Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Spage0987]

Do the crops need constant light from sunrise to sunset?

[Jeorg]

Do the crops need constant light from sunrise to sunset?

welp, as a bit of a farmer, I ll just say no. Better growth with good light I reckon, but I have some in the shadow of me orchard and they come up pretty good.

My biggest question is, Y'all reckon it will rain?

[Spage0987]

I don't ever even see rain...I play single player mode

[Jeorg]

I don't ever even see rain...I play single player mode

lol no. not yet.... no weather.

[Spage0987]

So crops will still grow without water...? I've been waiting for a long time for crops to grow....I even changed the 3 hours grow time to 30mins in my Single PLayer world

[Jeorg]

So crops will still grow without water...? I've been waiting for a long time for crops to grow....I even changed the 3 hours grow time to 30mins in my Single PLayer world

at this time, yes.
I have never once watered a crop, not now or just before release, and they always grow.
24 hour cycle on full growth is what I ve always had.
But I don't roam beyond 6 or 4 much, except to look in on questions on occasion.
Default of 3.

[Spage0987]

lol wow....well i know what was wrong...i had grass rendering set to 0. So apperently you won't see the crops either... /

[Aldebaran]

I got some crops to grow, and even harvested them, terrible yield, and it left the soil a really icky depleted look. Ho do I fertilise?

[DeathEmber]

My experience:

In the data files (we did some mining) there is a weather forecast... days 1-10 are all rainy and will increase your yield of crops greatly. Several days after that are hot & dry and yields will fall. There is no in-game graphic for rain (there is fog) so you will have zero indication if it is wet or dry (hopefully this is implemented shortly)

Edit; Also noticed on the game loading screen it mentions watching forecast for rain for your crops. lol



Ground quality affects yield.

Every time you farm the same cell the quality falls until it becomes barren.

Barren soil needs to be fertilised with dung to increase the yield. (obtained from coops) Fertilising soil multiple times and digging it up has revealed that multiple uses increases soil quality with each use. 100% soil quality seems possible in theory.

Plant growth timer on the server settings seems to be PER STAGE. If you plant a tree and have it set to 0.5, in 30 minutes (irl time) it'll grow one stage.

If not harvested within a certain amount of time (some debate, I suspect related to growth timer differences for different plants, and via server growth timer setting) it will die and the plot will become vacant but remain plowed.

So far our best yields have been on fresh soil that has not had anything grown on it, fertilised, then planted and harvested after being up for a couple of growth stages.


Thoughts still in question:
Does rotating crops on a single cell increase yield? It seems planting the same crop on the same cell and harvesting decreases yield. I'm contemplating 4 5x5 plots of ground. IRL Crop rotations that work in game: Potato -> Peas -> Cabbage -> Onions -> Potato... (needs testing)

We've had some issues with harvesting IMMEDIATELY after the cell matures to be harvestable only yielding 1. Theory is waiting longer after maturity increases yield up until the crop dies and all harvesting has been lost. (needs testing)

[Deantwo]

That amount of complexity almost makes me afraid of being a framer now.
Really need good indecation for this things. Working with invisible variables is not all that fun.

[Noodleguitar]

Barren soil needs to be fertilised with dung to increase the yield. (obtained from coops) Fertilising soil multiple times and digging it up has revealed that multiple uses increases soil quality with each use. 100% soil quality seems possible in theory.

So if you were to fertilise the ground multiple times, even if it shows the newly plowed texture, it would still increase the soil quality? I did notice a barren texture when you plow -> plant -> harvest and then plow again. One use of fertiliser brings the soil quality up to normal again (unlimited dung, woohoo). Multiple uses don't change the texture any more, but if the soil itself increases in quality it could very well affect crops indeed.

I also found that I was able to harvest rich yields from all crop types (4 - 12 units) today. I'm not sure if it was because of the planting conditions (planted on a sunny day) or because I left the mature crops for a while. From my experience, the seeds quality doesn't have a big impact.

[LordWiese]

I'm our groups main farmer, and that helps a lot, thank you!

For some reason I'm taking a liking to the hippy skills in the game.

[DeathEmber]

After numerous tests today, we did infact find that leaving crops longer after they ripen did increase yield greatly.

After planting in a field, I harvested 1 crop each IRL halfhour (what our server growth was set to) and noticed a steady increase in yield. however we did not get to the point crops died (each had 3x3 plots). Before all were harvested.

haven't experimented with rotation yet.

[Matheuz]

Can confirm when you wait to long the corps are lost.. we have the time multiplayer ata 3 and the best time to farm is afert 20 hours.. at 24 hours its lost.. then we become 4-12 from 1 cell.

[Proximo]

I haven't managed to obtain dung from the chicken coops at all yet, what is your breeding/feeding rates set too.

I leveled animal lore off collecting eggs at what seemed random times.

[BurghUK]

SO My group currently has the issue that our farmer planted crops 2 days ago and they have yet to show any signs of growth.

As far as im aware the server settings are default , what are we doing wrong?

[Valiantjared]

Barren soil needs to be fertilised with dung to increase the yield. (obtained from coops) Fertilising soil multiple times and digging it up has revealed that multiple uses increases soil quality with each use. 100% soil quality seems possible in theory.

So if you were to fertilise the ground multiple times, even if it shows the newly plowed texture, it would still increase the soil quality? I did notice a barren texture when you plow -> plant -> harvest and then plow again. One use of fertiliser brings the soil quality up to normal again (unlimited dung, woohoo). Multiple uses don't change the texture any more, but if the soil itself increases in quality it could very well affect crops indeed.

I also found that I was able to harvest rich yields from all crop types (4 - 12 units) today. I'm not sure if it was because of the planting conditions (planted on a sunny day) or because I left the mature crops for a while. From my experience, the seeds quality doesn't have a big impact.

how the heck did you get dung? gm spawned?

[Ravenclad]

Rabbits man, they crap like mad in a coop. Just gotta keep them fed.

[Deantwo]

SO My group currently has the issue that our farmer planted crops 2 days ago and they have yet to show any signs of growth.

As far as im aware the server settings are default , what are we doing wrong?

Is the soil fertilized?
Once you have have grown something in "Fertile Soil" and harvested it, the soil becomes "Soil". crops grow really slowly in " Soil".

You can do this things to fix this. Either you can fertilize the "Soil" cell with dung (poop) from a coop, or you can dig up the "Soil" and replace it with "Fertile Soil".

One other thing. If your "grass render distance" is set to 0 (zero), the crops will not render.
You can still go and right-click the cell though to see if it is ready to be harvested or nothing planted.

[DichBach]

The little group I've joined up with needed a farmer so I've taken it on as a primary role. Observations:

A. Plowing (with a shovel, not a plow) seems to be the most efficient way to level up the skill. I suppose if you have lots of apples to harvest, that may be better, but our apple trees are taking forever to mature and yield apples.

B. Harvesting wild plant foods (with primitive sickle, we cannot make steel yet to make the sickle): just anecdotal but . . . potatoes seem to yield from sloped dirt piles more often. In the span of 40 tiles I harvested 6 potatos, 5 of which were from a sloped dirt pile at the base of our town palisade. Grapes MIGHT come from sandy soil more? Carrots no observed pattern. These are very small sample sizes so who knows; might be nonsense I'm spouting.

C. Not sure what the server's plant setting is on ours, but I doubt it is set to a long grow time. That said, planting on fertile soil seems to a long time for stuff to grow.

D. It seems to be possible to "flatten ground" both after it has been plowed, and after it has been planted. I don't know if this will tend to have a bad effect on it.

Few issues I'm not seeing discussed, and figure we can wonder outloud together:

1. Fertile soil vs. forest soil. Presumably fertile soil is better for crops?

2. Fertile soil quality: having prepared the area for our fields by getting it all to the same elevation and flattening it (maybe a mistake not sure) I've yielded a wide range of fertile soil quality. I've got about 2 cm worth of 100Q, 6cm of ~85, 10cm of ~70 and so on like that down to ~60 of ~15Q soil. One would think that given quality effects are important in most other aspects of this game, that using the highest quality fertile soil would be beneficial (as well as fertilizing it).

3. Flattening: depending on what this actually means, it might be very bad for crops, or it might not be so bad. Also might be okay for some, and not okay for others. Wheat for example, I believe does best on nice level soil. Potatos on the other hand, I have always seen planted in little humps.

4. Slope and water: One would think that proximity to water would impact the growth of crops. Not sure. I'm tempted to pour a strip of moderately high quality soil along a lake, and plow it and plant it and see how it does. As far as slope, IRL some crops like to be more moist than others, one would think that being upslope or down slope relative to the surrounding land might have some effects.

I'm impressed if the devs have actually considered half of this stuff, and if it is implemented or halfway implemented than I'm really impressed

[DichBach]

Few more observations / questions.

I've got an area of about 4 x 5 that I've been fiddling with trying to understand soil, plowing, etc.

S = slope with forest soil ~7+ height
C = crop (hght of 6.9)
# = decimal of height 9 = 6.9

S S S S S
9 8 8 8 8
8 7 8 8 8
8 C C C 8
8 8 8 8 7

I think those three crop plots are peas and onions.

1. I noticed that the height values are in different colors in observe mode in terraforming. The numbers on the crop plots and all the 6.8 height tiles are in yellow. The two tiles that are slightly lower (6.7) are in green. The heights above about 6.9 as it slopes up are in orange.

Is this just relative values or do the numbers mean something more? Like is a slightly lower piece of land better for crops because it will collect more water?

2. Fiding an area with out pockets of forest soil can be a pain. I've dug down two or three patches in this area I'm working on by a meter and STILL was hitting forest soil.

3. Signs to assist with sorting soil into types an quality would be awesome.

4. Poured soil seems to be indistinguishable from "plowed" soil.

[DichBach]

I have now played a good 80 to 100+ hours as a farmer/lumberjack.

It is possible to deplete a LOT of soil. It appears that, at present there are really only two options for reinvigorating that soil:

1. Dig it up and replace it with a scoop of fertile soil from some other location.

2. Pour dung on it to fertilize it.

Dung production, with only hare and chickens is rather slow, and I have generally found it necessary to resort to method #1 in order to produce large quantities of flax and food.

One suggestion I would propose to the developers to consider is to try to implement (if possible) a restoration by leaving the land fallow, and or crop rotation systems.

[Deantwo]

One suggestion I would propose to the developers to consider is to try to implement (if possible) a restoration by leaving the land fallow, and or crop rotation systems.

Or maybe just more Dung.
One per % on the Dung'o'Meter should do it, I think.

And let us clean with less then 20%?

[DichBach]

I have a feeling the animals are still borked.

Previous server I played on had AnimalBFPeriod set to 60. That seemed rather slow.

I've got mine now set to 24. That also seems slow, maybe even SLOWER I am not sure.

Went to bed last night with two or three animals in each of five coops, all of whom had a hundred+ apples . . .this morning, they all died of old age, and no recorded breeding on the log.

Gonna try turning AnimalBFPeriod to 1 and day cycle to 0.5 (instead of 3 and see what that does).

[Deantwo]

Went to bed last night with two or three animals in each of five coops, all of whom had a hundred+ apples . . .this morning, they all died of old age, and no recorded breeding on the log.

Was there room enough left for more animals to be born?

[Uno]

two or three animals in each coop is a lot of room left for breeding.
Animals in coops just don't breed and the breeding pens are not usable. I don't doubt the devs increased breeding rates in the last patch, however when the base factor is zero, and operation on it will return a zero.

Dung production is even too much IMHO, bunnies don't even produce dung at all (in reality). Surely dung production was dependant on cows & livestock by design, but for some reason implementing a cow item appears to be a lot more complicated than implementing a bunny item, or so a lot of posters would want me to believe.

[DichBach]

Went to bed last night with two or three animals in each of five coops, all of whom had a hundred+ apples . . .this morning, they all died of old age, and no recorded breeding on the log.

Was there room enough left for more animals to be born?

Had like 2 or 3 animals in each coop and 100+ apples.

Have been doing some more testing in GM mode on this today.

Posting a "bug" report on it right now.

[Puschpa]

Yesterday when I left the game in the later evening I had 13 Chicken and 8 Hares in the coop, most of them age 6/7. This morning I got several red messages about Chickens/Hares died of old age, but also one green message "Little Hare of 55 quality was born!" So, breeding basically works, but at a very awful rate, regarding the losses of death by old age. Animals should breed during the most time of their life circle, not only on the last day, with great luck...

[DichBach]

Yesterday when I left the game in the later evening I had 13 Chicken and 8 Hares in the coop, most of them age 6/7. This morning I got several red messages about Chickens/Hares died of old age, but also one green message "Little Hare of 55 quality was born!" So, breeding basically works, but at a very awful rate, regarding the losses of death by old age. Animals should breed during the most time of their life circle, not only on the last day, with great luck...

Ah good to know. So it just very, very low probability.

However, based on my testing player controlled "selective" breeding (what I see some refer to as "forced" or "manual" breeding) does not work:

https://lifeisfeudal.com/mantis/view.php?id=1778

[Uno]

I would say that the breeding chances are maybe not the real problem but the fact that animals only try breeding near death. If they tried earlier (3/4+ years), chances would automatically increase as well.