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[NW_Kohaku]

However, Wicca is a magic system based around our real world, and it is therefore one more focused on intents, where magic is an interrupter of nature. 

DF has a much more mythic cosmos more suffused in magic. 

Take a look at the mythos of The Elder Scrolls, where the sun is not a ball of fire (yet), but actually a hole in the universe through which a god escaped reality into the Aether, a place beyond causality and time. Magic is funneled in from the Aether as its pure potential of outcomes that, in the Aether, devoid of time, would never have a chance to be. 

Further, the whole of the metaplot is based upon the concept of "mantling" gods, wherein mortals can act like gods until they gain their powers and force the gods to act like them, including the dragon god that controls time, forcing "Dragon Breaks" that result in complete breakdowns in causality. 

The entire concept of the Dragon Break was created just to explain that the next game in the series takes place in a timeline where nobody can understand what events actually happened during the timeline of the last game.  The Dragon Broke, every playthrough of the game happened simultaneously, and all possible outcomes simultaneously occurred, resulting in a lot of very confused people with conflicting accounts of the same events because they actually existed on different timelines that were then forced to merge.

Oh, and the whole thing takes place as a war between Gnostic elves who want to recreate the perfect potential before time and causality existed via destruction of physical reality, and Existentialist humans who want to create a whole new race of gods through mythic evolution.


It's not to say that wiccan-type magic can't exist at the same time, I even had another thread on magic like that, but that amethyst men and evil biomes that generate skeletal versions of any creature that once lived there are much more suited to a mythos that involves magic-suffused biomes.

In fact, they can merge together well, with magic-granting spirits or gods that require a magic field to feed off of, themselves, and where they gain greater power and status among the other spirits or gods as their domains are expanded. (Hence, they would encourage mortals to spread their domains the way that elves want to spread their nature spirit forests, and oppose the destruction of those forests violently.)

[wierd]

[Yay! Somebody else who read the game books!]

Even in the TES universe, the declarative is what makes this happen. The mortal gods of men, manifest the way they do through belief.  Likewise, the interview with vivec about why he pursecuted the neravarines and the dissident priests shows that he was using the belief of the dunmer to hold daggoth ur in his prison, being seperated from his routine magic-bath in front of the heart, and forced to rely on other means.

In the TES universe, the motal races represent the "aspects of aspects" of the divine beings who perishd to make those manifestations possible. (The original et ada are literally dead. The ground is litterally their bodies, and the mortal races are literally their progeny.) The manifestations of the divines are really just myth echos, shaped by belief. That is why the wa to heaven by violence, "walk like them until they walk like you" is able to work.

It is also why the marukhati selective was able to smash anuiel into akatosh when they danced on their tower.

In the TES mythos, "NOTHING" is real, and everything exists because of beleif. MK himself even said so.

[NW_Kohaku]

It's a subjective reality.  It's real because enough people believe it is, but only for as long as they believe it.  (Hence, believing the first emperor ascended into being a god makes it so, until they are forced to stop believing at sword-point, which makes him not a god anymore.)

Mantling is the shaping of perception when perception IS reality.

The path Vivec talked about was transcending godhood through creating an understanding of reality where you could perceive something beyond even what the gods could understand, and functionally mantling all of existence itself to shape the laws of reality to your design.

... buuuuut we're getting kinda far off topic, here.  I referred to TES to make a point on how magic can be conceived of in a game world.

As for the "potion of magic thundergoat liver", that falls very promiently into the realm of sypathetic magic.  A mandrake looks like a sexual organ, so it must confer sexual potency, etc.  It is really more a form of "magic, through ignorance", and actual, invoked magic. It is the result of imprper understanding, coupled with belief.  A bezoar is really just a glorified gallstone, found in a goat's stomach. Goats aren't really magically immune to poison, and a bezoar has no power to nullify poison. However, the ignorant notice that goats can at some toxic plants and be fine, notice the bezoars inside the goats when they are slaughtered, and believe the bezoar is responsible for that apparent immunity, and that if the (ugh..) eat....(gross.....) the bezoar, they will be able to survive being poisoned as well.

It has the same declarative origins as real, high magic, (by eating this bezoar, I am immune t poison!) but is magic through ignorance, and carries all the consequences that doing an ignorant thing would have. (Like being sickened by eating a disgusting gallstone!)

That's only how you are explaining it because you are trying to look at the game world as a magic-through-ignorance mindset, however. 

If, however, you perceive magic as an energy source around which biological processes develop, then it's entirely possible that either such pseudo-symapthetic magic can actually work (which is what the alchemy concept is based around - being able to transitively pass properties of different animals and plants and minerals into finished products) or there can be a more rational consequence at work.

For example, in the same way you can say Nethercaps are actually developed around the collected mollecular-scale portals to the nether realm, and that therefore you can use that wood as an infinite heat sink wherever, even if stripped down or "refined" into a more concentrated form of nether portals, (however much danger there may be in attempting that stunt,) you can then distill down nether portals to a material that you can then work into other materials if you can find an alchemical reaction that will accept the material you put nether portals into as a reagent.  Hence, you might suffuse a metal with nether portals as you are working it by temporarily dimming their power to link to the nether realm, and when forging is finished, you have a sword or shield or other item that permanently contains the nether portal's effects because you have placed them within the metal.  (Hopefully in a stable and safe way...)

It's not so unscientific when you really get down to it to see that goats can eat poison, and then experiment with different body parts they have near their digestion tract to try to find what gives them their immunity.  (Provided you take adequate care for if you were wrong and experiment in a safe manner, not just assuming you were right with your first guess.)

Eventually, through blind experimentation, you will hit on something right, and that's really what most folk-medicines and even those handed-down farming techniques were based upon - experimentation upon a concept they didn't really understand the process, but where they could understand the inputs and the outputs were relatively reliable.  (I.E. building up a myth around why fields you left compost and manure on would produce greater crop yields, while those that didn't have those things would lose their fertility over the years.)

[wierd]

Dont' misunderstand;

Science does not give us knowledge of what is.  It gives us knowledge of what things are not. The process provides us with more refined ideas, not pure ideas.  The scientist is not immune from ignorance, only less beholden.  This is very important to accept as true, if you want to avoid falling victim to hubris and observation biases.

As such, until the villagers test the bezoars on somebody that doesn't believe they work, in a double blind experiment, they wouldn't be able to determine that the bezoar is not really what is causing the poison immunity magic. (The belief in the bezoar is!)

As such, it is still ignorance, in the real sense, but they are unable to determine that their belief is physically untrue, bcause their beleif has real, measurable effects, which reinforce the beleif.

Eg, see this feedback cycle:

Stage 1)

I asked a fire imp how it makes fire. It says it simply wills the fire into being. I believe this, because I see it produce fire from is bare hands. As a spirit of fire, it wears no clothes, and carries no tinder. Fire simply appears where it commands. (I narrowly escaped the encounter.)

Stage 2)

I began practicing willing fire to exist myself. I am embolded by my experience watching the fire imp. I WILL master fire!

Stage 3)

I conjured a flame today! Now I KNOW I can produce fire as well! I won't stop until I can best that imp!

Stage 4)

(New student)
I have seen the fire wizard today. I am not the first student to come seeking how to master fire. I know it can be done, because I have seen him produce fire from nothing. I will learn to master fire as well!

From then on, the knowledge of fire becomes real. Further, the practice may take on regional color, as techniques to help overcome personal disbelief are incorporated, such as gestures. The art slowly moves away from the pureness of "I simply will it to be, and it is.", to "I know that if I gester just so, I can make a wall of flames."  Fundementally, it is the same thing; belief given form, but the manifestation changes as a result of instruction, and improper knowledge, even if that improper knowledge has real effects, such as more precise control over the magic. (Eg, "Oh no, you can only make the volcano explode by doing the hokey pokey naked, with 2 squirrels strapped to your nipples, and covered in chicken grease while gargling river spirits. When you spit into the fireplace, and the flames rise up into the air, THEN the volcano will erupt!"... because the practitioner believes this is the correct way to perform the magic, for THEM, it is!)

[wierd]

Dont' misunderstand;

Science does not give us knowledge of what is.  It gives us knowledge of what things are not. The process provides us with more refined ideas, not pure ideas.  The scientist is not immune from ignorance, only less beholden.  This is very important to accept as true, if you want to avoid falling victim to hubris and observation biases.

As such, until the villagers test the bezoars on somebody that doesn't believe they work, in a double blind experiment, they wouldn't be able to determine that the bezoar is not really what is causing the poison immunity magic. (The belief in the bezoar is!)

As such, it is still ignorance, in the real sense, but they are unable to determine that their belief is physically untrue, bcause their beleif has real, measurable effects, which reinforce the beleif.

Eg, see this feedback cycle:

Stage 1)

I asked a fire imp how it makes fire. It says it simply wills the fire into being. I believe this, because I see it produce fire from is bare hands. As a spirit of fire, it wears no clothes, and carries no tinder. Fire simply appears where it commands. (I narrowly escaped the encounter.)

Stage 2)

I began practicing willing fire to exist myself. I am embolded by my experience watching the fire imp. I WILL master fire!

Stage 3)

I conjured a flame today! Now I KNOW I can produce fire as well! I won't stop until I can best that imp!

Stage 4)

(New student)
I have seen the fire wizard today. I am not the first student to come seeking how to master fire. I know it can be done, because I have seen him produce fire from nothing. I will learn to master fire as well!

From then on, the knowledge of fire becomes real. Further, the practice may take on regional color, as techniques to help overcome personal disbelief are incorporated, such as gestures. The art slowly moves away from the pureness of "I simply will it to be, and it is.", to "I know that if I gester just so, I can make a wall of flames."  Fundementally, it is the same thing; belief given form, but the manifestation changes as a result of instruction, and improper knowledge, even if that improper knowledge has real effects, such as more precise control over the magic. (Eg, "Oh no, you can only make the volcano explode by doing the hokey pokey naked, with 2 squirrels strapped to your nipples, and covered in chicken grease while gargling river spirits. When you spit into the fireplace, and the flames rise up into the air, THEN the volcano will erupt!"... because the practitioner believes this is the correct way to perform the magic, for THEM, it is!)


Likewise with the bezoar. Really, there isn't much special about the bezoar, other than the fact that it is crystalized bile. (Blach!) Bile DOES serve a function in protecting the stomach from corrosive and irritating substances. This is why goats that eat a lot of irritating plantlife are likely to develop one. Eating the bezoar may well help protect your stomach from getting damaged by a nasty, irritating plant substance.  But, this fosters a belief in magical protection, which quickly outshines any physical protection.

Take for instance, picts, and their belief that painting themselves in woad pigment before battle magically shielded them from injury.  In a magical universe, this could well become true! One person believes the blueness is responsible after seeing a blue colored cobaltite titan take relentless punishment, for instance. Honestly thinks it is the blueness that conferred that resistance, paints himself blue, and truely believes himself invulnerable, like the titan. Others see him resist getting hit with axes, hammers, crossbows, and catapult rounds, and ask how he does it. He says it's the blueness. They believe it.

BOOYA.  Blue bodypaint suddenly is magically more effective than a candyfloss bikini is.

[winner]

Could you talk about the nature of magic in a non farm thread.  It's very interesting, but will make it harder for future people to completely read this thread.

[wierd]

Sorry.   it got OT from a discussion about magic interracting with a biosphere. Specifically, its role in cavern ecosystem, and the impact that would have on agriculture.

I am personally opposed to magic being involved in agriculture, because it would mundanify magic, and or, totally break agriculture. (Most likely the latter.)

I would prefer to keep magic as an extraordinary thing that doesn't manifest frequently, rather than something as common as green grass. The world is more... sensible.. that way, and better suited to a computer simulation, instead of a literary fantasy.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, to keep the response on magic (relatively) succinct...

I'm saying it's not magic by ignorance, it's an innate magic property of different materials, and they are scientifically testable.  There's something in that goat liver that's magic, and you can extract and use it:
Objective reality with magic forces you don't understand, but which do have predictable effects for a certain set of controlled causes.

Magic also is already mundane.  Goblins are immortal and don't eat but get their wool by shearing trolls and have access to caverns full of magic mushrooms.  Elves talk to animals and speak with a magic forest spirit that tells them how to live their lives.  Dwarves are magic creatures that exhibit magical properties, even if not all the time.  You might choose not to believe this what with most magic not yet implemented and things like the nature of a feather tree not being completely obvious that when Toady says "Feather tree" he literally means "tree made of feathers", but it's true.  The quarry bushes we already have are gray bushes with leaves that make no sense underground with oils just like an aboveground plant that grow from rock-like nuts.  Cave wheat is like regular wheat, but white, and not any sort of mushroom.

All underground crops simply are magic.  Underground farming is magic farming.  There's no way around that, the only way forward is to embrace it.  It's simply a matter of incorporating mundane magic into the rational framework of objective reality (where belief shapes nothing outside your own mind) that this game clearly also has.

What I'm suggesting is more rules so that magic isn't as rampant and able to be taken for granted as it already is - an amethyst man can only operate within the magical fields that support it, and will be rendered inert if removed from its necessary magic.  Quarry bushes are magic plants that rely upon magic from the caverns to grow.  Without that magic, they die as a plant without sun would.

Hence, "energy source" - like the sun is the energy source for a regular plant, a magic plant needs magic.  Sun berries can't grow without good magic, outside of good magic biomes, they die.  (No more just plain importing the seeds and growing them willy-nilly.) 


If I can use this to lead back to the non-magic aspects of the thread...

One of the other things a multi-variable system does is include the concepts of what biomes and soils are suitable for plants.  Orange orchards die in frost - you wouldn't be able to grow them anywhere but Warm or Tropical biomes. 

Soil acidity would also be something fairly biome-dependent.  Evergreen forest biomes having highly acidic soil, for example, would dictate very different soil acidity, and hence, viable crops, than a desert even if you were capable of supplying fresh water.  Drainage would also be something slightly more out of the control of the dwarves to easily change (although with work, you could alter it), making for some crops far easier to grow in some areas than others.

These differentiate forts by biome and region.  This both makes trade more useful, especially if you start getting to growing some types of items, such as cotton/flax/rope reed only really heavily in warmer or more tropical regions, so that colder regions have to import cloth, as well as making the game more varied as not every fort will be capable of growing everything of use every time.

I also stand by the assertion that multiple "nutrient" variables that are easier to change and more short-term are crucial to providing a challenging experience.

Water is also a key variable that needs to be addressed even more obviously than just soil fertility and energy source - the water management section covers how introducing a need to keep water flowing, as well as keep water finite (rather than having infinitely flooding sources of water) makes for a far more challenging irrigation problem (especially underground, where you can't just rely on rain). Engineering is obviously key in providing for safe and controlled irrigation, and it ties the strengths of the rest of the game's emergent behaviors into the need for agriculture. 

Likewise, if we have more complex composting needs (especially if those require using sewers to collect extra compostable materials from animals and dwarf alike) there's a logistical challenge in moving around all the various sources of compost to composting sites, and then moving the finished fertilizers and biomass to the farms.  For added challenge, remember that compost-to-be creates miasma, and that miasma might soon spread disease.

As opposed to merely having beans replenish the soil once a cycle, these two activities are actually spacial problems that involve moving things throughout the fort, and involve player skill in preparing their space-management and logistics.  Everything else in the fort can trip over a poorly designed water management system.  (Especially if you flood your fort...) A cycle of beans, fallow, corn, meanwhile, is wholly intrinsic to the fields itself, with no real possibility of emergent growth in gameplay.

The pests/weeds/diseases, likewise, invites use of specific predator animals or else companion planting of pest-repelling plants.  If a disease strikes certain crops, it can stay in the soil and strike again if you plant more of the same crop, forcing you to avoid some crops until the disease has died.

[wierd]

My simplified suggestion was meant to include water availability as a variable. I admit that soil type would also place additional constraints on gameplay, but it needn't get into such detail as the parts potasium to parts sodium in the soil. If that were the case, the only real solution is to import clays from different regions, and radically overhaul the clay types. (Some clays are volcanic, others are sedimentary, for example. They have very different soil properties, but both are usually just fine for pottery. If the local clay is deficient, which is why parts potasium is low, you would need a way to import a buttload of a different clay, and till it in, thus changing the soil tile type. As is, this would be rife for abuse, because you could simply import a bunch of fire clay, and keep tilling it into a 1x1 tile farm, until it is basically pure fireclay, unbuild the farm, designate it as a clay source, and totally break imports as the means of getting more. Same with sand, etc.)

I could see alkaline<->acid as a variable, because that would influence weather or not you grow wheat (prefers alkaline) or strawberries (prefers acid), but going too far is a problem.

The idea I had in mind, was that areas that are dry, can't sustain biomass, and naturally just deplete to naked clay or sand. This means the hot and dry biome would require compost to even attempt getting started, in addition to irrigation, which is true of the real world too. You could pour all the fresh water you wanted on the sahara, very little if anything would grow, or could grow, even with miles and miles of wet sand. Plants require the chemical exchange capacities of the biomass in the soil to get nutrients. Without it, they just can't grow. (Hydroponics actively dissolves the ideal nutrient concentrations into the water artificially, to get around this. Distilled water will always kill plants, without soil being present. Even "air plants" need an inert biomass filler to live, like cuir.)

Rather than be "soil building" directly,  was more implying that it was soil building, *if* you did not harvest the crop, tilled it under, and left the plot fallow for one full year, because that is really what you have to do with soil building crops to re-establish biomass.

Instead, the desired protocol I had in mind, was to make agriculture expensive, because it is. The system I proposed (or thought I proposed anyway...) would have required soil neutral plants that have a low nutritional yeild be the primary route to soil building, via a very inefficient composting process on the side.

Eg, you grow a boat load of ratweeds, because it is all your rotten marginal embark can grow to start with. You use some of it to make alcohol, so you don't get the game over screen, and rely on imported food and possibly poultry to survive starvation.  The rest of it, you directly shove into the composter. 

Compost loses anyplace from 50% to 90% of its mass through the composting process. So, you feed 500 units of ratweeds in, and you get maybe 50 to 250 units of compost out.  This is noplace near enough to fertilize your farm plots you used to grow 500 units of ratweeds on.  The soil buildup process is thus painfully slow, as it really, actually is IRL when dealing with marginal and pathetic soils. (You don't wanna know how hard it would be to build up on an undead biome that can only grow sliver barbs)

The idea was to link quantity of compost, with quality of input material, so that a nutrient rich input would lose less biomass during composting, and balance that by having higher density crops just have lower yeilds. This means that you could jumpstart your crappy soil, by either I.porting compost directly (whoo! Expensive!), or sinking lots of urists into buying high value crop goods, just to compost them, and crying bitter tears as your dwarves go bonkers at the sight of fresh veggies and pig out on them instead.

On top of that, tieing it all in with weather, and seasonal variations based on the biome, further making some crops simply unreasonable to grow depending on the embark.

All you have to do is set up the numbers the same way a casino does, so that developing a winning strategy is FIERCELY dependent upon the location, and specifically THAT location.

For instance, if you embark on that evil biome, you might literally be forced to have hunter and soldier dwarfs killing abominations, and composting the putrid corpses, just to keep enough biomass in the soil to barely survive, because there just isn't enough sunlight in the area, due to ut being on the north pole, and the constant dust storms and rains of putrid filth that come down, preventing the soil from being able to be built up enough to do more than just barely be fertile enough to make a pitiful amount of the worst alcohols in the game, and still stay homeostatic.

Compare wit the idyllic life of a temperate zone berry picker farm, that has lovely fine weather, and naturally fertile soil.

The gamplay requirements will be radically different, despite the exact same gameplay system being in effect.

As far s I could tell, that was the desired outcome. *shrug

[zwei]

Part of the problem, though, is that making a Lead Farmer that's worth listening to would be extremely complicated to program, as it would require making assessments of farming as a math problem when I've specifically set up farming not to be a simple math problem.

Having a mechanic where you can see, at the "I'm choosing what to plant" screen what crops the soil will currently support, what crops will take what amount of fertilizer before being able to be supported, and what crops are just not fit for the current soil or environment, no matter how you try to dink with it, is both easier to accomplish and also perhaps a bit more informative to the player for understanding how the whole thing works. 

(That is, rather than just telling you what to do, you know what you can do easily, and what is more difficult to do, and why it's more difficult.)

There are two things:

Lead Farmer should not be the best advice giver, so he can have reasonably inaccurate advice, he just should not give outright harmful advice. That is why skills and personality matters (and likes - if your agriculturist loves fisher berries, he will tend to suggest them when possible) - they are there to not improve, but rather to degrade his advice.

HE is there not for you, but for people intimidated by complexity - that screen you linked is very scary!

Also, he is not supposed to plan out entire cycle, just next season.

He can basically use same heuristics like that screen: Order plants by how well current soil would support them, fudge lit a bit by fertilizer requirements and tell player to use one of top three.

If it is supposed to be educational, then simple list of reason why it is better than current plan can be given (comsumes x which is abundant, restores y which is depleted).

In the end, you can just add +ses and -ses together with some weights, order plants and pick top one.

[winner]

I was really moved by your vision of finite resources in (semi) closed cycle, and by difficulty scaled along multiple dimensions.  As I program a prototype of this to see how it might feel to play I'm going to focus on the dynamics of it and disregard many of the details of your proposal.

here is what I understand as the important game play dynamics involved.

Mining Fertility from the land: Just as smelting steel involves your whole map because you have to collect the materials.  Farming is more interesting when you go out and collect the fertility, whether it is by collecting cow pies, composting logs, or depositing fertile silt from the river. 

Diseases and Pests: Even if you have no way of fighting them, they make you try new crops and farming styles, as a consequence there is no such thing as the perfect crop.  Similarly when you run out of Hematite ore you start smelting the Galina that wasn't worth bothering with before.

Crowding neighboring plants: When plants compete with their neighbors for light you can become very creative with the spacial layout of your crops.  We have countless threads on how to place your workshops and stockpiles for just a little bit more efficiency.  If weeding is an issue people will come up with things like planting prickle berry and valley herbs together because by the time the herbs are harvested the prickle berries will have grown large enough to suppress weeds on their own.  Little fisher berries might be planted among the apple trees because the berries use the little space left over after the trees have used most of it.

I'm going to see how it feels to play with just these 3 features and then slowly add in the fancier stuff.

[wierd]

(LONG post. Probably ninja... Yep, Ninja'd)

Ok, so basically, the idea I had was this:

Water availability:
A tile that is unable to retain moisture (desert biome, without irrigation) will lose biomass per growing season (NOT YEAR!) at a rate consistent with its lack of moisture, with an upper bound of 25% per season. Thus, if not irrigated, dumping compost on it will result in all the compost vanishing without a trace in 1 year. Distance from a water source determines how moist it is, in desert biomes. Exact rate of falloff needs to be determined carefully to avoid game breaking consequences.

Tiles that are too wet (Swamp!) will have a similar problem, even though this isnt exactly RL accurate. (Instead, swamps accumulate biomass, but prevent crop growth, due to toxicity, and lack of aeration for soil microbes, leading to plants literally rotting in the ground, and becoming peat.) Instead, dryness will be dependent upon proximity to dried tiles. (May require a magma source below to force-dry the tiles, or extensive tilling to keep the tiles aerated.)

Rainfall on a tile adds moisture, and on all tiles except swamp biome ones, tiles naturally revert to being parched. Parched tiles lose biomass like on desert tiles.

Weather:
Weather affects the amount of sunlight, and the amount of rainfall a region has. In addition, "Abnormal" weather, like deadly dust, and deadly rain, block out 100% of sun when they are in effect, and in the case of deadly rain, do NOT moisturize soil.

Region:
The latitude of the embark region will determine the amount of sunlight per growing season, and variance between seasons. An equitorial region embark will receive maximum sunlight per season, on all seasons, year round. A temperate zone embark will receive maximum sunlight only in summer, 50% sunlight in spring and autumn, and 25% sunlight in the winter.  A polar region embark will receive 25% sunlight in summer, and 0% sunlight in winter.

In addition to geographical factors, effects like "Goodness" and "Evilness" will impact the natural homeostasis of the soil, making it trend more toward fertile, in the case of good biomes, or dead, in the case of evil ones. The degree of this impact needs to be carefully implemented, and needs to be (very) subtle. Little things like this can be used to keep sunberries ONLY in good biomes, and sliver barb ONLY in evil ones, for instance.

The amount of rockiness of the area should also play an important factor, just by being there, since there is no way to remove rocks from a field efficiently without simply flooding the surface, and using mud.

Biomass casino roulette, and plant growth:

Plant requirements are static. A strawberry always requires the exact same amount of energy to grow. As such, there cant be any cheating by starting a strawberry on a tile that doesnt have enough biomass in it to theoretically supply 100% of its needs, should the sun fail to shine for some reason. (Like, it being the winter at the north pole, maybe?)

This means that a tile with 0 biomass will NEVER support life, unless it is fertilized first, and then only support what could theoretically be 100% supplied by that biomass, even if the sun is shining brightly overhead.

Composting is VERY inefficient! It is this way BY DESIGN. At LEAST 50% of the biomass of the source material will be lost, and up to 99% at the top end, based on the crop.  here is a tentative list of made up values that look good without being tested:

Sliver barb (Loses 99%)
ratweed (loses 90%)
hideroot (loses 80%)
bladeweed (loses 80%)
ropereed (loses 70%)
Fisher berry (loses 60%)
Prickle berry (loses 60%)
Strawberry (loses 60%)
Sunberry (Loses 50%)
Whipvine (Loses 50%)

Going the other way, different crops produce less biomass than others, as they gain in potency for composting.

Whipvine (yeild: 5 per tile end of season)
Sunberry (yeild: 3 per tile end of season)
Strawberry (yeild: 5 per tile end of season)
Prickleberry (Yeild: 8 per tile, end of season)
Fisher berry (Yeild: 8 per tile, end of season)
Ropereed (Yield: 12 per season)
Bladeweed (15 per season)
Hideroot (20 per season)
Ratweed (20 per season)
Sliverbarb (30 per season)

note how the edible crops are lower yeild: This is intentional.

In addition to this, the consumption rate to produce alcohol closely parallels the costs for composting coupled to yeild and crop size.

1 barrel curor == 500 sliver barb (barbs are low nutrition, AND small.)
1 barrel sewer brew == 30 rat weed
1 barrel river spirits ==  20 ropereed
prickleberry and fisher wine == 100 berries (Small)
strawberry wine == 120 berries (small)
sunshine == 120 berries (small)
whip wine == 50 whips

naturally, you should be seeing how it is going to be very difficult to survive now, without MASSIVE agricultural allotments. This is more realistic than most players are used to. Welcome to hell children.

Each soil tile has a fertility ranging from 5000, to 0. Depending on the biome, regional effects, and moisture balance, this will either naturally hold steady, or fall like a gold brick through the atmosphere of jupiter.

Let's play a sample.

Evil biome, North pole. (the infamous "Haunted Glacier" embark!)

Natural vegetation: NONE
Tree cover: NONE
Temperature: FREEZING
Surroundings: TERRIFYING

Site prospect says:
NO SOIL
AQUIFER
DEEP METALS
DEEP STONE

Neighbors: Goblins, Tower, Dwarves, Humans

embark window asks if you REAAAAAAALY want to embark there.

We say yes...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We arrive, and first thing, we dig down into the ice, and hit the aquifer. We have to breach it, so we double slit. We hit stone. In order to get surface crops started, we have to wait several years, and we also have to get magma just below the surface to keep our irrigation system from freezing solid. This means we have to get to the magma sea.

We murder our migrants, and compost the bodies, because we can't make any alcohol yet, and have VERY limited reserves. We make boatloads of stone crafts to sell. 

The dwarven caravan for the first year arrives. We sell our crafts, and buy food and booze. Gods, do we buy food and booze.  We continue our digging, and then the yetis arrive. Thankfully, we have built a drawbridge with stone mechanisms, and deep stone we got through breaching the aquifer. Then the deadly weather arrives, killing the yetis.  We think this is a blessing, but no! NO! the yetis rise from the dead as HUSKS.  We cleverly devise a freezing cannon with pumped water from the aquifer to murder them, so they stay dead. The necromancer arrives shortly afterwards. We succeed in destroying his undead army with the water cannon, but he escapes off the map. 

The humans show up. We sell them more of our useless stone goods, and buy wood, and surface crop seeds. With the leftovers, we buy more food and booze. With the wood, we make SORELY needed beds, averting that tantrum spiral that is imminent from always drinking the same booze, sleeping on cold stone floors, and seeing the undead, and witnessing death (Murdered migrants, remember?). 

We have now reached the magma sea, and constructed a minecart dipping system to transport it to the surface... but need wood for powered rollers. Our embark doesn't have a cavern layer. 

Dwarves arrive, and we buy the wood we need. We buy more food, and more booze.  Shortly after they arrive, the goblins spring from ambush, killing some of the dwarven merchants. We compost the bodies. (both dwarven and goblin) Shortly after, we channel the surface, and start dumping magma in.  Combo attack of evil weather, Tower attack, and Kobolds. It isnt pretty. (thank the gods we used a bridge!)  By the end of it, we have several new ice sculptures, a magma cart that has been derailed, job cancellations of doom, and monsters that refuse to get in range of the ice cannon. 

Summer rolls around, and the humans show up. More deaths-- but they break the seige for us. We compost the bodies, re-rail the magma cart, and put a stone block floor over the magma pool, along with a privacy wall around the crop yard. We FINALLY pour water on the constructed floor over the magma pool. MUD! HOORAY!.. but wait.... it has ZERO fert! OH NOES!  Well, we have about 10 units of compost from all those bodies... so, we put it on.  Ok, our 1x5 plot now has a whopping 2 fert! (10/5=2) whee......... Ok, we can grow... NOTHING. Great.  (Humans dont have sliver barb seeds. Ratweed needs at least 10 fert. We should have made a 1x1 plot, fertilized to 10, and planted ratweeds... but we didnt.)

The season comes and goes and... whats that? the fert dropped to 1?! ARHG! 

Now we get serious. We ask the trade liason for turkeys, because CLEARLY we arent gonna be growing any damned plants any time soon, and it is ALREADY year 3, and by then, the plot has returned to being 0 fert.

The turkeys arrive next year, after we buy out food and drink from the human caravan again. Stone is getting a little more scarce now, so we build an obsidian machine.  We have been dutifully murdering our migrants by blocking them outside until they die of thirst and starvation, and then composting thier little fat dwarven bodies this whole time. We are now officially a death trap. We put out nest boxes, and hope for the best. 

Another year.. Another round of sieges.. More migrants we euthanize.... our dwarves have DARED to get married and start producing babies. (HOW DARE THEY!?)  We now have a steady supply of turkey poults being pooped out! We butcher their asses, and compost some of the turkey skins. We thankfully have had only metal and stone moods so far, and none have needed any bones or other cloth... Cloth.... our clothing is looking rather tattered. We will probably have to order some. 

Year two after ordering turkeys. We are now swimming in adult turkeys. We enable egg collection, and start composting the SHIT out of turkey eggs... watch painfully as it requires absurd numbers of them to produce 1 unit of compost.....  But... progress is progress..... We buy cloth, make clothes, and watch the old ones fly off like at a frat party.

Milestone! We now have 100 units of compost from dead yeti, dwarf, human, and zombie bodies and turkey eggs! HOORAY! YAY! We fertilize our 1x5 plot, and get 50 fert! YAY! We plant that bitch into ratweeds.  The month passes, and we get 100 ratweeds! YAY! we think.......  We compost it and get... 20 compost!? ARE YOU SHITTING ME!? ARMOK TAKE YOUR SOUL YOU EVIL THING!

Next season rolls around, and the farm plot is down to 20 fert.  I could have SWORN that the wiki said that it... oh... right.... 0% sunlight...... SHIT. (-20 fert for evil biome, and dry. -10 fert for ratweed, no sun) We can plant ratweed again, so we do.  Another 100 units of ratweed. Composted... 20 compost added. Now at 40 compost.

We quickly realize that in order to sustain our 1x5 plot of farmland, we are going to have to CONTINUOUSLY subsidize it with dead turkeys and eggs.  We completely forget about building the soil above 50 every 2 years, and produce sewer brew as the main alcohol, and live on turkey meat almost exclusively.  We BUY all of our cloth, by selling turkey leather, and stone crafts. we savagely prune our population to survive.

Now-- see how that works now?

[winner]

I like the idea that dry soil will lose organic matter but the specific mechanism you proposed causes a problem. If the soil is so dry that it loses organic matter faster than it gains it then it will end up with no organic matter.  if it gains organic matter slightly faster than is loses it then it will end up with loads and loads of organic matter.

Cold and wet are two conditions that lead to the accumulation of loads of organic matter because nothing can grow to eat it up. 
In the polar regions maintaining soil fertility shouldn't be a problem. Your problem would be lack of light and cold temperatures preventing plants from growing.  Fertility doesn't just vanish, it is either converted into food or washed away.

[10ebbor10]

(LONG post. Probably ninja... Yep, Ninja'd)

Ok, so basically, the idea I had was this:

Water availability:
A tile that is unable to retain moisture (desert biome, without irrigation) will lose biomass per growing season (NOT YEAR!) at a rate consistent with its lack of moisture, with an upper bound of 25% per season. Thus, if not irrigated, dumping compost on it will result in all the compost vanishing without a trace in 1 year. Distance from a water source determines how moist it is, in desert biomes. Exact rate of falloff needs to be determined carefully to avoid game breaking consequences.

Tiles that are too wet (Swamp!) will have a similar problem, even though this isnt exactly RL accurate. (Instead, swamps accumulate biomass, but prevent crop growth, due to toxicity, and lack of aeration for soil microbes, leading to plants literally rotting in the ground, and becoming peat.) Instead, dryness will be dependent upon proximity to dried tiles. (May require a magma source below to force-dry the tiles, or extensive tilling to keep the tiles aerated.)

Rainfall on a tile adds moisture, and on all tiles except swamp biome ones, tiles naturally revert to being parched. Parched tiles lose biomass like on desert tiles.

Weather:
Weather affects the amount of sunlight, and the amount of rainfall a region has. In addition, "Abnormal" weather, like deadly dust, and deadly rain, block out 100% of sun when they are in effect, and in the case of deadly rain, do NOT moisturize soil.

Region:
The latitude of the embark region will determine the amount of sunlight per growing season, and variance between seasons. An equitorial region embark will receive maximum sunlight per season, on all seasons, year round. A temperate zone embark will receive maximum sunlight only in summer, 50% sunlight in spring and autumn, and 25% sunlight in the winter.  A polar region embark will receive 25% sunlight in summer, and 0% sunlight in winter.

In addition to geographical factors, effects like "Goodness" and "Evilness" will impact the natural homeostasis of the soil, making it trend more toward fertile, in the case of good biomes, or dead, in the case of evil ones. The degree of this impact needs to be carefully implemented, and needs to be (very) subtle. Little things like this can be used to keep sunberries ONLY in good biomes, and sliver barb ONLY in evil ones, for instance.

The amount of rockiness of the area should also play an important factor, just by being there, since there is no way to remove rocks from a field efficiently without simply flooding the surface, and using mud.

Biomass casino roulette, and plant growth:

Plant requirements are static. A strawberry always requires the exact same amount of energy to grow. As such, there cant be any cheating by starting a strawberry on a tile that doesnt have enough biomass in it to theoretically supply 100% of its needs, should the sun fail to shine for some reason. (Like, it being the winter at the north pole, maybe?)

This means that a tile with 0 biomass will NEVER support life, unless it is fertilized first, and then only support what could theoretically be 100% supplied by that biomass, even if the sun is shining brightly overhead.

Composting is VERY inefficient! It is this way BY DESIGN. At LEAST 50% of the biomass of the source material will be lost, and up to 99% at the top end, based on the crop.  here is a tentative list of made up values that look good without being tested:

Sliver barb (Loses 99%)
ratweed (loses 90%)
hideroot (loses 80%)
bladeweed (loses 80%)
ropereed (loses 70%)
Fisher berry (loses 60%)
Prickle berry (loses 60%)
Strawberry (loses 60%)
Sunberry (Loses 50%)
Whipvine (Loses 50%)

Going the other way, different crops produce less biomass than others, as they gain in potency for composting.

Whipvine (yeild: 5 per tile end of season)
Sunberry (yeild: 3 per tile end of season)
Strawberry (yeild: 5 per tile end of season)
Prickleberry (Yeild: 8 per tile, end of season)
Fisher berry (Yeild: 8 per tile, end of season)
Ropereed (Yield: 12 per season)
Bladeweed (15 per season)
Hideroot (20 per season)
Ratweed (20 per season)
Sliverbarb (30 per season)

note how the edible crops are lower yeild: This is intentional.

In addition to this, the consumption rate to produce alcohol closely parallels the costs for composting coupled to yeild and crop size.

1 barrel curor == 500 sliver barb (barbs are low nutrition, AND small.)
1 barrel sewer brew == 30 rat weed
1 barrel river spirits ==  20 ropereed
prickleberry and fisher wine == 100 berries (Small)
strawberry wine == 120 berries (small)
sunshine == 120 berries (small)
whip wine == 50 whips

naturally, you should be seeing how it is going to be very difficult to survive now, without MASSIVE agricultural allotments. This is more realistic than most players are used to. Welcome to hell children.

Each soil tile has a fertility ranging from 5000, to 0. Depending on the biome, regional effects, and moisture balance, this will either naturally hold steady, or fall like a gold brick through the atmosphere of jupiter.

Let's play a sample.

Evil biome, North pole. (the infamous "Haunted Glacier" embark!)

Natural vegetation: NONE
Tree cover: NONE
Temperature: FREEZING
Surroundings: TERRIFYING

Site prospect says:
NO SOIL
AQUIFER
DEEP METALS
DEEP STONE

Neighbors: Goblins, Tower, Dwarves, Humans

embark window asks if you REAAAAAAALY want to embark there.

We say yes...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We arrive, and first thing, we dig down into the ice, and hit the aquifer. We have to breach it, so we double slit. We hit stone. In order to get surface crops started, we have to wait several years, and we also have to get magma just below the surface to keep our irrigation system from freezing solid. This means we have to get to the magma sea.

We murder our migrants, and compost the bodies, because we can't make any alcohol yet, and have VERY limited reserves. We make boatloads of stone crafts to sell. 

The dwarven caravan for the first year arrives. We sell our crafts, and buy food and booze. Gods, do we buy food and booze.  We continue our digging, and then the yetis arrive. Thankfully, we have built a drawbridge with stone mechanisms, and deep stone we got through breaching the aquifer. Then the deadly weather arrives, killing the yetis.  We think this is a blessing, but no! NO! the yetis rise from the dead as HUSKS.  We cleverly devise a freezing cannon with pumped water from the aquifer to murder them, so they stay dead. The necromancer arrives shortly afterwards. We succeed in destroying his undead army with the water cannon, but he escapes off the map. 

The humans show up. We sell them more of our useless stone goods, and buy wood, and surface crop seeds. With the leftovers, we buy more food and booze. With the wood, we make SORELY needed beds, averting that tantrum spiral that is imminent from always drinking the same booze, sleeping on cold stone floors, and seeing the undead, and witnessing death (Murdered migrants, remember?). 

We have now reached the magma sea, and constructed a minecart dipping system to transport it to the surface... but need wood for powered rollers. Our embark doesn't have a cavern layer. 

Dwarves arrive, and we buy the wood we need. We buy more food, and more booze.  Shortly after they arrive, the goblins spring from ambush, killing some of the dwarven merchants. We compost the bodies. (both dwarven and goblin) Shortly after, we channel the surface, and start dumping magma in.  Combo attack of evil weather, Tower attack, and Kobolds. It isnt pretty. (thank the gods we used a bridge!)  By the end of it, we have several new ice sculptures, a magma cart that has been derailed, job cancellations of doom, and monsters that refuse to get in range of the ice cannon. 

Summer rolls around, and the humans show up. More deaths-- but they break the seige for us. We compost the bodies, re-rail the magma cart, and put a stone block floor over the magma pool, along with a privacy wall around the crop yard. We FINALLY pour water on the constructed floor over the magma pool. MUD! HOORAY!.. but wait.... it has ZERO fert! OH NOES!  Well, we have about 10 units of compost from all those bodies... so, we put it on.  Ok, our 1x5 plot now has a whopping 2 fert! (10/5=2) whee......... Ok, we can grow... NOTHING. Great.  (Humans dont have sliver barb seeds. Ratweed needs at least 10 fert. We should have made a 1x1 plot, fertilized to 10, and planted ratweeds... but we didnt.)

The season comes and goes and... whats that? the fert dropped to 1?! ARHG! 

Now we get serious. We ask the trade liason for turkeys, because CLEARLY we arent gonna be growing any damned plants any time soon, and it is ALREADY year 3, and by then, the plot has returned to being 0 fert.

The turkeys arrive next year, after we buy out food and drink from the human caravan again. Stone is getting a little more scarce now, so we build an obsidian machine.  We have been dutifully murdering our migrants by blocking them outside until they die of thirst and starvation, and then composting thier little fat dwarven bodies this whole time. We are now officially a death trap. We put out nest boxes, and hope for the best. 

Another year.. Another round of sieges.. More migrants we euthanize.... our dwarves have DARED to get married and start producing babies. (HOW DARE THEY!?)  We now have a steady supply of turkey poults being pooped out! We butcher their asses, and compost some of the turkey skins. We thankfully have had only metal and stone moods so far, and none have needed any bones or other cloth... Cloth.... our clothing is looking rather tattered. We will probably have to order some. 

Year two after ordering turkeys. We are now swimming in adult turkeys. We enable egg collection, and start composting the SHIT out of turkey eggs... watch painfully as it requires absurd numbers of them to produce 1 unit of compost.....  But... progress is progress..... We buy cloth, make clothes, and watch the old ones fly off like at a frat party.

Milestone! We now have 100 units of compost from dead yeti, dwarf, human, and zombie bodies and turkey eggs! HOORAY! YAY! We fertilize our 1x5 plot, and get 50 fert! YAY! We plant that bitch into ratweeds.  The month passes, and we get 100 ratweeds! YAY! we think.......  We compost it and get... 20 compost!? ARE YOU SHITTING ME!? ARMOK TAKE YOUR SOUL YOU EVIL THING!

Next season rolls around, and the farm plot is down to 20 fert.  I could have SWORN that the wiki said that it... oh... right.... 0% sunlight...... SHIT. (-20 fert for evil biome, and dry. -10 fert for ratweed, no sun) We can plant ratweed again, so we do.  Another 100 units of ratweed. Composted... 20 compost added. Now at 40 compost.

We quickly realize that in order to sustain our 1x5 plot of farmland, we are going to have to CONTINUOUSLY subsidize it with dead turkeys and eggs.  We completely forget about building the soil above 50 every 2 years, and produce sewer brew as the main alcohol, and live on turkey meat almost exclusively.  We BUY all of our cloth, by selling turkey leather, and stone crafts. we savagely prune our population to survive.

Now-- see how that works now?

It doesn't. It makes little sense. For example, deserts are actually quite fertile, as water availabilty doesn't interfere with ground nutrients. Polar embarks should recieve like 200% sun in winter/summer (Midnight sun*), and 0% in winter. Equatorial areas should still see changes in solar influx. Furthermore, the tremendously decreased yields, as well as giant problems with soil fertility (Since composting is hard and also your only option for increasing fertility) will completely nerf farming into oblivion.

Also, this once again reduces farming to a simple optimalzation exercise. All the so called challenges that the system caused are 100% foreseeable/ preventable by simply looking at the wiki. You haven't created a game system, but a puzzle. (Which is FUN the first time, but boring ever after)




*Actually they don't due to the angle in which the sun falls in, but it certainly should be a lot more than just 25%.

[wierd]

You are not listening to me. REAL FARMING **IS** an optimization exercise.

The issue, is that the optimization that is optimal for the site, is only optimal FOR THAT SITE. That is how nature WORKS. It establishes and maintains local maxima, based on the available nutrients, and set physics.

The example was specifically for one that *WOULD* narf farming into oblivion. The exact same setup, on a different embark, will have radically different results. That is the whole point. The wiki cant tell you "Plant strawberries, Ok, Now plant ratweeds, Ok now do X... Now do Y.. Repeat."  It can only give you helpful advice.

What you are wanting is an inconsistent play experience, and or, you dont know what you want.

Or, do I need to make an example of what embarking on a temperate biome would be like, to show you how you are wrong?