FarmVille English Countryside Cheats and Tips: Sheep Breeding 101

Horse breeding has been a mainstay of FarmVille for some time, but Zynga's other favorite livestock, Sheep, has been largely ignored. Well, aside from being the game's mascot, but no more! Sheep Breeding is the next big thing in FarmVille's English Countryside. Thanks to FarmVille Freak, we have all the details to make your experiencing easing into this brand new feature an enjoyable one.

Here are the most important things to know about Sheep Breeding before touching down in EC:

        Breeding Sheep has the possibility of producing Lambs.
        Lambs can be named. You will be able to change the name of your Lamb when it's a baby or adult.
        Lambs will require that you feed them Baby Bottles if you want them to grow into a Ram or Ewe.
        You cannot transfer Sheep over from your original farm to the English Countryside.
        Sheep Breeding is random, with no deterministic outcome.
        Offspring is based on DNA of parents genetics, but is not fully predetermined.
        Combinations of patterned sheep is in the thousands or even millions range! There are many, many possibilities for patterns and colors of offspring.
        You do not know what a Lamb will look like when it grows up. They are mysterious like that, meaning that if you have a Grey Lamb it could grow into a Purple Star patterned Sheep.
        Males determine Lamb patterns.
        New breeding opportunity for farmers to specialize in such as a color or pattern.
        When your Lamb is fully grown, you will be given Love Potions in which you can share with your farming friends via the Facebook News Feed.


Sheep UK FlagAs you can see, Sheep Breeding will be complex in FarmVille EC. Players will receive five Sheep to breed upon entering the game or fixing up the Sheep Pen. Breeding takes place on a Sheep Pen that looks largely similar to Pig Pens currently in the game, but with less mud and slop. Of course, the Pen has a "Look Inside" option that allows players to micromanage 20 of their sheep, but that number can double with an upgrade.

Breeding the Sheep is as easy as picking two Sheep and selecting "Breed." Once your Sheep produce a Lamb, you will have the option to either keep it or give it away to your friends, presumably through a News Feed post. The potential combinations for your fluffy offspring is said to be in the millions.

[Source: FarmVille Freak]

Check out the rest of our English Countryside coverage right here.

Have you made any preparations for Sheep Breeding in FarmVille EC? What pre-game tips might you have to ready us for Sheep Breeding?

Future Zynga Facebook, mobile games could be more sequels

At least Zynga chief creative officer Brian Reynolds is thinking about it. The design head of the company recently spoke with IndustryGamers and, when whether FarmVille English Countryside has sparked a trend within the company, Reynolds replied, "Well, it's so early in our industry, is it time to have sequels? I don't know. It sounds like something we might do." In fact, Reynolds appears to be a big fan of the sequel--just look at his previous work.

"It's never too late to do a sequel, by the way," Reynolds said to IndustryGamers. "It's not like we need to be quickly running for the sequels because you can do sequels even 10 years after the original game. The first Civilization sequel came out 5 years after the first one and the next one was 5 years after that. And we've only even been a company for 3 years."

And he has a point. Civilization still sells like hotcakes and it's been reiterated upon five times now. Not to mention the mobile releases and other rehashes over the years. Could Zynga employ the same strategy to remain relevant? While the company has already shown that it can successfully launch new properties (ahem, CityVille), the groundwork has already been laid out.

FrontierVille is surrounded on all sides by promised expansions with one recently receiving a mysterious update in its description. Mafia Wars constantly releases new content, and you could consider its new-and-improved mobile app an expansion. So, would it be in Zynga's benefit to succumb to "sequelitis?"

We've yet to see FarmVille's daily active player base stabilize as a result of the new expansion, nor has its monthly players grew dramatically. Granted, it's only been around for a week, but remember CityVille's meteoric climb? If anything is to decide whether more sequels are in the future for Zynga games, it is the numbers.

[Via GamesIndustry.biz]

[Image Credit: VentureBeat]

Would you still be interested in Zynga games if the next few releases were sequels? What is the likelihood that this is the direction the company will head in?

FarmVille English Countryside Decorations: Spring Cottage, Bluebells Knoll & More

While we've seen some Easter and Spring-related items being released in FarmVille this week, we can't forget that the English Countryside theme is still chugging alone, with four new items being released in the buildings and decorations department this evening.

To start, the two buildings are the Spring Cottage and the English Mill. The English Mill is the more expensive of the two items, costing 25 Farm Cash, while the Spring Cottage goes for coins - a whopping 350,000 coins, to be exact. With the increasing coin prices of buildings, it almost makes me want to spend Farm Cash on the items instead... almost. Then again, that's probably the entire point, but I digress.

For a full look at the new decorations released tonight, meet us behind the break.

As for the new decorative items, you'll be able to purchase just two: the Bluebells Knoll, which costs 10,000 coins, and the Garden Trellis Bench, which is priced at 150,000. The Garden Trellis Bench is a fairly large item, all things considered, standing both tall and wide. The Bluebells Knoll, then, is roughly the size of the other hill items that have been released in the past, but simply covered in a few Bluebell flowers for effect.

Regardless of which item you choose to purchase, all are available in the game's store for the next two weeks. There weren't a lot of items released in the English Countryside theme this evening, which leaves me to wonder if Zynga is finally running out of things to release; or, perhaps they've transitioned more into Spring items for the time being. We'll make sure to let you know what ends up being the case either way.