Post by: Artemiuz28 on July 23, 2018, 02:34:09 pm
Post by: Azerty on July 23, 2018, 04:27:39 pm
We have tea trees, but we don't have actual tea. I think this is of extreme importance and should be added ASAP. At least for adventurer mode.
I agree and I think other hot drinks such as coffee, cocoa, mate and any other tisane should be added, some of them giving syndroms and most of them giving an happy thought to the drinker.
There's interesting things here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=150630.msg6219084#msg6219084).
Post by: catoblepas on July 23, 2018, 05:15:42 pm
Milk, honey, and sugar are all in-game in some form or another-it would be neat to see dwarves adding milk and sweetner to their tea or something like that.
Post by: Starver on July 23, 2018, 06:49:20 pm
Maybe this could be done by developing 'exotic drink' candidates associated with each civilisation/region. A particular (suitably Raw-tagged) plant starts off as uniquely a given civ's speciality. (Yes, for Dwarves it's probably going to be brewed as in a still, rather than brewed as in a teapot, if guided by suitable civ-specifying tags to that end.)
It'd probably have to be a plant/whatever grown/found in a biome that civ has (significant) presence in, as well, for them to have developed this.
Once trade (and conquest, and diplomatic spying, etc) gets hold of it, it ought to at least potentially spread to other areas (the taste and demand for it, it least, but maybe also a drive to homebrew it themselves, by hook or by crook.
Post by: SixOfSpades on July 23, 2018, 08:52:15 pm
Post by: Batgirl1 on July 25, 2018, 02:21:28 pm
Post by: Azerty on October 18, 2018, 06:20:41 am
+1 for this. Having nonalcoholic beverages could also go hand in hand with Bad Water. It used to be that drinking plain water was a risky endeavor, which is partly why tea (which requires boiling) became so popular in the first place. Making nonalcoholic beverages that are easier / faster than booze but not as effective (like water is now), but without the health risks of water, could add some interesting layers to the drink industry.
We would have to include infectious diseases to have water-borne varieties (diarrhea, cholera). Syndromes from miasma should be done too.
Post by: voliol on October 18, 2018, 10:17:28 am
Post by: IndigoFenix on October 18, 2018, 11:48:20 am
There would need to be some way for taverns and creatures to recognize materials with the requisite syndromes to prevent them from trying to drown their woes in milk. Maybe throw in some non-DRINK means of fulfilling the need for mind-influencing substances as well, like pipe-weed for instance.
Post by: scourge728 on October 19, 2018, 07:31:06 am
Post by: FantasticDorf on October 19, 2018, 08:46:51 am
Maybe this could be done by developing 'exotic drink' candidates associated with each civilisation/region. A particular (suitably Raw-tagged) plant starts off as uniquely a given civ's speciality. (Yes, for Dwarves it's probably going to be brewed as in a still, rather than brewed as in a teapot, if guided by suitable civ-specifying tags to that end.)
It'd probably have to be a plant/whatever grown/found in a biome that civ has (significant) presence in, as well, for them to have developed this.
Exotic drinks gets a thumbs up from me as non-alcoholic but still valuable thing, that makes dwarves happy to consume when they are already full on alcohol and summarily non-dwarves get less drunk all the while just trying to fufill their thirst if you stocked a tavern more like a tea-room for visitors while the real bar serving strong dwarven brews is underground.
There are other teas that don't need such industrial processing like flower teas that could be naturally collected from the enviroment, and if a [EXOTIC_DRINK] (syntax break line, syntax foward space) [TEA] for a material template then it'd be easy to add and for it to be integrated into civilizations where relevant the same way some drinks break into other products.
(Though you could do it already by making multiple syndromes last time i checked)
Im hoping that the new Trade companies (mentioned in the devlog) can specialise in a product for Holland like Tulip farming, so there's vast fields of a cash crop not for eating out in the world to be pushed through the new trade routes, and keep it a exotic luxury made by certain civs.
Post by: IndigoFenix on October 19, 2018, 09:35:40 am
Maybe this could be done by developing 'exotic drink' candidates associated with each civilisation/region. A particular (suitably Raw-tagged) plant starts off as uniquely a given civ's speciality. (Yes, for Dwarves it's probably going to be brewed as in a still, rather than brewed as in a teapot, if guided by suitable civ-specifying tags to that end.)
It'd probably have to be a plant/whatever grown/found in a biome that civ has (significant) presence in, as well, for them to have developed this.
Exotic drinks gets a thumbs up from me as non-alcoholic but still valuable thing, that makes dwarves happy to consume when they are already full on alcohol and summarily non-dwarves get less drunk all the while just trying to fufill their thirst if you stocked a tavern more like a tea-room for visitors while the real bar serving strong dwarven brews is underground.
There are other teas that don't need such industrial processing like flower teas that could be naturally collected from the enviroment, and if a [EXOTIC_DRINK] (syntax break line, syntax foward space) [TEA] for a material template then it'd be easy to add and for it to be integrated into civilizations where relevant the same way some drinks break into other products.
(Though you could do it already by making multiple syndromes last time i checked)
Im hoping that the new Trade companies (mentioned in the devlog) can specialise in a product for Holland like Tulip farming, so there's vast fields of a cash crop not for eating out in the world to be pushed through the new trade routes, and keep it a exotic luxury made by certain civs.
That sounds like the kind of thing that would be best handled by procedural generation and a properly functioning economy. Anything that one civ has and another doesn't, either because it doesn't grow there or because the technique for making it is a closely guarded secret, can become a valuable export, and the details would be different from one world to the next, unless the item was hard-coded to only be accessible to particular races (sun berries for elves or subterranean plants for dwarves, for example).
Tea, coffee, silk, chocolate, and bananas are all examples of this in our world; I don't think exoticness should be a hard-coded thing.
Post by: FantasticDorf on October 19, 2018, 10:23:07 am
You might get the Uristrocrat Mineral & Gold mining co. , a joint elf company 'Woodland Venture co.' to sell sun-berries, humans attempting to sell masses of valuables gained from different places with rare animals being hunted, plants gathered, and fish & pearls being returned from the sea to pump through.
If the tea-plant has a value of 2 it gets pushed. (though that's tangental discussion between whether we'd like tea/drinks in the game)
Post by: Maximum Spin on October 19, 2018, 11:41:56 am
it could be as simple a thing as letting trade companies (individually per company) settle upon objects of high value [value modifier x] as a priority to collect as to push them forward.Better to have it the other way around, value determined by rarity, since supply and demand is supposed to be implemented at some point.
You might get the Uristrocrat Mineral & Gold mining co. , a joint elf company 'Woodland Venture co.' to sell sun-berries, humans attempting to sell masses of valuables gained from different places with rare animals being hunted, plants gathered, and fish & pearls being returned from the sea to pump through.
If the tea-plant has a value of 2 it gets pushed. (though that's tangental discussion between whether we'd like tea/drinks in the game)
Post by: voliol on October 19, 2018, 12:34:24 pm
Well, there's still the demand that should be accounted for. Demand should rise with the usefulness/actual intrinsic value of the item. The VALUE token could be considered a way to nudge the NPC's in the right direction for that, so that they don't start an economy based around some insignificant weed just because it happens to be rare.it could be as simple a thing as letting trade companies (individually per company) settle upon objects of high value [value modifier x] as a priority to collect as to push them forward.Better to have it the other way around, value determined by rarity, since supply and demand is supposed to be implemented at some point.
You might get the Uristrocrat Mineral & Gold mining co. , a joint elf company 'Woodland Venture co.' to sell sun-berries, humans attempting to sell masses of valuables gained from different places with rare animals being hunted, plants gathered, and fish & pearls being returned from the sea to pump through.
If the tea-plant has a value of 2 it gets pushed. (though that's tangental discussion between whether we'd like tea/drinks in the game)
Post by: C27 on October 19, 2018, 02:37:43 pm
Better to have it the other way around, value determined by rarity, since supply and demand is supposed to be implemented at some point.
Demand is about utility, not just rarity. You might have a handful of collectors and fashionistas that'd pay 1000 dwarfbucks for a tiger-leather hat because it's rare, but for most folks, 20 dwarfbucks for a cow-leather version will be way more attractive since it does the same job and is a lot more common and easier to get. By the same token, iron is one of the more common metals, but it doesn't make that much sense for it to end up cheaper than zinc which is much less common, because iron has a lot more practical utility and so the demand for it will be a lot higher.
Post by: Rufflikerex on October 21, 2018, 10:52:51 pm
Post by: FantasticDorf on October 22, 2018, 02:50:52 am
I doubt that Dwarves would be fond of Tea (maybe they'd drink it before water if a booze shortage occurs), but perhaps it could be used as an alternate drink for non-Dwarven visitors to a Tavern. I can imaging Humans, Elves, and Goblin visitors wanting to drink something more soothing than alcohol.
Depends if there's anything comparable underground, contrarily i dont see why they wouldnt like tea but it may be outside the reach/interest to gather of normal dwarves but still importable from foriegn sources if the player doesn't push.
Quarry leaves aren't edible but maybe they make a good brew to be mixed with dwarven milk & sweet pod extract to make Dwarven tea (though both the sugar & milk can be removed from that as nessecary)
Post by: SixOfSpades on October 22, 2018, 02:50:40 pm
I'd like to see the Herbalist profession removed, and replaced with:
"Forager", a new Ranger skill, who primarily seeks out edible plants (but may also kill/trap vermin creatures he happens to encounter), and
"Herbologist", a new Doctor skill who identifies, cultivates, harvests & prepares medicinal plants (and maybe a few animals).
Post by: Rowanas on October 23, 2018, 03:46:47 am
I don't think we should overlook the medicine/disease angle, which could add quite a lot to the game. Actual tea tea has no meaningful medicinal effects that I'm aware of, but infusions (and other treatments) of many different plants were (and still are) used to treat fevers, asthma, burns, heart conditions, etc.
I'd like to see the Herbalist profession removed, and replaced with:
"Forager", a new Ranger skill, who primarily seeks out edible plants (but may also kill/trap vermin creatures he happens to encounter), and
"Herbologist", a new Doctor skill who identifies, cultivates, harvests & prepares medicinal plants (and maybe a few animals).
No skill bloat please. We've already got four billion skills, can we try not to add new ones just for the sake of it?
Post by: FantasticDorf on October 23, 2018, 03:53:14 am
A medieval society wouldn't have a grasp of pharmaceuticals so would just ask the local alchemist/wise person to whip up a experimental, probably dangerous or placebo cure. Lets just hope they dont mix up the acid & golden salve flasks.
It'd be nice if we could actually use golden salve in this application, tea is also a stimulant so particularly potent & high value tea could give a syndrome that raises attentiveness but also makes them a bit more jittery.
Post by: SixOfSpades on October 24, 2018, 12:50:43 am
No skill bloat please. We've already got four billion skills, can we try not to add new ones just for the sake of it?It's hardly "just for the sake of it" when herbology was an actual skill that many people all over the world practiced, some even made their living by it. (Unlike some others, such as Gelder, or Glazer, or Fish Dissector.) I get your concern about bloat, but IMO realism generally trumps feelings. You might feel that, for example, splitting the Brewer profession up into Brewer, Vinter, and Distiller would be unnecessary bloat, but the fact remains that these are three almost completely unrelated processes and skill in one does not confer any skill in the others. Just as someone who knows the most likely times/places to go looking for wild strawberries is not guaranteed to also know that chewing on willow bark acts as a mild analgesic.
It sounds like one of the better skill suggestions, however chemist isn't used and can be applied under that.I'd prefer to keep the Herbologist and (Al)Chemist separate, actually. Just like the Carpenter and Mason: Even when they're working to achieve the same goal, their materials are too different to have the skill be transferable. Heck, there's a lot more cross-training potential between Herbologist and Cook than between Herbologist and Alchemist.
Post by: IndigoFenix on October 24, 2018, 03:40:44 am
In DF's abstraction, I think we can assume that the inedible plants are "invisible", and the herbalism skill is the ability to recognize the useful plants among the useless ones.
Post by: Rufflikerex on October 24, 2018, 05:26:46 pm
I doubt that Dwarves would be fond of Tea (maybe they'd drink it before water if a booze shortage occurs), but perhaps it could be used as an alternate drink for non-Dwarven visitors to a Tavern. I can imaging Humans, Elves, and Goblin visitors wanting to drink something more soothing than alcohol.
Depends if there's anything comparable underground, contrarily i dont see why they wouldnt like tea but it may be outside the reach/interest to gather of normal dwarves but still importable from foriegn sources if the player doesn't push.
Quarry leaves aren't edible but maybe they make a good brew to be mixed with dwarven milk & sweet pod extract to make Dwarven tea (though both the sugar & milk can be removed from that as nessecary)
Well here's the thing, Dwarves would rather drink alcohol than water, and since Tea is made from water it wouldn't make sense for Dwarves to drink it unless there's no alcohol, or it could be a more effective alternative to water for Dwarves in a hospital.
tl;dr: Dwarves don't drink tea like sissy Elves because Dwarves are hardcore drunks.
Post by: KittyTac on October 24, 2018, 10:28:05 pm
Post by: GoblinCookie on October 25, 2018, 06:55:48 am
Myth release will bring procedural, potentially non-alcoholic races. You could even play as humans. For those, tea would make sense.
I think the game should support us playing dwarves in a non-sterotypical way. Not that sterotypical dwarves ever made sense, why would dwarves waste the scarce energy in their underground environment on yeast?
Post by: KittyTac on October 25, 2018, 09:22:07 am
Post by: FantasticDorf on October 25, 2018, 09:55:04 am
Hmm
Code: [Select]
[SYN_NAME:stimulant]
[SYN_IDENTIFIER:STIMULANT]
[SYN_AFFECTED_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
[SYN_INGESTED]
[SYN_NO_HOSPITAL]
[SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:100:1000]
[CE_CHANGE_PERSONALITY:POLITENESS:25:FACET:THOUGHTLESSNESS:-25:FACET:IMAGINATION:25:FACET:ASSERTIVENESS:25:LUST_PROPENSITY:25:PROB:100:SIZE_DILUTES:START:10:PEAK:120:END:480:DWF_STRETCH:4]
[CE_MENT_ATT_CHANGE:ANALYTICAL_ABILITY:0:150:FOCUS:0:200:PATIENCE:0:250:SOCIAL_AWARENESS:0:200:MEMORY:0:200:PROB:100:SIZE_DILUTES:START:10:PEAK:120:END:480:DWF_STRETCH:4]
Something like this might be functional for modding it in as a pseudo brewable drink people can serve, fufill thirst from & reap the benefits of serving en-masse without anybody dying and instead being a teeny bit mentally sharper. Putting in a special reaction to brew tea from something like quarry bush leaves.
The stats could be more but 150,200 & 250 will push dwarves on the edge, up a field and the relaxation effect of the drink is significantly less than alcohol. I threw in the aphrodisiac into that code line under [LUST_PROPENSITY] as a experiment for whoever wanted to add it to their game if they could work out where to start, or use it as the basis for a mod.
Post by: Rowanas on October 25, 2018, 10:00:11 am
The game is supposed to be a simulation of your standard stereotypical fantasy world.
The sterotypical fantasy medieval world is pretty thin. If tea is the default drink for dwarves then that's nonsense, but if it's a thing they whip up for treats or ceremonies, medicines and the like, then fine.
Post by: Rufflikerex on October 26, 2018, 01:13:23 am
BECAUSE STEREOTYPICAL DWARVES ARE FUN! Let the drunks stay drunks.Myth release will bring procedural, potentially non-alcoholic races. You could even play as humans. For those, tea would make sense.
I think the game should support us playing dwarves in a non-sterotypical way. Not that sterotypical dwarves ever made sense, why would dwarves waste the scarce energy in their underground environment on yeast?
Post by: IndigoFenix on October 26, 2018, 01:39:18 am
Dwarves being heavy drinkers is really a post-Tolkein thing anyway (yes they liked to drink in Tolkein, but no more than everyone else). They picked up that attribute in popular culture right around the time they picked up the...Scottish accents.
Wait a second...
Post by: SixOfSpades on October 26, 2018, 03:04:01 am
Although it's not implemented in the game because there are no poisonous plants,Interesting tangent. I'm not advocating for who whole truckload of poisonous plants, of course, but it does seem odd that seemingly every single plant in DF is useful. If we've got obscure (and even somewhat controversial) plants like fonio & durian, then why not also have a few of the more well-known nuisances, such as stinging nettles, kudzu, poison oak, monkey puzzle, and jumping cactus? It would certainly make for a more gradual transition to things like staring eyeballs & wormy tendrils.
On a similar note, there are also no weeds. Sure, we have rat weed & blade weed, but they always stay nicely in their farm plots and only grow when planted in season. Currently, Planters have nothing to occupy their time between planting & harvesting--regular weedings would be a realistic requirement to maintain high yield, and would incidentally give children something useful to do.
Quote
in real life there was a strong link between herbalists and foragers.Yes and no, albeit admittedly mostly yes. Foragers mainly had to know which berries, roots, and mushrooms NOT to eat. (Or which parts, in cases like rhubarb.) But the important difference is, even legitimately medicinal plants are frequently toxic if you eat them in meal-sized quantities, so where the herbologist goes the extra mile is in knowing which of the bad plants can actually be good when used correctly. And not only do they have to tell the difference between yarrow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achillea_millefolium#/media/File:Achillea_millefolium_4.jpg) and hemlock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium_maculatum#/media/File:CMchinoCa.jpg), they also have to know what yarrow is good for, and how to use it. Also, both professions would be useful for keeping poisonous plants out of animal pastures, particularly if your livestock is not native to the area and thus wouldn't know which plants to avoid.
Quote
in post-farming societies pretty much the only reason a person would be gathering wild plants is for finding herbs that are not usually farmedUm, and poverty. That's a pretty big reason.
. . . since Tea is made from water it wouldn't make sense for Dwarves to drink it unless there's no alcoholExcept for the fact that all booze (except when of very high proof) is also primarily composed of water. Tea also has the advantage of a near-instantaneous prep time, unlike alcohol, which would realistically require a fermentation & aging period of months, if not years.
why would dwarves waste the scarce energy in their underground environment on yeast?1. Because beer,
2. Because yeast is a fungus,
3. Because the dwarven environment isn't limited to the underground, and
4. Because you're not turning this thread into another "caverns can't support life" debate.
The ALCOHOL_DEPENDENT tag is pretty gamey though. What, every dwarf at every age needs alcohol to not be depressed? I'd support a decision to remove it, but give dwarves a personality that encourages drinking for most dwarves (like a higher propensity for insanity due to bad moods along with a resistance to the harmful effects of alcohol) without it being straight up hard-coded in their biology.Agreed. It would be far more realistic to say that either booze makes them happy, or (harsher) they can't be happy without booze to flip the endorphin switch.
Post by: Egan_BW on October 26, 2018, 04:31:33 am
Post by: FantasticDorf on October 26, 2018, 08:54:32 am
You can offer water (which may be closer to what) but at the end of the day its either water or [DRINK] no matter how you try to reskin it or change its effects.
Tea and other drinks able to be drunk casually to fufill thirst would be pretty much the same as water but you'd have to poke dwarves to consider anything else unless you forcefully served the drink.
[ALCOHOL_REPLELLED] to always opt to steer away from alcohol and get negative thoughts if you ingest it?
Post by: Rataldo on October 26, 2018, 04:09:15 pm
Post by: Starver on October 26, 2018, 04:19:51 pm
Post by: GoblinCookie on October 27, 2018, 12:09:03 pm
Hallucinagenic herbal drinks that can encourage strange moods (or cause insanity) anyone?
Extracted from plants or fungi. I reckon that extracts make more sense than alchohol, the problem with alcohol being that you are basically throwing away scarce energy to feed all that yeast so you have beer. Extracting intoxicants is far 'cheaper' in energy terms, especially if you eat the plants or part of them as well.
It's interesting though that on the same basis beer is also very valuable to dwarves. You might imagine that humans could get the impression that dwarves guzzled lots of beer because when dwarves went to visit the surface they reliable took advantage of the ability to drink all that beer which to them is very valuable.
Post by: Dozebôm Lolumzalìs on October 28, 2018, 01:10:31 am
You can argue that this is unrealistic, but I don’t think that’s a very relevant complaint when there are dwarves and dragons and demons. The question is - does it improve the game? For detailed farm improvements, see NW_Kohaku’s masterpost I can’t currently find because I’m on mobile.
Personally, I think the plants eat magic. The magic varies by the season, which explains why crops can only be grown in certain seasons.
Post by: KittyTac on October 28, 2018, 01:59:19 am
Post by: therahedwig on October 28, 2018, 02:32:19 pm
Beer is not rare. It simply isn’t. You can set up an entire fortress with permanent beer using only a small room with a muddy floor.FWIW, I think the current underground farming system still makes most sense in old 2D DF where the underground river overflowed seasonally, meaning the ground got, er, renutriented. Perhaps if DF is going with the nutrients style farming, we'll see more of this kind of simulation, but by then it'll be softened by the huge amounts of other food sources that dwarves now have :)
You can argue that this is unrealistic, but I don’t think that’s a very relevant complaint when there are dwarves and dragons and demons. The question is - does it improve the game? For detailed farm improvements, see NW_Kohaku’s masterpost I can’t currently find because I’m on mobile.
Personally, I think the plants eat magic. The magic varies by the season, which explains why crops can only be grown in certain seasons.
I was going to say something about the topic, but I got distracted by researching medieval coughsyrup (https://www.coquinaria.nl/kooktekst/KAGent15.1.2.htm#1.91) when trying to look up what it was again that caused herbal tea to not be as popular as a drink as alcoholic drinks in medieval europe, but then realised it wasn't all that relevant.
Post by: Egan_BW on October 28, 2018, 04:30:45 pm
How well something works for gameplay isn't the only thing that matters. What matters probably even more than gameplay for DF is immersion. That is, things should work in a way that's logical without copouts like "you can grow things underground without light because dwarves". That doesn't mean no magic, dragons, and dwarves. It means those magical things need to be explainable, have a specific way they work and a reason why they exist. And that's exactly what mythgen is supposed to address. An entire long-wait dev cycle is going towards satisfactorily solving the problem of combining dwarves with realism.
And none of that had anything to do with tea.
Post by: Rufflikerex on October 28, 2018, 04:34:57 pm
It would be cool if there was a cavern-layer underground river again, which you'd need to set up by in order to do underground farming. Though needing to set up by a river would limit where you can put a fortress a lot more. On the other hand, it make a lot of sense.
How well something works for gameplay isn't the only thing that matters. What matters probably even more than gameplay for DF is immersion. That is, things should work in a way that's logical without copouts like "you can grow things underground without light because dwarves". That doesn't mean no magic, dragons, and dwarves. It means those magical things need to be explainable, have a specific way they work and a reason why they exist. And that's exactly what mythgen is supposed to address. An entire long-wait dev cycle is going towards satisfactorily solving the problem of combining dwarves with realism.
And none of that had anything to do with tea.
It's funny how much we stray from the original topic at hand so much. Remember the "Round Earth" thread? Why do we do this so often?
EDIT: Back to the topic at hand, I say that perhaps tea, and other drinks, should have an option to put specific types of alcohol in them (such as rum) to better appeal to dwarves while still adding variety.
Post by: GoblinCookie on October 30, 2018, 08:11:54 am
Beer is not rare. It simply isn’t. You can set up an entire fortress with permanent beer using only a small room with a muddy floor.
You can argue that this is unrealistic, but I don’t think that’s a very relevant complaint when there are dwarves and dragons and demons. The question is - does it improve the game? For detailed farm improvements, see NW_Kohaku’s masterpost I can’t currently find because I’m on mobile.
Personally, I think the plants eat magic. The magic varies by the season, which explains why crops can only be grown in certain seasons.
If the magic makes the plants grow that should appear in the legends. Otherwise I will assume things work as they do in real-life and the game is just compensating for missing mechanics.
Post by: Rowanas on October 30, 2018, 08:57:12 am
Beer is not rare. It simply isn’t. You can set up an entire fortress with permanent beer using only a small room with a muddy floor.
You can argue that this is unrealistic, but I don’t think that’s a very relevant complaint when there are dwarves and dragons and demons. The question is - does it improve the game? For detailed farm improvements, see NW_Kohaku’s masterpost I can’t currently find because I’m on mobile.
Personally, I think the plants eat magic. The magic varies by the season, which explains why crops can only be grown in certain seasons.
If the magic makes the plants grow that should appear in the legends. Otherwise I will assume things work as they do in real-life and the game is just compensating for missing mechanics.
Does the game also include airflow and water currents in legends? no, because they are simple facts of life, as is the magic plant power.
Post by: SixOfSpades on October 30, 2018, 04:52:59 pm
We can kill two birds with one stone: Dwarves are currently hypersensitive to stress, and we "need" a way to strongly link them to booze that doesn't involve them being somehow addicted to it from birth. So we completely do away with the gamey tags like [ALCOHOL_DEPENDENT], and instead assign all drinks varying values of Thirst_Quench, Alcohol_Content, and a bevy of Taste factors like Sweet, Bitter, Sour, Smooth, Fruity, etc., in order to appeal differently to dwarves with a varying range of preferred tastes. (A system which makes far more sense than having just 1 specific favorite food, especially when it's a food they've never had.) Then, make the alcoholic drinks lower stress (and perhaps make dwarves exceptionally sensitive to that stress-reducing effect), and maybe make certain other drinks (most likely the caffeinated ones) actually raise stress a bit. Finally, allow dwarves (at least) to be aware of this difference, so that they will know when they need a drink. Relatively happy dwarves will be more free to drink other beverages, but there's still no reason for them to avoid booze. So, all told, about 75% of the drinks consumed by dwarves will be alcoholic, as opposed to maybe 50% for non dwarves (assuming ample quantities of both, of course).
Post by: Egan_BW on October 30, 2018, 05:06:16 pm
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 01, 2018, 07:50:52 am
Does the game also include airflow and water currents in legends? no, because they are simple facts of life, as is the magic plant power.
If those things worked differently than they do in Real-Life I would expect them to appear in legends.
The problem is this a computer game, not real-life. Some things we expect to be abstracted.
If we're really going to chew on the optimization of everything tea-related, meaning all of agriculture, that's going to involve pretty much every major update Toady has planned: The caverns and magic are going to be heavily affected by the Mythgen release, making dwarves partly dependent on underground rivers will only become feasible if/when the Embark scenarios release allows us to embark underground, etc. The entire thread would be basically made of derails because we wouldn't be able to focus on any one thing. So I for one advocate dropping the entire agriculture angle and concentrating on alternative beverages.
There really isn't much to talk about since tea is not really that complicated a thing for Toady One to add. He could put it in tomorrow if he was not busy doing other stuff. Tea is really just leaves from a tree, adding it in is no different really from adding in fruit and turning fruit into wine.
Post by: KittyTac on November 01, 2018, 09:34:34 am
Like I said, this would stop making sense with procgen magic.Beer is not rare. It simply isn’t. You can set up an entire fortress with permanent beer using only a small room with a muddy floor.
You can argue that this is unrealistic, but I don’t think that’s a very relevant complaint when there are dwarves and dragons and demons. The question is - does it improve the game? For detailed farm improvements, see NW_Kohaku’s masterpost I can’t currently find because I’m on mobile.
Personally, I think the plants eat magic. The magic varies by the season, which explains why crops can only be grown in certain seasons.
If the magic makes the plants grow that should appear in the legends. Otherwise I will assume things work as they do in real-life and the game is just compensating for missing mechanics.
Does the game also include airflow and water currents in legends? no, because they are simple facts of life, as is the magic plant power.
Post by: Egan_BW on November 01, 2018, 04:35:56 pm
Post by: FantasticDorf on November 01, 2018, 04:48:50 pm
If legends mode contained explanations of things that exist in real life, such as erosion and hydrology, I think it would be a fine change. It's educational, it explains how the fictional world works, and it provides a contrast to those worlds where such things might work very differently. Those are things that would require an alternative explanation in a world set within the intestines of an unimaginably large beast.
You'd need a entire RAW file with wikipedia in it pretty much virtually to retain that information without a legion of mantis bugs.
Post by: Shonai_Dweller on November 02, 2018, 03:13:03 am
If legends mode contained explanations of things that exist in real life, such as erosion and hydrology, I think it would be a fine change. It's educational, it explains how the fictional world works, and it provides a contrast to those worlds where such things might work very differently. Those are things that would require an alternative explanation in a world set within the intestines of an unimaginably large beast.The last comment Toady made on the subject was that discovering what the fundamental laws of the universe you're playing in through trial and (much hilarious) error is part of the Fun for the player. So perhaps it doesn't all need to be explained step by step. Especially as the option for more familiar universes will be there as standard.
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 03, 2018, 08:40:12 am
The last comment Toady made on the subject was that discovering what the fundamental laws of the universe you're playing in through trial and (much hilarious) error is part of the Fun for the player. So perhaps it doesn't all need to be explained step by step. Especially as the option for more familiar universes will be there as standard.
I don't see how that's going to work though. It is going to require a ton of exposition to describe it all to us and the game mechanics do not lend themselves naturally to exposition.
Post by: FantasticDorf on November 03, 2018, 11:54:37 am
The last comment Toady made on the subject was that discovering what the fundamental laws of the universe you're playing in through trial and (much hilarious) error is part of the Fun for the player. So perhaps it doesn't all need to be explained step by step. Especially as the option for more familiar universes will be there as standard.
I don't see how that's going to work though. It is going to require a ton of exposition to describe it all to us and the game mechanics do not lend themselves naturally to exposition.
Mythgenerator and other sub generators displayed in talks will the be world-generation exposition devices Toady will use, to a extent vagueness & familiarity with fantasy & real life settings fill in the blanks.
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 06, 2018, 09:10:10 am
Mythgenerator and other sub generators displayed in talks will the be world-generation exposition devices Toady will use, to a extent vagueness & familiarity with fantasy & real life settings fill in the blanks.
That sound like it would be a Wall-Of-Text. Plus I don't think people should even know the 'correct' myth (as in objectively what happens) at the beginning of the game; it should be hidden at least as an option.
But facts should not be hidden. If tea is poisonous, that fact should be known to those living in areas with tea plants regardless of the mythological reasons for it.
Post by: anewaname on November 06, 2018, 12:21:10 pm
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 08, 2018, 07:06:55 am
Regarding the idea of the using herbs for medicinal purposes, it would be excellent to see a Wound Dresser going to a stockpile or to a live plant, to collect plant material for use in a poultice.
That is related to decay of stockpiled items. If items don't decay there is no reason to have the script for said wound dresser to actually collect plants for a specific purpose, since we can just produce the items separately and stockpile them.
Post by: Rowanas on November 09, 2018, 10:13:16 am
Regarding the idea of the using herbs for medicinal purposes, it would be excellent to see a Wound Dresser going to a stockpile or to a live plant, to collect plant material for use in a poultice.
That is related to decay of stockpiled items. If items don't decay there is no reason to have the script for said wound dresser to actually collect plants for a specific purpose, since we can just produce the items separately and stockpile them.
GC, it's not really related at all. At best you're quibbling.
Anewaname, yeah, it would be cool. Adding medical herbs and whatnot (including antidotes and whatnot) to medical treatment is a neat way to tie systems together, and encourages more diverse farming. Even tying the purposes fo plants to research performed through philosophers (medical treatises and the like) would be nice.
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 11, 2018, 10:33:41 am
GC, it's not really related at all. At best you're quibbling.
Anewaname, yeah, it would be cool. Adding medical herbs and whatnot (including antidotes and whatnot) to medical treatment is a neat way to tie systems together, and encourages more diverse farming. Even tying the purposes fo plants to research performed through philosophers (medical treatises and the like) would be nice.
Individuals going off to produce the item they immediately need as opposed to simply taking it from the stockpile is very much related to item-decay; it is inefficient otherwise.
It is also related to the main topic as well. Tea really needs to be something made from the ingredients by the dwarf at the moment rather than us having a central set of barrel of cold tea for us to drink. People ought to prefer newly made tea to barrels of cold tea.
Post by: Rowanas on November 11, 2018, 03:17:25 pm
GC, it's not really related at all. At best you're quibbling.
Anewaname, yeah, it would be cool. Adding medical herbs and whatnot (including antidotes and whatnot) to medical treatment is a neat way to tie systems together, and encourages more diverse farming. Even tying the purposes of plants to research performed through philosophers (medical treatises and the like) would be nice.
Individuals going off to produce the item they immediately need as opposed to simply taking it from the stockpile is very much related to item-decay; it is inefficient otherwise.
It is also related to the main topic as well. Tea really needs to be something made from the ingredients by the dwarf at the moment rather than us having a central set of barrel of cold tea for us to drink. People ought to prefer newly made tea to barrels of cold tea.
Is a teapot not simply a small barrel for storing tea? And what of ice tea? Ok, those aren't the point, but you're changing your argument from what it was, to being about cold tea. Stop it. To be clear, your point about cold tea is valid in the context of the conversation we're having, but not in consideration of what you were trying to argue. Item decay is such a marginal loss of goods that the effort required to gather new resources is not a meaningful consideration.
On the point he made, some goods may need to be gathered at use rather than stockpiled, like a stonemason requires stone only at the point that he makes a throne.
Post by: Bumber on November 11, 2018, 05:15:01 pm
Is a teapot not simply a small barrel for storing tea?The Laugh thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=139883.msg7885357#msg7885357) taught me it's a slur for a black person (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs_by_ethnicity#African).
Post by: anewaname on November 12, 2018, 02:30:38 pm
This thread topic may be "Tea", but it seems to be extended into the associated concepts of "uses of plants" and "the different conditions these plants need to be put in (fresh/cured/fermented/brewed/etc)" and "the specific knowledge(s) required by dwarfs to use these plants in an effective manner".
And it has not been said yet, but one civ might use one plant for a purpose and another civ might use another plant. Tea and coffee were brought into use separately in civilizations/cultures for similar purposes. Other plants were also used but I don't know their names or their purposes, I'm just a dabbler on this topic.
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 13, 2018, 07:05:07 am
Is a teapot not simply a small barrel for storing tea? And what of ice tea? Ok, those aren't the point, but you're changing your argument from what it was, to being about cold tea. Stop it. To be clear, your point about cold tea is valid in the context of the conversation we're having, but not in consideration of what you were trying to argue. Item decay is such a marginal loss of goods that the effort required to gather new resources is not a meaningful consideration.
On the point he made, some goods may need to be gathered at use rather than stockpiled, like a stonemason requires stone only at the point that he makes a throne.
I was changing my argument to rerail the thread; sorry. A teapot is more a pot than a barrel, but currently only barrels can store liquids. ;)
One of the main issues with tea is that (iced tea excepted) it's value tends to rapidly depreciate from when it is made. That is what makes it different and more complicated to model than simply the alcoholic drinks we have at the moment.
Except that if the culture is happy drinking cold tea, this isn't the case. At the moment dwarves basically live on alcohol and cold ready meals, if they cook their food at all.
Post by: Rowanas on November 13, 2018, 08:03:20 am
Is a teapot not simply a small barrel for storing tea? And what of ice tea? Ok, those aren't the point, but you're changing your argument from what it was, to being about cold tea. Stop it. To be clear, your point about cold tea is valid in the context of the conversation we're having, but not in consideration of what you were trying to argue. Item decay is such a marginal loss of goods that the effort required to gather new resources is not a meaningful consideration.
On the point he made, some goods may need to be gathered at use rather than stockpiled, like a stonemason requires stone only at the point that he makes a throne.
I was changing my argument to rerail the thread; sorry. A teapot is more a pot than a barrel, but currently only barrels can store liquids. ;)
One of the main issues with tea is that (iced tea excepted) it's value tends to rapidly depreciate from when it is made. That is what makes it different and more complicated to model than simply the alcoholic drinks we have at the moment.
Except that if the culture is happy drinking cold tea, this isn't the case. At the moment dwarves basically live on alcohol and cold ready meals, if they cook their food at all.
Ok, fine, but if you're going to rerail, I'd like to know. Now that we're back on rails, you're right, dwarves live on cold (but masterful) food and drink all day, every day. Given that, I don't think we need to quibble about whether tea also obeys the same rules. Yes, tea is better hot, but so is food. When heated food is implemented (if ever), tea should be included, certainly.
Post by: Starver on November 13, 2018, 10:34:52 am
Post by: Egan_BW on November 13, 2018, 07:37:56 pm
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 15, 2018, 06:46:13 am
A teapot tends to be a reaction vessel/dispenser than any kind of storage.
Teapots are actually pretty important. The reason is that the main issue with tea is that tea-drinking is originally and to a large extent still is a ritual thing. In order to further discussion of tea beyond the 'tea is just another kind of wine, we pick the leaves from the tree and make it into tea', we really have to think about how to work out the tea-drinking ritual.
I thought that maybe instead of just drinking tea direct from the barrel, dwarves could have tea-rituals. That would involve one dwarf gathering together a group of his friends, family and those he is on friendly terms with, up to the limit of the tea pot capacity (20 servings?). Then he would get a teapot, go to the barrel while the other dwarves would get their mugs and sit on tables, the dwarf serving tea would take tea from the barrel and put it in the teapot. Finally he would go serve all the dwarves in the group tea, similar to tavern keeper but the reputation would improve between the served and server and would be modified by how nice the teapot is.
Maybe tea will be added on a whim and be simply a nonalcoholic drink stored cold in barrels. Maybe it will be added with economy and be something that rich nobles have their servants prepare in a teapot. Maybe it'll be added with mythgen and be mostly just a component for spells. Any of these is possible and probably equally probable.
Practically anything could be an component for spells. Tea as medicine is really not so different from any other medicinal potion, which is presumably not going to be so different to magical potions.
Post by: Rowanas on November 15, 2018, 07:37:14 am
A teapot tends to be a reaction vessel/dispenser than any kind of storage.
Teapots are actually pretty important. The reason is that the main issue with tea is that tea-drinking is originally and to a large extent still is a ritual thing. In order to further discussion of tea beyond the 'tea is just another kind of wine, we pick the leaves from the tree and make it into tea', we really have to think about how to work out the tea-drinking ritual.
I thought that maybe instead of just drinking tea direct from the barrel, dwarves could have tea-rituals. That would involve one dwarf gathering together a group of his friends, family and those he is on friendly terms with, up to the limit of the tea pot capacity (20 servings?). Then he would get a teapot, go to the barrel while the other dwarves would get their mugs and sit on tables, the dwarf serving tea would take tea from the barrel and put it in the teapot. Finally he would go serve all the dwarves in the group tea, similar to tavern keeper but the reputation would improve between the served and server and would be modified by how nice the teapot is.
so you're suggesting Japanese Tea Ceremonies? I prefer the tea and a natter system of the British. Still though, tea-rituals are a good idea as an option for socialising. Designate taverns as tea houses or pubs.
Post by: FantasticDorf on November 15, 2018, 08:07:48 am
Here, here's a picture of a teapot jug (warning its a large picture)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Starver on November 15, 2018, 09:57:08 am
Teapots are actually pretty important. The reason is that the main issue with tea is that tea-drinking is originally and to a large extent still is a ritual thing. In order to further discussion of tea beyond the 'tea is just another kind of wine, we pick the leaves from the tree and make it into tea', we really have to think about how to work out the tea-drinking ritual.As an aside, have you read any of the Ancillary series, by Ann Leckie? Sci-fi, far-futuristic, but the society at the core of the tales (among other peculiarly progress/regressive traditions) sets great store on the Tea Ritual.
(Mentioning it is just a bit semi-random, I know.)
Wouldn't a pot be a metal jug?
Not necessarily. And, arguably, not ideally, for temperature-leaching reasons. You're not supposed to heat a teapot directly (unlike a kettle) and, though you do have metal ones, the ceramic ones are what you might think of. Maybe a dainty(-looking) white porcelain server small quantities or a big round brown hunk of a thing carted round the works or offices on the rattly old tea trolley. Or look up "Clarice Cliff Teapot" images for the Art Deco style and more impressionist designs.
A tea-urn is likely to be metal, maybe with an independent heating/heat-maintaining element to it (electric or maybe gas, usually), closest to a barrel that you'll find but still not really used for storage.
Full disclosure, though, I'm not really that fond of tea. But I've seen enough of it brewed (in the tea sense) to know how it is brewed, over here. And occasionally done it myself. But without the taste for it it's a hit-and-miss affair as to whether I've done it right (it wouldn't taste right to me, in any event, whether Builders' Tea or delicate fruit-tea infusions), which has gained me the reputation of not being the one to ask for anything other than the fetching of a tea-flavoured-drink from a vending machine that's pre-calibrated to approximate the stuff almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea that I can't mess up any more than the next most available pair of hands.
Post by: therahedwig on November 15, 2018, 11:54:13 am
I am extremely neutral to tea rituals. Wouldn't heat a teapot directly either, unless we want to add 'burns from hot pottery handling' and 'exploding pottery' to the game. And then the inevitable 'lets invite the goblins for tea parties'-thread.
Part of me feels that liquid holding containers in general should be considered more carefully by the AI. Like, what is stopping dwarves from filling a jug with alchohol and drag it to their parties. Or a bucket. Or fill the jug with water for feeding to patients. All that is possible in adventure mode, but so is filling a minecart with water for drinking... I suposse this requires a liquids handling rewrite in general :)
Post by: Starver on November 15, 2018, 05:35:27 pm
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 17, 2018, 08:58:06 am
so you're suggesting Japanese Tea Ceremonies? I prefer the tea and a natter system of the British. Still though, tea-rituals are a good idea as an option for socialising. Designate taverns as tea houses or pubs.
It does not really matter if it's British or Japanese, the mechanics cover both. 8)
Wouldn't a pot be a metal jug?
Here, here's a picture of a teapot jug (warning its a large picture)Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The teapot could be made out of rock, earthenware, metal, wood or glass. Functionally it ought to go with jugs and other dispenser type objects.
Uhm, if you really want to know. Coffee and tea made with boiling water instead of the preferred 90°C tastes/smells sour. That's it. It's kinda gross though. Had a conversation where the smell of badly brewn coffee was mistaken for the smell of cat piss. Now you know.
I am extremely neutral to tea rituals. Wouldn't heat a teapot directly either, unless we want to add 'burns from hot pottery handling' and 'exploding pottery' to the game. And then the inevitable 'lets invite the goblins for tea parties'-thread.
Part of me feels that liquid holding containers in general should be considered more carefully by the AI. Like, what is stopping dwarves from filling a jug with alchohol and drag it to their parties. Or a bucket. Or fill the jug with water for feeding to patients. All that is possible in adventure mode, but so is filling a minecart with water for drinking... I suposse this requires a liquids handling rewrite in general :)
Nobody is heating up the teapot. The teapot is full of cold tea from a barrel. :)
Post by: therahedwig on November 17, 2018, 09:21:20 am
Nobody is heating up the teapot. The teapot is full of cold tea from a barrel. :)therahedwig cancels post, horrified.
Post by: FantasticDorf on November 17, 2018, 09:52:31 am
Nobody is heating up the teapot. The teapot is full of cold tea from a barrel. :)therahedwig cancels post, horrified.
Iced tea with a swirl of dwarven syrup comes to mind or some fruit could be very very nice & sickly.
The teapot could be made out of rock, earthenware, metal, wood or glass. Functionally it ought to go with jugs and other dispenser type objects.I am extremely neutral to tea rituals. Wouldn't heat a teapot directly either, unless we want to add 'burns from hot pottery handling' and 'exploding pottery' to the game. And then the inevitable 'lets invite the goblins for tea parties'-thread.
By that point @GoblinCookie it would pretty much be a 'social function' mug alterative rather than a liquid holder, unless taverns ESPECIALLY asked for teapots & jugs to use to pour exact amounts into dwarves cups.
Post by: anewaname on November 18, 2018, 03:01:48 am
Post by: KittyTac on November 18, 2018, 03:39:49 am
I don't understand why dwarfs, which need alcohol to get through the day, would ever see tea as something other than water that has been polluted. They would be suspicious about drinking it, and would make jokes and rude comments at a "tea ceremony", and generally do anything except drink the tea.Mythgen will bring non-dwarf playable races, such as humans. Those might drink tea.
Post by: FantasticDorf on November 18, 2018, 07:57:32 am
I don't understand why dwarfs, which need alcohol to get through the day, would ever see tea as something other than water that has been polluted. They would be suspicious about drinking it, and would make jokes and rude comments at a "tea ceremony", and generally do anything except drink the tea.
You obviously have never met my grandma who mixes Jack Daniels whiskey into it.
Post by: Starver on November 18, 2018, 08:54:08 am
Post by: VislarRn on November 18, 2018, 09:37:42 am
I don't understand why dwarfs, which need alcohol to get through the day, would ever see tea as something other than water that has been polluted. They would be suspicious about drinking it, and would make jokes and rude comments at a "tea ceremony", and generally do anything except drink the tea.
All dwarves don't have to be Scottish, some might be British too. :)
Post by: Egan_BW on November 18, 2018, 01:08:20 pm
Post by: KittyTac on November 18, 2018, 09:57:23 pm
I could certainly see dwarves having their own little tea culture. Having a few cups of the stuff after waking up an hour before sunrise, to prepare themselves for a nice day of making microcline mugs.Perhaps with alcohol mixed into it.
Post by: Bumber on November 19, 2018, 04:44:47 am
I don't understand why dwarfs, which need alcohol to get through the day, would ever see tea as something other than water that has been polluted. They would be suspicious about drinking it, and would make jokes and rude comments at a "tea ceremony", and generally do anything except drink the tea.It's obviously meant to be minced into roasts and biscuits, like milk and syrup.
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 20, 2018, 07:03:33 am
Iced tea with a swirl of dwarven syrup comes to mind or some fruit could be very very nice & sickly.
With all those exotic ingredients we will have to keep an eye on the FPS!!!! ;) 8)
By that point @GoblinCookie it would pretty much be a 'social function' mug alterative rather than a liquid holder, unless taverns ESPECIALLY asked for teapots & jugs to use to pour exact amounts into dwarves cups.
The social function part is optional, you could simply use a teapot to carry water to drink in adventure mode for instance, so mechanically it is very much an ordinary liquid dispenser like a jug. Having jugs in taverns along the lines your describe would go a way to making taverns more efficient, instead of having to get a mug for each customer, the customers all take a mug when they arrive and then the barman goes around with a jug of alcohol to serve them.
Admittedly that isn't generally how taverns work in RL, but it is certainly more efficient.
I don't understand why dwarfs, which need alcohol to get through the day, would ever see tea as something other than water that has been polluted. They would be suspicious about drinking it, and would make jokes and rude comments at a "tea ceremony", and generally do anything except drink the tea.
How narrow-minded of them.....
Post by: Starver on November 20, 2018, 09:13:24 am
I do not like it, Sam-o-var!"
Post by: anewaname on November 20, 2018, 09:58:50 am
How narrow-minded of them.....It is in the raws... dwarfs are alcohol dependent. Dwarves might have a "ceremony", but "tea" is not likely to be a main component.
It would be interesting to see rituals/ceremonies being performed as a Socialize activity, similar to dancing, poetry, and music.
Post by: KittyTac on November 20, 2018, 10:15:22 am
Did you read my post? Eventually, dwarves will stop being the "main" race, as others will become officially playable. No-magic worlds will have only humans, anyhow.How narrow-minded of them.....It is in the raws... dwarfs are alcohol dependent. Dwarves might have a "ceremony", but "tea" is not likely to be a main component.
It would be interesting to see rituals/ceremonies being performed as a Socialize activity, similar to dancing, poetry, and music.
Post by: Rowanas on November 20, 2018, 11:04:10 am
Did you read my post? Eventually, dwarves will stop being the "main" race, as others will become officially playable. No-magic worlds will have only humans, anyhow.How narrow-minded of them.....It is in the raws... dwarfs are alcohol dependent. Dwarves might have a "ceremony", but "tea" is not likely to be a main component.
It would be interesting to see rituals/ceremonies being performed as a Socialize activity, similar to dancing, poetry, and music.
I'm not sure any of that is true. I think dwarves will be the default, even in no-magic realms. Others may sidestep into the limelight a bit, and other races will be more supported, but Dwarves will never cease to be the primary protagonists (or antagonists, depending on how long you've been playing for).
Post by: anewaname on November 20, 2018, 11:15:31 am
Yes. I just think the idea of a "ceremony" needs to be separated from the idea of "tea", and the idea of "tea" needs to be separated from "dwarf".Did you read my post? Eventually, dwarves will stop being the "main" race, as others will become officially playable. No-magic worlds will have only humans, anyhow.How narrow-minded of them.....It is in the raws... dwarfs are alcohol dependent. Dwarves might have a "ceremony", but "tea" is not likely to be a main component.
It would be interesting to see rituals/ceremonies being performed as a Socialize activity, similar to dancing, poetry, and music.
Any civilization can have customs (including ceremonies, rituals, and rites. I only vaguely know the difference between these words and there are probably more words for these activities.) But they all are actions that originally had an additional meaning and help create or reinforce the bond of an individual with a community.
In a world that does have dwarfs, I cannot see that those dwarfs would ever have a "ceremony" involving "tea", unless the ceremony represented some hardship their ancestors endured (such as having to survive on fermented tea leaves while they desperately sought plants that would yield a higher alcohol content).
Post by: Rowanas on November 20, 2018, 11:21:28 am
Yes. I just think the idea of a "ceremony" needs to be separated from the idea of "tea", and the idea of "tea" needs to be separated from "dwarf".Did you read my post? Eventually, dwarves will stop being the "main" race, as others will become officially playable. No-magic worlds will have only humans, anyhow.How narrow-minded of them.....It is in the raws... dwarfs are alcohol dependent. Dwarves might have a "ceremony", but "tea" is not likely to be a main component.
It would be interesting to see rituals/ceremonies being performed as a Socialize activity, similar to dancing, poetry, and music.
Any civilization can have customs (including ceremonies, rituals, and rites. I only vaguely know the difference between these words and there are probably more words for these activities.) But they all are actions that originally had an additional meaning and help create or reinforce the bond of an individual with a community.
In a world that does have dwarfs, I cannot see that those dwarfs would ever have a "ceremony" involving "tea", unless the ceremony represented some hardship their ancestors endured (such as having to survive on fermented tea leaves while they desperately sought plants that would yield a higher alcohol content).
Then why would they have a ritual involving singing or anything else? Dwarves are allowed to like things. I like the funny voice I get from helium even though I'm oxygen dependent, and I enjoy putting non-nutritional herbs and spices on my food, despite being nutrition dpendent.
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 22, 2018, 07:12:49 am
I'm not sure any of that is true. I think dwarves will be the default, even in no-magic realms. Others may sidestep into the limelight a bit, and other races will be more supported, but Dwarves will never cease to be the primary protagonists (or antagonists, depending on how long you've been playing for).
It think that not a magic vs no magic slider, it is a fantasy vs mundanity slider. At absolute mundanity only [MUNDANE] things will actually exist, that means stuff that exists in real-life. That means that dwarves won't exist in the extreme mundane universe because they don't exist in real-life.
I don't personally think it's a good system, I would prefer magic VS non-magic slider where things that are possible but don't exist in real-life (like dwarves) are found but nothing magic or supernatural does.
Post by: KittyTac on November 22, 2018, 07:31:54 am
Well, Toady has stated somewhere (I don't remember exactly where, maybe a FOTF reply?), that dwarves will stop being the primary protagonists around the Magic release. They won't make sense in no-magic worlds, as those will only have humans. Go ask a FOTF question if it bothers you.Did you read my post? Eventually, dwarves will stop being the "main" race, as others will become officially playable. No-magic worlds will have only humans, anyhow.How narrow-minded of them.....It is in the raws... dwarfs are alcohol dependent. Dwarves might have a "ceremony", but "tea" is not likely to be a main component.
It would be interesting to see rituals/ceremonies being performed as a Socialize activity, similar to dancing, poetry, and music.
I'm not sure any of that is true. I think dwarves will be the default, even in no-magic realms. Others may sidestep into the limelight a bit, and other races will be more supported, but Dwarves will never cease to be the primary protagonists (or antagonists, depending on how long you've been playing for).
Post by: Rowanas on November 22, 2018, 08:15:22 am
Well, Toady has stated somewhere (I don't remember exactly where, maybe a FOTF reply?), that dwarves will stop being the primary protagonists around the Magic release. They won't make sense in no-magic worlds, as those will only have humans. Go ask a FOTF question if it bothers you.Did you read my post? Eventually, dwarves will stop being the "main" race, as others will become officially playable. No-magic worlds will have only humans, anyhow.How narrow-minded of them.....It is in the raws... dwarfs are alcohol dependent. Dwarves might have a "ceremony", but "tea" is not likely to be a main component.
It would be interesting to see rituals/ceremonies being performed as a Socialize activity, similar to dancing, poetry, and music.
I'm not sure any of that is true. I think dwarves will be the default, even in no-magic realms. Others may sidestep into the limelight a bit, and other races will be more supported, but Dwarves will never cease to be the primary protagonists (or antagonists, depending on how long you've been playing for).
You've come across a little bit antagonistic there, but your suggestion is valid, so I shall.
Post by: anewaname on November 22, 2018, 05:05:51 pm
Do your helium or flavoring activities cause you pain or make you feel sick? The DF dwarfs have an alcohol dependency and fulfilling their drinking needs with a non-alcoholic beverage results in long-term negative thoughts and an effectively reduced physical output. You would not find a group of DF dwarfs that enjoy a "tea ceremony" for the sake of the "tea", because of how the dwarfs are biologically defined in the raws.Yes. I just think the idea of a "ceremony" needs to be separated from the idea of "tea", and the idea of "tea" needs to be separated from "dwarf".Did you read my post? Eventually, dwarves will stop being the "main" race, as others will become officially playable. No-magic worlds will have only humans, anyhow.How narrow-minded of them.....It is in the raws... dwarfs are alcohol dependent. Dwarves might have a "ceremony", but "tea" is not likely to be a main component.
It would be interesting to see rituals/ceremonies being performed as a Socialize activity, similar to dancing, poetry, and music.
Any civilization can have customs (including ceremonies, rituals, and rites. I only vaguely know the difference between these words and there are probably more words for these activities.) But they all are actions that originally had an additional meaning and help create or reinforce the bond of an individual with a community.
In a world that does have dwarfs, I cannot see that those dwarfs would ever have a "ceremony" involving "tea", unless the ceremony represented some hardship their ancestors endured (such as having to survive on fermented tea leaves while they desperately sought plants that would yield a higher alcohol content).
Then why would they have a ritual involving singing or anything else? Dwarves are allowed to like things. I like the funny voice I get from helium even though I'm oxygen dependent, and I enjoy putting non-nutritional herbs and spices on my food, despite being nutrition dpendent.
Dwarfs have these customs/traditions/ceremonies/rituals, such as singing, because it is an activity that multiple dwarfs prefer, not because a single dwarf prefers it. Their reason for preferring the activity might differ, but they engage in the activity in a similar way because they all find some meaning or positive feeling from performing it; possibly related to their beliefs of loyalty, friendship, duty, tradition, etc. Why would tea be involved in a dwarven custom/tradition/ceremony unless it had some special meaning in the activity?
And I am just expressing an opinion on this. It would be cool to see civs have or develop customs over time.
Post by: Dorsidwarf on November 23, 2018, 05:35:16 am
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 24, 2018, 07:43:19 am
Do your helium or flavoring activities cause you pain or make you feel sick? The DF dwarfs have an alcohol dependency and fulfilling their drinking needs with a non-alcoholic beverage results in long-term negative thoughts and an effectively reduced physical output. You would not find a group of DF dwarfs that enjoy a "tea ceremony" for the sake of the "tea", because of how the dwarfs are biologically defined in the raws.
Dwarfs have these customs/traditions/ceremonies/rituals, such as singing, because it is an activity that multiple dwarfs prefer, not because a single dwarf prefers it. Their reason for preferring the activity might differ, but they engage in the activity in a similar way because they all find some meaning or positive feeling from performing it; possibly related to their beliefs of loyalty, friendship, duty, tradition, etc. Why would tea be involved in a dwarven custom/tradition/ceremony unless it had some special meaning in the activity?
And I am just expressing an opinion on this. It would be cool to see civs have or develop customs over time.
It does not follow that just because dwarves have a biological need to drink some quantity of alcohol they won't drink other things as well; the alcohol dependency is a total non sequitur.
Post by: anewaname on November 25, 2018, 02:26:28 am
Have you ever drank water from a natural pond, with leaves rotting in it? Please get a good mental image of that water with little bits of rotted vegetation.
Compare the image of pond water to an image of real tea... Not the easily-made bagged tea, but the type where there are tea leaves in the bottom of the pot and after filling the cup, little bits of tea leaves float around.
Most dwarfs are going to look at tea as pond water... It doesn't matter if it is hot. It is dirty water that has no alcohol content.
There might be a few dwarfs that like the flavor, but they are not going to convince many others to join them in a "tea ceremony". "He felt satisfied after participating in a ceremony with a friend. He felt disgusted after drinking nasty water.
I suspect that players who enjoy tea would like to think that their dwarfs would enjoy tea, but I suspect that is more an issue of players applying their own feelings to the dwarfs.
Post by: Egan_BW on November 25, 2018, 02:38:59 am
Post by: Starver on November 25, 2018, 07:11:58 am
You seem to have a strange idea of how dwarves work.They whistle while doing it, don't they?
Post by: mightymushroom on November 25, 2018, 04:50:20 pm
By that point @GoblinCookie it would pretty much be a 'social function' mug alterative rather than a liquid holder, unless taverns ESPECIALLY asked for teapots & jugs to use to pour exact amounts into dwarves cups.
The social function part is optional, you could simply use a teapot to carry water to drink in adventure mode for instance, so mechanically it is very much an ordinary liquid dispenser like a jug. Having jugs in taverns along the lines your describe would go a way to making taverns more efficient, instead of having to get a mug for each customer, the customers all take a mug when they arrive and then the barman goes around with a jug of alcohol to serve them.
Admittedly that isn't generally how taverns work in RL, but it is certainly more efficient.
I've been in plenty of restaurants that serve coffee in pretty much this exact manner, everyone gets a cup and the server goes around pouring out of a universal carafe. And, although not distributed quite so freely, there are establishments that provide pitchers of (usually only a cheap brand of) beer to a whole table at a time as well as doing individual servings. So the method seems viable, at least at a sufficiently low price point (commensurate with relatively low customer expectations?).
Post by: GoblinCookie on November 27, 2018, 07:16:19 am
I've been in plenty of restaurants that serve coffee in pretty much this exact manner, everyone gets a cup and the server goes around pouring out of a universal carafe. And, although not distributed quite so freely, there are establishments that provide pitchers of (usually only a cheap brand of) beer to a whole table at a time as well as doing individual servings. So the method seems viable, at least at a sufficiently low price point (commensurate with relatively low customer expectations?).
I don't see how from the customers POV there is any real difference between getting individual drinks of the same kind or everyone getting served the same kind of drink from a pitcher. To a certain extent it is a cultural thing, the most efficient way to serve a large number of people is for everyone to line up on a table and then the bartender to go around with a pitcher to pour everyone a glass of whatever it is. That does not however seem to be culturally preferred, probably because of individualism, which isn't an option for dwarves anyway.
Post by: Rowanas on November 30, 2018, 04:38:48 am
Dwarfs dislike drinking water and greatly dislike "muddy" water. That is in the game, and is an consequence of the alcohol dependency.
Have you ever drank water from a natural pond, with leaves rotting in it? Please get a good mental image of that water with little bits of rotted vegetation.
Compare the image of pond water to an image of real tea... Not the easily-made bagged tea, but the type where there are tea leaves in the bottom of the pot and after filling the cup, little bits of tea leaves float around.
Most dwarfs are going to look at tea as pond water... It doesn't matter if it is hot. It is dirty water that has no alcohol content.
There might be a few dwarfs that like the flavor, but they are not going to convince many others to join them in a "tea ceremony". "He felt satisfied after participating in a ceremony with a friend. He felt disgusted after drinking nasty water.
I suspect that players who enjoy tea would like to think that their dwarfs would enjoy tea, but I suspect that is more an issue of players applying their own feelings to the dwarfs.
I feel revulsion at the thought of drinking dirty pond water, but I still drink tea, and an alcoholic (a human who depends upon alcohol) can still drink shit that isn't alcohol and enjoy it. Furthermore, as dorsi and GC have already said - requiring something is not an impediment to consuming other things, whether to your detriment or not. I get that you like the idea of dwarves being physically incapable of drinking anything but alcohol (and in DF, there's no need to discover fermentation and have thousands of years of non-alcoholic dwarves), but it is, in my opinion, dumb, and presents dwarves as two dimensional little things, rather than building them up into believable people in a fantasy universe.
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 01, 2018, 07:00:55 am
Dwarfs dislike drinking water and greatly dislike "muddy" water. That is in the game, and is an consequence of the alcohol dependency.
Have you ever drank water from a natural pond, with leaves rotting in it? Please get a good mental image of that water with little bits of rotted vegetation.
Compare the image of pond water to an image of real tea... Not the easily-made bagged tea, but the type where there are tea leaves in the bottom of the pot and after filling the cup, little bits of tea leaves float around.
Most dwarfs are going to look at tea as pond water... It doesn't matter if it is hot. It is dirty water that has no alcohol content.
There might be a few dwarfs that like the flavor, but they are not going to convince many others to join them in a "tea ceremony". "He felt satisfied after participating in a ceremony with a friend. He felt disgusted after drinking nasty water.
I suspect that players who enjoy tea would like to think that their dwarfs would enjoy tea, but I suspect that is more an issue of players applying their own feelings to the dwarfs.
I feel revulsion at the thought of drinking dirty pond water, but I still drink tea, and an alcoholic (a human who depends upon alcohol) can still drink shit that isn't alcohol and enjoy it. Furthermore, as dorsi and GC have already said - requiring something is not an impediment to consuming other things, whether to your detriment or not. I get that you like the idea of dwarves being physically incapable of drinking anything but alcohol (and in DF, there's no need to discover fermentation and have thousands of years of non-alcoholic dwarves), but it is, in my opinion, dumb, and presents dwarves as two dimensional little things, rather than building them up into believable people in a fantasy universe.
Dwarves will drink water if they can't get alcohol and it does not do them any harm, provided it comes from a well they don't get unhappy thoughts plus sick/injured dwarves only get water. However there is an issue here in that we can't have dwarves drink tea until their alcohol quota has been met.
Post by: Starver on December 01, 2018, 09:48:33 am
Post by: anewaname on December 01, 2018, 01:35:55 pm
I am disagreeing with the idea that there will be enough dwarfs who prefer tea for that civilization to create and sustain a "tea" ceremony. Ceremonies (and rituals/customs/etc) require groups of individuals to create and sustain the ceremony through time. These groups of individuals require a common interest in the ceremony.
Please make a list of about ten ceremonies/traditions/rituals/customs/etc that you know of... then for each entry on your list, determine a few reasons these ceremonies developed. Which of those ceremonies could continue to exist if the number of interested individuals dropped too low? If any of these ceremonies have been discontinued, determine some reasons why this happened.
In the DF worlds, elves probably have ceremonies involving trees... I have a few nature-loving dwarfs that would enjoy a "tree ceremony" but most of my dwarfs would hold it in contempt. This is the difference between personal preferences and cultural preferences.
Group activities require groups of individuals, not individuals.
Post by: KittyTac on December 02, 2018, 01:47:03 am
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 03, 2018, 09:50:17 am
Some dwarfs may prefer tea.... I am not disagreeing with that.
I am disagreeing with the idea that there will be enough dwarfs who prefer tea for that civilization to create and sustain a "tea" ceremony. Ceremonies (and rituals/customs/etc) require groups of individuals to create and sustain the ceremony through time. These groups of individuals require a common interest in the ceremony.
Please make a list of about ten ceremonies/traditions/rituals/customs/etc that you know of... then for each entry on your list, determine a few reasons these ceremonies developed. Which of those ceremonies could continue to exist if the number of interested individuals dropped too low? If any of these ceremonies have been discontinued, determine some reasons why this happened.
In the DF worlds, elves probably have ceremonies involving trees... I have a few nature-loving dwarfs that would enjoy a "tree ceremony" but most of my dwarfs would hold it in contempt. This is the difference between personal preferences and cultural preferences.
Group activities require groups of individuals, not individuals.
Individuals seldom develop individual stuff independent of the wider culture.
You are talking about dwarves like they exist and there are empirical facts about them, you have no stated reason why dwarves would not drink tea and have tea ceremonies. Dwarves don't develop tree ceremonies because trees are not a major part of their lived experience, unlike with elves; it has nothing to do with their abstract opinion of the nature above their heads, trees are not part of their life. The only facts as regards dwarves are the facts about the environment they are supposed to live in (the artificial underground), they have no reason to hold tree ceremonies in contempt because there is no reason to oppose something that is impossible.
On analysis tea is actually more likely than alcohol for dwarves to drink. The reason is that the 'charge' of tea does not depend upon the energy content of the tea leaves, it is a chemical thing produced independently of that. The strength of alcohol on the other hand is related to the amount of energy that is invested in making it, given the general scarcity of energy in the environment they live in dwarves would be be likely to eat the things they would make alcohol out of than ferment them into alcohol.
Post by: Rowanas on December 04, 2018, 09:58:45 am
Christmas, including the giving and receiving of gifts. A dwarven culture (with procgen myths) could have a mythic tea-drinking figure.
Singing Auld Langsyne and getting wasted on new year's Eve. We do it.. for fun, I guess?
Gradutation ceremonies. Not vital to survival, but we take pride in them.
etc.
Post by: anewaname on December 04, 2018, 07:29:46 pm
Individuals seldom develop individual stuff independent of the wider culture.Actually, that is the only way it does happen... It starts with an individual within a group of individuals and is introduced into parent, peer, or child groups.
For a ceremony/custom/ritual to continue and thrive in each group that it is introduced into, these groups of individuals must find some meaning or benefit from engaging in the activity.
You are talking about dwarves like they exist and there are empirical facts about them, you have no stated reason why dwarves would not drink tea and have tea ceremonies. Dwarves don't develop tree ceremonies because trees are not a major part of their lived experience, unlike with elves; it has nothing to do with their abstract opinion of the nature above their heads, trees are not part of their life. The only facts as regards dwarves are the facts about the environment they are supposed to live in (the artificial underground), they have no reason to hold tree ceremonies in contempt because there is no reason to oppose something that is impossible.You are saying that trees (which exist above-ground and below-ground in DF) are not part of their life... but tea leaves (from one type of tree that only grows in tropical regions), are part of their life.
On analysis tea is actually more likely than alcohol for dwarves to drink. The reason is that the 'charge' of tea does not depend upon the energy content of the tea leaves, it is a chemical thing produced independently of that. The strength of alcohol on the other hand is related to the amount of energy that is invested in making it, given the general scarcity of energy in the environment they live in dwarves would be be likely to eat the things they would make alcohol out of than ferment them into alcohol.Fermentation continues until the sugars have all been converted to alcohol, and dwarfs are not involved in this activity once the container is sealed. I agree that it takes less effort to make tea than to make alcohol, since fermentation requires the effort of putting the sugars into the container and if the dwarfs live in a biome with tea trees, it is easier to bring a bucket to the pond full of rotting tea leaves and fill the bucket.
I think you are ignoring my argument that you won't always be playing dorfs.I am not ignoring it. Humans may become the primary protagonists, but dwarfs and other races will continue to be be playable. It will not matter what race the overseer chooses if that race's ceremonies/customs/rituals/traditions are procedurally generated based the race's raw data and that civ's environment (biomes, friendly civs, enemy civs, etc). And, one can assume that if dwarfs are removed from the game, modders will add them back in again, creating raws with ALCOHOL_DEPENDENT or ALCOHOL_SUSCEPTIBLE... And those players that want their dwarf civs to develop "tea ceremonies" will add a CAFFEINE_SUSCEPTIBLE tag and look for mountain homes based in tropical biomes. And then again, I probably will still play humans as if they were dwarfs.
.. A dwarven culture (with procgen myths) could have a mythic tea-drinking figure...Yes!! Tea-drinking may be unlikely for dwarfs but it could happen. "And Erush drank tea with the elves to confirm the truce..." Later, he and others drank tea once a year to celebrate that event and to remember their dead, and this continued to be known as the "tea ceremony", long after their grandchildren had began spiking the tea with rum and their grandchildren's grandchildren stopped spiking the rum with tea."
Post by: KittyTac on December 05, 2018, 02:05:55 am
Post by: Dorsidwarf on December 05, 2018, 05:55:36 am
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 05, 2018, 07:20:06 am
Actually, that is the only way it does happen... It starts with an individual within a group of individuals and is introduced into parent, peer, or child groups.
For a ceremony/custom/ritual to continue and thrive in each group that it is introduced into, these groups of individuals must find some meaning or benefit from engaging in the activity.
Not quite. What happens is that a bunch of individuals within a culture independently come to the same conclusion based upon the pre-existing culture they have in common (same thing applies to ideas as with customs). Then they realize that they have something in common and create an institution. The institution then spreads the custom to everyone in the culture, regardless of whether they would independently develop an interest in it on their own. This is why cities and urban centers drive culture forward so much, because in a city it is easier for a number of individuals as described above to meet.
You are saying that trees (which exist above-ground and below-ground in DF) are not part of their life... but tea leaves (from one type of tree that only grows in tropical regions), are part of their life.
The tea leaves come from the surface because they are harvested there (in real-life tea trees are actually high-altitude plants, they will grow happily in Scotland) and brought below by a section of the population. However we are talking about literal tea there, nothing keeps there from being other plants, even underground ones of which 'tea' can be made; perhaps with more industry being involved than with tea leaves.
About trees, the point is kind of that trees lack general relevance to the population. Some dwarves will find trees relevant, because they go there to harvest things from trees, whether they be fruit, tea leaves or wood. But they don't have general familiarity to everyone, which means their cultural significance would remain for traditional fantasy dwarves limited; this does not have anything to do with their abstract ideas about nature.
However if you stretch things a bit we can end up with a different situation to traditional fantasy. If we have a dwarf fortress below a forest and nearly everyone goes out to get fruits once a year, trees could become a key cultural thing.
Fermentation continues until the sugars have all been converted to alcohol, and dwarfs are not involved in this activity once the container is sealed. I agree that it takes less effort to make tea than to make alcohol, since fermentation requires the effort of putting the sugars into the container and if the dwarfs live in a biome with tea trees, it is easier to bring a bucket to the pond full of rotting tea leaves and fill the bucket.
I was not talking about the effort involved :). I was talking about the sugars and carbohydrates used up by the production of alcohol. Traditional fantasy dwarves live in mountainous areas underground, which amounts to two environments where energy is scarce. Above them there are few carbohydrates and below them (in the caverns) there are also few carbohydrates, most energy in those environments is the protein and fats in the animals of creatures. There simply isn't the ability to mass-produce beer or wine as there is in human societies, because dwarves will simply have to eat the scarce carbohydrates and sugars needed to make them in order to stay alive.
Tea on the other hand, that grows in mountainous slopes as it's idea environment. Between alcohol and tea, tea makes more sense because this frees up all the energy that would be used to feed yeast in order to feed dwarves.
Post by: Bumber on December 05, 2018, 11:09:28 am
Traditional fantasy dwarves live in mountainous areas underground, which amounts to two environments where energy is scarce.Yet DF caverns have giant mushrooms and bear-sized birds. You can't disregard fantastical environments for fantastical creatures.
Post by: Egan_BW on December 05, 2018, 11:16:59 am
Post by: Bumber on December 05, 2018, 12:46:59 pm
Who says mountains have little energy? They have a very variable amount of energy because "mountains" by itself isn't a distinct biome, just a place that so happens to disregard the supposed flatness of earth's terrain.The problems are soil and air, which are products of high altitude. The sunlight exposure is also quite harsh, counter-intuitive to the low temperature (which is caused by the inability to trap the heat.)
Post by: Azerty on December 05, 2018, 03:38:49 pm
Actually, that is the only way it does happen... It starts with an individual within a group of individuals and is introduced into parent, peer, or child groups.
For a ceremony/custom/ritual to continue and thrive in each group that it is introduced into, these groups of individuals must find some meaning or benefit from engaging in the activity.
Not quite. What happens is that a bunch of individuals within a culture independently come to the same conclusion based upon the pre-existing culture they have in common (same thing applies to ideas as with customs). Then they realize that they have something in common and create an institution. The institution then spreads the custom to everyone in the culture, regardless of whether they would independently develop an interest in it on their own. This is why cities and urban centers drive culture forward so much, because in a city it is easier for a number of individuals as described above to meet.
You could provide interesting input to the Events, Customs and Traditions, or the introduction of celebrations (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=167597.0) thread.
Fermentation continues until the sugars have all been converted to alcohol, and dwarfs are not involved in this activity once the container is sealed. I agree that it takes less effort to make tea than to make alcohol, since fermentation requires the effort of putting the sugars into the container and if the dwarfs live in a biome with tea trees, it is easier to bring a bucket to the pond full of rotting tea leaves and fill the bucket.
I was not talking about the effort involved :). I was talking about the sugars and carbohydrates used up by the production of alcohol. Traditional fantasy dwarves live in mountainous areas underground, which amounts to two environments where energy is scarce. Above them there are few carbohydrates and below them (in the caverns) there are also few carbohydrates, most energy in those environments is the protein and fats in the animals of creatures. There simply isn't the ability to mass-produce beer or wine as there is in human societies, because dwarves will simply have to eat the scarce carbohydrates and sugars needed to make them in order to stay alive.
Tea on the other hand, that grows in mountainous slopes as it's idea environment. Between alcohol and tea, tea makes more sense because this frees up all the energy that would be used to feed yeast in order to feed dwarves.
Given the information you provided, I wonder how the "beer-drinking mountain dwarves" trope came to birth. OTOH, mead-drinking might be more widespread and, moreover, a fantasy world might have more lively undergrounds.
Warhammer made dwarves trave their craftswork to the valley humans in exchange of food, enabling them to devote their farmers to grow their special barley.
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 08, 2018, 10:37:34 am
Yet DF caverns have giant mushrooms and bear-sized birds. You can't disregard fantastical environments for fantastical creatures.
Nutrients are not presently a factor in determining creature populations. It is actually more energy efficient pound for pound to have a few larger creatures than to have a lot of smaller creatures. Provided the caverns were large enough to fit the creatures in, we might well see very large cave-dwelling creatures.
There are plenty of thing that live in caverns in real-life. We actually don't know exactly what creatures there are down there because so little of the cavern systems are accessible to us. Then there are whole quasi-alien ecosystems based upon the chemical reactions driven by extreme heat deep in the earth which we naturally know little about.
It seems however that fungi do actually store energy as carbohydrates according to the answer to this question (https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/41897/where-does-fungus-store-excess-food). The problem is that there is little requirement to store energy in an underground environment because there are no seasons. A lot of carbohydrates are stored by plants because of seasonal fluctuations demand they go dormant for long periods and/or regrow themselves. Carbohydrates are also stored in seeds in order to speed up the growth of new seeds to give them a head start in the competitive race to get to the light, which does not exist underground.
That leaves only one possible option. A mushroom is normally a means by which the fungus propagates itself, which makes it in a sense a fruit. A mushroom that wanted to be eaten, could presumably exist and therefore they could store carbohydrates in them to attract animals to eat them in the same manner than fruit does. Problem is nothing is in any real rush to reproduce in an environment which is both static and energy scarce, in that environment to waste energy to reproduce more effectively is a sure way to go extinct.
Given the information you provided, I wonder how the "beer-drinking mountain dwarves" trope came to birth. OTOH, mead-drinking might be more widespread and, moreover, a fantasy world might have more lively undergrounds.
Warhammer made dwarves trave their craftswork to the valley humans in exchange of food, enabling them to devote their farmers to grow their special barley.
Mead is pretty much what they are going to be drinking. That is because honey bees like mountainous area because there are plenty of flowers on the lower slopes of mountains. The problem is that mead still has less sugar in it than the honey that it was made from and honey does not go off. That however might be entirely the point, dwarves drinking alcohol is conspicuous consumption but that does leave a gap for the staple beverage to be filled either by tea or by mushroom derived 'buzzes'.
From Warhammer Total War I rather got the impression that the dwarves neighbors were mostly orcs and goblins. I also got the impression that they mostly ate the barley rather than turning it into beer.
Post by: Bumber on December 08, 2018, 09:27:24 pm
Nutrients are not presently a factor in determining creature populations. It is actually more energy efficient pound for pound to have a few larger creatures than to have a lot of smaller creatures. Provided the caverns were large enough to fit the creatures in, we might well see very large cave-dwelling creatures.Does this account for the ability of sized creatures to seek out food and spend time grazing? Aside from that, the issue with bear-sized birds is the required wingspan and the muscles to use them (also, cavern walls.) It is apparent that there's magic involved, and energy isn't really so scarce.
Just because there aren't "seasons" (although farm plots disagree) doesn't mean there isn't some kind of cycle.
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 11, 2018, 08:12:27 am
Does this account for the ability of sized creatures to seek out food and spend time grazing? Aside from that, the issue with bear-sized birds is the required wingspan and the muscles to use them (also, cavern walls.) It is apparent that there's magic involved, and energy isn't really so scarce.
Just because there aren't "seasons" (although farm plots disagree) doesn't mean there isn't some kind of cycle.
As I said, a lot of it has to do with the size of the cavern. The main issue with big creatures is that you still need to maintain a viable population, by which I mean the population has to be large enough that if any plausible catastrophe happens it's population won't fall below the number that it ceases to be able to reproduce without problems. In this case it is the total number of creatures, not their biomass that matters. A small number of large creatures deals with a shortage of food better than the equivalent biomass of smaller creatures but we have to have a certain number of actual creatures in a certain proximity in order for the population to be viable at all.
Thus, while economies of scale make large creatures quite viable in an energy poor environment, the amount of total space needed per creature means that there are problems with maintaining a viable population in a 'small biome'. In real-life unlike DF caverns tend to be small, so cavern life is also small but in DF we presently have a massive global cavern and massive cave creatures are entirely viable in such a cavern.
Cycles in a cavern system would have to be related to changes to the flow of water in response to rainfall patterns on the surface.
Post by: Bumber on December 12, 2018, 07:52:25 pm
Cycles in a cavern system would have to be related to changes to the flow of water in response to rainfall patterns on the surface.Or plant/fungal reproductive cycles. Or ambient magic cycles.
But, of course, none of this has to do with tea. Dwarves drink alcohol because plump helmets can apparently be brewed into alcohol, and any explanations are superfluous, especially if plump helmets don't exist in non-magic worlds.
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 13, 2018, 07:55:47 am
Or plant/fungal reproductive cycles. Or ambient magic cycles.
But, of course, none of this has to do with tea. Dwarves drink alcohol because plump helmets can apparently be brewed into alcohol, and any explanations are superfluous, especially if plump helmets don't exist in non-magic worlds.
Even if plump helmets exist, they would still need scarce nutrients to grow; limiting their number.
Post by: SixOfSpades on December 13, 2018, 10:41:11 am
A small number of large creatures deals with a shortage of food better than the equivalent biomass of smaller creaturesThis is actually 100% wrong. Let's compare an elephant, and a group of rabbits that collectively consume as much food as said elephant. If the supply of food drops by 50%, half of the rabbits (maybe a bit more) will starve, but the other half will do just fine, and the warren hops along at 50% capacity until the local ecosystem recovers. But the elephant will just flat-out die, no questions asked. That's why small animals are far more likely to survive mass extinctions that completely wipe out the far larger lifeforms that were dominant just a few years before.
Problem is nothing is in any real rush to reproduce in an environment which is both static and energy scarceI for one am getting reeeally tired of you assuming that DF caverns should be sterile and barren simply because RL caverns are. Practically every single tile, of practically every single embark, on practically every single world generated, hosts at least ONE cavern whose biosphere is every bit as lush, and nearly as diverse, as the sunlit world above. If you're so sure it should be otherwise, then just man up and start a new thread, asking Toady for an advanced worldgen option that prohibits life in wet caverns as well as dry. But beyond that, please take your opinion and store it, appropriately enough, where the sun does not shine.
Post by: Bumber on December 13, 2018, 04:00:25 pm
Or plant/fungal reproductive cycles. Or ambient magic cycles.
But, of course, none of this has to do with tea. Dwarves drink alcohol because plump helmets can apparently be brewed into alcohol, and any explanations are superfluous, especially if plump helmets don't exist in non-magic worlds.
Even if plump helmets exist, they would still need scarce nutrients to grow; limiting their number.
It is apparent that there's magic involved, and energy isn't really so scarce.
Post by: Batgirl1 on December 14, 2018, 11:51:46 pm
I also like the idea of herbal infusions being fed to hospital patients.
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 15, 2018, 08:25:38 am
This is actually 100% wrong. Let's compare an elephant, and a group of rabbits that collectively consume as much food as said elephant. If the supply of food drops by 50%, half of the rabbits (maybe a bit more) will starve, but the other half will do just fine, and the warren hops along at 50% capacity until the local ecosystem recovers. But the elephant will just flat-out die, no questions asked. That's why small animals are far more likely to survive mass extinctions that completely wipe out the far larger lifeforms that were dominant just a few years before.
No, if the supply of food simply drops by half, then all the rabbits end up eating 50% of the food they need which means that all the rabbits die. Same principle applies then to a single elephant as applies to a group of rabbits.
The actual reason small animals survive mass extinctions better is that reproduction requires proximity between creatures. Very large creatures require a large amount of land per creature and that drives them apart, which means is something kills off a large portion of the large creatures there is a good probability the survivors will be too far apart for them to reproduce well enough to replace their losses.
I for one am getting reeeally tired of you assuming that DF caverns should be sterile and barren simply because RL caverns are. Practically every single tile, of practically every single embark, on practically every single world generated, hosts at least ONE cavern whose biosphere is every bit as lush, and nearly as diverse, as the sunlit world above. If you're so sure it should be otherwise, then just man up and start a new thread, asking Toady for an advanced worldgen option that prohibits life in wet caverns as well as dry. But beyond that, please take your opinion and store it, appropriately enough, where the sun does not shine.
Real-life caverns are not all sterile and barren.
As the caverns in the world are generic and the same with exactly the same lifeforms; I don't take this to be the final state of things. Some caverns would realistically be barren and others would have varying amounts of life in them.
Suppose Tea is to Water what a Masterwork Meal is to a normal meal, i.e. "same but tastier/higher value"? It would thus be preferred over water, maybe giving a happy thought for flavor, but still pale in comparison to booze.
I also like the idea of herbal infusions being fed to hospital patients.
I think that tea is basically similar to booze, tea leaves+water are processed into tea which is then drunk. The only real difference is the AI needs to understand the differences between the two things, requiring a different category but mechanically there need be little difference.
Post by: SixOfSpades on December 16, 2018, 12:09:57 pm
The actual reason small animals survive mass extinctions better is that reproduction requires proximity between creatures. Very large creatures require a large amount of land per creature and that drives them apart, which means is something kills off a large portion of the large creatures there is a good probability the survivors will be too far apart for them to reproduce well enough to replace their losses.Wow. :o Seriously, wow. I mean, yeah, I knew you weren't going to admit to having made a rookie mistake with food consumption (not even an understandable & forgivable one, since we know that Biology is not your field), but I wasn't expecting you to triple-down on your assumption and full-out imply that the dinosaurs went extinct because they all simultaneously forgot that they could walk in order to find mates. Thank you for that, you made my morning.
Perhaps in the future, you'll at least consider changing your theories to fit the facts?
But anyway. The title of the thread is "Tea". I shall devote the remainder of my posts here to the discussion of plants and plant-related nonalcoholic beverages, and let us see if you choose to do likewise.
* * *
It seems wrong to add plants' medicinal qualities to the game without also considering their harmful ones, especially considering that the only difference between a healing remedy and a fatal poison is frequently just a small question of dosage. The wide majority of anesthetics & antibiotics are essentially toxins, and very dangerous in nonexpert hands. Relatively untrained Herbologists / Apothecaries / whatever-they-get-called might begin by deliberately erring on the safe side of caution, administering doses too small to really do much of anything (but they'll still take full credit if the patient lives).
Dwarves might drink tea for its novelty value (it might take on an "exotic" cachet), for the sake of being polite to visiting elven diplomats (or would elves instead be offended by the needless consumption of leaves?), or simply because they want to drink something hot, especially in cold climates. Plus the already-remarked-upon benefit that tea and coffee can be prepared while the drinker is thirsty, which alcoholic drinks cannot. People of all races might drink it without even really needing a reason: It's far safer to drink than plain water usually is, so they associate it with a sense of safety, and perhaps even luxury. If the drinking of tea/coffee becomes widespread enough to become customary, then soon it will be those who don't drink it who will have to explain their choice.
Post by: Batgirl1 on December 17, 2018, 08:28:58 am
Post by: Rowanas on December 17, 2018, 10:16:41 am
Ease of creation is probably be the heavy hitter in balancing water/tea/booze. Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.
We already have such an overabundance of resources that making another source of mass food/drink for cheap is probably an awful, awful plan. Generally, if you have the barrels, plants and workshops up to make tea, you would have the same to make booze, or be so close that the difference is negligible. no fortress ever runs out of booze on account of anything (unless the barrels have all been claimed by some other process).
Post by: therahedwig on December 17, 2018, 11:07:15 am
Post by: Batgirl1 on December 17, 2018, 01:58:53 pm
Ease of creation is probably be the heavy hitter in balancing water/tea/booze. Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.
We already have such an overabundance of resources that making another source of mass food/drink for cheap is probably an awful, awful plan. Generally, if you have the barrels, plants and workshops up to make tea, you would have the same to make booze, or be so close that the difference is negligible. no fortress ever runs out of booze on account of anything (unless the barrels have all been claimed by some other process).
A good point, so perhaps the solution is to make booze production harder (longer time, less yield, and/or more steps in the process) while tea takes on the methods booze currently uses, maybe even a little easier, for a resulting product that is about on par with well water.
Post by: Rowanas on December 19, 2018, 10:06:26 am
Ease of creation is probably be the heavy hitter in balancing water/tea/booze. Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.
We already have such an overabundance of resources that making another source of mass food/drink for cheap is probably an awful, awful plan. Generally, if you have the barrels, plants and workshops up to make tea, you would have the same to make booze, or be so close that the difference is negligible. no fortress ever runs out of booze on account of anything (unless the barrels have all been claimed by some other process).
A good point, so perhaps the solution is to make booze production harder (longer time, less yield, and/or more steps in the process) while tea takes on the methods booze currently uses, maybe even a little easier, for a resulting product that is about on par with well water.
That would be reasonable - it moderates the vast booze production problem and gives less valuable drinks a niche in the early fortress, at the very least. It may even be the case that a stable but not overproductive fortress will only have dwarves drink alcohol every two or three times in order to keep their mood up, while supplementing their alcohol intake with lesser fluids.
Post by: SixOfSpades on December 19, 2018, 01:20:01 pm
. . . tea takes on the methods booze currently uses, maybe even a little easier, for a resulting product that is about on par with well water.That raises an interesting tangent--what exactly is the value of well water? Since wells require Architecture and can be admired, the "happy" thought/stress relief gained no only largely outweighs the drawbacks of "being forced" to drink water, but is also directly proportional to the money spent (building material cost) on keeping your dwarves clean & hydrated. In other words, the dwarves feel better about the luxury of the water than they do about the water itself. If such things as fantastically beautiful fountains (specifically designed for sentients to drink from) existed in-game, dwarves might even enjoy drinking there even more than consuming some good booze (providing that the water is of good quality, of course).
IMO, tea and coffee represent a similar "status symbol check": They symbolize that the drinker is worthy of having drinks made for them. In most cultures, if you invited someone over to your house and then offered them nothing but tap water to drink, that could be construed as an insult, or at least a sign that you are an impolite host. To show proper decorum, you must offer beverages that would cost money in a store or restaurant. That's what dwarves want. They want an effort to have been made to please them. A bed, a chair, a table, a mug--it doesn't matter how good or how expensive it is, as long as it shows that they are part of a proud, dignified society, whose members don't have to go without the cultured things in life.
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 21, 2018, 07:51:42 am
Wow. :o Seriously, wow. I mean, yeah, I knew you weren't going to admit to having made a rookie mistake with food consumption (not even an understandable & forgivable one, since we know that Biology is not your field), but I wasn't expecting you to triple-down on your assumption and full-out imply that the dinosaurs went extinct because they all simultaneously forgot that they could walk in order to find mates. Thank you for that, you made my morning.
Perhaps in the future, you'll at least consider changing your theories to fit the facts?
But anyway. The title of the thread is "Tea". I shall devote the remainder of my posts here to the discussion of plants and plant-related nonalcoholic beverages, and let us see if you choose to do likewise.
It is a fact that a larger creature consumes less food than a quantity of smaller creatures that weighs as much as it does. That means that a low amount of food in an environment does not mean that larger creatures cannot exist; so my entire argument was based upon the facts of the matter.
You made a very basic rookie mistake when you claimed that if we have 50% of the food a population of creatures need it means that half of them get enough to eat and half of them starve. That is a basic mathematical error. Creatures also cannot spend all day 'walking to find mates', even if they are intelligent enough to do that because they have to do other things to survive and as the population density decreases the search-time goes up exponentially.
In any case, the subject of discussion was tea and not how much you're in-hate with me.
Ease of creation is probably be the heavy hitter in balancing water/tea/booze. Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.
The other issue is the strength of the tea, weak tea takes less leaves to make than stronger tea.
So, perhaps then, we should assume the food industry overhaul(at the very least the nerfing of farming) is in place or at the least is the devcycle in which tea would be best implemented?
It doesn't need to be implemented at that time, as the interesting part of tea is the status/custom elements not the item which isn't so different from the present drinks.
Post by: SixOfSpades on December 23, 2018, 05:40:40 am
. . . you claimed that if we have 50% of the food a population of creatures need it means that half of them get enough to eat and half of them starve.I already acknowledged that point back in my post of the 13th, when I admitted that a bit more than 50% of the rabbits could starve, because obviously the weaker ones aren't going to just give up & die, they're going to glean what food they can--even if it's not enough for them to survive on, even if it means causing the death of another rabbit that might otherwise live. But for the most part, some rabbits will be simply more fit to obtain food, and because they obtained food when their counterparts did not, that simply widens the disparity. The weaker ones die off, while the fittest survive. Your claim that "all the rabbits end up eating 50% of the food they need which means that all the rabbits die" flies directly in the face of one of the fundamental tenets of biology, and yet you presume to try to lecture me on a subject on which you have no support but the strength of your own ego.
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In any case, the subject of discussion was tea and not how much you're in-hate with me.Posting to state a correction to a chunk of assumptions and misinformation does not smack of being "in-hate" (in my opinion, at least).
But good on you for at least pretending to want to be on-topic.
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I'm not sure "strength" is what we should be aiming for, when we already have the variable of species (and perhaps *quality*) to deal with. Considering the several types of non-tea plants that are used to make tea-type infusions in RL (and we might get many more in-game), I expect we'll see several "recipes" for such drinks, some of which would be naturally stronger than others--and some of these recipes might call for larger quantities of the less-concentrated plants (or even combine with them with different plants), to make them stronger or more flavorful. Conversely, some of the more potent leaves might prompt recipes that include additives such as milk, honey, or lemon juice to improve (or at least cut) the taste a bit.Suppose, for example, that one unit of plant matter can be made to yield either 10 units of tea or 1 unit of booze. It would thus be invaluable for new forts, but the player will still want to start booze production ASAP.The other issue is the strength of the tea, weak tea takes less leaves to make than stronger tea.
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 23, 2018, 08:49:30 am
I already acknowledged that point back in my post of the 13th, when I admitted that a bit more than 50% of the rabbits could starve, because obviously the weaker ones aren't going to just give up & die, they're going to glean what food they can--even if it's not enough for them to survive on, even if it means causing the death of another rabbit that might otherwise live. But for the most part, some rabbits will be simply more fit to obtain food, and because they obtained food when their counterparts did not, that simply widens the disparity. The weaker ones die off, while the fittest survive. Your claim that "all the rabbits end up eating 50% of the food they need which means that all the rabbits die" flies directly in the face of one of the fundamental tenets of biology, and yet you presume to try to lecture me on a subject on which you have no support but the strength of your own ego.
The fundamental tenets of biology are not based upon basic mathematical illogic Six of Spades, biologists aren't that stupid.
If you are better at finding food that does not mean that there *is* more food, if there are twice as many rabbits as food the rabbits that are better at finding food end up simply increasing the % of the food they get at the expense of all the other rabbits; functionally that means they simply starve to death slower by causing the others to starve to death quicker. That is because if an individual rabbit is as much as 20% better at finding food, that means they are only getting 60% of the food they need causing them to still die. The tendency of random distributions in populations is towards the mean, not towards the extremes, a rabbit that is 20% better at finding food is many times more improbable than a 10% better and a rabbit that is 40% better than the mean is many times more improbable again.
It gets worse for your rabbits, since as a result of their being more rabbits than food, the rabbits end up eating 100% of the food that is available. This results in them wiping out all the plants they eat, turning the whole place into a barren wasteland where no number of rabbits can survive at all. That means that even if somehow a few of the rabbits managed to survive at the expense of all other rabbits by being vastly better at finding food, those rabbits would still end up dying because there isn't any food left for them to eat however good they are at finding it. Not only therefore are your super-rabbits highly improbable, but they also have to contend with the fact that by the time all the other rabbits have starved to death, there is simply no food left to eat.
If we somehow get past the wasteland problem, we face a third problem. The whole situation now will happen all over again, but this time all your rabbits are now uniformly super-rabbits, the first time round a few rabbits survived by being incredibly better at finding food than the other rabbits but as already mentioned they did not actually create any more food. Once the original situation (twice as many rabbits as food) happens all over again, we find all the rabbits are on a virtually even playing field and hence they all starve to death as one; since all genetic diversity in finding food efficiency was eliminated by the deaths of all rabbits that weren't super-rabbits.
However there is a key difference between a shortage of food brought about by a temporary environmental conditions (say a drought) and a shortage of food brought about simply by the numbers of a creature being too great for it's environment in general. In the former case, the one that is the best at not-starving can actually win because if they can wait out the catastrophe they can emerge in a revitalised environment on the other end. In *that* case however, generally the larger creatures are favored, the reason is that all else being equal, larger creatures starve to death slower because of their slower metabolism and their ability to steal food from other creatures (or sometimes outright cannibalize them) is greater.
However larger creatures are vulnerable to things which outright kill them rather than to shortages. Things like disease, natural disasters and predators will kill off a good proportion of the total population regardless of how well-fed they are. In those instances smaller creatures are favored, because there is a necessary population density per area for the population of any creature to be viable from a reproductive standpoint (it is not quite as simple as not finding mates, but that is part of the problem). Since the density is the same regardless of the size of the creature, smaller creatures are favoured since they can have a higher density before the catastrophe meaning a higher density after it.
Posting to state a correction to a chunk of assumptions and misinformation does not smack of being "in-hate" (in my opinion, at least).
But good on you for at least pretending to want to be on-topic.
It was vaguely about the efficiency of tea vs alcohol given the carbohydrate scarcity of the dwarves general environment in fantasy, caverns+mountains. You cannot bear the fact that I have a different POV to you, that has been quite clear to me for a time from when you made a mental list of all the times we have disagreed before and kept digging it up. Considering other people's opinions and arguments in order to give relevant responses rather than simply dismissing them as assumptions+misinformation is a good first step to recovery from your "in-hateness".
I'm not sure "strength" is what we should be aiming for, when we already have the variable of species (and perhaps *quality*) to deal with. Considering the several types of non-tea plants that are used to make tea-type infusions in RL (and we might get many more in-game), I expect we'll see several "recipes" for such drinks, some of which would be naturally stronger than others--and some of these recipes might call for larger quantities of the less-concentrated plants (or even combine with them with different plants), to make them stronger or more flavorful. Conversely, some of the more potent leaves might prompt recipes that include additives such as milk, honey, or lemon juice to improve (or at least cut) the taste a bit.
The same principle would apply to alcoholic beverages. I suppose I was opening a can of worms when I mentioned the strength of tea. :)
Post by: SixOfSpades on December 23, 2018, 09:00:01 am
The same principle would apply to alcoholic beverages. I suppose I was opening a can of worms when I mentioned the strength of tea. :)True, just like DF has no separate variables for how "juicy" or "marbled" a cut of meat is, or how "fresh" or "bursting with flavor" the veggies are, etc.-- it's all just *quality*, and that's good enough for the likes of us. If we want to introduce quality levels for tea, we'll just say that the Herbalist picked the leaves when they were at the right/wrong point in development (for that kind of tea), or dried & processed them correctly/incorrectly, etc.
But as for all the biology-related stuff, you'll have to move it to a separate thread if you want me to read it, as it has no place here.
Post by: Bumber on December 23, 2018, 01:00:36 pm
There are also the practical issues of which animals have access to which food, and how rabbits are territorial, but I don't want to get further involved.
Post by: Starver on December 23, 2018, 06:30:41 pm
Spoiler: Could we perhaps relax back into the tea? (click to show/hide)
Post by: Batgirl1 on December 23, 2018, 09:35:46 pm
The idea of combining multiple plants for different blends, the way Dorfs already combine multiple foods when cooking meals, could also add an interesting facet: "Lavish" blends of 4 plants, if we're directly mapping from the Meal template, could generate a happy thought *almost* but not quite on par with alcohol, for instance. Although, this does bring up the question of how fine-tuned Dwarfs' happiness-meters are; how many levels exist between "Had a non-awful glass of water" and "YAY! BOOZE!"?
Also: Perhaps include broth as a kind of meat-based tea?
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 25, 2018, 07:55:45 am
True, just like DF has no separate variables for how "juicy" or "marbled" a cut of meat is, or how "fresh" or "bursting with flavor" the veggies are, etc.-- it's all just *quality*, and that's good enough for the likes of us. If we want to introduce quality levels for tea, we'll just say that the Herbalist picked the leaves when they were at the right/wrong point in development (for that kind of tea), or dried & processed them correctly/incorrectly, etc.
But as for all the biology-related stuff, you'll have to move it to a separate thread if you want me to read it, as it has no place here.
As interesting as it is, it is really off-topic altogether. I was going to reply by PM but since I am clearly right the discussion would probably spiral into recrimination rather fast.
The rabbits could cannibalize each other. They are known to eat their stillborn young.
There are also the practical issues of which animals have access to which food, and how rabbits are territorial, but I don't want to get further involved.
To clarify, the problem is that the rabbits in Six of Spades parable don't just starve, they also consume 100% of the food in the process. Eating 100% of the food means extinction for the plants that rabbits eat and this extinction is irreversible. Any rabbits that manage to survive by eating the other rabbits, simply starve to death last because the overpopulated rabbits drove all their food plants extinct. It does not matter that there are now only a few rabbits, because there is now food for 0 rabbits.
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png)Spoiler: Could we perhaps relax back into the tea? (click to show/hide)
:D 8)
Strength/Weakness of tea could probably be switched out for Quality, as with other foodstuffs. "This is a masterwork oolong", for example.
The idea of combining multiple plants for different blends, the way Dorfs already combine multiple foods when cooking meals, could also add an interesting facet: "Lavish" blends of 4 plants, if we're directly mapping from the Meal template, could generate a happy thought *almost* but not quite on par with alcohol, for instance. Although, this does bring up the question of how fine-tuned Dwarfs' happiness-meters are; how many levels exist between "Had a non-awful glass of water" and "YAY! BOOZE!"?
Also: Perhaps include broth as a kind of meat-based tea?
I don't see how stronger tea is necessarily of higher quality than weaker tea. It seems a matter of personal and cultural preference, some people like it strong and some people like it weak.
Post by: Batgirl1 on December 26, 2018, 12:22:56 pm
Post by: therahedwig on December 26, 2018, 03:07:35 pm
The strength of tea uses the same mechanic as that of coffee, leave the tea higher in a smaller amount of water and you get more strong tea.
The difference between loose tea, tea cakes and bags is that the taste of the former two is indeed more pronounced, but the same can be said for different ways of preparing food. So perhaps instead...
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This is masterful oolong tea. It was brewed masterfully from it's components of dried tea leaves and water. The dried tea leaves were masterfully prepared from high quality tea leaves, and left to ferment for 3 days in a summer sun before being rolled. The water is of a high quality.
This drink is highly caffeinated.
This could then also extend to booze.
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This is masterful malt whisky. It was distilled expertly from malt. The malt was masterfully brewed from quality grain and quality water. The water is from aquifer water. The whisky was aged for 1 year in a casket made from oak.
This drink is highly alcoholic.
Maybe it might be an idea to take a peek at the tea processing wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_processing) to get an idea of what makes different teas different. :)
Though, I am not sure if it makes sense to state 'is highly <chemical>', as the game doesn't conceive of the effects that way, nor does it make much sense for the histfigs to conceive of the effects that way...
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 28, 2018, 08:16:58 am
@goblincookie: Fair point. Perhaps then "strong" tea would just be a fine/lavish blend where every ingredient is the same plant, e.g. "it's brewed from a blend of quarrybush leaves, quarrybush leaves, and quarrybush leaves."
The issue here is about how the game economy works (incorrectly). The stronger tea is of higher value because it contains a greater quantity of tea leaves but it is potentially of low quality than weaker tea. In reality quality is quite separate from value (or if you prefer a different type of value) but the game conflates the two things, which results in silly situations when people prefer drinking weaker tea but will pay a lower price than they will for stronger tea. In reality the unwanted stronger tea will still have higher value, but nobody would buy it.
Post by: Batgirl1 on December 28, 2018, 10:03:05 am
A dwarf in the kitchens/still/whathaveyou will brew one unit of either strong tea or strong alcohol. This can then be further combined with fresh water to create several units of the weaker stuff. In alcohol, this will be of lesser value, but in tea, this will be no change except for dwarfs who "prefer" weaker tea. Of course, since tea is only slightly better than well water anyway, this doesn't make too much more of a dent in the economy than drilling a well for endless water.
Post by: Starver on December 28, 2018, 11:41:16 am
New Idea: Watered Down Drinks.You are cordially invited to implement that.
Post by: SixOfSpades on December 28, 2018, 01:07:50 pm
The idea of combining multiple plants for different blends, the way Dorfs already combine multiple foods when cooking meals, could also add an interesting facet: "Lavish" blends of 4 plants, if we're directly mapping from the Meal template, could generate a happy thought *almost* but not quite on par with alcohol, for instance.Ehhh, I personally have so much distaste for how cooking is currently handled that all ideas associated with it look bad by default. An infusion with 4x the minimum amount of plants would most likely either be too strong to drink, or potentially toxic. It's a far better route to simply have a number of set recipes for tea, and have the additional ingredients (like milk & sugar) optional to suit the (intended) drinker's taste preferences. (Similarly a "bread" recipe might be very basic, but include options for flavoring items such as cheese, cinnamon, raisins, nuts, rosemary, etc. Flavored bread might be more desirable than plain bread, but combining flavorings should not always result in a higher-demand item: One dwarf might like blueberry muffins, while another likes salty pretzels, but who's going to want both flavors at once?)
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Perhaps include broth as a kind of meat-based tea?I'd class that as one of the simplest soup recipes, myself.
"since I am clearly right" -- Oh, now that is just precious. I'll have to file that right alongside Don Trump's self-assessment of "being, like, really smart." After all, you both use the exact same fact-checking service to verify your accuracy. As for recrimination, I assure you that I have no qualms about shaming you in public, as well as privately--this simply isn't the place for it.But as for all the biology-related stuff, you'll have to move it to a separate thread if you want me to read it, as it has no place here.As interesting as it is, it is really off-topic altogether. I was going to reply by PM but since I am clearly right the discussion would probably spiral into recrimination rather fast.
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I don't see how stronger tea is necessarily of higher quality than weaker tea. It seems a matter of personal and cultural preference, some people like it strong and some people like it weak.Agreed. As I've mentioned before on other food-related threads, procedurally giving each dwarf their own taste preferences (some like tangy foods, some like mellow smoothness, some like it bland, some like it hot & spicy, etc.) makes a lot more sense than each dwarf liking just 1 specific food--and once this system is in place, we can easily fit it to drinks as well as foods. Dwarves who prefer foods with sharper, stronger tastes would naturally like a more intense brew, as well.
The strength of tea uses the same mechanic as that of coffee, leave the tea higher in a smaller amount of water and you get more strong tea.Or if you let the tea steep for a longer time, but that tends to lead to . . .
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I am not sure if it makes sense to state 'is highly <chemical>', as the game doesn't conceive of the effects that way, nor does it make much sense for the histfigs to conceive of the effects that way.Letting tea brew for too long can indeed cause a bitter (after)taste, possibly because of some compounds that take longer to dissolve. And the dwarves could easily be using "caffeinated" not in reference to any specific chemical, but merely as shorthand for its known effects of causing alertness and a jittery mood.
The issue here is about how the game economy works (incorrectly). The stronger tea is of higher value because it contains a greater quantity of tea leaves but it is potentially of low quality than weaker tea. . . . In reality the unwanted stronger tea will still have higher value, but nobody would buy it.Yes. On a related note, a single unit of tea made from 4x tea leaves should be absolutely identical (assuming similar quality levels) to 4 units of 1x tea leaves. The price shouldn't magically rise simply because you tamped it down in the barrel.
Post by: GoblinCookie on December 30, 2018, 07:37:53 am
"since I am clearly right" -- Oh, now that is just precious. I'll have to file that right alongside Don Trump's self-assessment of "being, like, really smart." After all, you both use the exact same fact-checking service to verify your accuracy. As for recrimination, I assure you that I have no qualms about shaming you in public, as well as privately--this simply isn't the place for it.
If you are absolutely certain you are right, then it is a bad idea to continue a discussion with a person that disagrees with you. That is because you will have a correct answer to everything they say, meaning they have no choice but to resort to recriminations. As you are already doing by comparing me to Donald Trump.
There are rather few actual facts, so any fact-checking service is simply a disguised propaganda outlet for somebody. Since Edward Bernays day the propagandist has made great currency out of wheeling out cherry-picked experts to back up a claim in order to get the gullible to believe whatever they want.
Yes. On a related note, a single unit of tea made from 4x tea leaves should be absolutely identical (assuming similar quality levels) to 4 units of 1x tea leaves. The price shouldn't magically rise simply because you tamped it down in the barrel.
Are you are seriously arguing that finished goods are worth the same as their raw ingredients? Why are the raw ingredients worth anything?
Post by: SixOfSpades on December 30, 2018, 01:16:35 pm
Yes, sorry, I should have clarified--I was thinking of cured & processed dry tea, meant for sale & transport, as opposed to already-brewed tea ready for immediate consumption. I'd assumed that my use of the word "tamped" would be enough to indicate the distinction (you can't tamp a liquid), but I see I should have spelled it out. Anyway, my point was that if various "tea" recipes have leaves blended together, then DF's current model of food preparation (wherein the added ingredients are treated as decorations on the main ingredient, and have their values multiplied accordingly) would mean that [1] unit of (+tea leaves+, +tea leaves+, +tea leaves+, and +tea leaves+) would cost far more than [4] units of (+tea leaves+). I was just saying that this was silly; 40 leaves' worth of dry tea should always cost the same as 40 leaves' worth of dry tea, no matter how it's grouped.Yes. On a related note, a single unit of tea made from 4x tea leaves should be absolutely identical (assuming similar quality levels) to 4 units of 1x tea leaves. The price shouldn't magically rise simply because you tamped it down in the barrel.Are you are seriously arguing that finished goods are worth the same as their raw ingredients? Why are the raw ingredients worth anything?
Unfortunately, it's at this point that my post ceases to have anything to do with tea.
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There are rather few actual facts, so any fact-checking service is simply a disguised propaganda outlet for somebody. Since Edward Bernays day the propagandist has made great currency out of wheeling out cherry-picked experts to back up a claim in order to get the gullible to believe whatever they want.Well, well, well! Sounds like somebody finally did some actual research, and didn't like what they found. This must have presented a nice little dilemma for you: If you were unable to unearth any reputable sources that supported your claims, but you did discover several sources that supported mine, you could either
- Grudgingly admit that you were wrong about something, or
- Discredit the entire idea of independent sources and expert opinions as something untrustworthy.
Well, guess what; I'm calling your bluff. You say that experts can be cherry-picked to back up practically any viewpoint? Well then, you'd better have some references that are more reputable than your own ass, which is literally the only source you've cited so far. I have my own, of course, but have refrained from mentioning them simply because, as I keep saying, the debate does NOT belong in this thread.
Speaking of which: I was going to bring up my old threat about taking our ongoing rivalry and moving it to its own thread, which would be located somewhere more appropriate, like General Discussion. But in GD's Forum Guidelines, I see that Rule #1 is "Do not pick a fight," which is directly against the nature of what would literally be a SixOfSpades vs. GoblinCookie thread. So I admit I'm a bit unsure of where to continue . . . which is the only reason I'm talking so much about it here. What do you think--should we move this to a PM, with the eventual loser agreeing to come back out in public, and metaphorically heap dung upon his head?
Post by: scourge728 on December 30, 2018, 01:19:37 pm
Post by: Batgirl1 on December 30, 2018, 10:10:18 pm
Post by: Egan_BW on December 31, 2018, 04:07:36 am
Post by: Batgirl1 on December 31, 2018, 07:44:52 pm
Post by: Egan_BW on January 01, 2019, 10:49:33 am
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 02, 2019, 09:38:43 am
Yes, sorry, I should have clarified--I was thinking of cured & processed dry tea, meant for sale & transport, as opposed to already-brewed tea ready for immediate consumption. I'd assumed that my use of the word "tamped" would be enough to indicate the distinction (you can't tamp a liquid), but I see I should have spelled it out. Anyway, my point was that if various "tea" recipes have leaves blended together, then DF's current model of food preparation (wherein the added ingredients are treated as decorations on the main ingredient, and have their values multiplied accordingly) would mean that [1] unit of (+tea leaves+, +tea leaves+, +tea leaves+, and +tea leaves+) would cost far more than [4] units of (+tea leaves+). I was just saying that this was silly; 40 leaves' worth of dry tea should always cost the same as 40 leaves' worth of dry tea, no matter how it's grouped.
Unfortunately, it's at this point that my post ceases to have anything to do with tea.
I was arguing that the present system of quality = value does not work very well because according to it a stronger tea is more valuable than a weaker tea to a dwarf, since if quality is a X of the raw materials we end up with an ever huge gap between the value of the two types of tea since the initial resource value is greater.
Well, well, well! Sounds like somebody finally did some actual research, and didn't like what they found. This must have presented a nice little dilemma for you: If you were unable to unearth any reputable sources that supported your claims, but you did discover several sources that supported mine, you could eitherBy the way, which of these tactics comes closer to the default strategy of Don "Fake News" Trump? Now, granted, I'll be the first to say that you, GoblinCookie, are FAR more intelligent than he is. (I realize that that's incredibly faint praise, but hey, what do you expect from me, right? ;)) But there's another similarity, as well: You both strongly believe a number of things which are objectively and provably false, and will stubbornly cling to those beliefs in spite of all evidence to the contrary. (Perhaps that's what motivates my personal grudge against you: Fighting you feels so much like fighting him.)
- Grudgingly admit that you were wrong about something, or
- Discredit the entire idea of independent sources and expert opinions as something untrustworthy.
Well, guess what; I'm calling your bluff. You say that experts can be cherry-picked to back up practically any viewpoint? Well then, you'd better have some references that are more reputable than your own ass, which is literally the only source you've cited so far. I have my own, of course, but have refrained from mentioning them simply because, as I keep saying, the debate does NOT belong in this thread.
Speaking of which: I was going to bring up my old threat about taking our ongoing rivalry and moving it to its own thread, which would be located somewhere more appropriate, like General Discussion. But in GD's Forum Guidelines, I see that Rule #1 is "Do not pick a fight," which is directly against the nature of what would literally be a SixOfSpades vs. GoblinCookie thread. So I admit I'm a bit unsure of where to continue . . . which is the only reason I'm talking so much about it here. What do you think--should we move this to a PM, with the eventual loser agreeing to come back out in public, and metaphorically heap dung upon his head?
I think you and I have a very different philosophy and it time to switch to PM.
Post by: SixOfSpades on January 02, 2019, 05:11:18 pm
Syndrome Associate with Tea: Argumentativeness. Dwarfs who consume too much tea will begin shouting at each other about politics, rumor verification, and cannibalistic rabbits.Hmmm . . . a "Debate" interaction sounds like a very good wrinkle to fold into the School/Academy addition. Scholars could debate the niceties of whatever branch of science they're researching, Priests could debate points of theology, etc. The longer/more spirited the debate, and the higher the average Analytical Ability of the participants, the better the odds that they will eventually arrive at the correct answer.
I think you and I have a very different philosophy and it time to switch to PM.Too late. I've decided that, since my primary aim in correcting you was to prevent your teaching the other forum members things that aren't true, it would be an equal disservice to them if I concealed the actual science behind a PM wall. So I'm compromising by posting in the thread, but using a spoiler tag. Those readers who wish to learn why GoblinCookie is wrong can click the spoiler, while those who only want to concern themselves with tea are welcome to scroll right on past.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Egan_BW on January 02, 2019, 10:19:21 pm
Too late. I've decided that, since my primary aim in correcting you was to prevent your teaching the other forum members things that aren't true, it would be an equal disservice to them if I concealed the actual science behind a PM wall. So I'm compromising by posting in the thread, but using a spoiler tag. Those readers who wish to learn why GoblinCookie is wrong can click the spoiler, while those who only want to concern themselves with tea are welcome to scroll right on past.
Ah, so you admit that the purpose of you not taking it to PMs is a need to prove in front of everyone here that you are smarter than GC~
Post by: SixOfSpades on January 03, 2019, 10:23:57 am
Ah, so you admit that the purpose of you not taking it to PMs is a need to prove in front of everyone here that you are smarter than GC~Mmm, nah, if I felt a "need" to thrash him in public, I wouldn't have offered to move it to a PM in the first place. The only thing(s) that needed to be seen were either the actual facts of the scientific points under debate, and/or GoblinCookie's full retraction & admission of error. I would most likely have been content arguing the matter in private--IF he had actually wanted to argue. Instead, I opened my PM inbox & got only a face full of his fatuous navel-gazing upon the nature of truth. So, since he clearly was never going to give a public retraction, I felt obliged to give him a good public schooling.
Post by: Calidovi on January 03, 2019, 06:58:22 pm
Post by: Rowanas on January 04, 2019, 10:19:16 am
should tea fall under cooking, or would it be better suited under a medical skill? i think the inclusion of tea precipitates the inclusion of other syndrome-causing drugs.
I would include them all under brewing or farmer-related tasks. At the moment we've got an arbitrary distinction between alcohol and all other substances, which makes this sort of thinga bit of a peculiarity.
SixofSpades, I disagree with both you and GoblinCookie on "if the conclusion reached by logical extension of a premise is incorrect, so to is the premise" because it is logically true but very unhelpful in normal discourse, where the enumeration of all the tiny footnotes is purely a matter of nitpicking, rather than any kind of aid to the discourse itself in most situations. So my disagreement is that it is generally and practically unhelpful, rather than false.
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 05, 2019, 08:34:43 am
Too late. I've decided that, since my primary aim in correcting you was to prevent your teaching the other forum members things that aren't true, it would be an equal disservice to them if I concealed the actual science behind a PM wall. So I'm compromising by posting in the thread, but using a spoiler tag. Those readers who wish to learn why GoblinCookie is wrong can click the spoiler, while those who only want to concern themselves with tea are welcome to scroll right on past.
As we both agreed, the DF suggestions forum is not the place to talk in-depth about the nature of biology. Maybe someone should report you for deliberately derailing a thread? I will respond to your 'why I am wrong points' only by PM, I'm saying this in case people think that I cannot respond or have no interest in doing so. I've already amply demonstrated why Six of Spades is talking nonsense, so I don't really need
Ah, so you admit that the purpose of you not taking it to PMs is a need to prove in front of everyone here that you are smarter than GC~Mmm, nah, if I felt a "need" to thrash him in public, I wouldn't have offered to move it to a PM in the first place. The only thing(s) that needed to be seen were either the actual facts of the scientific points under debate, and/or GoblinCookie's full retraction & admission of error. I would most likely have been content arguing the matter in private--IF he had actually wanted to argue. Instead, I opened my PM inbox & got only a face full of his fatuous navel-gazing upon the nature of truth. So, since he clearly was never going to give a public retraction, I felt obliged to give him a good public schooling.
So you now openly admit to deliberately derailing a thread?
Those aren't facts, those are the opinions of various biologists that wrote books. What you call the fatuous naval-gazing is the whole problem, you refuse to understand that mere opinions are not facts. In other words you really love this particular fallacy (https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/21/Appeal-to-Authority). If you were interested in facts, you would be interested in the 'fatuous naval-gazing' because they concern how we distinguish facts from opinions. A fact is not the opinion of some clever person, or a lot of clever people; a fact is something that is or is not the case by necessity, that is to say it is not possible for it to be wrong.
should tea fall under cooking, or would it be better suited under a medical skill? i think the inclusion of tea precipitates the inclusion of other syndrome-causing drugs.
Tea would fall under cooking, because boiling water and adding things is pretty much a staple of many recipes. It is certainly does not fall under medicine, because there really is no similarity between making tea and most medicine skills, unless medicine is supposed to mean making medicine instead of administering it. Making medicine may fall under cooking or chemistry depending upon the nature of medicine.
Post by: therahedwig on January 05, 2019, 09:21:10 am
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 05, 2019, 10:21:34 am
So, hey, I actually do want to talk about goddamn tea. As in the darned soaking of dried plants into hot water and drinking the resulting concoction and related industries. As someone who has been waiting for the thread to rerail, neither of you two have been keeping on topic, so don't go claiming moral high ground on thread derailment.
The difference is he is in some kind of crusade against me, but I'm not in a crusade against him.
Post by: Starver on January 05, 2019, 12:29:30 pm
G'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan...
Post by: KittyTac on January 06, 2019, 06:02:22 am
Chill.
...now, can we go back to discussing tea?
Post by: therahedwig on January 06, 2019, 07:14:54 am
Okay, so we've got...
Alcoholic plant based drinks.
Non-alcoholic plant based drinks from fruit: Juice.
Non-alcoholic plant based drinks from herbs and spices: Coffee, Tea, Tisanes(Herbal Tea) and Hot Chocolate.
Animal extract based drinks: Milk, Yoghurt, Lassi.
Water.
So maybe we could talk about combining these somehow?
Post by: SixOfSpades on January 06, 2019, 12:57:46 pm
The grey area between the disciplines is rather large, both in techniques and in terms of historical time. Tea falls under the "seasoning" aspect of Cooking (which of course doesn't really exist yet), because like other herbs, it's collected and consumed in quantities far too small to satisfy hunger, all it can really do is provide flavor. But I disagree with tea being unlike medicines: Many healthful herbs are delivered via infusion, and compounding the precise ratios of such plants would definitely fall under the Medical purview. If anything like the Innovations plan is ever developed, I would place Tea as a discovery that could be unlocked by a Cook or an Herbalist/Herbologist.should tea fall under cooking, or would it be better suited under a medical skill? i think the inclusion of tea precipitates the inclusion of other syndrome-causing drugs.Tea would fall under cooking, because boiling water and adding things is pretty much a staple of many recipes. It is certainly does not fall under medicine, because there really is no similarity between making tea and most medicine skills, unless medicine is supposed to mean making medicine instead of administering it. Making medicine may fall under cooking or chemistry depending upon the nature of medicine.
Are you guys hinting we should discuss icetea?Why not? If cold biomes can/should produce cultures that value hot drinks, certainly ice would be a valuable luxury commodity in warmer climes.
Quote
Okay, so we've got...Don't forget alcoholic milk drinks, like kumis and kefir. And upcoming cavern strangeness might also produce strange new beverages, as well.
Non-tea-related stuff:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Batgirl1 on January 09, 2019, 11:05:27 pm
As for iced tea, I was going to point out that it's initially made hot and then chilled, but now I can't recall why that's important.
We could probably have Medicinal Teas as a subset, using the same workshops and skills but *also* requiring a medical background in order to make. I.E., Urist McBrewer can make Pigtail Tea, which is delicious but has no medicinal value, but he cannot make Dimple Cup Tea, which would cure Dwarf Measles; only Urist McDoctor can make that, and it comes out crappy because he only has a Dabbling rank in brewing/cooking/whatever.
Post by: Starver on January 10, 2019, 02:48:57 am
Dorftech, of course, could employ something like nethercap barrels (at least to store crushed ice, if not to generate it). Ice used for numbing (as per that link, in dentistry) seems more likely, though, than iced tea. Tea is generally hot-'brewed' (though you can design infusions to work better at room-or-lower temperatures, that's not typical - "sun tea" is tea steeped for an hour in a glass of water warmed under a hot sun rather than a few minutes at near-boiling) and the leaving to cool part (as per some brewing of alcohols) is perhaps Ok if it's not for immediate consumption, but actually lowering the temperature with extravagant use of ice (diluting the product) is an anathema to me.
(I don't even have ice in my carbonated-drinks. I'd rather a full container of whatever it is than a partial one buffed up to the rim by blocks of solid water that hang around longer than the drink itself, leaving me with increasingly diluted dregs if I'm still thirsting enough to try to imbibe the homeopathic cola or fruit-juice. Similarly I'd rather have a splash of water in my whisky (and rarely even that! - maybe only in a whiskey) than ice. And while it might not have the ice in it (hopefully!) any beer that has to be drunk at mouth-numbing temperatures to be palatable is probably best avoided. This being a personal thing; other people have the right to be wrong about this, naturally...)
I'd say ice, as a separate thing, could be useful in Fortressing. Not (typically) to the scale of building ice-palaces in a desert, perhaps, even though that is veery dorfy. Perhaps an auxilliary aspect food storage (along with salting) if it ever becomes more than "safe to store forever in an open food stockpile", untrameled vermin excepted. And as a medical aid (enhances surgical procedures? Used for burns? Used to keep a drowning victim's remaining heartbeat slow to aid resuscitation? ...getting a bit 'modern', that, thpugh) a bit of ice might be useful if not actually vital.
But that's all a different thing from tea, and seems as unnecessary to me as combining your smelting industry to ensure your favourite food (https://www.planetfootball.com/quick-reads/franck-ribery-eating-a-gold-steak-has-pssed-off-a-lot-of-people-its-hilarious/) and/or drink (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldschläger) having one or other of the E170s additives (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number#E100–E199_(colours)). Staving off a particularly capricious noble by serving them their favourite mineral as a meal in lieu of their only other preference of Dodo Testicles (sic), maybe? Ok, so iced tea isn't that bad, extravagance-wise, but it's not something I recognise in my experience, and doubt it's a 14thC-cum-proto-Industrial-Revolution thing. My opinion being my own.
Post by: Bumber on January 10, 2019, 04:40:42 am
We could probably have Medicinal Teas as a subset, using the same workshops and skills but *also* requiring a medical background in order to make. I.E., Urist McBrewer can make Pigtail Tea, which is delicious but has no medicinal value, but he cannot make Dimple Cup Tea, which would cure Dwarf Measles; only Urist McDoctor can make that, and it comes out crappy because he only has a Dabbling rank in brewing/cooking/whatever.Why does one need a medical background in order to prepare a folk remedy?
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 10, 2019, 07:04:12 am
The grey area between the disciplines is rather large, both in techniques and in terms of historical time. Tea falls under the "seasoning" aspect of Cooking (which of course doesn't really exist yet), because like other herbs, it's collected and consumed in quantities far too small to satisfy hunger, all it can really do is provide flavor. But I disagree with tea being unlike medicines: Many healthful herbs are delivered via infusion, and compounding the precise ratios of such plants would definitely fall under the Medical purview. If anything like the Innovations plan is ever developed, I would place Tea as a discovery that could be unlocked by a Cook or an Herbalist/Herbologist.
That seems to point in the direction of having general skill classes. So things that involve the same skill, for instance boiling would result in transferable skills, if you learn one skill you also learn the other skill, or it becomes easier to do so. This also seems like an idea for another thread.
I doubt it's a 14thC-cum-proto-Industrial-Revolution thing. My opinion being my own.
It isn't actually supposed to be the replication of an historical era. There is just an arbitary technological limit set in order to keep things manageable. So if iced tea exists in real-life and dwarves have the technology to make it then it is an option.
Post by: Starver on January 10, 2019, 08:03:10 am
A) It would necessarily be an aspect of the fantasy world that isn't demanded or even suggested by the baseline aspirational era that is considered its mundane baseline (unlike brewing in the alcoholic sense and likely general herbal infusions taken hot or after cooling)
And B), iced Tea is, in my opinion, not a 'flavour' that readily comes to mind. But that's me. In a famously tea-drinking country, but who doesn't like (normal, never mind 'exotic') tea personally, wherever that leaves my authority on the matter.
Combining the two, however, let's say that it's not such an easily logical addition to the fantasy world that it's worth pursuing over other possible staples of the genre such as bubbling magic potions capable of healing, even to the extent of regrowing damaged/lost limbs and eyes (to suggest a rather more plausible direction to take the tea-making art).
Post by: Batgirl1 on January 10, 2019, 06:53:37 pm
Why does one need a medical background in order to prepare a folk remedy?
I was just thinking in terms of knowing that X is medicinal, and how to apply it. Herbology would probably also be a good skill check for it; possibly even a better one, come to think.
Post by: therahedwig on January 11, 2019, 07:34:01 am
No idea how this would work in adventure mode. Some kind of identification round on objects?
Post by: betaking on January 11, 2019, 08:58:04 am
or even ones that aren't true or mistaken, so dwarves will think "boiled root of X" is a cure rather than a poison or "bad for them".
thinking about it tea /etc. should all be part of some kind of overall upgrades to cooking/brewing or agriculture. maybe include smoking along with it as some "traditional" medicines require smoking certain plants.
Post by: therahedwig on January 11, 2019, 10:04:01 am
Post by: FantasticDorf on January 11, 2019, 11:38:21 am
thinking about it tea /etc. should all be part of some kind of overall upgrades to cooking/brewing or agriculture. maybe include smoking along with it as some "traditional" medicines require smoking certain plants.
you might be thinking about Pipe Weed, or Hobbit Leaf (http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Pipe-weed) for recreational smoking via a fantasy trope route or just straight up start harvesting tobbacco from the wilderness.
Post by: scourge728 on January 11, 2019, 12:01:42 pm
Post by: therahedwig on January 11, 2019, 12:14:46 pm
Don't forget that a lot of the things that are on the, eh, banned list is because the playerbase has a bit of a tendency to trivialize certain crimes, and for the elements on the banned list that would go from 'edgelord' to 'downright tasteless'. Though, they've mellowed down a lot, earlier notes and stories also contained a lot more references to trite kidnap the wimmins plots, and later ones have women far more often in combat roles and have generally been more open minded.
I dunno, smoking doesn't seem that controversial to me if the related syndrome is able to simulate all effects. 'Dwarf Fortress, the game where your character can gain a nicotine dependence and die of lung cancer' seems a bit odd, but nothing compared to the combat reports or 'Dwarf Fortress, the game where you drown your enemies in poop, because poop is hilarious'(Which is on the banned list). Alcoholism is already sort of simulated in adventure mode as a response to trauma...
That said, bringing this back to tea: Dependencies on caffeine? There's alcohol dependency for Dwarves, after all.
Post by: Batgirl1 on January 11, 2019, 03:43:21 pm
That said, bringing this back to tea: Dependencies on caffeine? There's alcohol dependency for Dwarves, after all.
That should totally be an Elf trait! Dwarfs are dependent on alcohol, Elves on caffeine! =D If you cut down too many trees, you can avert war by offering the elf leader a coffee.
Post by: betaking on January 11, 2019, 05:09:12 pm
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 12, 2019, 12:06:38 pm
Those two quoted points might be considered separately, as they were not intended to be run-on reasoning for my stance.
A) It would necessarily be an aspect of the fantasy world that isn't demanded or even suggested by the baseline aspirational era that is considered its mundane baseline (unlike brewing in the alcoholic sense and likely general herbal infusions taken hot or after cooling)
And B), iced Tea is, in my opinion, not a 'flavour' that readily comes to mind. But that's me. In a famously tea-drinking country, but who doesn't like (normal, never mind 'exotic') tea personally, wherever that leaves my authority on the matter.
Combining the two, however, let's say that it's not such an easily logical addition to the fantasy world that it's worth pursuing over other possible staples of the genre such as bubbling magic potions capable of healing, even to the extent of regrowing damaged/lost limbs and eyes (to suggest a rather more plausible direction to take the tea-making art).
Iced tea was proposed as an example as to why everyone drinking cold tea isn't a problem. That is why we don't need to wait until hot meals are served in order to have tea.
I have this strange feeling smoking tobacco/marajuna is unlikely to make it in...
The main problem is the smoke mechanics needed for it's effects to be modeled realistically. In effect there isn't much moral difference between those things an alcohol, which all fall into the Poisoning myself = Fun category.
In any case there is a fairly recent thread on smoking here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=172697.0).
Post by: Starver on January 12, 2019, 12:30:58 pm
Iced tea was proposed as an example as to why everyone drinking cold tea isn't a problem. That is why we don't need to wait until hot meals are served in order to have tea.We don't talk of chilled roasts, so why resort to iced tea?
If the cooked meat platter is eaten cold (but no longer raw), having been stockpiled for several seasons, and is still a roast/whatever then tea is tea is tea once steeped and no need to invoke additional ice to the process.
Post by: Batgirl1 on January 13, 2019, 04:15:30 pm
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 14, 2019, 01:40:24 pm
We don't talk of chilled roasts, so why resort to iced tea?
If the cooked meat platter is eaten cold (but no longer raw), having been stockpiled for several seasons, and is still a roast/whatever then tea is tea is tea once steeped and no need to invoke additional ice to the process.
Nobody was resorting to anything, it was just a refutation of the argument that tea required us to have previously worked out the mechanics for eating food hot.
Basically iced tea basically requires us to use ice as an economic resource. Funny this is like icecream, icecream was actually invented I think in Italy precisely as the ultimate luxury item, because it needed ice it had to be shipped across the whole of Europe to get to Italy, so they were eating icecream precisely because it wasso impractical in their location that it showed off how rich they were are like nothing else.
It does complicate what I was saying earlier about alcohol. Sometimes consumption is *not* rational and this is a deliberate thing.
Ice tea would give nethercaps and ice/snow more purpose though, which is always something to encourage.
Ice will be more economic once we develop the whole gathering water side of things, since it will be the main source of water in artic biomes most the year.
Post by: SixOfSpades on January 14, 2019, 02:33:36 pm
Ice has always been harder to create, and more luxurious a process to use in comestibles, than fire. . . .Low-tech, in-period refrigerator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l) technology!
Dorftech, of course, could employ something like nethercap barrels (at least to store crushed ice, if not to generate it).
Basically, it works by having a very tall, well-insulated room, that has a small chimney at the very top. The height of the room allows thermal separation--the warmer air rises to the top, where it gets sucked out through the chimney by the wind. A steady breeze means that heat is constantly being removed from the room, and never added, so the temperature inside is always almost equal to the previous night's low temperature.
More relevant to food preservation than to tea, of course, but it's more realistic than nether-caps.
Post by: Bumber on January 14, 2019, 04:28:50 pm
Nobody was resorting to anything, it was just a refutation of the argument that tea required us to have previously worked out the mechanics for eating food hot.You still need to heat the tea before you cool it. Wikipedia states that "sun tea" is made by leaving it in the sun for an hour. That's doable, but it's not something dwarves are likely to consider.
Post by: scourge728 on January 14, 2019, 05:33:57 pm
Post by: Bumber on January 14, 2019, 05:35:30 pm
*something something magma*That includes the mechanics of eating food hot.
Post by: anewaname on January 14, 2019, 06:21:34 pm
Basically iced tea basically requires us to use ice as an economic resource. Funny this is like icecream, icecream was actually invented I think in Italy precisely as the ultimate luxury item, because it needed ice it had to be shipped across the whole of Europe to get to Italy, so they were eating icecream precisely because it wasso impractical in their location that it showed off how rich they were are like nothing else.All the cultures that developed icy treats obtained their ice from nearby mountains, not from across long distances.
It didn't matter what system of nobility the culture had... If the nobleman's wife was saying, "it is too hot", that nobleman would look at his men and say, "I see snow on that mountain. Bring it for her."
Romans were not the first, because Rome was founded much later than other cultures that could see the ice-caps of mountains from their domain. Those cultures were the first.
If that nobleman was not the top dog in the system, he would ensure those above him were well supplied or risk having them take control of the operation.
Like all things of value, ice would have been treated as a resource to be cultivated for harvest. People would be sent to do the work of creating or improving pools, so ice would be available in larger quantities and higher quality, and the methods of transport and storage would be developed by trial and error and improved within a few years. Any locals would be drafted into the operation or evicted. The supply would remain limited for the nobleman and his immediate court and guests, poachers and spies would be killed, competition would be attacked, and so on.
Post by: scourge728 on January 14, 2019, 10:11:50 pm
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 16, 2019, 07:11:04 am
All the cultures that developed icy treats obtained their ice from nearby mountains, not from across long distances.
It didn't matter what system of nobility the culture had... If the nobleman's wife was saying, "it is too hot", that nobleman would look at his men and say, "I see snow on that mountain. Bring it for her."
Romans were not the first, because Rome was founded much later than other cultures that could see the ice-caps of mountains from their domain. Those cultures were the first.
If that nobleman was not the top dog in the system, he would ensure those above him were well supplied or risk having them take control of the operation.
Like all things of value, ice would have been treated as a resource to be cultivated for harvest. People would be sent to do the work of creating or improving pools, so ice would be available in larger quantities and higher quality, and the methods of transport and storage would be developed by trial and error and improved within a few years. Any locals would be drafted into the operation or evicted. The supply would remain limited for the nobleman and his immediate court and guests, poachers and spies would be killed, competition would be attacked, and so on.
I was wrong about having to ship it all the way across Europe, but it is still expensive to obtain in hot environments like Italy because you have to go a long way up and down a rather high mountain to get the ice in such an environment, especially in the summer. There is also the issue of having to stop it melting en-route, so it is not quite as simple as I'm hot get me some ice. You originally need someone scientifically clever who can figure out how to keep the ice melting en-route.
Post by: mightymushroom on January 16, 2019, 09:15:31 am
Post by: SixOfSpades on January 16, 2019, 10:30:30 am
There is also the issue of having to stop it melting en-route, so it is not quite as simple as I'm hot get me some ice. You originally need someone scientifically clever who can figure out how to keep the ice melting en-route.The Romans used wooden crates lined with sawdust, hauled in chariots. They got their ice & snow from the Swiss/Italian Alps.
Correction: Mainly from the Appenines, not the Alps. Obviously the Appenines are closer, but I wasn't sure how much snow they had . . . turns out, they've even got a small glacier. (Some Romans still got their snow/ice from the Alps, but not the ones actually in Rome.)
Post by: callisto8413 on January 16, 2019, 10:19:20 pm
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 18, 2019, 10:52:01 am
From what I know of more recent history – ice cutting being one of the businesses on the local lake prior to electrical refrigeration – the usual way to transport ice was to pack it in straw for insulation and keep it well shaded. If you harvest and store enough during winter then the sheer bulk in the ice house keeps itself chilled in the summer. Bonus points if your storage is underground, which should be naturally cool even where surface temperatures soar. There would be some loss around the edges, but you just work that into the business model for how much supply you'll want to meet the demand.
I don't think most people would want lake ice in their tea, wouldn't it be full of dead bugs and silt? Gathering snow and compacting it sounds like it would produce a product people would want to consume.
The Romans used wooden crates lined with sawdust, hauled in chariots. They got their ice & snow from the Swiss/Italian Alps.
I did not know the Romans had icecream. I thought that was invented in Renaissance Italy. It seems we need a dwarven icecream thread now. :)
Post by: anewaname on January 18, 2019, 03:09:42 pm
...We are not better at science today than the people of the past. We have better tools for observation and for data capture. We have better communication tools, to distribute information and to educate. We leverage these tools. That leverage is a large multiplier. The base cleverness of the people is the same.
You originally need someone scientifically clever who can figure out how to keep the ice melting en-route.
Those men who were involved in the movement of goods over a distance, they knew methods to manage the temperature of the goods, just as they had to manage the temperature of their bodies over those distances. They were interested in efficiency, profit, and their own leisure time, the same as people of today. They transported ice and foods without refrigeration machines and the phrase "scientifically clever" describes some of them well.
+1 regarding what SixOfSpades and mightymushroom posted about the methods.
I don't think most people would want lake ice in their tea, wouldn't it be full of dead bugs and silt? Gathering snow and compacting it sounds like it would produce a product people would want to consume.I posted this earlier, "People would be sent to do the work of creating or improving pools, so ice would be available in larger quantities and higher quality...". You should be able to imagine the type of masonry activities involved in this. Those masonry activities are the same ones used to create water reservoirs today and have been used for thousands of years.
The product being delivered over a distance is the "potential thermal energy", Snow and ice are both frozen water, but ice holds more of this "potential thermal energy" per cubic meter. This means it is easier to transport the same weight of frozen water to the destination.
If you put a metal bowl in the freezer with 2 liters of water in it, give it a few days to freeze completely, bring it into a cool room (subterranean rooms would be used in the past), apply heat to the bowl so the ice can fall out of the bowl, then use a metal tool to chip at and shave the ice. Once your technique improves, you will have ice shavings that you can use to create a cold drink that would make any over-heated person happy. If that person did not have refrigeration, it would be a marvel to them. A noble would use this luxury for their court and guests, to impress them, just as a merchant would sell this luxury to those who wanted to impress others.
Post by: mightymushroom on January 18, 2019, 03:32:42 pm
I don't think most people would want lake ice in their tea, wouldn't it be full of dead bugs and silt? Gathering snow and compacting it sounds like it would produce a product people would want to consume.
Lakes freeze from the top down, most of that stuff sinks to the bottom. It's not like modern ice cube trays where it's cold on all sides and impurities are surrounded by crystal formation. So I'd say it's no more full of dead bugs and silt than any other aspect of ancient/medieval life. (When you're chipping off a bit for your drink, discard the chunk with the bug in it! :P) I will admit that the operation I had in mind when I posted was geared more toward providing ice blocks to keep other foods refrigerated than for direct consumption. I don't know how much was actually used in cold drinks. But, personally, lake ice would not be at the top of my list of sanitary concerns were I suddenly sent back in time. Heck, it probably has fewer issues than drinking from the same lake in the summer.
Snowbanks (which build from the ground up) are quite good at accumulating airborne pollutants including bugs and soot, and of course are full of air (which is why you sink in) so wouldn't provide as much ice product per volume harvested or as much resistance to melting. (Edit: what anwename said about energy.) I'm not convinced any supposed gain in purity offsets the lower density compared to sawing out blocks of ice; I'm not aware of anyone artificially turning collected snow into solid ice on a production scale. In season snow might be perfectly acceptable as a chiller, but it's not the way I would go if I needed serious amounts of ice to keep. (If I did, melting and re-freezing would probably be simpler than pressure compaction.)
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 20, 2019, 06:57:18 am
We are not better at science today than the people of the past. We have better tools for observation and for data capture. We have better communication tools, to distribute information and to educate. We leverage these tools. That leverage is a large multiplier. The base cleverness of the people is the same.
Those men who were involved in the movement of goods over a distance, they knew methods to manage the temperature of the goods, just as they had to manage the temperature of their bodies over those distances. They were interested in efficiency, profit, and their own leisure time, the same as people of today. They transported ice and foods without refrigeration machines and the phrase "scientifically clever" describes some of them well.
+1 regarding what SixOfSpades and mightymushroom posted about the methods.
I was just pointing out that it wasn't quite a simple as was made out.
Lakes freeze from the top down, most of that stuff sinks to the bottom. It's not like modern ice cube trays where it's cold on all sides and impurities are surrounded by crystal formation. So I'd say it's no more full of dead bugs and silt than any other aspect of ancient/medieval life. (When you're chipping off a bit for your drink, discard the chunk with the bug in it! :P) I will admit that the operation I had in mind when I posted was geared more toward providing ice blocks to keep other foods refrigerated than for direct consumption. I don't know how much was actually used in cold drinks. But, personally, lake ice would not be at the top of my list of sanitary concerns were I suddenly sent back in time. Heck, it probably has fewer issues than drinking from the same lake in the summer.
Snowbanks (which build from the ground up) are quite good at accumulating airborne pollutants including bugs and soot, and of course are full of air (which is why you sink in) so wouldn't provide as much ice product per volume harvested or as much resistance to melting. (Edit: what anwename said about energy.) I'm not convinced any supposed gain in purity offsets the lower density compared to sawing out blocks of ice; I'm not aware of anyone artificially turning collected snow into solid ice on a production scale. In season snow might be perfectly acceptable as a chiller, but it's not the way I would go if I needed serious amounts of ice to keep. (If I did, melting and re-freezing would probably be simpler than pressure compaction.)
The idea that ancient/medieval people routinely drank dirty water is a historical myth.
No, because impurities tend to sink to the bottom, the reason that it is occasionally possible to find drinkable water in the DF caverns. If you skim water off the top of a lake, most of the impurities won't be in it. But if you are talking about having ice without refrigeration, you are going for as big a chunk of ice as possible, which means you aren't just skimming the top of the lake as you would be if you were drinking it normally.
Granted none of these things matter if you are using it for purposes of cooling stuff down but it is an issue if you intend to actually consume it.
Post by: thompson on January 20, 2019, 10:05:16 pm
Look up "zone melting" if you're still not convinced. Letting nature do that for you is much better than trying to emulate the process yourself.
Edit: In DF collecting snow would be useful as it would provide a source of water in cold biomes and could help set up an ice industry if you don't have surface water. There are more dwafy ways of creating ice.
Post by: mightymushroom on January 21, 2019, 10:48:20 am
The idea that ancient/medieval people routinely drank dirty water is a historical myth.
No, because impurities tend to sink to the bottom, the reason that it is occasionally possible to find drinkable water in the DF caverns. If you skim water off the top of a lake, most of the impurities won't be in it. But if you are talking about having ice without refrigeration, you are going for as big a chunk of ice as possible, which means you aren't just skimming the top of the lake as you would be if you were drinking it normally.
Granted none of these things matter if you are using it for purposes of cooling stuff down but it is an issue if you intend to actually consume it.
I didn't mean to imply that drinking supplies would be unusually dirty, only trying to emphasize that the ice supply would be no dirtier. And skimming the top of the lake is exactly what you do: the ice layer insulates the remaining water from the freezing air; lakes even far north of where I live never freeze to the bottom.
You seem to have in mind a scenario where you're trying to haul one ginormous chunk of ice, and that isn't particularly desirable even were it feasible. Although, being the DF suggestions forum, I will grant that it sounds quite dwarfy to do it that way, supposing you have dwarfy mechanisms to call upon. It's easier (for humans) to handle when the volume is made up of many, many conveniently sized 'bricks.' I'm not certain of the ideal thickness but I'd estimate it's in the 15-25 cm range; ~10 cm is considered minimum to support a person safely but I'm bringing a vehicle for hauling as well. Once the lake ice can support the load, use an augur for a starting hole(s) and then a hand saw to cut out regular pieces. Then pick up the bricks with tongs (handling directly makes frostbite even more likely in this cold job) and stack them in the sled or wagon. Accumulate these from across the surface of any decent sized lake and you'll have plenty of ice.
Furthermore if your lake is spring-fed or, like mine, river-fed then it's quite possible that your water source does not freeze, meaning that the water level in the lake is replenished as the ice is removed. The freeze cycle starts anew for even more ice; there is never any reason to visit the mucky, unfrozen bottom.
Post by: Starver on January 21, 2019, 02:11:21 pm
Post by: therahedwig on January 21, 2019, 02:42:03 pm
Post by: Starver on January 21, 2019, 05:11:42 pm
Not saying one is better than the other, for all that. But both pale into insignificance against "Let's Build A Snowman (We can make him our best friend. We can name him Shannon! Shannon Wilson Bell We can make him tall, or we can make him not so tall)..." from Cannibal: The Musical...
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 22, 2019, 07:45:43 am
I didn't mean to imply that drinking supplies would be unusually dirty, only trying to emphasize that the ice supply would be no dirtier. And skimming the top of the lake is exactly what you do: the ice layer insulates the remaining water from the freezing air; lakes even far north of where I live never freeze to the bottom.
You seem to have in mind a scenario where you're trying to haul one ginormous chunk of ice, and that isn't particularly desirable even were it feasible. Although, being the DF suggestions forum, I will grant that it sounds quite dwarfy to do it that way, supposing you have dwarfy mechanisms to call upon. It's easier (for humans) to handle when the volume is made up of many, many conveniently sized 'bricks.' I'm not certain of the ideal thickness but I'd estimate it's in the 15-25 cm range; ~10 cm is considered minimum to support a person safely but I'm bringing a vehicle for hauling as well. Once the lake ice can support the load, use an augur for a starting hole(s) and then a hand saw to cut out regular pieces. Then pick up the bricks with tongs (handling directly makes frostbite even more likely in this cold job) and stack them in the sled or wagon. Accumulate these from across the surface of any decent sized lake and you'll have plenty of ice.
Furthermore if your lake is spring-fed or, like mine, river-fed then it's quite possible that your water source does not freeze, meaning that the water level in the lake is replenished as the ice is removed. The freeze cycle starts anew for even more ice; there is never any reason to visit the mucky, unfrozen bottom.
You want an enormous chunk of ice because that keeps it from melting so easily. A lot of small pieces of ice melts a lot faster than a single chunk of ice. The top melts first however, which means the clean ice gets lost faster than the dirty ice at the middle of the chunk.
In game mechanical terms, what this needs is to keep track of the mud content of water when it freezes, I think at the moment freezing water purified it just as pumps do.
Post by: mightymushroom on January 22, 2019, 10:13:05 am
You want an enormous chunk of ice because that keeps it from melting so easily. A lot of small pieces of ice melts a lot faster than a single chunk of ice.
I'm saying you can build a large mass more easily than moving one whole, and thus store the same amount of potential energy.
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The top melts first however, which means the clean ice gets lost faster than the dirty ice at the middle of the chunk.
None of my ice is from any deeper than a bucket barely dipped under the surface. If you were satisfied that surface water is clean enough for making tea then you can rest assured the ice I'm supplying is likewise clean enough for chilling tea.
Post by: Starver on January 23, 2019, 12:14:56 am
Any decent quality ice, though, will make visible any obvious contamination, and the ice-vendor will account for it. Just as they account for the straw/whatever insulation they pack around the block. After transporting as large a block as they can extract from the source and package up for transport (a 10cm-cube will weigh slightly under a kilogramme and last a certain amount of time without significant loss, a metre-sided cube (or 1000 of the prior cubes repacked together as one) would weigh slightly less than a tonne and last maybe 10 times as long to a similar degree - so choose the scale you can best work with given your capabilities) it is trivial enough to saw/shave/plane off any bits you don't like the look of.
You can even slice the large block up through any internal impure intrusions, sluice away the undesirable contamination and then repack the ice, now clean. It might even reseal itself, as the liquid melt between two ice-bodies could freeze-weld it all together, though aesthetic/structural flaws might not be entirely conducive to the ice-sculpture industry, without special care.
Given everything else that can go wrong with water, I'd probably trust the freeze-distilled water of 'wild-sourced ice' more than the unfrozen version of the same source of water, under most circumstances.
Post by: thompson on January 23, 2019, 09:17:58 pm
I didn't mean to imply that drinking supplies would be unusually dirty, only trying to emphasize that the ice supply would be no dirtier. And skimming the top of the lake is exactly what you do: the ice layer insulates the remaining water from the freezing air; lakes even far north of where I live never freeze to the bottom.
You seem to have in mind a scenario where you're trying to haul one ginormous chunk of ice, and that isn't particularly desirable even were it feasible. Although, being the DF suggestions forum, I will grant that it sounds quite dwarfy to do it that way, supposing you have dwarfy mechanisms to call upon. It's easier (for humans) to handle when the volume is made up of many, many conveniently sized 'bricks.' I'm not certain of the ideal thickness but I'd estimate it's in the 15-25 cm range; ~10 cm is considered minimum to support a person safely but I'm bringing a vehicle for hauling as well. Once the lake ice can support the load, use an augur for a starting hole(s) and then a hand saw to cut out regular pieces. Then pick up the bricks with tongs (handling directly makes frostbite even more likely in this cold job) and stack them in the sled or wagon. Accumulate these from across the surface of any decent sized lake and you'll have plenty of ice.
Furthermore if your lake is spring-fed or, like mine, river-fed then it's quite possible that your water source does not freeze, meaning that the water level in the lake is replenished as the ice is removed. The freeze cycle starts anew for even more ice; there is never any reason to visit the mucky, unfrozen bottom.
You want an enormous chunk of ice because that keeps it from melting so easily. A lot of small pieces of ice melts a lot faster than a single chunk of ice. The top melts first however, which means the clean ice gets lost faster than the dirty ice at the middle of the chunk.
In game mechanical terms, what this needs is to keep track of the mud content of water when it freezes, I think at the moment freezing water purified it just as pumps do.
Please give the dimensions for"enormous", and a mass estimate, and an explanation for how it could either be deep enough to be"dirty" or feasible to carry.
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 24, 2019, 07:11:39 am
I'm saying you can build a large mass more easily than moving one whole, and thus store the same amount of potential energy.
I was of the understanding we were just taking our ice from a lake there. If we crush snow together we can indeed create a mass, but multiple blocks of solid ice are pretty hard to combine.
Please give the dimensions for"enormous", and a mass estimate, and an explanation for how it could either be deep enough to be"dirty" or feasible to carry.
You really want to carry the largest block of ice you can. The bigger the ice block, the less of it melts relatively speaking before you get it where you want it to be. There is of course a bonus if you are carrying it through less that 0 C temperatures, but underground at any depth things will melt fast, even if it's freezing up there.
Post by: anewaname on January 25, 2019, 12:44:28 pm
I think you are ignoring my argument that you won't always be playing dorfs.
Yes, races and civs will be procgen. But dwarves, being a common fantasy race, will likely be present in many worlds. I'm just saying that there is no point in not adding tea just because dwarves would not drink it.So... I agree that other drinks would be a fine addition to DF and that other races might enjoy tea. My point was that dwarfs (as they are defined in the DF raws) are unlikely to develop "tea ceremonies".
There is nothing indicating that dwarfs, humans, and the others are capable of eating all of the same things. This is important. Maybe 75% of the known plants are toxic in some way to humans and some might not be toxic to dwarfs, or caffeine may have no effect on dwarfs. Look at what aspirin does to cats and chocolate to dogs.
Post by: SixOfSpades on January 26, 2019, 01:25:50 pm
There is nothing indicating that dwarfs, humans, and the others are capable of eating all of the same things. This is important. Maybe 75% of the known plants are toxic in some way to humans and some might not be toxic to dwarfs, or caffeine may have no effect on dwarfs.It's quite plausible that dwarves' iron livers would allow them to safely ingest certain toxins that would kill a human (and possibly vice versa), so that's a fun bit of difference . . . but I believe that interspecies hybrids are planned, meaning that any toxicity differences will also have to consider things like half-dwarves.
An idea that I had earlier in this thread would be to make both caffeine and alcohol affect dwarves in the exact opposite manner that they do to humans (inebriated dwarves already do their work much faster than sober ones, etc.), but having to take half-dwarves into account pretty much killed that possible suggestion. :(
Post by: Starver on January 26, 2019, 07:38:49 pm
Human works well enough with no drink, a tot of rum might help fortify them slightly but a few more tots and they're Dungeoneering Under the Influence.
A dwarf has a scale that is almost up against "the maximum alcohol anyone could physically drink" (a limit like "you can't drinking negative amounts" that windows the otherwise function without spoiling the theoretical curve) and deteriorates as you head towards nothing.
Options for dwarf/human hybrid:
1) Peak efficienc set at average of parental peaks (stick to shandies?),
2) Random choice of which parent provides their tolerance/requirement,
3) Dominant gene (always Type 1, or 75% chance Type A, or whatever the genotype mixing and respective parent-races genomics dictates),
4) Epigenetics kicks in (which also suggests the possibility of Fetal Non-Alcohol Syndrome in pure-bred dwarves born into sufficiently 'dry' Fortresses),
5) As with the Liger (offspring of male Lion and female Tiger) creating a much larger animal than their Lion or Tiger half-siblings (or Tigon 'double-cross-cousins'), it could get weird, either in magnitude or direction, because "big, but not too big" development from one side is now just "big" or otherwise not traditionally constrained (i.e., if alcohol-focussing is caused by multiple genetic markers, then inheriting the dwarven need without the dwarven target of alcohol, it may pick up some alternative 'necessity' (from what is merely a 'predilectionv in the pure-human genome) like milk or... tea? Which there's a thread about, somewhere in this forum.)
Post by: SixOfSpades on January 28, 2019, 04:21:00 am
* Querns & Millstones used for grinding coffee should impose a negative quality modifier on the next few batches of flour created in that same quern/millstone, and vice versa.
(Although I do believe that Brewing, Vinting, and Distilling should be broken into three separate labors, as they're 3 different processes with very different chemistries.)
Human works well enough with no drink, a tot of rum might help fortify them slightlyMmmm . . . for humans, drink (certainly at only 1 drink per day) doesn't do much to "fortify", and only functions as a morale booster more than any other positive effects. In fact, that could be very much the same for dwarves: The observed symptoms of sobriety might not be due to actual physical withdrawal, but instead be purely psychological in nature: They know that they're laboring for an overseer/mayor/monarch who doesn't think they're worth the effort of providing liquor for, and it's very demoralizing to be denied your well-earned drop of liquid happiness. So, understandably, their work ethic plummets. (That wouldn't explain their slower reflexes, though.) Attributing their lethargy to ennui makes a lot more sense than making up some weird-ass dwarven biochemical needs.
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A dwarf has a scale that is almost up against "the maximum alcohol anyone could physically drink"Almost to the maximum, indeed. Dwarves can still drink themselves to death, and of course the upper limit is defined by gnomes. (Gnomes currently can drink infinite amounts of booze, but IMO they should definitely have some sort of hard limit on consumption, like 100% of their normal body size.)
Post by: Bumber on January 28, 2019, 08:23:16 pm
(Gnomes currently can drink infinite amounts of booze, but IMO they should definitely have some sort of hard limit on consumption, like 100% of their normal body size.)Is it really infinite? The entry for dark gnomes (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Dark_gnome) says a dilution factor of 500 puts them above a creature 10 times their size. That would mean the equivalent of a tiger man, although it doesn't say how much more than that.
Post by: GoblinCookie on January 29, 2019, 07:18:16 am
Is it really infinite? The entry for dark gnomes (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Dark_gnome) says a dilution factor of 500 puts them above a creature 10 times their size. That would mean the equivalent of a tiger man, although it doesn't say how much more than that.
The gnomes are smaller but the units of alcohol don't get smaller.
Post by: SixOfSpades on January 30, 2019, 12:47:36 pm
Is it really infinite? The entry for dark gnomes says a dilution factor of 500 puts them above a creature 10 times their size.Oh--well then, if there actually is a cap, then that's at least vaguely approaching realism . . . although it'd make a lot more sense to limit consumption by pure volume, instead of inebriation. I have no problem with a creature that lacks the capacity to get drunk, but all that booze still has to go somewhere. Liquids are incompressible.
Post by: thompson on January 30, 2019, 05:28:36 pm
Is it really infinite? The entry for dark gnomes says a dilution factor of 500 puts them above a creature 10 times their size.Oh--well then, if there actually is a cap, then that's at least vaguely approaching realism . . . although it'd make a lot more sense to limit consumption by pure volume, instead of inebriation. I have no problem with a creature that lacks the capacity to get drunk, but all that booze still has to go somewhere. Liquids are incompressible.
Maybe they just pass right through? Makes for a disturbing mental image.
Post by: Bumber on February 01, 2019, 12:43:44 pm
Maybe they just pass right through? Makes for a disturbing mental image.*Smacks the gnome on the nose with a quire, collapsing the part into a lump of gore*
Bad gnome! Not on the booze stockpile! Bad!
Post by: GoblinCookie on February 02, 2019, 04:08:28 pm
Oh--well then, if there actually is a cap, then that's at least vaguely approaching realism . . . although it'd make a lot more sense to limit consumption by pure volume, instead of inebriation. I have no problem with a creature that lacks the capacity to get drunk, but all that booze still has to go somewhere. Liquids are incompressible.
Not in the present DF it doesn't. ;)