2024-10-27T10:57:36Z Updated.
Please read FS17 Guide first as we do not repeat the same stuff here unless it has been changed.
Realistic American Farming Guide lists some bare essential mods to use when trying to farm like a real american farmers do.
Gameplay Tips User Interface
You can resize the user interface UI from the main menu options (not while game, ie savegame is running), like if you want to make it obnoxiously large or very tiny you can do that now. Nothing better than the new transparent UI style which is reduced in size, you hardly need hide HUD mod after this heh. If you make the UI smallest possible, it also makes 9 key map windows quite small.
Difficulty Options
Three different game modes for three difficulty levels at the same time.
- Easy - New farmer
- Normal - Farm-Manager
- Hard - Start from scratch
New farmer: start with basic farm, fields, vehicles and equipment. Quite limited, small scale I would say. By default adds random amount of crops into your farm silos at career start.
Farm-manager: start with nothing except 1.250 million of money. You need to decide what land and vehicles to buy. Multiplayer farm manager mode starts with 250,000 loan (so 1 million of own money).
Start from scratch: start with nothing and very limited money, prices (and vehicle maintenance costs?) are the most expensive.
Note: you can achieve the same thing by editing savegame directorys XML files like if you want to create "start from scratch" game mode for easy difficulty level. Considering this, the only unique or special thing in the new career game modes is the difficulty level.
Difficulty level for economy can be changed at any time from the in-game menu while playing.
Plowing
You only need to plough after harvesting corn or sugar cane etc odd crops, there is no more plowing after every third harvest (thats for lime, see below). If you do not plant these odd crops then you never need to plow your fields.
Lime
You can see lime field status on the map-view. Lime is a product which you purchase and spread to your fields using solid fertilizer spreader. Lime must be spread before seeding.
Using stock game Bredal spreader expends lime at incredible high rate, all you do is drive to refill heh. Note: if you use variable spray mod you can tweak lime spreading to game-play enjoyable level.
Seeding
Refer to FS17.
Crops Growth
Refer to FS17. And to note that even the same buggy or bad design for crops growth is still there where half of your field can have different growth stage.
Crop growth stages and weeds are switched through the terrain from north to south (top to down) direction and it does not matter when did you seed/plant, you could be even seeding at the moment the switch happens and then half of your field switches while you're still seeding the second half.
These events are triggered according to time, it depends how many hours one growth stage is per crops (this can be configured by terrain developer). Once the time is up growth stage or weeds are switched.
You cant do anything about it, like choose the right time to seed/plant. Well unless you use growth control mod which shows you how many hours for the next growth stage switch, then guess you could wait until it happens before starting seeding if its important to you to avoid the half field growing while you're still seeding. Also Seasons mod completely removes crops growth issues when using real/normal game time (I have played with seasons since its release and yet to see mixed crop growth).
This is no big deal once you understand how it works. It is what it is, maybe giants comes up with better way to handle this like individual field basis in the future, until that, just know how it works and deal with it.
For large terrains (over 3km and especially those larger than 10km) in singleplayer when you time accelerate the field growth stages switch somewhat oddly especially on large terrain size, but on multiplayer it is even worse because on top of the odd stage switching you still have the regular MP field state desync going on. Basically you have to run back and forth across your field you are waiting to switch stages. Extremely annoying.
Obviously same applies as in single player that if you're in no hurry to use time acceleration this is no issue.
Weeds
Weeds grow on fields after harvest, they take away nutrients from your actual crops so therefore are very harmful for the yield. You must kill weeds either mechanically by a weeder or chemically by a herbicide sprayer.
You can see weed status from map-view soil composition, field with weeds in it is marked as pink color.
If weeds grow too large along with your crops, you cannot get rid of them with the mechanical weeder implement. If night is upon us and you want to skip time / sleep until morning but you have crops growing when weeds have not broke out yet, think twice before sleeping as over night the weeds can break out AND you crops get fully grown harvest ready before you have time to take care of the weeds.
You cannot see (easily or maybe at all) weeds on field that is on the first two growth stages, you must check soil composition colors for a pink color to spot weeds.
You cannot spray a field if its darker "wet" color, either herbicide or fertilizer.
If you herbicide spray so your field turns darker color and next try to spread/spray fertilizer it does not work. The dark "wet" field color is a good marker of when you cannot fertilize. Its the same other way around if you first fertilize you cannot immediately herbicide spray you must cultivate or spread lime or wait for crop growth stage to switch in between.
So after you harvest, first fertilize. You can obviously herbicide spray -> cultivate -> fertilize as usual. It is recommended to herbicide spray when you get crop green plants growth stage switch.
Seed Pallets
Refer to FS17. With exception that now you can unload fertilizer / seeder and pallets are created next to it.
Seed Placeables
Several mod makers released seed placeables and Giants Software finally put out their official refill stations in 2019-01-31. Place it down and refill your seed tanks. Note: Refilling using Giants Software seed placeable will cost you a higher price for seed than buying it in BigBags at the Shop and they do not include lime. Lime placeable is not included possibly due ravenport and felsbrunn having hardcoded lime station in the terrain.
Seed Tenders
There is now a official game vehicle as seed tender which we did not have in FS17. You can use grain carts as seed tenders just as in FS17.
Unloading Fertilizer/Seeder
You can now unload your fertilizer, seeder and lime spreader. When you unload them there will be pallet(s) created next to the implement which you can then refill back to the same or other implements etc.
Train
On un-modded game ravenport terrain the train will loop constantly, every time you want to use the train it will be on different location. You can transfer crops with the train.
Trailer
Refer to FS17.
Fertilizing
There are only two levels of fertilization.
Buying / Selling Equipment and Vehicles
Refer to FS17.
Placeables for Money
No such things in FS19 v1.1 release.
Placeable Buildings
A huge change in FS19 compared to the previous games is that you build your own farm using placeables. Terrain developers know that even the sell points are actually placeables just configured through XML files meaning they are not placed into terrain i3d as objects anymore. This is a great new feature to have which gives so much more freedom to players, assuming terrain developer did not place any farm objects.
Your own farm house is just an decorative object with the sleep option. Sleep is simply 5000x time acceleration with the optional how many hours to sleep dialog. It is nice, but to have 350,000 euro costing huge object for it is total overkill, better to use fast forward type time acceleration mod instead.
Farm silo (and farm silo extension) placeables are to hold your grain. Most properly developed terrains do not include farm silos anymore and it is up to players how they want to build their farms including placing down farm silos, with obvious exception being many real world data terrains.
Selling placeable buildings is done from garage (P), just select the object you want to remove/sell and hit the sell key (ENTER). If you are using mod placeables and are very lazy, you can simply leave the placeable mod(s) out when loading a savegame and then they do not appear in-game, however its recommended to just sell them normally.
Contracts / Missions
Please refer to contracts page for further details.
Vehicle Maintenance
You can repair vehicles even when they are being used in the fields. Go to garage (P), select your vehicle and then you get the option to repair it (default key X), it costs money but at least the slowing down vehicle starts to operate at normal speeds again.
Adding New Mods
Never ever add brand new mod to your important career savegame, no matter how reputable mod authors release it is, always test new mods on some brand new savegame where you cannot lose any progress if a mod has errors and ruins your savegame.
Ambient Birds
v1.2 has a bug or rather engine issue that makes the wildlife birds and even your pet dog to walk on vertical walls and roofs of placeables. We will see if this gets fixed in the future. Just wanted to let you know that yes this is a known engine v1.2 bug / issue and not related to any modders editing.
Liquid Transport
Liquid transport in FS19 stock vehicles do not include anything for liquid fertilizer or herbicide transport. You can purchase liquid fertilizer pallets and then load them into low loader for transport but that is not really a liquid transport in the sense we are talking about here. You should search for FS19 mods for a nice liquid transport solution.
Fuel Transport. Thundercreek FST990 capacity is 3750 liters, can be pulled with giants pickup 1978 model just fine. On level straight road pickup reaches 121km/h but across fields its merely half of that.
Slurry Spreader
Slurry transport. Stock vehicles in the slurry tanks category offer Garant Kotte FRC field container with 55,000 liter capacity, Garant Kotte TSA 30000 tanker trailer for trucks to pull with 30,000 liter capacity.
You can park the field container to the field you are fertilizing, then transport slurry from your slurry pit into this container using tanker trailer.
The downside of slurry spreader is that there are no narrow tire options, it will cut crops. Also game-play related downside is that while in FS17 slurry spreading was viable option and fun, now in FS19 giants have totally ruined with the rate its expended, you literally go from 100% to 50% capacity under a minute, totally crazy.
Purchasing Fields With Crops
Actually this should be "purchasing LAND with fields which have crops" 
I purchased Midwest Horizon F77 for 684.3k, this field is 32.68ha in size (land lot is 34.63ha). It had weeded and unfertilized soybeans growing, when harvested the yield was 219,054 liters.
If we calculate lets say 3750 market price the amount of money the crop was worth, it comes to 219 x 3750 == 821.2k, then if we subtract the field price 684.3k - 821.2k == 136,950k final outcome.
I don't know why anyone would want to buy a land lot without soybeans growing on it, the harvested crop will pay the land for you.