I haven't had problems with making rice wine. It's made from Rice Plants, while the seeds are called only Rice (and can't be brewed), according to the UI in my fortress (I don't have any Rice Wine at the moment, though, but Rice Plant is marked by the UI as Brewable, and I've had a fortress where I did at least once have every kind of booze on the wiki it the same time). Rice is ANY_TROPICAL according to the wiki.
I mentioned biome of rice, because I thought it could be the reason I can't plant it. But I don't know why I can't plant it. Rice doesn't appear in my list of plants in the farm plot, even though plants like sliver barbs or sun berries appear. Rice bought from merchants can't be milled, can't be brewed, and can't be planted (maybe its GMO). This particular world was created in v0.44.10, maybe there was or is a bug of some kind, though the RAWs for rice seem to be identical between v0.44.10 and v0.44.12.
Banana beer can only be produced from elven imports because of a bug that causes "trees" that don't produce wood to never appear in an embark even if it should. Hacking Banana to produce wood allows it to appear in suitable embarks, though.
But what if you elves don't bring bananas? You looking for another embark?
Mead can be used for cooking, but the DFHack interface for it doesn't support it, possibly because it's produced from honey via a reaction rather than through normal brewing of a plant. I believe my script can use mead, though, although I haven't been able to verify it. I haven't tried to set up a use of it the "normal" way (that's mikekchar's domain...).
I'm a "micromanager", so manually setting input is enough for me. Maybe it would be hard if I had access to all alcohol related plants, but as it happens, I have only about 15 alcohol types on average, and peak at 20. So my way is to use ALT+S to set the input in the kitchen job, then chosen alcohol in the fourth slot (which will give name to the roast), another plentiful alcohol in the third slot (for quantity), and optionally other plentiful items in the second or first slots (tallow, meat from a giant animal, quarry bushes). This way I often gets stack of 50-80 roasts containing and named after a single alcohol. It would be a fraud in real life (like liquor chocolates which contain only 1% of liquor), but dwarves like that.
The underlying problem is lack of access to the ingredients, i.e. alcohols or their components.
A problem is that elves bring only fruit, which means they leave out berries (such a Sun Berries, should they have access to Good biomes). Since I embark in a good savage embark (with a slice of evil for Gutter Cruor and Glumprong) I typically don't have any problem with this one.
Well, my dwarves want 78 alcohols. The game contains 77 of them, the missing one is bumblebee mead. But a single alcohol is wanted by maximum of ten dwarves, and a minimum of one. (the only one wanted by ten is turnip wine, I suppose they are more like gnomes than dwarves). Since I have at most 20 of them, and only rarely, I won't be able to fulfil their needs this way.
I think that your goal to have every alcohol is very ambitious, but it's somehow which is hardly possible without careful selection of embark place (to get many different biomes), luck and some modding. There seems to be a limit of species of plants available. For example I would expect whip vine in a savage biome, but I get it about half the time.
It's most impressive if you are able to achieve production of all required alcohols.
I've considered whether there's a need/use for a script that would replace specific food preferences with the generic animal one (i.e. cow, rather than cow heart) matching what the UI displays, and a vermin one with a randomly selected real creature, and possibly add a random food preference if the number of food preferences is zero.
Is it possible to have preference for animal and not for a part of it at all?
I've got only one dwarf with no food/drink (or any other) preferences. It is a hillock dwarf, the first one obtained from hillocks. All other 357 dwarves have one alcohol preference, and sometimes other food preferences, but not alcohol. So the only dwarf without preferences is certainly a bug, and normally all creatures have one alcohol preference, and random number of other food/non-alcohol drinks preferences, if any.
If I were making script adding preferences, I would maybe omit dwarves who do not have need to eat decent meal, and would certainly not add impossible meals (which could be tricky, maybe choose from something which already is in the fortress instead of total randomness?). The one dwarf with no preferences I got does have such a need, and it can never be fulfilled of course, but still is happy enough.
I have to admit that I've never run a fortress with more than about 120 dwarfs. I think the needs system in general would make it impossible to satisfy 350 dwarfs in just about anything. However, there are special challenges for a large fortress like that.
When I look at my dwarfs, about 80% of them have either a food *or* a drink that is obtainable. 20% have all foods/drinks that are unobtainable. The order screen from the dwarf caravan is crucial -- you have to order ahead of time to ensure that you get as much as you can. And then for fruits, you have to trade with the elves. Living in a biome that grows many plants is helpful too. You should also try to get as much livestock as possible for making various cheeses -- again, for some animals order from the dwarfs and for others get what you can from the elves. You can even grow livestock for meat and catch whatever fish you can get in your biome.
Finally get various things from the humans.
I think that here is where the luck strikes first - if you had such poor elves as mine, you would curse their race. There's also issue with ordering - I tend to become mountainhome quite quickly. But probably most important is that 10 dwarves can like something unobtainable, while 1 can like your main export wine...
With a smaller fortress the above is manageable (even without scripts) because it's all about setup. You start with 7 dwarfs and you make sure that you have access to as much food as possible for them. Then as you get migrants, you have to keep improving your setup. It takes hours (like everything in DF), but once you have it set up, there isn't that much you need to do. However, with 350 dwarfs (especially if you are just starting to set it up now), then you are in for a world of hurt. I even limit my migrants to 10 or so per year so I have time to set up everything for their needs.
I agree that script is not needed in smaller fort, if you care about some micromanaging (as I do), but my point is also that you need some luck in addition to work. I have nothing against more work with setup personally.
The other problem with a really large fortress is that you are probably going to want multiple kitchens, multiple farms, multiple breweries, etc, etc. It's going to cover a large area. I think there is considerable possibility that even if you make all the food you need, you won't easily be able to store your food in a small enough area that the dwarfs will search for the food they want. Or if you do, it won't be possible to get the distribution to the kitchens right so that you can hack the production methods.
One kitchen is enough for this number of dwarves (I have two kitchens, but they often are unoccupied, and roasts are what buys me iron and steel). As for still, I had to make a fourth one after including alcohols in meals, though two working full time and one part-time are generally enough for drinks if I don't care about their type too much. For storage I use quantum stockpiles.
Farming would be harder if I had access to more seeds, but for general food and alcohol production 10 farms 7 tiles each seem sufficient. I added 5 more for rare alcohols. Don't have more seeds. I also have gathering zones (mostly for fruit), it also fulfils need for wander.
So I can definitely see that for your fortress it's probably going to be very difficult or impossible to fulfil their food needs. That doesn't mean it's impossible to satisfy the majority of food needs in general, though.
I made some statistics with my population, and it seems that:
~19% of dwarves have access to their favourite alcohol (including these made from entirely imported ingredients)
~10% of dwarves do not have a need to eat decent meals (they still have good thought after eating it)
~10% of dwarves do not have a need to drink alcohol (they still have good thought after drinking)
One alcohol is favoured by 1-10 dwarves, with 4.5 being avarage (this is for 350+ dwarves).
All except one of not needing decent meals also don't need alcohol, officially. One doesn't have to drink, but has to eat.
I have bad luck with alcohols needed, because the most produced are below the average request level, except dwarven rum and alcohol from potato. But for instance this potato alcohol (I named it vodka) is as much favoured as mead, which is more hard to obtain in large number (there are dwarves who love honey).
There are 78 possible needs in regard to alcohol, with one impossible to make (bumblebee mead), and several rather restricted. Some of these restrictions are from bugs, when it's impossible to culture needed plants, some are bad luck (merchant's and own biomes), and some are by design (limited number of plants in a biome).
I buy almost every plant, and most foods, except those I make on site. I admit that my elves are the worst possible, with very poor choice of both plants and animals (they like to bring domesticated animals like llamas or duck instead of cool stuff, and crappy plants), but merchants of humans and dwarves seem standard. So from these numbers I'd say that is impossible to fulfil needs of most, unless lucky (if they like dwarven ale all, or something other easy to acquire), though probably bigger fort makes this harder.
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Topic: What is a "decent meal"? (Read 17128 times)