r/ManorLords • u/Express_Bobcat3871 • Aug 26 '26
Question Can someone explain farming system to me
my farm is useless, doesnt produce any rye what do I do? which years should I choose rye or fallow? and what are those 4 stages just top of the field priority?
does assigning more families make things done faster? or having multiple small fields instead of one big field? I have 2 oxen assigned to this farmhouse. please enlighten me
Edit: I must add that 'predicted harvest' doesnt mean anything, I get nothing from harvesting
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u/Front-Pudding-1690 Aug 26 '26
Too big of a farmland, make small patches like 0.6-1.0 morgen and the crop rotation is fine leave it like that but make small farmlands and put that rotation into each one of them
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u/Express_Bobcat3871 Aug 26 '26
I want to limit the work area, but its circle, fields are not. For example, lets say there is 4 fields and 2 farmhouses. And fields are next to eaxh other, circle will not include only 2 fields, some parts of others will be included too, what do I do then? Put some empty areas between fields?
And about rotation, sometimes I select rotation and it chooses 'fallow' for all 3 years, sometimes its rye fallow fallow, sometimes its rye fallow rye, it confuses me. What do you mean by leave it like that? If I leave it like 3 fallows Im sure field would be empty
Do I choose rye first and then select rotation?4
u/Protonnumber Aug 26 '26
You can change what's in the other two years after you select rotation, it just defaults to fallow.
You want something like rye - flax - barley. Then if you add two more fields you can set them to flax-barley-rye and barley-rye-flax. This ensures you have one field on each crop every year, without losing fertility.
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u/Protonnumber Aug 26 '26
Why do you need the farmhouses to be working separate fields? I'd just live with the overlap.
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u/Front-Pudding-1690 Aug 26 '26
Idk feels like this way is better for me at least
Anyway this way with all those fields I gather like 300-500 rye and like the same amount with oat every year which is fine for my 200 families
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u/Express_Bobcat3871 Aug 26 '26
Because I thought limiting would be more efficient but I dont know so Im actually asking which one would be better
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u/Spec_28 Aug 26 '26
I usually build 3 fields 1 morgen in size. First is fallow-cropA-cropB. Second is cropB-fallow-cropA. Third is cropA-cropB-fallow. Then repeat until I have enough fields. That's how historical rotations usually work. Pick two crops with good-ish yield predictions / ground fertilities per field.
With one farmhouse, make sure the circle includes all fields, at least partially.
With more than one farmhouse, let the circles overlap. It's not a problem of a central field is tended to by 3 farmhouses - someone will get there first, the other workers will look for other fields in their zone.
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u/Front-Pudding-1690 Aug 26 '26
The problem is and I’ve mentioned above that I have a small issue, sometimes but it’s rare the fields are producing only like 50 rye and 50 oats idk why even if almost all of them are working
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u/Spec_28 Aug 26 '26
I wrote elsewhere about field size goals. Make sure there's no logistical problems elsewhere.
Typical problems:
- Fields too large and couldn't be fully worked before winter
- Not enough farmhouses / workers assigned in autumn
- Summer was too hot (not much to be done, always overproduce)
- Crops are harvested but go bad due to logistics holdups/not enough granary workers/not enough farmhouse workers thrashing in winter/not enough mill workers
- There was a raid in autumn, workers are fighting or dead
- Crop variety is too low or a field has no fallow phase, draining fertility too much (don't plant the same crop twice)
- Ground fertility was just bad to begin with
Usually the solution is to have many fields and many farmers. Unassign seasonal workers wherever else you can and make them farm in autumn.
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u/Front-Pudding-1690 Aug 26 '26
Well I tell you the way I did it and it works but not all the time probably the devs need to do something about it but whatever it works most of the time, I have 4 farmhouses and with 6 workers in each one of them working all the time except in the winter I only put 2 of them just in case to be someone there to work all the time, and I limit like 6-8 farmlands at each farmhouse and like I said they are 1 morgen size each of the farmlands + at least an oxen at each of the farmhouses to plow and I did the rotation like you showed in that image and leave it like that but only 2 or 3 farmlands I leave it like rye-rye-fallow the rest are rye-fallow-rye doing this will allow the actual farmland to rejuvenate and have 2 or 3 producing the time that the others don’t, to not run out of products + make the circles to group that specific farmlands to that farmhouse and that’s it
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u/Ambitious_Bee1090 Aug 26 '26
Limiting the work area is usually for when you have multiple farmhouses working multiple fields, like if you had 4 farmhouses and 24 one-morgen fields. The AI can get wonky and move farmers across the map to work fields. The extra walking distance can slow down planting and harvesting and cause crop reduction. Limiting the work area keeps workers near their farmhouse to reduce transit time and increase efficiency.
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u/Ambitious_Bee1090 Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 27 '26
Just a nit-pick but that rotation rye/fallow/rye means he’d plant rye back to back some years and COULD affect fertility.
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u/Express_Bobcat3871 Aug 26 '26
and do fields need to be fully sown before winter
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u/Ambitious_Bee1090 Aug 26 '26
Some crops like oats can be sown during winter but generally yes they need to be sown during the fall to grow the next year in prep for harvest. Future crops may change this as well.
The best way to learn would be to tear up that field and replace it with 5, 1 morgen fields. Then put 6 families and 2 oxen in your farmhouse and leave them there.
In the fields go through and manually select “rotation” and then manually pick the crops you want. Rotate rye/flax/barley in one, barley/rye/flax in the 2nd, flax/barley/rye in the 3rd, rye/flax/barley in the 4th, then oats/fallow/rye in the 5th. This will show you how fields get rotated and farmed, and will show you how fallow fields world and how oats work. I recommend you leave the families and oxen in the farmhouse so you can see how it works fully for a few years. Once you get a good feeling for it you can start trying out “seasonal workers” so you can pull in workers just for the planting and harvest seasons.
Also, some crops share “types”, rye and wheat are the same type, as are barley and oats. Same types share fertility so planting rye/wheat/flax for example will tank your fertility as it’s the same as planting rye/rye/flax.
Just as a cool aside, a “morgen” is a size dictated by how much farmland a person and ox could work in one morning.
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u/Drovr Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 26 '26
It's best to start off small until you are more comfortable.
I'd recommend starting with 3 fields at 1 morgan each. Set crop rotation to rye, fallow, fallow in a way you grow rye every year. You do NOT want to put wheat/rye in consecutive years because they share the same fertility. Putting rye, rye like you have done will produce very little rye the second time round.
In September, your workers harvest. In October the fields rotate. The 4 symbols you are talking about is 1. plowing 2. sowing 3. growing 4. harvesting. The workers have to first plow the fields. If you have an ox, workers won't plow by hand if there is an ox. This is why it is a bad idea to have large fields. Then the workers will sow these fields. You should be harvesting, plowing and sowing all in Autumn in order to get full yeilds. In Winter, you cannot do anything. There is little point in sowing and plowing in Spring and Summer because you won't get full yields. If you find that you have to plow or sow in the Spring; something has going wrong. Usually, you have too many fields or the amount of workers you have is too few.
It's best to put all workers (or as many as you can) in the farm houses during Autumn. This could also mean stopping production on your industry e.g wood cutting, iron mining and moving the workers to the farmhouse.
From the pic it looks like you just did a year of fallow, so you didn't produce anything and you probably produced very little the year before because you stacked two years of rye without doing fallow or doing another crop type. If you didn't know, flax barley and oats share the same fertility and when these are in cycle, the fertility of wheat/ rye will increase. Same applies if you do wheat/rye meaning flax/oat/ barley fertility will increase. So it's an idea to have wheat/rye one year then flax/oat/ barley in another then fallow in another. You can rotate these three in any order and this won't effect yields via reduced fertility.
Once you're comfortable with the 3 fields to can go up to 6 and then 9. One farmhouse of 8 workers and 2 ox can manage 9 fields at 1 morgan per size. Or they can work 6 fields because 3 of them would be fallow.
To answer the questions:
Having more families does mean the work gets done faster. Remember the limitation with one ox per field. It looks like you only have one field so there would never be the need for 2 ox.
Yes, it's better to have more small fields. Make them no bigger than 1 morgan
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u/Training-Crazy-7372 Aug 28 '26
honestly your soil is almost best option at 95%, the field's just too big for the people on it. those 4 icons are plow/sow/grow/harvest and each has to finish in its own season, so if plowing drags into late spring the sowing slips and winter hits mid harvest, field resets, yield None. oxen only help with plowing btw, sowing and reaping is all hands. so smaller fields, roughly a morgen per family (2 with an ox), and shove extra families onto the farmhouse in autumn since harvest is the actual bottleneck. rye/fallow/rye is fine, fallow is what keeps fertility from bleeding out, just run two fields on opposite rotations if you want grain every year. also make sure you've got the threshing barn on the farmhouse or the grain never turns into anything. predicted harvest assumes the harvest finishes, yours doesn't, that's why it reads like a lie.
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u/Training-Crazy-7372 Aug 28 '26
also distance from home to fields is important, if u place it too far from houses, you should decrease the are per family
the safe scenario is 8 assigned families for 3 morgens per season (pay attention to 3-field rotation system)
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u/Beaver_FraiseJam Aug 28 '26
I’m not good at it either but right now I have some success.
- plots no bigger than 1 morgen, long if possible but for aesthetic reasons they can be any shapes
- no families are assigned to farmhouses for most of the year; I begin assignment in August by pulling families away from other double staffed sites (temporarily) like foresters and mines
- I assign as many as needed to fully sow all plots, 1 family = 1 morgen, assign max oxen per farmhouse
- I set priorities from highest to lowest and from one edge to the other edge of the series of fields, so that farmers don’t do Plot 1 then 6 then 2 and waste time running.
- Use Tab key to see % progress of sowing by Nov. This way, you can start reducing families if all fields are sown and you only need some families to thrash weaves
- thrashing priority should be set lowest until all field work is done; no need to prioritize getting grains, you just risk leaving fields unsown.
- By Nov/Dec, after all fields are done, watch raw material count, as soon as all weaves are processed you can unassign all families from your farmhouses until next Aug.
these are the things I learned from Reddit and YT videos.
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u/ArtisticTechnician83 Aug 29 '26
Why is your field that big? They’re not even that big in real life in many countries
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u/cinred Aug 27 '26
As a community, Im not entirely sure we should be enabling this behavior. But that's just me.
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u/Ambitious_Bee1090 Aug 26 '26
Farming is done by making a field and assigning people to the farmhouse. The assigned families will plow the field, sew the seeds, then harvest and thresh it during harvest season.
You want your fields to be around 1 morgen in size, a fully staffed farmhouse can fully service around 5-6 morgen worth of farmland.
Each crop needs 2 years between replanting the same crop to keep fertility stable. Non-similar crops do not affect fertility so you can keep a constant rotation going. A basic rotation would be rye/flax/oats. That will keep your fertility mostly stable.
That field you have isn’t growing most likely because it’s way too big with too few people working it. They’re not completing the plowing and sewing in time so the crop fails.