The game organizes the plots of food into north-south oriented rows. So you want the longest side to be north-south oriented because you get a plot per row for every tile in that direction.
In the east-west direction, you get 1 plot every other tile, starting with the first plot on the west side. If you have 10 tiles east-west you’ll get 5 rows. If you have 11 tiles east-west, you’ll get 6 rows. You always want an odd number of rows in the east-west direction.
So 11x11 is 66 food (1.83~ tiles per food) and 10x10 is only 50 food (2 tiles per food).
Of course 11x1 is the most efficient farm shape, because every tile is a food tile. If you make 11 of them, you get a super efficient shape for the farmer to tend. Don’t expect that to last forever though! I expect that when watering becomes a thing, the unused tiles in the pattern will be required to provide water to the crops and that will be more efficient.
At least in my experience, in Alpha 10, if you start near a patch or two of berries you will not even need a farmer.
I managed to get to ten population with only one trapper, if you keep the size of the trapping area decently small (10x10, 20x20) you can make the person you might turn into a farmer and make a second footman, as almost nothing can be as annoying as your only footman being overwhelmed!
Also, keep everything organized. Don’t try to get to fancy until you get a foothold. Try to just build something like a longhouse, and use it for all of your needs. And as I learned, if you want to at some point remove the goblins? Do not fence off your stockpile completely, as the raiders just stay at the village! Instead, try a choke point, making a footman “attack” the entrance to guard it.
Ooh I don’t know if anyone said this, but another good tip would be
start on peacefull mode if you are unsure how to play the game. That way you can get the basic mechanics down without being attacked every night. Then when you are ready start a normal game.
I start with the same parties as @sdee does. When invaders… erm… invade, I pause or slow down the game in order to set my formations. I send my army to attack about halfway on the path to the invaders, and I set my civilians to defend about halfway to that. My army usually reaches the invaders before they reach my civilians. Once my army has weakened the invaders enough, I send my civilians up ahead. If needed, I can pull my army back a bit so that they can recover before finishing the invaders off.
Before water acted as a natural barrier to baddies I would use recesses in the terrain to ensure minimal incursions. With water introduced I am now finding places where water spans valleys or partially surrounds plateaus. Reducing traffic to small areas in this fashion allows me to gate and fence off my town sooner.
10.5 alpha… I started near berries; (always)… setup 2 shared sleeping quarters… I like the new spread work… people will harvest and pick things up and build at the same time. Made 2 swords, promoted 2 of my bet stated peoples. This worked well before. But this time the goblins came, and only 1 swordsman went to attack, the other stayed sleeping. They barely survived. The second wave of goblins came, and 1 went out to fight, the other stayed patrolling the stockpile! (this is more like a bug)
missed getting a new guy the first day (lots of berries were left by bushes… some of the bushes were pretty far, and it seems the closest things have priority to move to the stockpile). But did get a guy second and third day.
Also when the builders were done with my second sleeping quarters and the dining hall, they left wood blocks on the roof. After all the scaffolding was gone, had to build a ladder to the roof to recover them.
Did like 10.0 behavior where both footmen would attack, they would even rouse from sleep to go fighting.
At first i make walls at every side with only one or two doors (best is a cliff so there are only 2 possible ways) - next i build big stockpiles for later and make 2 farmers and 1trapper - next a set 2 soldiers and get all hearthlings in attack and defendpartys. now i can wait and my 2 workers gathers all items and when i get more heaths. they get a carpenter for beds and after this they become houses xD
Simply put: 1x1 farming. See here for more details. I do not recommend this right now, as the game becomes laggy when plowing the second 1x1 farm. Follow the link to find the ongoing discussion on the matter. I have left this here so people don’t get confused about the replies below. Perhaps performance will be improved and this will still be a viable strategy in future version.
Cheaty 1-wide row farms have been around for a while, though I have never before heard of a soil richness increase before. But it’s been speculated before that such irrigation, etc., in the future may make furrows useful.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I’m sure all of this will prove worthless eventually when more features are implemented. I wouldn’t call it cheaty though, but that’s just me.
just kidding, good advice!
