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[Neruz]

Starving to death is difficult even if you remove farming entirely due to Dorfs happily chowing down on cave spiders.

[Lancensis]

Why would winter matter to underground plants? Or seasons in general really.

Takes longer to plough because the fields are filled with hibernating animals

[Dakk]

Eh, me thinks its because of the frozen soil. I for one never heard of anyone not being able to farm because he/she accidentaly hit a hibernating bear.

[G-Flex]

Seasons should matter less and less as you go deeper underground, as the temperature remains more constant.

Oddly, in DF the opposite happens; plants above-ground can be grown at any time during the year, whereas plants underground are rather picky about when they're grown.

[monkeyfetus]

I for one never heard of anyone not being able to farm because he/she accidentaly hit a hibernating bear.

Then count yourself lucky. I'll never forget that day... so much blood.

[MrWiggles]

Eh, me thinks its because of the frozen soil. I for one never heard of anyone not being able to farm because he/she accidentaly hit a hibernating bear.

Exactly. It doesn't even take that much of a dirt layer to have a constant temperature to my understanding.

[monkeyfetus]

Assuming you have no fancy irrigation techniques for stone-layer farming, only the topmost layer will be soil, right? And then, you're digging into them, presumably letting the cold outside air creep in. Depending on the climate for how long the temperature stays below freezing, it's understandable for the ground to become hard enough that fungi wouldn't be able to break through and form roots. Or, for that matter, for it to be simply cold enough that they couldn't grow.

[MrWiggles]

Assuming you have no fancy irrigation techniques for stone-layer farming, only the topmost layer will be soil, right? And then, you're digging into them, presumably letting the cold outside air creep in. Depending on the climate for how long the temperature stays below freezing, it's understandable for the ground to become hard enough that fungi wouldn't be able to break through and form roots. Or, for that matter, for it to be simply cold enough that they couldn't grow.

Permafrost doesn't penetrate that far into the ground, at not not that for for Dwarf Fortress. It would depend on air currents and circulation.

On my really cold maps I try to keep the fortress heated with magma in-between layers to keep everything toasty.

[GRead]

One of the first mods I make to any DF installation is make all crops only grow for a single season, make nothing edible raw, and make nothing grow during the winter.

It's still ridiculously difficult to actually fail and starve to death, though.

I see nothing wrong with it being difficult for someone who knows what they're doing to fail and starve to death. DFs learning curve is steep enough as it is; making it difficult for an experienced player to succeed at something so simple as feeding your starting 7 would make the game virtually impossible for newcomers. Unless you're starting in a difficult biome, early food production shouldn't be very difficult.

Now, there's no reason it should remain so simple as your fortress starts to grow. Feeding 20, 50, 100 etc. dwarfs should be more difficult than siccing a legendary grower on a 5x5 plot of plump helmets. Part of the problem is the ease of producing food, part of it is the ease of getting a legendary anything.

[Lemunde]

I think a partial remedy to food being too easy is to make food variety have more of an impact on dwarf moods.  A couple of years eating nothing but plump helmets should start leading to tantrums or extreme loss in productivity as they start hunting around for different food.

[MrWiggles]

I think a partial remedy to food being too easy is to make food variety have more of an impact on dwarf moods.  A couple of years eating nothing but plump helmets should start leading to tantrums or extreme loss in productivity as they start hunting around for different food.

Much like how they get tired of the same old boozes. Nother thing to encourage food variety is allergies.

[Wavecutter]

I read somewhere that it takes about an 8th of an acre to support one human being.

I also came across some numbers from a guy trying to live off the grid.

Wheat

40 bushels of wheat per acre
73 loafs of bread per bushel of wheat
2920 loafs of bread per acre of wheat
Feed 28 people 2 loafs a week for a year

Barley

32 bushels of barley per acre
851 12oz bottles of beer per bushel of barley
27323 12oz bottles of beer per acre
Produce 4 bottles of beer a week for 128 people for a year

Green Beans

40 bushels of beans per acre
148 cups per bushel of beans
5920 cups of beans per acre
Feed 8 people 2 cups of beans a day for a year


Has anyone created a successful zinc gas trap?

[Aachen]

I read somewhere that it takes about an 8th of an acre to support one human being.

I also came across some numbers from a guy trying to live off the grid....

What farming methods is that assuming are used?

[Bryan Derksen]

And why would nothing be edible raw? Plenty of plants are edible raw. Some of them don't even have to be rinsed off. Not that dwarves would care if their plants were covered in dirt, I guess.

"Human ale is better than I thought it would be. Dwarven ale tastes too much like dirt. Probably because we put dirt in it." - Oghren

[greenwatering]

it's not dirt, it's ground-up microline. and it's good for beard growth.