Weed growth on fields is much, much too slow

Farthest Frontier General Discussion
1

I think this changed fairly recently, not exactly sure when, but I used to have to put in some effort to keep my farm fields weed free. Not a huge amount but, if I was short on manpower, it would slowly creep up. Now it’s virtually impossible for them to not stay at 0.

The maths is that month the weed level increases on its own, adding up to around 4-5% per year. Each planted crop reduces it the weed level by the “weed suppression” value shown on the crop selector. Clover on its own reduces it by 8. This means that planting 2 clovers per 3-year rotation is enough to keep weeds at 0 Without taking into account any other crops. And without doing any field maintenance.

I tested this by running this for a full rotation, making sure that there was no off-duty field maintenance being done between crops.
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Note that this is just about the least weed suppressive rotation possible: peas, carrots, flax, and leeks all have 0 suppression. I had the minimum number of farmers possible (only field in the village), and turned it down to 0 between crops. And yet weeds stayed at 0, occasionally going up to +4% during the longer crops, but going straight back to nothing afterwards.

With weed growth being so weak, it might as well not exist; it basically works like rockiness at the moment. IMO, doubling the growth rate would still enable most rotations to keep them at 0 even without doing any field maintenance (either scheduled or in gaps). The value probably needs to be tripled in order for scheduling field maintenance to ever be necessary once a field has been prepared. Could also give field maintenance a role in culling crop diseases, now that those matter more than ever.

[As an aside, does non-scheduled field maintenance even happen? It was mentioned in patches ages ago that farmers would do it during down time, but I couldn’t get it to happen even when I tried. As I understand it, “Tending Crops” is an idle state that does nothing but look pretty (and happens while crops are in the ground), while “Field Maintenance” is the one that actually removes weeds].

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Perhaps tending crops is reducing weed level

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I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, based on my testing. And that the code calls it an idle state (ie, like doing laundry). Besides, by having only 1 farmer I was ensuring that he was too busy to ever actually tend the field. The results in the test line up with the numbers in the game. I’m fairly certain that weed growth is just that slow.