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[G-Flex]

@ G-Flex: personally I agree with you, in that underground farming shouldn't be so effective (and especially with the water+rock combination we have now). But I don't think it's possible to nerf it "to the degree that having a large excess of food isn't really feasible for a dwarf fortress to accomplish", without making UG farming not-worthwhile in the eyes of most players. Even if you sped up rot, made farming much more labour-intensive, and dropped the plant stack sizes to 1 for underground farming, it'd still be a matter of numbers: say, twenty good farmers instead of two, and mine out a soil layer for plots, and you're back in the game.

That's a question of opportunity cost, though.

You SHOULD be able to survive on your own farming, and do okay, by doing what you said. But even if it just boils down to numbers... why do that when you can, say, trade for food? Or hunt?

After all, even if it's just a numbers game, it's rather silly to have five farmers doing the work of a single hunter, or a single guy making crafts in order to trade for wheat from the humans or what have you. But you'd still WANT to farm, because overhunting would be bad for you in the wrong run, and trading isn't 100% reliable and might not provide all of what you need.


So really, even if you just change numerical things like area/work required to grow N amount of crops, there can still be a meaningful gameplay change. It wouldn't if you have an infinite amount of expendable dwarves, but either that's not true, or that betrays a serious and far more general problem with the game.

Look, if you can't handle a 200 dwarf fortress on your computer there's a population cap for you, Aquillion. You do not have to argue against an overwhelming majority of players who want farming reworked because you percieve it will render your game unplayable. Bear in mind I'm building 200 dwarf fortresses on a Pentium 4, complete with waterfalls and getting 20 fps. I don't mind it in the slightest.

It wouldn't even necessarily do that, at least not much.

I mean, compare it to other industries. Farming requires about as many dwarves as most other industries do, or fewer, depending on how much you care about preparing meals and plant-processing. And yet, it's much more essential to the fortress.

I don't think it's a big deal in the long run to require you to have more farm workers to some degree, and to have the player focus more on supplementing this with trade and meat.

Also, keep in mind that things like hauling will likely be getting overhauled in the relatively near future, partially mitigating one of the biggest wastes of dwarven work-hours there is.

But the point is, requiring more dwarves to farm sounds cute at first, but doesn't actually do anything, from a gameplay standpoint, beyond put more burden on your FPS.

Sure it does; see above. It changes priorities for how you get your food, for instance.

Also, I know I wouldn't personally suggest that more dwarves should be the only part of the solution.

Individual processor power doesn't come into it; no matter how good your processor is, there's a cap.  The important thing to realize is that that cap prevents players from expanding their population to match with expanded farming requirements.

Assuming they're running the exact same fortresses in the exact same way that they are now; they wouldn't be.

[Draco18s]

30% of 200 is 60.  No one ever suggested that many.  5% tops.

However many.  It's either too low to matter (in which case it's not worth doing) or it's high enough to be an issue, in which case the biggest problem it will cause is going to stem from the fact that your population is ultimately capped by FPS concerns.

I see you are incapable of seeing in shades of gray.  There is a number that is larger than "too small" and smaller than "too big."

Unless you can find a number that is both.

[garfield751]

I think farming diffculty should depend on the plants your planting.

like one dwarf plants a plump helmits in a 5 by 5 field and another dwarf of the same skill plants sunberries in the same size field. the first dwarf uses 30 seeds 5 of which fails. while the other dwarf uses say uses 50 seeds 25 of the seeds fail.

Also on the subject of growing time i personally think that vanilla DF should have the same a grow times on dig deeper.

[Solara]

This is a great discussion, and timely for me. Lately I've been messing around with grow durations and seasons and crop combinations trying to find the least efficient farming setup to try to create that 'masses of lowly peasants toiling in the fields to feed the rich in their glass towers' feel...basically impossible with the current mechanics, but it's fun to try. My current fortress relies on longland grass (grown in the autumn only and milled by hand at a quern) with ropereed for bags, with a no booze or seed cooking rule (I usually just offer the bags and bags of excess seeds to the caravan to keep from profiting from it).

In the end though my conclusion is that if we had a STACKSIZE tag for farming (I originally thought this is what CLUSTERSIZE was for and was disappointed) it'd be a very simple, quick way to help the problem while we waited for a more detailed solution to be implemented further down the line.

Also, Aquillon, do you generally run no-immigration games or what? That's really about the only situation I can think of where every single dwarf is as vitally important as you're arguing - by the time I hit 50 dwarves or so over a third of my population generally spends most of their time idling in the meeting hall.

And even then, a small population is easier to feed. No one's saying you should need ten farmers to feed seven dwarves - IMO it would be a step in the right direction if you even needed ten to feed two hundred.       

[G-Flex]

In the real world, agriculture becomes more important as population gets large.

I'm not sure how this could occur in DF, but I could think of some possibilities.

After all, you don't have to worry about overhunting (or overgathering) when you're only feeding ten people, so hunting/gathering is more reliable, especially since it doesn't matter as much if food stocks get low, considering how easy they are to replenish.

So yeah, it's perfectly plausible for farming to be more necessary as individual dwarves get less important.

Really, I'm glad I thought of improved hauling: Less peasant gruntwork devoted to that means a bit more that can be devoted to farming. After all, hauling is basically THE peasant job at the moment, which is a bit silly. It would make more sense if they were toiling the fields, or composting garbage, or whatever it is dwarves do to make food.

[winner]

hunter gathering also gets a lot more bang per buck of energy than agriculture.

[Impaler[WrG]]

30% of 200 is 60.  No one ever suggested that many.  5% tops.

However many.  It's either too low to matter (in which case it's not worth doing) or it's high enough to be an issue, in which case the biggest problem it will cause is going to stem from the fact that your population is ultimately capped by FPS concerns.

I see you are incapable of seeing in shades of gray.  There is a number that is larger than "too small" and smaller than "too big."

Unless you can find a number that is both.

Actually 30% is from the opening post

Balance Goal:
I'd like to throw out some ideas to make it a bit harder.  First off let me explain what I see as the goal.  First goal, 30% on average of the Forts population is needed for food/alcohol production, this includes the whole production 'chain' of Planter, Thresher, Miller, Brewer, Milker, Chesses, Cook, Herb, Butcher etc.  Depending on climate and play emphasis Farming might be all of that or none of it but would typically be 2/3 in a mature Fort so we would be looking at 20% of Population as farmers. Second goal, the area of farm plots needed to feed a single dwarf would be around 12 if its the sole source or when using the 2/3 goal 8 plots (all other food production would be more space intensive then this).  This would give me a believable agrarian base to the Fort and sustain the perception of a medieval level of technology while increasing difficulty.

Now consider that while you can run only a handful of planters (<5% population) you'll still need at least another 5-10% for the other food related jobs like cooking and brewing so the games already requiring ~10-15% for the whole food sector and 85% is available for other tasks.  Under my proposal 70% is available.  Assuming a 200 dwarf fort presently looks like

10 planters (near worst case)
20 other food workers
170 non food workers

And that would change too

40 planters
20 other food workers
140 non food workers

It's hard to argue that having only 140 dwarfs instead of 170 is going to cripple your entire fort and make your game unplayable.  But these FPS arguments are really evading saying is that large parts of the game are not 'game' to certain people.  They clearly consider something else to be 'game' probably the military or mega-projects, but under this logic all the carpenters, jewelers, smiths and other crafters are 'overhead' for the parts they consider the actual game.  It's like saying that laying down the roads in SimCity was just 'overhead' to the real game play of laying down zones.

[G-Flex]

That's a good point.

I think people say that just because farming is necessary, so they don't want it to wind up overshadowing everything else, which I can sort of understand, but it should at least be important and require a bit of effort.

[Dante]

It's like saying that laying down the roads in SimCity was just 'overhead' to the real game play of laying down zones.

That's a good point.

I think people say that just because farming is necessary, so they don't want it to wind up overshadowing everything else, which I can sort of understand, but it should at least be important and require a bit of effort.

That's a good point too. I'd even say one of the fundamental points to the conflict in this thread. Some people know they can currently rely on farming, so managing food supply isn't a worry/issue for them in the way that, say, defence is.

But really, food supply should be an issue. It has to be. It used to be. It easily could be. There are many possible food supplies other than farming, which just get ignored because farming is so broken. But people are so used to not having to worry about provender at all, that they want that particular sleeping dog left to lie.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Exactly Dante, a 'Starvation Spiral' should be something that actually happens once and a while and which the player needs to work to prevent just as we keep away other Fortress ending disasters.  Every Medieval civilization had deal with occasional famines that killed a portion of the population, food supplies were not guaranteed, much of the feudal system was built around that fact.

[Joakim]

60 out of 200 sounds reasonable to me. The point of this is to make a more medieval-like economy, so we want most people to be in food production. As it currently stands I still have enough people for everything else. The only thing that makes a serious dent in the fortress population is fortress- and royal guard requirements. And those will be far less of a problem now that the they can be controlled.

Regarding ignoring other food supplies, farming is the only one that doesn't run out. It's possible to live on trading food, but you have to trade aggresively. Especially when 30 migrants come just after the caravan.

[Nikov]

Eh, if I wound up with 1/4th of my fortress population tied up in agriculture I would start pushing for other food sources. I'd put it closer to 20 planters on 10 'dwarven acres' above ground. Anyway, my opinions aren't really swayed from my more extensive post on the subject. I never felt the FPS concerns were really logical.

And I wouldn't have nutrient values down to each ingredient contributing 'carbs' 'protein' 'fats' 'vitamins' and 'minerals'; this adds a lot more variables to track on a dwarf and a lot of complexity that isn't immediately apparent. I would rather the 'nutrient' value be the only figure tracked regarding hunger and 'value' determine the dwarf's satisfaction with the meal.

[Aquillion]

I see you are incapable of seeing in shades of gray.  There is a number that is larger than "too small" and smaller than "too big."

Unless you can find a number that is both.

Not really.  Either your goal is to make the game harder or it isn't.  Any difficulty coming from this suggestion ultimately comes down to one of three things:

1.  It demands enough dwarves to make things harder for players.  This is a FPS issue; ultimately, your real cap on dwarves is your FPS.

2.  It demands enough space to make things harder for players.  This is a FPS issue, again, since you real limit on space is how many FPS you're willing to sacrifice when you embark.

3.  It demands micromanagement and constant attention to avoid a 'starvation spiral'.  This is, I think, something most people in the thread have rejected; micromanagement is not good.

Where else can it pull difficulty from?  As I see it, its only impact is in one of those categories; if it is enough to have any impact at all, that impact will, generally, be negative.  If it's not enough to have any impact, why do it?

That's a good point too. I'd even say one of the fundamental points to the conflict in this thread. Some people know they can currently rely on farming, so managing food supply isn't a worry/issue for them in the way that, say, defence is.

But really, food supply should be an issue. It has to be. It used to be. It easily could be. There are many possible food supplies other than farming, which just get ignored because farming is so broken. But people are so used to not having to worry about provender at all, that they want that particular sleeping dog left to lie.

I would tend to disagree.  I think that the issue is that there are many other much more interesting and important challenges that are going to be added to the game eventually.  But because those things aren't in yet, we see constant requests to complicate and make harder all the 'basic' functions in the game.  Players are used to having nothing to do but farm, so they ask for farming to become so difficult and complicated that it would serve as a game all by itself.

But there are other things that are going to go into the game.  I would strongly suggest that, at the very least, any overhaul of farming wait until the rest of the game is complete so that it can be balanced against, for instance, the challenges imposed by the completed Army, Diplomacy, and Magic arcs.  Fiddling with it (or other such game-balance things) before those are done would be a bad idea, since it would just require more tweaking down the road.

It's hard to argue that having only 140 dwarfs instead of 170 is going to cripple your entire fort and make your game unplayable.

I would say that it's hard to argue that reducing people to 140 dwarves instead of 170 is an improvement worth spending any development time on.  It seems, really, by your logic, that most of your suggestions in this thread are kind of pointless, aren't they?

If you think 30 dwarves aren't a big deal, good!  We can obtain basically the same thing as your results, with less FPS overhead, by leaving things the way they are now.  Let's give up on the idea of farming overhaul and discuss more interesting improvements to the game.  Or at least delay it until those other improvements are in.

But these FPS arguments are really evading saying is that large parts of the game are not 'game' to certain people.  They clearly consider something else to be 'game' probably the military or mega-projects, but under this logic all the carpenters, jewelers, smiths and other crafters are 'overhead' for the parts they consider the actual game.  It's like saying that laying down the roads in SimCity was just 'overhead' to the real game play of laying down zones.

 

That's a good point.

I think people say that just because farming is necessary, so they don't want it to wind up overshadowing everything else, which I can sort of understand, but it should at least be important and require a bit of effort.

Well...  it is hard to say, seeing as the other parts of the game aren't in yet.  Certainly I think it's reasonable to look in askance at people asking for more complicated rules for roads when we still lack half the game's structures.  We should wait for all the primary parts of the game to go in before we start trying to rebalance them, certainly, shouldn't we?  Nobody can seriously judge farming before we know how it will feed the armies of the Army arc, or suffer under the magics of the Magic arc.  Rebalancing it before then is pointless.

Certainly farming is part of the game, but many of the real challenges of the game are yet to come.  What you are doing with this thread, Impaler, is like saying that Simcity is too easy when you have disasters turned off and an infinite-money cheat on.  You can't seriously gauge how bad of a demand farming is on your dwarves currently (and, therefore, can't seriously ask for it to be adjusted) when so many of the game's real challenges and depths aren't in yet.

[Joakim]

Aquillion,
First of all, there is no FPS issue. If your computer cannot handle a 2x2 embark area then it's too weak first of all. Secondly you could always mod it back to make farming boring again. No FPS issue.

Secondly there is a fourth kind of difficulty. That of setting up a robust, automatic, flexible, sustainable and profitable industry. Even if you can finish, in a sense, the journey is still plenty fun. For some of us.

Now you have switched to the "other stuff is more important" argument. To you maybe. And to me actually. That's why it isn't at the top of the eternal voting list. But that is completely off topic, this thread is not about how important farming is relative to all the other things that can be done. This is not a "more farming NOW" thread. If you want to argue that other things are more important, then do it in a "what shall we do next" thread.

And the tweaking is basically a non-issue since it can be done by the community. Especially as the RAWs gets more and more flexible.

[Footkerchief]

So why should dwarves be amazing farmers? They live underground, for Pete's sake. There's not even any sunlight. Farming, by all rights, should be difficult for them not just for the sake of realism or basic difficulty, but for the sake of balance and consistency, so that dwarves don't become some sort of super-race within the game's universe.

I know Tolkien's not quite canon, but I think this counts as thematic precedent: "In the essay 'Of Dwarves and Men' in The Peoples of Middle-earth it is written that Dwarven and human communities often formed relationships where the Men were the prime suppliers of food, farmers and herdsmen, while the Dwarves supplied tools and weapons, road-building and construction work."

On another note, I was talking to someone on IRC about this, and the idea of fermentation came up. Dwarves are obviously already familiar with fermentation (of the alcoholic variety), so it's not too much of a stretch (especially in a fantasy world!) to say that they could ferment things that humans can't normally digest, like the cell walls of mushrooms, into something edible. Hell, maybe that's how plump helmet wine works.

Haha, I remember talking about that in Suggestions a while back.  Yeah, it's reasonable.

Any difficulty coming from this suggestion ultimately comes down to one of three things:

1.  It demands enough dwarves to make things harder for players.  This is a FPS issue; ultimately, your real cap on dwarves is your FPS.

You don't need more dwarves.  Most fortresses have idlers unless the player puts effort toward keeping everyone busy.