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[Mushroo]

So, I have plump helmets coming out of my ears, quarry bush leaf roasts worth $100,000, I've run a fort that only eats dimple cup spawn, another fort that only drinks mead, and a 3rd fort that specializes in purring maggot cheese. Farming is just too gosh-darn easy in DF!

Help me come up with a truly challenging idea for my next agricultural-themed fortress!

[Jase]

Try to prevent that dwarves eat your crops and feed them only with meals cooked from seeds

[martinuzz]

You are not allowed to brew plant booze. Sustain your dwarves' thirst solely by producing mead.
You'd need to find a workaround for the bug that causes you to only be able to use one beekeeper, if that's still there. Perhaps walled-off burrows would work?

[Jase]

You are not allowed to brew plant booze. Sustain your dwarves' thirst solely by producing mead.

I think has done this already:

So, I have plump helmets coming out of my ears, quarry bush leaf roasts worth $100,000, I've run a fort that only eats dimple cup spawn, another fort that only drinks mead, and a 3rd fort that specializes in purring maggot cheese. Farming is just too gosh-darn easy in DF!

Help me come up with a truly challenging idea for my next agricultural-themed fortress!

But here is an addition for my idea: Additionally, use the mod which doubles the required meals and drinks per dwarf per season.

[martinuzz]

Heh. Oops. I should set a bigger letter type for reading

[AutomataKittay]

Well, I have no idea how to make agriculture challenging. Other than limiting farming pretty strictly. Like, say, you can only have 1 tile of food/booze plot per 5 dwarves, rounded up ( Though this might be easy, I suspect with proper management, each plot can support 8 dwarves for food and booze? )

If you use fertilizer, increase the required dwarves by 50%

I'd say no animals, but I suppose it'd be fair to allow one animal in exchange for one farm plot. Butcher all of the newly born as soon as they comes out and no hunting supplements. You can replace parents with newlyborn, but you'll have to butcher the parents first.

You cannot supplement your dwarves' diets with traded foods, and no making booze out of rope reed or pigtails, reserve all of them for industrial use. All of seeds from non-food crops aren't allowed to be eaten either

[MadocComadrin]

Use your crops solely as ammo for multiple dwarven shotguns. Use said shotguns to hunt the wildlife around your fort.

[Almagest]

Your farms must be flooded annually using mechanical contraptions, even if they're already placed on dirt. Well, it'll only really matter for the first few months when you won't be able to farm at all, unless you're really creative with the machinery. Be creative.
Limit your growing season. For example farm only in summer. Embark in temperate/cold climate for the best effect.

[Mushroo]

Thanks for the great suggestions everyone! I will use some (or all) of them in my next games. Keep the good ideas coming!

My favorite challenge so far is the 3x5 farm plot challenge, which means seeing how large/long you can grow your fort using 15 squares of farm plot as your only source of food and income. (I've also tried a 7-square challenge and in my opinion that was enough for food or industry, but not both.) Fertilizer is allowed (15 squares is optimum size for 4 bars of potash per season) and trading roasts is allowed. Animals, fishing, and herbalism are not allowed.

I also really enjoyed the 1,000 rock nut challenge which is to embark with some stone (for querns, mechanisms, and jugs) and 1,000 rock nuts. Dwarfs are allowed to gather wild plants and keep animals & bees for their own subsistence, but plot farming is forbidden. A team of millers and pressers spends the spring and summer months processing the rock nuts to oil and press cakes, which are then cooked into biscuits consisting of exactly 1 press cake and 1 unit oil. These biscuits are the fortress's only trade good, and naturally rock nuts must be obtained through trade each year to keep the cycle going.

My least favorite agricultural challenge was anything having to do with bees. The reason is that honey does not stack like plants, therefore you need 5 barrels of mead [5] (not to mention 5 brewing jobs, 5 hauling jobs, 5 pressing jobs, etc) to equal 1 barrel of dwarven wine [25]. It's just annoying and inefficient. Furthermore royal jellies are bugged so you need to micro-manage your stockpiles to cook with them. It's just not worth it (except as a "fun" challenge) in a world where plump helmets are so bountiful!

[Mushroo]

I should also mention I hate animal husbandry due to the micromanagement, I always slaughter immigrant animals before they can reproduce and never trade for animals except dogs and the occasional egg-layer.

[Neyvn]

The best method is to change the Growdur of the crops. Making something that normally has like 4-5 harvests a season into something that has only 1 harvest every 2 seasons can make the farmside of DFFM way harder...

I think there is a mod out there already for that...

[Mushroo]

Yes I have tried the mod you're talking about, it is called "Seasonal Crops" and I consider it a must if you're going for any type of realistic farming in DF. Good suggestion!

[Scruffy]

1. The only source of food is butchered animals
Or
2. Change the ethics and make inviders butcherable. You are only allowed to eat the other green meat. (or elves. Just leave kobolds alone!)
Or
3. Soilent Brown, the meal that is dwarves. Either make dwarves butcherable or make a reaction that produces soilent dwarf and kills the one making it (syndrome cloud or something. A wonky transformation perhaps?)

[Mushroo]

Ewww, no cannibalism, got to draw the line somewhere!

Oh I forgot to mention Fort McMuffin, whose specialty biscuit was eggs fried in rock nut oil. That was fun, profitable, and just the right amount of micro-management to be enjoyably complicated without annoyingly so!

[smirk]

Go find the Seasonal Crops mod in the modding boards - it reduces crop yield, and makes crops take multiple seasons to grow. This is to start.

Found a farming outpost. The Mountainhomes require food! Embark somewhere with good soil, and plant 90% of the surface area each year. You will need to dedicate most of your dwarves to planting/harvesting. You are only allowed to trade unprocessed crops to the caravans. You will need a guard to protect your fields, and between guards and farmers you'll have no dwarves left over for other industries (although there will probably be an off-season where they can do other things). Trade raw crops for guard equipment. For extra credit, don't wall in your fields - leave them open. Also, excavate a soil layer and do the same thing for underground crops. Practice crop rotation. Build scarecrows! Plan a harvest festival! If your dwarves don't enjoy being farmers, exile them to the caverns.