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[Xilian]

The agricultural revolution mod
By Xilian
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The agricultural revolution mod aims to overhaul the current farming system. The current system allows you to feed a fort of 200 people with scarcely any dedicated farming land whatsoever. Furthermore, growth times of plants are unrealistic and can be grown year round. Near every process that involves plants net seeds to allow for replanting, yet no systems are in place to increase selectivity of what plants are processed. The agricultural revolution mod changes all that within the capacity of the current hard coded model. In doing so more land will have to be dedicated to farming and will allow for food and drink scarcities to occur more rapidly thus incorporating a more challenging survival approach to Dwarf fortress. The mod focusses mostly on above ground crops as those are the more numerous, yet subterranean plants have also been changed according to the new system.
 
Features:
-          Radically increased growth times of plants to be more in tune with real life growth.
-          Plants are now seasonal and can no longer be grown year round, an excel sheet is available for planting and harvesting months.
-          Plants are now shifted to be more in line with their native locations, hence many plants have been moved from tropical to temperate climates.
-          Herbalism efficiency has been drastically reduced.
-          Plants have been placed into one of five categories to allow for more selective reactions: Cereal, Vegetable, Fruit, Fibre, Dye crops.
o   Cereal plants in general have milleable and fermentable seeds, the plant is used to gain seeds.
o   Vegetable plants in general have edible growth parts or seeds, the plant is used to gain seeds.
o   Fruit plants in general have grown fruits that can be fermented or eaten, the fruit is used to gain seeds.
o   Fibre plants in general are used to gain thread, the plant is used to gain seeds.
o   Dye plants in general are milled into dyes used by a dyer’s shop, the plant is used to gain seeds.
-          New reactions allow for the recovery of seeds from plants for new crops, seeds are no longer gained from processing plants.
-          Amount of food required for fermenting has been increased.
-          More natural dyes have been added, more in tune with historical dyes (including kermes red and tyrian purple).
 
Existing known problems:
-          Fruit taken upon embark cannot be used in new reactions, seeds gained from eaten the fruit raw can be used to plant new crops that can be used in the new reactions.
-          Milling and plant processing jobs still exist to allow the products to be traded, however it is advised not to use these anymore for the milling and threshing of plants.
-          Trees still provide insane amounts of fruit.
 
New reactions:
-          Ferment grains: replaces the old brew from drink, requires cereal seeds to ferment.
-          Ferment fruits: replaces the old brew from fruit, requires fruits to ferment.
-          Recover seeds from [crop_type]: recovers seeds for planting from harvested plants.
-          Mill seeds to flour: mills cereal seeds to flour.
-          Produce [colour] dye: mills the new and old dye plants into dye powder.
-          Produce tyrian purple/kermes red: dry kermes or murex extract into dye powder.
-          Process plant to fibre: thresh fibre plants into thread.

This is my first mod, any criticism is welcome.

Patch notes:
v1.0.1:
   - Fixed Cave wheat and Sweet pods being unbrewable and unmilleable.
v.1.1.0
#General rule of thumb: feeding a dwarf on average for a year requires 1 tile, providing alcohol also requires 1 tile, providing sufficient clothing requires 1 tile. More skilled farmers will require less land, while unskilled farmers will require more land.
   - Gave unprocessable fruits and vegetables the appropriate tags to process them
   - Added reactions to process fruits and vegetables into their appropriate growths
   - Overhauled the balance of reactions creating food and drink
   - Cereal crops are now the best source of food
   - Fruits and Vegetables can supplement a diet, but require a lot more land to provide a single dwarf with a year's worth of needs.

[Sver]

This looks awesome! I'll make sure to try it out in the future.

Just one thing: the download link is a bit off.

[Xilian]

Thanks!
The download link should be fixed now.

[vjmdhzgr]

The reason I always saw for aboveground plants not having seasonal restrictions even though underground ones do was more one of game balance. It takes a lot more effort to make and protect a farm aboveground than it does to dig out a 10x10 area of dirt and grow all the plump helmets you want. So when you do make an aboveground farm the benefit is bigger.

[Thundercraft]

This looks promising. I'm impressed.

More natural dyes have been added, more in tune with historical dyes (including kermes red and tyrian purple).

Nice! I like historical uses of plants. And I really wanted to see more dyes in DF.

Plants are now shifted to be more in line with their native locations, hence many plants have been moved from tropical to temperate climates.

I -do- like accuracy with plants and crops.  I'll have to try this mod out. Though, I would point out that, sometimes, game balance should trump accuracy.

For instance: You say that many plants have been moved from tropical to temperate climates. But how many plants did you leave in tropical climates vs. what are now in temperate climates? Is it nearly a 50/50 split, or more like 40/60, 30/70 or 20/80? I would much prefer something close to an even split of plants between these two biomes, even at the cost of inaccuracy.

Consider what an embark in a tropical biome would be like, in terms of plant variety, vs. an embark in a temperate biome. If the split is more like 20/80, then there won't be much variety in a tropical embark, but too much variety in a temperate embark.

Plants have been placed into one of five categories to allow for more selective reactions: Cereal, Vegetable, Fruit, Fibre, Dye crops.

New reactions:
-          Ferment grains: replaces the old brew from drink, requires cereal seeds to ferment.
-          Ferment fruits: replaces the old brew from fruit, requires fruits to ferment.
-          Recover seeds from [crop_type]: recovers seeds for planting from harvested plants.
-          Mill seeds to flour: mills cereal seeds to flour.
-          Produce [colour] dye: mills the new and old dye plants into dye powder.
-          Produce tyrian purple/kermes red: dry kermes or murex extract into dye powder.
-          Process plant to fibre: thresh fibre plants into thread.

I feel divided on this change. On the one hand, I love the concept and I'm sure it makes things handier. But, on the other hand, I suspect that this could make mod compatibility something of a nightmare. To make any mod that adds new plants work, wouldn't this require copying your category system and changing reactions?

Could you give some pointers on how one could make a plant mod compatible, such as which tokens need to be changed?

Existing known problems:
-          Fruit taken upon embark cannot be used in new reactions, seeds gained from eaten the fruit raw can be used to plant new crops that can be used in the new reactions.
-          Milling and plant processing jobs still exist to allow the products to be traded, however it is advised not to use these anymore for the milling and threshing of plants.

Aren't both of these issues a side effect of splitting plants and reactions up into your five categories? What actually happens if I order some milling or thrashing? Nothing? Doesn't that limit what we can do with our plant products? And I really don't like the idea of not being able to directly utilize embark fruit.

Hmm... Could you, perhaps, have a separate version of this mod that does not split plants into your five categories and categorized reactions - that is, a bit closer to vanilla but with all your other changes? I think I'd use this mod without the five categories if it bypassed the above two issues, especially if it means better compatibility with new plants in other mods.

Further, I would point out that there have been several other mods over the years that have modified agriculture to be more realistic and/or challenging. (Though, AFAIK, none of them have been updated in years.) Of particular note:

• Claije's Seasonal Farming for DF v42.06
• Blackthumb Farming (DFFD) for DF v0.40.10
• New Seasonal Crops for DF v0.40.14

I wanted to point them out because, perhaps, there is something in these old mods that you might find useful or inspiring.

Blackthumb Farming was interesting in that there were three different growing difficulties available as separate folders: Black (most difficult), Brown (medium) and Green (easiest). There was even special code provided to work with the Masterwork mod's GUI.

Of the above, I think New Seasonal Crops may be the one I found most attractive. I liked how it did the growing seasons. It required, quote:

...most crops to grow for 1.75 seasons and capable of sitting mature for a season. One may attempt to grow more than 1 harvest, but only through micromanagement.

I took a quick peek at your Excel sheet for planting and harvesting. But it looks like all of your above-ground crops require most of a full growing season. None of them seem to allow for more than one harvest. I'd rather have at least a few crops which allowed for a possibility of two harvests, even if that is not accurate.

Edit:
I forgot to mention: Please consider adding a link to this forum topic on the DFFD download page for your mod. (It is traditional to put the forum link in the field titled "Home:", but anywhere would be great.) Some of us do not normally search the forums for new mods and, instead browse the DFFD to see what mods are new. So if we find a new mod without a link to the forum topic, we're likely to assume that one does not exist.

[Thundercraft]

The reason I always saw for aboveground plants not having seasonal restrictions even though underground ones do was more one of game balance. It takes a lot more effort to make and protect a farm aboveground than it does to dig out a 10x10 area of dirt and grow all the plump helmets you want. So when you do make an aboveground farm the benefit is bigger.

But having no seasonal restrictions above ground makes no sense, especially if there are seasonal restrictions underground, where they should not exist at all. That's not only unrealistic, it's backwards.

And I don't think that I agree with that assessment of game balance. It may be more difficult to protect an above ground farm, but how is it more difficult to make? The big difference, IMO, is that it is easy to start with an underground farm because we start with seeds for underground crops, whereas we obtain seeds for above ground crops later or in a roundabout way.

[Xilian]

This looks promising. I'm impressed.

Thanks, I hope you'll enjoy it if you decide to try it out.

Nice! I like historical uses of plants. And I really wanted to see more dyes in DF.

Currently I removed the weed blade grass and hide root, replaced it with madder root for a reddish dye, and woad for an indigo dye. I also added Saffron as a yellow dye. Mixing up different combinations of these three plants give a purple, green or orange dye. Of course these colours are not what you normally think of when you think purple or green and I've tried to be more in tune with the actual colours these dyes would historically have. Preferably its possible to dye over an already dyed cloth as they did historically to gain colours such as green. However this is not possible as far as I'm aware.

I -do- like accuracy with plants and crops.  I'll have to try this mod out. Though, I would point out that, sometimes, game balance should trump accuracy.

For instance: You say that many plants have been moved from tropical to temperate climates. But how many plants did you leave in tropical climates vs. what are now in temperate climates? Is it nearly a 50/50 split, or more like 40/60, 30/70 or 20/80? I would much prefer something close to an even split of plants between these two biomes, even at the cost of inaccuracy.

Consider what an embark in a tropical biome would be like, in terms of plant variety, vs. an embark in a temperate biome. If the split is more like 20/80, then there won't be much variety in a tropical embark, but too much variety in a temperate embark.

I see your point and I moved most cereal crops to temperate regions, along with a lot of vegetable plants. However I think currently the balance is more to a 40/60 split in favour of temperate regions, but I haven't actually calculated it. I think that a lot of trees that give fruits are still in tropical regions. I also moved flax crop to temperate regions but most other fibrous crops are still in tropical regions. If there's too little variety in tropical regions I might have to make some changes. But keep in mind that in most regions generated in world gen that is not done through the tool Perfect world DF have very little tropical regions, even regions denoted as hot tend to end up temperate. If I could make plants appear according to temperature rather biomes I would.

I feel divided on this change. On the one hand, I love the concept and I'm sure it makes things handier. But, on the other hand, I suspect that this could make mod compatibility something of a nightmare. To make any mod that adds new plants work, wouldn't this require copying your category system and changing reactions?

Could you give some pointers on how one could make a plant mod compatible, such as which tokens need to be changed?

Reaction_agriculture actually has an overview to which tokens needs to be added to which part of a new plant depending on the catagory. Other than that they require [REACTION_CLASS:<category>_CROP] on the plant and in the case of cereal crops on the seeds as well. It does limit some plants somewhat that could for example be used as a dye but still have fruits that can be used to ferment, as these are now degraded to fulfill only one category. This is mostly in place to more selectively get seeds from plants and allow specific dye making. This might be changed later but I don't currently have any plans for it. Of course I'd be willing to help anyone that wants to add their own plants and bring them in line with the systems of this mod.

Aren't both of these issues a side effect of splitting plants and reactions up into your five categories? What actually happens if I order some milling or thrashing? Nothing? Doesn't that limit what we can do with our plant products? And I really don't like the idea of not being able to directly utilize embark fruit.

Hmm... Could you, perhaps, have a separate version of this mod that does not split plants into your five categories and categorized reactions - that is, a bit closer to vanilla but with all your other changes? I think I'd use this mod without the five categories if it bypassed the above two issues, especially if it means better compatibility with new plants in other mods.

On the first problem, as far as I can tell it is not a problem inherent to the tokens I added to the plants, but rather with the reaction itself. I
already tried to remove the reactions class tokens and everything but the problem could not be solved. So its most likely a problem that I can change by messing with the reaction, though I don't currently have an idea how to. Or its a problem inherent with the DF code itself. For the latter problem, if you order an old milling or threshing job it'll do what has always happened. they take a random plant that can be milled or threshed do the job and you get the milled or threshed product + some seeds. My reactions that process plants don't give seeds, except for the specific seed recovery jobs. Not recovering seeds during these jobs is one of the major features of the mod, but since the milling and threshing job is hard coded they can't be subject to change like the brewing and papermaking jobs. The raw files require milling and threshing to show up in entity resources to be traded etc. Yet this also makes them available for these hard coded jobs. Hence I left them in, its not ideal but its better to the alternative. I could remove all the catagorised reactions to be closer to vanilla, but then you can no longer mill flour from seeds.
EDIT: I just took a look at the other mods you linked. Interestingly they ran in the same problem that I did, that is the MILL AND THREAD tokens that still enable the old threshing and milling jobs, and they opted to remove them. Now this makes it so that the flour and plant thread cannot be brought during embark. Can they still be traded for though? If they can I might actually remove these tokens aswell. I will have to look into this.
EDIT2: Yea, missing the MILL and THREAD tokens make them untradeable and unable to be selected upon embark, so I'd rather avoid that.

Further, I would point out that there have been several other mods over the years that have modified agriculture to be more realistic and/or challenging. (Though, AFAIK, none of them have been updated in years.) Of particular note:

• Claije's Seasonal Farming for DF v42.06
• Blackthumb Farming (DFFD) for DF v0.40.10
• New Seasonal Crops for DF v0.40.14

I wanted to point them out because, perhaps, there is something in these old mods that you might find useful or inspiring.

Blackthumb Farming was interesting in that there were three different growing difficulties available as separate folders: Black (most difficult), Brown (medium) and Green (easiest). There was even special code provided to work with the Masterwork mod's GUI.

Of the above, I think New Seasonal Crops may be the one I found most attractive. I liked how it did the growing seasons. It required, quote:

...most crops to grow for 1.75 seasons and capable of sitting mature for a season. One may attempt to grow more than 1 harvest, but only through micromanagement.

I took a quick peek at your Excel sheet for planting and harvesting. But it looks like all of your above-ground crops require most of a full growing season. None of them seem to allow for more than one harvest. I'd rather have at least a few crops which allowed for a possibility of two harvests, even if that is not accurate.

Thanks for showing me these other mods, I was aware of some farming mods, but they all seemed outdated. I'll look through them and see if I find anything interesting. Also yes, my crops don't allow for two harvests a year, except on very rare occasions some tropical plants. However some plants for example the cereal crops have winter and spring crops allowing you to attain harvest throughout different seasons of the year, thus allowing for a steady supply if food if you are willing to allot more space for farming. This is what makes the mod more challenging as it requires you to manage different farm plots in such a manner that you have a steady supply of food throughout the year and where this is not possible increase farming of a specific plant to such a height it can supply your fortress throughout the year ready for the new harvest season.
EDIT: it might be useful to allow all dwarves to harvest, as it is the skill from the dwarf that plants the crop that determines how much of the plant is produced in that specific tile. This is to avoid plants disappearing(naturally whitering) because you can't bring in the harvest fast enough. Usually if you plant immediately when the new season appears you should have enough time to bring in the harvest. if you plant them at the end of the first month for some crops its hard to actually bring in the harvest, and this needs to be taken into account aswell. In regards to how many dwarves are allowed to plant crops and how many farm plots you have.

Edit:
I forgot to mention: Please consider adding a link to this forum topic on the DFFD download page for your mod. (It is traditional to put the forum link in the field titled "Home:", but anywhere would be great.) Some of us do not normally search the forums for new mods and, instead browse the DFFD to see what mods are new. So if we find a new mod without a link to the forum topic, we're likely to assume that one does not exist.

I'll do this as well. Thank you very much for the useful criticisms, its very helpful!

[Xilian]

The reason I always saw for aboveground plants not having seasonal restrictions even though underground ones do was more one of game balance. It takes a lot more effort to make and protect a farm aboveground than it does to dig out a 10x10 area of dirt and grow all the plump helmets you want. So when you do make an aboveground farm the benefit is bigger.

I think ThunderCraft already said most on this. but I would like to add that the farming system in itself currently is not at all balanced in that any type of farming gives way too many units of food. This is the issue addressed in this mod. Furthermore while you are correct that aboveground farms are harder because they need to be protected, it is safe to assume that with a default growdur of 300 as it is in vanilla this does not become an issue especially with sieges being seasonal as they are. This mod introduces the possibility of your farms being completely destroyed during a siege and thus introducing a famine by not having enough food that year.

[Thundercraft]

Currently I removed the weed blade grass and hide root, replaced it with madder root for a reddish dye, and woad for an indigo dye. I also added Saffron as a yellow dye. Mixing up different combinations of these three plants give a purple, green or orange dye.

Madder root, woad and saffron sound good. But, why remove weed blade grass and hide root? Is there anything wrong with having more than one possibility of the same color dye - two plants for red and two for indigo? (Nobody is forcing players to grow both weed blade grass and woad or both hide root and madder root.) At the very least, why not change weed blade grass so that it produces a blue-green or light blue dye instead of indigo? I'm of the opinion that more variety is usually a good thing.

I see your point and I moved most cereal crops to temperate regions, along with a lot of vegetable plants. However I think currently the balance is more to a 40/60 split in favour of temperate regions, but I haven't actually calculated it. I think that a lot of trees that give fruits are still in tropical regions. I also moved flax crop to temperate regions but most other fibrous crops are still in tropical regions. If there's too little variety in tropical regions I might have to make some changes. But keep in mind that in most regions generated in world gen that is not done through the tool Perfect world DF have very little tropical regions, even regions denoted as hot tend to end up temperate. If I could make plants appear according to temperature rather biomes I would.

On thinking about this crop temperate/tropical biome ratio issue some more, something occurred to me:

Why move a crop from tropical to temperate (or visa versa)? Instead, why not just add temperate biomes to tropical crops, allowing them to appear in both?

For example: Consider einkorn wheat. It has two biome tags:
[BIOME:GRASSLAND_TROPICAL][BIOME:SAVANNA_TROPICAL]

Doesn't this mean that crops and other plants can appear in multiple biomes, even very different biomes? I know that certain animals in DF can appear in a variety of very different biomes, having a multitude of biome tags like above.

You did point out that, without using a tool like Perfect World, maps in DF generally have very little tropical regions. However, I consider this a very weak argument. Indeed, tropical rainforests cover a very small percent of the Earth's land. But, despite being so small, about half of the world's species of plants are found there:
savetheamazon.org > Rainforest Statistics

Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6%...

Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microoganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to Rainforest deforestation.
Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year...

At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.

...Of the above, I think New Seasonal Crops may be the one I found most attractive. I liked how it did the growing seasons. It required, quote:

...most crops to grow for 1.75 seasons and capable of sitting mature for a season. One may attempt to grow more than 1 harvest, but only through micromanagement.

EDIT: it might be useful to allow all dwarves to harvest, as it is the skill from the dwarf that plants the crop that determines how much of the plant is produced in that specific tile. This is to avoid plants disappearing(naturally whitering) because you can't bring in the harvest fast enough.

Could you, perhaps, incorporate New Seasonal Crops's feature of sitting mature for a season? Shouldn't that allow dwarves plenty of time to harvest crops before they wither and die?

Also yes, my crops don't allow for two harvests a year, except on very rare occasions some tropical plants. However some plants for example the cereal crops have winter and spring crops allowing you to attain harvest throughout different seasons of the year, thus allowing for a steady supply if food if you are willing to allot more space for farming. This is what makes the mod more challenging as it requires you to manage different farm plots in such a manner that you have a steady supply of food throughout the year and where this is not possible increase farming of a specific plant to such a height it can supply your fortress throughout the year ready for the new harvest season.

I'm all for making farming in DF more challenging and more realistic. However, as it often is with games, players have different ideas of what is challenging and they have different preferences when it comes to game difficulty. At least, as you point out, it is (barely) possible to have spring and winter crops by growing certain different (cereal) crops in different plots. Still... Is there no room for at least one or two crops that could be planted at a certain time (perhaps exclusive to a tropical biome) that could (barely) yield two harvests...? 

[Xilian]

Madder root, woad and saffron sound good. But, why remove weed blade grass and hide root? Is there anything wrong with having more than one possibility of the same color dye - two plants for red and two for indigo? (Nobody is forcing players to grow both weed blade grass and woad or both hide root and madder root.) At the very least, why not change weed blade grass so that it produces a blue-green or light blue dye instead of indigo? I'm of the opinion that more variety is usually a good thing.

I removed weed blade grass and hide root because they're not historically accurate. all the dyes currently except for dimple cups are. Dimple cups will eventually be replaced by lichen based dyes, at least such is the plan. New natural dyes will indeed be added for more variety in the same colours, they had multiple different ways to make for example yellow, red and blue dyes. Green dyes specifically will likely not see a dye that comes directly from one plant, but will be made as it currently is as a mix of multiple plants. Green dyes were notoriously hard to come by and often required multiple dyes to produce. Currently three dyes already exist that are sourced by mixing a combination of either woad, madder or saffron plants. Bottom line, yes more dyes are definitely on the schedule for an update.

On thinking about this crop temperate/tropical biome ratio issue some more, something occurred to me:

Why move a crop from tropical to temperate (or visa versa)? Instead, why not just add temperate biomes to tropical crops, allowing them to appear in both?

For example: Consider einkorn wheat. It has two biome tags:
[BIOME:GRASSLAND_TROPICAL][BIOME:SAVANNA_TROPICAL]

Doesn't this mean that crops and other plants can appear in multiple biomes, even very different biomes? I know that certain animals in DF can appear in a variety of very different biomes, having a multitude of biome tags like above.

You did point out that, without using a tool like Perfect World, maps in DF generally have very little tropical regions. However, I consider this a very weak argument. Indeed, tropical rainforests cover a very small percent of the Earth's land. But, despite being so small, about half of the world's species of plants are found there:
savetheamazon.org > Rainforest Statistics

Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6%...

Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microoganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to Rainforest deforestation.
Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year...

At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.

Most cereal crops actually don't do entirely too well in tropical regions, but some forms of millet, rice, maize and some african grasses already grow only in tropical regions. I currently have no plans to move around plants to appear in both tropical and temperate regions(except possibly the grasslands, savannas and woodlands), although it is entirely reasonable that forms of temperate crops grow well in tropical regions, and this is actually the case. However there is a simple reason I would rather avoid this, and this also tackles the tropical regions have the most variety of plant life. This is definitely the case. However, most tropical regions, and in particular the rainforest regions are not specifically known for farming crops, most of these so called cradles of civilisations that started out agricultural life were located in temperate regions.

I'm all for making farming in DF more challenging and more realistic. However, as it often is with games, players have different ideas of what is challenging and they have different preferences when it comes to game difficulty. At least, as you point out, it is (barely) possible to have spring and winter crops by growing certain different (cereal) crops in different plots. Still... Is there no room for at least one or two crops that could be planted at a certain time (perhaps exclusive to a tropical biome) that could (barely) yield two harvests...? 

Challenge in games is definitely subjective to the player, and in this case I'll justify my choices by my own preference of what is challenging. I'd rather not have crops that can be planted twice a season because for me that's simply not challenging. Leaving crops for over a maturing season is also a problem, I only have four seasons to play with and a lot of plants are already growing through 3 seasons, adding a fourth would make them plantable all year round and no more attention will need to be paid to when planting and harvesting seasons come around. This goes against the problems this mod aims to tackle. That said there are already exceptions to this rule. Pearl millet for example is growable year round and only requires 4 months to grow. Some crops even had to have season extensions because realism made them plantable throughout 3 seasons yet only required them to be grown for 4 months, like maize. Perhaps this is not entirely balanced and I will have to deal with that on a case by case basis. It has definitely not evaded my concern though.

Once more thanks for the insightful comments!

[Padsparadscha]

Hello!  I was playing around with this on 44.11 -- it works fine in that respect, incidentally -- but I noticed that, no matter what I did, I couldn't brew dwarven rum or beer, despite having plenty of cave wheat seeds/sweet pod seeds lying around.  I took a poke around in the raws and found that

Code: [Select]

[REACTION_CLASS:CEREAL_CROP] was missing from both of their seed profiles.  Adding that in fixed the issue.  Thanks for your work on this mod -- I really enjoy the added challenge to an otherwise cakewalk of a mechanic, and the new dyes are fantastic.

[Xilian]

V1.0.1 released.

[Xilian]

Hello!  I was playing around with this on 44.11 -- it works fine in that respect, incidentally -- but I noticed that, no matter what I did, I couldn't brew dwarven rum or beer, despite having plenty of cave wheat seeds/sweet pod seeds lying around.  I took a poke around in the raws and found that

Code: [Select]

[REACTION_CLASS:CEREAL_CROP] was missing from both of their seed profiles.  Adding that in fixed the issue.  Thanks for your work on this mod -- I really enjoy the added challenge to an otherwise cakewalk of a mechanic, and the new dyes are fantastic.

Thanks for pointing this out to me, I released a new version in which this is fixed. Glad to hear you're enjoying the added challenge!

[Xilian]

v.1.1.0 Released

v.1.1.0
#General rule of thumb: feeding a dwarf on average for a year requires 1 tile, providing alcohol also requires 1 tile, providing sufficient clothing requires 1 tile. More skilled farmers will require less land, while unskilled farmers will require more land.
   - Gave unprocessable fruits and vegetables the appropriate tags to process them
   - Added reactions to process fruits and vegetables into their appropriate growths
   - Overhauled the balance of reactions creating food and drink
   - Cereal crops are now the best source of food
   - Fruits and Vegetables can supplement a diet, but require a lot more land to provide a single dwarf with a year's worth of needs.

The mod should be a lot more balanced now, and most if not all plants should now be farmable.

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

Madder root, woad and saffron sound good. But, why remove weed blade grass and hide root? Is there anything wrong with having more than one possibility of the same color dye - two plants for red and two for indigo? (Nobody is forcing players to grow both weed blade grass and woad or both hide root and madder root.) At the very least, why not change weed blade grass so that it produces a blue-green or light blue dye instead of indigo? I'm of the opinion that more variety is usually a good thing.

I removed weed blade grass and hide root because they're not historically accurate. all the dyes currently except for dimple cups are. Dimple cups will eventually be replaced by lichen based dyes, at least such is the plan. New natural dyes will indeed be added for more variety in the same colours, they had multiple different ways to make for example yellow, red and blue dyes. Green dyes specifically will likely not see a dye that comes directly from one plant, but will be made as it currently is as a mix of multiple plants. Green dyes were notoriously hard to come by and often required multiple dyes to produce. Currently three dyes already exist that are sourced by mixing a combination of either woad, madder or saffron plants. Bottom line, yes more dyes are definitely on the schedule for an update.

On thinking about this crop temperate/tropical biome ratio issue some more, something occurred to me:

Why move a crop from tropical to temperate (or visa versa)? Instead, why not just add temperate biomes to tropical crops, allowing them to appear in both?

For example: Consider einkorn wheat. It has two biome tags:
[BIOME:GRASSLAND_TROPICAL][BIOME:SAVANNA_TROPICAL]

Doesn't this mean that crops and other plants can appear in multiple biomes, even very different biomes? I know that certain animals in DF can appear in a variety of very different biomes, having a multitude of biome tags like above.

You did point out that, without using a tool like Perfect World, maps in DF generally have very little tropical regions. However, I consider this a very weak argument. Indeed, tropical rainforests cover a very small percent of the Earth's land. But, despite being so small, about half of the world's species of plants are found there:
savetheamazon.org > Rainforest Statistics

Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6%...

Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microoganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to Rainforest deforestation.
Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year...

At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.

Most cereal crops actually don't do entirely too well in tropical regions, but some forms of millet, rice, maize and some african grasses already grow only in tropical regions. I currently have no plans to move around plants to appear in both tropical and temperate regions(except possibly the grasslands, savannas and woodlands), although it is entirely reasonable that forms of temperate crops grow well in tropical regions, and this is actually the case. However there is a simple reason I would rather avoid this, and this also tackles the tropical regions have the most variety of plant life. This is definitely the case. However, most tropical regions, and in particular the rainforest regions are not specifically known for farming crops, most of these so called cradles of civilisations that started out agricultural life were located in temperate regions.

I'm all for making farming in DF more challenging and more realistic. However, as it often is with games, players have different ideas of what is challenging and they have different preferences when it comes to game difficulty. At least, as you point out, it is (barely) possible to have spring and winter crops by growing certain different (cereal) crops in different plots. Still... Is there no room for at least one or two crops that could be planted at a certain time (perhaps exclusive to a tropical biome) that could (barely) yield two harvests...? 

Challenge in games is definitely subjective to the player, and in this case I'll justify my choices by my own preference of what is challenging. I'd rather not have crops that can be planted twice a season because for me that's simply not challenging. Leaving crops for over a maturing season is also a problem, I only have four seasons to play with and a lot of plants are already growing through 3 seasons, adding a fourth would make them plantable all year round and no more attention will need to be paid to when planting and harvesting seasons come around. This goes against the problems this mod aims to tackle. That said there are already exceptions to this rule. Pearl millet for example is growable year round and only requires 4 months to grow. Some crops even had to have season extensions because realism made them plantable throughout 3 seasons yet only required them to be grown for 4 months, like maize. Perhaps this is not entirely balanced and I will have to deal with that on a case by case basis. It has definitely not evaded my concern though.

Once more thanks for the insightful comments!

Trolls also not historical, why you dont' remove tjem? Also you broke normal reactions. So, I will make my own mod about farming. With blackjack and... You undersyand.