Sometimes, though, it can be vexing in less enjoyable ways. It wouldn't feel right without a healthy dose of suffering. Call me heartless, but it's the Middle Ages. It can feel like a lot to manage sometimes, but I got into a headspace of embracing the chaos and sometimes even laughing at the misfortune of my villagers. It's refreshing, honestly, when so many games have abstract mechanics that lead me to make silly decisions for the sake of getting things running smoothly. You'll also have to deal with drought, frost, wild animals eating your crops, and diseases like mildew, the solutions to which make your settlement look and feel more believable over time. I was actually looking up articles on medieval field rotation practices as I played, which is about as close to my personal happy place as I can get playing this type of game. These can all be influenced with various jobs, and it makes crop rotation essential because planting the same thing over and over will often end up leaving the land barren after a while. Every plot of land you can grow on has ratings for fertility, rocks, weeds, and even the ratio of sand to clay content. That’s part of Farthest Frontier’s seriously detailed agriculture system. It also depletes soil fertility a lot faster than other crops. Grain can be stored a lot longer than other crops, but it also can't be eaten on its own – you need to turn it into flour, and then bread, which requires two extra buildings. There are interesting trade-offs at every step of the way. It forced me to think more like the way an actual medieval, agricultural society would think, eventually leading me down a lot of the same paths they traveled in real life. This simple change is the core of why Farthest Frontier feels so authentic, and why I found its challenges so novel and satisfying.
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