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The County Fair Event (2013)

Introduction

When FV2 was first launched and as the game play style so uniquely its own began to mature, the pre-evolutionary Prized Farm Animal System made reference to taking your Prized Farm Animals to the County Fair, where they would participate in and be judged on their merits as Prized Animals, the result being that after a modest pause the player was presented with the “prizes” their Prized Animals won in the forms of Coin and the traditional County Fair ribbon of White, Red or Blue.

If you have ever attended a County Fair in one of the New England states in the USA this will be a very familiar ritual, if not, well guess what? You get to!

Following the extensive evolution of the Prized Farm Animal system in FV2 and with the introduction of the County Fair Special Event, farmers now get to hitch the trailer to their neighbor's Ute and participate in the actual competition in the form of their crops being judged, though naturally this has been abbreviated to use the points system that was created for it in place of the judging of each crop type individually.

The rewards offered for participation span a wide array of types and values, but in summary what you will receive is a mixture of Coin, bragging rights for the week, and an ongoing and escalating Ribbon Collection scheme...

The CF Event Points Scheme

To begin with only Farmers whose Farms have achieved a minimum of Level 20 or higher may participate in the County Fair Event.

Competition in the County Fair is based upon your “score” which is made up entirely of the numerical value of the special “Prized Crop” events that are prompted by the harvesting of a fully fertilized (using FRU's) crop either on YOUR farm, or on your neighbor's farm via the helper actions system.

Essentially only crops that have had an FRU applied may produce the special Prized Crop, and the Prized Crop event is represented in the game as an exceptionally fine or large representative sample of the crop type.

The rewards that may result from participation in the event include, as previously noted, FarmVille Coins and XP, as well as obtaining the first special Ribbon and then, as you progress through the competition from week-to-week, an improved level and version of that Ribbon.

It should be emphasized that with each increasing level of “Ribbon” that has been unlocked, the better the Prized Crop results may be in the Crop phase of the competition.

Obtaining Points

There are several methods by which the player will obtain points in order to be judged for the event, including the following:

(I) Prized Crops grown on your farm.
Crops are planted, watered, and fertilized (the use of FRU's on your crop is essential, nay even critical, to creating the Prized Crop. Each week when the official evaluation and judging is completed, the various point and events counters are reset, permitting players to repeat the basic process over again for next week's judging ceremony.

(II) Top Producers Awards
Top Producer of crop X receives a special bonus score, so that each week the player among your group (see Group Competition below) who has the highest scoring Prized Crop for that Crop Type obtains this special bonus score.

(III) First Farmer Awards
First farmer to find and ID the special “Prize Crop of the Week” - that being the secret Crop that has been selected as that week's Prized Crop - receives a set of Bonus Points. Note that if there are neighbors in your social group who dwell upon a continent other than the one upon which you yourself live upon, chances are pretty good that one of you is going to be rogered by the clock (the time differences) since whoever gets the earliest to Midnight (or whenever the timer resets) has the better chance at obtaining the special bonus points - just saying.

(IV) Attendance Awards
It is really not all that clear how this actually works, but basically there are several bonus point modifiers attached to actually attending the County Fair Judging Event. That is to say each week as long as you have logged in on Judgment Day (the day that the Fair Timer on the County Fair Event Window has been counting down to) a hidden point modifier for your farm record is incremented.

If you fail to log in on Judgment Day - for example you logged in and attended the Fair on the day or several days AFTER the actual day that the judging happened - you do NOT receive that point modifier increment, and the XP and Coins that accrue to you during and following the judging are less sizable as a result.

It has been suggested that this point modification also has a modest impact on the number of points that are awarded to your Farmer when they discover Prized Crops for the next week as well, in addition to the modification that is present from the Ribbon level and the declared bonus modes that are active.

(V) County Fair Medal Level
The first point to be remarked upon is that the County Fair Medals follow the traditional metallic formula, being made of Bronze, Silver, and then Gold (from order of importance, Bronze being lowest, Gold being highest). In addition to that though there are incremented levels of importance for each of the metal types; for example you have several “levels” of each medal and metal to earn :)

Keeping this as simple as we can, you should note to yourself that each color/metal/ribbon for each of the medals identifies a specific level structure associated with that medal.

When your nieghbor has X level of medal you will find that a visit to their farm will yield the resource count specific to THEIR medal, while YOUR medal level will dictate the number of Helper Actions (or Actions) you are able to complete during that visit.

In addition to that there are some special rules that apply that we touch on after the table below...

Medal and Level	Ribbon Colour	WRU Gains	FRU Gains	GPC's Obtained	Helper Actions
Bronze Level I	Yellow	1 WRU	1 FRU	1 GPC	6 Actions
Bronze Level II	Red	1 WRU	1 FRU	1 GPC	6 Actions
Bronze Level III	Blue	1 WRU	1 FRU	1 GPC	6 Actions
Silver Level I	Yellow	2 WRU's	2 FRU's	2 GPC's	7 Actions
Silver Level II	Yellow	2 WRU's	2 FRU's	2 GPC's	7 Actions
Silver Level III	Red	2 WRU's	2 FRU's	2 GPC's	7 Actions
Silver Level IV	Red	2 WRU's	2 FRU's	2 GPC's	7 Actions
Silver Level V	Blue	2 WRU's	2 FRU's	2 GPC's	7 Actions
Silver Level VI	Blue	2 WRU's	2 FRU's	2 GPC's	7 Actions
Gold Level I	Yellow	3 WRU's	3 FRU's	3 GPC's	8 Actions
Gold Level II	Yellow	3 WRU's	3 FRU's	3 GPC's	8 Actions
Gold Level III	Yellow	3 WRU's	3 FRU's	3 GPC's	8 Actions
Gold Level IV	Red	3 WRU's	3 FRU's	3 GPC's	8 Actions
Gold Level V	Red	3 WRU's	3 FRU's	3 GPC's	8 Actions
Gold Level VI	Red	3 WRU's	3 FRU's	3 GPC's	8 Actions
Gold Level VII	Blue	3 WRU's	3 FRU's	3 GPC's	8 Actions
Gold Level VIII	Blue	3 WRU's	3 FRU's	3 GPC's	8 Actions
Gold Level IX	Blue	3 WRU's	3 FRU's	3 GPC's	8 Actions

Listing Key and Code:
Actions = Helper Actions (the things you can do FOR your Neighbor)
FRU = Fertilizer Resource Unit (Bags)
GPC = Guaranteed Prized Crop
PC = Guaranteed Prized Crop
WRU = Water Resource Unit

Special Harvesting Rules

It is always nice to obtain a predictable set of results, and particularly when you mean to convert your Helper Actions into specific resources, so you should bear in mind the following:

I. For GPC's
With respect to GPC's - Guaranteed Prized Crops - you will receive the PC for the first however many crop squares you click on to use a Helper Action on.

What that means, in simple terms, is that assuming your Neighbor or NPC Neighbor has planted a variety of crops (this is almost always true with respect to the NPC Neighbors), you will want to take care to using your first however many clicks (3 if you are Gold Medal Level, 2 for Silver, and 1 for Bronze - and remember it is YOUR Medal Level that counts for this) on the crop you want the PC for.

This can be strategically important for several reasons:

(1) If the Clock is in your favor and no one among your ladder has obtained a PC for Strawberries for example, then using one of your HA's to obtain a PC from the NPC Nieghbor's Strawberries will gain you the Bonus Award for being the first this new Crop Period to obtain a Strawberry PC, and so on...

(2) When your Neighbor or NPC Neighbor have planted a variety of crop types, spreading your GPC's among them allows for the chance that you will (A) get a first bonus, or (B) get a size record for that crop type (that's purely luck but still).

This being the case, you can easily see how you will benefit from that approach.

II. “Guaranteed Resources” Collecting

One of the strategies that has been widely exploited and utilized following the deployment of the Tree Grove into FV2 is Guaranteed Resources Collecting, which is to say ensuring that you get a specific resource no matter what else you get.

This is accomplished due to a quirk in the game's logic structure in which it basically completely ignores the RNG whenever you have used x4 Helper Actions on a Tree Grove.

When you do that - select a Tree Grove - to apply the first four (4) Helper Actions for the visit, the game treats the Grove as a container that has no relationship to the outside world with respect to the normal use of the Random Numbers Generator (RNG) that is normally used to determine whether or not your application of a Helper Action results in spawning one of the resource types for the object upon which you have spent a Helper Action (or Actions plural in this case).

What that means in simple terms is that once you click on and use up the first four Helper Actions on the container that is the Tree Grove, EVEN IF the result of that application of Helper Actions is one or more of the resources produced by the tree types that are contained within that Grove, whatever object that you click on next will AUTOMATICALLY result in a successful spawning of the associated resource.

What that means is that the following scenarios are true - upon visiting your neighbor's farm with a full set of Helper Actions available to you (let's assume you have five in total available), you click on any Grove with four trees in it that is flagged as valid for the use of Helper Actions, which results in the Grove being serviced (either watered, fertilized, or harvested, whichever it is does not matter to us).

At this point if you want resource X you apply the very next Helper Action to object Y, examples being:

(1) You want a Water Resource Unit: You apply a Helper Action to a Well, a Watering Trough, or a Shady Trough. The application of your Helper Action automagically results in spawning a WRU from that object.

(2) You want a specific Crop or Tree Resource: You apply the next Helper Action to the Crop Square or single Tree Type for that resource. The application of your Helper Action automagically results in spawning resource from that object.

(3) You want some wood: You apply your next Helper Action to any single of the following trees - Pine Tree, Red Ash Tree, or an Irish Juniper Tree. The application of your Helper Action automagically results in spawning the wood resource from that tree.

There are plenty of variations we could use but you should get the idea here, right?

III. The Working Bits

Each week on Thursday the County Fair Crops Judging takes place, and during the judging you can earn only ONE (1) medal or medal upgrade for that calendar week - or not, since failing to earn the XP required to either earn a medal or unlock the next medal level is certainly a possibility, just saying...

As previously mentioned, obtaining either a new medal or an upgrade to your existing medal includes a set of benefits or bonus modifiers, and once the medal or upgrade is applied (unlocked / awarded) those bennies kick in immediately.

Not only that but unlocking the next medal or upgrade contributes to the Fame Level of your farm, which means... Actually I have no idea what that means...

I do know that the new medal / level results in triggering what is called “Jumbo Time” and which for a period of time until the timer runs out offers the player a significant bonus to XP earned both for your farm/farmer and for the XP in the Medal XP Meter.

IV. Additional Point Modifiers

The following factoids will be of interest to farmers intent upon making the most of this event...

(A) All Crops are NOT Equal: It quickly became evident that the growth timer for a given crop has a tremendous impact on the value of any Prized Crops that are found for that crop as you progress through both the week timer and the growing timer.

The rule of thumb for this is very simple indeed - the longer a crop's growing time, the more points it is potentially worth when a Prized Crop event happens. Of even more significance is the fact that the relative XP or Level of your farmer/farm is not counted. This is actually very important for a not-so-obvious reason...

Basically it means that the Prized Crop Points awarded to a Level 5 Farmer who is growing and harvesting Strawberries (a Level 5 crop with a 24h growing time that ordinarily yields 13xp for a regular harvest, and around 20xp for a fertilized harvest has the potential to yield double that as a Prized Crop regardless of the level of the farmer.

That makes the playing field level between a Level 5 farmer and say a Level 30 farmer, which is important because the Level 30 farmer is already going to have a larger farm, more crop squares, and a decided advantage anyway. Of course this all presumes that you care about the challenges between members of your social ladder (your neighborhood IOW) - if you don't then ignore that portion of this...

(B) Point Bonus for Previously Mastered Crops: If the crop that you are growing on your farm is one that you have already mastered (thus you possess the Blue Ribbon and third sign version for it) you will receive a bonus of 1xp per harvested crop square as a result.

That is actually significant in that because you are, in addition to pursuing the County Fair Event, very likely also continuing your crafts and profits/xp plan as well as working towards your active quests, it is likely that you will have to grow crops that you have already mastered and that may not necessarily yield the best results County-Fair-Points-Wise than might otherwise be the case, but hey, when you need Wheat you grow Wheat, right?

At least this way you pick up some extra points as the reward for already having mastered that crop.

V. The Country Fair Awards Ceremony

The first major point that needs to be made here is that there are consequences related to the County Fair Awards Ceremony - specifically negative consequences for failing to appear at and attend the weekly celebration and judging...

In simple terms when Thursday rolls around you need to log in and go to the County Fair and participate in the judging - because if you don't you lose the forward progress you have made for the current medal class.

To be clear, let's say that you are presently at Silver Medal V, and you end up not logging into your farm until Friday - when you process the week's progress to reset your points you will find that your medal progress has now been reset to Silver Medal I as the result.

So yeah, don't do that.

VI. The Mystery of Farm Fame

As previously noted one of the side-effects of the County Fair judging is an increase in your farm fame, but did you know that farm fame is also increased based upon the number of visitors a farm receives from neighbors, and how often they visit...

This is all spiffy and stuff but so far the wizards at Zynga have not yet revealed why that is important... Or even what Farm Fame actually does... Searching online has proven fruitless - either nobody knows what farm fame actually does, or they are not talking?