I'd like to look at the vanilla expected trait levels for farming. A 16 yr-old governor who dies at 66 governs for 100 turns, which I like 'cause it keeps the maths easy for me. During that time he can build no more than 5 farms max, right? 5 points of good farmer total.

How many other buildings can he build in that time? It takes 14 turns to build the governors houses, and 15 to build the farms, so he has 71 turns left in which to possibly get bad farmer traits. Anybody know off hand how many buildings he can build in that time frame, max? Until someone posts that number and makes a fool of me, let's assume the average building takes 3 turns, which makes for 27 buildings. 8% of 27 (so much for easy math) is 2.16 levels of bad farmer.

Net: ~2.8 levels of good farmer, from a life spent neutral on the farm subject. I would conclude from this that the threshold for grower should be no less than 3. Considering that the temple of farming adds 6 points every 10 turns on average, he who honors the farm gods gets 60 points of good farmer from that. Thus the threshold for Agriculturalist should not be greater than 62, and probably less.

I conclude from this that good farmer was intended to be a trait that only those with farming temples acquired, and everyone else washed out even in the long haul. I think 3, 18, and 36, would make good thresholds. Someone who builds farms first has a shot at getting grower for a while, even if he will eventually lose it for failing to honor the farm gods properly (which plays for me since he's not the onee actually DOING the farming). A man who is dilligent about farming and is seen to worship the farm gods, otoh, gets grower within his first 2.5 to 5 years, then after 15 years he gets level two, and after 30 years as a farmer, he spends the remaining 20 years renowned as an agriculuralist.