Food is an essential part of most colony sims. Without it, the populace will die, and whether one is trying to keep an entire planet or a single hamlet alive, letting everyone starve to death isn't the way to do it. Some colony sims are more granular than others, however, making crop cultivation a tricky and time-consuming business.
New colony sim Farthest Frontier is on the more granular end of the spectrum, giving crops a variety of traits that must be carefully tracked and weighed against one another if the player is to optimize their output and keep everyone fed. For new players, that can be as difficult as it sounds, and in a game about pushing the limits of civilization in a hostile wilderness, farming as a whole can be daunting. Here's everything that players need to know about the best food to grow.
The Basics Of Farming
Farming in Farthest Frontier is a complicated business compared to farming in most colony sims, which can be a little overwhelming for beginners. The first thing to know when trying to pick the best food to grow is that many factors of crops are beyond the player's control. A crop's tolerance for temperature changes and the presence of weeds and rocks, its dependence upon high quality soil, its yield and growing time, and its impact upon the fertility of the soil in which it is planted are all beyond the player's control. The player can account for these things when making decisions, but can't alter them directly.
Instead, the player should concentrate on manipulating the factors that they can control in this addictive city-builder: Fertility, Weed Level, Rockiness, and Soil Mixture. Weed Level and Rockiness are the most basic: some foods don't grow well when the fields they are planted in contain too many weeds or rocks, but the player can do Field Maintenance to remove the offending objects and improve their farm.
The player can also adjust the Soil Mixture of their fields, adding more Clay or Sand until the field is the ideal planting space for the desired crops. Last and perhaps most important is Fertility, a quality that most crops cause to decrease at harvest time. Maintaining Fertility requires intelligent Crop Rotations, which is a problem in itself. All this complexity makes Farthest Frontier a great real life sim, but it can be hard to process at first.
The Best Food To Grow
Farms don't necessarily need to be built right away, but farming will inevitably become a core part of gameplay. In Farthest Frontier, players plan their farming three years in advance. This pre-planning feature is incredibly important, because it allows the player to leave themselves time to plant Clover to increase Fertility or schedule Field Maintenance to remove pesky obstructions, thereby ensuring they can continue to grow good food.
What crops are best depend upon the player's needs at any given time, but the following crops are reliable choices to make sure the focal city flourishes:
- Turnips grow quickly and thrive in any weather condition, allowing the player to plant multiple harvests without worrying that a sudden seasonal change will kill them off.
- Peas can't stand up to the summer sun but improve the Fertility of the fields they're planted in, keeping the field healthy longer.
- Beans also improve Fertility and are highly heat-resistant, making them an excellent summer crop.
- Buckwheat grows quickly and acts as a natural weed suppressant, cutting down on the amount of Field Maintenance the player has to do.
- Carrots struggle when there are too many rocks but grow well even in fields with poor Fertility, giving the player options if they've been rough on their fields or want to sneak in an extra harvest during an off year.
Farthest Frontier is available now for PC.