Saxlingham

Another computing game post. Unlike the recent reviews of Strange Horticulture, Police Simulator: Patrol Officers and Manor Lords, this is not an introduction to a game. My regular readers will know of my Farming Simulator involvement and we had a series running last year on a farm in France. Sadly, some personal things got in the way and I have been through a period of mental renewal. The visits to games outside of my standard fare was a part of that and I intend to visit some other games that catch my eye in future, especially those that may offer enjoyment to those of my readers who would like some gaming without the in depth commitment of time and computing power that the likes of Farming simulator and Truck Simulator require.

For those new to the genre Farming Simulator 25 is a game that requires a lot of your time – There are no short cuts to getting the job done. And there’s not a lot of entertainment in the traditional gaming sense – No bandits trying to steal your tractors, no rustlers taking the sheep and definitely no Zombie hordes crawling out of the haystacks!

This is a game that requires planning and patience. It rewards with some beautiful views and a real sense of achievement as you harvest the crops that you sowed last autumn and gradually expand your farm. There are so many ways to progress that you can be left scratching your head. You will have to spend a lot of time thinking – Though fortunately you can do that while you’re cultivating a field! And your plans?… They may change from one bad harvest so you need to be thinking all the time.

Saxlingham is a mod map based on a real world location beside the A140 Ipswich to Norwich main road. For those who don’t live in the UK, a main road probably conjures up a 4 or 6 lane dual-carriageway. In Norfolk, such roads are rare and the A140 is a single-carriageway road inhabited by boy-racers, company reps and truckers!

When choosing to play the map you can opt for either no start farm or using the intended start farm which is situated in the village of Swainsthorpe…

..If you choose the start farm you’ll have some of the equipment you need including the New Holland T7 tractor above, a Claas Arion 570 and a very nice Claas Lexion 6900 Harvester! There’s a trailer, plough, baler, spreader, sprayer, seeder and cultivator. With the Farmyard and house, you get 4 fields…

…At the top there’s numbers 7 and 19 – pretty normal size beginner fields. Then you notice fields 2 and 3 – also yours and much larger than normal for start farms. They all have a barley crop that needs to be harvested – so the month of August is all hands to the pumps…

…Thank god and/or the developers for the reliable tracking by the workers in this iteration of the game – Here I am in the Claas Arion with the Krampe trailer driving alongside the Lexion which is being driven by a worker and unloading its harvested barley as we go! This is field 3 and you can see field 2 beyond still awaiting harvesting! Without the much improved worker behaviours, I wouldn’t have got all the fields harvested before the end of August and might have lost some of the crop.

The supplied vehicles and equipment doesn’t include some essentials – No bale collection trailer for example (I bought the one you see in the first screenshot). And, the tractors are both ageing and cost a lot to run so it quickly became apparent that I’d need to replace them. Limited funds meant choosing which and I decided to sell the New Holland T7, replacing it with a more powerful Valtra S series with a 370HP engine – This is better suited to handling the plough as it will have over 100HP in spare. Here it is ploughing field 19…

…Once more with a worker in charge, allowing me to deal with other things. The Claas Arion will soldier on for now. The means of collecting supplies from the dealer is also an issue. I was fortunate to get a second-hand bale trailer for this but needed something capable of handling supplies and bales. So, a first for me, I’ve bought a Telehandler – The Merlo 44.9…

…caught in the act of loading some fertilizer bags. I think this was a good choice as it has 170HP which means it can handle loaded trailers in much the same way as the Arion, freeing up that tractor for other work.

There are some beautiful vistas and lighting on this map…

…An early morning shot of the Bednar seeder (another replacement of existing equipment) as it waits in field 19 for its seed and fertilizer tanks to be filled by the Merlo.

There are some places on the map where the mist never seems to clear even in the middle of the day…

…All very ‘Sleepy Hollow’ – This is a weedkilling mission for a neighbour.

Then there’s the Ford…

…I’m wondering what that’ll be like in the depths of Winter!

I’ve decided to let fields 2 and 7 lie fallow this year as the cost of seeding and fertilizing them would really strain the finances – The Valtra and Merlo, for example, have been bought on Hire Purchase so I need to ensure that around £10k is there in the bank at the end of every month. I will still need to apply a second dose of fertilizer in fields 3 and 19 once the Canola crop I’ve sown shows through. This is all so much more intense than the Medieval farming I was practising in Manor Lords just a few days ago 😅 Fortunately, the other farmers need my help to keep their heads above water too!…

…Even if it’s to cultivate in a withered crop with hired equipment so the field is ready for next year!