Crop cultivation

Each planted cell or field holds a crop type, a growth progress value, and condition flags such as watered, fertilized, or diseased. Each tick or day, progress advances at a base rate multiplied by modifiers for soil fertility, water, light, temperature, and season; outside allowed conditions growth stops or the plant dies. At maturity the crop is harvested for a yield, sometimes scaled by care or skill, and the cell resets, regrows, or loses fertility. Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley require daily watering and tie crops to seasons of a fixed calendar; RimWorld scales growth by soil fertility and light and halts it outside a temperature band; Farming Simulator turns field preparation, sowing, fertilizing, and harvesting into vehicle operations; Manor Lords and Farthest Frontier track soil fertility per field and reward crop rotation. Inputs: seeds, labor or player actions, environmental conditions. Outputs: harvested goods and an updated field state.

Planning around a delayed payoff. The player commits land and time now for a harvest days or a season later, then guards the field against weather, pests, and neglect. In avatar farming games the daily watering round becomes a ritual; in colony sims the growing season becomes a deadline that sets how much must be stored for winter.

• growth duration per crop and number of visible stages
• which conditions gate growth (water, light, temperature, season, fertility) and whether violating them pauses or kills the crop
• single-harvest versus regrowing crops
• yield and quality modifiers from fertilizer, skill, or care
• soil fertility depletion and recovery rules, including rotation or fallow
• labor or action cost of planting, tending, and harvesting

• Daily manual tending scales poorly, so large farms become rote clicking until automation such as sprinklers arrives.
• One crop with the best value per day dominates and planting choice disappears.
• Season-change crop deaths feel arbitrary when the calendar is not prominent.
• Growth too fast relative to consumption makes food trivial; growth too slow with harsh winters makes early runs unwinnable.

• Harvests arrive in pulses, creating labor peaks that compete with construction and hauling.
• Seasonal growth windows couple farming to storage and spoilage, turning winter into a stockpiling test.
• Soil depletion pushes expansion onto new land or forces rotation schedules.
• Weather events and blights can wipe out a season and cascade into famine.

• Can learned plant growth models give crops plausible responses to microclimate that players can still reason about?
• How much automation can farming absorb before cultivation stops being a decision?