Stronghold: Legends Food Production - When Cheese Is Op

[Planewalker 25]

Hey everyone - Lord Tanthos here - an old-time Legends fanatic! Being curious about the differences, I decided to examine the output of SHL farms (for granary food). I set up a an empty granary and placed 2 apple, dairy, and chicken farms adjacent to it. I then set rations to None and waited 10 minutes. (2 years, 6 months in game time)

I noted the following. First, delivery sizes:

Chicken Farmer: 6 meat
Apple Farmer: 7 apples
Dairy Farmer: 6 cheese

After 10 minutes, I checked the granary contents: 198 Meat, 168 Apples, 102 Cheese

This helped to give a sense of how efficient each type of farm is. The apple farmers occasionally wandered to the other farm's trees and back, reducing their efficiency. The dairy farmers also spent a long time waiting for cows to return to the barn after returning to their farm. Chicken farms are direct from granary to coop.

A note about seal farmers: seal farmers perform similarly to chicken farmers (including a 6 meat drop-off). However, their meat processing animations are slower. In testing, they deliver about 10% less meat. Together with the lack of bread, this means the Ice faction has the worst food production options.

Next I wanted to know how the farms fare when placed at a distance. I repeated the same test (2 of each farm for 10 minutes), but placed the farms approximately 15 tiles further away from the granary.

After 10 minutes, I checked the granary contents: 84 Meat, 84 Apples, 90 Cheese

The extra distance had a substantial impact on the efficiency of meat and apples due to all the extra walking time. However, dairy farmers were almost unaffected by extra distance. I discovered the cause after carefully examining the dairy production process. First, unlike in SH1/SHC, a SHL dairy farm's calf is born and grows into a cow without the farmer being present at the workplace - this means the dairy farm gets ready for production after placement regardless of where the worker is. Second, and most importantly, each cow appears to have an internal timer on being ready for milking. When that timer is up, it slowly returns to the barn. When a dairy farm is close to the granary, the farmer spends a lot of time standing around waiting for the cow to be ready for milking, and then spends more time waiting for it to walk back to the barn. When a dairy farmer is far from the granary, the cow returns to the barn while he is on the way back to the farm, so when he arrives, he may immediately resume cheese production.

TL;DR - place cheap dairy farms away from your granary to maximize cheese production while leaving room for other buildings

I'll examine royal food production next. Let me know if you have more economic questions about SH:L that might be interesting to examine.

[Asophix 189]

Interesting findings. I'd be more interested in more complex layouts as well!

Given how buildings can be rotated and have different access points (such as seal holes have only one entrance on the platform), there may be cases where certain farms perform better than others.

In some Youtube match recordings, I've seen people go for loads of chicken coops after building a variety of all farms (presumably for early honor). Could you see those being superior despite? Cheese may be marginally better, but chicken farms come online faster so you can trade food for gold earlier with them.

[Planewalker 25]

I also tried a mixed configuration with the two farms where one farm is adjacent and one is distant. Result was: 168 Meat, 147 Apples, and 90 Cheese.

It's certainly clear that chicken coops are superior from output, when adjacent. Dairy farms are simply comparable once distance and cost are accounted for. Cheese is only better if you run out of room.

As for seal holes, you are right that it's essential to have those face the right way... otherwise they perform even worse. The more seal holes you have, the harder it is to keep the path to the granary ideal. Chicken coops with their walkable fences do not have that problem.

Edited March 29, 2024 by Lord_Chris
Removed previous quote