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[RAM]

You could base moods off of the popularity of the dwarf, and add all tradeable items to the list of potential artefact requirements. If the siege goes on for too long your most loved citizens start gettng picked off one by one...

[zwei]

I'd rather have outside access, map-edge access, general "omg, we are sieged" and military ineptness factor into morale:

"Urist was unhappy latelly. He complained about being cut-off from Mountaine home lately. He was annoyed by restricted outside access lately. He was worried about overly long siege lately. He was unhappy about military not fighting enemy."

[AfterShave]

I like your ideas there zwei, except this one
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                       \/

"He was annoyed by restricted outside access lately."

The sun scorched hell that is above ground is for lesser races like elves 

[Sutremaine]

In IL-2 it does something even better:  a toggle switch for each and every difficulty feature.  For example, you can have every single nit-picking realism detail and still choose to toggle off blackouts and redouts from high gee maneuvers.

It would be so much easier to be able to access the init options from the main menu, and having them in such a prominent place away from the technical settings would make them less daunting to newbies. Might be nice to have a couple of preset difficulties offered anyway to make troubleshooting easier.

[PorkRolls]

OP here.

Most of the people in this thread completely missed the point. The point wasn't to make the game more difficult by making farming more difficult, the point was to give dwarves a reason to ever go outside.

As it is, you can seal yourself off under a mountain and forget the outside world exists. If a siege comes, you can lock the door and wait it out. A tiny farming plot in a cave is an infinite source of nutrients so there's nothing to worry about, which is cheap and unrealistic.

By making underground farming rely on constant fertilization, the player would almost certainly rely instead on above-ground farming, since it's feasible that seeds and sunlight are all you need. Above-ground is dangerous, and therefore fun. Cut off from the outside during a siege, a player would be able to last for a while on food stocks and some below-ground farming, but it would eventually run out and you would have to face your attackers or starve.

Of course, this relies on some assumptions:
- Above-ground seeds would be available on embark
- Sieges are changed so you can't just wall off your farms
- Sieges sometimes last long enough to deplete food stores

[Caledonian]

To use compost, you simply build a compost heap, which generates miasma periodically while active.

  Objection:  a properly-designed compost pile doesn't smell bad.  Only if the right balance between carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials isn't met, and there's too much nitrogen, will noxious substances be produced.

A skilled composter ought to be able to manage a pile without producing miasmas, and even a poorly-managed compost heap ought not to smell too bad.

[Arrkhal]

Objection:  a properly-designed compost pile doesn't smell bad.  Only if the right balance between carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials isn't met, and there's too much nitrogen, will noxious substances be produced.

A skilled composter ought to be able to manage a pile without producing miasmas, and even a poorly-managed compost heap ought not to smell too bad.

True, but I'm mainly thinking of gameplay balance.  Ideally, and with modern techniques, there's absolutely no reason not to compost.  In-game, though, there should probably be a valid reason not to.

Modern composting only started in about 1920.  Up until then, it was mainly just heaping stuff up and letting it sit for a year or more, which is obviously inefficient in many ways.  How much would that smell compared to a modern compost pile?  I don't know, and I don't really want to pile up junk to find out.

Also, I'm fairly sure that meat and animal corpses aren't generally added to modern compost, as it's much more efficient to render those down into bonemeal, fat, and protein.  I would imagine that the countless dead rats, lizards, fluffy wamblers, goblin chunks, etc., in a dwarven compost heap would make it much more pungent than a modern human one.  The option to not compost small animal remains should probably cut miasma down to nothing.

Also, it'd probably smell a whole lot worse in a confined space, and the piles should follow the same miasma-generation rules as everything else.  An outdoor compost pile doesn't stink (though it may lose some nutrients over time, due to rain, etc.), an indoor one does.

[Saronsen]

Yeah it'd be definately way bad to completely nerf underground farming. That's my #1 source of food, and even when I have a huge farm with 8 growers, I still run out of food sometimes.

On the note of Champions patrolling... I have 5 Champion wrestlers, and I think they actually rip heads off of goblins, the angry camels that attack my dwarves, and kobolds. There's a camel one second, then "Bactrian's Head" and "Bactrians Corpse".

[RAM]

A 15 z-level drop to an aboveground farm will make it pretty much immune to non-flying opponents until some sort of climbing is implemented.

Some sights are not conducive to aboveground farming.

Cave adaptation is a required test of citizenship in all my forts.

[Lordinquisitor]

So and what hinders me to build an above ground farm, which i lock off with moats and walls?

[RAM]

Don't forget the glass roof and the fortifications overlooking it so you can get rid of any siegers that jump in...

[PorkRolls]

Hm, greenhouses would be cool, but only if built out of clear glass.

[RAM]

What isn't cool about building a greenhouse out of green glass?

[PorkRolls]

Green glass hinders plant growth by blocking the colors used for photosynthesis.

[Dante]

Above-ground is dangerous, and therefore fun.

<snip>

- Sieges are changed so you can't just wall off your farms

While I agree with pretty much all the farming-related ideas in this thread so far, I can unfortunately see two problems with the underground/above-ground distinction.

First, you can make your above-ground farms inaccessible by ways other than farming, e.g. moat, magma moat, sheer cliffs, in a pit, etc.

Second, if sieges are changed so that all these obstacles are overcome, it means digging/deconstructing/bridgemaking enemies, so a player is going to have more to worry about with invaders getting everywhere else in their fort than with the prospect of eventually running out of food.

For a cheap and nasty fix, my personal preference would be simply requiring semi-frequent irrigation of underground farms, as well as above-ground ones if the fortress is in a low-rainfall area.