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Crop rotation is an unexpected joy in town-builder Farthest FrontierOh oi’d kill for a brand new combine harvester
Oh oi’d kill for a brand new combine harvester
Playing settlement-building survival gameFarthest Frontierhas me planning a lot. I’m planning outposts to mine distant resources. I’m planning road and neighbourhood layouts to optimise movement and happiness. I’m planning defences to fend off bandits. But most of my thought is going on farming, planning my crop rotations to optimise fertility and yields. Finally, I have a use for everything school taught me about the three-field system and the nitrogen cycle.
Farthest Frontier - Gameplay TrailerWatch on YouTube
Farthest Frontier - Gameplay Trailer
BEAR, DO NOT STEAL MY FISH
So dig roads to speed movement, cobble them to hasten it further, build storage depots to stash and spread supplies, and build wagons to handle bulk transit. The bigger your settlement, the more hands you’ll have helping, and the more you can semi-automate.
I do enjoy when my town ticks along enough that I can sit back and watch my little ant farm buzz with life. Everyone has animations for whatever they’re up to, and I enjoy the tilt-shift camera effect kicking in as I zoom in to watch woodsplitters split wood, labourers chop and dig, the night soil collector pushing their cart, the wagon drivers trundling along, people dashing about to collect food and deliver goods, and all the rest—even crops slowly growing.
This field is tired but I’m hesitant to commit several years to improving it. Hmm. Probably a mistake
Farming is my favourite aspect of Farthest Frontier to focus intently on. Hunting and foraging can only feed so many people, and keeping animals takes a huge initial investment, so crops are vital. What delights me is that you don’t simply drag a farm into the landscape and watch food roll in, you have to carefully plan your crops for yields and sustainability.
Blighted
With soil needing time to recover, you’ll want to plan not just a crop rotation but a field rotation system to keep food coming. While one field recovers, have others growing, staggering their recuperative years. It is unreasonably pleasing to get a system of fields set up nicely.
Usually my attention in town-builders goes on perfectly building layouts but here I’m thinking more and more about my crop rotations. I trust the town will be fine but what about my flax? I know I’ve slightly botched my latest settlement’s field layouts, and have suffered some crippling blights.
See if you can spot the point I started actually planning my residential district
In Farthest Frontier, I do lose interest past a certain point. I enjoy struggling to survive at the start, desperately trying to stockpile resources while carefully managing growth. I like seeing my handful of shacks grow into a hamlet, then a village, and the beginnings of an industrialised town. I like the initial excitement of unlocking new buildings and expanding towards distant valuable resources but the settlement-building early game interests me more than the town-managing game which Farthest Frontier grows into. The escalating raider hordes aren’t an interesting challenge either, just a punishing one, and the solutions to them are not fun either. It all starts to drag.
I should be clear that I feel this way about a lot of the survive-o-building genre; I suspect serious builders might feel otherwise. But I’ve been happy playing the parts I do enjoy up until I don’t, then starting over again with the benefit of new knowledge. I think my next settlement will be magnificent. My fields will be perfect.
Farthest Frontier is still in early access. Crate Entertainment had said they expected launch after 8-12 months, so they still have ages to expand and tweak things. They have said expanding the late game is one of their main early access goals. I look forward to seeing the game it grows into.
