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Efficiency tips for producing a lot of food without assigning workers.
Manor Lords: Passive Food Production Guide
Benefits of Backyard Food Production
- Does not require assigned families, so it will not affect your labor pool.
- Does not rely on land fertility, so placement is not limited.
- Can be the largest source of food for your population.
- Increases food variety, leading to faster population growth and fulfilling tier requirements.
Vegetable Gardens
Planning for passive food production starts with choosing the size of your burgage plots. You will want different size plots based on what you plan on using them for.
The only burgage plots that benefit from a large backyard are those you want to use for vegetables (or fruit trees if you have that development upgrade). For this you don’t just want a long plot, but a wide one. Once you have chosen the outline for your plots you will see options to rotate as well as a + and -. Click on the – until you see expansion housing for each plot.
This will not only result in a wider plot for more vegetables to be planted, but it will allow for a housing expansion to be constructed on that lot. That expansion prevents a population cap issue, as 1 wide burgage will be able to have just as much population as the same width of land with 2 burgages. Additionally, that extra family will be able to assist with the large vegetable garden.
One decent sized vegetable garden can provide more than enough vegetables for 10 families to benefit from the extra food variety. These plots do benefit from having more families, so having them closer to the market makes upgrading them easier. Markets fulfill the burgage plot needs to closer burgages first. If there are not enough resources to supply all burgages only the ones closer to market will be upgradeable. Unlike artisan housing, the extra families on these plots can be assigned to work other places.
Chicken Coops
Plot size does not impact egg production in any way, so it’s best to use small plots just big enough to have a back yard extension. You don’t need more than one family to maintain a chicken coop, so a plot wide enough for a housing expansion is not advised. You can have more chicken coops per family if you put them on plots that don’t have the expansion. This method applies to goats as well, for passive hide production.
Since egg output can’t be increased with larger burgage plots you will want roughly twice as many chicken coops as vegetable gardens to benefit consistently from the extra food variety. Just because you are producing eggs does not mean you are producing enough for that family to offer their surplus at the market. More families in the plot means more in-home consumption, so these plots should be the last ones you upgrade to tier 3 (or never). Since they are the ones you want to upgrade the least, they should be the furthest burgages from your market.