User Guide

own staff of employees. Fully staffing the farm is
important; a farm that is partially staffed yields less
than a fully-staffed farm. In addition to labor, mead-
ow farms need road access.
Depending on the crop, meadow farms are harvested
one or two times per year. Barley, grain and pome-
granates are harvested twice a year, while flax, lettuce
and chickpeas are harvested only once a year. Each
harvest usually produces less than a floodplain farm’s
harvest.
Fertility varies from meadow to meadow. The yellow
vegetation that grows on
meadows with high fertility
is very dense. Harvesting a
meadow farm does not
deplete the fertility of its
land. Info-clicking on a
meadow farm shows you
the fertility level of its land
and when the next harvest
will be.
Meadow farms can be vital
to the city’s existence.
While harvests of flood-
plain farms are large, they only occur once a year, and
the farms are inactive for two to four months of the
year during the Inundation. Because they are active
year round, meadow farms can help tide the popula-
tion over during the Inundation.
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You can increase the fertility — and hence, the pro-
63
Farming and Food Production
Floodplain farms also tend to produce more because
they do not need to devote space for year-round liv-
ing quarters. Floodplain farms are just fields, and any
required farm hands come from a Work Camp.
Gangs of peasants gather at the Work Camp for assign-
ment. During farming season, the Work Camp will
likely send most of its work crews to the floodplain
farms. If all floodplain farms are staffed, or if it is flood
season, the Work Camp sends gangs to work on any
active monument projects in the city that may need
them.
While one Work Camp could provide peasants for all
floodplain farms and monuments, the more Work
Camps you have, the quicker farms or construction
projects will receive the peasants they need. More
Work Camps will also provide more peasants, which
speeds the monument-building process.
Like other walkers, peasant laborers have a limited
working life. Time spent walking to work is time not
spent working, so don’t build Work Camps too far
from the floodplain fields.
Both Work Camps and floodplain farms require road
access. Work Camps also need labor.
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Arable land is not limited to the flood plains.
Meadows are also arable, and meadow farms have the
advantage of supporting crops year-round.
Work Camps do not supply meadow farms with a gang
of farm hands; rather, each meadow farm must find its
62
Farming and Food Production
Meadow Farm
When building a farm, you
don’t have to specify “Meadow
Farm” or “Floodplain Farm.”
Your architects automatically
know which type of farm to
build, depending on where you
build it. Both farms cost the
same amount of money.
Work Camp