Bug: Planting acacia saplings causes farmers to stop working efficiently

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Summary:
Playing an Ascendancy settlement, I acquired acacia seeds from a trader. I let them sit for a while before planting them, but as soon as I did, all of the farmers stopped working efficiently. I currently have a large settlement with 39 hearthlings, and was previously able to maintain a stable level of food with three farmers and two cooks, working 3 11x11 plots and 10 5x11 plots. I keep several additional small plots (1x11) fallow most of the time until I find myself running low on trees, so I set one of these rows to acacia saplings and two of them to oak.

Soon after this, I noticed that my food supplies had dropped a bit according to the daily update. I watched the farms for a while and saw that the farmers were only replanting crops in roughly 2/3 of the plots at any given time. They were also not harvesting roughly 1/3 of the ripe crops before they rotted. I assumed at first that the balance had shifted at some point, so I promoted first one and then another new farmer to pick up some of the load. I also placed two new vaults set only to hold food in case the problem was a lack of storage space. I tried removing and redesignating the plots that were not being planted. However, the problem persisted after each attempted solution, and food supplies steadily dropped. The citizens panel showed that the farmers were spending most of the time idle even though there was plenty of work available.

I began to suspect the acacias as the source of the problem because of the timing. I reset the acacia plot to fallow and waited for the saplings to mature. As soon as they were completely harvested, the farmers returned to working the other plots at their normal rate. As an additional test, I planted an entirely new 1x11 plot of acacia saplings, and the farmers again began to neglect 1/3 of the other plots within a day. This time, I removed the acacia plot without waiting for the saplings to be harvested, and the farmers immediately resumed planting and harvesting as normal.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Acquire acacia seeds from a trader
  2. Activate the seeds to allow farmers to plant them
  3. Set either a new plot or a previously planted/fallow plot to grow acacia saplings

Expected Results:
The farmers would continue to work all active plots at their usual rate and efficiency.

Actual Results:
The farmers neglect approximately 1/3 of the plots, failing to replant crops in more than 2/3 of the plots at any given time, and leaving many crops to rot without harvesting.

Notes:
I unlocked two other seeds acquired from the trader (golden gourds and watermelons) at the same time as the acacia seeds, but planting golden gourds or watermelons does not result in the same problem.

Version Number and Mods in use:
Alpha 21 (develop 3362), no mods

System Information:
Windows 10 Home 64 | Intel i5-4670K | 16GB RAM | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960

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Welcome to the forum, @Nyessa :slight_smile:

Could you upload your savefile?

  1. Find the save folder for the saves you wish to upload. By default, they are located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Stonehearth\saved_games (assuming a default Steam install).
  2. Zip the folder.
  3. Right click the folder (should be a long set of numbers).
  4. Left click on Send to in the menu that appears.
  5. Left click on `Compressed (Zipped) folder).
  6. (Optional) Rename the folder to something different than the default set of numbers.
  7. Upload the save.
  8. If the zip is less than 10 MB, you can upload it directly. Either use the upload button or drag and drop it into the compose window,
  9. If larger than 10 MB, upload it to a cloud storage site like Dropbox, Google Drive, File Dropper, etc. and post the sharing link here.
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Thank you, @Relyss!

I now believe that the acacia seeds were not the problem. I looked at a couple of my saves to see if I had one from when the problem was occurring, and I discovered that the most recent save before I unlocked the acacia seeds also had the problem–I just hadn’t noticed it yet because the food stores hadn’t begun to diminish. So I’m including two saves: the one right before I unlocked the acacias, and the next one after that, which was after I deleted the acacia plot and the farmers seemed to go back to their normal work. Here’s the Google Drive link.

If I hadn’t taken some time to watch the farmers’ behavior, I would suspect that it was my own fault for not having enough farmers assigned. But the fact that they were spending most of their time idle in spite of the available work is what makes me still believe there’s a bug involved somewhere.

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4

I see your follow-up that it’s not related to Acacia trees, and I agree. I’ve seen this in multiple games where farmers just burn out and stop working. I’m curious if Master Farmers keep accumulating XP and overruns the XP variable?

I changed all 5 of my farmers to footmen, put them in a new combat party and sent just those to battle two camps of orcs on top of a mountain. After they all died, I promoted 5 new workers to farmers, and they started planting and harvesting the fields I had previously laid out.

I think I’m going to put the 5 ex-farmer gravestones next to the fields just to remind the new farmers what happens if they get lazy.

3 Likes