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[Fossaman]

In areas of the world with regular freeze-thaw cycles, fields grow rocks. Yes, rocks. They're broken off of the bedrock and pushed to the surface. Farmers would end up having to pick them out of their fields, and after a time an average field would have a fairly sizeable wall around it, built from the fieldstones. They were also used as a building material for homes and other structures.

What I propose is this: Every time a seed is planted in a field, the field generates a partial unit of 'fieldstone.' After a certain number of seeds have been planted, this gets spit out into a pile at the edge of the field. Dirt roads would also generate fieldstone. It would function the same as rock for any construction (including workshops and furnaces), and stonecrafting, but would not be useable in a mason's workshop.

Along with this, a stipulation: Fieldstone should only occur in regions where it has frozen during the winter. Now, this would exclude most of the areas in DF, and I feel this is wrong. I think that the temperate biomes in DF need to be colder than they are now; temperate biomes should always freeze for at least brief periods during the winter.

[Untelligent]

temperate biomes should always freeze for at least brief periods during the winter.

They already do this.

[Fossaman]

Only sometimes. I still say they need to be colder, as in reliably freezing for periods of a couple weeks or so. I live in an area that can get up to 110 degrees F in summer, but gets down below freezing for weeks at a time in winter, sometimes sub-zero. (For those of you using Celsius, that's around -20C to 43C in range.)

That's the extremes, though. You could probably call it temperate most of the time.

[Pilsu]

The temperature is pretty borked with a clearcut line for permafrost

I don't think fieldstones would add a whole lot to the game

[Footkerchief]

Could you cite some sources about fieldstone renewing itself the way you describe?  I searched for a few minutes and all I found were folksy anecdotes.

[Fossaman]

I'll look around and see what I can find. That was the way it was told to me, but I could be mistaken.

EDIT: Folksy anecdotes, modern, but with a reasonable explanation or two: Link

Google has truly failed me on this one; the word 'fieldstone' has been co-opted by so many companies and businesses that I cannot for the life of me find any other relevant pages on it. I seem to recall seeing a television program that mentioned the phenomenon of rocks being pushed to the surface and piled on the edges of fields as walls by farmers. But I can't find an exact reference. If anybody could help me out on this one I'd appreciate it.

[Pilsu]

There's tons of those rock fences around here but I'm not sure if they rose out of the ground. More likely they were pulled out as the field was tilled for the first time

Confusingly, most of those fences are in the middle of forests and uneven terrain. Probably to herd cows I guess


Speaking of rough stone walls, is lichen and moss planned?

[Hyndis]

Related to this is the iron harvest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest


There is of course a finite amount of items farmers will turn up after the winter, but takes many, many decades (centuries probably) to get even close to depleting.

[Jude]

If wikipedia doesn't have a page on something, I refuse to believe it exists.

[Fossaman]

Okay, back from a trip, sorry it took me a couple days to get back to this.

Apparently the term I'm looking for is 'Frost Heaving' and more specifically 'Frost Push' or 'Frost Pull'. Reference
(Unfortunately the pertinent section gets cut off, but I'm not talking crazy here. Real phenomenon that lacks a wikipedia article.)

So. Frost push occurs because water tends to collect on the underside of rocks, and when it freezes it expands and pushes the rock up. This apparently takes place near the surface in most cases.

Frost Pull occurs because the soil expands because of freezing. When the ground thaws, the soil under rocks is better insulated and remains frozen longer, resulting in settling around the rock, lifting it relative to the soil. Apparently this can move fairly large stones.

[chucks]

I know next to nothing about geology.  However, if the game did happen to model active geology in unmined rock and dirt and sand and marshes and whatnot, that would be really neat.  If sand and dirt were able to blow around in the wind amongst other environment activity, that would be really neat.

[smjjames]

Related to this is the iron harvest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest


There is of course a finite amount of items farmers will turn up after the winter, but takes many, many decades (centuries probably) to get even close to depleting.

That isn't even closely related to geology, it's just the continual cleanup of remains from the trench warfare of WWI, and possibly some from WWII.

[Fossaman]

And yet, finding ancient rusty swords at the sites of forgotten battles would be extremely cool.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

[chucks]

Related to this is the iron harvest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest


There is of course a finite amount of items farmers will turn up after the winter, but takes many, many decades (centuries probably) to get even close to depleting.

That isn't even closely related to geology, it's just the continual cleanup of remains from the trench warfare of WWI, and possibly some from WWII.

I really wasn't talking about that one.  I was talking about the OP's point about stones moving around inside dirt, which is a geological phenomenon.  I have no idea how the topic got derailed to talking about trench warfare of WWI and WWII except as a remotely similar concept.  You haz confoosed me.

Things buried in the dirt or clay or sand could move around within those soils.  Vertical movement up at deeper levels could be difficult while items buried near the surface could slowly rise out of the ground.  Horizontal movement would be extremely infrequent, maybe a small probability that the item could move one adjacent tile on the same z-plane once a winter season.

Also, if a system of water flowing through dirt and sand layers ever made it to the bloat list, perhaps damp or wet soils could mess with the probabilities and make them higher.

[Hyndis]

Related to this is the iron harvest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest


There is of course a finite amount of items farmers will turn up after the winter, but takes many, many decades (centuries probably) to get even close to depleting.

That isn't even closely related to geology, it's just the continual cleanup of remains from the trench warfare of WWI, and possibly some from WWII.

Its the exact same mechanism in action. What brings rock to the surface will also bring old and deeply buried munitions to the surface.

A WWI artillery shell is just more dramatic than a rock.