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[Draco18s]

while not to complex I fear by the time you add moisture and temperature to the equation you'll be over the appropriate complexity level.  If moisture is three levels (dry, moist, damp) then you end up with 9 combination and three dimensional graphs, temperature is yet another layer.  Perhaps dropping things down to a binary grow/no-grow and each plant has a specified range of tolerance for each factor and the UI simply blocks planting in inappropriate soil.  Also I really wouldn't want to see 'phosphorus' expressed in the Soil read out it's not time period appropriate, rather a silt-sand-clay designation would be more useful, it would also allow some soils to count as both types and grow a wider range of plants.

Temperature wouldn't apply to underground farms, and to outside farms it'd either be in the menu, or it wouldn't (binary).

Moisture can be abstracted way into a binary "has" and "has not" and if it "has not" and there is a water source and a bucket a farmer will water the plants (reducing the need of the player to be involved).  This makes glacial and desert maps particularly challenging to those who want it.  Soil layers above an aquifer would be "moist."  Soil layers without an aquifer and stone layers would be "dry."  Artifically flooded areas would "wet" the layer above them (as per "this tile is damn, cancel digging") already and would thus also be "moist."  The game will be able to know if "moist only" plants will be incapable of growing (no water source, tile is dry) and mark those plants in red (like it already does for "too late to plant," or whatever).  If a water source is lost, and not regained, then the plant can wither (as if it was left too long).  Ditto if it is not watered (which would be balanced to assume a certain number of farmers--more than 1 super legendary dwarf--and the average expected farm size, which will likely come down to 1 to 3 "water plant" jobs per seed over the growing season.  Farming should be a full time occupation for a sizable portion of your fortress).

So far, no added complexity unless the player wants it (embarking on a mountain/forest border gives you a partial aquifer, moist soil layers, stone layers that can be used to breach the aquifer with ease, and have wood: an ideal start location for new players) as the game simply won't allow you to plant that crop.  The complexity I'm adding reduces the effectiveness of farms if the soil quality is not maintained (our third complexity notion, which has 2 axis and 2 bits per trait).  For new players this means that their farms will still produce, just not be perfect (as each plant modifies only one axis of the chart in one direction, it will never become impossible to grow something on a farm that produces a single crop).  If necessary we can reduce the graph to 1 bit per axis giving us four regions, a plant will grow in 3 of them (extra yield in 1) and not at all in the fourth.

Given that some underground plants can be grown in winter, it is trival to implement a 4 crop rotation on farms, which should match up with the soil quality modifiers of each plant such that there is an ideal arrangement (all crops in their favorite quality of soil) and multiple "less ideal" rotations (that is, every plant will be capable of growing).  Followed by more micro-manage-y rotations whereby a player rotates his farms from year to year, rather than season to season.

Note: soil quality should be tracked "by farm" and is altered at the end of the season based on what was grown.

TL;DR:
Temperature only matters for outside plants (and the game forbids selection of inapropriate plants)
Moisture is handled by the game (game warns if you're embarking on a waterless region)
Soil Quality is a 2 axis graph that lowers farming yield without using better techniques.

[jfs]

Since the next version is supposed to store the raws along with the world, instead of per installation, I imagine setting things like difficulty of farming could easily be made a worldgen parameter.

[Zifnab]

Right, temp wouldn't affect underground farming, but at the same time, to be realistic, fertilization could be more important for underground agriculture.  Got to get the energy to grow somewhere...  And I definately think that all plants underground should be able to be grown in all seasons.

As for above ground, the binary system also works.  Unless toady introduces greenhouses as a building at some point.  Or maybe a custom building by a modder.  They would perhaps be able to grow all plants.

I like the ideas in Draco18s's latest post for moisture and soil quality.  A base level of soil quality for each soil with modifiers tracked for each farm would work well.  Most players don't want things overly complex, and my computer runs df slow enough as is to track individual nutrient elements in the soil. 

Nitrogen fixing plants that improve soil quality would also be cool in the future.

[Kav]

I always wondered why I can grow strawberries in the winter but I can't grow pigtails year round.

Many of these ideas, while clever, are just way over the top. Simply limiting what can grow in what season would go a long way. Cutting down on the stacks needs to happen one way or the other. Honestly I think planting seeds should take longer than it does, it should take more than 1 farmer.

Keep it simple, you don't want it too complicated:
Smaller stacks, slower planting, limit harvests by plant and season.

Infinitely easier to implement these ideas than the over-complicated ones.

[Zifnab]

It is true that limiting what would grow during which seasons would go a long way towards cuting back on how overpowered farming can be.

But a little bit of added complexity would help diversify gameplay in different areas.  Settle in an area with warm temps, good soil, and plenty of water and you can have a farming paradise.  Settle in a desert and you are going to need some source of water to farm, whether it is a river or an aquifer.  At some point barrels of water could even be made importable, to allow for an expensive and very limited farming enterprise.

Besides, why couldn't you grow strawberries in winter if you were in a tropical climate?  In some of the farms in the southwestern US and Mexico, crops are grown year round that might only be grown during the summer further north.

[Googolplexed]

Besides, why couldn't you grow strawberries in winter if you were in a tropical climate?  In some of the farms in the southwestern US and Mexico, crops are grown year round that might only be grown during the summer further north.

Mostly because in a proper tropical climate, there is no winter. only wet and dry seasons.

[Zifnab]

Exactly, but the game doesn't model it that way.  So with irrigation in a dry season, you can grow crops.

[Draco18s]

Exactly, but the game doesn't model it that way.  So with irrigation in a dry season, you can grow crops.

What we could have is that during "winter" things get wetter and colder (depending on biome) and that triggers the wet/dry warm/hot/cold calculation of planting conditions (eg. if its too cold, plants become unavailable for planting, etc).

[Darbuk.Ubildolush]

Keep it simple, you don't want it too complicated:

This assumption is... wrong.. I do in fact want it complicated.   It's why I love Dwarf Fortress, and love Toady for the complexity that he's bringing in future expansions.

That being said, I like a lot of the ideas here, the OP did some wonderful thing with corner plants and the like.

Things that I think would be interesting would be to include a myriad of fertilizer agents.  We can use the one's that are currently extant, such as bone meal, and potash.  Have animals producing excrement that needs to be cleaned out (Or you start getting vermin infestations and sickness), it can be gathered and used for fertilizer. 

You can also deal with PH levels of the soil by using Vinegar (produced by the Still) and Lye (We already have this) to alter the PH level.

Here's the kicker, there's no reason to have the players MANAGE this.  If the materials are available, your farmers will simply use the available materials to adjust this.

Add a little message thing at the bottom that says "(so and so) farmer, cancels job - Tend Garden, Lye needed" and even the new player has all the input they need.

[Grek]

So, my plan:

1. Make farming complicated. Like ridiculously so. Moisture, PH value, light levels, irradiation levels, air temprature, ground temprature, plantary positions, every nutrient that you can think of (including potasium, phosphorus, nitrogen, various minerals, etc.), soil grain size, availabilty of pollinating insects, wind speed, soil drainage, sphere info, miasma levels, seed quality, diseases (once they go in) and anything else that could possibly effect growth. All of these factors decide how much produce you get.

2. Decouple planter skill from yield. Who plants the seed does not matter at all, what so ever. You can have children or peasents do it and it does not matter at all. Yield is 100% based on the factors in part one. Anyone with the "Planting (fields)" labour enabled will do. This means that it is actually optimal to have tons of unskilled labourers working the fields rather than one person who is really really good at planting. Quantity is a quality of its own. If you have 20 10x10 fields and enough workers, you could get by without any skilled workers in a horrible badlands.

3. Automate the upkeep of farms. There is a new job to enable/disable. People with the "Farming" labour enabled will automatically work to adjust the conditions in the farm to attempt to increase yeild. If the plants need watered, the farmers will get the "Water Plants" task and water them. If the PH is wrong, they will add lye or vinager as needed. If the things they want to use on the farm are not available, the "q" menu for the farm will miss what things they want but don't have. The automation can be toggled to manual, if the player feels like it.

4. The accuracy of the automatic farming maintainence is dependant on skill in "Grower". Novice growers will still attempt to maintain the farm, but they will not be as precise as better growers and may overwater/underwater. Legendary growers will be able to get the conditions correct with 100% accuracy. If you wish, you can assign a farm an "overseer" who's skill value is used in place of the other people at the farm as long as he is performing the "Oversee Farm" task. Mutliple farms require multiple overseers.

Thus, there are two ways to farm: Vast tracts of land given over to unskilled immigrant labourers or small, well managed, well stocked farms run by skilled growers and a few unskilled farmhands.