I have a few new suggestions about farming. I know a lot of suggestions have been already made for farming, and I agree with most of them, such as implementation of weeds, and longer times to grow crops to make it more realistic. I really think it would be better for the game to take longer to grow the crops because as of now, it is way to fast and trying to have a good diverse selection of foods is actually a bad thing because you’d have a food overflow (unless you have tiny 1x1 farms).
Besides the slower grow rate, I think farmers should have to work the fields as the crops are growing. Most of the time the farmers are sitting there, waiting for the crops to grow. I personally don’t think having weeds is necessary, but if weeds would be too complicated to have for some reason, I think that degradation of the soil should happen. There is already soil types going from “poor” to “rich,” so I think that the soil should start off at a good grade, then slowly, as you plant and harvest crops, degrade over time. If the farmer works the field while the crops are growing, this will happen at a slower rate. If the farmer doesn’t have enough time to work the field, then the degradation will happen quicker. Having poor soil should effect the quality of the crop. Instead of having just “corn,” there should be “nice corn,” “disgusting corn,” etc… Having disgusting food would effect the food morale of your settlers. The way to get your soil’s quality back up is to not plant any crops in that field for a while.
Another suggestion for farming is having certain farmers “own” different farm plots. This would help farmers manage the different fields they have to work to keep the soil fresh. You would be able to assign different farmers to different fields and they would only work that field. If you had a very large field, you could assign multiple farmers to that field, or if you don’t want a specific farmer to work on that field, you could just have all of them work it.
This “field ownership” idea might be a little to much micromanagement for Radiant’s style, but I do think it would be a great implementation. I think the longer growing times and soil degradation are definitely good ideas though, and the ownership idea is just a maybe.
Anything you guys wanna add on to any of my suggestions?
