Farm Life - Is agriculture the new rock n'roll?

[dazza262 133]

Hello everyone, 

I have some questions for all you (Sim) farmers out there.

I've been away from the game for a few years now, but I've caught the bug again and I'm back in.

I've created a nice new region for myself, and I'm currently building up my plug-ins folder from scratch.

Now, one thing I've never really bothered with much before, is agriculture, and I thought it might be fun (and more realistic) to set a few tiles aside for farmland.

I had a quick read up on the SPAM mod, and it looks a great way to develop those rural areas, but I wondered if this is the go-to mod for farmers, or are there any alternatives out there? Also, if I do install SPAM, will it affect the game play when I'm developing my urban cities?

Any pointers or suggested downloads for my tractor driving Sims will be much appreciated.

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

20 minutes ago, dazza262 said:

I have some questions for all you (Sim) farmers out there.

I love farms!

Spoiler

Here's my region as of moments ago:

 

22 minutes ago, dazza262 said:

Now, one thing I've never really bothered with much before, is agriculture, and I thought it might be fun (and more realistic) to set a few tiles aside for farmland.

You could just grow vanilla Maxis farms if those aren't going to be your overall region plan.

 

23 minutes ago, dazza262 said:

I had a quick read up on the SPAM mod, and it looks a great way to develop those rural areas, but I wondered if this is the go-to mod for farmers, or are there any alternatives out there?

SPAM is the most often recommended for farmers and there are a lot of other Peg addons that go well with a rural setting.

 

24 minutes ago, dazza262 said:

Also, if I do install SPAM, will it affect the game play when I'm developing my urban cities?

We'll have to wait for the gurus for official comments on this as I've not used SPAM yet. It's on my list, but for now I'm learning the game from the ground up.

Spoiler

Until just a few months ago my Plugins folder was nearly empty. Now it's up to 45.9 MB including a few mods I made for myself (such as I have the tax revenue from agriculture be 5 times the amount from the same tax rate (so I can afford health care and fire protection for all), I blocked Pedriana's Plants from growing, and I just recently blocked the bare dirt fields from spawning. The ones you see in my screenshot were before I made the dirt blockers.)

If my memory is correct, the SPAM removes the caps the original game places on farm jobs such that the demand doesn't diminish as your city grows. I'll guess that means it won't negatively affect your later larger city tile plans.

[RobertLM78 1,597]

I've enjoyed SPAM for about a year or so now - I mostly build cities, and can testify that the urban game-play is no different (other than the mentioned caps being removed).  Now rural game-play is as different as night is from day - and in a very enjoyable way.   Much more variety and no more zillion Pedriana Plants...

 

[Fantozzi 4,064]

Well, I never used the SPAM as I use CAM. So SPAM and CAM don't work together - reason is how CAM balance pollution and workforce to smooth out grow levels will conflict. CAM alters same data as SPAM on this.

So this is a very basic decision you have to make: SPAM or CAM.

Maybe before you go for SPAM - if you don't like the the maxis farms, there are other ways to replace them. Simplest way is to use a blocker for maxis farms and to use custom farms.

Me, I'm working on a farm mod that will cover all 10 (!) grow stages CAM offers (SPAM has 5 grow stages, base game only 3, but all 3 growing at the same time, so there aren't really stages)

 

You may like to check out this:

Or - to be selfish - visit my thread but this is still in the works.

But to be true - there is another promising farming expansion in the works and on farming we may see still things in the future as CAM 2.1 farming atm isn't well supported but offers many posibilities. Imho farming is a field still has big modding potential.

Lately SimCoug uploaded a nice set of farms:

So SPAM is more than adding better looking farms, it's a complete mod that changes gameplay and adds farming to the BSC reward chain, adding farm fields pieces to make also diagonal fields etc. It depends on you what you want - if you're only looking for some nice farms to replace the default ones or if you want to become a serious farmer.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 8/1/2017 at 3:42 PM, dazza262 said:

I thought it might be fun (and more realistic) to set a few tiles aside for farmland.

If I could get at the SC4 source code, I'd make food another commodity (like power and water) that the player would need to produce or neighbor-deal in order for residential demand to advance stages and/or break caps.

Beware of SPAM / CAM / NAM collisions. Read up and then choose installation options wisely. Then orchestrate plugin load-order carefully.

[wournos 53]

I've never really cared for farms IRL but developed some bizarre attraction for them in SC4. SPAM is what I use. I don't remember the reason why I went for it. But I like SPAM and some of PEG's and WMP's rural stuff.

Looking at my addon list I see Shmail's ploppable farms. Those are very pretty. Pumpkin, pineapple and lemon farms.

Shameless plug: Farms, Wournosville

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 8/11/2017 at 9:47 AM, wournos said:

Looking at my addon list I see Shmail's ploppable farms. Those are very pretty. Pumpkin, pineapple and lemon farms.

In recently developing a farming sector*, I noticed that the same farm kept coming up 80% of the time, so I went on a shopping spree in the STEX. Shmail's farm were among the many farms and packages I downloaded. I also needed a pile of dependencies.

After installing many things, I ran Rivit's DataNode program, discovered many files in which everything was superseded. I removed many of those files, but I changed my load order for some others. There's probably much more to do with the files that are partially overridden, but there's only so much file management I can tolerate before I get back to playing!

* In the SF Bay Area, Stanford's nickname is "The Farm", so in my SF region, I designated a large, south-peninsula sector named Stanford to become almost all farms. With SPAM etc, its farms are now quite diverse.

[wournos 53]

10 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

...but there's only so much file management I can tolerate before I get back to playing!

Preaching to the choir!
I've put my agricultural adventure on hold for now. I kind of got sucked into planting flora and forgot to actually play the game.

 

Oh my goodness! I just realized those green emoticons are lamas. Always thought they were some bizarre version of a lizard.

[markussaage 762]

1 hour ago, wournos said:

Preaching to the choir!
I've put my agricultural adventure on hold for now. I kind of got sucked into planting flora and forgot to actually play the game.

 

Oh my goodness! I just realized those green emoticons are lamas. Always thought they were some bizarre version of a lizard.

Yeah, I haven't actually really played in a year, because I got caught in file management and organizing stuff as well as testing my own stuff. That's, what happens, when you wanna do things right...
Anyway, I do love my farms and the SPAM Mod, but I also love the CAM 2.1, so I am still debating with myself, which Mod do I want to use... Right now I am using the SC4DataNode tool again. I hope, I'll find an answer ins the next 10 years and get all the projects on my list done, so that I finally can PLAY the game again!

Kind regards!

[Prophet42 1,500]

I would also highly recommend getting the JMyers farms over at SCDevotion.  These are the most realistic farms for SC4 that I have seen.

I do use SPAM, but find some of the farms not very realistic.  I usually bulldoze most of the SPAM farms in the hopes that a JMyers farm develops in its place.  At the very least you should get the SPAM main Mod and the resource pack.  The SPAM download explains the bare minimum you need if you don't want to use the SPAM farms.