...Necro...
Now, improved farming won't be in the upcoming version, but it is #10 on eternal suggestions voting, and Toady has said he's going to review the top ~10 for the next series of releases.
The suggestion itself says: “Adding things such as Soil Deprivation, watering of plants (or other irrigation), weeding, longer growing seasons, and the like in an attempt to make farming more interesting, a little more difficult (balance it out somewhat in the process), and make it more realistic.”
I'm going to focus on “more difficult/balanced”, and only incidentally touch on “more interesting/realistic” since some people are opposed to that; but there is a clear consensus that farming is too easy. However, people have different ideas why and to what extent.
So basically, this will be a series of four summary/discussion posts (apologies in advance) addressing what I think are the central themes that emerged in this thread, more than a year ago. Hopefully we'll get a sense of what's changed since then and where people are at. Is it possible to reach a consensus on improved farming – not a plan that panders to all the hugely disparate viewpoints, but at least a set of parameters for improvement that everyone would accept?
I. Current problems.
A. Easy to set up farms. In the transition to the 3D version, we lost a bunch. It's still possible to flood an area of rock to make farmable land – in fact, it might even be easier, since you don't even need to get to a cave river to do it. More important is that soil layers now let us have a farm set up within a couple of game days of embark that could sustain pretty much any size the fortress grows to.
B. A fortress can be fed from a tiny farm. Even with dabbling farmers you can survive on a 1 dwarf to 1 tile farm ratio. There is also such a disparity between dabbling and legendary growers that as they improve, you can keep feeding more and more dwarves from the same sized farm. You don't need to expand to keep up with your population. This may not reflect reality, where the grower has far less influence on the crop than environmental factors.
C. Overall balance problem. This also involves food, stacking and the details of farming. In the current version it seems like growing seasons are too short, it's possible to have too many crops per year, and not enough effort is put into tending crops... but these may all just be symptoms of the underlying problem of, too much food is produced compared to the quantity that dwarves eat... and the quantity that animals don't eat.
D. Farming can be set up and left. This is a more controversial 'problem', since most people think that you ought to be able to set it up and leave it. However, perhaps it runs too smoothly. There are no unexpected problems to contend with – in the form of blights, vermin, or whatever. Compare the 2D version, where plots had to be replaced annually and the soil irrigated.
E. Realism. Related to the last 'problem', and also disputed. In neutral terms, though, farming is very abstract/simplified: soil nutrients are not exhausted, soil can be created by adding water to rock, rock stays muddy forever, plants can be grown without irrigation and in rainless biomes aboveground, and plants can be grown just as well in sand as in peat.
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Topic: Improved Farming (Read 142314 times)