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[Normandy]

Ah yes, but my attacks were relevant to the discussion at hand. I don't see how blue tilde tiles factor into a conversation like this; how you treat strategy games does.

I'm not sure how you can accomplish such a feat of expansion, I must congratulate you. Every time I win the game, I get hit by the game's upkeep and corruption mechanic and I'm stuck with two to five income drainers that get pillaged by barbarians and conquered by other players. I have to ride a fine line between expanding and shoring up my cities. I can't afford to build up my core cities because I'm busy building defenses for my expansions; and that player over there with 4 less cities is able to pump out more military units and tech than me because he's been building workers instead of settlers, and can afford to spend more towards science because he's built marketplaces, which you haven't had a chance to do while you've been expanding.

Automatic win, right? No strategy or planning involved. No decisions to make other than to pump out cities at every possible chance. Expanding is a necessity; but to take this to the extreme and say that all-out expansion is the auto-win is not a conclusion you can make. No interesting decisions? Hardly.

One of the great things about DF is that you can make decisions like this - should I open up the caverns or wait? Should I start up metal production now, or should I spend my limited labor towards creating more wealth and attracting more immigrants? What if I generate too much wealth and attract an ambush I can't handle? These are analogous to those decisions in Civilization: Should I expand to this high-risk high-gain area? Should I build a barracks now so I don't have to spend as much on defense, or should I build a marketplace so I have more money available? What if that player next to me has a large army poised to strike at me once I begin this wonder, stealing my hard work and production, or at the very least making me waste much of it?

I agree that farming can be made harder. But going back to OP, the way to do this is not to introduce new layers of obfuscation. I've said (a long time ago) before that magic, if implemented, must capitalize on the systems already present in DF - temperature, growth times, item properties, etc... To introduce ideas like 'runes' and 'mana' and 'elements' willy-nilly is a just plain terrible idea. It introduces detail, homework, without introducing satisfying complexity.

Do I have a better farming system than your system? No. I agree that your system is already better than vanilla DF's system, which really does need an overhaul. But I disagree that the way to go forward is to introduce arbitrary (i.e. not already in the game world) new concepts all over the place, bundle it together, and call it a game.

[Jayce]

A comprehensive cover all manual is a bad thing for this game,half the fun is finding out how things work.
Dunno about simple getting my millstone to be powered by my windmill took me ages to figure,didnt help that i build them out of stone(earlier version) i believe you can no longer use stone blocks for building windmills.

[NW_Kohaku]

One of the great things about DF is that you can make decisions like this - should I open up the caverns or wait? Should I start up metal production now, or should I spend my limited labor towards creating more wealth and attracting more immigrants? What if I generate too much wealth and attract an ambush I can't handle? These are analogous to those decisions in Civilization: Should I expand to this high-risk high-gain area? Should I build a barracks now so I don't have to spend as much on defense, or should I build a marketplace so I have more money available? What if that player next to me has a large army poised to strike at me once I begin this wonder, stealing my hard work and production, or at the very least making me waste much of it?

And no, you don't have to cater to it. But doing so is an overwhelming part of what makes games objectively fun (being defined as fun for "the most people")

See, this is why "Interesting choices" is such a meaningless phrase. (And what is "objectively fun"?  Isn't fun, by definition, something subjective?) Although I probably shouldn't go off on MORE other games, let's talk about some things that "most players" play, like the incredibly popular Mario games or Sports games or First Person Shooters that dominate much more of the market.  Can you really talk about "Interesting Decisions" in terms of "Do I jump on the goomba now, or do I wait .5 seconds longer to jump?" or "Should I collect that power-up, or do I take advantage of being small, and dying in one hit?"  or "Should I shoot at the basket now, or when I'm actually close enough to have a chance at scoring?" or "What are the pros and cons of running over that grenade on the ground there?"

People don't play DF in terms of "Interesting Decisions" that weigh pros and cons.  They play in terms of "OK, what is my highest priority right now?"  If they need food badly, they're probably going to ignore everything else in favor of making more farms.  If they think they have vulnerabilities militarily, they shore it up.  If they want to go into caverns, they don't weigh pros and cons, they look at their military, and make an educated guess on whether it's strong enough to survive the caverns or not, and if they aren't, will simply bulk the military up.  It's not "interesting" to decide you don't have enough military might to move into a risky area when you don't have the strength to do so.  It's just a simple pass/fail analysis.

Ask people why they enjoy DF. 

I doubt you'll get many answers revolving around "Interesting Choices".  What you ARE likely to get are answers revolving around the freedom the physics system gives them to do things like magma flood the map, or the difficulty of the game, or something along those lines.  What Toady tends to talk about, though, is a little term called "Verisimilartude".  He wants to make the game have all this depth when it can, but detail even when it can't because he wants the game to LOOK like it's just a wide-open place with plenty to explore.  Consider a game like Oblivion, and it's massive, beautiful open environments and ability to just get on a horse and tramp around the forests and fields for a while.  Or consider that The Sims is basically one of the highest-grossing games/series ever, and there's very little that counts as a difficult choice in that game.  "Fun" is sometimes just the ability to be able to understand and relate to a world, not having to figure out whether you need a +3 to tech instead of +4 to production.

I agree that farming can be made harder. But going back to OP, the way to do this is not to introduce new layers of obfuscation. I've said (a long time ago) before that magic, if implemented, must capitalize on the systems already present in DF - temperature, growth times, item properties, etc... To introduce ideas like 'runes' and 'mana' and 'elements' willy-nilly is a just plain terrible idea. It introduces detail, homework, without introducing satisfying complexity.

Do I have a better farming system than your system? No. I agree that your system is already better than vanilla DF's system, which really does need an overhaul. But I disagree that the way to go forward is to introduce arbitrary (i.e. not already in the game world) new concepts all over the place, bundle it together, and call it a game.

You know, at some point, everything that was ever added into DF is "arbitrary" by this definiton. 

Maybe you could argue against metals having properties jammed into the game rather than just arbitrary (in the original definition of the term) percentage multipliers on weapons based upon the weapons, but was 3D such a horrible decision because it added in some "arbitrary" third dimension to game mechanics?  Is the upcoming parts of the Army Arc 2, where we get to build armies and march them on enemy cities going to be "arbitrary"?  What about "arbitrary" new adventurer mode roles?  I don't know about you, but I look forward to some "arbitrary" changes that give this game more complexity AND depth.

This is a game that isn't finished by a longshot.  That means that some things get added.  I'd honestly like a magic system that works more like an Alchemy system, especially from a Gust game, where I could either mine for or grow ingredients needed to perform single-shot magic on the farms in this game.   If that farming takes advantage of the new "arbitrary" system, but then makes use of the same farming system instead of "mana", does it "un-arbitrary" the magic system?

Frankly, the magic system is a problem not because of the fact that it adds new elements to the game, but because it can radically alter what people think of the game.  Currently, Dwarf Fortress is all about warfare and engineering.  It might as well be "Roman Fortress".  People can look at this game and think of their dwarves as "Steampunk" dwarves in a low-magic setting, but the Magic system may potentially upturn all that.  There are people who will be delighted by a magic system, and potentially new players, and a huge number of people who will see any change towards more magic as a destruction of what they wanted the game to be.  It's the RUINED FOREVER topic to many players.  It has nothing to do with added complexity or a lack of fitting in with previous materials systems, it's everything to do with the theme of the game, and whether or not we're playing Warhammer.

(And if you're still hung up on soil pH, it's not even like soil pH was my idea, I originally argued for a more abstract system while Silverionmox wanted the more detailed one.  It was Toady, who may or may not have been influenced by the discussion, or may have just decided NPK +pH was the "most realistic" and went for it based on that alone, who said he was going for NPK +pH, so I worked out the best system I could around that for the suggestions thread.  Of course, you CAN blame me for pushing forward "biomass" as a way to feed non-photosynthetic plants so that underground plants and mushrooms don't just get their energy from nowhere.)

If you, as you say, see this as an improvement, and have no way to improve this further, other than to gripe about wanting less factors to be involved, what's the point of this, other than to argue for argument's own sake?

[Normandy]

Well, is there any other sake for arguing? Screwing with the status quo is fun. Just because a decision has been made, or that we have differences in opinion, doesn't mean that the discussion should stop. I understand that I won't convince you or anyone else of my position; but, like third-party candidates who run with no chance of winning here in the US, the discussion is solely to have our ideas heard. So yes, I'm griping about how I would prefer there to be fewer factors in farming.

Indeed, there really isn't any point in discussing "interesting decisions" anymore. I've made my point, and I think we can all be in agreement that fun is relative.

You know, at some point, everything that was ever added into DF is "arbitrary" by this definiton.

Precisely. But my argument was that there should be very careful consideration about adding arbitrary features; and whenever possible, things should take advantage of the systems already in DF, rather than adding entirely new ones.

but then makes use of the same farming system instead of "mana", does it "un-arbitrary" the magic system?

Actually, yes. There's less 'homework' involved - anyone who knows their way around the farming system now has a significant leg up on magic. The system becomes more complex and satisfying, without introducing unnecessary detail.

Also, I just brought up the magic system as a clear example of what I meant by an 'arbitrary' system versus a 'non-arbitrary' system. Have you seen the suggestions people have made for magic? Many of them eschew almost all of the game's preexisting mechanics and places a completely outside system into DF. If you want to talk about lore-breaking, talk about suggestions to add the four classical elements as a distinct concept to DF. That's far more perception-breaking than, say, adding an ability to modify the game's weather and temperature systems. Once again, these are just examples to illustrate a concept - not necessarily tied to any one suggestion or person.

We're just using pH as a descriptive focal point for our arguments, not necessarily griping against it specifically. I do actually like the system, as I have expressed before; but I don't like it on principle.

[Makaze2048]

And what is "objectively fun"?  Isn't fun, by definition, something subjective?

Partially. There are activities that no one considers fun and there are activities that some people consider fun. In terms of games by looking at the characteristics of universally unfun activities and common characteristics shared by fun activities you can develop a general idea of what is objectively fun. There is no single sweet spot where things are fun to everyone, but there is certainly lots and lots of design space where things are fun to no one. Interesting choices tend to be in the design space that is fun.

An interesting choice being a meaningful choice between 2 or more valid (though not necessarily correct) options. It's usually the meaningful part that people differ on. By ensuring that presented choices have multiple valid options rather than simply multiple options and by making each of those choices carry a consequence that is meaningful to the player you increase fun.

Although I probably shouldn't go off on MORE other games, let's talk about some things that "most players" play, like the incredibly popular Mario games or Sports games or First Person Shooters that dominate much more of the market.  Can you really talk about "Interesting Decisions" in terms of "Do I jump on the goomba now, or do I wait .5 seconds longer to jump?" or "Should I collect that power-up, or do I take advantage of being small, and dying in one hit?"  or "Should I shoot at the basket now, or when I'm actually close enough to have a chance at scoring?" or "What are the pros and cons of running over that grenade on the ground there?"

Sure. They're not everyone's cup of tea to be sure, but the concept still holds true. Here we see decisions where the player is presented with perhaps perfect knowledge but insufficient time to fully process and act on that knowledge. This leads to a quick decision among several choices with consequences being made. It is a different type of interesting choice but one none the less.

People don't play DF in terms of "Interesting Decisions" that weigh pros and cons.  They play in terms of "OK, what is my highest priority right now?"  If they need food badly, they're probably going to ignore everything else in favor of making more farms.  If they think they have vulnerabilities militarily, they shore it up.  If they want to go into caverns, they don't weigh pros and cons, they look at their military, and make an educated guess on whether it's strong enough to survive the caverns or not, and if they aren't, will simply bulk the military up.  It's not "interesting" to decide you don't have enough military might to move into a risky area when you don't have the strength to do so.  It's just a simple pass/fail analysis.

You just gave a perfect example of someone internally weighing pros and cons of various valid actions, choosing the one they thought was the best based of their limited knowledge, and acted with consequence. Those are interesting choices. It doesn't really matter if there is only one objectively correct answer only that there are multiple valid choices with significant enough meaning. Heck, even deciding what your highest priority is has the potential to qualify.

Ask people why they enjoy DF. I doubt you'll get many answers revolving around "Interesting Choices". What you ARE likely to get are answers revolving around the freedom the physics system gives them to do things like magma flood the map, or the difficulty of the game, or something along those lines. 

No doubt. It's a rather academic term used in design circles to attempt to describe an abstract game concept. Regular people don't use it, at least not in the context I'm using it here. The physics system (though I really have a hard time calling it that considering how little it actually does...) is liked because it gives people interesting choices. Whether they specifically call them that or not is irrelevant.

What Toady tends to talk about, though, is a little term called "Verisimilartude".  He wants to make the game have all this depth when it can, but detail even when it can't because he wants the game to LOOK like it's just a wide-open place with plenty to explore.  Consider a game like Oblivion, and it's massive, beautiful open environments and ability to just get on a horse and tramp around the forests and fields for a while.

Which to some degree is a worthwhile goal. Interesting choices are a game mechanic concept used to maximize the fun in that aspect of game design. Immersion is a separate concept and sometimes they knock heads. A more realistic and immersive system can limit choices or overwhelm with too many inconsequential ones. They both help to make a fun game overall and juggling between them (and other concepts) is a balancing act. In this case I believe that something like soil pH will do harm to pure gameplay aspects while providing very little in terms of immersion as most people are not familiar with the concepts involved and so will relate to it in pure abstract terms instead of as an immersive factor.

Or consider that The Sims is basically one of the highest-grossing games/series ever, and there's very little that counts as a difficult choice in that game.  "Fun" is sometimes just the ability to be able to understand and relate to a world, not having to figure out whether you need a +3 to tech instead of +4 to production.

True, The Sims does very well without many interesting choices, though there are some. It does so at the cost of interaction though. You don't so much play The Sims as watch it like you would TV (also very popular).

[Shades]

watch it like you would TV (also very popular).

Which as far as I can tell doesn't have any interesting choices. Mostly just adverts that they charge me to watch.

[Jayce]

Best way to spoil something fun is to stand back and ask why is this fun?.

[Makaze2048]

Best way to spoil something fun is to stand back and ask why is this fun?.

Agreed, but if your goal is to design something fun then it's an important question.

[Umi]

Just popping in to say that I had intended the topic more for discussion on whether it is complex or merely detailed now.  The other discussions are by all means welcome, but can I get your opinions on it in it's current state as well?

Also, any volunteers for making the minimal mod?

[Socializator]

I apologise for slight necro, but I have read the whole thread and I think it is indeed interesting debate (and the OP’s question itself)

The "interesting choices" debate is very similar to what was happening on forums of new 4x game  by Stardock – Elemental (btw. company which values their customers). Main question was if there should be all elemental magic attacks and defences (fire attack/defence, air, earth... etc) as the mechanic itself is detailed, yet trivial...

Personally I think that “fun” consists of two main elements – those “interesting choices” and something I would call “tamagotchi”. Different games balance these differently. The Sims is typical tamagotchi game in my eyes. 4X games are more “interesting choices” in the early and mid-game for me. Late game tends to be just boring – either you were extinct or you are superpower. (But I dont mind, I just start a new game heh)

Using good old wiki: “A complex is a whole that comprehends a number of intricate parts, especially one with interconnected or mutually related parts“. (feel free to adjectivitize that).

Advanced farming proposal mentioned here contains  both complexity and just complicated details. E.g. creating an irrigation to achieve higher yields requires lot of small problems and issues, thinking and planning. This task has also potential to be at least slightly different in each of my subsequent fortresses, which I find interesting as well. And the Tamagotchi value is there too.. How lovely these pipes and pumps look!
On the other hand, setting up the actual amount of water which plant requires is just detail. Open wiki, read the value, set the value, problem solved. Excel sheet would be able to do same job better than me. And replayability equals to 0. Just unnecessary and completely isolated micro.

And this leads me to OP’s question. Is DF complex or just detailed.

It indeed seems to fit with current Toady statements that he doesnt want to put in anything that is isolated from the rest of the simulated world.

But which part of gameplay is prevalent in _current_ DF?
You can pay extreme attention to detail and try to pick the best weapons for military and put coffer in every bedroom and dye cloth and cook meals and stuff. But indeed most of them are relatively separated from each other. (once they keep a dwarf at least moderately happy and alive). DF is not that complex as it appears to be. You have lot of tree types but in the end it is just wood. Lot of metals but all I am heading for is steel, ignoring all the rest. No iron on map? Open wiki and find 2nd best metal. Look at the industry chart. Level of interconnection is fairly low. (I am tempted to say “fortunatelly”).

My point is that making working fortress is indeed quite simple, ONCE you get through, I dare to call it that way, GUI, and find out that there is such thing as DF wiki.
For me the most important value of DF is the Tamagotchi - playground and sandbox value. And for this some good level of detail is needed. If you dont care about military, just build cages and (magma!!!!) traps  and you can focus on whatever you care about.  And in that particular field you are interested in, the level of detail AND complexity is kinda appreciated. (new synergy of military and materials). On the other you apprecieate that you dont have to mess with the pH to have a non-starving fortress.

Dont get me wrong, I like complex games with interesting choices. But it is not what dwarf fortress is for me. Those choices are of course present, be it planning part or management or design. But most important part, again for me, is the visibility of result. There are no points or tiers or levels. Very little punishment (once you get into the game). You are your own judge. So we are back to the Sims – how you design your house is completely up to you.

Dwarf fortress is extremely detailed Tamagotchi. By no doubt some parts of the dwarf world are complex (e.g. materials), but the game doesn’t force you to utilise that.

[NW_Kohaku]

Now THIS is out of left field.

Sorry, Socializator, but I can't quite follow much of what you're saying, here, and I'm going to have to ask you to define some of your terms.  (Specifically, YOUR definition of "Interesting Choices", whether I am correct in guessing you're seriously advocating an elementally-based rock-paper-scissors mechanic in this game, and what you mean by Tamagotchi...)

As for "excell spreadsheet playing", I've actually had this same essential argument continue onward, so I now have a new distillation of my argument, the refinement of arguing the same thing a dozen times over in a half dozen different threads:

I don't know why soil pH is the preferred whipping boy of those who oppose added complexity, but it's really the easiest variable to deal with, at least, unless you run out of lime.

Anyway, I'll continue to defend added complexity in the model by referring back to the "free stuff button" problem.

Currently, stone is effectively free stuff - you almost always have far more of it than you can store in stockpiles or get rid of, and therefore, you will use it without even considering it a cost - it's free!  Anything you can make from stone, you make it from stone, because stone is free - free rock mugs, free statues, free tables, free chairs, free doors!

Currently, wood is limited in supply, but still fairly cheap - you can make a huge variety of things out of wood, but really, you tend to stick to barrels and bins and beds, and maybe some charcoal, but not too much.  Wood is something you can't just consume completely without any care in the world.  You have to put at least some thought into conserving it for the things you really do need, because you only have so much of it in any given year.

Currently, however, steel and to a lesser extent, bronze are relatively difficult to make.  You need fuel, metal that you have to find and are in somewhat limited (although still fairly abundant) quantities, and you're prone to supply shortages.  You can't just build steel chairs for all your dwarves, you have to really consider what your priorities are for steel.  (And also note that steel and wood are both inifinite, they're just limited by the amount you can harvest per unit time.)

Frankly, these are the ONLY concerns about resources/materials that you really have in Dwarf Fortress.

So yes, you can add a few more jobs onto the processing part, or a little more land onto the farming part, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still basically like glass when you have magma and sand or like stone - it's free stuff, you'll never run out of it, so there's no reason to ever consider it.  Food is a default, automatic, easy gimmie, and will continue to be even if you have to up the number of dwarves working - most players just wind up killing off dwarves that they wind up have idling because they can't find any jobs for them, anyway, so simply assigning a larger proportion of their labor to farming is no difficulty, and if their entire supply chain is automatic and thought-free, then the problem will always remain.

This is why we need "additional complexity".  It's because we need SOME complexity in the mechanic whatsoever, so that it isn't just a "push button, get food" mechanic. 

I've frequently seen arguments against the farming thread based upon "this isn't a Farming Simulator", and that they don't want to have to care about generating resources or, really, anything besides seiges... Which frankly, seems like it's selling the game very short.  DF's not JUST a Warhammer Simulator, either.  We have to care about something in our fortress, and since, at the moment, we have nothing to really care about except whether or fortress continues to exist or not, food is as good a place as any to make the player actually have to care about resource management.  Heck, this isn't even more dramatic a claim than what every RTS since the days of Dune 2 has done, or every city-building strategy game has ever done.  Currently, almost everything you do is free and limitless and as such, there is nothing stopping you from ordering massive mining or construction or industrial projects without ever having to consider costs.  There are hardly even opportunity costs associated with anything - all the defenses and food production you'll ever need can be set up in a single season's time, and even making more processing only means you have to wait for more dwarves to show up to do more of the jobs to make the ratio of foodworking dwarves still sufficient.  It just means the fortresses have more dwarves, and the FPS goes lower.

The only way we really solve the problem DF faces is by making the player recognize that farming is not free, and that you can't just scale production forever, or demand things made completely without thinking about them.

Crop rotations (where sets of crops have to be chosen to accomidate one another), pests and pest control, and supporting fertilizer industries, all of which must similarly change in focus every time you want to produce more of one form of food over another.  These make players stop and consider what they are going to need in the future, and build accordingly.  They make players no longer simply respond to a shortage of one product by simply adding more dwarves to that production line.  It means you have to consider either conserving on some resources or take the time to accomidate the solution to the problem.

This is what DF needs more of - a need to stop and think about your problems - rather than simply making all your problems a matter of oversight and not paying attention when your supplies started running low.

You want to know what the problem/facepalm moment/way I killed my fort I see most frequently coming up about farms is right now?  "I forgot to start a farm."  Farming is currently so mindless and so assured that people just plain forget the entire mechanic is even there.  "Wait, you mean there were parts to this game that weren't the military or possibly mining?!"

DF is supposed to be better than this.

[Hammurabi]

Socializator, your post made perfect sense.  Some people want a Tamagotchi or ant farm.  Others want a puzzle game.  Some want an economic sim, while others want a sandbox/lego freeform system.  DF is only one-third finished, so we are all advocating that our favorite parts get more emphasis.

[NW_Kohaku]

Socializator, your post made perfect sense.  Some people want a Tamagotchi or ant farm.  Others want a puzzle game.  Some want an economic sim, while others want a sandbox/lego freeform system.  DF is only one-third finished, so we are all advocating that our favorite parts get more emphasis.

One-third finished?  Where do you get that idea?

Even if Toady has declared that he will arbitrarily determine version 1.0 is when he hits 100 features, that doesn't mean he's stopping at 100 features (and he's said he won't), it just means he's arbitrarily declared it v1.0

[Makaze2048]

I don't know why soil pH is the preferred whipping boy of those who oppose added complexity

Perhaps you should think on that though. If it is the single most common point of complaint then perhaps there is reason for that, a reason that you can't see since you're so wrapped up in proving you're right. There are many types and degrees of complexity. People who oppose something like soil pH do not necessarily oppose complexity in general, merely the type of complexity that soil pH represents.

Anyway, I'll continue to defend added complexity in the model by referring back to the "free stuff button" problem...

Everything is not free. It has at the very least an associated labor cost and those labor costs boil down to providing dwarves the things like food, booze, and shelter that they need to survive. One can certainly argue that the current costs are too low and that the existing situation of 20 dwarves easily providing for 150 slackers is undesirable. But that is simply a matter of balance, costs are too low not non-existent.

Of course if you raise the costs of labor then you make starting out much harder. Other games often solve this problem with a series of escalating requirements based on population or time. DF does this to a small degree by introducing nobles with increasing demands but does not do so for the general populace. You can have the increasing requirements be for things like smoothed stone bedrooms or other permanent improvements but those are only speed bumps and do not actually increase the overall cost of labor. For that you need an increase in consumable requirements, and the best way to supply those are through renewable means such as farming. Things like tobacco, wine made from slow growing crops that requires glass bottles, beard and mustache wax, actually needing clothes, better meals (with the a cooking system change to force lavish meals to use high value ingredients), etc. If a dwarf doesn't receive these items it could work much like booze does today, he survives but becomes increasingly slow and depressed, perhaps eventually abandoning the fortress for somewhere he will be better appreciated. These luxury items don't even have to be consistent across dwarves, some may demand cognac others cigars. The details do not matter so much as the point that you're increasing the cost of upkeep on each dwarf as dwarves increase (or perhaps in DFs case as the skill of an individual dwarf increases, make that legendary cost more than that peasant). This counteracts the economies of scale and accelerated production from increased skills that allow a small handful of dwarves to provide the upkeep for many.

This is also added complexity, but of a completely different sort than soil pH.

I've frequently seen arguments against the farming thread based upon "this isn't a Farming Simulator", and that they don't want to have to care about generating resources or, really, anything besides seiges... Which frankly, seems like it's selling the game very short.

What they want is to be able to setup the system and leave it be. For many the enjoyment of DF is in the building aspect. Not in that you mine out tunnels but the construction of a system of supply and production. The enjoyment is in setting them up and moving on to another one, not in constantly tweaking, checking on, and maintaining something like soil pH. That's simply micromanagement.

Additional difficulty and complexity in setting up the system is good, forcing me to monitor something and make endless tweaks to maintain it goes against the spirit of DF. That being you setup a fortress and the dwarves largely run it. Sure the game throws monkey wrenches into your perfectly setup plans, that's part of the fun. But the idea is to let those unpredictable events unbalance things not to purposefully create systems that require manual balancing.

The only way we really solve the problem DF faces is by making the player recognize that farming is not free, and that you can't just scale production forever, or demand things made completely without thinking about them.

Agreed, but I'd rather see a system that incorporates that cost into the game rather than externalizing it by increasing the cost of farming in terms of player attention and patience.

Crop rotations (where sets of crops have to be chosen to accomidate one another), pests and pest control, and supporting fertilizer industries

And some of that sounds good, depending on how it's implemented. Requiring fertilizer for certain crops, or having it increase yield sounds good. Having certain crops mark a field binarily as [Depleted] in the following season and only allowing certain crops or requiring additional fertilizer sounds good. Because I can set that up and provided I also maintain sufficient additional supplies (which is just part of the larger system) then great it all just works.

On the other hand having an analog measure of soil pH among other values does not sound good. It means that I'll have to either constantly check my pH levels and adjust what's growing or look on the wiki for 1 of a handful of perfectly balanced rotations. It creates little extra work for the dwarves, just a lot of micromanagement for the player.

This is what DF needs more of - a need to stop and think about your problems - rather than simply making all your problems a matter of oversight and not paying attention when your supplies started running low.

If you think this is what your system will produce then you are sadly mistaken. It will merely result in people forgetting to check their farm pH and then noticing that they're running out of food.

DF is supposed to be better than this.

DF is what it is. You can certainly want it to be something closer to the ideal in your head but it's only supposed to be whatever it is currently designed to be.

[NW_Kohaku]

Perhaps you should think on that though. If it is the single most common point of complaint then perhaps there is reason for that, a reason that you can't see since you're so wrapped up in proving you're right. There are many types and degrees of complexity. People who oppose something like soil pH do not necessarily oppose complexity in general, merely the type of complexity that soil pH represents.

Putting the whole issue of soil pH not exactly being my idea in the first place aside, soil pH is frankly quite easy to deal with.  It's mostly a matter of balancing the soil once, if that's even an issue (mostly with certain types of stone), to reach the level that is right for whatever set of crops you want.  Although certain types of fertilizer or crops acidify soil (which just adds a reason to be cautious about using them), soil acidity largely stays the same.  It is the NPK and water aspect that requires constant upkeep.  Soil pH is largely used to keep groups of crops being planted, since it is too much a pain to frequently change soil pH, so that you can't decide to switch rapidly between blueberry bushes and cotton fields.  It's a mechanic that makes you slow down and consider what your future needs will be because once you start working towards one end of the pH scale, it is slow going, and will be slow to change it back if you change your mind.  It's an "are you sure you want to commit to this set of crops?" mechanic.  (And honestly, I can't help but notice that everyone who's mocked pH thus far has not exactly done a good job of demonstrating they understand how I am using it, expecting that I am demanding of people that they mash the "lime soil" button every three seconds.  I think the reason people avoid mocking NPK is because I've seen several of them get the elements wrong, and because even people arguing against complexity realize it's hard to make the notion that plants need to be watered sound absurd.  It is the mockery one can make because one doesn't want to understand, not because they have been able to find serious fault in the mechanic, or argue for a better system.)

As for being "wrapped up in proving I'm right", I'll remind you that it's rather silly to accuse people of trying to advocate for the things they believe are best for the game.  Obviously I believe I am arguing for something I believe is right, or I wouldn't be doing it.  That, however, doesn't mean I'm somehow incapable of listening to or understanding what other people say.  As much fun as it might be to paint me as some kind of remorseless megabeast rampaging through the forums that only you can oppose, if I don't agree with you, it's not because I didn't understand you the first time, it's because I understood you, and still disagree. 

Look over the way that the Improved Farming thread has evolved, and you'll see how much my position has changed, especially because of arguing with others for or against certain aspects of this proposal.  I initially didn't care for NPK, wanting just three arbitrary values of describable soil color or such over the technical and realistic, but conceded, especially when Toady supported NPK+pH.  I have reversed myself on pests - I used to think it was just another labor sink for the simple sake of labor sinking, but now think it is perhaps the most dynamic feature that can be imposed upon a player.

This notion that I ignore complaints is ill-founded.  The problem with many of the complaints that have been cropping up recently, however, is that they are not interested in what actually goes into the farming system, but rather about a mere design philosophy standpoint...  People argue that any work on the part of the player is "micromanagement" (so I work to automate what I can), but that if it is automated, it's "just watching a dwarf movie" (so I have to provide more complex and systematic problems for the player to tackle).  Not only are these goals mutually exclusive (and occasionally argued by the same person in the same post), but these arguments are also significantly less productive than the earlier arguments over whether or not pests would be a good idea - you can measure the merits of pests objectively.  "Too much micromanagement" is just a subjective impression, often formed by people who tl;dr the whole discussion to begin with, and is easily subject to "Moving the Goalposts". 

Even worse, this just creates an absurd semantic argument over is or isn't an "Interesting Decision", where, I will point out, Makaze, that you eventually landed on saying that "when Mario jumps" (and whether he hits a goomba or falls into a bottomless pit) is an "Interesting Decision"... if simply WHEN you press the button is an Interesting Decision, then by extension almost anything I make of the Farming system will be an Interesting Decision, since you can always just choose to grow what you want sooner or later.  (And of course, every single person had different definitions of the term, making it thoroughly useless as a means of conveying information - even if I match up direct comparisons of the things one person said were "Interesting Decisions" to something almost entirely like it, they could simply refuse to acknowledge the comparison (and move the goalposts again).)

Anyway, I'll continue to defend added complexity in the model by referring back to the "free stuff button" problem...

Everything is not free. It has at the very least an associated labor cost and those labor costs boil down to providing dwarves the things like food, booze, and shelter that they need to survive. One can certainly argue that the current costs are too low and that the existing situation of 20 dwarves easily providing for 150 slackers is undesirable. But that is simply a matter of balance, costs are too low not non-existent.

Of course if you raise the costs of labor then you make starting out much harder. Other games often solve this problem with a series of escalating requirements based on population or time. DF does this to a small degree by introducing nobles with increasing demands but does not do so for the general populace. You can have the increasing requirements be for things like smoothed stone bedrooms or other permanent improvements but those are only speed bumps and do not actually increase the overall cost of labor. For that you need an increase in consumable requirements, and the best way to supply those are through renewable means such as farming. Things like tobacco, wine made from slow growing crops that requires glass bottles, beard and mustache wax, actually needing clothes, better meals (with the a cooking system change to force lavish meals to use high value ingredients), etc. If a dwarf doesn't receive these items it could work much like booze does today, he survives but becomes increasingly slow and depressed, perhaps eventually abandoning the fortress for somewhere he will be better appreciated. These luxury items don't even have to be consistent across dwarves, some may demand cognac others cigars. The details do not matter so much as the point that you're increasing the cost of upkeep on each dwarf as dwarves increase (or perhaps in DFs case as the skill of an individual dwarf increases, make that legendary cost more than that peasant). This counteracts the economies of scale and accelerated production from increased skills that allow a small handful of dwarves to provide the upkeep for many.

What they want is to be able to setup the system and leave it be. For many the enjoyment of DF is in the building aspect. Not in that you mine out tunnels but the construction of a system of supply and production. The enjoyment is in setting them up and moving on to another one, not in constantly tweaking, checking on, and maintaining something like soil pH. That's simply micromanagement.

Additional difficulty and complexity in setting up the system is good, forcing me to monitor something and make endless tweaks to maintain it goes against the spirit of DF. That being you setup a fortress and the dwarves largely run it. Sure the game throws monkey wrenches into your perfectly setup plans, that's part of the fun. But the idea is to let those unpredictable events unbalance things not to purposefully create systems that require manual balancing.

This is also added complexity, but of a completely different sort than soil pH.

Then let me use a different term than "free stuff", let me call it "infinite resources".  You do not need to stop and consider what you use your stone for, because you will always have more of it than you will ever need.  You DO, however, need to consider what you use your steel for, because it is limited in supply, and it takes more management to set up.

The purpose of this argument is to show the difference this sort of limitation of resources imposes upon the thought process of any player.  When food and other farmable goods become something you can't count on to be infinite just because you put X number of dwarves on that labor, and that's all it takes, then you can start making players actually face real decisions about the management of their resources.  The point of this is to make food and other farmable goods less like stone, where you can't get rid of it fast enough, and more like steel, where you have to consider how you manage it because you can't be absolutely certain that there will always be a surplus.

This sort of thing simply isn't possible if the answer to any shortage is merely "make more dwarves farm", with a possible additional "designate a little more farm".  That's just a quick reflex, it doesn't make you consider

With that said, if you assume I am going to force you to repeatedly return to the farm tiles every 2 game weeks to punch the "water the crops" button, then you simply haven't been reading what I've written on the subject, because I've spent some significant time specifically on the subject of how to design automatable systems of exactly the sort you are arguing should be there.  (You can start reading here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=22015.msg1481494#msg1481494)

Likewise, if you think that I should include more than simply food in farms... CONGRATULATIONS!  I have been advocating this straight from the begining.  I have even made a full-blown suggestion thread on JUST making dwarves seek luxury goods and the luxury goods and services they can seek.  (See here, here, here, and here.  More coming the less time I have to spend arguing this same argument all day every day.) 

On the other hand having an analog measure of soil pH among other values does not sound good. It means that I'll have to either constantly check my pH levels and adjust what's growing or look on the wiki for 1 of a handful of perfectly balanced rotations. It creates little extra work for the dwarves, just a lot of micromanagement for the player.

If you think this is what your system will produce then you are sadly mistaken. It will merely result in people forgetting to check their farm pH and then noticing that they're running out of food.

You're arguing that I'm ignoring things or fighting against I've always supported, which I can only get the impression is because you tl;dr-ed through what it is I've been proposing, instead just assuming I am for things I am not for.

edit: I am forced to repeatedly restate what, exactly, it is I am arguing for over and over again, and this is why I am so highly frustrated by this whole process, especially since it just seems to crop up all over again in another thread each week.