Salem

IMO the invariance penalty update did wonders for the learning system. Before it the optimal strategy was just grinding the same inspirational (spinning top, most likely), which was quite boring and bot friendly. Now that we need a variety, there's a proper reward in engaging in all sorts of different content.

The reason that I mention this is because the farming system suffer from the same problem the learning system had. Influence is the main thing, I'm sure everyone will agree, and upkeep is the trash stat. So everyone just spams a ton of hay, then a bit of humus, and finishes off with chips because they're really easy to get en masse. Fields with full meters just need a ton of lime, ofc, but that's easy enough. So, the main grind in fertilizing is collecting hay. I'd say it's as much as 3/4 of the time investment in farming. This is fairly monotonous and bot friendly work. This also takes away from importance of the lesser influence fertilizers.

The learning and the farming problems are similar, so I think they should have similar solutions. IMO fertilizer types should have diminishing returns on top of the already existing ones for the fertilizer quantity. So you might open with two hay, but by then the hay penalty would get high enough for turkey droppings to give more influence than another piece of hay. This means you'd need to engage in a variety of tasks to fill the "good" slots in the fertilizer queue. And in the "bad" slots, ie where you currently use wood choppings, the combination of the quantity and the variety penalty would make chopping spam too inefficient. Naturally we'd need some new upkeep fertilizers to keep these slots useful. IMO it would be best if the new fertilizers gave different combos of effects rather than just one like hay or choppings.

When introducing these new fertilizers needed for this change, some of them could be made region dependant, to encourage trade. In another thread I suggested tying purity pushing for crops in with the fertilizing system. If this was implemented then this trade incentive would be even more powerful.

What types of fertilizers would you suggest then? As in what stats and how would the be created?

I'm generally of the opinion that farming is better done en mass with S/C bonus and minimizing the work required per field. I never use more than 4 pieces of fertilizer per field.This system would naturally destroy my "method" of farming if purity becomes (edit:) more crosslinked with fertilizing, but I'm not opposed to it. The fertilizing system definitely has room to grow.

Imho it wouldn't change much. It would simply become a different grind and slow even further the unlocking of the other tiers (since the first tiers...well, are quite useless by themselves).
(beside that, i'm still waiting for a patch regarding the issue of the "crops draining from all the bars beside theirs", and that would really help, since as now you can't raise more than a single bar without using influence fertilizers...)

Lots of fields with a bit of fertilizer in them is good. The problem is blitzing high tier crops with haybots. Apparently certain people have had sea island cotton a week ago.

And high tier crops are supposed to be a bit slow to get. That adds a lot of weight to decision between defending your town or abandoning it.

Just because some people are catasses and grind like retards to get things first is not a reason to punish those of us who aren't. I find keeping my scant 6 fields fertilized to be a HUGE chore and you want to make it harder? No thanks. you must have been one of those guys who thought corpse runs in Everquest were "fun".

If you don't spam hay you won't be affected much.

Upon thinking about this pain, maybe I misinterpreted.

If each unique fertilizer gives the full benefit, use of few fertilizers will actually be massively buffed compared to the mass grinders.

I agree with Potjeh, the current haygrindfest is boring. And as we already talked about in the custom client thread, there are already featured haybots doing that job.

the returns should be diminishing to the point of negative benefit. if you put too much of one thing, you're gonna burn your crop.

***** to talk **** about how much i hate botters who gain unfair advantages. Please don't turn into HnH