Agricultural Improvements

Yes, in game 3 he makes so much wheat that he regularly burns the excess.

Crazy.

Introducing the Norfolk agricultural system this game turn using 8,000 farmers trained at academies. Even more grain!

Well, I have already done that in game 3, and we'll see what effect that has. Though I'm going to confuse the issue by introducing milled coins next month I think.

Odd how in G3 Spain is having to burn grain to keep the price stable.

In G7 the Spanish do not seem to have got to that stage yet but to judge from the annoyed Indians they seem to be well on the way.

Which leaves the question........why is G2 Spain suffering a famine?

In G2 Spain is in a financial mess, Honour is also not at its highest, I wonder if that factors in on Grain surplus, or is a random factor .

Over the years playing Prussia which is supposed to be a country the generates a surplus , have still suffered a number of famines. Despite irrigation, forest clearance, Hardend crops, improved farm implements.

I always try and store/buy enough grain to have at least one years supply in stock in case of famine.

I think the vagaries of the dice can really screw you sometimes on famines. In Game 8, poor Rumelia has had famine 2 years in a row.

There always seems to be at least one nation scrabling around in G2 with a begging bowl in the hand.

Maybe the years of continual war have wrecked the in game agricultural base.

Some times the Famine/ surplus reports turn things on there heads with UDP & England enjoying bumper harvests whilst Poland & Russia have failures.

With regard to farming improvements I remember reading somewhere a suggestion that before implementing the improvements like enclosures and the Norfolk
system it would be a good idea to trial these in a farming estate and thus getting the farmers used to the idea before introducing them country wide.
I would be interested if anyone has done this and their idea on if it helped with the country wide implementation and lessen the bad effects.

Cheers.

One Grain.

Havent used the norfolk system as yet, other suggestions would be researching into ways of improving grain quality. Another one would be not to let grain just sit around as it goes bad, I remember in one game I had just joined and had to burn a load of useless grain.

If you don't want to go for encloseures, try getting the farmers to for cooperative societies, to share manpower, tools, Horses etc, You can invest in Farm tools for them as well.

If you wan tto do trials then try on the royal estates it will keep down the levels of annoyance among the Nobles as you are not medeling in there lands, plus the poor farmers are also not initially effected, if it succeds then you have a model you can roll out over the rest of the country if it fails it is hopefully a small enouhg area not to have too great an impact on the overall ecomony.

what you just suggested duke Flower is what I read, to use an estate TY.
as for grain going rotten when I took over there was no spare grain and nowhere to store any if I did have some.
That's why I prefer Cake.

One Grain.

Ref the introduction of enclosures - if you have large colonies with land going spare in them what you can do is buy out small farmers allowing for the creation of larger farms at home. Then send the now landless small farmers to the colonies to establish new larger farms in the colonies.

This theory is probably not much use to Rumelia which has no colonies. But perhaps you could try forest clearance as an alternative to using the colonies to provide new farms.

Historically this is what happened on Britain & Ireland. As Crofters & Smallholders we pushed off their land by enclosing landlords so revolution and social unrest was partly avoided by small farmers heading off to a new life rather than running up the bloody flag.

I think you can also get away with "enclosure" that much easier after a famine.....a) A lot of small marginal farmers have died so their land is free b) After seeing family members die of hunger small farmers are more willing to sale up their family half acre and try somewhere new.

Any updates on the Enclosures and how it's playing out longer term?

I still remain very interested in this, since it seems strange that it cratered EH so badly.

My economic health is now improving but its been so long since I introduced enclosures that it is hard for me to judge whether its the positive impact of enclosures finally kicking in or everything else I have tried to save my economy.

All I know and remember is the pain of introducing them!! Crashing to to an EH of 1, which in turned ruined my revenues virtually destroyed me.

One thing I did do about a year ago (in game) is introduce a series of model industrial villages, to help with the displacement of agriculture workers. Again do not know if that helped the increased EH but its something to consider if you introduce enclosures.