How to get high yield on crop fields in arid highland map

Farthest Frontier General Discussion
1

The arid highlands map is a challenging map to survive in a harsh world with crop fields:

  • Very low environment fertility factor (EFF). Large plots of land with EFF ~40% are rare. Most arable land has EFF ~30%. The reason I put this issue first is because it is the biggest factor. In maps with favorable growing conditions, fields with EFF 100% will increase soil fertility by 3% for clover per crop, 1 application of compost yard will increase 8%, beans and peas will increase 1% per crop but with low EFF the number you get is the ratio of EFF x the above parameters.
  • Low fertility. Most arable land has only 30% to 50% fertility. It will take a lot of time to improve the crop fields to achieve 100% fertility
  • There are often droughts, sometimes early frosts that lead to crop losses
    …

Of course, I’m not saying that focusing on developing the crop fields is the right thing to do.
In agriculture alone: ​​The buildings of the tree grower are very productive (especially when combined with the relic “Root of the first tree” which increases the growth rate of trees by 15% and increases the yield of fruits by 25%. Livestock farms are also very productive
With the abundance of iron, coal, gold, and sand mines, industry is the thing that should be focused on to be able to buy and sell goods in the trading post.

However: the merchants do not always bring a lot of food to the trading post (especially to supply large settlements with a population >2000). Moreover, the cultivated fields are very important in increasing the diversity of food sources (to upgrade houses) and providing food for livestock and poultry.

Back to the main issue. The goal we are aiming for is to achieve optimal productivity in the crop field under such harsh conditions. To do this, we need to solve the following problems well:

  1. How to increase the fertility of the crop field to 100% in the shortest possible time - an important factor for high productivity. Also, do not forget to eradicate weeds.
  2. How to keep this fertility high (>90%) without falling over time
  3. Choose high-yielding crop varieties and have a high planting rate in the 9 months that can be planted and at the same time not let crop diseases spread and reduce productivity.
  1. How to increase the fertility of the crop field to 100% in the shortest possible time.
  • With EFF 33%, planting clover once increases fertility by 1%. Establish a field with 2 plantings of clover/year
  • Fertilize from compost yard. Compost yard increases fertility by 8% x EFF for 1 application for any field size. With 33% EFF, a single application will increase fertility by 2.66%/application.

An important thing to optimize fertilization is to build the largest fields possible. My preferred size is 12x24

  • Although livestock waste no longer directly increases fertility in crop fields as it used to, it is still good to take advantage of clover fields by grazing on them to provide a high food source for animals. This is important because you need to build on many cow, goat, chicken barns to have a lot of waste to supply the compost yard
  1. How to keep this fertility level high (>90%) without falling over time.
  • Each type of crop causes a different decline in the fertility of the crop field. Set the total decline in this 3-year rotation as A
  • Clover, beans and peas help increase fertility). Set the total increase in soil fertility over the 3-year rotation of these 3 crops as B
  • Set the total increase in fertility from Fertilizer from the compost yard as C

So our goal should be: B+C >= A

Suppose the EFF is 33%. In a 3-year rotation, clover is planted 3 times (increasing fertility by 3%), and each crop field is fertilized from the compost once (increasing fertility by 8%). Assuming no beans or peas are grown, the total fertility loss that all other crops should have is a maximum of 10%.

Note: Wheat fertility loss is currently 7%/crop

  1. Choose high-yielding crop varieties and have a high planting rate in the 9 months that can be planted and at the same time not let crop diseases spread and reduce productivity.

This is the most important issue that we need to discuss in this topic.

  • First of all, the higher the fertility requirement of a crop and the lower the weed rate, the higher the yield. Specifically, according to the table above, wheat and leeks are the two crops with the highest productivity. However, our crop fields will not grow leeks because this crop has a very short storage time (6 months for green vegetables) so most of them will be damaged before being consumed. So wheat will be the main crop even though it causes a decrease in soil fertility of -7% / planting

  • A weakness of wheat is its long growing period (more than 5 months), which can easily lead to farmers not being able to harvest in time, leading to wheat rotting in the fields. To overcome this, we need to ensure that there are enough farmers in the fields (I think it should be 18 farmers / 12 x 24 field), and arrange many granaries and root cellars close to the fields to minimize the time for storing crops.

Also, don’t forget to build cobbled roads to increase the movement speed of villagers, as well as arrange many workers in the field + abundant goods so that farmers can spend more time working in the fields instead of traveling kilometers just to get 1 piece of firewood.

It is necessary to establish the location of the crop fields so that they are close to residential areas, and at the same time the fields are close to each other so that farmers of each field can quickly move and support each other.

  • It is necessary to ensure that the time spent on the crop field accounts for at least 90% of the 9 growing months. If this ratio is too low, it will reduce the yield of the crop field

  • Crops grown in the same year do not have the same disease group. For example: beans, peas, carrots

  • So what other crops should be arranged besides wheat in the 3-year rotation? Here is how I set it up.
    I divide the crop fields into a combination of 4 crop fields each: A1, A2, A3 and B
    A1, A2, A3 have the same rotation as follows:
    Y1: Clover + wheat
    Y2: Peas + weeding + clover
    Y3: Peas + Clover + turnip
    A1, A2, A3 should be set up to grow a different type of Yx so that the harvest is even in all years

In the above rotation, only Peas are repeated twice in Y2 and Y3. Suppose if the pea disease appears in Y2, then in Y3 you should remove this crop (and replace it with weeding) to ensure that when rotating from Y3 to Y1, the disease has been suppressed and no longer affects Y2 of the next rotation.

In terms of impact on the fertility of the crop field
Wheat x1 = -7%
Turnip x1 = -1%
Clover x 3 = +3x3% x EFF
Peas x 2 = +2x1% x EFF

Assuming EFF = 33%, the total above = -4.37%
Thus, if the crop field is fertilized for only 2 out of 3 years of the rotation, it will ensure a positive coefficient of fertility

In terms of planting time, the above rotation has an average planting time of 8.6 months / 9 months ~ 95.5%

Another advantage is that it is possible to increase / decrease the clay / sand in the crop fields so that wheat and peas can get an additional 10% bonus. The downside is that turnips will not receive this bonus. However, this is not important because the Turnip yield is very small in the total yield of the rotation.

As shown in the image above, according to the in-game experiment, on a 12x24 field EFF 30% with 18 farmers

  • Wheat yield is 6886 but is reduced by 52 due to not being harvested in time, so it is only 6834
  • Turnip yield is 2145
  • Pea yield is 2391 x 2
    The total yield of 3 fields A1, A2, A3 in 1 year is 13,761 units.

A villager consumes 24 units of food / year. So these 3 fields alone are enough to feed 573 villagers (if not counting spoilage)

The important thing is that all 3 of the above foods have a very long shelf life: wheat: 24 months (18 months if ground into flour), peas 12 months, turnips 12 months

Similarly, for field B I set up the following rotation:
Y1: peas + weeding + clover
Y2: Hay + weeding
Y3: Clover + flax

The calculation is still similar to the above and gives very good yields, to meet the needs of the settlement and livestock.

2

I found that by focusing on the food type categories and not so much on the variety of individual foods, I was able to get the housing upgrades needed. It is worth noting that the varieties are only needed to trigger an upgrade, not sustain that upgrade, so you can maintain a high fruit and meat production through arborists and (cow) barns to support a large population, having the majority of your crop in any plant that produces wheat and enough hay to keep your cattle from consuming all your wheat.

Bread is the only food in the grain category on the chart as pastry is listed as a luxury so don’t skip out on producing bread once you get your bakeries upgraded.

Berries and nuts are all fruit, so if you’re thinking about upgrading your foragers to cultivate medical root instead, that’s okay too because you can make a lot of fruit from the arborists and unlike berries which have a shelf life of only 4 months, the fruit lasts much longer. I recently discovered that having pear trees near where your villagers live and work is helpful as they pick from these freely and often faster than the arborists. Pears carry over 40% of their remaining fruit into the next year as well making them good for providing additional food not listed in your inventory. It is my understanding that fruit on the tree does not have a shelf life.

Eggs are a protein, so you don’t need to worry about foraging these at the beginning of each year if you have a chicken coop going because you will get plenty of protein from the meat. Eggs are currently only required for the Pastry luxury food item, so put root cellars near your pastry shops with minimum stock set for eggs and flour to ensure they don’t have to walk far to get them.

The preservist only needs root vegetables to create preserved vegetables, so any other kind of vegetable is subject to their time to keep cycles with mushrooms and greens having a short 6 month cycle and beans having 12 months. Root vegetables by themselves keep for 12 months as well and consists of either turnips or carrots. These two have similar traits to production, grow time and what they do to the soil but the turnips are hardier and faster to grow. Only need to switch to carrot when a disease affects turnips. You may want to target buckwheat as your wheat source early on as it has relatively low fertility dependence until you get your fertility up.

It is also worth noting that on this type of map, there are sporadic areas of higher fertility soil you should jump on with your farms because the effectiveness of compost depends on this base level.

While pushing for large cow populations will get you plenty of meat and compost, let’s not forget the milk production and later cheese. These are the only foods that fit in the dairy category and are important for achieving the food type quantity requirements. So when you are not pushing for housing upgrades, you can sustain your population on just fruit and meat while getting your fertility up.

3

It’s going to depend on what your map seed allows as far as t2 foragers go. On the Arid Highlands map I was playing I couldn’t grow greens, mushrooms or medicinal roots because the biome didn’t have them in the wild.

4

How many years does it take you to get to 100% fertility or however much you’re aiming for?

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5

As the parameters I gave above.
Suppose the crop field has a fertility of 40 and EFF of 30%

Plant 2 crops of clover each year. So 1 year can increase 1.8
So in the situation of not fertilizing, it will take 33 years
But if in ideal conditions, fertilizing regularly, the fertility will increase by 2.4%. So after more than 14 years, the field will reach maximum fertility.

Of course, this is a long-term investment, but the results will be huge and long-lasting, just use a reasonable crop rotation to keep the fertility high.

I am currently aiming for the goal: conquer the map with the arid plateau + vanquisher mode + reach a population of 2000 in the arid plateau + Raging Raiders mod (to increase the difficulty of the enemy) and survive for at least 100 years, this is a profitable investment. On the contrary, for players who only aim to upgrade their Town Center to level 4 and then move to a new map, this is an investment that should not be made.

6

You can extend over the max range? - is that a “feature”?

Using buckwheat indeed, how you go about root vegetables in Arid terrain, since they will decrease fertility?

7

To get a 12x24, you first start with a 12x12, then once it is ready for planting, open it up and on the left edge there is a button to extend the farm. Now you can extend it one time to 12x24. After that, the button says you are already over the max limit. I think this is a bug though as the extend was probably meant for smaller farms to allow you to bring it up towards max size later, but it was implemented in a way players can take advantage of it to double an already max field. You still get the entire field fertilized at one time from a single dose of compost though.

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