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[Draco18s]

I never said anything about weeding. 

You didn't, but I have.  It was an example of DwarfBusyWork relevant to farming.

[WingDing]

Now bear in mind I didn't bother to read most of the thread

You didn't, but I have.  It was an example of DwarfBusyWork relevant to farming.

DwarfBusyWork

What, ok now I'm confused.

-bear in mind I didn't bother to read most of the thread-

Also why shouldn't farm designating ever change? And are we even talking about the same thing? You need to elaborate a bit more.

[Othob Rithol]

You need to elaborate a bit more.

He does that. It makes it very hard to understand precisely what his point is and tests my patience as well. But to each their own.

But  I am thankful you are more verbose. I have questions. I've read through your whole post, and frankly don't really see much that is relevant to the discussion at hand. You basically just re-explained why the advances Toady has mentioned in regional/kingdom management are going to be so kickass.

Now bear in mind I didn't bother to read most of the thread

NOT a good way to start. That basically says: "don't take any of this seriously".

Now with this suggestion I think that a lot of people believe we would have to make enormous farms in every fortress (to prevent early starvation) and that it would be made square by square, farmer by farmer as it is now.

What does this mean?

...by the time the player starts playing all the agricultural infrastructure would already exist in the world and the player would merely have to create a trade agreement that would send caravans of food to their fortress.

Like we do now? You can easily support 100-150 dwarfs with just imported food/booze/plants.

Also if you were a farming fortress caravans would come to trade goods for your food instead of vice-versa.

Um...like we do now? They will buy your plump helmets/roasts/ale and sell you trinkets/armor/weapons.

Lastly, if the amount of land needed is too much despite the low population of the DF worlds (compared to reality where even a small country has hundreds of thousands of people in it) then the time crops need to grow could be kept lower than it really is to allow for a bigger harvest.

Yeah, like it is now. We spent the first few pages of this thread testing increased growing time trying to shrink the harvest.

[Atanamis]

It sounds like 8 tiles per dwarf farmed year planted in the spring and harvested in the fall is a pretty good consensus regarding the ideal size/time needed to farm. I would suggest that each farmer be able to tend 80 tiles at a time until harvest, but that it take 3 dwarves total (unskilled) to harvest the farms. This would give a distinct disadvantage to one season plants, as they would produce the same amount of crops as three season crops but require far more harvesters to stay in business.

The problem with requiring irrigation and fertilization is that they add huge hurdles for newbies. This can be avoided by not requiring them the first few years. Above ground in a temperate climate, irrigation would not be a major problem at all. Underground, a well would need to be present and a bucket available for the farmers to water their crops. This should happen passively as part of their farming labor. Fertilization should be required every 2-5 years, with crop quantities decreasing each year after two that they are not fertilized. Years 1 and 2 you would have 100% production, year 3 you would have 75%, year 4 you would have 50%, year 5 25%. A warning should be given when planting on depleted ground. Fertilizing would require only designating fertilization for the farm, at which point dwarves with the farming labor would fertilize it with available fertilizer.

I do like the idea that dirt need to be bought/gathered and hauled to make underground farms. This makes underground farms harder for newbies, but would make it more believable. Regarding sizing, I do like the idea of dwarves eating 10 units of food per meal, though obviously they need to be able to carry multiple items first. Long term, dwarves should become very unhappy being in a large, wealthy fortress that doesn't stock the kind of food they like. In fact, it should be impossible to maintain a large, wealthy fortress without riots unless you stock a wide range of food types.

To summarize: Farming should take at least 10% of your dwarves as planters with 8 tiles farmed 3/4 of the year to produce food for each dwarf. Only select crops should grow in winter, and such crops should either produce low yields or be less desirable than "normal" crops. As farmer skill level increases, yield should only increase enough to add farming of clothing related crops. Overall, above ground farming should be easier, but create less satisfaction for your dwarves (both farmers and eaters) as well as higher vulnerability to attackers. Attackers should raze outdoor crops when they encounter them (making depending on outdoor crops risky in late game).

[WingDing]

Thank you for responding Othob, I knew my post was wordy but not wordy enough to explain myself fully so your feedback is very much appreciated.

NOT a good way to start. That basically says: "don't take any of this seriously".

Well, you don't have to take it seriously if you don't want to. I was only being honest, anyway.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

and it's not like this is serious business, now is it?

don't really see much that is relevant to the discussion at hand.

I interpreted some complaints as:

making farming difficult would make the game tedious and unfun

And that the subject was:

making farming difficult

If I am wrong please inform me what everyone is talking about before I embarrass myself further. Although thinking over it, I must admit that my post was more about the game's economy and gameplay and how farming should be (or could be) a big part of it rather than the actual difficulties of farming that could be implemented in DF, which may or may not be what you are or are not talking about. So just say so if it isn't.

What does this mean?

Last time I checked farm plots could not be expanded indefinitely and farmers must be assigned one by one, in a perfect world you would be able to mass designate things like farms and assigning large numbers of dwarves would be easy. Although this is really about my fantasy of games toning down micromanagement, a gameplay 'feature' I hate oh so much.

Like we do now? You can easily support 100-150 dwarfs with just imported food/booze/plants.

Yes, but that food materializes out of nowhere as farms do not exist in Non-Playable Civ-sites. As for buying food in the present, why buy food when it's so easy to grow it? The point that I was thinking of but somehow forgot to post was that players making an urban center would not make farms at all and instead import all their food, while players in the countryside could make the realistically large fields (not implemented currently) to feed themselves and make a profit off of. Oh and they would support their civilization as a fortress that's actually something more than a self-sustained insane asylum (as in, if the fort disappeared it would have actual consequences.)

Um...like we do now? They will buy your plump helmets/roasts/ale and sell you trinkets/armor/weapons.

Yes, but why do the caravans even need the food? NPCs do not eat! Even if they did a farm the size of a parking lot would feed the entire civilization. And who makes the trinkets/armor/weapons? Have you ever seen a workshop outside a player fortress? As I mentioned this whole post is really all about the currently non-existent economy so, sorry for wasting time and topic space.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Unless you enjoyed it.

Yeah, like it is now. We spent the first few pages of this thread testing increased growing time trying to shrink the harvest.

I was working under the assumption that you were working under the assumption that I was comparing Dwarf Fortress to reality wherein this is already the case and thus assumed that you were assuming we assumed this. Or in other words, I was taking crops taking longer to grow for granted. So really, this is all my fault for being so careless as not make it more clear in my post.

If you wish to continue this subject that may or may not be relevant to the topic at hand then go right ahead and do so.

[Othob Rithol]

You've got wit, I'll give you that 

Actually you answered most of my questions. It was hard to read your overall stance on the issue until you clarified it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And no it is not serious but it is seriously serious business trying to have some serious fun, and yes I enjoyed it. I'm evil like that.

The only one I really disagree with is the difficulty attributed to making the plots and assigning the farmers. Yeah, the plot size is limited, but still big. Building and setting the crop cycle is still pretty quick. I could easily do one of those 1600 tile farms in earlier posts in about 5 minutes.

And assigning the dwarves is real easy: just turn on one labor. Things get a little more complex if you want to use fertilizer (need wood, ash it, make potash) but the game should always be optimized such that fertilizer is an option: if you want to micro your agriculture you get better yield.

The counter point Draco18s was trying to make (and should have spelled out clearly  ) is that most of the suggested additional steps (DwarfBusyWork) are automated. They won't really raise the difficulty of running the farms (interface and complexity wise), they just make the yield a little weaker.

[Draco18s]

DwarfBusyWork

What, ok now I'm confused.

You know how a mason stands around in a workshop working?  That's "DwarfBusyWork."  It's what they do to stay occupied doing some task.  Farming currently has 2 tasks, both of which require almost no time at all: planting and harvesting.

[WingDing]

The only one I really disagree with is the difficulty attributed to making the plots and assigning the farmers. Yeah, the plot size is limited, but still big. Building and setting the crop cycle is still pretty quick. I could easily do one of those 1600 tile farms in earlier posts in about 5 minutes.

Well, the key-words there should have been 'tedious and unfun' rather than 'difficult' in that designating huge farms spanning entire sites wouldn't be fun (until you start losing them to invading hordes that is.)

And assigning the dwarves is real easy: just turn on one labor. Things get a little more complex if you want to use fertilizer (need wood, ash it, make potash) but the game should always be optimized such that fertilizer is an option: if you want to micro your agriculture you get better yield.

Realistically speaking you would need A LOT of dwarves for a realistic farm, you know, the kind that spans acres and acres and requires lots of tilling (by hand!) In case there is some confusion, I am speaking about realistic farms as though they were already implemented, and if you want to know what I mean by 'realistic' I mean pretty much how it was in reality which you can look up on Wikipedia, I'm not sure if I can be much more clear than that.

The counter point Draco18s was trying to make (and should have spelled out clearly  ) is that most of the suggested additional steps (DwarfBusyWork) are automated. They won't really raise the difficulty of running the farms (interface and complexity wise), they just make the yield a little weaker.

For me the additional step that is required is the one that makes farming take lots of manual labor, large flat open spaces, and time, lots of time. Basically I want farming to be slow. Very slow. So that making any kind of sustainable farmland would require lots of effort and attention. If a fortress' only source of food is from the outside, then this can drastically change gameplay (it'll be more fun, if you see where I'm going with this.)

You know how a mason stands around in a workshop working?  That's "DwarfBusyWork."  It's what they do to stay occupied doing some task.  Farming currently has 2 tasks, both of which require almost no time at all: planting and harvesting.

As I made clear in this post, I would like to see farming made slower, if not more difficult. I imagine difficulties will come in when the hard back-breaking labor takes it's toll on your poor peasants and leaves you in dire straits.

Or lying on the ground surrounded by angry peasants. It's difficult to tell.

[Draco18s]

As I made clear in this post, I would like to see farming made slower, if not more difficult. I imagine difficulties will come in when the hard back-breaking labor takes it's toll on your poor peasants and leaves you in dire straits.

Or lying on the ground surrounded by angry peasants. It's difficult to tell.

Slower I'm fine with, the game just needs to be able to handle a multiple growing season plant as being plantable late in the first season (say it takes 2 to grow and will grow in three, but you can't plant it late Spring for some absurd reason).

That back-breaking dwarf labor you're talking about is the same as my DwarfBusyWork.

[WingDing]

Slower I'm fine with, the game just needs to be able to handle a multiple growing season plant as being plantable late in the first season (say it takes 2 to grow and will grow in three, but you can't plant it late Spring for some absurd reason).

Ok, so we're on the same page then.

That back-breaking dwarf labor you're talking about is the same as my DwarfBusyWork.

To make farming realistic we could make it so that farms take longer to construct (to simulate your dwarves tilling the land,) making crop yield lower, forcing the player to irrigate the crops, making it so that the player must have fertile soil to plant farms in (no more sand farms,) and introducing the chance of crop failure (which could be caused by many factors, especially weather conditions.) Almost none of those involve adding purely automated dwarf work and instead require the player to pick a good location for their farms.

So I hope that explains how I would like farming to be made difficult and that none of it was contradictory or confusing.

[SocietalEclipse]

What is the default for food with no [GROWDUR] token?

It should be added to the wiki if someone knows it:
http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Plant_tokens

[Othob Rithol]

I'll test that next time I play. I'm thinking without that tag, it either won't grow at all (missing variable->process fails) or will grow immediately.

What was said about multi-season crops is a big one. I've tried to mod my plants to 2 or 3 season, but you end up with them being red (too late) on the first day they can be planted, despite the fact that they can be fully mature in their growing season.

If someone's keeping a list, that needs to be in the first few entries.

[LegacyCWAL]

I've tried to read the whole thread before posting this.  I've undoubtedly missed some stuff, but I've tried.


First, I do NOT think that outright crop failure should be added.  Why?  Because it can already be seen as being abstracted in.  That dabbling grower who gets 1 plant per tile could just as easily be an abstraction of the fact that four out of the five he planted died, whereas the Legendary grower over beside him was good enough to get more plants through the growing season.  If something along the lines of crop failure absolutely had to be added, I'd rather it just be included as a factor in determining how many plants you get out of a tile.

Second, one thing I haven't seen (which probably means it's been mentioned ten times per page) is discussion of nerfing the crops themselves.  Right now, plump helmet is one of eight crops that grow year-round and can be both brewed and eaten raw, while another two year-rounders can be milled and brewed.  Nerfing various crops' versatility or growing seasons or something may not do much (if anything) to the food supply, but if we're looking for ways to make things harder, having ten ways for a single barrel of seeds to keep your farms full to the brim all year long seems like a good target to start with.

Third, want to say that I agree with the sentiments that 1) cooking should require at least a little variety, and 2) NO COOKING BOOZE.  Having a roast made of plump helmet, plump helmet, plump helmet, and plump helmet is kind of inane.  Even replacing just one of those plump helmets with something else would be a step up.  As for no booze cooking, booze cooking is just plain cheap.  If the ability to cook booze is left in at all, then it should be at 1/5th efficiency, so that you get the same number of meals per plant (i.e. when counting how many roasts you get, 25 units of booze would only count as 5 units of ingredient).


Edit: ......aaaaaaaaand I just noticed the thread is a bit older than I thought, so...uh...bump?

[G-Flex]

Toady does plan to revamp cooking, so that's a question of when he gets around to it (at least as far as, say, booze-cooking is concerned).

I think crops should definitely take longer (say, even two or three seasons) to grow, and few things should be possible to grow in winter, although I suppose that probably matters less underground. If you had to plant crops 2-3 seasons beforehand for something more like a yearly/biyearly harvest, you'd have to plan ahead more and build bigger farms. Stack size being decreased would also be nice, as well as having to irrigate rock more than once.

[Draco18s]

Edit: ......aaaaaaaaand I just noticed the thread is a bit older than I thought, so...uh...bump?

It's linked from Eternal Voting, so I have no problem with the bump, this is more or less the authority on better farming ideas.

Your thoughts are nice, though I do like the idea of crop failure vs. the abstract only because you get 2 seeds from 1, even with a dabbling grower.  A competent grower is the level at which I would assume that they will always get back more than they plant and have extremely low crop failure rates.  Dabbling growers don't know the first thing about planets, I'd expect them to fail a lot (i.e. get nothing to grow).

Crop nerfs: no issues.