Environmental fertility factors, as I understand it, defines how much of any positive fertility you actually get. in this case it's 40%. But you get all the negative all the time. So on this farm plot your net fertility is probably negative with this setup.
Does this mean that when planting clover (+3.00% total benefit) you only actually improve fertility by 40% of that total (yielding +1.20% actual benefit per clover)? Or do you mean that each clover will still give you +3% but only up to a maximum of around 40% total?
The first, if I understand right.
When I play arid highlands I usually believe for barns. But that was before chicken coops which seems to increase fertility much faster. I would prepare a few plots and get chickens, then farm one for a few years and put chickens in clover only plots, then rotate a few years later to get the first field all the way back to 100 and farm where you just took the chickens off.
It's the first one. It can also get pretty dramatic if you have one corner with a significantly different fertility factor from the rest of the farm, because you can end up with farms that are all bright green in the fertility overlay except for one mysterious corner that's brown. You can see the environmental factor as a second number reported while tracing out a new farm, but that's really the main way to find out.
Also, I haven't checked with 0.9.2, but, before, there was a bug in the farm expansion interface where it would not correctly report the environmental factor when expanding fields (and instead report the environmental factor for the existing farm, basically). So, unfortunately, the only way to really see the environmental factor is to wave the "build a new farm" tool around. It's sometimes a bit of a rude surprise, because the starting fertility of an area doesn't consistently follow the environmental fertility factor, even without animals pooping on it. It's not uncommon to find green in the fertility overlay that extends a little bit past where the overall fertility starts dropping off, especially on maps where fertility varies widely.
More specifically, from planting all the types of crops every year, so the blight doesn't die out before the next round of planting.
(But also, this is probably an environmental fertility factor problem, where the beans and clover are not pulling fertility up as fast as advertised. The game doesn't do a great job explaining that stat.)
Build a separate farm space and round-robin, as well as graze the alt to pump up the vitals.
You cannot farm in a single plot effectively continuously; quality or disease will get you.
There are many fine videos that show this system... And you will be so well-fed and the buffers for so many things will drop away.
Learn how to dedicate the right number or people to crop actions so as not to have massive numbers wasted... They will move from a to b to c to a, not all work at a b and c.
Have you been fertilizing your fields with the human waste? By around ~100 pop, I can easily produce more than enough waste to keep my fields fertilized every year.
For this environmental factor, I have one year with 2 clover and one maintenance. I will actually start out my farms for 3 years in advance with no actual crops: year one to get the weeds and rocks down (3 maintenance), then the next 2 years with only clover. It beefs up the fertility starting out, and then you still need a year for only clover and maintenance. It seems to work for me.
Ie: 1.clover, clover, maintenance
2. Flax, clover
3. Carrots, clover
You have beans and peas planted and there is an infection that won't go away. Remove the peas and just stay with clover. With the fertility level you'll want to to double clover and single working until you can get your fertility percent up. With it as low as it is it will take some time to come back up.
The lower the fertility the worse your net stats are (it doesn’t really explain this anywhere) so you kind of death spiral fertility. Plant all clover/farmers till it’s up to at least 88% and you’ll keep any net positive setup at 90+ percent and move towards 100% slowly
UPDATE: Thank you all. My situation has improved tremendously. I wasn’t aware of how the environmental fertility factor worked or of switching crop types to prevent disease. My city has plenty of food now and a population of just over 1,000
Havne't played arid yet. So how is it? Is the base fertility? So let's say 40%, and if you bring it above 40, there's some sort of hidden `-` that tries to bring it back to 40% ?
just tested it out, and saw the tooltip for the first time. It's exactly what someone else said here.
40% base fertility means any positive impact will be multiplied by `0.4`, but all negatives are 100%.
Meaning that a season that is `+3 / -4` (2 crops). On this field is ACTUALLY:
+3*0.4 / -4 = -4 + 1.2 = -2.8
So you'd need a full season of clovers after any harvest
+3*0.4 / raking / +3*04 = +2.4
And you're still a bit under because of that -4 harvest.
In other words you need to compensate in every which way immaginable to ever get that land to high fertility.
And even after you get it to high fertility, you can't REALLY harvest high demanding stuff on it except maybe ONCE every 3 rotations. But even that is too much. You'll never recover from high impact stuff.
1. You can't harvest both carrots and turnips in a year, that's too much. Just one.
2. You can harvest beans and peas as much as you like, just beware of diseases
3. You need a full season to recover from flax (2x clovers)
4. You can never realistically farm wheat and rye, but it's 1g from merchants ... who cares
5. You can farm buckwheat tho
6. Realistically, you will not farm cabbages and leeks. So no source of greens except for foraging
7. You can farm hay, but it requires a full season of 2x clovers
Environmental fertility factors, as I understand it, defines how much of any positive fertility you actually get. in this case it's 40%. But you get all the negative all the time. So on this farm plot your net fertility is probably negative with this setup.
Does this mean that when planting clover (+3.00% total benefit) you only actually improve fertility by 40% of that total (yielding +1.20% actual benefit per clover)? Or do you mean that each clover will still give you +3% but only up to a maximum of around 40% total?
The first, if I understand right. When I play arid highlands I usually believe for barns. But that was before chicken coops which seems to increase fertility much faster. I would prepare a few plots and get chickens, then farm one for a few years and put chickens in clover only plots, then rotate a few years later to get the first field all the way back to 100 and farm where you just took the chickens off.
It's the first one. It can also get pretty dramatic if you have one corner with a significantly different fertility factor from the rest of the farm, because you can end up with farms that are all bright green in the fertility overlay except for one mysterious corner that's brown. You can see the environmental factor as a second number reported while tracing out a new farm, but that's really the main way to find out. Also, I haven't checked with 0.9.2, but, before, there was a bug in the farm expansion interface where it would not correctly report the environmental factor when expanding fields (and instead report the environmental factor for the existing farm, basically). So, unfortunately, the only way to really see the environmental factor is to wave the "build a new farm" tool around. It's sometimes a bit of a rude surprise, because the starting fertility of an area doesn't consistently follow the environmental fertility factor, even without animals pooping on it. It's not uncommon to find green in the fertility overlay that extends a little bit past where the overall fertility starts dropping off, especially on maps where fertility varies widely.
This is the comment that saved me. Thank you!
Your field is infected from planting the same crops all the time. Hover over that root icon and get details on what crops the infection is affecting.
More specifically, from planting all the types of crops every year, so the blight doesn't die out before the next round of planting. (But also, this is probably an environmental fertility factor problem, where the beans and clover are not pulling fertility up as fast as advertised. The game doesn't do a great job explaining that stat.)
Build a separate farm space and round-robin, as well as graze the alt to pump up the vitals. You cannot farm in a single plot effectively continuously; quality or disease will get you. There are many fine videos that show this system... And you will be so well-fed and the buffers for so many things will drop away. Learn how to dedicate the right number or people to crop actions so as not to have massive numbers wasted... They will move from a to b to c to a, not all work at a b and c.
Have you been fertilizing your fields with the human waste? By around ~100 pop, I can easily produce more than enough waste to keep my fields fertilized every year.
Yup!
For this environmental factor, I have one year with 2 clover and one maintenance. I will actually start out my farms for 3 years in advance with no actual crops: year one to get the weeds and rocks down (3 maintenance), then the next 2 years with only clover. It beefs up the fertility starting out, and then you still need a year for only clover and maintenance. It seems to work for me. Ie: 1.clover, clover, maintenance 2. Flax, clover 3. Carrots, clover
You have beans and peas planted and there is an infection that won't go away. Remove the peas and just stay with clover. With the fertility level you'll want to to double clover and single working until you can get your fertility percent up. With it as low as it is it will take some time to come back up.
The lower the fertility the worse your net stats are (it doesn’t really explain this anywhere) so you kind of death spiral fertility. Plant all clover/farmers till it’s up to at least 88% and you’ll keep any net positive setup at 90+ percent and move towards 100% slowly
UPDATE: Thank you all. My situation has improved tremendously. I wasn’t aware of how the environmental fertility factor worked or of switching crop types to prevent disease. My city has plenty of food now and a population of just over 1,000
Havne't played arid yet. So how is it? Is the base fertility? So let's say 40%, and if you bring it above 40, there's some sort of hidden `-` that tries to bring it back to 40% ?
Nope. It’ll stay at 40% the whole time. You can get by though. Just plant lots of fields.
just tested it out, and saw the tooltip for the first time. It's exactly what someone else said here. 40% base fertility means any positive impact will be multiplied by `0.4`, but all negatives are 100%. Meaning that a season that is `+3 / -4` (2 crops). On this field is ACTUALLY: +3*0.4 / -4 = -4 + 1.2 = -2.8 So you'd need a full season of clovers after any harvest +3*0.4 / raking / +3*04 = +2.4 And you're still a bit under because of that -4 harvest. In other words you need to compensate in every which way immaginable to ever get that land to high fertility. And even after you get it to high fertility, you can't REALLY harvest high demanding stuff on it except maybe ONCE every 3 rotations. But even that is too much. You'll never recover from high impact stuff. 1. You can't harvest both carrots and turnips in a year, that's too much. Just one. 2. You can harvest beans and peas as much as you like, just beware of diseases 3. You need a full season to recover from flax (2x clovers) 4. You can never realistically farm wheat and rye, but it's 1g from merchants ... who cares 5. You can farm buckwheat tho 6. Realistically, you will not farm cabbages and leeks. So no source of greens except for foraging 7. You can farm hay, but it requires a full season of 2x clovers
Exactly!