So my wife started playing a game called FarmVille on Facebook. It’s a very simple game that revolves around you running a farm. The point of it is to harvest crops/resources, which you sell for money to expand the farm. It’s a very silly, but amusing game that involved some strategic thinking and some creativity. If you ever played SimFarm, it’s the same basic idea but not as advanced.

I’m a huge fan of strategy/simulation games so I gave it a shot. Here’s a picture of my farm as I’m typing up this posting:

There’s 3 sources of resources in the game: Crops, Trees, and Animals. I haven’t worked out the stats for Trees/Animals yet because it takes more work. However when you first get started you have to do crops because a) they’re way cheaper, b) they harvest way faster, and c) they make your plot of land look pretty.

So being the analytical type guy I am, I pulled the stats on the different crops you can harvest:

Breaking the above numbers down so you know what they mean:

Base Cost – that’s how much it costs you to buy the seeds for 1 square of land of that crop.
Time – this is how many hours it takes for the crop to be harvestable.
XP – this is how many experience points you get for planting that seed. XP is used to advance in levels like most RPG’s.
Sell For – this is your gross revenue when the crop harvests.
Revenue – this is the difference between the Base Cost and the Sell For price.
Plowing – before you can plant a seed you need to plow the square, which costs 15 regardless of the crop.
Profit – this is the difference between Revenue and Plowing (you’re total net profit from a single square).

I Should Farm Artichokes!

At first glance it may appear that Artichokes are the most profitable, as you can see you’ll make a net profit of 119 per square. But that is a wrong assumption as you aren’t accounting for what economists calls the Time Value of Money (a big fancy phrase that you’ll have drilled into your brain if you ever take any business classes…as I’m doing my MBA right now you can imagine that I’m sick and tired of that phrase).

Time Value of Money simply means this – $1 today is worth more than $1 tomorrow. Why? Because you can re-invest that money and make a small profit. If you’re not into economics/business, don’t worry, I’ve broken down the numbers below.

Alrighty, so above are the total profits/XP you’ll gain over various periods of time if you farm the mentioned crops. Aren’t I such a geek?

Still think Artichokes are still the good investment? As a matter of fact, they are one of the worst crops you could possibly farm, bringing in the lowest amount of XP (not including Raspberries) and the 3rd worst money generator.

If you want to make money and don’t care about XP, then you want to farm Raspberries until your eyes bleed. As you can see from the above chart, Raspberries make almost twice the amount of money that the other crops do. However there are some drawbacks: they don’t generate any XP, they require you to be level 8 to grow, and they harvest every 2 hours. The biggest problem is that last one – unless you are able to check your computer every 2 hours to harvest/replant them, they are useless to you and you will lose money in the long run.

Strawberries are the next logical choice. Offering a nice haul of money and the highest XP gain. I like strawberries and I made it to level 7 with nothing but Strawberries. However they harvest every 4 hours, which means you have to login the game every 4 hours to get the full benefit of them, which may not work for most of you.

You’ll see I’ve highlighted 2 other crops that are the best all-rounders: Pumpkins and Rice. These two crops give you a very nice amount of money, and a good volume of XP. They provide you with the best overall results because a) you only have to login once or twice a day to keep them going, b) with the 8-12 hour harvest time it’s not vital you login as soon as they harvest like with Raspberries/Strawberries.

Therefor the best crops to harvest are Pumpkins and Rice. I personally recommend Pumpkins because the XP is way higher for only slightly less money earned.

But I Want to Farm Soybeans!

There’s nothing wrong with farming the other crops, they just won’t give you as big of a benefit as the ones I’ve mentioned will. It’s more important that you have fun with this game, but this information is mostly meant at the twinking munchkin players like me that like to push games to the limits and get the best possible results with the least amount of work (aka I’m a lazy ass).

Happy gaming!