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[sluissa]

I've had good luck with just gathering naturally occuring above ground plants. I set about 3 dwarves to do that constantly and I've got more than enough food. Fishing could suppliment that. Might be okay to have two herbalists and a fisherdwarf. I wouldn't rely on hunting too much, but I never did. Perhaps if animals repopulated easier in this version... Domesticated animal butchering is another option. Get a breeding pair of something and start a farm.

[RandomNumberGenerator]

I never spent much time with buchering/hunting/fishing - farming has always been my main source of food, drink and income(☼Dwarven Syrup Roasts☼ anyone?). Part of the reason for this was the ease of seting up, and the lack of micromanagement. That said, I wouldn't mind some fort of irrigation being required, but I dislike the current system. I would prefer more of a continuous irrigation system... probably one of the following:

1) Ditch-esque irrigation system, where you can dig channels next to the farm and have (flowing) water in those channels, 24/7. Plants draw water from that. No micromanagement required.

2) Current flooding system, but allow dwarves to water the farm plot with buckets directly to make it muddy instead of needing an extra Z-level to have the bucket brigade fllood it. No micromanagement required, just extra dwarf labor.

3) No required irrigation, with growing on dirt possible. Like the old system. No micromanagement required.

With the first two options, some effort is expended to get the system set up, but the player doesn't need to continually micromanage the water supply to insure a steady food supply. As long as dwarves have a reservoir of water they can draw from, I shouldn't need to flood and re-flood a 3x3 farm to provide food for my dwarves. It's silly and irritating. 

[pubby]

Water should "irrigate" outwards 4 tiles (like sound vs bedrooms does). Then water loses 1 level every 3 seeds planted nearby or something.

Then you could actually farm alongside rivers instead of having to build gates/pumps all over them.

[Wirevix]

Normally I bring rather low supplies of food and have my dwarves fish for the first few seasons until the farms are built up to the ridiculous point that no army in dwarfdom could possibly eat all of it, so I would normally recommend fishing as a good starting-point for someone who's nervous of irrigated farming yet.  Normally.

Unfortunately, there are no fishable fish in .31.  Even after designating a fishing zone over a pond that I can see turtles hanging around in, a message comes up claiming there are no fish to be caught. 

And hunters are currently quite buggy and require a lot to manage because they're not behaving as they should.

Sooo... for the current state of .31, for someone who doesn't want to try irrigated farming yet, the only real answer is herbalism + surface crops.  (And hope there's no acid rain.)

[chaoticag]

Trade works as well, since I had no idea I could farm underground, and make larger than 1x1 plots when I first played the game.

[Max White]

I think it would be interesting to have three tags to define how to farm. Right now we have the standers above/below ground, the second would be irrigate/non-irrigate (To define if it would require mud) and thirdly a soil/rock tag, to define if the plant must be grown on soil or rock.

This would have some interesting implications, such as plants that grow above ground in rock for mountains, or plants that are planted on rock underground without the need of water for easy crops with less yield.

[alphawolf29]

Normally I bring rather low supplies of food and have my dwarves fish for the first few seasons until the farms are built up to the ridiculous point that no army in dwarfdom could possibly eat all of it, so I would normally recommend fishing as a good starting-point for someone who's nervous of irrigated farming yet.  Normally.

Unfortunately, there are no fishable fish in .31.  Even after designating a fishing zone over a pond that I can see turtles hanging around in, a message comes up claiming there are no fish to be caught. 

And hunters are currently quite buggy and require a lot to manage because they're not behaving as they should.

Sooo... for the current state of .31, for someone who doesn't want to try irrigated farming yet, the only real answer is herbalism + surface crops.  (And hope there's no acid rain.)

eh? I currently have 2 fisherdwarves raping the land of turtles. (Though most of these are from ponds / small small lakes etc, not running water) so i dont know what you're talking about.

[Wirevix]

Dunno why none of my fishers can ever find a damn thing, then.

[RandomNumberGenerator]

I think it would be interesting to have three tags to define how to farm. Right now we have the standers above/below ground, the second would be irrigate/non-irrigate (To define if it would require mud) and thirdly a soil/rock tag, to define if the plant must be grown on soil or rock.

This would have some interesting implications, such as plants that grow above ground in rock for mountains, or plants that are planted on rock underground without the need of water for easy crops with less yield.

That could be interesting. Plump Helmets, being the staple of Dwarven culture, could probably grow just about everywhere. Cave Wheat and Dimple Cups should grow on soil or irrigated rock, while Quarry Bushes should only grow on rock and Sweet Pods only on soil. It would be nice, since Sweet Pods would be harder to grow and no longer dominate the crop market. Might make Rock Nuts worthwhile if you don't want to mess with irrigation, since otherwise Sweet Pods are indisputably better.

[mythmonster2]

I got the "no fish" message almost instantly after my fisher started fishing.

[Frumple]

On the 'how do I eat without irrigating' question a bit back':

Cavern floors come naturally muddy, if you can handle (or wall off) the off-map entrances to the place. Actually, unlike the surface, you can build walls right against the side of the map underground, so it's far from impossible to completely seal off a cavern or two from visiting critters. Just remember to close off the space above the bottom wall, if there's extra z-space above 'em, and watch out for underwater entrances. Might have to wall off some of the pools, too.

Dunno if there's anything controlling it, but underground soil layers -- or at least sand -- seem to allow for natural underground plant growth; if your FPS can handle it, just mine out a few screens worth of empty space and run off of herbalism. Plenty of trees that way, too. I vaguely remember getting at least 50 plants a season with basically untrained herbalists, and that's probably massively misremembering (in an underestimation sense) the actual plant throughput that was going on.

Hunting's fairly viable, if you've got critters walking around the map. It's probably safer to get a small squad of military dwarves and issue them kill commands against the wandering fuzzies; it's a middlingly decent way to train novices, too.

Fishing is incredibly spotty, as has been noted. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. Gods only know what's the deciding factor involved; yeh probably shouldn't rely on it.

Trade's pretty easy, too. Ore density being what it is now, you could probably buy the caravans out just selling them gold nuggets, much less anything processed.

[Garrie]

Unfortunately, there are no fishable fish in .31.  Even after designating a fishing zone over a pond that I can see turtles hanging around in, a message comes up claiming there are no fish to be caught. 

Odd.
I have a tiny (3x4 rectangle missing one corner) pond, and one fisher-dwarf. He's surrounded by turtles somewhere between freshly caught and rotten. He is my only food provider (my herbalist is dedicated to the stillery, however, some dwarfs may in fact be stealing plants from the brewer I wouldn't put it past them).

[Garrie]

Has anyone got a pointer to an efficient farming solution of dffd?

[RedWick]

Has anyone got a pointer to an efficient farming solution of dffd?

The old floodgate irrigation method from the 2D version works like a charm, with only the addition of a pump or drain needed to deal with the excess water.  In a nutshell: Dig out farm area.  Dig access tunnel between farm and a reliable water source.  Block off access tunnel with floodgate at the entrance to the farm.  Attach floodgate to lever.  Breach access tunnel so water runs.  Drop floodgate.  Flood farm.  Raise floodgate.  Pump water out.  Plant farmland.

Flooding the farms was something that you used to need to do every year because every winter, the mud would dry out.

[Ilmoran]

I like the idea of having to do some form of irrigation, but I wish there was a little more realism to it:

* Water should be able to damp soil several tiles away.  Stone should only dampen 1 tile away, and damp stone should not be sufficient for irrigation.  In other words:  You can run a channel of water through your farm room, and make nearby soil tiles farmable.  But if you have a stone farm, you need to use a flooding/muddying irrigation method.

* Soil aquifers should allow farms on top of them with no additional work.

* Above ground farming should require water as well; rain should be sufficient for approximately 1 month, with a warning.  1 month after rain has fallen, an announcement should say something like "A drought is threatening your farms!".  At that point, the plants stop growing, and you then have 1 month to provide water somehow.  If you water the farms within that month, plants resume growing, with the timer set to 2 months (essentially, direct watering is more effective than rainfall).  If a month passes without watering, the plants die.

* Muddy stone should follow the same 2 month drying rules that above ground farm would.

This complexity, as a whole, should be controlled by [PLANTS_NEED_WATER] in the init.  Turning that off means farming on any soil, or 1 time irrigation of stone floors (unless someone cleans up the mud!)