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[Draco18s]

I only suggested that because some people gen worlds without caverns and because it's realistic and in line with some of the more complex farming improvement suggestions. Right now a world without caverns doesn't have any underground crops but maybe that's fitting.

No underground = No underground crops?

You know what, I'm ok with this.  Sure, a few people who gen no-caverns worlds won't have their plumpy helmet shrooms and have to use above ground crops and be annoyed by it.

But in terms of being able to set difficulty sliders for yourself (or even for sheer realism) it means you only get above-ground crops (and I've got no problems with underground races needing to have large above ground farms: it's happened in other literature before).

Or underground edibles end up being very rare (i.e. once in a while the dwarf civ in a no-caves world ends up with some undground plants, due to caves rather than caverns), which I'm also OK with, as it ends up being like other materials.

That said, there still needs to be a change in the amount of food a given farm produces and how many farmers it should realistically take to grow food.  As much as some people on this forum object to the idea of "more than 1 dwarf farming" (no really, there's several people who do not want to see farming require even FIVE dwarves of their 200 and I'd like to have it be 10) something's got to change.

[harborpirate]

I only suggested that because some people gen worlds without caverns and because it's realistic and in line with some of the more complex farming improvement suggestions. Right now a world without caverns doesn't have any underground crops but maybe that's fitting.

No underground = No underground crops?

You know what, I'm ok with this.

Actually after giving it some thought, I agree as well. Just making the caverns more difficult will only result in more players ignoring them; we need something that will really drive players to seek them out and try to use them.

If players do close off caverns they find, there should be some kind of tradeoff for doing so. If DF had a few aboveground flying crop stealers, players who opt not to tough out the caverns would have to deal with those surface problems instead.

There might be one legitimate exception: plump helmets. I agree with the Farming Megathread that plump helmets should be grown by using up a log, which could be allowed underground anywhere. This would give noobs an easy out, but they'd soon find out that dwarves grow tired of the same food and drink after a while. Besides, that would only work for a short time, because it would put too much pressure on a limited resource. Fun!

I really like the idea of cave creatures as a resource as well. We have cave spiders, but there should be other creatures down there that have useful parts or secretions. Perhaps even meat sources so that certain embarks aren't death sentences. After all, Giant Cave Spiders must be eating something, right? There should be a whole food chain down there.

[Draco18s]

There might be one legitimate exception: plump helmets. I agree with the Farming Megathread that plump helmets should be grown by using up a log, which could be allowed underground anywhere. This would give noobs an easy out, but they'd soon find out that dwarves grow tired of the same food and drink after a while. Besides, that would only work for a short time, because it would put too much pressure on a limited resource. Fun!

Deal.

Also, flying death isn't much of an issue right now, as you can just roof over your farms in stone and never ever have to worry about it (and still get sunlight, as tiles are only ever checked for sun once, once they've seen it, they glow in unholy brilliance, illuminating and feeding crops forever).

[Vattic]

Actually after giving it some thought, I agree as well. Just making the caverns more difficult will only result in more players ignoring them; we need something that will really drive players to seek them out and try to use them.

I meant that if you generate a world without caverns you can never get cavern plants or their seeds; Not even on embark. Entities with the INDOOR_FARMING token get access to all the plants in the first cavern but only if it exists. That's how it works right now.

If you're going to have flying creatures attacking your above ground farms I suggest that above ground plants should wither if their is a roof overhead.

Edit:Somehow missed the above post.

[BurnedToast]

The problem in my mind is that the economic system of the game is just completely and totally broken.

it's fine to say add stuff to the caverns that players would want, but can you think of anything players would want (that's not weapon/armor material since adamantine has that covered)?

I can't, because nothing has any real value. Shove huge piles of super valuable gems just sitting in piles the caverns and it's still not worth the effort to haul them out because who cares? what are you going to buy with them? More plump helmets? the 3 or 4 gold bars you can import per year that can be bought with a single stone craft each?

Before the caverns get overhauled to be more worthwhile, the whole economy of the DF world needs to be overhauled. There needs to be (expensive) things you want to buy, and there needs to be a point to having wealth - imagine, for example, if you had a treasure horde building or something and dwarves got happier the more loot was in there. Or imagine the in-fort economy worked and you actually had to pay the dwarves for their labor (meaning you better dig out those gems if you want urist to keep making plump helmet roasts so everyone does not starve).

As for digging straight to the adamaintine, I'm not sure it would be a real problem if the game were just made harder overall - if you needed to focus everyone on just surviving for at least a few years, if dwarves were not by and large completely and utterly disposable, and if sieges/megabeasts were not total jokes then maybe players would not be so eager to build an express elevator to hell just to try and grab some shiny overpowerered weapons/armor. People do it because it's the only thing to do (other then build crazy megaprojects)

[Draco18s]

You're saying that "being able to farm underground" isn't any real value to the player?

[BurnedToast]

Right now? no. It's too easy to get food from other sources - I never farm (above or below ground) anymore because it's just not worth the bother.

[Draco18s]

Right now? no. It's too easy to get food from other sources - I never farm (above or below ground) anymore because it's just not worth the bother.

True, what with a 300 pound cow supplying 270 meals...and 30 bones.

[kaijyuu]

I still farm for booze.

My food comes from eggs nowadays.

[irmo]

The problem in my mind is that the economic system of the game is just completely and totally broken.

This is true.

First, stone crafts just need to go away. This isn't the Stone Age. Your five hundred drinking cups carved from only the finest chalk have a market value of zero. The few stones pretty enough to be made into valuable crafts are called "gems".

Second, caravans should be far more discriminating. Not articles of trade: ill-fitting armor that smells like dead goblin; fish stew; stone mechanisms*; anything below +item+ quality. Caravans come to your fortress expecting to buy the fine products of dwarven artisans, not Aunt Betty's collection of slightly chipped shotglasses and antique beef jerky. Merchants should get offended and storm out if you try to unload your trash on them.

Third, as mentioned before, farm production is totally excessive. So is animal butchery. So are eggs. In general food is not enough of a problem: there's hardly any labor input (crops require no labor other than planting and harvesting, and animals never have to interact with a dwarf other than the butcher!) and no capital input (which is part of the poor pacing of the game--you don't incrementally build up your farming industry over time because there's nothing to build).

it's fine to say add stuff to the caverns that players would want, but can you think of anything players would want (that's not weapon/armor material since adamantine has that covered)?

That's what we're thinking of with the requirement for crops to be grown in the caverns: what the player wants is farmland, so make it available only in the cavern. This is nice because (unlike adamantine) you can't just dig it out and then close up the hole--you have to keep control of the territory.

Before the caverns get overhauled to be more worthwhile, the whole economy of the DF world needs to be overhauled.

My disagreement here is with the before. There's no reason "the whole economy" needs to be fixed first. Even without fixing the economy, forcing underground farms to be in the caverns would be a great improvement for a very modest amount of effort. It would be an even greater improvement if farms were actually necessary for survival, and better still if they were necessary for trade. But one thing at a time.


* stone mechanisms also need to go away

[Nil Eyeglazed]

This is veering into food rewrite territory, but an abstract version of pollination could require map edge access-- either above or below ground, depending on the plant.  Abstracted pollinators could be flying (real life ones are), requiring only flying map edge access, but flying isn't necessary to the idea of a pollinator.

That would require cavern map edge access, perhaps only at certain times, to grow underground crops, even though those underground crops could be grown anywhere (although you could change that too, if it suits you).  At that point, caverns would be a force to deal with, with wallers facing a choice: don't wall-off the surface, don't wall-off the underground, or don't farm.

I bring this up because requiring cavern soil to plant underground crops doesn't solve the problem of unchallenging caverns; it just makes it so you need a slightly larger wall.

[BurnedToast]

This is veering into food rewrite territory, but an abstract version of pollination could require map edge access-- either above or below ground, depending on the plant.  Abstracted pollinators could be flying (real life ones are), requiring only flying map edge access, but flying isn't necessary to the idea of a pollinator.

That would require cavern map edge access, perhaps only at certain times, to grow underground crops, even though those underground crops could be grown anywhere (although you could change that too, if it suits you).  At that point, caverns would be a force to deal with, with wallers facing a choice: don't wall-off the surface, don't wall-off the underground, or don't farm.

I bring this up because requiring cavern soil to plant underground crops doesn't solve the problem of unchallenging caverns; it just makes it so you need a slightly larger wall.

Mushrooms (which all underground plants realistically should be) don't require pollination.

Furthermore, some plants can self pollinate and of those that can't you could just plant two (or more) of them next to each other so they pollinate each other.... no edge of the map access needed there.

Edit: On reread I see you mean pollinators such as bees, not off-map pollen coming in. Farmers can manually pollinate plants (though it would be time consuming for large crops) or a beehive or something could be kept inside with them.

[peskyninja]

What if this flying pests were vermin? (no roof would stop their advance)

[Nil Eyeglazed]

This is veering into food rewrite territory, but an abstract version of pollination could require map edge access-- either above or below ground, depending on the plant.  Abstracted pollinators could be flying (real life ones are), requiring only flying map edge access, but flying isn't necessary to the idea of a pollinator.

That would require cavern map edge access, perhaps only at certain times, to grow underground crops, even though those underground crops could be grown anywhere (although you could change that too, if it suits you).  At that point, caverns would be a force to deal with, with wallers facing a choice: don't wall-off the surface, don't wall-off the underground, or don't farm.

I bring this up because requiring cavern soil to plant underground crops doesn't solve the problem of unchallenging caverns; it just makes it so you need a slightly larger wall.

Mushrooms (which all underground plants realistically should be) don't require pollination.

Furthermore, some plants can self pollinate and of those that can't you could just plant two (or more) of them next to each other so they pollinate each other.... no edge of the map access needed there.

Edit: On reread I see you mean pollinators such as bees, not off-map pollen coming in. Farmers can manually pollinate plants (though it would be time consuming for large crops) or a beehive or something could be kept inside with them.

I know the problems, but it's hardly realistic botany that we've got going on in this game.  There are a number of ways that underground plants in DF don't behave like real-life fungi, and I'm fine with that.  I can think of no reason why an underground plant that requires pollination would be impossible, any more than a unicorn would be impossible.

Workarounds could be denied, but they could also be allowed.  My goal is to change the cost-benefit ratio of having map edges accessible by your dwarves, such that caverns slow downward progress more than they already do.  Manual pollination (slower farming) or maintaining hives or alternate pollinators both provide a slight cost to walling off map edges; or from a different perspective, cavern discovery provides a benefit by allowing farming of underground plants without the need for manual pollination or bees.

On preview to peskyninja: One of the problems with using vermin to affect caverns is that vermin don't spawn at map edges; they spawn anywhere in the biome.  So if you're talking about using vermin to pollinate, it wouldn't work, or, rather, it wouldn't do much to prevent walling off.  On the other hand, if you're talking about using vermin spawn to alter cavern difficulty without affecting walling off, you might be on to something.  What exactly are you suggesting?