Inefficiencies with sharing cornfields

[Lewin]

As promised I've been looking into the inefficiencies with sharing cornfields. First of all the problem: Farmers produce far less corn when they are sharing fields than when they have separate fields (far enough apart that they aren't shared)
Why?
a) Sharing one large field means the farmer will on average work on tiles that are further away. Farmers choose a random field within 10 steps from below their door so if the farmer only has his own field there most of the tiles will be within 2-5 steps. If there is a large shared field there will be fields between 2-10 steps, so on average he has to walk further. More walking = more time wasted.
b) Much less significant: Farmers will sometimes try to take the same field, and the second farmer will have to walk to a new place when he realizes this. More walking = more time wasted.

First of all I tested to see how bad the problem is. Here's the layout I used in my tests (note: different layouts would give different results). Here's the results:

4 farms sharing 64 fields (16 fields each, more than enough to keep them busy):
917 corn produced after 4 hours

1 farm with 16 fields:
295 corn produced after 4 hours, so that's 4*295 = 1180 corn if there were 4 of them.

So 1180/917 = 1.287. This means with separate fields you'll get ~29% more corn than with shared fields! That's a massive difference. I also tried 4 farms with 81 fields (20.25 each), but the results were about the same (915 corn instead of 917)

So I made a simple change: Farmers normally take a random job within 10 tiles from below their door. Now they will take a job within 5 tiles of their door, and if no such job exists, they will take a job within 10 tiles. This means they "prefer" to work closer to their house. Here are the results:

4 farms sharing 64 fields:
1033 corn produced after 4 hours

4 farms sharing 81 fields:
1066 corn produced after 4 hours

So now you only get 14% extra corn with separate fields, and only 11% if you build a few extra fields for each farm (81 instead of 64). I'm quite pleased with these results, I think we'll use this change in the next release. Note that it IS still more efficient to have separate fields, but nowhere near as much as it was before. Maybe that adds more unintended strategy to the game? Separate farms it probably harder to fit into your base.

Any comments are welcome
Cheers,
Lewin.
P.S. I've attached the test maps.

[The Dark Lord]

Sounds very good to me.

[pawel95]

YEAH brilliant. It was verry bit up to here,when you start making your first/second farmer and he is "walking more than working"

[Da Revolution]

Good improvement. By the way the difference between separated farms and clustered farms will also be less because its easier to build you grain-using buildings near clustered ones.

[Mixons]

Good change, but what is this message with corn?

[Lewin]

Good improvement. By the way the difference between separated farms and clustered farms will also be less because its easier to build you grain-using buildings near clustered ones.

Good point

Good change, but what is this message with corn?

What do you mean?

[Nissarin]

Good change, but what is this message with corn?

What do you mean?

He is probably talking about what I think is actually a pen icon - some pop up message.

[Lewin]

Good change, but what is this message with corn?

What do you mean?

He is probably talking about what I think is actually a pen icon - some pop up message.

Ohhh that. It's a new "notification system" we've been experimenting with to try and reduce message spam about houses being empty and troops being hungry. We haven't finished it or made any final decisions yet, but you can be sure we'll post about it here when we have

[pawel95]

Ah lol, so mixons means the Message with the "pen" ? It is in the acutal version,too. When you import some TPR maps and some buildings/troops/citizens aren´t in the area of the map,i think.


Back to topic:

So I understand it right,that it should be the same with wine? Or is this working with other parameters.

[Lewin]

So I understand it right,that it should be the same with wine? Or is this working with other parameters.

Good question. I think the impact will be less with wine because they only walk to the field once for each item produced (there's no planting) so the amount of wine lost due to excess walking is smaller. But I don't see any harm in making it the same for wine, it could just raise the production rate very slightly (I guess 5-10%) when winefarms are sharing a large field.

[lucbach_pl]

Lewin, it's impressive! A lot of testing, notes and, at the end, a very interesting conclusion. I think many, many players don't know about this.

As it turned out it's better to wait and build 'independent cornfields' - it's a long-term benefit.

Thanks!

An a one thing - you wrote:

Farmers choose a random field within 10 steps from below their door

So what about the field located above their door? Is there any difference?

[Lewin]

An a one thing - you wrote:

Farmers choose a random field within 10 steps from below their door

So what about the field located above their door? Is there any difference?

That's not what I meant, above or below the house are the same. I mean they begin counting their steps from the tile below their door, not from inside the house (so stepping out of the house is not counted as a step. The step after that is). Sorry for the confusion, I didn't write that very clearly.

[lucbach_pl]

No problem - all is clear!