Pay for the seed before you know anything.
Four decisions — crop, field, date and seed rate — taken in three to five minutes, in October, on the basis of a forecast that will be wrong. Everything else in the season is downstream of them.
Plan a drilling.
The base is a hectare of winter wheat on Curdle Hill, drilled in the second week of October at 350 seeds per square metre. Everything else moves the cost in Coins, and the total at the bottom is what leaves the account the moment the drill moves.
The mechanic, precisely.
The decisions
- Crop
- Four at level one, six by level nineTwo of the six exist mainly to demonstrate that they are a bad idea here.
- Field
- Six at level one, eighteen at level twelveEach with a soil type, a slope, a drainage state and a cropping history.
- Drill date
- A window of about six weeksThe only decision with a genuinely two-sided trade-off, which is why it is the interesting one.
- Seed rate
- 280 to 420 seeds per square metreModelled against establishment loss, which is itself modelled against date and seedbed.
The numbers
- Yield penalty per day of delay
- ≈0.4%After about 10 October. Before it there is no penalty and no benefit.
- Blackgrass reduction per day of delay
- ≈8 plants per square metreWhich is worth about £155 a hectare on badly infested ground.
- Establishment loss, early drilling
- 4–9%Slugs, mostly, and it is worse in a wet October.
- Establishment loss, late drilling
- 11–24%Cold seedbeds and a shorter window to get anything done at all.
- Cost per hectare
- 180–640 CoinsSeed, dressing and the drill. Fuel is charged at harvest rather than here.
What it does not do
- Sell a better seed for money
- NeverThere is no premium seed, no paid variety and no purchasable germination rate.
- Punish a missed window
- NoThe drilling window closes and the field goes to a spring crop. The field is not lost.
- Hide the trade-off
- NoThe yield and blackgrass consequences are shown on the date slider before commitment.
Every figure is a design target drawn from published agronomy, not a measurement of a build that does not exist.
The drill-date argument, which is the whole reason this stage exists.
Every agronomy textbook says drill winter wheat in the last week of September. Every farm with a blackgrass problem drills a fortnight later than that on purpose, accepts about four per cent off the ceiling, and considers it the cheapest herbicide available.
That is a genuine, contested, consequential decision made by real farmers every autumn, and it is completely absent from every farming game on the market, all of which treat sowing as a button. Putting it in costs one slider and one tooltip, and it converts the first stage of the loop from a chore into the decision the season turns on.
It is also the honest introduction to the whole design: two right answers, a cost attached to each, and no way to find out which was correct until August.
What each crop actually does in the game.
| Crop | Yield ceiling | Input cost | Failure exposure | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter wheat | 9.4 t/ha | Highest | Spring drought, septoria | Flour, and the benchmark everything is measured against |
| Winter barley | 8.1 t/ha | High | Lodging in a wet June | Malting spec, which pays more and is harder to hit |
| Spring barley | 6.6 t/ha | Moderate | A dry May | The brewery, and the answer to blackgrass |
| Spring oats | 5.8 t/ha | Lowest | Very little. That is the point | Forgiveness, and a break in the rotation |
| Oilseed rape | 4.2 t/ha | High | Cabbage stem flea beetle. Can be a total loss | Oil, scheme value, and the yellow field everybody photographs |
| Durum wheat | 6.0 t/ha, in theory | Highest | Everything. It made under two tonnes here in 2025 | Demonstrating that the marginal crop is marginal |
What happens after you commit.
The Coins leave immediately
Before establishment, before anything is known, and there is no refund. This is the part that teaches cashflow.
The drill moves
Two to four in-game days, or none at all if you have paid Kaleb, who will do the second and third fields but not the first.
Emergence is counted
Twelve to twenty in-game days later. Plants per square metre, and a photograph from the same fence post every season.
The number is judged for you
Good, thin, or a problem — with the reason, and with what can still be done about it.
The season starts properly
And the first Tending window opens about a fortnight after that.
Planting, questioned.
No. There is no premium seed, no paid variety and no purchasable germination rate anywhere in the design. Money buys time through Kaleb and it buys cosmetics, and that is the entire list.
The window closes and the field goes to a spring crop instead, which yields less and costs less. You do not lose the field, and nothing dies.
Because blackgrass is the most expensive weed in British arable and later drilling is one of the few genuinely effective controls left. About four per cent of yield against roughly fourteen per cent of the gross margin is an argument worth having.
Then it needs tending.
Six input windows, the dearest spray of the year, and permission to miss any of them.
