Field and crop rotation planner

Fields are the slowest part of the Manor Lords economy to fix if you get them wrong: a bad choice costs you a whole year. This planner does two jobs. First it reads the fertility numbers you see on the in-game overlay and tells you whether wheat or rye is the better grain on that ground. Then it lays out a rotation across several fields and years and flags any field that keeps draining the same fertility.

Wheat or rye?

Rye does not have its own fertility map. Since Update 5 the game sets rye fertility to 1.5 times the wheat fertility on the same spot, capped at 100%, which is why rye does well on poor land. Update 8 then cut rye yield by 12.5%. The patch notes say that after the change wheat is the more efficient choice when wheat fertility is over about 30%, and rye yields more below that. The planner applies exactly that rule and shows the rye figure next to the wheat one so you can see the gap.

Both grains end up as bread: the farmhouse threshes the harvest into grain, the windmill grinds it into flour, and a communal oven or a bakery bakes it. Rye makes rye bread, which counts as its own food type for variety.

Fertility pools and rotation

A crop drains fertility while it grows, and the field recovers when it is left fallow or given a crop that draws on a different pool. The planner groups crops into three pools: wheat and rye (one pool, because rye is derived from wheat), barley and oats (Update 8 says oats share barley's fertility), and flax. If a field grows from the same pool two years in a row the cell is marked with "!".

The presets follow the old medieval systems the game is modelled on. Three-field rotation (a winter grain, a spring grain, then fallow) keeps a third of your land resting each year. Two-field rotation is simpler but rests half your land. Four-field adds flax for linen. Pick "Custom" to type any sequence, for example rye,oats,flax,fallow.

Stagger is on by default, so field 2 starts one step later than field 1. That gives you some grain every year instead of a feast and a famine. The second table counts how many fields of each pool you have each year, and their area in morgen, so you can see how much your farmhouse has to plow and harvest.

Seasons and labor

Since Update 6, rye is a winter crop and barley a spring crop. The 0.8.110 beta notes call wheat and rye winter crops that can also be spring-sown for a quicker but smaller harvest. The same beta notes say flax, barley and oats are spring crops that can only be sown in spring. A farmhouse takes up to 8 worker families and, with the oxen upgrade, 2 oxen for plowing and hauling. Fields are measured in morgen; one morgen is roughly 2.1 acres.

Beta note (0.8.110): crop rotation becomes always on, fallow fields recover fertility much more slowly than before, and a new fertilizer chain (dung from livestock, composted at a dunghill) lets farmers raise a fallow field's maximum fertility for just over two years. If you play the beta, lean towards the rotations with fewer fallow years and plan a dunghill.

Worked example: reading the overlay

Say the fertility overlay shows wheat at 24% on a patch of poor ground next to your village. Rye there is 24 x 1.5 = 36%, and because wheat is under the 30% line the developers gave in Update 8, the planner says sow rye. Move to a richer field at 60% wheat and rye would be 90%, but Update 8's 12.5% rye yield cut means wheat is now the better pick. Barley at 50% and flax at 40% on the same spot are separate pools, so a wheat, barley, fallow rotation drains each pool only one year in three.

With three fields of 1.5 morgen each on the default three-field rotation, every year the farmhouse sows 1.5 morgen of wheat and 1.5 of barley and rests the third field. That is about 3.2 acres of each crop by the wiki's 2.1 acres per morgen.