Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Alex]

Hey there everyone,
First off I just want to say how much I am loving this game. Really kicks ass.

I have been reviewing all the farming tutorials, but have not seen one that addresses my issue. I created a farm plot around 6x9 and started growing plump helmets. However,even with this food, my dwarves are dropping from starvation two at a time. I have a feeling it is an efficiency issue since the closest food stock pile is a distance away.

I am looking for any tips on making an efficient food supply for around 60 dwarves. I hear that cooking is an option that helps feed more dwarves, but I am afraid of loosing all my seeds and being unable to grow anymore food.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

-- Alex

[DJ]

Use dedicated farmers to ensure that crops get planted in a timely fashion. This means you should turn off all other jobs (most importantly various hauling jobs) for your farmers.

[Nos3y]

If you aren't handy on farming, try hunting or fishing (if possible). I have a few hunters and fisherdwarves doing their things. And once you do get a stable Farm, you can change your hunters into Marksdwarves (or in my case a battalion of Mark/Hammerdwarves. Cheers

[Jreengus]

do you have barrels? without barrels you need some massive stockpiles, also if a year has passed make sure you tell your dwarves what to plant this year. (I have lost countless forts beause I forgot to tell my dwraves to farm during the second year)

EDIT: Also another problem I've had before is settign my brewer on repeat so he brews all the food my dwraves are meant to be eating check you dont have like 1000 dwarven wine and only 2 plump helmets.

[ December 04, 2007: Message edited by: thatguyyaknow ]

[Eagle of Fire]

To alievate the situation, you can select one of each different kind of meat in the starting screen. Not only this will provide your expedition for quite a number of food, but you'll get one free barrel from each. Especially usefull for a quick start and in areas in which wood is scarce.

You can also bring with you some logs in the starting screen.

[ERoberts]

1. make sure you have plump helmet spawn to plant
2. make sure you have gone into the 'Q' menu, selected the farm, and selected Plump helmet.
[I am assuming you have these two figured out already.]
3. put a stockpile specifically for seeds, right next to your farm
4. put a stockpile specifically for Plants right next to your farm

Tip four is probably the most relevant, as Dwarves will not eat plump helmets that are targeted for a hauling job. having even a small stockpile at hand can free up some food quickly when you need it, and you can always use the stockpile "take from" command to use it as a staging point.

[Ziusudra]

You can also gather plants to get food (and seeds.)

The seed stockpile should be seeds only to prevent other food from taking all the space.

I would make that 6x9 plot into 9 1x6 plots so you can plant other crops.  You can tell if a farm plot has been planted because the wavey lines turn straight.  A square ready for harvest will show a symbol for the plant.  Squares that didn't get harvested in time will show a different grey symbol.

You might set the "All harvest" option until you have enough food.

Turn on the seasonal autosave feature for an unmissable reminder to update your farm orders.  You can also set orders in advance, but if you don't have the seeds that wont help.

Digging channels into soil from outside will give you an outside farm that won't be plagued by planting/harvesting interuptions.  (Really just needs to be plantable and labelled as outside, muddy granite on the very bottom z-level would work.)

Oh, and seeds can also be got and requested from trading and are usually cheap.  Food too, but not as cheaply.

Recap:
Places to plant
Seeds/spawn to plant
Orders to plant them
People to plant them
People to harvest them
Small seed only stockpile nearby
Larger food stockpile nearby
Barrels and bags
Don't use up all your edibles for other purposes
Edit: Don't cook raw edibles until you have a stockpile of those seeds

[ December 05, 2007: Message edited by: Ziusudra ]

[Lord Dullard]

One thing that I always do once my farming industry gets going is go into the 'Z' screen, then to 'Kitchen', and turn off cooking for all ingredients but alcohol. This'll keep the dwarves from cooking food (and more importantly plants, because cooking prevents plants from producing seeds), and trades out some of my (usually huge) alcohol stock for cooked food. Cooked food also sells for megacash, and it's usually what I use to buy out trade caravans for the first few years of play (Stone crafts that sell for 30 apiece? Pfft. Try 30 biscuits that sell for 500. Don't ask me, apparently dwarves make REALLY good biscuits).

[Alex]

wow, thank you all for the help. and so quick!