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[NW_Kohaku]

Preaching to the choir.  Again, I would want something fairly similar, but I disagree on minor issues.

Now, that being said, on to a blow by blow response with NW Kohaku.

... Are you really talking to anyone besides me, here?

Yep, anyone who's reading.

Also, I honestly am not sure very many people are following this thread, which may account for its notable limited number of posters at any one point in time.  Even IF every major on-topic post was not running at around 3 pages in length if you put a post in a word processing program, there is the intimidating page number of this thread that would tell most posters that it is not worth getting involved in.

[Draco18s]

Preaching to the choir.  Again, I would want something fairly similar, but I disagree on minor issues.

Now, that being said, on to a blow by blow response with NW Kohaku.

... Are you really talking to anyone besides me, here?

Yep, anyone who's reading.

Also, I honestly am not sure very many people are following this thread, which may account for its notable limited number of posters at any one point in time.  Even IF every major on-topic post was not running at around 3 pages in length if you put a post in a word processing program, there is the intimidating page number of this thread that would tell most posters that it is not worth getting involved in.

Yeah, I stopped reading when the posts got over a screen-worth.  Don't have the time or attention span to read through all of it (and then there's a reply of similar length!)

[Dvergar]

After a quite local search, I didn't find my suggestion so,

I don't think numbers of dwarves needed to feed a fortresses should be fixed.  With the arrival of more and more population it will become profitable to build large machinery and tools to improve tile yields and labor yields.

I think crops should have nutritional stats attached to them, requiring a balanced diet if you want the happiest/most efficient dwarves.

It's never gonna happen, but I wish we could get away from the communistic collective farms.  Maybe farming dwarves demand to own their own fields?

[NW_Kohaku]

The problem with moving away from collectives is that, historically, farms are where collectives both originated, and make most sense.  Even in the modern day, farms are by and large owned by giant agricultural firms that simply hire people to manage the land, growing what they are told to grow, using a shared pool of tools.

Of course, the reasons for that are not modeled in DF...

As for nutrition... I'm wondering how that would work, aside from simply demanding a greater variety than two crops, as we currently have.  Currently, food is handled thusly: There is a hunger meter that starts at 0, and incriments up to 65535, making a dwarf "hungry" somewhere around 50,000.  Food drops that all the way back down to 0. 

We'd need to start by having nutritional values for various vitamins for every dwarf, and then raw-ifying what every possible kind of food (including meat) would give as a nutritional bonus...  And we'd need to have some sort of model for why you would want to care (such as becoming more vulnerable to disease or injury)...

All that sounds terribly complicated for something that you can't even directly control... I can almost see someone yelling at their dwarves for eating the same tallow biscuits three times in a row when they haven't been eating their vegetables, which would lead to them becoming obese...

[sweitx]

The problem with moving away from collectives is that, historically, farms are where collectives both originated, and make most sense.  Even in the modern day, farms are by and large owned by giant agricultural firms that simply hire people to manage the land, growing what they are told to grow, using a shared pool of tools.

Of course, the reasons for that are not modeled in DF...

As for nutrition... I'm wondering how that would work, aside from simply demanding a greater variety than two crops, as we currently have.  Currently, food is handled thusly: There is a hunger meter that starts at 0, and incriments up to 65535, making a dwarf "hungry" somewhere around 50,000.  Food drops that all the way back down to 0. 

We'd need to start by having nutritional values for various vitamins for every dwarf, and then raw-ifying what every possible kind of food (including meat) would give as a nutritional bonus...  And we'd need to have some sort of model for why you would want to care (such as becoming more vulnerable to disease or injury)...

All that sounds terribly complicated for something that you can't even directly control... I can almost see someone yelling at their dwarves for eating the same tallow biscuits three times in a row when they haven't been eating their vegetables, which would lead to them becoming obese...

Maybe instead of nutrition requirement, dwarf always tries to eat different type of food, and if not available, gets progressive bad thoughts.
For example, a dwarf can remember the last couple of meal it eats, and always prioritize search for one not on said list, and tries to avoid the latest addition to said list.  Then, if it always have to eat something recent on said list, it gets bad thoughts like...
"He is getting tired of eating the same thing every day."
"He is angry at the lack of variation in food today."

[NW_Kohaku]

Maybe instead of nutrition requirement, dwarf always tries to eat different type of food, and if not available, gets progressive bad thoughts.
For example, a dwarf can remember the last couple of meal it eats, and always prioritize search for one not on said list, and tries to avoid the latest addition to said list.  Then, if it always have to eat something recent on said list, it gets bad thoughts like...
"He is getting tired of eating the same thing every day."
"He is angry at the lack of variation in food today."

I would kind of prefer we not base EVERYTHING related to dwarven upkeep on their happiness meter.  After all, we can already offset the effects of having one's whole family murdered by having a really nice meal in a fancy dining room.

What that suggestion does is simply make one more thing to "worry about" when it comes to keeping dwarves happy that can be happily ignored in a fortress that has a waterfall or a nice dining room.

[Silverionmox]

The legendary dining room exploit merely means that a dining room is overvalued in the happiness scheme. Food can be a luxury apart from a necessity, so I think it's a good idea. Dwarven psychology will be revised anyway; the most important thing will be to let dwarves be consoled their unfortunate friends, rather than be depressed by them.

[Nikov]

The problem with moving away from collectives is that, historically, farms are where collectives both originated, and make most sense.

Tell that to 12 million starved Ukranians when they were forced to collectivize. Private land ownership produces the best agricultural results and modern farming 'co-ops' are simply community distributors of tools and chemicals, not collective ownership of land. Even 'commercial' farms are really just privately owned land, privately managed, with employed farmhands. There's nothing modern about them aside from the machinery; successful farmers become wealthy farmers, wealthy farmers buy land from unsuccessful farmers, wealthy landowning farmers hire the now unemployed farmers. Thats why private ownership produces the best results; all farmers are competing with their neighbors to keep their businesses afloat and their production high. A failed collective loses nothing, a failed private farmer loses his land.

[Silverionmox]

That's because Stalin decided he didn't like Ukrainians, really. I do agree though, smallholder agriculture has always been more productive than large farms (be it Roman latifundia, medieval domains or slave plantations). Notice, however, how that large farmer gradually assembles a large farm with the same disadvantages: his workers just do their hours and nothing more.

[NW_Kohaku]

The problem with moving away from collectives is that, historically, farms are where collectives both originated, and make most sense.

Tell that to 12 million starved Ukranians when they were forced to collectivize. Private land ownership produces the best agricultural results and modern farming 'co-ops' are simply community distributors of tools and chemicals, not collective ownership of land. Even 'commercial' farms are really just privately owned land, privately managed, with employed farmhands. There's nothing modern about them aside from the machinery; successful farmers become wealthy farmers, wealthy farmers buy land from unsuccessful farmers, wealthy landowning farmers hire the now unemployed farmers. Thats why private ownership produces the best results; all farmers are competing with their neighbors to keep their businesses afloat and their production high. A failed collective loses nothing, a failed private farmer loses his land.

Oh boy, political wonkery ahoy.

"Collectivizing" doesn't necessarily mean direct Communist Governmental control.  When the Amish get together for a communal Barn Raising, they are pooling their communal resources for the benefits of an idividual farm, because it benefits the entire community to be able to rely upon their neighbors, and know that they can expect similar communal support in return. 

When I said collectivizing, I mean that the tools of modern farming are extremely capital-intensive.  Farmers use advanced, complex machinery like automated harvesters and irrigation systems, which provide greater crop yields that a small farmer without access to as much capital cannot compete with.  It's the reason this nation has to give government handouts just to prevent all of the small farmers from going out of business.

Regardless, this isn't a Communist Manifesto, here, this is about ways to model farming in DF.  I'm not interested in taking your Capitalist ideology away from you, so no need to get your Reagan underwear in a knot.

[Nikov]

I was only correcting you on a historically proven fact. There was no need to start political wonkery.

[sweitx]

Maybe instead of nutrition requirement, dwarf always tries to eat different type of food, and if not available, gets progressive bad thoughts.
For example, a dwarf can remember the last couple of meal it eats, and always prioritize search for one not on said list, and tries to avoid the latest addition to said list.  Then, if it always have to eat something recent on said list, it gets bad thoughts like...
"He is getting tired of eating the same thing every day."
"He is angry at the lack of variation in food today."

I would kind of prefer we not base EVERYTHING related to dwarven upkeep on their happiness meter.  After all, we can already offset the effects of having one's whole family murdered by having a really nice meal in a fancy dining room.

What that suggestion does is simply make one more thing to "worry about" when it comes to keeping dwarves happy that can be happily ignored in a fortress that has a waterfall or a nice dining room.

I would put that down as a improper weighting of happiness contribution.
Thou since we got disease in the new version, perhaps have lack of variety of food generate some disease related to not having a good variety of food (if you want to model nutrition, that would mean that each potential food items needs to have it's nutrition content specified).

[stormsaber]

So, it seems farming in DF2010 has received a minor overhaul. I approve - but it doesn't take it far enough: I end up making massive irrigation systems cos thats the kind of dwarf I am, only to use them *once*!

I'd like to see a system where you have to re-water indoor land every, say, year. It would also be sweet to have some rice analogs - plants that grow only in, say, 3-6 water and die in 7, 2 or 1 but must be harvested after being drained. Or you could have plants like cranberries which must grow in fairly dry land but have to be flooded once before picking. Thats a little hassle so the crops could be made very much worth it by having a massive yield as long as regular crops were nerfed (along the lines of the OPs suggestions and the massive war they started..)

I think it should also be possible to build horse-drawn plows and carts at carpenters workshops - that would finally give us a reason to actually have horses donkeys and cows around our fortresses. They wouldnt have to be useful outside of farms, but could be used to bring farm productivity up to the levels they are now - after the rest of the system is nerfed, of course.

Finally, I'd also like to see a plant that doesnt require any sort of mud or irrigation - perhaps a cave weed that grows underground and some sort of cactus above ground. Having ridiculously *low* yields and slow growing times, these could be used in the beginning game as a small supplement to hunting and fishing until farming is underway proper.

Daniel
PS: Off-topic I know but Ukraine never had collectivisation of farmland. What happened was people's land was taken away from them and given to the state . In collectivisation, *community* owns land which is held in trust. In the future Nikov, please keep your politics out of these threads.

[Draco18s]

So, it seems farming in DF2010 has received a minor overhaul. I approve

Technically its a bug.

[Atanamis]

I would kind of prefer we not base EVERYTHING related to dwarven upkeep on their happiness meter.  After all, we can already offset the effects of having one's whole family murdered by having a really nice meal in a fancy dining room.

What that suggestion does is simply make one more thing to "worry about" when it comes to keeping dwarves happy that can be happily ignored in a fortress that has a waterfall or a nice dining room.

I'd actually like to see the difficulty of keeping dwarves happy with food vary based on the age and wealth of a fortress. The first couple years, dwarves should be ok with eating raw plump helmets. After a couple years though, they should start insisting on cooked food at least occasionally to be content. Having bad food wouldn't drive a dwarf to insanity, but it would reduce their maximum level of happiness (making it easier for other things to drive them mad).

After 5-10 years, the dwarves should start wanting variety in their food. If living in an area where food cannot easily be produced, you should be able to buy it by this point. Important (high skill) dwarfs should begin to demand their favorite foods occasionally after 10 years or so. (Ideally I'd like it to take this long to get your first "Accomplished" dwarves.) As you start getting nobility, they too would insist on having their favorite foods available to achieve maximum satisfaction. The wealthier the fort gets, the more dwarves would be discontented with plain old raw plump helmets. Even if you put in royal dining halls and bedrooms for everyone, the lack of food should be like the lack of alcohol. Something that slows labor and makes any dwarf irritated.

This wouldn't be anything that would kill a fortress, but it would encourage revisiting your food production every 5 years or so to add in additional varieties. You should have a screen that shows how many dwarves are asking for each food type, and see quickly if important dwarves want special foods. By the time your fortress "naturally" (non special attraction) attracts a monarch, you should probably already be producing most of your cultures natural foods as well as importing a variety from neighboring cultures.