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DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Agriculture
« on: July 08, 2011, 02:11:03 pm »
Thanks for the positive feedback, Pan.
Once you've mastered the basics, here are a few intermediate strategies:
1. Stockpiles. Prepared meals near the trade depot (no barrels!!), seeds near the farm plot, no dye near the kitchen, etc.
2. Bookkeeper. "Plants: 200?" on the z-stocks screen is useless. If you know exactly how many of each plant you have, you can plan your work better. Also it's nice to use Forbid on the stocks screen, for example if your herbalist brings back whip vines and hide roots, you can forbid the hide roots and only mill whip flour. It's also nice to forbid one of each seed if you plan to cook plants, just in case, you don't want to cook the last one and lose the ability to grow that crop!
3. Manager. Assigning jobs through the manager works great for things like brewing, milling, or preparing lavish meals. If you run out of raw ingredients, the jobs stay in the queue and will resume at the next harvest. Also a manger allows you to set workshop profile, I highly recommend having one kitchen where your legendary cook makes lavish meals and a second kitchen for your sous-chef to render fat and cook prickle berry seed roasts for the militia (no need to waste your lavish quarry roasts on the cannon fodder).
4. Solid ingredients. You need 1 solid ingredient to make a prepared meal, so don't make a booze-and-syrup-only fort!
5. Stack size. 1 legendary grower is better than 4 dabbling growers because there will be more plants per stack. This has a ripple effect all the way down the production line: bigger prepared meals, fuller syrup barrels, more alcohol, etc.
6. Quality only matters for some jobs: brewer (hidden quality), grower, cook. Skilled milling, threshing, etc. doesn't increase value (only speed) so use your immigrants for those jobs.
7. Non-moodable. No strange moods for any of the farming labors, so you have to train up the old-fashioned way: practice practice practice!
Once you've mastered the basics, here are a few intermediate strategies:
1. Stockpiles. Prepared meals near the trade depot (no barrels!!), seeds near the farm plot, no dye near the kitchen, etc.
2. Bookkeeper. "Plants: 200?" on the z-stocks screen is useless. If you know exactly how many of each plant you have, you can plan your work better. Also it's nice to use Forbid on the stocks screen, for example if your herbalist brings back whip vines and hide roots, you can forbid the hide roots and only mill whip flour. It's also nice to forbid one of each seed if you plan to cook plants, just in case, you don't want to cook the last one and lose the ability to grow that crop!
3. Manager. Assigning jobs through the manager works great for things like brewing, milling, or preparing lavish meals. If you run out of raw ingredients, the jobs stay in the queue and will resume at the next harvest. Also a manger allows you to set workshop profile, I highly recommend having one kitchen where your legendary cook makes lavish meals and a second kitchen for your sous-chef to render fat and cook prickle berry seed roasts for the militia (no need to waste your lavish quarry roasts on the cannon fodder).
4. Solid ingredients. You need 1 solid ingredient to make a prepared meal, so don't make a booze-and-syrup-only fort!
5. Stack size. 1 legendary grower is better than 4 dabbling growers because there will be more plants per stack. This has a ripple effect all the way down the production line: bigger prepared meals, fuller syrup barrels, more alcohol, etc.
6. Quality only matters for some jobs: brewer (hidden quality), grower, cook. Skilled milling, threshing, etc. doesn't increase value (only speed) so use your immigrants for those jobs.
7. Non-moodable. No strange moods for any of the farming labors, so you have to train up the old-fashioned way: practice practice practice!
