How to Play Agricola Revised Edition: Rounds, Harvests & Feeding
Agricola Revised Edition is a 14-round worker-placement game about building a productive farm while feeding a growing family. Each family member gives you one action each round, so family growth is powerful—but every extra person also increases your food requirement at harvest.
Edition scope. This guide covers the 2016 Revised Edition base game for 1–4 players. Expansion decks and Farmers of the Moor add material but do not replace the core round structure described here.
Start with two people and a two-room wooden house
Each player begins with a farmyard board, a wooden house of two rooms and two family members. Depending on the chosen mode, players also receive Occupation and Minor Improvement cards. Action spaces are placed on the central boards, while additional round cards are revealed gradually as the game progresses.
At the start of a round, reveal a new action and replenish accumulation spaces
Reveal the next round card and make its action available. Then add goods to every accumulation space. Goods already sitting on an accumulation space remain there, so ignored spaces become more valuable over time.
Place one family member, then take that action immediately
Starting with the starting player and continuing clockwise, place one unused family member on an unoccupied action space and carry out that action. Players keep alternating until every person has been placed. In general, only one person can occupy an action space in a round.
Actions let you collect resources, plow fields, sow grain or vegetables, build rooms and stables, fence pastures, acquire animals, renovate the house, play cards and eventually grow your family.
Rooms control family growth
Normally you need an empty room before taking a Family Growth action. Growing the family increases the number of actions you can take in later rounds, making early expansion one of the strongest long-term investments. The tradeoff is that each additional person must be fed during future harvests.
Fields, pastures and improvements build the food engine
- Fields: plow field tiles, then sow grain or vegetables so crops can be harvested repeatedly.
- Pastures: fence areas to hold animals; stables can increase animal capacity.
- Major and Minor Improvements: create conversion effects, bread-baking options, points or other efficiencies.
- Occupations: provide persistent abilities and combinations but usually cost an action to play.
Harvests have three phases
Harvests occur after specific rounds. First, harvest one crop from the top of each planted field. Second, feed your family; the standard requirement is 2 food per person, with special rules applying to newborns from that round. Third, each animal type can reproduce if you have at least two of that type and legal room for the newborn.
If you cannot provide enough food, you must take begging markers for the shortfall. Each begging marker costs 3 points at final scoring, so emergency feeding is usually expensive.
The game ends after the harvest of round 14
After the final harvest, score the farm. Agricola rewards a broad farm: fields, pastures, crops, sheep, wild boar and cattle all have scoring bands, while unused farmyard spaces can lose points. Rooms, family members, fenced stables, improvements and card bonuses can add more.
A simple first-game teaching order
- Explain that every person equals one worker-placement action.
- Show how accumulation spaces grow if ignored.
- Explain the next harvest before players choose early actions.
- Show fields, pastures and one food-conversion improvement.
- Explain family growth only after players understand rooms and feeding.
- Leave detailed final-scoring thresholds until the first farm has taken shape.
Continue learning
Sources and scope
Checked September 20, 2026. This guide excludes Farmers of the Moor and other expansion-specific actions.