My experiments with farming...

[Sir_Simcelot 0]

If any of this has been discussed before or is wrong then please be easy on me, I'm new =)

 

Okay I was messing around one day wondering why large fields of farmland provided me no more jobs really than small patches. Sure the larger patches will somtimes yield the bigger farmhouses (with more jobs listed) but often I would have acres and acres of farmland and just a small 2 job listed farmhouse on it. I then thought that the job was actually just the farmhouse and not the fields. I thought well then I can just dezone the fields and leave the house and place another farm next to it. This seemed to work becaue everytime I dezone the fields I lost no income and when the new farm grew next to it I made even more income obviosuly. I figured this would be a good way to make alot of jobs and income in a very small amount of space.

 

Another reason I wanted to do this was I like to make all the transportation and stuff first in my city and not later (thus destroying blocks and blocks of city in the process) but that costs alot of money to do and I was really getting tried of feeling carpel tunnel in my fingers due to the measly 1000 bucks that weaknesspays was giving me every time I used it. I wanted a way to make billions and billons and I think I can do that with the city I'm designing now. I have taken some pictures to show what I'm doing.

 

 

Here I'm laying down the smallest farm you can make, a 4x4 patch. Notice how I have the road touching it only in the top left corner. Thats because that is where I want the farmhouse to be built, next to the only road the 4x4 is connected to.

 

 

Just as expected the farmhouse appears right next to a previous one I have done.

 

 

I dezone the unneeded space eating extra farmland and place an extra peice of road onto my existing one.

 

 

And I start the process again.

 

Another odd thing I have noticed is that once farmland is established it no longer needs a road connection anymore...

 

 

Those farms in the middle function just as well as if they were next to a road. This along with the above techinque means you now have alot more options to make farms in just about any size space you want. You are not restricted to 4x4 zones or larger only.

 

 

Hard to see but in this high up aerial you can see that I have done the entire top row of a large city map with farms using the process I showed in the first few pics. I was makign about 1000 dollars a month income off of these farms and only spending about 200 or so in expenses such as my windmill power plants and road and power line upkeep.

 

1000 bucks a month is nothing you say? Well of course it is. It is but the start. What do I do now?

 

 

 

 

Continue the process that is of course! I shall make the entire large map nothing but a country jewel of farmhouses. If I make another 100 rows that means 1000 a row x 100 rows =100,000 dollars a month. Thats 1.2 million a year! Now I'm making some serious dough. If I leave my game on unattended for a few hours I can easily be filthy rich. Once I get my desired amount of I don't know lets say 100 billion smackers then I just tear down all the farms and start building the city of my dreams.

 

Of course building all those rows will take alot of time and patience but thats what this game has always been about. So basically I have come up with a unique way of making alot of money on cheap farms and at the same time learn a new way to fit farms in the most smallest of spots in my new cities while still gaining the benefits of large farms but at a friction of the real estate.

[Bones1 96]

Don't believe the job stats listed when you click on a farm house.

The number of farm jobs is determined purely by how much land is zoned (and developed). Different stages offer no more of less jobs, either.

 

I've had all stage 3 farms. I modded the game to create only stage 1 farms, then bulldozed the farmland. When things regrew as only stage 1, the exact same number of jobs were present. (As seen from the pop graph.)

[XpirAment 0]

Welcome to these forums, Sir_Simcelot.

This is quite an interesting approach. I've never really eXpirAmented with farms because they don't provide a lot of income. I use them as mere decoration in my cities- in order to get that realistic small town feel.

Anyway, if you are hard pressed for money, and are willing to cheat to get it, I recommend you download the Cousin Vinnie Ordinance . It gives you $200,000 a month forever, and the only effort you exert is clicking open the Ordinances box and clicking that ordinance.

[dhoppeii 12]

Quite an interesting technique you have developed there. 

 

The only flaw I might see in your technique would be dilapidation(sp?) of your farms.  What I would think would happen is this:  Each farm creates a certain amount of industrial traffic.....Those goods gotta get out somehow.....Having that many farms on each stretch of road will create an enormous amount of traffic, causing the farms to break down.  Now, this is just a guess on my part, since I haven't tried your technique and I would be interested in knowing if this is the case.

 

 

If you are only going for the money, why not just download a money lot from the STEX and be done with it?  You then would have the freedom to develop your farm land as you see fit

 

If you are really into farming, I would suggest you take a look at the BCS Farming EP also available on the STEX.  Just do a search of BSC Farming EP.  You can get a good look at how it works in my City Journal, linked in my sig below.

 

It is not entirely correct to say that a farm no longer needs a road connection once it has developed.  I believe it needs to be a certain distance from a road and no further.  I have had several large farm plots that will show a no road connection zot above it if I stray too far away....

 

Regarding the job issue, I can't speak for the Maxis provided farms, but I believe that the BCS Farming EP bases the number of jobs, per field tile.

 

Good luck and have fun....

[Sir_Simcelot 0]

Thanks for the replies, yeah I didn't know about money lots and that ordinace so thanks for bringing them to my attention. Yeah I guess I did get decieved by the job listed thing but it was only because I thought if I lost jobs due to taking away fields then why did my income not go down any. I had fun messing around tho =)

Edit: I decided to just add onto this post instead of posting again (I'm not going for count

 

Holy huge farm batman!

 

align=baseline>

 

I decided to go the other route hehe, instead of goign for the small farm packed together in hindsight of what was told to me I wanted to make as big of a single farm plot as possible. I tried it on a small city with just a road around it and saw a increase of like 500 jobs right away. I thought well I'll try it on a medium map then... well it crashed when I tried to do the whole medium map at once so I broke the medium down in 4 squares the size of small maps. Here I have done two of those squares already and you can see the huge increase of jobs that resulted. Pretty cool way to make alot of agri jobs instead of wasting alot of road and stuff lol.

 

 

[Nardo69 51]

Someone on ST found out that the maximum size for a farm is 8192 tiles so breaking it up to 4 huge tiles makes sense ...

Interesting experiment anyway although I tend to make smaller farm due to asthetic reasons (but this is another field...)

Nardo

[Cjah 15]

Wow...I remember when i first read of this technique back in o3....Wow I haven't heard of anyone else doing it since then....

 

I did it back with my first region and it was so cool,but it does cause alot of traffic and some times it fails and then it gets dilapidated...

 

Well good luck and great job finding out about a well guarded secret...!

[sloppet 3]

Well, I think that it's nite to see people sharing their game discoveries with us (or something like that...) lol

[Gridlock 9]

Farm population and jobs ,is measured on the area of farmland zoned ,every big region i feel needs a state fair ,lol,imho.anyway in my experiments i found that the largest zones provided the most jobs,also petra plants ,grows to have massive offices and phamasutical industries,whether these are linked to my massive farming cities ,im unsure.

[Constantina 5]

These experiments are great, but it is also possible to create, something like an L-shaped farm. It doesn't have to be always rectangular.

[newyorkstate 6]

Good experiment... i`ll try it!

[ABCD12345 1]

must try that!

[RiverCocytus 0]

I have produced some relevant figures for you guys, Very interesting stuff!

My experiment was to see what the optimal size for a farm was, right? (What does optimal mean? See below...)

I had noticed in earlier play, that large numbers of small farms produced more jobs. Odd, but true. But this isn't the whole solution to the puzzle, so I set out to discover the key to this conundrum.

All of my test cities were called 'Farmus' something-- like Farmus V, Farmus Prime, etc.




1. Farmus Minimus
I observed the largest size it will make by default (by the way the auto-streets are placed) and made as many of these square zones as I could fit on a small map. It is 9 (quite sensibly...)

  Stats:
    9 16x16 farms 
    total area - 9 x 256 = 2304 units of farmland
    jobs       -            393 industrial ag
    freight    - 9 x 13  =  117 freight truck units
    profit     -             31 $

2. Farmopolis Minorus.
My steadfast belief has been that the small farms (4x4) are somehow optimal. Well, whatever. I had to test this idea... So I built the same total area, but split it up into all 4x4 farms. This is done by laying out a checkerboard, and as they develop placing the missing blocks.

   Stats:
    144 4x4 farms (9 x 16 x 4x4)
    total area - 9 x 256 = 2304 units of farmland (same)
    jobs       -            435 industrial ag
    freight    -            178 freight truck units
    profit     -            503 $

Crazy. Now, this is not wholly conclusive... but it is definitely striking!

This led me to some conclusions--

Number of farms is significant in job production.
-That is, same area but more farms may produce more jobs (this is not always true... more on this later...)

Freight is effected by the number of jobs produced by the farmland, but possibly also by the number of farms and/or jobs 'listed' in the farm buildings.
-Some of this can be deceiving, as I found out later...

Profit is strictly based on number-of-farms. Each seemed to net me around 3.5 $ a month.
-This is also deceiving- more likely, it is based on the number of jobs 'listed' at the farm building.

Other notes: Only farm buildings absorb electricity, so more farms = more elec. The city with the larger farms never needed a new wind power, but the one with the 144 small farms did.

[+Guest]

I suggest to anyone thinking of Farming to give BSC/CSX Farms a run for there money.The game Farms were ok when we didn't have a choice but now there is BSC/CSX Farms.

  The game Farms are bland and boring while BSC/CSX Farms are colorful and full of life.Don't forget the Prevent I-R MOD if you go BSC/CSX.

[RiverCocytus 0]

thanks, BB... I'll give them a looksee. This is about game-standard farms, though, its a test of gameplay mechanics...

I couldn't rest just yet, so here's part two...

Developing a scale of measure

The next several cities were built to test how many jobs I can squeeze out of

256 tiles of farmland (a rather small amount-- only 1/4 of a small area.)

1. Farmus Alterus
One big 16x16.

 Stats:
   1 16x16 farm (pumpkin acres)
   acreage - 1 x 256 = 256 units of farmland
   jobs    -            43
   freight -            13 truckloads
   power   -             0 units
   profit  -             3 $

2. Farmus Major
8 4 by 8's-- Seemed like a good scaling downward.

 Stats:
   8 4x8 farms (one is a Jez knight acres- listed 10 jobs)
   acreage - 8 x 32   = 256 units of farmland
   jobs    -            45
   freight -            15 truckloads
   power   -            11 units
   profit  -            33 $

2. Farmus II
8 4 by 8's again. The appearance of Jez Knight made me suspicious of my

results.

 Stats:
   8 4x8 farms (all pumpkin acres)
   acreage - 8 x 32   = 256 units of farmland
   jobs    -            44
   freight -            17 truckloads
   power   -            7 units
   profit  -            27 $

2. Farmus Prime
16 4 by 4's- my supposed optimum.

 Stats:
   16 4x4 farms (all pumpkin acres)
   acreage - 16 x 16  = 256 units of farmland
   jobs    -            53
   freight -            17 truckloads
   power   -            15 units
   profit  -            55 $

Ahhh! Look at that. But I was not done yet... not even close!

2. Farmus Dystopius
This is a similar method to Sir Simcelot's, I call it 'Bonzai Farming' after

the process by which Bonzai plants are created (they are allowed to grow but

placed in a small pot, and trimmed when they grow too long. The result is a

very compact structure.)

 Stats:
   64 2x2 farms (all pumpkin acres, but see below..)
   acreage - 64 x 4   = 256 units of farmland
   jobs    -            58
   freight -            32 truckloads
   power   -            63 units
   profit  -           223 $ (Z0mg! )

Note: a Llama Ag developed, so I let it stay. It said '6' jobs, so I let it

take three farm zones, or 4x3 = 12 units. I justified this by saying it was

like 3 farms. See the correction below...

 Adjusted- got rid of Llama ag.       With 1 'Jez Knight'            
   64 2x2 farms- all pumpkin acres
   acreage -         no change        no change
   jobs    -         no change        60
   freight -         no change        33 truckloads
   power   -         no change        67 units
   profit  -         no change        229 $

The first column is just all pumpkin acres-- sort of hints at my idea of the

6 job farm equalling three 2 job farms was correct.
The jez knight has been squeezed into one 2x2 square (its absolute minimum.)

Direct comparison:

   size     16x16   8x4   4x4   2x2 (all pure pumpkin acres)
   number   1       8     16    64  (independent variable 2) 
   acreage  256     256   256   256 (control variable)
   jobs     43      44    53    58  industrial ag
   freight  13      17    17    32  truckloads
   power    0       7     15    63  units
   profit   3       27    55    223 $

Scale of measure - jobs = land area + some factor for number of farms (something like an electoral college factor )
freight = land area + a factor for number of farms
power = number of farm jobs 'listed' / 2 - 1
profit = number of farms jobs 'listed' / 2 * (something close to...) 3.5$

Very cool. One might also note that seeing a bigger ag building is always good, even though it might create more freight and use more power.

Also, this proves very solidly that what it 'says' about jobs in the ag building is totally false for anything but measuring desirability and taxation amounts.

At this point my scale of measure for jobs and freight is very inaccurate still.

Next- How many jobs are there really? And what is total land area's real

effect on the number of jobs?

Keep it icy cool, gents.

[TheCrybKeeper 275]

This is quite interesting, RC! I want to see more, please!

also gives me a neat idea, with the 2x2 forced fit farming technique. what about 3x3 forced fit farming?

You are very thorough, bud! I love it so far.

[RiverCocytus 0]

Well, I am breaking on this at the moment, but I can tell you for sure that the trend continues with larger amounts of land. The keys that I've discovered are (I'll post some figures later) 1. if you just want to get some ag jobs to pump up your R$ demand, your best bet is to just slap down a giant size farm and be done with it. 2. the smaller your farms are, the more profitable it will be for you, although there are certain limitations. A farm building providing 10 jobs is worth 5 times the taxes of the little 2 job pumpkin acres buildings. I rarely see the 10 jobs buildings in 4x4 plots, but more often in larger plots. I'll try your 3x3 forced fit farming idea. I just did the 4x4, 2x2 thing because of the multiples of 2. Also, I think the key is how you are going to use it in-game. The fff techniques are always more expensive.

[RiverCocytus 0]

That is, fff is more expensive to begin with, but more profitable in the long run.

[Saint Andrew 6]

I admire your patience! I could never go through that, I hate farms

[RiverCocytus 0]

Simcelot's first experiment seems like It would be very workable, as far as I can tell with the work I've done.

The vet above listed some issues that might occur, but they are issues that have not happened for me. One thing that can hamper your farms' profitability is if they are not connected to road/street. Then, instead of listing 2 jobs they only list 1 and are less profitable. Additionally, my tests have fairly conclusively shown that since farmland itself is a major component in freight generated, having 1000's of tiny farms will not produce a lot more freight than a giant one.

The only thing that might hurt them is if desirability pits out, demand falls off, and freight gets blocked.

Keeping of desirability is as simple as keeping out air pollution. Freight is usually so small in amount that it won't produce enough air pollution to really hurt your farms.

Demand can be managed by having a small population of R$ sims in a nearby city. At a certain number of R$ people nearby, Ag demand seems unquenchable.

Increased freight times will occur further into the map, so you might want to have a freight station, and waste a little bit of money and space to let the middle farms get their freight out quickly.

Roads will help freight times too.

---

At the moment, I'm trying to figure out the optimal farm set up, vis a vis-- an optimization (calculusy) of a few variables.

First variable: Profit.

Second variable: Time to build.

Third variable: Jobs.

Fourth variable: accessibility. (freight going out and workers going in)

Fifth variable: initial cost.

Right now that is all I can think of...

My experiment now is to figure out how you get the most jobs, profit and accessiblity for the least amount of construction work and initial cost.

A few side notes...

there is a dividing line between fff and regular farming, and while this does not represent a great jump in profitability, jobs or accesibility, initial cost and time to build jump.

The most accessible, fastest to build, cheapest to build farm is the biggest farm you can put into the area without the game crashing.

The most profitable and highest job-producing farm is the smallest fff's you can get.

Also note, that the jobs 'listed' effect the taxable amount in $, so larger farms are favored in that you are more likely to see a bigger building. The size of the building really has a minimal bearing on jobs, and to my experience, going for lots of big buildings as a way to increase jobs or profit is probably foolish; the bonuses for multiple buildings usually outweight those for a single, larger building that probably won't show up. Unless you're forcing I to stage 3, then just build the smallest farm area where a stage 3 will appear

So for the purposes of making a money machine, fff maximized is the way to go, unless time is a concern. 3x3 fff's might be the most time-conscious way to make a money mill.

To get some jobs for those R$'s, build a big farm. you can control its accesibility (freight and workers) easily, and the time involved in creating it is basically, nothing.

I like my idea of using 4x4 farms for maximum profitability. you lay out a checkboard and as they fill in, lay new farms. It looks like:

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
r    iiiiriiii    r
r    iiiiriiii    r
r    iiiiriiii    r
r    iiiiriiii    r
riiii    r    iiiir
riiii    r    iiiir
riiii    r    iiiir
riiii    r    iiiir
r    iiiiriiii    r
r    iiiiriiii    r
r    iiiiriiii    r
r    iiiiriiii    r

etc...

just fill in those spaces when they develop. They take a little bit longer to develop than bigger farms, but they don't require any trimming.

Cheers, Y'all!

RC

[TheCrybKeeper 275]

Hey! This is really becoming much clearer to me now.

I like your 4x4's idea best. maybe that is why dragging out the farm zone starts at 4x4 for the smallest is the wisest way to go.

based on this info though; we could create the ultimate custom farm LOTs pack. Of course that is kinda cheating for some.

Thank you RC, for all the great info!

I like your grid idea as well; following the land or conforming to and around it, while incorporating the grid at the same time. I agree with you; that will be not only more interesting, but more realistic in nature also.

The best of both worlds!

[Liger14 0]

You guys are pretty good at farming.I wish i could do that...

[gradonacelnik 0]

This is a great tips that ties well into the zonig tips for industrial lots. I'll try to see how well your grid will morph into a planned industrial grid using the CNTRL key.

[jacqulina 162]

interesting indeed very nice i must say

[Bones1 96]

I'm not yet convinced that your methodology is correct for determining if small farms provide more jobs (per acre) than large farms. Desirability of the area has a big impact on the number of jobs provided.

Desirability not only affects the jobs that you see when you click on a farmhouse, but it also affects the jobs in the fields (which unfortunately, you can query). Desirability can change month-to-month, especially when an area is newly developed.

Perhaps one way of factoring out desirability in your test, is to make sure it is maximized across all your farms (large and small) before you read the number of jobs. You can do this by planting trees (either mayor mode or god mode). Plant a zillion trees over all your farmland, and that will cause a big spike in desirability the next month. (You can verify it using the desirability view.) But be aware that the desirability spike from tree-planting is only temporary; it goes back down to previous levels within a few months.

[buckbeach 8]

After some time away from the game I am trying to relearn some of the details and mechanics again. I love the ag/rural areas and set up a few feeder city communities in my current region and have come across a couple of items that may be of some interest.

One of my communities has no residents or com'l businesses just scattered ranch/farms with a industry job modifier (again I want them to feed jobs to adjacent cities). From the "Play this City" screen it says I have 122 jobs that correlates to low paying jobs on the graph tool. When I query the farms the jobs aggregate 164. The farms are JMyers, BLS, Maxis (150 plus tiles) and Simgoober (96 tiles). Only the Simgoober show jobs per tile (3 or less each), with the JMyers and Maxis showing nothing and the BLS showing nonsensical information.

When the transporation query is activated it ONLY shows freight trips to other cities and NO other trips of any source. I tested one of my other cities in the regional an the other transporation modes are working.

I am making about $600/mo net (where is the simolian sign) of the utilities and road costs, which is great for a new city.

I have been asking questions and discussing the issue of jobs (specifically ag) for almost 3 years on and off and I have come to the conclusion that the model does not work as intended with Maxis or Custom lots.

Buck

[rocketoink 3]

OK, let's say I have 1024 large cities, and I used this method on every one. If I could let the region run 100,000 years, how many smackers would I get?[Anyone who tries to work it out, thank you, and take your time] Edit; By the way, RiverCocytus, don't call Blackbeard BB cause then it sounds like he's Big Brother or something like that.

[RiverCocytus 0]

True, Bones. Didn't think of that. Question is, though, why are the larger farms consistantly having lower desirability?

(FYI I have done the experiment several times over; smaller farms tend to generate a marginally larger number of actual jobs.)

I'm thinking, now that I know more about the actual mechanics of the game, it may be a freight-time issue-- larger farms have more farmland farther away from freight destinations, which might cause slightly lower desirability = marginally less jobs.

[Bones1 96]

Yeah, freight time may be an issue. Or, you are likely correct in your original assertion that small farms provide marginally more jobs per tile than large farms. A Pedriana Plant supplies 13 jobs, and Alvin's Acres provides 6 jobs. But it's not as simple as that...

Those farm buildings can appear on a wide range of lot sizes, and I don't think that the lot size for the farm building has any affect on the number of jobs. In addition, the individual farm tiles (crops, apples, etc.) contain jobs; I believe 1 job per tile.

So, you have to add the farm crop tile jobs to the farm building jobs. But the farm building can be on a lot of varying size, so you can't predict ahead of time.

It may just be that smaller lots still fit most of the same type of farm buildings on them. So, that part of the equation results in more jobs per area simply because it's a smaller lot with the same number of jobs.

[Sam 163]

I realise you are talking about something a bit different here (factoring in desirability etc) and this may not be relevant to your discussions, but the maximum number of jobs that appear on the farm building query is the Capacity Satisfied property in the building exemplar. The building exemplar is the important part for jobs that appear in the farm building query. You can have the same building exemplar on different sized lots, but because it is the building exemplar that determines the number of jobs, the maximum number of jobs will be constant regardless of the size of the lot.

For example, the maximum number of jobs for the ingame Jez Knight Acres is 10. (the actual number of jobs varies by desirability). This Jez Knight Acres building might appear on lots of different sizes (I don't know if it actually does) but the maximum number of jobs would always be 10.

The maxis farm fields have their Capacity Satisfied property in the Parent Cohort file, so it is the same for all the ingame fields that belong to that parent cohort, ie 1 job (unless it is overridden in a custom building exemplar or mod). Although they don't appear in the farm field query unless a mod is used, they do exist.

Of course desirability does affect the actual jobs the farm provides, which is probably closer to what you are discussing.

I think the Building Value property is what affects the taxes, and this property appears in the Parent Cohort for the farm buildings. I don't think the Building Value property appears either in the farm field building, or its Parent Cohort hence no taxes on fields.

Sorry if this is not relevant to what you are talking about.