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[MercDraco]

(Warning Detailed)
from my view point i semi-calculated that currently
1 Tile = a 5' by 5' by 10' area (5 feet wide, 5 feet long and 10 feet tall) so thats where my formula starts
Now i never imagned a dwarf planeting just 1 Seed in that amount of space so i think it's 1 handful of seed (that and eat something with seeds it usually theres more than 1 though yes certain foods have just 1 seed) So Urist McDonald picks up a handful of cave wheat seeds from the stockpile and takes it to plot A where he plants them in the tile.
Now some time later Cog McHauler shows up and takes 1 cave wheat plant or 5 depending on how many that magical random generator decided to provide, now can you imagine planting a Handful of seeds and only 5 plants were deemed Worthy to later be milled into flour to bake into that meal?

Now thats Assuming that a DF Tile is really 5 feet by 5 feet by 10 feet and 1 unit of Seed is a handful however only the Toady One knows. (as for how Kitty and Dragon only take up 1 tile for kitty it just shows what tile he's currently wandering around in but Dragon...evidently DF has some Really Skinny Dragons i reconmend a diet of elf until their atleast 2 by 2 tiles)

Now yes i agree how currently foods abit rediculous in ease of production as i have 2 2 by 10 fields feeding pretty much all my fortresses (one reached 100 some pop and is still god with justy those two fields and fish),  I think i saw somewhere above someone mentioned increasing Demand for food or demanding a varity of foods, bravo to you.

Just how big is a messure of the food stuff are leaves really as filling as a piece of cow? and some questions came up.
Whats the Size of the Food?  How filling is it? Taste?

Size and Filling Value is currently 1 meal lasts till the next well (more Assuming here) lets say a average Dwarf has 2 meals a Season (never bothered looking to see how often they eat) (time between meals is assumed 6hrs)
a Plump Helmet: I picture a big Mushroom (sp? Portabello?) which in and of itself it pretty filling but that'd last maybe 3/4 to next meal
Cave Wheat: Once milled i can picture a dwarf making a small loaf of Bread with this which bread is eh on its own (lasts 1/2 to next meal)
Sweet Pod: Sweet Peas, (nuff said)
(Forgot)Leaves: Its probally Cabbage (make a salad and it'd last 1/4 time to next meal
i know theres more foods and i'll have to write them down but please if you remember more write it up along with the short yada-yada and lets figure out how to add a Filling Value to food items so  that we can figure out how much food a dwarf really needs to "survive" and note i said average dwarf just like humans have some that want/need more/less food, from Skinny McIdolcrafter to Baroness McLardy

[Draco18s]

(Warning Detailed)
from my view point i semi-calculated that currently
1 Tile = a 5' by 5' by 10' area (5 feet wide, 5 feet long and 10 feet tall) so thats where my formula starts

It's really more like 2.5 x 2.5 x 6.25.

[Jamuk]

I think my solution is the simplest.

At the beginning of the game 2/7 of your dwarves are required for farming, the problem is that that proportion falls much too fast as their skill increases.

If you decreased the effect that skill has on farming by lowering the time required to plant the seeds and increasing the time that the plants need to grow for, I don't think this problem would be occurring.

The only reason that 2/7 of your dwarves don't need to farm later in the game is because legendary growers can do 20x as much work as the unskilled farmers can, and because planting crops is a large portion of the time required to grow food.

[Othob Rithol]

We're talking about game balance here, not real world agriculture.

1 space = 1 dwarf = 1 bed = 1 anvil : the dimensions in RL are irrelevant
1 seed = 1 space which yields up to [clustersize] (default 5) plants based on skill
1 plant = 1 Food OR 5 Alcohol
1 Alcohol = 1 Food (*see below*)
Cooking takes 2,3, or 4 stacks of "Food", totals them and makes a stack of Meals

This is a game, so all are abstractions...IE a seed is enough seed or spawn to plant a square, quarry bush leaves are a spice so they are likely a pile of leaves dried and ground up like tea, and one meal is enough to fill a dwarfs tummy.

* on alcohol: this is one of the key exploits used in older versions of DF to multiply food production... grow/gather plants, brew them, cook the booze. Not being able to do this prevents the player from converting booze into food for emergencies. However, even not using this exploit results in a gross overabundance of food in the current version/settings. I have always thought that this should be reduced in usefulness (IE 2 alcohol = 1 food).

Cooking seeds is a lot like cooking alcohol (free food) and works wickedly in conjunction with it. However it is necessary so the player can convert seed stock into food for emergencies. Cooking seeds is also labor intensive compared to cooking with large stack items.

The solution is in these numbers, as well as [GROWDUR]... but the elegant solution changes the minimum number of them.
----

In my current fort I am not using the alcohol exploit, and I have tripled the default grow times (900 to 1500) and actually have had a challenge to feed ~120 dwarves. I have made farms on par with my old 2D Forts, totaling about 500 to 600 tiles. Farm/Food staff (post 40 dwarves all browns do it all for me) is around 15%-20% of adult population. From this experiment I am thinking the golden level for me might be default [GROWDUR] x4. I really don't want to mess with stack size [CLUSTERSIZE].

Thus my suggestion is an init option called [plantgrowth:#]. Setting to any integer >0 multiplies the default growth time in the raws by that integer. Resolve the raw files [GROWDUR] so that:
[PLANTGROWTH: 3] x [GROWDUR] = desired default*, so that a player can make it easier (setting it to 1 or 2) or harder (4,5)).

Toady seems to like 5 point scales, and I hope eventually he adds in a 5 point difficulty scale. this would be one of the scaled values therein.

*My recommendation is that desired default should be 3x current value, needing no changes to the raws.

Since all this can be easily done in the raws anyhow, I can just add them to my list of edits to each new version.

[Draco18s]

I could probably get by with a GROWDUR that's 4x longer than normal, due to the way in which I inevitably set up my farms: one indoor growing plants in the summer, one outdoor growing plants in the winter.  Ussualy still end up with storage problems.

[Dasqoot]

Being required to export a percentage of your produced food to the Mountainhomes would be neat too. If you produce past a certain amount of food a season, a percentage would be required to ship off with the outpost liaison. This percentage would rise with your current settlement's production capabilities, eventually turning your city into a breadbasket feeding other forts who specialize into metal-smithing or animal husbandry.

I can't think of a major city that produces all of its food locally, so having fortresses specifically for farming, and other fortresses that would be trade hubs or quarries would probably make more sense. I don't mean that all that would happen in the farming-oriented fortress would be farming and weaving, but that food would always be its major export. In this vein, I suppose farming should be made much more difficult to subsist off of entirely. Nearly impossible to do if you are running another major industry in your fort.

[Othob Rithol]

Setting GROWDUR to x4 has generated a problem: the valid window to plant has become very short in some seasons. In example my game just rolled into winter and plump helmets are too late to plant (red)

[Silverionmox]

There are two ways of "nerfing" farming.  While everyone seem to be talking about decreasing supply, I have another idea.  Increasing demand.

1) All the Tame animals and pets could now require food to eat, and unless you lock you your stockpiles against pets, they'll just help themselves.

2) Beds should require cloth and straw (gotten from processing cave wheat and longland grass) in order to make a mattress.  Again, more stuff you have to grow.  Nobles could require feather mattresses, which comes from birds you raise, which would need feeding.

3) Dwarves should demand lots of clothes, and demand them often (fashions change after all).  The more elaborate party dresses should requite multiple blots of dyed cloth.  Perhaps some of them (nobles) would demand silk, which need to be collected from domesticated silk producing animals, which would have to be fed.  All this increases a demand for farm produced products.

4) In order to heal injured Dwarves, bandages made of cloth and medicinal ointment made of herbs would need to be used, both requiring more growing.

5) Some Dwarves would required Pipeweed as well as Alchohol, which would again have to be grown.


The benefit of this is, you don't HAVE to have all this in the beginning.  You can not have any pets, have everyone sleep on the floor, give each Dwarf one change of clothes, let injured Dwarves remain injured, and have pipeweed addicts be very very unhappy.  This allows someone to quickly provide enough food to survive, but a long time to farm enough so that everyone's happy.

This solution is both interesting and effective.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I think the feeding livestock is most key, keeping animals to slaughter (other then cats) should serve as a means to convert grain to meat at a low yield (3/4 grain to one meat) not as a free endless generator of meat.  Their needs to be a better way to control and manage livestock too, the current pit and cage system is geared more towards gladiatorial animal fights then food production.  I'd like to see some kind of 'coral' that can be made with cheap wooden fences, animals stay inside and the Animal caretaker would bring the food to them, owners feed their pets.  Animals don't just raid your stockpiles, but an unfed pet might abandon its owner to becoming feral resulting in unhappy thoughts (or just plain dies, same effect) or worse attacks its master.  You could also graze animals in a designated 'Grazing zone' and this would actually effect the grass turning it dead for a period, the grazing would again be managed by the Animal caretaker acting as Shepard.  Lastly a 'maintain herd size of x' management option some ware that will let my herd grow to x size and only then start butchering animals over the limit so I maintain a steady production without killing off the whole heard or involving myself with a ton of micro management.

[Align]

Since grass currently gets worn away by a few creatures walking on it, feeding anything in grazing zones would be challenging. But I do agree that they should be able to go and eat outdoors, not just from your foodpiles.

[Drunken]

It seems to me that there are two kinds of solutions, and that most people agree on the same problem: farming is too easy.

The two kinds of solutions are the simple one: changing raws, grow time, cluster/stack sizes.
and the complicated one, involving a complete revamp of the farming system including the uses of grown products, irrigation skills, job requirements etc.

At the moment to make it more of a challenge I simply make a rule that I am not allowed to build farm plots.

I always advocate the maximum anal realism possible in games especially DF so I would like to see farming become rediculously difficult and complicated. Thankyou everyone for the complicated suggestions on here I love almost all of them.

[Nesoo]

There are two ways of "nerfing" farming.  While everyone seem to be talking about decreasing supply, I have another idea.  Increasing demand.

1) All the Tame animals and pets could now require food to eat, and unless you lock you your stockpiles against pets, they'll just help themselves.

Add in the grazing idea for herbivores and allow carnivores to eat chunks from the butcher's shop (and make dwarves prefer these as a source of food for their pets), and I'm all for this. There could even be a job to feed strays that requires the animal caretaker skill, giving it an actual use!

2) Beds should require cloth and straw (gotten from processing cave wheat and longland grass) in order to make a mattress.  Again, more stuff you have to grow.  Nobles could require feather mattresses, which comes from birds you raise, which would need feeding.

Specifically, the birds should require seeds, cutting in to your seed supplies for farming, making it at least somewhat more difficult.

3) Dwarves should demand lots of clothes, and demand them often (fashions change after all).  The more elaborate party dresses should requite multiple blots of dyed cloth.  Perhaps some of them (nobles) would demand silk, which need to be collected from domesticated silk producing animals, which would have to be fed.  All this increases a demand for farm produced products.

Once all the clothing bugs are fixed, and an option to make an outfit is added to the clothesmaker's workshop, definitely

4) In order to heal injured Dwarves, bandages made of cloth and medicinal ointment made of herbs would need to be used, both requiring more growing.

I don't think that bandages should be required, but they should significantly improve the chances of a successful healing and/or reduce the time required to heal. I'd also suggest that some of the herbs (perhaps the more effective ones) can only be found by use of plant gathering: maybe the dwarves don't know how to farm them, they don't grow well in a garden, they're a rare wild plant, or whatever. This should help make those plants gatherers more useful (though I, personally, always bring one with me).

(Edit: The herbs that can only be gathered should be rare enough that you'd want to farm the more basic ones anyway, especially if you're going to be going to war soon... or someone just declared war on you!)

5) Some Dwarves would required Pipeweed as well as Alchohol, which would again have to be grown.

One could also add other substances, though I think they would tend to lead towards inefficiency in the fortress as the dwarves take a lot of recreational time to enjoy them. I suspect that many players would just set up atom smashers for the dwarves with "She/He prefers to consume magic mushrooms." in their profile

Overall, I like the ideas.

[Skeeblix]

Fix farming. I shouldn't be able to feed 100 little guys off 20 tiles.

'Nuff said.

Thread bumped.

Thank you, and goodnight.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I'm experimenting with some farming mods, I've found that cluster size adjustment is useless (it only affects the size of purchases stacks not how much is grown which is apparently hard coded, CRUD!). 

So instead I'm looking at grow duration and value.  I've pushed it up in the range of 1200 but found that it makes getting started painfully slow so I'm now thinking of a 'ladder' of plant quality with fast growing (500) cheap plants (value of 1-2) at the bottom and Sloooow growing (5000) super premium (value of up to 16) plants at the top. Thus you can keep dwarfs feed without too much effort but making them happy will be a much bigger investment.

[Othob Rithol]

One of the problems I have been running into is that with GROWDUR at x3 or x4 normal values (thats 900/1500 and 1200/2000) the fall and winter season I can not plant. Obviously there is some sort of "is there enough time left to grow this season" check.

Also it seems that the Fall is short in "grow time" and that the winter is even shorter. For instance... when I had a plot set to helmets in fall and winter, it could plant on the 1st day of fall (and for about a month after), but was unable to plant on the 1st day of winter.

I worked around the above problem by going back to the 2D; I removed winter from helmets. Everything is at x3 GROWDUR, except pigtails is a bit faster (they weren't able to grow at x3 in fall)