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[SixOfSpades]

A small number of large creatures deals with a shortage of food better than the equivalent biomass of smaller creatures

This is actually 100% wrong. Let's compare an elephant, and a group of rabbits that collectively consume as much food as said elephant. If the supply of food drops by 50%, half of the rabbits (maybe a bit more) will starve, but the other half will do just fine, and the warren hops along at 50% capacity until the local ecosystem recovers. But the elephant will just flat-out die, no questions asked. That's why small animals are far more likely to survive mass extinctions that completely wipe out the far larger lifeforms that were dominant just a few years before.

Problem is nothing is in any real rush to reproduce in an environment which is both static and energy scarce

I for one am getting reeeally tired of you assuming that DF caverns should be sterile and barren simply because RL caverns are. Practically every single tile, of practically every single embark, on practically every single world generated, hosts at least ONE cavern whose biosphere is every bit as lush, and nearly as diverse, as the sunlit world above. If you're so sure it should be otherwise, then just man up and start a new thread, asking Toady for an advanced worldgen option that prohibits life in wet caverns as well as dry. But beyond that, please take your opinion and store it, appropriately enough, where the sun does not shine.

[Bumber]

Or plant/fungal reproductive cycles. Or ambient magic cycles.

But, of course, none of this has to do with tea. Dwarves drink alcohol because plump helmets can apparently be brewed into alcohol, and any explanations are superfluous, especially if plump helmets don't exist in non-magic worlds.

Even if plump helmets exist, they would still need scarce nutrients to grow; limiting their number. 

It is apparent that there's magic involved, and energy isn't really so scarce.

[Batgirl1]

Suppose Tea is to Water what a Masterwork Meal is to a normal meal, i.e. "same but tastier/higher value"?  It would thus be preferred over water, maybe giving a happy thought for flavor, but still pale in comparison to booze. 

I also like the idea of herbal infusions being fed to hospital patients.

[GoblinCookie]

This is actually 100% wrong. Let's compare an elephant, and a group of rabbits that collectively consume as much food as said elephant. If the supply of food drops by 50%, half of the rabbits (maybe a bit more) will starve, but the other half will do just fine, and the warren hops along at 50% capacity until the local ecosystem recovers. But the elephant will just flat-out die, no questions asked. That's why small animals are far more likely to survive mass extinctions that completely wipe out the far larger lifeforms that were dominant just a few years before.

No, if the supply of food simply drops by half, then all the rabbits end up eating 50% of the food they need which means that all the rabbits die.  Same principle applies then to a single elephant as applies to a group of rabbits. 

The actual reason small animals survive mass extinctions better is that reproduction requires proximity between creatures.  Very large creatures require a large amount of land per creature and that drives them apart, which means is something kills off a large portion of the large creatures there is a good probability the survivors will be too far apart for them to reproduce well enough to replace their losses. 

I for one am getting reeeally tired of you assuming that DF caverns should be sterile and barren simply because RL caverns are. Practically every single tile, of practically every single embark, on practically every single world generated, hosts at least ONE cavern whose biosphere is every bit as lush, and nearly as diverse, as the sunlit world above. If you're so sure it should be otherwise, then just man up and start a new thread, asking Toady for an advanced worldgen option that prohibits life in wet caverns as well as dry. But beyond that, please take your opinion and store it, appropriately enough, where the sun does not shine.

Real-life caverns are not all sterile and barren. 

As the caverns in the world are generic and the same with exactly the same lifeforms; I don't take this to be the final state of things.  Some caverns would realistically be barren and others would have varying amounts of life in them.

Suppose Tea is to Water what a Masterwork Meal is to a normal meal, i.e. "same but tastier/higher value"?  It would thus be preferred over water, maybe giving a happy thought for flavor, but still pale in comparison to booze. 

I also like the idea of herbal infusions being fed to hospital patients.

I think that tea is basically similar to booze, tea leaves+water are processed into tea which is then drunk.  The only real difference is the AI needs to understand the differences between the two things, requiring a different category but mechanically there need be little difference. 

[SixOfSpades]

The actual reason small animals survive mass extinctions better is that reproduction requires proximity between creatures.  Very large creatures require a large amount of land per creature and that drives them apart, which means is something kills off a large portion of the large creatures there is a good probability the survivors will be too far apart for them to reproduce well enough to replace their losses.

Wow.    Seriously, wow. I mean, yeah, I knew you weren't going to admit to having made a rookie mistake with food consumption (not even an understandable & forgivable one, since we know that Biology is not your field), but I wasn't expecting you to triple-down on your assumption and full-out imply that the dinosaurs went extinct because they all simultaneously forgot that they could walk in order to find mates. Thank you for that, you made my morning.

Perhaps in the future, you'll at least consider changing your theories to fit the facts?
But anyway. The title of the thread is "Tea". I shall devote the remainder of my posts here to the discussion of plants and plant-related nonalcoholic beverages, and let us see if you choose to do likewise.

*          *           *

It seems wrong to add plants' medicinal qualities to the game without also considering their harmful ones, especially considering that the only difference between a healing remedy and a fatal poison is frequently just a small question of dosage. The wide majority of anesthetics & antibiotics are essentially toxins, and very dangerous in nonexpert hands. Relatively untrained Herbologists / Apothecaries / whatever-they-get-called might begin by deliberately erring on the safe side of caution, administering doses too small to really do much of anything (but they'll still take full credit if the patient lives).

Dwarves might drink tea for its novelty value (it might take on an "exotic" cachet), for the sake of being polite to visiting elven diplomats (or would elves instead be offended by the needless consumption of leaves?), or simply because they want to drink something hot, especially in cold climates. Plus the already-remarked-upon benefit that tea and coffee can be prepared while the drinker is thirsty, which alcoholic drinks cannot. People of all races might drink it without even really needing a reason: It's far safer to drink than plain water usually is, so they associate it with a sense of safety, and perhaps even luxury. If the drinking of tea/coffee becomes widespread enough to become customary, then soon it will be those who don't drink it who will have to explain their choice.

[Batgirl1]

Ease of creation is probably be the heavy hitter in balancing water/tea/booze. Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.

[Rowanas]

Ease of creation is probably be the heavy hitter in balancing water/tea/booze. Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.

We already have such an overabundance of resources that making another source of mass food/drink for cheap is probably an awful, awful plan. Generally, if you have the barrels, plants and workshops up to make tea, you would have the same to make booze, or be so close that the difference is negligible.  no fortress ever runs out of booze on account of anything (unless the barrels have all been claimed by some other process).

[therahedwig]

So, perhaps then, we should assume the food industry overhaul(at the very least the nerfing of farming) is in place or at the least is the devcycle in which tea would be best implemented?

[Batgirl1]

Ease of creation is probably be the heavy hitter in balancing water/tea/booze. Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.

We already have such an overabundance of resources that making another source of mass food/drink for cheap is probably an awful, awful plan. Generally, if you have the barrels, plants and workshops up to make tea, you would have the same to make booze, or be so close that the difference is negligible.  no fortress ever runs out of booze on account of anything (unless the barrels have all been claimed by some other process).

A good point, so perhaps the solution is to make booze production harder (longer time, less yield, and/or more steps in the process) while tea takes on the methods booze currently uses, maybe even a little easier, for a resulting product that is about on par with well water.

[Rowanas]

Ease of creation is probably be the heavy hitter in balancing water/tea/booze. Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.

We already have such an overabundance of resources that making another source of mass food/drink for cheap is probably an awful, awful plan. Generally, if you have the barrels, plants and workshops up to make tea, you would have the same to make booze, or be so close that the difference is negligible.  no fortress ever runs out of booze on account of anything (unless the barrels have all been claimed by some other process).

A good point, so perhaps the solution is to make booze production harder (longer time, less yield, and/or more steps in the process) while tea takes on the methods booze currently uses, maybe even a little easier, for a resulting product that is about on par with well water.

That would be reasonable - it moderates the vast booze production problem and gives less valuable drinks a niche in the early fortress, at the very least.  It may even be the case that a stable but not overproductive fortress will only have dwarves drink alcohol every two or three times in order to keep their mood up, while supplementing their alcohol intake with lesser fluids.

[SixOfSpades]

. . . tea takes on the methods booze currently uses, maybe even a little easier, for a resulting product that is about on par with well water.

That raises an interesting tangent--what exactly is the value of well water? Since wells require Architecture and can be admired, the "happy" thought/stress relief gained no only largely outweighs the drawbacks of "being forced" to drink water, but is also directly proportional to the money spent (building material cost) on keeping your dwarves clean & hydrated. In other words, the dwarves feel better about the luxury of the water than they do about the water itself. If such things as fantastically beautiful fountains (specifically designed for sentients to drink from) existed in-game, dwarves might even enjoy drinking there even more than consuming some good booze (providing that the water is of good quality, of course).
 
IMO, tea and coffee represent a similar "status symbol check": They symbolize that the drinker is worthy of having drinks made for them. In most cultures, if you invited someone over to your house and then offered them nothing but tap water to drink, that could be construed as an insult, or at least a sign that you are an impolite host. To show proper decorum, you must offer beverages that would cost money in a store or restaurant. That's what dwarves want. They want an effort to have been made to please them. A bed, a chair, a table, a mug--it doesn't matter how good or how expensive it is, as long as it shows that they are part of a proud, dignified society, whose members don't have to go without the cultured things in life.

[GoblinCookie]

Wow.    Seriously, wow. I mean, yeah, I knew you weren't going to admit to having made a rookie mistake with food consumption (not even an understandable & forgivable one, since we know that Biology is not your field), but I wasn't expecting you to triple-down on your assumption and full-out imply that the dinosaurs went extinct because they all simultaneously forgot that they could walk in order to find mates. Thank you for that, you made my morning.

Perhaps in the future, you'll at least consider changing your theories to fit the facts?
But anyway. The title of the thread is "Tea". I shall devote the remainder of my posts here to the discussion of plants and plant-related nonalcoholic beverages, and let us see if you choose to do likewise.

It is a fact that a larger creature consumes less food than a quantity of smaller creatures that weighs as much as it does.  That means that a low amount of food in an environment does not mean that larger creatures cannot exist; so my entire argument was based upon the facts of the matter.

You made a very basic rookie mistake when you claimed that if we have 50% of the food a population of creatures need it means that half of them get enough to eat and half of them starve.  That is a basic mathematical error.  Creatures also cannot spend all day 'walking to find mates', even if they are intelligent enough to do that because they have to do other things to survive and as the population density decreases the search-time goes up exponentially. 
In any case, the subject of discussion was tea and not how much you're in-hate with me. 

Ease of creation is probably be the heavy hitter in balancing water/tea/booze. Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.

The other issue is the strength of the tea, weak tea takes less leaves to make than stronger tea.

So, perhaps then, we should assume the food industry overhaul(at the very least the nerfing of farming) is in place or at the least is the devcycle in which tea would be best implemented?

It doesn't need to be implemented at that time, as the interesting part of tea is the status/custom elements not the item which isn't so different from the present drinks. 

[SixOfSpades]

. . . you claimed that if we have 50% of the food a population of creatures need it means that half of them get enough to eat and half of them starve.

I already acknowledged that point back in my post of the 13th, when I admitted that a bit more than 50% of the rabbits could starve, because obviously the weaker ones aren't going to just give up & die, they're going to glean what food they can--even if it's not enough for them to survive on, even if it means causing the death of another rabbit that might otherwise live. But for the most part, some rabbits will be simply more fit to obtain food, and because they obtained food when their counterparts did not, that simply widens the disparity. The weaker ones die off, while the fittest survive. Your claim that "all the rabbits end up eating 50% of the food they need which means that all the rabbits die" flies directly in the face of one of the fundamental tenets of biology, and yet you presume to try to lecture me on a subject on which you have no support but the strength of your own ego.

In any case, the subject of discussion was tea and not how much you're in-hate with me.

Posting to state a correction to a chunk of assumptions and misinformation does not smack of being "in-hate" (in my opinion, at least).
But good on you for at least pretending to want to be on-topic.

Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.

The other issue is the strength of the tea, weak tea takes less leaves to make than stronger tea.

I'm not sure "strength" is what we should be aiming for, when we already have the variable of species (and perhaps *quality*) to deal with. Considering the several types of non-tea plants that are used to make tea-type infusions in RL (and we might get many more in-game), I expect we'll see several "recipes" for such drinks, some of which would be naturally stronger than others--and some of these recipes might call for larger quantities of the less-concentrated plants (or even combine with them with different plants), to make them stronger or more flavorful. Conversely, some of the more potent leaves might prompt recipes that include additives such as milk, honey, or lemon juice to improve (or at least cut) the taste a bit.

[GoblinCookie]

I already acknowledged that point back in my post of the 13th, when I admitted that a bit more than 50% of the rabbits could starve, because obviously the weaker ones aren't going to just give up & die, they're going to glean what food they can--even if it's not enough for them to survive on, even if it means causing the death of another rabbit that might otherwise live. But for the most part, some rabbits will be simply more fit to obtain food, and because they obtained food when their counterparts did not, that simply widens the disparity. The weaker ones die off, while the fittest survive. Your claim that "all the rabbits end up eating 50% of the food they need which means that all the rabbits die" flies directly in the face of one of the fundamental tenets of biology, and yet you presume to try to lecture me on a subject on which you have no support but the strength of your own ego.

The fundamental tenets of biology are not based upon basic mathematical illogic Six of Spades, biologists aren't that stupid.

If you are better at finding food that does not mean that there *is* more food, if there are twice as many rabbits as food the rabbits that are better at finding food end up simply increasing the % of the food they get at the expense of all the other rabbits; functionally that means they simply starve to death slower by causing the others to starve to death quicker.  That is because if an individual rabbit is as much as 20% better at finding food, that means they are only getting 60% of the food they need causing them to still die.  The tendency of random distributions in populations is towards the mean, not towards the extremes, a rabbit that is 20% better at finding food is many times more improbable than a 10% better and a rabbit that is 40% better than the mean is many times more improbable again.

It gets worse for your rabbits, since as a result of their being more rabbits than food, the rabbits end up eating 100% of the food that is available.  This results in them wiping out all the plants they eat, turning the whole place into a barren wasteland where no number of rabbits can survive at all.  That means that even if somehow a few of the rabbits managed to survive at the expense of all other rabbits by being vastly better at finding food, those rabbits would still end up dying because there isn't any food left for them to eat however good they are at finding it.  Not only therefore are your super-rabbits highly improbable, but they also have to contend with the fact that by the time all the other rabbits have starved to death, there is simply no food left to eat.

If we somehow get past the wasteland problem, we face a third problem.  The whole situation now will happen all over again, but this time all your rabbits are now uniformly super-rabbits, the first time round a few rabbits survived by being incredibly better at finding food than the other rabbits but as already mentioned they did not actually create any more food.  Once the original situation (twice as many rabbits as food) happens all over again, we find all the rabbits are on a virtually even playing field and hence they all starve to death as one; since all genetic diversity in finding food efficiency was eliminated by the deaths of all rabbits that weren't super-rabbits.

However there is a key difference between a shortage of food brought about by a temporary environmental conditions (say a drought) and a shortage of food brought about simply by the numbers of a creature being too great for it's environment in general.  In the former case, the one that is the best at not-starving can actually win because if they can wait out the catastrophe they can emerge in a revitalised environment on the other end.  In *that* case however, generally the larger creatures are favored, the reason is that all else being equal, larger creatures starve to death slower because of their slower metabolism and their ability to steal food from other creatures (or sometimes outright cannibalize them) is greater. 

However larger creatures are vulnerable to things which outright kill them rather than to shortages.  Things like disease, natural disasters and predators will kill off a good proportion of the total population regardless of how well-fed they are.  In those instances smaller creatures are favored, because there is a necessary population density per area for the population of any creature to be viable from a reproductive standpoint (it is not quite as simple as not finding mates, but that is part of the problem).  Since the density is the same regardless of the size of the creature, smaller creatures are favoured since they can have a higher density before the catastrophe meaning a higher density after it. 

Posting to state a correction to a chunk of assumptions and misinformation does not smack of being "in-hate" (in my opinion, at least).
But good on you for at least pretending to want to be on-topic.

It was vaguely about the efficiency of tea vs alcohol given the carbohydrate scarcity of the dwarves general environment in fantasy, caverns+mountains.  You cannot bear the fact that I have a different POV to you, that has been quite clear to me for a time from when you made a mental list of all the times we have disagreed before and kept digging it up.  Considering other people's opinions and arguments in order to give relevant responses rather than simply dismissing them as assumptions+misinformation is a good first step to recovery from your "in-hateness".

I'm not sure "strength" is what we should be aiming for, when we already have the variable of species (and perhaps *quality*) to deal with. Considering the several types of non-tea plants that are used to make tea-type infusions in RL (and we might get many more in-game), I expect we'll see several "recipes" for such drinks, some of which would be naturally stronger than others--and some of these recipes might call for larger quantities of the less-concentrated plants (or even combine with them with different plants), to make them stronger or more flavorful. Conversely, some of the more potent leaves might prompt recipes that include additives such as milk, honey, or lemon juice to improve (or at least cut) the taste a bit.

The same principle would apply to alcoholic beverages.  I suppose I was opening a can of worms when I mentioned the strength of tea.   

[SixOfSpades]

The same principle would apply to alcoholic beverages.  I suppose I was opening a can of worms when I mentioned the strength of tea.   

True, just like DF has no separate variables for how "juicy" or "marbled" a cut of meat is, or how "fresh" or "bursting with flavor" the veggies are, etc.-- it's all just *quality*, and that's good enough for the likes of us. If we want to introduce quality levels for tea, we'll just say that the Herbalist picked the leaves when they were at the right/wrong point in development (for that kind of tea), or dried & processed them correctly/incorrectly, etc.

But as for all the biology-related stuff, you'll have to move it to a separate thread if you want me to read it, as it has no place here.