Farming in iron age Finland

[koteko]

I personally find it disheartening that most villages in the game have an unending supply of crops, so much that to actually BE a farmer is essentially useless unless you live in the north or in the no man's land in the far east.

Was iron age Finland like that? I've read that there were definitely times of famine, where people made bread out of tree bark. But I don't know how the average year might have looked like.

Did they actually have plenty of agricultural surplus to barter away? I somehow imagine it being more of a family subsistence thing.

PS: incidentally, it would be cool if some catastrophe happened in URW too: crops going badly (even a whole harvest worth, occasionally - that would be something to fear), bad hunting causing people to consume all the harvest (and not sell it to you!), etc. But this belongs more to suggestions I guess.

[Jakub-urw]

I agree. Seeing my character suffer and those 1%-ers sitting on their wooden thrones in their wooden huts is disheartening xD. I wish each villager would go hunting for their village once in a while and return with food or begin farming during spring/summer. If the village doesn’t get enough food in a month people begin starving. Villages in real life attract diseases and plagues, so I wish this was a part of the game.obviously this would be hard to implement and definetely not on the development list. At least I can hope 

Edit
Do villages actually farm? I’m new to the game so I don’t know. I thought they just spawned food once in a while. Hm I don’t know. If so, ignore the first part of my commend

[koteko]

Do villages actually farm? I’m new to the game so I don’t know. I thought they just spawned food once in a while. Hm I don’t know. If so, ignore the first part of my commend

A few months ago I built a cabin a bit too close to a village (eg, 3-4 world tiles) and bags of barley etc started appearing on my floor. No human tracks around, so the villagers hadn't actually entered my cabin.

The explanation Sami gave was that villagers don't actually go collect that kind of thing manually, but harvest produce is calculated and placed as if the villagers actually went and did the job.

I do seem them sometimes in the fields surrounding villages though, so maybe the cut of the crops is simulated (if you are nearby only, maybe?) but then the various bags of grains are placed randomly.

I agree with your suggestions, it would be great. For starters though, I'm going to modify some of the FREQUENCY and COMMONNESS values into the "flora_cultivated.txt" files and see if the villages get less prosperous accordingly. I'm going to cause a famine, then farm and be the King of the Granary

[Jakub-urw]

For starters though, I'm going to modify some of the FREQUENCY and COMMONNESS values into the "flora_cultivated.txt" files and see if the villages get less prosperous accordingly. I'm going to cause a famine, then farm and be the King of the Granary

You are too preoccupied with whether you can do it, you never stoped to think whether you should xD
That actually sounds fun. Edit all the files so all villagers die of starvation within a few months then raid the villages or something 
Or create a completely empty world where you’re the only person alive and do a full self-sufficiency game  hermit style
Or empty the world of villages apart from one, wait for the update with children and repopulate the world (Adam and eve style).

[koteko]

Or create a completely empty world where you’re the only person alive and do a full self-sufficiency game  hermit style

This sounds awesome

[koteko]

Spoke too soon.. the "commonness" and "frequency" are not set at all for the cultivated plants. I can only maybe tweak the number of plants per square (eg, you can as many as 25 barley and rye plants in one spot).