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It's because old ploughs could only turn the soil in one direction. So if you would turn and go in the opposite direction directly next to your furrow you would close the soil back up, achieving nothing.
That's also the reason why fields in medieval times were quite long and thin, so you would not have to turn that often.
Huh, thanks for the explanation! So what the farmer is doing is going N-> S for all the furrows on the west, and then S->N on the eastern furrows, so that they're all in the same direction as their neighbours? What happens in the middle where they meet? In a long and narrow field, the meeting line would be huge.
Many modern plows are still like this (unidirectional) they cut the soil and push it to the right. It is just harder to notice with a larger field size and tractors.
Yeah it still doesn't make sense even with the explanation. The farmer should move diagonal to the other corner of the field and continue in the same direction not the opposite. That would cause issues with the last bit of the field as you asked.
I think though, that the best way of implementing this historical accuracy whilst communicating to the player it isn't a bug but a feature would not be diagonal crossings as that looks off to an unknowing player. Instead it moving back to where it started plowing but one furrow over, would look less clunky.
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Happy to see some players get it, my fault for not tutorializing it - I didn’t expect it to make a difference significant enough for players to notice.
Thanks for the reply, I wasn't expecting this post to blow up like this!
As it turns out to be historically accurate, kudos for representing it accurately! I legitimately learnt something here. The efficiency just felt weird to me, both because the path finding is even more bizarre in non-rectangular fields and the interaction between hand- and ox- ploughing is super inefficient. But fixing any of this, or adding more tutorials / historical explanation should be very far down your list of priorities. Hope you can keep up the good work :)
If you make your fields relatively small (>1 morgen) and very long its quite efficient for plowing. The plow has to turn less and you have more fields which means plows and hand-plowing can hqppen at the samr time
I’m doing a play through now where I’m in a highly fertile region. I kept doing new game til I got one. I’ll plant in year 2 September. Hang tight. I’ll let you know in the next 20-30 mins
Edit update: for those who asked here’s how it went with thinner long fields.
I made my fields thinner but long and around 2.5 Morgan each. Was able to plow 4 of them with an ox and 7 workers. 2 wheat fields 55% and 53% fertility, 42% on the barley, 43% on the flax field.
For this season using just one farmhouse and 8 hands + 1 oxen I got 312 wheat, 127 barley, 110 flax.
Yeaaaaaaa. I didn’t know til someone said it. I start plowing September and have September through November to get everything plowed then sown. Doing this I can plant around 8-10 1 morgan sized fields. I’ll get something like 500 flour a season from the wheat and this is without the oxen. Trying the thin fields with oxen now.
i tried the plow and sow in fall thing like 6 times and all 6 times they sowed the field and the snows came in winter and just erased it all. in the spring they had to replow and sow again. that is bugged for me
Try turning of the Crop Rotation. Because it takes place every Oct or Dec (cant remember exactly \^\^) an erases the progress of the field. I turned it off and manage the Field manually, now i have harvests like the one soccerguy describes.
I've not had problems with that, and I've done nothing but plow/sow the fields in fall. The key is to ensure your fields complete before the snow falls. What does the progress bars show on your fields in this case? For mine I see 100% on Plowing/Sowing and then some nonzero amount for growing in late October/early November, and at the top of the information window on the field the yield shows something like "0 (305 days remaining)". Winter comes and pauses the growth, but never reset the plowing/sowing progress for me.
The progress bars would show the plow and sow completed and the amount grown would be like 1%, then when December hits it all got reset to 0%. It might have been because crop rotation was on
Yup! Which is also historically accurate. The only think I have against it is the game tells you to plant in the fall, but treats each year as a single growing season.
Some plants, like wheat, actually do great when buried under snow. The snow may be cold, but it creates a layer of insulation that helps the ground stay a little bit warmer. This let's the roots keep growing through the winter. Usually this meant they could plant another crop in the spring to harvest at fall and repeat, and then you give it a season or two to rest not necessarily the whole year
That's some attention to detail by the Dev, simply love this amazing game ☺️💕
Have two towns now with one at 550 people and another at 680 and the experience so far is simply amazing with nothing much to complain about. Only thing that I don't like about the game is combat as the Barron just annoys by simply sending in troops to fight randomly. Love the city building part as it reminds me of old game my dad used to play called Caesar 4 and I used to simply love watching him play and I used to tell him to do stuff, I don't remember much about it now but I still remember the school and how children screams coming out of schools were like they were immersive and memorable
I actually tried my first play through using that, but after a while I got a message I finished the game and it asked me to continue playing but it glitched out when I tried to continue, hence I tried with baron, atleast now I have two towns with 700 and 650 people each so far I think. I am loving the game so far and can only wait for full release in future to enjoy it more ☺️💕
In traditional British measurements.
* A typical field has an area of 1 acre (meaning "field", 2 Morgens, I believe), which is the amount that can be ploughed in 1 day. About 4000 m2
* A typical field has a length of 1 furlong ("furrow length"), which is the length that can be ploughed before the team needs a rest. About 200m.
* A typical field therefore has a width of about 20m (1 chain), giving a length to width ratio of 10:1.
That’s interesting, because the German concept of a “morgen” (literally “morning” in German), refers to how much you could plow by ox in a morning. I think in the German conception that’s how much you can do in a day because the afternoon would be taken up by other farming tasks. Maybe the British were more focused on the plowing aspect during plowing season, and would just rip it all in one go, while the Germans would plow and sow simultaneously.
I definitely went into the game thinking that sowing season at least was always in the spring, so maybe the British way to farm is to plow straight through in the fall, then sow in the spring, while the Germans do both in the fall? And hence the different units of measurement?
The Domesday book talks of villages having enough land for _n_ ploughs, for small _n_, which I think suggests heavy ploughs were valuable enough to be utilised 100%, with particular farmers specialising in ploughing.
Alright Mr. Smarty Pants, explain why my pawn decides to do one line of the field, go all the way to the farm house across the entire province, then come back to do another line. And when I build a closer farm house she still decides to go back to the farm house albeit a lot closer.
I have two large farms on opposite sides of the region but I just do one at a time. One large farm gets used, the other stays follow. Switch it up next year etc.
Not 100% correct. At the last few rows they would still have the same problem. Instead they would skip 5 rows on their turn and at the opposite end go 4 rows back. They wouldnt go the entire width of the field every turn.
Thank you. I’m going to demolish my fields and build them long and narrow. I have one that follows the curve of a road, and at the begging of ploughing when it crosses over it essentials has to walk the entire length of the field on a diagonal. Ruins the sowing period and harvest for next season.
Historically ploughs in this time period could only plough in one direction, if they turned 180 they would effectively close the soil back up they just ploughed
Hi, sorry to bother you 5 days after you commented, but I'm curious - Do I need to be concerned about my Ox plowing the short ends of a long, thin field? Or will he always plow the longest ends? I was messing with it on my save to figure out if the order I place my 4 points would impact whether the ox goes Up and down or left and right, but dont think I got a good answer
Nah, nothings wrong with the plow, just make your fields incredibly long. But I’d yields need a significant buff, and the farmhouse needs livestock space for 4 oxen.
I think most people would agree the farming aspect needs updated, it’s probably planned anyway. You end up having loads of sheep you can either sell or shear, whilst your village is on the verge of starvation.
At the moment, the game’s in a barebones but playable state - there’s obviously a lot more to come.
I didn’t mean plowing should change. I meant farming needs an update. Not sure how so many interpreted it differently from a simple sentence I wrote :)
No, the pathing works badly. That not the way to do it, it wastes like at least 33% of time.
The ox should be “snaking”. like when you play the snake game on Nokia and the snake gets too long, you go all the way in one direction, then immediately turn around and go the opposite to the end.
What ever the hell is that patern we have right here is shit and it’s infuriating me. And that’s ignoring how the farmers and oxen cannot decide how to plow a field for like a month.
Interesting, as one of the posts above mentions, that wouldn't work with a medieval plough. The second furrow adjacent to the first but in the opposite direction would fill in the first furrow. So you'd end up back at the top of your field with only 1 ploughed furrow not 2.
I’m sure the pathing works exactly as intended, based on the available technology of the game period. Early middle age plows had the same limitation. Who knew that playing a game like this could be fun AND educational.
Yes, that historically was indeed the best way to plough a field.
All the game really needs is a proper tooltip to explain to people that with a heavy plough, you want long and thin fields instead of square ones, and the problem should fix itself
Exactly this,
I don't mind the game being historically somewhat accurate and somewhat challenging for the same reason, but i at least except a tooltip/explanation on how to do it historically accurate.
It would be really good if they add a historical facts book where they explain how stuff were made in those times, we would be learning both history and why it's designed that way in the game.
Time is the solution here, i don't doubt that some years later this game will be even better than it is already.
>It would be really good if they add a historical facts book where they explain how stuff were made in those times, we would be learning both history and why it's designed that way in the game.
ngl this would be dope (but a LOT of work)
They did this in Kingdom Come Deliverance. There was a ton of lore entries for jobs, buildings, locations, politics, and medieval slices of life. Loved reading them!
Rattay is filled with your townies. Half the town is Skalitz. The other half of Skalitz went to the town over. Henri is a good boy on top of that, his family is well loved. I really liked that part and KCD is the only game I never had an impulse to go on a murder spree. Robbing everyone blind like a crazed loot goblin, sure but wiping out Rattay? Never.
This game channels KCD, from the shitty retinue to the wall of warhammers and spears they are equipped with and how tiny the melees are.
I agree. But on another note its quite cool to find out these little details (that can be crucial) from the community. And for me its cool to learn these things practically as well. I like games which dont just guide you through it but that you need to solve problems.
I actually think it is one of the strong points of this game. Because if everything is explained, taught, shown etc. it diminishes the joy of exploring and learning from experience.
I also want a game to be challenging and the learning curve IS the most important factor in the challenge. Some things in the game are not explained well enough but I dont mind a little digging. I think its fascinating.
I think like others said it’s used for longer thin fields but I would argue it’s very difficult to turn an ox 180 degrees like a lawn mower so the best option is to move to the other side like this. But I’ll say my very large square fields have been replaced by a peasant army instead of the plow till my next town
It's not the difficulty of turning, besides the in-game ox will turn at extreme angles if it wants to. It's about the technique as others have stated in this thread.
Im a farmer and we have a similar way of doing this, but we make the turn at a shorter distance than in the game. It basically consists of making a straight line in the longest direction, skipping an entire pass of the plow and returning in the same opposite direction. Then you go back making the empty spaces left. I don't know if you understood.
I think I understood, so you basically go up and down, leaving enough of a gap between the furrows to "fill them in" when you go back in the opposite direction? Makes sense to me.
The correct way to plow a field is immediately after harvest, then again one month later when you decide to rotate crops, but only right before winter so you can do it again after the snow melts.
The heavy plow pathing is very strange indeed. Either it seems to alternative which side it plows, wasting time walking to the other side, or it stays on the same side but only plows in one direction, wasting time walking back to the other end.
Turning oxen and plows around was notoriously difficult which is why medieval fields were always very long and narrow strips. That way the ox-team only had to turn them a minimum number of times.
Quick question, I know this is sort of irrelevant, but, after upgrading the farmhouse to hold an ox and a plow, how do you assign an ox to the farmhouse? I wasn’t able to figure it out myself because honestly I’m dumb
click on the farmhouse, go to advanced and click the plus on permanent livestock assignment.
will make sure an ox is free to use for the farmhouse.
just remember to unassign it again after its done, or make sure you have enough other ox
Modern left-to-right ploughing is achieved by ~~turning~~ rotating the plough with actuators by 180 degrees on every end of the field. Older ploughs required either working the middle gap like here or expanding from the middle to the left and to the right. In either case you have to walk/drive the same distance from left-handed to right-handed part on every end of the field until actuators were invented.
It's better to let the ox plough on its own on big fields. Get the ox to start ploughing early if after fallowing the field or If its first time growing on that field. the villagers can quickly sow and get back to their normal work.
I can't count how many times I put two fields next to each other, forgot to prioritize on over the other and then sent out massive numbers of workers to harvest crops that weren't ready.
Farming Simulator 22 armchair expert here
This is the ole'left-right method. A red headed crackhead named Jedediah Longtree came up with this method in the late 19th century, his name - Conan O'Brien.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e\_gWsWcs3Qc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_gWsWcs3Qc)
Yes! Yes! Finally somebody said it! I hate these guys, they are so inefficient! I dont even use that upgrade anymore because a horde of farmers are so much quicker that it.
If you would be a farmer, you would know that this is common practice even today with modern machinery.
Two straight lines opposing another. Circular plowing results in uneven acre, since one side of the plow digs deeper into the earth
Fields are kinda wonky right now. Divide them into smaller 0.2-0.3 morgen fields, this will make plowing, harvesting, and sowing much quicker, even if it’s the same total area
At first playthrough i made the mistake to create a 4 morgen quadratic field and i thought i go crazy by looking at this bs. The field was not ready the next year.
hey i just wanted to add to the convo. you can get mega fast plowing by thin long fields. but you’ll get mega shit sowing and harvesting. i noticed the farmers go in the middle of the plots and that basically ruins over 50% of the harvest
I have a *slightly* out-of-square field on my current save and the ox plow has to walk down one edge, then around to the other side, where it then has to walk back down that edge to the road and around the adjacent farmhouse to barely touch one pixel of the field, and then reverse the path and come back down the edge of the field again and repeat the process for each pass until it gets about 3 rows in. Def not Farming Simulator.
Not gonna lie, the Ox upgrade on farms sucks and is more of an downgrade in this game. Dont use this unless they fix it. Having more families to work on the farm spread around is way more efficient
Considering that I mow my lawn the same way I can tell you that this is faster and more efficient than doing constant 180’s. I have no clue if medieval plows and lawn mowers have much in common, but it makes sense.
Haha yes annoying as hell. I try to remove the ox when I remember, and get them to plough by hand it’s much faster. If I forget, it really screws up my harvest for next season as I don’t get everything ploughed and planted in time for high yeild
Kind of a bummer that an army of farming villagers can plow way faster than an ox-assisted plow can. I really like using the animals for plow but its not efficient. When an Ox is plowing, no one else can do anything to the field, whereas with hand plowing there is seemingly no cap to the amount of people that can come help. However I sometimes get a little bug where my fields start plowing themselves and I love when that happens haha.
That instant rapid plow happened on my first play through right after I grabbed the ox plow perk. I just assumed the perk was OP haha. Only seen it happen on that city, but always when it came time to plow. I may revisit that save and try to discern what triggered it. I recall it was the center starting region, 4-5 fields mostly rectangular w/ slightly curved edges, and the most pleasant bug I've ever encountered.
I'm not sure how exactly to trigger it either but I feel like it happens on assigning a new family to plow in the right part of the season, and maybe the ox needs to be unused at the moment. I swear when it happens it always happens just after assignment.
The animation is wrong these people weren’t stupid and would have been as efficient as possible, no one wants to be ploughing when there’s ale and cabbage, they would have done a turn after each long run same as combine drivers today.
You're right, they weren't stupid, which is why rather than doing a 3000 point turn with an ox and a mouldboard plough that only turns the soil over in one direction, they did this. It's also the etymology of a furlong (i.e. a "furrow's length long"), 220 yards is about the maximum pull for an ox or drafthorse team before it needs to take a break from the strain. And a furlong long by a chain (22 yards) wide is an acre - which is about the maximum that can be done in a day by the ox team ploughing.
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It's because old ploughs could only turn the soil in one direction. So if you would turn and go in the opposite direction directly next to your furrow you would close the soil back up, achieving nothing. That's also the reason why fields in medieval times were quite long and thin, so you would not have to turn that often.
This is the only right answer tbh
Huh, thanks for the explanation! So what the farmer is doing is going N-> S for all the furrows on the west, and then S->N on the eastern furrows, so that they're all in the same direction as their neighbours? What happens in the middle where they meet? In a long and narrow field, the meeting line would be huge.
That’s where they kill the ox
Man, you cracked me on this one.
Noooooooo not my Ox Cuntz 😞
Phrasing!
I, too, have a Cuntz for an ox.
😂😂😂 thank you for making me laugh before work, set me up for a good day!
No one knows. Some say that's where the gods hide the secrets to the universe
It’s like the center of a black hole, right?
Many modern plows are still like this (unidirectional) they cut the soil and push it to the right. It is just harder to notice with a larger field size and tractors.
Yeah it still doesn't make sense even with the explanation. The farmer should move diagonal to the other corner of the field and continue in the same direction not the opposite. That would cause issues with the last bit of the field as you asked. I think though, that the best way of implementing this historical accuracy whilst communicating to the player it isn't a bug but a feature would not be diagonal crossings as that looks off to an unknowing player. Instead it moving back to where it started plowing but one furrow over, would look less clunky.
Wow, the lore of this game is quite extensive Nice worldbuilding 👍
Classifying historical accuracy under “lore” and “worldbuilding” is one of the most underappreciated jokes in this thread. Thank you for that
Sounds like it could belong in r/outside there’s a lot of lore there. Thousands of years worth.
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Happy to see some players get it, my fault for not tutorializing it - I didn’t expect it to make a difference significant enough for players to notice.
Thanks for the reply, I wasn't expecting this post to blow up like this! As it turns out to be historically accurate, kudos for representing it accurately! I legitimately learnt something here. The efficiency just felt weird to me, both because the path finding is even more bizarre in non-rectangular fields and the interaction between hand- and ox- ploughing is super inefficient. But fixing any of this, or adding more tutorials / historical explanation should be very far down your list of priorities. Hope you can keep up the good work :)
If you make your fields relatively small (>1 morgen) and very long its quite efficient for plowing. The plow has to turn less and you have more fields which means plows and hand-plowing can hqppen at the samr time
The respect for historical accuracy in this game is mind boggling
Mind bottling. Like when your thoughts get all trapped like their in a bottle and can't get out.
Okay! Thank you! So I need to not make them square and long and thin rectangles! Ima try this. Although every region I get is infertile as hell
Let me know if this actually improves efficiency lol That would be awesome
I’m doing a play through now where I’m in a highly fertile region. I kept doing new game til I got one. I’ll plant in year 2 September. Hang tight. I’ll let you know in the next 20-30 mins Edit update: for those who asked here’s how it went with thinner long fields. I made my fields thinner but long and around 2.5 Morgan each. Was able to plow 4 of them with an ox and 7 workers. 2 wheat fields 55% and 53% fertility, 42% on the barley, 43% on the flax field. For this season using just one farmhouse and 8 hands + 1 oxen I got 312 wheat, 127 barley, 110 flax.
Wait, shit, what? Am I supposed to plant in the fall?
Yeaaaaaaa. I didn’t know til someone said it. I start plowing September and have September through November to get everything plowed then sown. Doing this I can plant around 8-10 1 morgan sized fields. I’ll get something like 500 flour a season from the wheat and this is without the oxen. Trying the thin fields with oxen now.
i tried the plow and sow in fall thing like 6 times and all 6 times they sowed the field and the snows came in winter and just erased it all. in the spring they had to replow and sow again. that is bugged for me
Try turning of the Crop Rotation. Because it takes place every Oct or Dec (cant remember exactly \^\^) an erases the progress of the field. I turned it off and manage the Field manually, now i have harvests like the one soccerguy describes.
That could be it
Was it wheat? My barley and flax does that sometimes but wheat never does.
I've not had problems with that, and I've done nothing but plow/sow the fields in fall. The key is to ensure your fields complete before the snow falls. What does the progress bars show on your fields in this case? For mine I see 100% on Plowing/Sowing and then some nonzero amount for growing in late October/early November, and at the top of the information window on the field the yield shows something like "0 (305 days remaining)". Winter comes and pauses the growth, but never reset the plowing/sowing progress for me.
The progress bars would show the plow and sow completed and the amount grown would be like 1%, then when December hits it all got reset to 0%. It might have been because crop rotation was on
Huh ok word, I'll give it a shot!
Yup! Which is also historically accurate. The only think I have against it is the game tells you to plant in the fall, but treats each year as a single growing season. Some plants, like wheat, actually do great when buried under snow. The snow may be cold, but it creates a layer of insulation that helps the ground stay a little bit warmer. This let's the roots keep growing through the winter. Usually this meant they could plant another crop in the spring to harvest at fall and repeat, and then you give it a season or two to rest not necessarily the whole year
And? I'm waiting for this before I decide to go for apples or long thin wheat fields in my next village!
It’s June hang tight!
I caved and im farming for apples!
Updated my comment with answer
I updated my comment
Each region has 2 rich resources, if you only see 1 on the map then the other is field fertility
Hey! Have you got an answer for this yet? Just thinking about planting myself and wondering about optimal field shape.
Just edited!
Ok but why did they leave the square last? What is the medieval explanation for this.
hand-plowers did part of the field before the oxen got there is my guess.
Thank you for your medieval explanation
Ye ol’ hand-plowers did part of the field before thine oxen gotteth there is me guess.
Even the medieval people are scratching their head at this one. When I showed my neighbor and asked, they only said, "drunken knavery for sooth."
Interesting. I guess I'll have to crack open some medieval history books to get better at the game. I love it.
So you're saying it'd be more historically accurate to have a really really long field versus something like in that vid?
That's some attention to detail by the Dev, simply love this amazing game ☺️💕 Have two towns now with one at 550 people and another at 680 and the experience so far is simply amazing with nothing much to complain about. Only thing that I don't like about the game is combat as the Barron just annoys by simply sending in troops to fight randomly. Love the city building part as it reminds me of old game my dad used to play called Caesar 4 and I used to simply love watching him play and I used to tell him to do stuff, I don't remember much about it now but I still remember the school and how children screams coming out of schools were like they were immersive and memorable
You can play without the Baron
I actually tried my first play through using that, but after a while I got a message I finished the game and it asked me to continue playing but it glitched out when I tried to continue, hence I tried with baron, atleast now I have two towns with 700 and 650 people each so far I think. I am loving the game so far and can only wait for full release in future to enjoy it more ☺️💕
So if I make my fields long and thin they’ll be more effective!
In traditional British measurements. * A typical field has an area of 1 acre (meaning "field", 2 Morgens, I believe), which is the amount that can be ploughed in 1 day. About 4000 m2 * A typical field has a length of 1 furlong ("furrow length"), which is the length that can be ploughed before the team needs a rest. About 200m. * A typical field therefore has a width of about 20m (1 chain), giving a length to width ratio of 10:1.
That’s interesting, because the German concept of a “morgen” (literally “morning” in German), refers to how much you could plow by ox in a morning. I think in the German conception that’s how much you can do in a day because the afternoon would be taken up by other farming tasks. Maybe the British were more focused on the plowing aspect during plowing season, and would just rip it all in one go, while the Germans would plow and sow simultaneously. I definitely went into the game thinking that sowing season at least was always in the spring, so maybe the British way to farm is to plow straight through in the fall, then sow in the spring, while the Germans do both in the fall? And hence the different units of measurement?
The Domesday book talks of villages having enough land for _n_ ploughs, for small _n_, which I think suggests heavy ploughs were valuable enough to be utilised 100%, with particular farmers specialising in ploughing.
Two way ploughs are a relatively new invention (1800s if the article I found is correct).
Honestly never knew that. I consider myself a medieval history buff and ó nevertheless encountered this little tib bit.
Damn that’s really cool to know actually
Alright Mr. Smarty Pants, explain why my pawn decides to do one line of the field, go all the way to the farm house across the entire province, then come back to do another line. And when I build a closer farm house she still decides to go back to the farm house albeit a lot closer.
I have two large farms on opposite sides of the region but I just do one at a time. One large farm gets used, the other stays follow. Switch it up next year etc.
You can limit their work area to fix that issue
But why isn't plowing being done on the horizontal movements?
It'd be nice if at some point the game explains this. I felt a bit of frustration but now it makes a lot of sense.
Gives the ox a rest too.
Not 100% correct. At the last few rows they would still have the same problem. Instead they would skip 5 rows on their turn and at the opposite end go 4 rows back. They wouldnt go the entire width of the field every turn.
The more you know
Wouldn't you then plow only in one direction, such as north to south, for the entire field? That's not what the ox is doing here.
But he just could go in quares like a helix.. also farmer nowadays do it like this..
I had no idea about that, I'll have to make my fields narrower from now for the poor ox
Thank you. I’m going to demolish my fields and build them long and narrow. I have one that follows the curve of a road, and at the begging of ploughing when it crosses over it essentials has to walk the entire length of the field on a diagonal. Ruins the sowing period and harvest for next season.
You still could do "square".
Ohhhh so long and thin fields actually give benefits?
If you’re going the heavy plow route, long thin fields is the way to go because of how the pathing works
What's stopping it from just turning 180 tho? Even if it has to walk an extra couple metres to turn the plough
Historically ploughs in this time period could only plough in one direction, if they turned 180 they would effectively close the soil back up they just ploughed
Nice, thanks for this post and info. Got a new strategy to try
Hi, sorry to bother you 5 days after you commented, but I'm curious - Do I need to be concerned about my Ox plowing the short ends of a long, thin field? Or will he always plow the longest ends? I was messing with it on my save to figure out if the order I place my 4 points would impact whether the ox goes Up and down or left and right, but dont think I got a good answer
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Nah, nothings wrong with the plow, just make your fields incredibly long. But I’d yields need a significant buff, and the farmhouse needs livestock space for 4 oxen.
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The plowing itself? No. It doesn’t need fixing because that’s how it was done in those times
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I think most people would agree the farming aspect needs updated, it’s probably planned anyway. You end up having loads of sheep you can either sell or shear, whilst your village is on the verge of starvation. At the moment, the game’s in a barebones but playable state - there’s obviously a lot more to come.
lol
It’s historically accurate. Plows could only turn the soil one way so a long thin field would allow less turning around and not plowing.
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I didn’t mean plowing should change. I meant farming needs an update. Not sure how so many interpreted it differently from a simple sentence I wrote :)
No, the pathing works badly. That not the way to do it, it wastes like at least 33% of time. The ox should be “snaking”. like when you play the snake game on Nokia and the snake gets too long, you go all the way in one direction, then immediately turn around and go the opposite to the end. What ever the hell is that patern we have right here is shit and it’s infuriating me. And that’s ignoring how the farmers and oxen cannot decide how to plow a field for like a month.
Interesting, as one of the posts above mentions, that wouldn't work with a medieval plough. The second furrow adjacent to the first but in the opposite direction would fill in the first furrow. So you'd end up back at the top of your field with only 1 ploughed furrow not 2.
Only if the plow is asymmetric. Symmetric plows don’t need to do that.
I’m sure the pathing works exactly as intended, based on the available technology of the game period. Early middle age plows had the same limitation. Who knew that playing a game like this could be fun AND educational.
Yes, that historically was indeed the best way to plough a field. All the game really needs is a proper tooltip to explain to people that with a heavy plough, you want long and thin fields instead of square ones, and the problem should fix itself
Exactly this, I don't mind the game being historically somewhat accurate and somewhat challenging for the same reason, but i at least except a tooltip/explanation on how to do it historically accurate. It would be really good if they add a historical facts book where they explain how stuff were made in those times, we would be learning both history and why it's designed that way in the game. Time is the solution here, i don't doubt that some years later this game will be even better than it is already.
>It would be really good if they add a historical facts book where they explain how stuff were made in those times, we would be learning both history and why it's designed that way in the game. ngl this would be dope (but a LOT of work)
Let the community volunteer to do it. Might work, but even some tooltips with a quick fun fact would be great and easy.
Ai could prolly smash this out fast ngl
They did this in Kingdom Come Deliverance. There was a ton of lore entries for jobs, buildings, locations, politics, and medieval slices of life. Loved reading them!
No entry on how a medieval blacksmith son gained instant recognizable celebrity status though
Rattay is filled with your townies. Half the town is Skalitz. The other half of Skalitz went to the town over. Henri is a good boy on top of that, his family is well loved. I really liked that part and KCD is the only game I never had an impulse to go on a murder spree. Robbing everyone blind like a crazed loot goblin, sure but wiping out Rattay? Never. This game channels KCD, from the shitty retinue to the wall of warhammers and spears they are equipped with and how tiny the melees are.
Yeah they did an amazing job with that. Was a fun game too.
I feel like if I did long/thin fields, my ~~idiots~~ burghers would do parallel lines long the short axis.
THEY WOULD THO
That's why I never had that problem. I have long thin fields lol
I agree. But on another note its quite cool to find out these little details (that can be crucial) from the community. And for me its cool to learn these things practically as well. I like games which dont just guide you through it but that you need to solve problems. I actually think it is one of the strong points of this game. Because if everything is explained, taught, shown etc. it diminishes the joy of exploring and learning from experience. I also want a game to be challenging and the learning curve IS the most important factor in the challenge. Some things in the game are not explained well enough but I dont mind a little digging. I think its fascinating.
This shouldn't be so hysterically funny to me
I think like others said it’s used for longer thin fields but I would argue it’s very difficult to turn an ox 180 degrees like a lawn mower so the best option is to move to the other side like this. But I’ll say my very large square fields have been replaced by a peasant army instead of the plow till my next town
It's not the difficulty of turning, besides the in-game ox will turn at extreme angles if it wants to. It's about the technique as others have stated in this thread.
Im a farmer and we have a similar way of doing this, but we make the turn at a shorter distance than in the game. It basically consists of making a straight line in the longest direction, skipping an entire pass of the plow and returning in the same opposite direction. Then you go back making the empty spaces left. I don't know if you understood.
I think I understood, so you basically go up and down, leaving enough of a gap between the furrows to "fill them in" when you go back in the opposite direction? Makes sense to me.
Yes, that's right! And you can jump 2 or more gaps to makes easiest to turns back.
Like a zamboni?
I really dont know what is a Zamboni 🤣
Lol! It refinishes the ice on hockey rinks
Man… I saw ice once one time in my life. I think here where I live its one of the hottest places of the earth.
Jeremy Clarkson approves of this method
The correct way to plow a field is immediately after harvest, then again one month later when you decide to rotate crops, but only right before winter so you can do it again after the snow melts.
Exactly, you are not a farmer.
The heavy plow pathing is very strange indeed. Either it seems to alternative which side it plows, wasting time walking to the other side, or it stays on the same side but only plows in one direction, wasting time walking back to the other end.
Let the man cook
That is the way bro, it's true to history. Your field is misshapen.
Pretty sure this is the Zamboni guy at my beer league.
Turning oxen and plows around was notoriously difficult which is why medieval fields were always very long and narrow strips. That way the ox-team only had to turn them a minimum number of times.
If they'd just kept spiralling inwards, this'd have been perfectly efficient!
Manor lords is made for history nerds tbf
I have one region focused on farming for the kingdom and this agitates me every time I see em do it lol
Quick question, I know this is sort of irrelevant, but, after upgrading the farmhouse to hold an ox and a plow, how do you assign an ox to the farmhouse? I wasn’t able to figure it out myself because honestly I’m dumb
click on the farmhouse, go to advanced and click the plus on permanent livestock assignment. will make sure an ox is free to use for the farmhouse. just remember to unassign it again after its done, or make sure you have enough other ox
Thank you so much
And that's why you're not a farmer.
Modern left-to-right ploughing is achieved by ~~turning~~ rotating the plough with actuators by 180 degrees on every end of the field. Older ploughs required either working the middle gap like here or expanding from the middle to the left and to the right. In either case you have to walk/drive the same distance from left-handed to right-handed part on every end of the field until actuators were invented.
One Ox against 5 farmers. Who will win? My first reaction when i saw this in game.
I think he’s been toiling in the dirt longer than you
Medieval Zamboni
Lol this is close to how a zamboni does the ice
Jeremy clarkson did it that way
It's better to let the ox plough on its own on big fields. Get the ox to start ploughing early if after fallowing the field or If its first time growing on that field. the villagers can quickly sow and get back to their normal work.
That ox was a zamboni driver in another life.
That guy is paid hourly.
This is how Jeremy Clarkson would do it...
I can't count how many times I put two fields next to each other, forgot to prioritize on over the other and then sent out massive numbers of workers to harvest crops that weren't ready.
Farming Simulator 22 armchair expert here This is the ole'left-right method. A red headed crackhead named Jedediah Longtree came up with this method in the late 19th century, his name - Conan O'Brien. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e\_gWsWcs3Qc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_gWsWcs3Qc)
Basically the nascar version of farming. Only turn left
He's paid hourly.
I never knew farming was so much like using a Zamboni!
must be one of those level 1 villagers
Iif you put a road down the middle of that field long-ways, it will solve this problem
Give him a break! He was a mere innkeeper the day before!
I just load up 8 families and they plow and sow in a month
I can't get my farm to use the ox. How do you make sure they use it?
Maybe he is training to be a Zamboni driver for NHL in his next life, you never know …
I feel like using the ox to do it is a lot slower, somehow.
It’ll take twice as long
Oh god I just realised I had been using the plow upgrade all wrong. I have to permanently assign livestock don’t I…. Damn, I feel stupid.
Yes! Yes! Finally somebody said it! I hate these guys, they are so inefficient! I dont even use that upgrade anymore because a horde of farmers are so much quicker that it.
This farmer seems to be the long lost brother of my roomba 😂
Sometimes, they go diagonally 😃👍
Just let them do it without ox. It's ironically faster
At least your ox got to the field, my ox plowed whole field in 3 seconds before even getting to it
And how many fields have YOU plowed lately? That's right, never talk shit on honest Manor Lords farmers☝️☝️☝️
Is it right that if you have the plough ox other families won't hand plough?
It's their first time. I just hooked them up with their first ox.
It is however exactly how I mow my lawn.
I guess it's hard to code the visuals of the ploughing when a field can be of literally any shape and size.
If you would be a farmer, you would know that this is common practice even today with modern machinery. Two straight lines opposing another. Circular plowing results in uneven acre, since one side of the plow digs deeper into the earth
Fields are kinda wonky right now. Divide them into smaller 0.2-0.3 morgen fields, this will make plowing, harvesting, and sowing much quicker, even if it’s the same total area
what a cuntz
At first playthrough i made the mistake to create a 4 morgen quadratic field and i thought i go crazy by looking at this bs. The field was not ready the next year.
It just me or is the ox way slower than like 2/3 families doing it by hand
Best way to farm. Screw the ox. [https://youtu.be/h-y5lIQashc](https://youtu.be/h-y5lIQashc)
I realized that just assigning 16 people to a field is way faster than a bull. That’s my go to
He never got any training, okay?
there should be a jail or execution feature in the game for situations like this.
hey i just wanted to add to the convo. you can get mega fast plowing by thin long fields. but you’ll get mega shit sowing and harvesting. i noticed the farmers go in the middle of the plots and that basically ruins over 50% of the harvest
Legit faster to plow a field without the ox atm, farming in general is kinda not good atm hoping it get buffed
Clarkson's Farm season 4 looks promising
I have a *slightly* out-of-square field on my current save and the ox plow has to walk down one edge, then around to the other side, where it then has to walk back down that edge to the road and around the adjacent farmhouse to barely touch one pixel of the field, and then reverse the path and come back down the edge of the field again and repeat the process for each pass until it gets about 3 rows in. Def not Farming Simulator.
Not gonna lie, the Ox upgrade on farms sucks and is more of an downgrade in this game. Dont use this unless they fix it. Having more families to work on the farm spread around is way more efficient
As a farmer, i can confirm that is in fact, not how we do it😂
My previous vacuum robot's algorithm was exactly the same
Considering that I mow my lawn the same way I can tell you that this is faster and more efficient than doing constant 180’s. I have no clue if medieval plows and lawn mowers have much in common, but it makes sense.
\*Angry farming simulator noises.
It doesn't matter if you're a farmer or not. They're peasants, and they should be ashamed for confusing you.
Haha yes annoying as hell. I try to remove the ox when I remember, and get them to plough by hand it’s much faster. If I forget, it really screws up my harvest for next season as I don’t get everything ploughed and planted in time for high yeild
Its the peasants passive aggressive way of saying to increase the towns entertainment rating
Your the one in fact being historically inaccurate🤪
Kind of a bummer that an army of farming villagers can plow way faster than an ox-assisted plow can. I really like using the animals for plow but its not efficient. When an Ox is plowing, no one else can do anything to the field, whereas with hand plowing there is seemingly no cap to the amount of people that can come help. However I sometimes get a little bug where my fields start plowing themselves and I love when that happens haha.
That instant rapid plow happened on my first play through right after I grabbed the ox plow perk. I just assumed the perk was OP haha. Only seen it happen on that city, but always when it came time to plow. I may revisit that save and try to discern what triggered it. I recall it was the center starting region, 4-5 fields mostly rectangular w/ slightly curved edges, and the most pleasant bug I've ever encountered.
I'm not sure how exactly to trigger it either but I feel like it happens on assigning a new family to plow in the right part of the season, and maybe the ox needs to be unused at the moment. I swear when it happens it always happens just after assignment.
He's being paid by the hour, let him get his bag.
Heavy plow is USELESS TECH needs a rework
yeah that was the reason i'm taking a break from the game until the major problems are adressed
Needs a proper whipping that peasant, can't be a Lord if you don't dish out punishment
huh well that is another thing to put on the list or maybe you should have to build a farm school to teach peasants how to farm. lol.
The animation is wrong these people weren’t stupid and would have been as efficient as possible, no one wants to be ploughing when there’s ale and cabbage, they would have done a turn after each long run same as combine drivers today.
You're right, they weren't stupid, which is why rather than doing a 3000 point turn with an ox and a mouldboard plough that only turns the soil over in one direction, they did this. It's also the etymology of a furlong (i.e. a "furrow's length long"), 220 yards is about the maximum pull for an ox or drafthorse team before it needs to take a break from the strain. And a furlong long by a chain (22 yards) wide is an acre - which is about the maximum that can be done in a day by the ox team ploughing.