Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Suggestions => Topic started by: PorkRolls on January 01, 2010, 03:59:14 pm
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Make underground farming require constant refertilization. First season's free, though.
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I like this suggestion and would like to subscribe to it's newsletter.
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Then desert and tundra fortresses would effectively be screwed farming-wise due to lack of trees. Good or bad?
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well if he have this then we must be able to make fertalizer out of crap.
and to get crap we have to allow crap to be implimented into the game...
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That's already implemented: why do you think Dwarves leave seeds on their chairs when they're done eating?
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That's already implemented: why do you think Dwarves leave seeds on their chairs when they're done eating?
Hahahahaha!
About the idea of requiring fertilization in general, though:
Frikkin' great idea!!! I'm all for it!!! And it doesn't need to be poop, though it would probably be the best... And potash can already be used as a fertilizer, though potash only provides one of the major crop nutrients. Potash provides potassium, though other fertilizers would be needed for providing the other two major plant nutrients, nitrogen and phosphate. I doubt, though, that dwarfs in the setting of DF would know about nutrient requirements of plants in so far as individual chemicals are concerned.
According to a brief, uncited blurb in the fertilizer article in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#History) even slag and cinders were used in fertilizer, which would be dwarfy. However, the wikipedia articles dealing with fertilizer are woefully lacking in citations as well as history prior to the agricultural revolution. I will need to research the history of fertilizer some more.
Also, about desert and tundra fortresses being effectively screwed: so what, says I. It would make it more challenging, more realistic, and spice up the game in a way that isn't introducing some arbitrary, contrived game mechanic for the sake of making the game more complicated. Deserts and tundra are too hospitable as is, anyway, methinks, and if this game is setting out to be a simulator of civilizational/economic development and siege warfare, better simulated farming is a must. Plus, if more realistic crop management is included, it's not like it couldn't be made to be turned off by the user if it's a possible game-breaker for those who don't care as much about the simulation aspects of the game, which is understandable.
As for introducing poop in general, I think it should be done, eventually, I think. But that's a whole different thread right there and the AI is not going to be good enough to effectively implement that for a while...
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Then desert and tundra fortresses would effectively be screwed farming-wise due to lack of trees. Good or bad?
Underground forests are going in next version, so you would have to have a desert/tundra without any underground forest chambers in order to have absolutely no wood growing on the map. And, even then, there would still be trade.
Eventually, other sorts of fertilizer such as manure, compost, river silt and dead animals can be added.
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Then desert and tundra fortresses would effectively be screwed farming-wise due to lack of trees. Good or bad?
Underground forests are going in next version, so you would have to have a desert/tundra without any underground forest chambers in order to have absolutely no wood growing on the map. And, even then, there would still be trade.
Eventually, other sorts of fertilizer such as manure, compost, river silt and dead animals can be added.
If underground wood replaces above-ground wood to that extent, then your fortress is self-sufficient anyway, so how does this do anything more than make farming more difficult? In other words, it really has little/no relationship to siege difficulty at all.
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Make underground farming require constant refertilization. First season's free, though.
Sounds good as long as flooding counts as fertilization. It would make breaking sieges to let caravans through very important unless the fort had a water source.
Tower cap farms and wild underground vegetation already require a nearby pool of water or flooding to grow so they shouldn't be affected.
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Would allowing farm plots to fallow one season per year be sufficient? Or perhaps growing a specific type of crop (for instance, growing legumes in above-ground farms to help restore nutrients to the soil)?
Besides, if you have enough animals and manage them correctly, farms become obsolete (as far as bare necessities are concerned) for anything other than booze.
I see what you're trying to do here - make attrition on supplies an actual part of sieges - but I get the feeling one would have to change a LOT more than just farming to achieve that.
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It is still a step in the right direction, and I feel it should be implemented.
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Hmmm... I'm leaning on both sides. For one, it would make farming less the perpetual fool proof food source it is now, and make fishing, hunting and trapping more viable (if these were tweaked a bit). On the other side, I tend to be a lazy bastard which relies on farming and just builds some plots then and when and sets crops.
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As far as fertilizer is concerned, you could also add some reactions to turn otherwise useless chunks from butchering into potash (or an interim material, then potash).
Of course, if you're relying on farming for food, you probably won't have much butchering going on to create chunks.
I like the idea of being able to flood the tiles to fertilize them (especially from an underground river, which would theoretically be higher in minerals).
Since making farming more complex is going to require code changes anyway, making fishing (from rivers especially) and, to a lesser extent, hunting better long-term or more viable solutions would be nice as well.
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Of course, if you're relying on farming for food, you probably won't have much butchering going on to create chunks.
Cats are a never ending resource.
Anyway I wold rather have acrualy challenging sieges, but I do like the pressure this would bring.
While we are at it, crop rotation .
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you could remove your iron anvil at loading screen and bring a crap load of wood. than trade pigtails or rock crafts the second year for one. I do not think this will make the game much harder with the updates coming but would add to the realism of the game, as a draw back it adds to the learning brick wall this game already has. technically re-flooding the farming room through flood gates should add new soil and thus no fertilization needed.
as a thought for how this could work you should be able to burn withered or left over crops/use dead enemies/animals.
Personally I would rather see milking done and hunter improvements first (so hunters can carry two stacks of bolts like soldiers and work with there hunting dogs better). though do not get me wrong all and all this is a good idea
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I think this would make the game even harder for people who are first starting the game.
Do you remember when u first started the game?
I remember about ten failed fortresses (in their first year) not playing 4 a year coming back 5 failed fortresses and then finally finding the DF wiki.
I really just think that making farming (as you say the only foolproof method of attaining (reliable) food) much more difficult is taking the piss...
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I think this is a stupid idea. It would only make the sieges harder in the beginning of the game, and it would raise the difficulty of tundra/glacier/rocky wasteland areas way too high.
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In response to the last two posts:
Well, perhaps a difficulty setting system should be set up, especially for the noobs... I do remember starting the game, and it did take me about a month to figure out entirely. Actually, though it took me a long time, I was able to teach the game to a friend in a half hour after I learned the ropes. He became as proficient as me after a week, building some pretty impressive forts. Frankly, after learning how to play this game, a lot of things seem spoon-fed to me. Sieges and surviving in "hostile" environments are way too damned easy in large part due to farming as it is implemented right now. Making farming a bit more realistic with the OP's suggestion would make sieges actually a game as well as simulate a factor that made sieges in real-life actually a threat to fortifications. Also, it would simulate a factor that makes locations such as desert and tundra poor places to inhabit in real-life. It would make them actual wastelands. As sieges are now, they are an annoyance and not challenging unless you make concessions on your own part to not build traps and leave doors unlocked.
So what if the sieges in early game would be more difficult, or making a fort in desert/tundra would be more difficult; bring it on. Challenge is part of a game, or at least any game I consider enriching and worth playing. I've never had a problem after the first month or so playing the game repelling sieges. Fortunately, there are other parts of DF that are challenging that keep me interested, and I don't think I will ever lose interest.
And things should not be fool-proof in this game unless you as the player make things work as such in your fort. Fools should not be rewarded for their foolishness.
Also:
If underground wood replaces above-ground wood to that extent, then your fortress is self-sufficient anyway, so how does this do anything more than make farming more difficult? In other words, it really has little/no relationship to siege difficulty at all.
It does have a relationship to siege difficulty. Up until you make your fort self-sufficient, sieges would be more difficult. Implementing the OP's suggestions would make getting to that level of self-sufficiency more difficult, which I think needs to happen.
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Although farming is probably too powerful at present, there are probably better ways to limit it, and better ways to make sieges more difficult.
Removing boozecooking (which I'd consider to be an exploit anyway) would help. Yields in general could stand to be reduced, in many cases. Once disease is implemented, it should include crop-borne diseases.
Farming should really just require substantially more land, dwarfpower, and time than it does now, like real farming. Fertilization could stand to be made more realistic, but that's only one small piece of the puzzle. Probably 3 options would do it for that part. You could either not fertilize at all (thus being reliant on crop rotation; either allowing your field to lay fallow every other year, or planting a crop which puts certain nutrients back into the soil, like peanuts; or you could just use up all the nutrients and build a new farm plot elsewhere). Or you could use "free" fertilizer in the form of composted food waste and poo (at the expense of requiring a composting area designated, and the constant generation of miasma both by the compost heap and at the fields, and the fact that your fertilizer supply is limited; you can't just order your dwarves to poo more). Or you could use chemical fertilizers which don't stink (quite as much), but must be manufactured. Or of course, a combination of the three.
But mainly yeah, lower yields and no boozecooking. The statistic is what, about a half acre to keep a single human fed?
Oh! I forgot the most important one! Animals should need to eat. Livestock are far too easy a source of food as well. That alone would increase difficulty quite a bit, without being too hard on the newbies (who often already expect animals to eat...). Except, oh man, catsplosions would be devastating to morale. Owned cats dying of starvation left and right, being improperly buried, stinking up the place...
Of course, animal food should be semi-realistic as well. Cows can eat roughage indigestible to dwarves, and dogs will eat the less appealing animal parts.
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Do you remember when u first started the game?
Yup, downloaded the Afteractionreporter tutorial and found the game rather easy to learn.
I remember about ten failed fortresses (in their first year) not playing 4 a year coming back 5 failed fortresses and then finally finding the DF wiki.
That's your problem right there. I know this is the era of "screw the manual, we'll just make the games easy-peasy and spam incredibly irritating hints throughout the game" era, but if you pick up a complex game, be it Armed Assault, Falcon 4.0: Allied Force or Dwarf Fortress and don't read the manual or Wiki... you won't get it. That simple.
I dare you to pick up Falcon 4.0 Allied Force without a manual and try to get a parked F-16 started without documentation. I promise you it'll take you a month or more just to get her off the ground, not to mention getting her off the ground with all the systems running as they should so you can actually do something useful up there. Does this mean F4AF is a poorly designed game? Nope, the developers have done a fantastic job at giving the laymen a chance to experience what flying a real F-16 feels like. They couldn't have done this and make the game simple - even with realism set to 0%, F4AF has quite the learning curve.
In short, DF is an RTFM game, not a "Durr, you were killed by a grenade, yuk, you're supposed to dodge those, look out for the big white grenade indicator, see, it looks like this, dur. And now I'm gonna repeat this every time you die cuz your probably dumb enough to not understand this until youve had it spammed on your screen 10 000 times, durr, hurr hurr hurr" game.
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At present, farming takes a some management to set up, and then you can really just let it go. As long as you have enough dedicated growers, your dwarves sustain themselves just fine.
This is both a good and bad thing, I understand. After the first or second year, farming offers no challenge whatsoever. I agree with the ideas that farms should be larger for the output they currently produce. When I think of 13th century farms, I think of miles of farmland surrounding or near a village. I can sustain an entire population of dwarves with just a 9x9 area of 3x3 farms, but just for variety I'll make one both inside and outside.
While I agree that farming could stand to be more of a challenge, I hate the idea of requiring fertilizer to sustain farming. It's too much of a distraction from late-game megaprojects, and quite frankly I can see it getting really annoying later on. I like that farming is something I can get off the ground and forget about, but there could be more challenges that might upset your balance.
Oh! I forgot the most important one! Animals should need to eat. Livestock are far too easy a source of food as well. That alone would increase difficulty quite a bit, without being too hard on the newbies (who often already expect animals to eat...). Except, oh man, catsplosions would be devastating to morale. Owned cats dying of starvation left and right, being improperly buried, stinking up the place...
Of course, animal food should be semi-realistic as well. Cows can eat roughage indigestible to dwarves, and dogs will eat the less appealing animal parts.
This is an excellent idea! It adds additional challenge to both farming and livestock without changing the farming mechanics at all. I think I'd like to see this implemented as a "test" to see how well it works before making any other changes to the system.
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Arrkhal, you rawk. Good suggestions.
KenboCalrissian, I see what you mean about farming being something you can get off the ground and forget about, and sympathize with you there. :) The requiring fertilizer thing, though, could be automated as crop rotation could be given the current system. Just an initial planning, and voila, all you have to do is worry about fertilizer supply. heh heh... I say that as if ensuring fertilizer supply was easy. Hmmm... Well, I'll just stick to a previous suggestion of mine and say that a lot of "realism" options should be able to be turned on and off, like in that Falcon 4.0 game or IL-2 (another flight sim I wuv <3). I, being the realism nut I am, would have them all turned on, all the time.
Also, I'd love to see the actual numbers of how much crop land is needed to sustain an individual of a given diet. I'll add that to my list of things to look up if I have the time. Also, are there any scholars of pre-agricultural revolution and medieval farming? Or actual farmers for that matter? Is fertilizer in actuality 100% required to farm? When were the merits of crop rotation realized anyway?
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Some fun links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture
From what I'm reading the absolute bare minimum to sustain a vegetarian substinence diet is 0.07 hectare (0.173 acre), and that's if absolutely everything is done perfectly. Planting times, fertilization, yields, good food preservation methods, etc. Even then, that's too small an area to get much variety, so once again, perfection would be needed to avoid micronutrient deficiency (scurvy, beriberi, etc.).
On the other hand, 1.2 acres of fertile cropland per person is necessary to sustain the average American diet (mainly because most cows on commercial farms get most of their calories from human-edible grain products, rather than inedible pasture and silage; despite what the elves say, livestock can be a way of getting more food per acre, as long as they're fed exclusively on things that humans/dwarves can't eat). So hm, in between those extremes, my earlier estimate of 1/2 acre per person is probably about right. 1/2 acre should be able to comfortably feed a single vegetarian. But 0.07 hectare is also be an excellent benchmark for what a Legendary Grower should be able to use to feed 1 dwarf, given the best fertilization, ideal conditions, no blights, etc.
Also, on the maintenance side, I think my system would be a good one. No fertilization would be like the current system, except you'd really want to set your lands to rotate, and yield would be far lower.
Compost would only require you to set up a compost heap, and position that and your farmlands somewhere that miasma won't bother everyone. Simplest approach in game mechanics would be for generic "waste" to be generated whenever a dwarf or animal eats, representing both poo and leftover inedibles (Urist! I can't believe you did that right on the dinner table!). Refuse haulers would then truck that off to the compost heap, and farmers would automatically apply the compost to the fields at appropriate times. Without composting, "waste" would simply go to the refuse pile. An extra layer may be to differentiate between different types of "waste," but it's probably unnecessary before version 1.0.
Then chemical fertilizers would be fairly similar to the present system, but more varied than just potash. Assign the appropriate workshop tasks, and tell the farmers to either use it now, or use it automatically.
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It's been brought up, yeah. Searching Suggestions for "siege" yields too many relevant threads to link. (http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?action=search2;params=YWR2YW5jZWR8J3wwfCJ8YnJkfCd8NXwifHNob3dfY29tcGxldGV8J3x8InxzdWJqZWN0X29ubHl8J3x8Inxzb3J0fCd8cmVsZXZhbmNlfCJ8c29ydF9kaXJ8J3xkZXNjfCJ8c2VhcmNofCd8c2llZ2U=) Here's a sampling from the first page of results:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=41331.0
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=29283.0
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=27247.0
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=22962.0
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=28660.0
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=23879.0
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=28846.0
I know it's a lot to ask, but you should at least skim over these and other siege-related threads. When there are so many prior suggestions around, Toady gains much more from new suggestions that build on top of them rather than just restate them.
As for Toady's own plans for sieges, he discussed those in great detail in DF Talk #2. (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/df_talk.html) You can read the relevant part of the transcript here. (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_2_transcript.html#1.siege)
As Footkerchief pointed out in another thread, plenty is going into the works for sieges. There are plenty of other simple and realistic ways to make sieges more challenging. Plenty of other solutions are already planned.
Somewhere amongst those legions of threads i'm sure Starvation is addressed. I'd be truly surprised if Toady hasn't already taken into consideration farming changes and improvements for the future, especially in regards to siege and starving out enemies.
I'm sure there will be tweaks of this kind as soon as Toady gets there. And from the sounds of DF Talk #2, siege is just around the corner.
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I like your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Particularly I'd like to see growers take a more active role in farming, and for larger farms to be necessary. I don't know how large a hectare or acre is in DF tiles (or, really, visually in Real Life), but I could imagine that a fortress of 200 subsisting on grown food would require several 20x10 plots, particularly if they need to lay fallow after a crop harvest. This could tie in well, in the case of underground (or even, for certain crops, above-ground) farming with flooding the plots to fertilize them, or to assist with growing - I am thinking particularly of the flooded rice fields you'd see in the southeastern asian countries. Growers would additionally need to spend time tending to the fields, making it a more full-time job (and tending farms abstracts well over DF's time periods).
I also like your idea of compost areas, and of meals leaving 'waste' that needs to be taken either to a compost area or refuse. This wouldn't necessarily refer to dwarven waste, but meal leavings like inedible parts of plants or leftovers. Likewise, as far as fallow plots are concerned, livestock can be used to graze fallow plots and help fertilize the soil, as I believe is used in real life farming as well. This may not apply with regards to underground farming, depending on whether muddied tiles will ever produce mildew/lichen, like surface tiles produce grass. Perhaps that could be the differing factor - on the surface, you can use livestock to graze and help fertilize, while underground you can flood the plot again. In both cases you can use fertilizers, like compost or potash.
As far as yields, as I mentioned, I like the idea that you need larger farms (and more farmers) to properly feed a fortress. Cooking yields, by comparison, can probably remain as is, maybe reduced only slightly, in order to help extend your stocks. Booze can remain as a cooking ingredient, but you should only be able to use it once, and probably only in lavish meals. That is, no cat beer cookies, or dwarven wine roast, comprised of wine/wine/beer/ale.
In truth, most of Arrkhal's posts could be copied toward whatever suggestion threads are directed toward improving farming, rather than making sieges more difficult.
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Nope.. Sorry.. this is a mess of a suggestion. Unless fertilizer is fixed, and hauling is fixed, there is nothing to be had here except annoyance.
And once again this will only really be a problem for large forts or early forts. any fort that can grow enough tree's to generate enough fertalizer will be fine, any fort that is small enough to survive by other means is fine..
Just another thing to add lag and hauling jobs..
Doesnt fix sieges.
Doesnt make them harder assuming you harvested the wood first or you have tower caps.
Does not make a fort any less self sufficient if you can keep designating new fields..
Does not add anything in the form of reality (real fields do not require constant fertilization, just the return of the biomass they grew, and some earth worms.)
what does this suggestion add?
Reduced FPS, Hauling jobs, petty micromanagement, More demand for the most undwarflike of materials (wood).
And if the rest of the suggestions are added... Then we end up with MORE hauling jobs.. Hauling poo around... Hauling plant waste around... Oh friggin grand...
Farming needs to be fixed.
This is not the way to do it.
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It's a good idea, but it's come up a million times before. It used to be that underground farms needed regular irrigation (that got lost in the move to 3d, but I'm pretty sure I remember a post saying Toady wanted to bring it back). More importantly though, it's already number 10 on the eternal suggestions voting list. That means, not only is Toady aware of it, but stuff will be done on it in the next couple of updates.
10. (189) Farming Improvements
Adding things such as Soil Deprivation, watering of plants (or other irrigation), weeding, longer growing seasons, and the like in an attempt to make farming more interesting, a little more difficult (balance it out somewhat in the process), and make it more realistic.
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honestly, if df was all about reducing framerate and complexity then it would consist of a goblin and a dwarf chasing each other around a five tile cave.
The only thing that bugs me about farming is underground farms--it's analogous to the animals that never eat. You can't just grow stuff underground like that...it has to get energy from somewhere. A constant supply of compost (not burned trees, but something refuse derived) really ought to be necessary if it's going to make sense. You can realistically farm underground this way (ants do it all the time). You could in theory grow underground "plants" on ground rich in certain chemicals. There are bacteria that get energy this way-but they tend to grow veery slowly and be really toxic.
But as long as underground farms make sense from a gameplay perspective, leave them in
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I don't think this would fix sieges at all. The problem with sieges is that they are too easy to thwart, 1 locked door is not an adequate deterrent to stop a group of people willing to march across country for days, maybe even weeks or months, to risk their lives fighting crazy dwarves.
If you are locking the door then you are doing this to yourself. If you want to take it seriously then you can build a fortress that is 5 tiles away from the surface in all directions, building walls 20 tiles deep in your entrance if you think a siege might be close, and rig the entirety of the upper floors to flood in an emergency...
In the current version this would be impractical, it would just invalidate too many sites. If this is going to be your solution to sieges being too difficult then you need to combine it with a whole range of needs. more demandsm if you run out of rose gold then you start getting a steady stream of negative thoughts. If a caravan doesn't make it to your depot your whole fortress gets a negative thought. If Urist McTreehugger goes 5 months without a Bambi Burger he takes a job as a freelance hammerer...
In the short term I just don't see the benefits outweighing the costs. In the long term I don't see this being the right way to deal with sieges. A self sufficient fortress should have costs, and may only last for a couple of decades if their supplies are decent. but it should be possible to have something that will outlast a year-long siege with no great difficulty...
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Just thinking about fertilization and composting a little more.
Probably the best and easiest way (for a future version, during the agricultural arc probably) would be to abstract most of it out, and have as much behind the scenes as possible to minimize micromanaging. To use compost, you simply build a compost heap, which generates miasma periodically while active. Querying the heap, or maybe the Orders menu, would produce compost options: Dwarves do not compost waste / Dwarves compost animal waste and leftovers / Dwarves compost all waste. No compost means no "free" fertilizer, but does not increase the risk of foodborne disease. Animal waste and leftovers gives "free" fertilizer related to the amount of livestock, and if your dwarves are already eating regularly. Composting all waste would increase the risk of disease more, but increase fertilizer.
The compost value could just be expressed in number of farm tiles which can be fertilized. Easiest would be to make it determined by the size of your citizens and animals; a size 5 animal can fertilize up to 0.5 tile, or 5 tiles, or whatever. Whether compost is fully utilized depends on the number ands kill of your Growers.
Farmers will naturally want to plant fertilized tiles first, but if your active plot size increases your fertilization capacity, they'll have to make do without doo. Maximum yield on a larger area would thus require "artificial" fertilizers like bone meal, dried blood, potash, ground limestone, etc. And that is when you have to micromanage a bit, though ideally, there'd just be a generic "fertilizer" stockpile, and how intelligently it's utilized depends both on your farmers' skills, and the player's ability to order the manufacture of the correct stuff.
In terms of game balance, I think it should be that, without any fertilization whatsoever, it should require complete perfection to be self-sufficient; nearly all dwarves are highly skilled growers, optimal use of land, intelligent planting, like alternating crops which fix nutrients that others deplete, etc. Simple composting should make it reasonably easy to survive on what you grow, as long as you have a fair number of farmers, and especially if you supplement with livestock which are fed only inedibles. However, either dwarfanure or artificial fertilizers or both, should be necessary to build up a significant enough surplus to be able to have a significant food export industry.
So low-maintenance farms are largely substinence, while high-maintenance ones can be an industry. In terms of both gameplay and realism, that's what I think would work the best.
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This thread seems to be more of an agricultural thread than it is a siege thread. It should probably be considered strictly an agricultural one -- not a siege thread. Though the reason for it coming up is because of siege, siege is going to change quite a bit.
But which truly is it?
Are we here to say "Let's fix sieges!" or are we here to say "Let's fix agriculture!"?
The two are somewhat separate issues.
A long-term siege was used to deprive a city/castle of it's supplies. Water, food, reinforcements, and misc. goods. Even things as simple as fuel for forges, wood & feathers (which is not an issue for us) for arrows, the basic materials for fortification repairs, extra clothing and boots, and even materials to repair arms and armor for continued use against possibly assaults or for possible sallies.
These things, over a long period of time, would become scarce. Especially food and good water.
All of these things contribute to morale, as well as the togetherness of the establishment's defenses. Classically speaking, the land used for farming was outside the walls. It was too much land to wall off. Sure, your dwarves could do it over a long enough period of time, but you could also be putting that time to more useful endeavors and fortifications. The latter was usually the case in medieval times, especially since stonework was time-consuming and expensive. They were no dwarves in the matter.
So farms were typically prone to being destroyed and overrun during assaults and long-term sieges. Food sources would be limited. Underground farming poses a problem typically never experienced in classical times: The ability to continually have a source of food and water. Some structures were built atop springs, which solved the water problem, but ofttimes food was a limiting factor.
Dwarves solved this problem. Perhaps agriculture does need to be looked at. But as for improving sieges, sieges have a long way to go to be called anything close to. Proposing agricultural changes for the sake that they need to be fixed is one thing. It may indeed need tweaking. But proposing to make agricultural changes for the sake of siegecraft is unrealistic and foolish. The dwarves would have a realistic and simple advantage in this way. It is not something to be taken lightly when angering the dwarfen peoples.
Especially when the Dwarves' have the potential for underground agriculture. One would need to take this into account when trying to siege the Dwarfen people. You cannot simply hope to starve them out. You must try to deprive them of other necessities and, if truly set on destroying these dwarfy folk, find other alternatives for breaching the fort. Alternative methods which do not exist yet, but of which Toady is going to be looking into soon.
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Arrkhal, would you consider moving your awesome agricultural suggestions to another thread? I think a lot of us are losing focus of your suggestion because the OP's goal to make sieges harder. Once we drop any mention of sieges from the suggestion altogether, it'll make a lot more sense.
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I might repost if a good agricultural thread comes up. It's not really anything that original, though, and IIRC, agriculture is lowish priority for now. I guess sieges are more on topic for the current mainly military arc.
So back on track, allowing goblins to dig, breach walls, cause cave-ins, etc., would be a decision that needs to be approached very carefully. It should generally be that goblins can do anything dwarves can (though perhaps not as well). But at the same time, it can't be so easy for gobs to dig their way in that you're better off living like a filthy aboveground humie so that you at least see the green meanies coming.
It should obviously be very easy for goblins to collapse or dig into simple dirt rooms (and maybe they could even employ trench warfare, if they know your fortress relies on projectile weapons), but they should dig stone much more slowly than dwarves.
There should be distinct pros and cons to underground vs. aboveground defenses. Underground must be slowly and laboriously dug to, but there's not a whole lot you can do to attack goblin diggers without exposing yourself. Aboveground stuff is much easier to attack, especially with catapaults, but also allows a more active defense.
In the longer term, a good, realistic terrain destruction system would be great. You'd need to build your fortress deep, with thick walls and ceilings, and plenty of supports, or a well-placed catapault stone (or a few dozen) would cave in the whole thing. Aboveground walls should eventually be potentially unstable if they're too high and/or thin.
Just better goblin AI by itself would also take the game to the next level too. It's reasonable for early scouting bands and skirmishers to blunder into your defenses, but by the first real siege, they should really be a lot more organized and intelligent, trying to breach your fortress by some tactic other than a screaming highland charge down the corridor of death.
Use of ladders, grappling hooks, and other climbing tools could certainly make some fortresses harder to defend.
If disease is also implemented in this next version, the goblins could even use biological warfare by flinging corpses and poo!
A realistic need for air circulation would also increase difficulty enormously, as goblins could try to find your air vents and try to smoke you out with fire, stink you out with miasmic filth, etc. Air circulation could potentially be way too much for newbies, though, depending on how it's done. I'd just do a simple rule, like X tiles must be open to the outside for every Y tiles of volume in your fortress. It would certainly eliminate the old "just one entrance" design philosophy. Combined with terrain destruction and climbing, a large fortress could be very hard to defend.
Things which make sieges really hard, though, should be be saved for a version where diplomacy is better developed. Like before, I'd suggest a low-maintenance and high-maintenance approach. The low-maintenance one would be allying with someone and getting them to protect you in exchange for goods, services, whatever. Costs you money (possibly quite a lot), but you don't have to worry too much about sieges, as your faithful humie pals march off to their deaths under the scorching light of the evil sky-orb. But handling a big, late-game gobbo siege all on your own should be extremely difficult (and extremely satisfying to beat back). And of course, it should also be possible to negotiate peace (however temporary) with the gobs.
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... or you can just have 23 champions on patrol around your embark sites perimiter with no defenses except for a 4 square wide entrance into your fort. Preferably using adamantine shields with adamantine armor. When they reach level 163 in shield use 120 in hammer use and have 42 strength, things just tend to evaporate instead of invading.
*Even with relentless assault.
*Side note: one of my dwarfs hit a kobold so hard it flew clear across a 3 wide embark, and crashed into the edge of the screen on the other side. Was one hell of a hit
* The tree-ents flying with hammer hits also give me a massive chuckle.. the thought of a giant tree flying nearly half a mile I cant help but smirk every time I see it.
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Gobbos dig a tunnel to your fort. 23 champions charge in after. GOBLINS FIRE A BALLISTA! Honor the charge they made, noble 23!
Seriously though, 23 champions would probably annihilate an enhanced siege. The issue there is how easy it is to get those kinds of levels through endless sparring. Something like in Dungeon Keeper 2 would probably be ideal, where you can only get moderate skill through practice, decent skill in an arena, and the remaining levels require real combat.
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I like this. I can imagine an extended siege where hungry dwarves use dead bodies to keep the food supplies running.
Urist has been forced to use a friend as fertilizer lately.
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-snip-
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troo... and another thing that is also important and sorta along the same line:
With regard to sapping during sieging: Mining happens ridiculously fast relative to the speed of combat. With a legendary miner, you could pretty much obliterate a wall section in seconds, even under fire. What would have taken several months in real life siege mining operations would take a few minutes (which could be a few weeks or so in game time and would sorta match real life in that regard, but combat is still sloooooow). Well, I guess this will be taken care of when Toady gets there... but I dunno what he would do... perhaps making mining speeds differ depending on whose attacking or defending?
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It's not like mining has to be fast you know. Just because we're used to it doesn't validate it's current state
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Well, my view on that anyway is that dwarves are really great miners, so of course they're fast. Gobbos, on the other hand, should take far longer. Not only for gameplay reasons, but also because gobs shouldn't be very good at digging. They should be better at killing for sure. But not at digging.
Of course, if you go to war with your own civ, you may wake up one morning to find your entire fortress balanced on a single soap support...
But anyway, it at least makes sense for dwarves to dig much faster than any other vanilla race, even if they end up slowed down a bit. You could think of it as sort of like "low fantasy" magic, where, rather than being huge epic spells, magic is a subtle force that pervades the world. A simple healer can only bandage wounds and use herbal remedies, while a master doctor can cure a fatal injury with a touch, without any sort of definite transition in between; it's impossible to really say where it begins to be "magical." That's low fantasy vs. high fantasy.
Which DF is destined to be remains to be seen, since the magic system is broken.
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I think this would make the game even harder for people who are first starting the game.
Do you remember when u first started the game?
I remember about ten failed fortresses (in their first year) not playing 4 a year coming back 5 failed fortresses and then finally finding the DF wiki.
I really just think that making farming (as you say the only foolproof method of attaining (reliable) food) much more difficult is taking the piss...
Hmm...I realise how this came out and i apologise, I do think that this is a good idea and i was meant to simply suggest one of the potential problems that could arise
Also you said that a difficulty option could be implemented? Wouldn't that simply counteract "A simple and realistic way to add challenge back to sieges"?
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Also you said that a difficulty option could be implemented? Wouldn't that simply counteract "A simple and realistic way to add challenge back to sieges"?
Think about how difficulty setting in realistic flight sims like IL-2 are implemented. Some people want black-outs and easy stalling, so they leave the difficulty on highest setting to get the experience they desire, while those who want arcade-like play or are just starting out turn off the appropriate difficulty options. With a similar way to turn features on and off in DF, those people may not want difficult and/or realistic(as far as DF can be realistic) sieges for whatever reason (like just starting the game) can just turn off the factors that make them difficult either for the entire world they generate or just their fortress. So, nah. I don't think it would invalidate it.
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The problem with the original suggestion is that it is to simple. It doesn't apply pressure to the player, it simply adds a check, that forces complete failure under specific circumstances, but can be safely ignored in all others. This renders it useless and restrictive.
However, it can be made to work, by adding system of internal pressures that make it balance a bit more instead of being pass/fail.
To achieve the desired effect (making prolonged sieges slowly degrade the logistical viability of the fort) without the drawback (sieges must be broken immediately in some areas, even with underground farming), cause the maximum annual yield of a farm to degrade constantly over time, until it reaches a set minimum maximum(say one unit per tile per season) or receives a dosage of fertilizer.
With a large enough set of fields one could still sustain his fort without fertilizer, but the player gains much reduced benefit from expert+ growers(as they produce only as much as the field is physically able to support), and must constantly expand his plots, whenever the fortress grows, or his newest plot degrades too much.
Since so little of value grows in the winder, you want to fertilize every spring, for efficiency, but the spring siege will make this inconvenient if you don't have wood stored up in advance.
This still doesn't really give the goblins a chance to get into a well defended, or tightly sealed fort, and it's unlikely to actually kill anyone who knows the rules. (Face it; Bay12 doesn't direct new people to that wiki. There is no official, useful manual, so there will be some newbies killed by this, but not many, as they'll just adapt by building more farms.)
However, it does make sieges more able to hurt the player for making mistakes, in non-fatal ways, which is the thing that they really need, at this juncture.
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Also you said that a difficulty option could be implemented? Wouldn't that simply counteract "A simple and realistic way to add challenge back to sieges"?
Think about how difficulty setting in realistic flight sims like IL-2 are implemented. Some people want black-outs and easy stalling, so they leave the difficulty on highest setting to get the experience they desire, while those who want arcade-like play or are just starting out turn off the appropriate difficulty options. With a similar way to turn features on and off in DF, those people may not want difficult and/or realistic(as far as DF can be realistic) sieges for whatever reason (like just starting the game) can just turn off the factors that make them difficult either for the entire world they generate or just their fortress. So, nah. I don't think it would invalidate it.
True true...it would probably be easy to implement a difficulty slider, but then you wouldn't necessarily need for farms to need constant fertilisation a a method, as there are a number of other methods that could be used in a difficulty slider? The reason why fertilisation requirement is a good idea is because its so simple, so if you had a difficulty option, but the only option would fertilisation wouldn't this seem lacklustre?
P.S also remember I am once again simply spit balling possible problems at you don't take this the wrong way.
P.P.S One simple raw editable method I use personally for increasing siege difficulty is to actually mod out of the game all edible plants and instead require them to be processed at a smelter using wood into a cookable extract
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Oh, no worries. I don't take things like what you said the wrong way. This is helpful discussion. :D Also, it wouldn't need to be a difficulty "slider". :3 In IL-2 it does something even better: a toggle switch for each and every difficulty feature. For example, you can have every single nit-picking realism detail and still choose to toggle off blackouts and redouts from high gee maneuvers. :D And your P.P.S. comment... n33t idea... I might do that meself sometime. :B And I like your name.
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You could base moods off of the popularity of the dwarf, and add all tradeable items to the list of potential artefact requirements. If the siege goes on for too long your most loved citizens start gettng picked off one by one...
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I'd rather have outside access, map-edge access, general "omg, we are sieged" and military ineptness factor into morale:
"Urist was unhappy latelly. He complained about being cut-off from Mountaine home lately. He was annoyed by restricted outside access lately. He was worried about overly long siege lately. He was unhappy about military not fighting enemy."
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I like your ideas there zwei, except this one
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"He was annoyed by restricted outside access lately."
The sun scorched hell that is above ground is for lesser races like elves :P
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In IL-2 it does something even better: a toggle switch for each and every difficulty feature. For example, you can have every single nit-picking realism detail and still choose to toggle off blackouts and redouts from high gee maneuvers.
It would be so much easier to be able to access the init options from the main menu, and having them in such a prominent place away from the technical settings would make them less daunting to newbies. Might be nice to have a couple of preset difficulties offered anyway to make troubleshooting easier.
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OP here.
Most of the people in this thread completely missed the point. The point wasn't to make the game more difficult by making farming more difficult, the point was to give dwarves a reason to ever go outside.
As it is, you can seal yourself off under a mountain and forget the outside world exists. If a siege comes, you can lock the door and wait it out. A tiny farming plot in a cave is an infinite source of nutrients so there's nothing to worry about, which is cheap and unrealistic.
By making underground farming rely on constant fertilization, the player would almost certainly rely instead on above-ground farming, since it's feasible that seeds and sunlight are all you need. Above-ground is dangerous, and therefore fun. Cut off from the outside during a siege, a player would be able to last for a while on food stocks and some below-ground farming, but it would eventually run out and you would have to face your attackers or starve.
Of course, this relies on some assumptions:
- Above-ground seeds would be available on embark
- Sieges are changed so you can't just wall off your farms
- Sieges sometimes last long enough to deplete food stores
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To use compost, you simply build a compost heap, which generates miasma periodically while active.
Objection: a properly-designed compost pile doesn't smell bad. Only if the right balance between carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials isn't met, and there's too much nitrogen, will noxious substances be produced.
A skilled composter ought to be able to manage a pile without producing miasmas, and even a poorly-managed compost heap ought not to smell too bad.
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Objection: a properly-designed compost pile doesn't smell bad. Only if the right balance between carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials isn't met, and there's too much nitrogen, will noxious substances be produced.
A skilled composter ought to be able to manage a pile without producing miasmas, and even a poorly-managed compost heap ought not to smell too bad.
True, but I'm mainly thinking of gameplay balance. Ideally, and with modern techniques, there's absolutely no reason not to compost. In-game, though, there should probably be a valid reason not to.
Modern composting only started in about 1920. Up until then, it was mainly just heaping stuff up and letting it sit for a year or more, which is obviously inefficient in many ways. How much would that smell compared to a modern compost pile? I don't know, and I don't really want to pile up junk to find out.
Also, I'm fairly sure that meat and animal corpses aren't generally added to modern compost, as it's much more efficient to render those down into bonemeal, fat, and protein. I would imagine that the countless dead rats, lizards, fluffy wamblers, goblin chunks, etc., in a dwarven compost heap would make it much more pungent than a modern human one. The option to not compost small animal remains should probably cut miasma down to nothing.
Also, it'd probably smell a whole lot worse in a confined space, and the piles should follow the same miasma-generation rules as everything else. An outdoor compost pile doesn't stink (though it may lose some nutrients over time, due to rain, etc.), an indoor one does.
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Yeah it'd be definately way bad to completely nerf underground farming. That's my #1 source of food, and even when I have a huge farm with 8 growers, I still run out of food sometimes.
On the note of Champions patrolling... I have 5 Champion wrestlers, and I think they actually rip heads off of goblins, the angry camels that attack my dwarves, and kobolds. There's a camel one second, then "Bactrian's Head" and "Bactrians Corpse".
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A 15 z-level drop to an aboveground farm will make it pretty much immune to non-flying opponents until some sort of climbing is implemented.
Some sights are not conducive to aboveground farming.
Cave adaptation is a required test of citizenship in all my forts.
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So and what hinders me to build an above ground farm, which i lock off with moats and walls?
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Don't forget the glass roof and the fortifications overlooking it so you can get rid of any siegers that jump in...
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Hm, greenhouses would be cool, but only if built out of clear glass.
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What isn't cool about building a greenhouse out of green glass?
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Green glass hinders plant growth by blocking the colors used for photosynthesis.
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Above-ground is dangerous, and therefore fun.
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- Sieges are changed so you can't just wall off your farms
While I agree with pretty much all the farming-related ideas in this thread so far, I can unfortunately see two problems with the underground/above-ground distinction.
First, you can make your above-ground farms inaccessible by ways other than farming, e.g. moat, magma moat, sheer cliffs, in a pit, etc.
Second, if sieges are changed so that all these obstacles are overcome, it means digging/deconstructing/bridgemaking enemies, so a player is going to have more to worry about with invaders getting everywhere else in their fort than with the prospect of eventually running out of food.
For a cheap and nasty fix, my personal preference would be simply requiring semi-frequent irrigation of underground farms, as well as above-ground ones if the fortress is in a low-rainfall area.