Ok, I'm a bit dissapointed about the irrigation system in the game. The major problem is that there is just not enough water. There are two possible ways to get irrigation water.

1. spring in the plot. between 0-1000 m3 per SA day.

2. Rivers/Streams. between 2-75 m3 per SA day.

The difference between these options are that the river/stream needs an artificial pond, and then it is possible to irrigate any field in that ponds zone.

To me it seems strange that a spring gives more water than a river. Usually farmers take water from rivers or lakes, springs (to my knowledge) are not used for big irrigation operations.

So one have to ask, why is a spring supplying up to 1000 m3 per day when the largest river only give 75 m3?

Let's say that I want to irrigate a 50 ha field with a normal irrigation dose around 30 mm "rain".

1 mm water on one ha is 10 m3, so 30 mm on 50 ha would be 15 000 m3. If I have the largest river going by that would mean that I would have to save water for 200 SA days, that is almost 2.5 years. This is really wrong if you ask me.

I think a river should supply at least 20 times more water than now, maybe 100 times. This is so that players actually can irrigate their fields.

Therefore I would like to start to build an opinion against the current system so that the developers perhaps can change the nubers for us!

So if you feel that we need more water, please make your voice heard!

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I fully agree with Solanum. The irrigation capabilities in this game are ridiculous.

You are very right, but i think at the moment its best to just ignore it and carry on as normal and one day it will be looked at and fixed in future updates

yes the irrigation in this game is a joke. It has very little effect on crop growth and quality. Also in my area it seems to rain very often but I can never get the Pluviometry gage to come up.

ive had two attempts once brought 1 drum second time 6 and both times proved a waste of time and money

If they re-named a spring as a borehole, would be more credible.

Agreed the river volumes are too small.

As an addittion, would love to able to put liquid manure down the system as our neighbour does in real life !

Just made some calculations on irrigation drum capacity and compared it to the game.

Everyone seems to agree that irrigation is insuffcient in the game. And what my calculations show is that they are neither realistic if we compare with real life.

Let's see. In real life, if we use 'drums' (as in the game) one ususlly say that one drum is good for irrigating 6 ha with 30mm rain per day. In water ammount this is equal to 1800 m3 per day, (to give one mm water on one ha it takes 10 m3, so 30 mm on 6ha is equal to 1800 m3).

In tha game the biggest drum can provide 600 m3 each SA day. And as we know one SA day is approx. 4 real days since there is only one week every month in the game.

The efficiency from the biggest drum in the game is therefore only 600/4 = 150 m3 per day. the drum in the game is therefore 12 times as inefficient as it should.

All I want is that this is corrected. I can't see any reason for it to be so very inefficent, especially on the US server where fields are much bigger than on the European servers.

But the major problem is still that even though one might be able to coup with really inefficient drums, there is just not enough water, there is no way to get the water one need to irrigate.

That River 3 only gives 75 m3 per day (maximum) is really strange.

So developes, the new season is now undeway, please look into this and make the nessecary adjustments.

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Still wondering about why there can't be more water available for irrigation. Can please someone from the SA team explain why this is not looked into?

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i think that we should be able to build Irrigation pivots in our plots, as they are much more efficient than irrigation drums

For our types of plots lateral move would probably make more sense than center pivot but the delivery technology is a moot point unless the water supply is adequate and the crop growing program responds with a substantial effects from irrigation. If those thing are improved then we could concern ourselves with equipment issues.

Very good point Dimond Ranch.

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Done, the flow rate of the rivers and streams has been increased 10 times.

thanks, now you can work in the amount of water that a irrigation drum deliveries, and the amount of water that we get when its rainnign(i thinks that when its rainning the plot should get more water).
but this is a good start

Very Nice!

Let's see if that is enough. But still. Nice to actually see some results from opinion building! :)

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Sorry if we are a bit slow at the moment, but don't worry, we do take into account some of the ideas, suggestions and comments from you people.

Excellent and thanks Domaine. Its good to know upper management do look at the forums and take into consideration our cries for help and suggestions :)

I think there is something still off with irrigation part of it might be our perception of what we use irrigation on since there is no information on when to use it what size plot to use it on, ect..

I think part of the problem is all the conversions back and forth from meters, liters and millimeters. For example here is one of my plots
Type 7 spring 700m3 per day, type 2 river 300m3, optima 2075 600m3(.74mm) and the plot gage goes up to 1200mm so it needs 600mm

There is 2 different sets of numbers there and when you build a pond it lists the water in liters per day so then you have 3 different units of measure.

Now looking at the spring it is per day, but a river does not say per day so what is supposed to be? I know where I have built a pond it is per day, but there is no information any where on what it should be.

Here is another plot, level 1 spring 100m3/day, level 1 river 60m3. currently I have a 20,000m3 pond it pumps only 60m3 per day(it lists 60,000 liters) which just happens to match the river at 60m3 even though it does not say per day. So again the rivers/streams still provide less than a spring. Or do you get more with more drums on the pond? Do you get more with a larger pond? There is no way to know but to waste a lot of money because again there is no information in the game rules.

If you look back on the main forum you see I have a post when the ponds were first put in place how the numbers were off by at least 100 it is from Feb 2010.

They are still off the same way.
Spring goes from 100 – 1000/day
Streams and rivers are less than that they don’t say per day but that is what they end up and there is no information on what to do with the numbers. It seems like it should go from smallest to largest Spring.stream, river. So if a spring ends at 1000 shouldn’t a stream start at 1000? And go to 10,0000 and then river start at 10,000? Or maybe there could be some information and what size pond does what and how they are supposed to work.

And then to use the numbers from Solanum. Where 1mm = 10m3/hec using my potatoes for example I have around 1300hc of potatoes they need 600mm of water. 6,000m3/hc
Total water needed 7,800,000 over the growth time, they have around 30days min to grow so that is 260,000m3 per day and then the largest drum is 600m3 so I would need 433 irrigation drums for just my potatoes an average of 33 drums per plot. There is no way to ever get that much water with the current system, unless there is some hidden way when you spend 10,000,000 on a pond. But this goes to our perception maybe we are not supposed to irrigate potatoes or 100+hc plots. It is just that we see the option to do it so we think we should be able to. This goes back to no information on the subject.

So could the admin list how irrigation is supposed to work, the explanation does not even need to be in English Google will translate good enough to know what is being said.

First of I agree with Blueberry that better instructions and 'how to"s would be nice to have for many things, including irrigation :)

Now i have evaluated the performance of the updated irrigation system. These are my primary concernes:

1. Water Supply
This has been improved by the update. More water is now available, however, it will not be enough. But this is not the primary concern atm.

Now we need to turn to the equipment, and see if this is working properly/realistic.

2. Equipment

I think SA has made a mistake when they implemented the irrigation drums.

This is how it works:
The largest drum available (2075) provides some 600 m3 per SA day. This is incorrect.

According to Irrifrance's product specifications

http://www.irrifrance.com/anglais/produits/enrouleurs/index.html?contenu=sommaire.html

The maximum hourly output is 90 m3 per hour.
That is, 90 * 24 = 2160 m3 per day (real day)
And, since we know that one SA day is approx 4 real days daily output for the 2075 drum should be 4 * 2160 = 8640 m3 per SA day.

Product specifications says that the 2060 drum irrigates 5.5 ha with 65mm water in 40 hours. This is consistent with the caluculations above.

So, if product specifications of the drums available would be fixed, then it would make sence to irrigate.


This season I put a 2075 drum on a 1000m3 spring on an 9 ha plot with sugarbeets. It has ben standing there constantly and it only supplies 6.67 mm every SA day. In real life, running a drum 24/7 on a 9ha plot would turn that plot into a lake.

So knowing this, maybe it is time to make additional adjustments!

(Obviously there is not gonna be enough water if drum capacity is adjusted to proper values)


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It seems like the problem is being worked on from the wrong direction. If the drums are to small as Solanum suggests then that should be adjusted first, then the water rates. Instead of just raising water rates.

I also wonder if the large plots were added after the irrigation drums. (over 400 drums needed for my potatoes) maybe irrigation needs a rework. There should be 2 systems the drums like we have now and then something else built on the plot call it what ever you want just “irrigation” is good enough for me.

Take the drums and optimize them for 20hc and under plots, you start out with a 20hc plot so it would make sense to use that size. Optimize them as in fix the output of the drum if needed, then adjust the springs to work with the new drum settings. They would still work on larger plots but you would not get the best use of them. And have them only work with springs to separate them from the two systems. Then springs should be fixed to allow for more than one drilling, maybe allow 10 drillings double the price each time and make the max spring go down by one each time and at drilling number 10 you hit a level 1 spring. Drilling 1 max spring 10, drilling 2 max 9, drilling 3 max 8, ect…..

Any plot over 20hc would need to have “irrigation” built on the plot for a fixed price maybe 1000/hc to start(it should cost a good amount of money) to get the proper amount of water. it could be made as simple or as complicated as you want. Simple would be like the pipe option click it and it is built. Complicated could have changeable heads and pumps, bigger heads need bigger pumps but more water faster. and then they would need to be replaced after a while.

Then adjust the rivers/streams to work with the built in “irrigation” for the larger plots.
----edited in -----
Here is some information on river flows that might help too.
You can google usgs river flows to get some data on rivers in the us, here is a river and a creek(stream) in CA, the gage height is the depth of the water and the flow is listed per second.

Usgs 11376000, cottonwood creek
Gage height 2.55 feet
Rate 250 ft3/sec ( aprox 7m3/ per second)

Usgs 11290000, Tuolumne river

Gage height, 39 feet
Rate 650 ft3/sec (approx 18m3 /per second)

Here is something on a very large river
“The Mississippi river discharges at an annual average rate of between 200 and 700 thousand cubic feet per second (7,000–20,000 m3/s)”

As well as this as it all sounds great the amount of water you use you get charged for as well as you do in real life.

“As well as this as it all sounds great the amount of water you use you get charged for as well as you do in real life.”

That would be the easiest fix, let us build ponds any where(and if not ponds then water tanks out on the plots) and fill them with 1 click like we do water tanks now, I have 3,500,000 liters water for my livestock I fill by click of button, that is 3,500m3 of water. my 20,000m3 pond out in the field only fills at a rate of 60,000 liters per day. So I if I could just buy the 8,000,000 liters my potatoes would need that would be fine with me, and then increase the drums to solanums 8,000 number and it would be all fixed.

---edited in --------

If you want options, you could have 4 options to buy water to fill your pond.

Option 1 same zone as farm build pipe and then fill from farm nothing else needed.

Option 2 stream, river in same area click and fill price covers pumps and stuff

Option 3 spring on plot click and fill price same as pond cost of pumps

Option 4 no stream , no river ,no spring , or not same zone. Fill by truck orders show up just like VBF orders do now. It would take 210 trips to fill the 8,000,000 for my potato example. Have it work like the sawmill trips do now with 1 click and 20 trips.

This would take care of all the issues with flow rates, and still give benefits for having springs ,rivers , and streams on a plot

Excellent idea Blueberry. Having ponds/water tanks on all plots is the only way to solve the games issues/problems. We need to solve the irrigation problem as at the moment it is broken beyond repair in its current state

I saw on the french forum that someone tried to bring up this topic too. The game needs to be fixed in two ways. Irrigation as such is not correct. Irrifrance homepage is very sparse when it comes to explaining their equipment in english but I can still see that the capacity on the real equipment is way off from the game, and since the website is french one figures that the developers should have an easier time understanding how the stuff works (since it mostly is in french)..

The largest reel has an output of 88.2 m3/hour. How can the equivalent machine in the game only supply 600m3 in one SA day (four real days)? My garden sprinkler can almost beat that.

Lets just multiply everything that has to do with irrigation by a factor of 10. Springs, Rivers (although they should maybe be 100 fold), and equipment. If this is done the game will almost achieve real life efficiency. :)

Then I think it would be a nice feature if it could be added some center pivot systems and these 'spray lines'. Center-pivot systems are locked to one particular field and spray lines could be locked to a specific zone. Then if the farmer needs to move it to another zone it will take huge amounts of APs.



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Oh, forgot about the second thing.. That relates to what is going on in the "General Forum".

Crops needs to be adjusted too!!

So realizing that this topic is about irrigation I just want to state that the water need for most crops should be lowered. And rain during the winter (for winter crops) should not be added to pluviometry bar. (the crop should not grow during winter time either.)

And there should be varieties with different resistant to drought. Thanks!

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Ive planted Colza on a 18 hectare plot, and at the moment it has grown 75 % and is on "Optimum" so i guess im having a good year :P