Houses and workers on the farm
Houses are the only thing you can build to get more of the workers your production and processing buildings need. Besides the simple version paid for in Dollars there is also the fancy house for Gold, which gives you more workers and knocks contentment down less. And since worker contentment directly affects your production costs, houses are not only about headcount - they shape how the whole farm runs.
Houses are the absolute foundation of farm progress - without them no production building will ever get going. If you have Gold to spare, the fancy version pays off in the long run, because it gives you more workers with a smaller hit to contentment.
You get workers by building houses
Nothing gets produced on your farm without workers. A chicken coop, a windmill or any other production or processing building needs workers assigned to it before it runs - once the building is up, you click it and assign workers to it, as long as you have enough free ones on the farm. The farmhouse holds a few worker slots too, but the bulk of your workforce comes from houses.
Workers are tied to the particular farm their house stands on, so you cannot move them anywhere else. Before you build or upgrade a production building, always work out how many free workers you have available - if there are not enough, the building will go up, but you will not be able to put it into operation.
The simple house and the fancy house differ in capacity and price
You build a house on the Main farm, the Gourmet farm or the Flower farm, always on a 5x5 plot of tiles. There are two versions to choose from - the simple house, which is paid for in Dollars, and the fancy house for Gold. Both versions can be upgraded all the way to level 10, and taking a house to that top level requires being at game level 144.
| Stat | Simple house | Fancy house |
|---|---|---|
| Cost at level 1 | 450 Dollars | 250 Gold |
| Build time at level 1 | 15 minutes | 20 minutes |
| Workers at level 1 | 10 | 12 |
| Contentment penalty at level 1 | -35 | -25 |
| Cost at level 10 | 42 000 000 Dollars | 57 000 Gold |
| Build time at level 10 | 3 days 8 hours | 2 days 14 hours |
| Workers at level 10 | 55 | 68 |
| Contentment penalty at level 10 | -270 | -225 |
The numbers show that the fancy house gives more workers at every level while denting contentment less than the simple house - you pay for it in Gold instead of Dollars, though, so it is the classic choice between the regular and the premium currency.
Worker contentment affects your production costs
Every house you build or upgrade adds workers, but it also lowers contentment on the farm - and the higher the level of the house, the more noticeable that drop is, as the contentment penalties in the table above show. And contentment is not just a number to feel good about when you look at your farm: the more content your workers are, the lower your production costs. So it pays to plan building and upgrading houses step by step and keep an eye on contentment, instead of letting it slide out of control.
Upgrading and demolishing houses comes with its own rules
You can upgrade a house to a higher level at any time - more workers come with it, but so does more discontentment, so plan the upgrade ahead, ideally together with a step that brings contentment back up.
Demolishing a house is possible too, but not just any time you like - the condition is having at least as many unassigned workers available on the farm as the house holds. Those workers disappear when it comes down, but the farm gets back part of the contentment the house was costing it. Demolishing typically comes in handy when the farm has a surplus of workers and you are short of space for something else.
