Talk:Farmer
Why is Dictator listed first? Slagpit 23:38, 15 January 2011 (MST)
Contents
This is from EartherWiki
Introduction
A farmer primarily builds farms to produce mass amounts of bushels to sell as a profit. At the end of each set of turns, bushels that have been produced during these turns are sold on the public market. However, due to the delays of the marketing system, a farmer will not receive cash immediately after selling excess bushels of food. Instead, the money will arrive and can be utilized during the next set of turns, provided the market delay time has passed and the goods have actually sold. This means that a farmer must make enough money in bushel sales to last an entire set of turns with some to spare for military and technology.
The Democratic farmer will have an advantage due to the fact there are no market commissions. This allows the democratic farmer to both make a larger profit selling his own bushels AND buy up and resell cheaper bushels for a profit. Using both will usually vault a Democratic Farmer higher than that of a Dictator Farmer.
The Dictator farmer gains in that its military has an increased strength. This allows the farmer to gain land easily, and protect it well. On the same cue, a Tyranny farmer can be visualized as a Tyranny profits from increased attack gains. However Tyrannies must be careful to protect their land afterwards.
A farmer can undergo a teching phase for increased efficiency at around 2-3k acres before finally switching to farmer.
Starting Out
It is advisable to start off as an Industrialist as a beginning farmer is unable to gain money and a strong military fast enough. Once an acreage of around 3,000 acres is obtained, a switch to a farmer is best; any more and the switch becomes costly, any less and there would be no point if switching. Maintain the democratic/dictator government from the beginning so you do not have to deal with switching costs.
Stockpiling
You may find that a farmer will have nothing much to do with most of his turns. This allows farmers to make many attacks throughout his attacking phase. Hence you should begin your stockpile with a large acreage. If you are a dictator, you will mainly cash your turns away. However, as a democratic farmer, you can spend many turns selling on the market and market camping, buying up cheap bushels and reselling of a higher price. However you can only do so much selling and eventually you will find that most of your turns will be spent cashing.
Another way of "stockpiling" is more aggressive, and can get you into more trouble. You can find a target with a very low SPAL, and attempt to steal tech every turn. If you are able to find a suitable target (ideally a stockpiling techer with no spies) then you can spend all your turns stealing tech, which can be very profitable. However retaliation is very real, and caution should be used when doing something like this.
Ensure that at periodic times, you place all your bushels on the market for an inflated price to prevent a huge bushel decay and other countries from raping away your stockpile. Continue to make bushels and place them on the market at inflated prices until you are ready to destock.
Destocking
Begin by selling all your bushels on the market at a buyable price. Continue until you hit the 2 billion dollar mark before buying up goods and repeating the cycle. Once the prices of bushels drop below the private market prices, begin selling on the private. Be sure not to go over 2 billion dollars or you will not gain any more cash.
Overall Strategy Efficiency
Generally, farmers will not do as well as techers or cashers. However they can try to offset this by having a huge amount of land. For the most part, unless bushel prices were extraordinarily high in the set, farmers will not see the top ten.
