Soil fertility in Manor Lords follows the same logic as real life. A piece of land’s fertility is a finite resource and planting, growing, and harvesting a crop on top of fertile land removes the soil fertility little by little.
To compensate for this loss, players can rely on Crop Rotations, a means of letting the soil rest and recover in order to restore its fertility. Here’s how to set it up.
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How to Set Up Crop Rotations in Manor Lords
First, create three fields 0.6 Morgen large on fertile land. 0.6 Morgen is the sweet spot for field size as it can be managed year-round by only one family. There are four types of soil fertility: Emmer (Wheat), Flax, Barley, and Rye, though they often tend to overlap with each other.
To set up Crop Rotations:
- Click on field #1.
- Select a main crop type (whichever crop you want to grow this year).
- Click on the empty checkbox next to Crop Rotations.
- Select the drop-down next to Second Year and choose another crop you want to grow during the year after this one (use the percentage signs next to the crop name to decide the best value).
- Select Third Year and choose Fallow. A Fallow year means that nothing will be planted in the crop during that year, and soil will be left to recover.
Planting the same crop two years in a row drastically drops soil fertility for that field. This drop is not easy to recover from.
Repeat the same steps for field #2, but choose Fallow for the Second Year instead of the third. For field #3, select Fallow as the main crop type, and select two different crops for both Second Year and Third Year.
Now, the crop rotation is fully set up. Assign two families to work at the Farmhouse. One family will take care of field 1, and the other will handle field 2. After a year, one yearly cycle will be completed, and the two farmer families will be able to harvest both fields. In the Second Year (starting in Autumn), the second family will switch to field #3 since field #2 is set to Fallow for this year. The same will happen during the third year when workers abandon field #1 to let it remain Fallow.
As a result of this crop rotation, two families will work three fields for three years straight, without any downtime in between, and the soil fertility levels will remain consistent while this is happening.
Rye can only be farmed after players unlock the related development node when the settlement levels up.
Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
Field 1 | Crop 1 | Crop 2 | Fallow |
Field 2 | Crop 1 | Fallow | Crop 2 |
Field 3 | Fallow | Crop 1 | Crop 2 |
How Crop Rotations Work in Manor Lord
Crop Rotations are a means of creating a sustainable cycle of farming a piece of land and retaining its fertility at the same time. When players decide to start farming, the first order of business is to find land to convert into a field. The soil fertility overlay offers a visual indicator in the form of a color gradient of what parts of the land are the most fertile for certain fields.
Players can then set up a field with a farmhouse on the greenest land to take advantage of the fertility. But farming isn’t just mindlessly planting things in the ground and harvesting them when they grow in an infinite loop. Crops that grow in a field suck up the nutrients from the soil to facilitate their growth. If a field is not given time to rest, the fertility necessary for proper crop growth also doesn’t recover.
Manor Lords tries to replicate how things work in reality as much as possible, and the solution to the fertility problem, validated by historical facts, is crop rotations. Farming a field for two years and letting it rest for one year. Setting up crop rotations on three fields simultaneously (a three-field system) is the most efficient use of land and manpower.
Manor Lords
- Platform(s)
- PC , Xbox One , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S
- Released
- April 26, 2024
- Developer(s)
- Slavic Magic
- Genre(s)
- Strategy , City Builder
