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Author Topic: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution  (Read 136404 times)

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #180 on: February 12, 2011, 11:03:01 pm »

Well, shot my plans to Hell today.

I went out for an extended period (AAAAGH! HATEFUL SUN!), and when I came back, I wound up spending most of my time coming up with ways to revise the entire scheduling screen.

(OK, so now we need to have a way of selecting companion crops, and that means changing something else on the screen, as well.)

I went wiki-crawling again...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercropping
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneficial_weed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companion_planting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_pest_management
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

So naturally, reading something new set me off on planning how best to model these things, again.

Companion planting/intercropping will be a pretty strange idea for most people, I'm sure... However, the idea we'd set up something like a primary crop, with a companion crop that repels pests, but takes up a bit of the space in a plot really appeals to me.  Then there's polyculture, where you grow coconut and banana trees with ginger as three tiers of crops in the same plot of land.

It's also one of those things that people don't need to know to start out, but which heavily rewards knowing what it is you're doing very well.

I just need to figure out a way to include it without making people's heads explode.



OK, so let me just put this out as a post-it note on what I need to be able to do in the scheduler...

I need to pick a main crop.  I need to be able to pick secondary crops, and then set some sort of ratio of crops.  (Would having more than one crop in a tile be possible?)  This requires at least one button for selecting ratios of crops, which could be its own sub-menu, because the scheduler is going to have more dials than a 767 if I don't start using sub-menus.

I need to set permissables, which include catagories for tillage, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides/alchemical products, liming, placing pests.  This requires two buttons, one for adding and one for removing permissables, plus use of the +-*/ keys for adding and subtracting them.  0 should be a possible value, and -1 should mean "infinite".  Hitting enter at a permissable should just give you some sort of detailed view of what that permissable is, and what it is supposed to do.

I need to set farming block lengths.  There needs to be at least one button for just creating the block, and hitting enter at the block should let you alter the block in a sub-menu.

Herds need a button just to add them as grazers.

Then I need a button for setting up the cycle to be a repeating rotation.

Anything else I might be forgetting?



Oh, and maybe two buttons for auto-setting the amount of fertilizers on one or all of the permissables to green every indicator.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2011, 11:54:41 pm by NW_Kohaku »
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Solace

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #181 on: February 13, 2011, 03:17:26 am »

I guess, speaking really generally, I wouldn't mind seeing something like that eventually, but there's a lot of stuff that'd take that level of work I'd want to see first. Which is why I'd advocate for a simpler system, to solve "farming is too easy and basic" in the meanwhile, before it got that crazy level of complicated.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #182 on: February 13, 2011, 10:00:15 am »

Small steps generally isn't the way you can really build something like DF.

Every time you add something, you make something that can break or become buggy.  Every time you add something, you can break or make buggy something else.  Why introduce these bugs in multiple steps, when you can get them all over with at once, and make the entire process go quicker?

It's why 31.01 came out with so many extra stats on its materials that didn't even really do anything - Toady was just trying to cut off a future need to expand the game by adding in the stubs for features he might presumably want later.  He has to build expecting what his next hundred steps are going to be in making this game, because otherwise he has to go back and bulldoze much of his own work every next step he takes.

Maybe this wouldn't all be released in one version, but the framwork for making it all really should be.  Having a soil nutrient system (it's on the devpage) without having an interface for it is pretty silly.  Having this interdependant system with half the dependencies dummied out would just make an absurdly unbalanced system, and players aren't really going to accept "it'll make sense when I get around to finishing it 3 years from now" as an answer.  You at least need to give it the semblance of a coherent system, and then you can tweak it once it's there.

Anyway, I think I know how to put together the interface again, although it might be a day or two before it's actually updated.  I want to get this "how the player uses it" section up soon.

Once I get a good idea of what the interface looks like, I can then start working on ways to reduce the interface.

The scheduler is a bit of a behemoth, especially compared to some of the lightweight tabs like the zoner.  I'm going to segregate as many actual functions as possible into sub-menus, so that as much relevant information can be presented to the player as possible when they are making decisions. 

Not having the relevant information to make informed decisions on hand when you make those decisions is one of those negative aspects of DF's UI.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #183 on: February 13, 2011, 04:08:56 pm »

"How it works" section now up.

I've finished the noob-friendly walkthrough so that people can get a sense of what they do with the interface, and how it would work for them.  Hopefully, more people will be able to look at the interface, and comment on how it works with that guide.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #184 on: February 13, 2011, 04:28:58 pm »

Also, check out the medical tab; it has many shorthand coded entries, and yet it is still legible. How? Because it has a legend at the bottom of the screen that tells what each symbol means. This screen would be better with the addition of a legend somewhere near the bottom of the screen.
As for a set of explanations for what each symbol means, I unfortunately don't think that's viable without taking up too much space in this one window.  (I've actually remembered more buttons that I want to add into this screen, to handle certain odd circumstances.) I think that players will just need to be told from a help window or a different window what these symbols mean.

Ah, A thought here: While it players would need to be told in a help/legends window, perhaps a link could be left as a ?:Legend (or somesuch) next to the bits that would be most confusing to someone first encountering it. (Such as the symbol chart)

Though I suspect it's something you've already thought of.

Also, because I flunked out of the Ninja academy: The "How it works" section is pretty much how I thought it would work.
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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #185 on: February 13, 2011, 04:41:49 pm »

Ah, A thought here: While it players would need to be told in a help/legends window, perhaps a link could be left as a ?:Legend (or somesuch) next to the bits that would be most confusing to someone first encountering it. (Such as the symbol chart)

Though I suspect it's something you've already thought of.

Also, because I flunked out of the Ninja academy: The "How it works" section is pretty much how I thought it would work.

Yeah, a help page summary of symbols is probably going to be mandatory.  (Of course, it will also be up on the wiki within a week or so...)

I'm glad several of you have been able to keep up, however, I'm also keenly aware of the fact that the overwhelming majority of forum-users are just going to take one look at my thread, and decide to, at most, give a short skim of it, and I think having some sort of tl;dr version of the thread with a link to a simplified, quick "how to use it" section and some pretty pictures is the most concise way I can present this information to the Twitter-age people who are leary of reading anything with more than 500 characters unless they have guaratees of porn or a chance to shout out their opinions on politics or game consoles or something at the end.

Simply making a thread with a suggestion isn't enough, I have to also make it accessable enough that people are willing to read it.  Just like DF needs to have at least enough playability to get someone to be willing to learn its interface, no matter how good the systems behind it are.  I'm trying to take the time out to both make it extremely complex and deep and also accessable enough for someone to want to try reading/playing what I am offering.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #186 on: February 13, 2011, 09:35:39 pm »

Fertilizers section is now ready for your perusal.



Random thought on symbols:

Since we've been talking about card suit symbols, what if the soil nutrients were symbolized as follows:

♣ - Nitrogen
♦ - Phosphorus
♥ - Potassium
♠ - Biomass

Those are the most heavily symbolic of the symbols, anyway, since we don't even really tell players what NPK means.  That way, even without knowing which one of those nutrients is what, you can just tell the card suits are related soil nutrient values.  Might as well let them just think "I need more clubs and don't need to put as many diamonds in the soil".  I could put the symbols in the nutrient view, as well, so that players can see that ♣ is next to one of the soil descriptors in the view plot window.



OK... so what to do next?  I can do alternate crop types and fisheries, the growth process, pollution, and the Advanced NPK system where I explain the exact mechanics of the variables.  After that, there's the livestock and then the nutrition and then the xenobiology sections.

How can I write so much crap and still have so much left to write?!
« Last Edit: February 13, 2011, 09:38:58 pm by NW_Kohaku »
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #187 on: February 15, 2011, 03:36:10 pm »

Got a little sidetracked... Pollutants should be out soon.



Quote from: NW_Kohaku
I agree. In general, if you're going to simulate societies, you cannot adequately simulate one aspect without adequately simulating the others (within reason). Obviously, if the game were solely about war, you could make the other parts more abstract and still have a successful simulation, but that isn't the case here. Simulated cultures need to be viewed on a sort of holistic level, with each aspect influencing the others and the whole, and that's where DF could feasibly shine.

To be honest, this ties into why I'm so afraid that fantasy races in DF will just wind up as copies of each other with different flavor. I don't know that there's a serious risk of this, but think about it: Even dwarves have their own flavors of large-scale agriculture and woodworking even when entirely below-ground. I'd rather that dwarves, say, suck at farming altogether, and have limited access to relatively poor underground "wood", and have to consider what implications that has for their species and the questions it raises... rather than them having "forestry, but underground" and "agriculture, but underground".

To an extent, this requires some greater complexity of modeling.

In the farming thread, I've actually been musing to myself that the altered way in which herbalism and weed growth can be abstracted would allow for an "elven farming" method that does not involve actual direct farming, but rather the culturing of certain soil conditions and purposeful introduction of specific pests (or hunting of undesirable pests) could allow a careful enough culture to grow "weeds" of marketable food crops and freak tons of rope reed to make into clothing that you trade with dwarves.

Dwarves will, unless we somehow bar them from certain aboveground farming techniques or technologies altogether, generally have the ability to do everything, even living aboveground, if the player chooses to do so, although whether you live above or below ground and farm will have pretty massive differences in how the game will play out when choosing to grow plants without access to photosynthesis as an energy source means you have to play with xenosynthesis and potenially dangerous magic energy sources for the ecology coming from the caverns.

Goblins, being carnivores, would have to either be hunters or dedicated ranchers to feed themselves.  Either having cattle drives, or having some sort of magic-fueled slop farming to feed their livestock.  All you need to do is make livestock need to eat, too, and put limits on how much grass grows in an area, and you've already got the major difference in goblin farming.

There's a lot of differentiation you can create, but it takes a complexity of modeling to make meaningful differentiation.

Quote from: G-Flex
Quote from: NW_Kohaku
To an extent, this requires some greater complexity of modeling.

Agreed.

Quote
Dwarves will, unless we somehow bar them from certain aboveground farming techniques or technologies altogether, generally have the ability to do everything, even living aboveground, if the player chooses to do so, although whether you live above or below ground and farm will have pretty massive differences in how the game will play out when choosing to grow plants without access to photosynthesis as an energy source means you have to play with xenosynthesis and potenially dangerous magic energy sources for the ecology coming from the caverns.

I don't think this needs to apply to dwarves any more than it applies to, say, humans or elves, really (except perhaps for cultural reasons).

The fact is that dwarves are adapted to life underground. That much is obvious. As such, it makes sense to me that their biology and/or culture are adapted less to life above-ground. For instance, I don't think it's really fair, and is actually kind of boring, to assume that dwarves have just as much of a knack for typical above-ground agriculture as humans despite not doing it and not caring much for the sun.

Quote
Goblins, being carnivores, would have to either be hunters or dedicated ranchers to feed themselves.  Either having cattle drives, or having some sort of magic-fueled slop farming to feed their livestock.  All you need to do is make livestock need to eat, too, and put limits on how much grass grows in an area, and you've already got the major difference in goblin farming.

I'm not sure ranching alone is even close to efficient enough to sustain a large society, so there would have to be something else going on. Basically, there's a reason why larger human societies needed agriculture to begin with. That being said, this necessitates either something magical, or something militaristic (raids for resources, etc.), or some other consideration to account for this. But see, to me, that's the fun part: Starting with some assumption (like "dwarves live underground" and "goblins are mostly carnivorous") and trying to find ways for it to actually work. To me, you can create pretty compelling entities that way, and ones that act realistically (in terms of their behavior being realistic, not "realistic" in the sense of replicating Earth).

I just hate to see dwarves as "humans, except stockier and better at living underground". To me, it's a lot more meaningful if their underground life is more difficult in certain ways. For instance, I'd like it if dwarven underground farming weren't nearly as efficient as the human variety; after all, it's not as if dwarves don't have their explicitly and implicit advantages as well. It would also fairly neatly justify the fact that dwarven societies tend to be a little more sparse, less expansionist, and more isolated/low-population, whereas humans (fueled by agriculture) have more sprawling, massive, expanding settlements, and elves can basically live wherever in the woods they feel like by ostensibly living in a harmonious ecology with the world around them.

Of course, if dwarven underground farming is relatively inefficient, that means dwarves must have other compelling reasons not to just set up shop above-ground and farm there. Why this would be the case, I'm not sure, but possibilities are certainly open. For example, maybe they're less naturally capable of dealing with certain adverse environmental conditions (after all, underground areas don't have weather and stay at a relatively stable temperature year-round).

Basically, my point is that I want to see compelling differences between races, not just the flavorful but essentially meaningless "they make beer, except they do it in caves" variety. Dwarves being the standard player race in this game, there's probably a big temptation to make them good at absolutely everything, but I don't really think that should be the case. I'd rather see dwarves do interesting things with stone and glass and metal and clay than see them use wood for everything like a human would, for example. "How would dwarves live?" is a pretty interesting question that could result in some pretty interesting answers, and I don't think the game should avoid that. The proliferation of underground forests already kind of feels like it skirts the question in favor of shoehorning in above-ground elements so that the dwarves have access to them no matter where they live, so that they can engage in industry that, by all reason, the humans and elves should be more inclined towards.

Quote
There's a lot of differentiation you can create, but it takes a complexity of modeling to make meaningful differentiation.

Definitely. Even a question like "why don't humans dig underground or as well as often as dwarves?" has answers like "because dwarves don't get blacklung or heavy metal poisoning" that require more simulation than the game currently has to offer.

The thing is, either we can make a farming system, and then not let dwarves use all of it, in which case, it seems like a bit of a waste to actually model it all, or we can let dwarves do everything, and then just say that there's some sort of social mores that dwarves don't actually do that sort of thing usually (like, say, building forts in a flat swamp instead of near a mountain), but that the player can merrily break all social tradition without repercussion.

I think, to an extent, the reason why dwarves are so "overpowered" is simply because all the things that are in the game are the things dwarves do well, and anything that elves are supposed to do well aren't in the game.  If elves as a playable race aren't in the game yet, why give them something you'll never play in Vanilla, when you could be adding more fun things for Vanilla players to enjoy?
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G-Flex

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #188 on: February 15, 2011, 03:56:39 pm »

The thing is, either we can make a farming system, and then not let dwarves use all of it, in which case, it seems like a bit of a waste to actually model it all, or we can let dwarves do everything, and then just say that there's some sort of social mores that dwarves don't actually do that sort of thing usually (like, say, building forts in a flat swamp instead of near a mountain), but that the player can merrily break all social tradition without repercussion.

I don't see why it would be a waste, since the other races would still use it, and other races being available in fortress mode is also a valid goal.

I'm also not saying that dwarves flat-out shouldn't be able to use above-ground farming successfully, just that the disadvantages to them should somehow outweigh the benefits (and those benefits should be more than just cultural, even if they're mostly circumstantial).

Also, a complex farming system could still be applied to underground crops as well. There's no reason why not, and it's not like I'm suggesting underground farming be removed. I'm only saying that it makes sense for underground farming to be less efficient, and less capable of sustaining the kind of sprawl that dwarves don't really have in the first place, and that it would make sense if (on a more cultural level), dwarves just didn't have the kind of expertise on par with the humans when it comes to above-ground farming (hell, they're hardly accustomed to rain!).

Quote
I think, to an extent, the reason why dwarves are so "overpowered" is simply because all the things that are in the game are the things dwarves do well, and anything that elves are supposed to do well aren't in the game.  If elves as a playable race aren't in the game yet, why give them something you'll never play in Vanilla, when you could be adding more fun things for Vanilla players to enjoy?

I agree, but we have to consider the larger simulation as well, as well as the fact that implementing non-dwarf stuff is a necessary step on the way to allowing non-dwarf play.

I mean, hell, I want to see big complicated elven tree-compounds even if I don't want to build them in Fortress Mode. We can at least visit them, right?
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #189 on: February 15, 2011, 04:25:32 pm »

I don't see why it would be a waste, since the other races would still use it, and other races being available in fortress mode is also a valid goal.

It's only a waste until you actually can play as those races.

Basically, I think it's putting the cart before the horse.  I think that adding in features that dwarves can't use is a solution to a problem (making alternate play modes) that hasn't yet been created.  When the addition of other race play modes becomes imminent, then the need to add in special technologies, lifestyles, and other key differentiations becomes a real problem that demands solving. 

Until then, players will want to see game mode changes that they can actually do something with. 

To a certain extent, most of my suggestions involve actually creating the problems that players then have to solve, rather than trying to solve non-existant problems just to add something into the game.  This is why there are complaints about "Some Sort of Honeybee" when Toady is just throwing out small additions.

Also, a complex farming system could still be applied to underground crops as well. There's no reason why not, and it's not like I'm suggesting underground farming be removed. I'm only saying that it makes sense for underground farming to be less efficient,

I'm actually trying to spin off an "exotic energy source" discussion on magic energy fields to describe how plants grow underground.  Basically, instead of just growing as if they were aboveground plants just by magic, they grow underground by... well... by magic, but it's magic with rules

Kidding aside, as an overall expansion upon the idea of what a farm really is, I'm working on an idea of dwarves impacting ecosystems, and underground ecosystems are just plain magical, so I want to try to make a convincing simulation of a magic-based ecosystem while I'm at it.

I'm also not saying that dwarves flat-out shouldn't be able to use above-ground farming successfully, just that the disadvantages to them should somehow outweigh the benefits (and those benefits should be more than just cultural, even if they're mostly circumstantial).[/url]

Right, I'll agree on that front, and think that some sort of dwarven "disability" that makes aboveground farming somehow not advisable is a good idea, and that it warrants discussing what sort of reasons dwarves would want to undertake underground farming if it is less efficient or more dangerous than aboveground farming. 

So... What sort of dwarven disability would there be that could make growing aboveground food not preferable to growing underground food?
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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #190 on: February 15, 2011, 04:51:19 pm »

Basically, I think it's putting the cart before the horse.  I think that adding in features that dwarves can't use is a solution to a problem (making alternate play modes) that hasn't yet been created.  When the addition of other race play modes becomes imminent, then the need to add in special technologies, lifestyles, and other key differentiations becomes a real problem that demands solving.

You could view it that way, or you could say that adding other play modes is only possible when those features have already been implemented. They really go hand-in-hand, where you don't want to implement elves as a player race until you have their tree forts, but you also don't want to implement tree forts too long before the player cares that they exist. That being said, I certainly understand prioritizing features towards dwarves specifically, as has been done so far.


Quote
Right, I'll agree on that front, and think that some sort of dwarven "disability" that makes aboveground farming somehow not advisable is a good idea, and that it warrants discussing what sort of reasons dwarves would want to undertake underground farming if it is less efficient or more dangerous than aboveground farming. 

So... What sort of dwarven disability would there be that could make growing aboveground food not preferable to growing underground food?

  • Defensive/logistical reasons. A self-sustaining underground fortress is a whole lot easier to defend and manage than a fortress that's mostly underground but has vast above-ground pastures and fields.
  • Dwarves, as I mentioned before, wouldn't be as accustomed to the things you have to deal with topside. Certainly dwarves do understand things like weather and seasons, but they're not something dwarves have to deal with very often, so they might not be as used to doing so, or as good at it. Above-ground farming would present almost literally a whole new world of things for dwarves to have to understand, predict, and deal with, and as human agriculture and almanacs can attest, that stuff is complicated and takes effort even if things like "rain" and "snow" and "clouds" are totally normal to you, which isn't the case for dwarves. Basically, they'd have to sink a lot of cost into figuring out things that humans have figured out almost by default.
  • On that note, to reiterate another point, maybe dwarven biology isn't quite as good at standing up to the rigors of harsh weather/climate, since they normally don't have to deal with that; seasons barely exist to them in their underground homes, and weather doesn't exist much at all. This makes underground farming a bit more comfortable and safe to them.
  • For similar reasons, underground farming might be more reliable, at least on smaller scales. I'm sure it might have its downsides, but on the other hand, you don't have to deal with having an exceptionally cold winter, or some of the other environmental effects that you have above ground. For a race that doesn't really deal with seasons and doesn't care much for farming, it makes sense to grow crops in a manner that you can do year-round without having to worry about such things.
  • Dwarves live in mountainous regions, where typical above-ground farming might be more difficult to begin with, although certainly not impossible.
  • As I said, dwarves don't seem to have the kind of expansionist mindset that humans have, and if that's the case, they might not need the kind of large-scale agriculture necessary for sustaining large human populations. This goes into issues of what dwarves are inclined towards doing as a race; whereas humans are big on survival/adaptation/expansion, perhaps dwarves are more content to live in smaller, more stable populations and focus on crafts and other forms of cultural advancement.
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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #191 on: February 15, 2011, 05:26:56 pm »

Defensive/logistical reasons. A self-sustaining underground fortress is a whole lot easier to defend and manage than a fortress that's mostly underground but has vast above-ground pastures and fields.

This is something implied, but not forced with the current system.

You can still make a "surface dwarven settlement", and just wall it in.  If we, at the very least, make sure there aren't "stone greenhouses" that grow aboveground crops underneath a stone roof, then at the very least, you invite fliers to attack, although we don't have enough serious flying threats to make that a perfect solution.

Also, why are humans capable of doing it?

If humans are just plain willing to accept the casualties of aboveground farming, while dwarves aren't, then it's just a cultural difference.

Dwarves, as I mentioned before, wouldn't be as accustomed to the things you have to deal with topside. Certainly dwarves do understand things like weather and seasons, but they're not something dwarves have to deal with very often, so they might not be as used to doing so, or as good at it. Above-ground farming would present almost literally a whole new world of things for dwarves to have to understand, predict, and deal with, and as human agriculture and almanacs can attest, that stuff is complicated and takes effort even if things like "rain" and "snow" and "clouds" are totally normal to you, which isn't the case for dwarves. Basically, they'd have to sink a lot of cost into figuring out things that humans have figured out almost by default.

While I can agree with and understand this concept in theory, it meets very stiff resistance when you start talking about how you would apply this sort of idea.

When I started talking about needing to fill out encyclopedias or almanacs to be able to really see what the requirements of plants are for growing them in the proposed interface, a good portion of the people who read that see "Research" and think "Tech Tree".

It may not be impossible to implement, but it makes passage of the suggestion as a whole much more opposed.

Researching plants to understand them also adds to the interface complexity, since you then need to start obscuring parts of the interface that give you data until you have enough research accrued to pass whatever threshold value you have for actually learning the important information on a plant.

That said, I'm not really opposed to it, it's just something I'm not going to prioritize fighting for.  Unlike the interdependent systems in this suggestion, this is really something that can be slapped on after everything else.

On that note, to reiterate another point, maybe dwarven biology isn't quite as good at standing up to the rigors of harsh weather/climate, since they normally don't have to deal with that; seasons barely exist to them in their underground homes, and weather doesn't exist much at all. This makes underground farming a bit more comfortable and safe to them.[/li]
[li]For similar reasons, underground farming might be more reliable, at least on smaller scales. I'm sure it might have its downsides, but on the other hand, you don't have to deal with having an exceptionally cold winter, or some of the other environmental effects that you have above ground. For a race that doesn't really deal with seasons and doesn't care much for farming, it makes sense to grow crops in a manner that you can do year-round without having to worry about such things.

Heh, that brings up the question of why aboveground farming is year-round, while underground farming is seasonal, again... In the Xenosynthesis thread, I mentioned that perhaps underground magic fields are seasonal, and quarry bushes need a magic type only available during certain times of year.

This sounds like a pretty viable concept... although caves tend to be slightly colder, and a "stocky" body is better at retaining heat, so it would make more sense that they be better in cold climates, but worse in hot climates (meaning heat stroke would be a problem... maybe they don't sweat the way that humans do, either?)

The problem with this, however, is why do they wind up being good at working a hot forge directly over a magma vent, then?

  • Dwarves live in mountainous regions, where typical above-ground farming might be more difficult to begin with, although certainly not impossible.
  • As I said, dwarves don't seem to have the kind of expansionist mindset that humans have, and if that's the case, they might not need the kind of large-scale agriculture necessary for sustaining large human populations. This goes into issues of what dwarves are inclined towards doing as a race; whereas humans are big on survival/adaptation/expansion, perhaps dwarves are more content to live in smaller, more stable populations and focus on crafts and other forms of cultural advancement.

These are cultural claims, again.

Actually, it almost seems like you could say "Dwarves are humans that went to live in the mountains, where the metal ores are, and their bodies adapted to cave life", more than you can say "Dwarves are largely unsuited to surface life".

In Dragon Age's setting, dwarves just hate the surface and surface ways as a matter of cultural stubbornness, even if it is clearly self-destructive. 

Maybe we just need something that introduces some societal ramifications to working aboveground?  Only an "untouchable caste" or the like can work aboveground? 

That, or make cave adaptation a much more crippling disease that is much harder to get over, and have immigrants arrive at your fortress through the caverns or make tunnel roads to reach your fortress...
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Improved Farming
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G-Flex

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #192 on: February 15, 2011, 05:54:45 pm »

Defensive/logistical reasons. A self-sustaining underground fortress is a whole lot easier to defend and manage than a fortress that's mostly underground but has vast above-ground pastures and fields.

This is something implied, but not forced with the current system.

You can still make a "surface dwarven settlement", and just wall it in.  If we, at the very least, make sure there aren't "stone greenhouses" that grow aboveground crops underneath a stone roof, then at the very least, you invite fliers to attack, although we don't have enough serious flying threats to make that a perfect solution.

Also, why are humans capable of doing it?

If humans are just plain willing to accept the casualties of aboveground farming, while dwarves aren't, then it's just a cultural difference.

First off, I understand the game currently doesn't simulate this well. I'm not talking about the game as it stands, I'm just thinking out loud about concepts.

At any rate, humans deal with it because they don't live underground in the first place. Of course, then the question becomes "why not?" which I go into at least a little bit elsewhere.

Quote
Dwarves, as I mentioned before, wouldn't be as accustomed to the things you have to deal with topside. Certainly dwarves do understand things like weather and seasons, but they're not something dwarves have to deal with very often, so they might not be as used to doing so, or as good at it. Above-ground farming would present almost literally a whole new world of things for dwarves to have to understand, predict, and deal with, and as human agriculture and almanacs can attest, that stuff is complicated and takes effort even if things like "rain" and "snow" and "clouds" are totally normal to you, which isn't the case for dwarves. Basically, they'd have to sink a lot of cost into figuring out things that humans have figured out almost by default.

While I can agree with and understand this concept in theory, it meets very stiff resistance when you start talking about how you would apply this sort of idea.

When I started talking about needing to fill out encyclopedias or almanacs to be able to really see what the requirements of plants are for growing them in the proposed interface, a good portion of the people who read that see "Research" and think "Tech Tree".

It may not be impossible to implement, but it makes passage of the suggestion as a whole much more opposed.

Researching plants to understand them also adds to the interface complexity, since you then need to start obscuring parts of the interface that give you data until you have enough research accrued to pass whatever threshold value you have for actually learning the important information on a plant.

That said, I'm not really opposed to it, it's just something I'm not going to prioritize fighting for.  Unlike the interdependent systems in this suggestion, this is really something that can be slapped on after everything else.

It would have to be implemented in a relatively abstract way, yes, and I'm not sure how you'd do that. I agree that it's a difficult thing to propose, but I don't think it's impossible either.

Quote
On that note, to reiterate another point, maybe dwarven biology isn't quite as good at standing up to the rigors of harsh weather/climate, since they normally don't have to deal with that; seasons barely exist to them in their underground homes, and weather doesn't exist much at all. This makes underground farming a bit more comfortable and safe to them.[/li]
[li]For similar reasons, underground farming might be more reliable, at least on smaller scales. I'm sure it might have its downsides, but on the other hand, you don't have to deal with having an exceptionally cold winter, or some of the other environmental effects that you have above ground. For a race that doesn't really deal with seasons and doesn't care much for farming, it makes sense to grow crops in a manner that you can do year-round without having to worry about such things.

Heh, that brings up the question of why aboveground farming is year-round, while underground farming is seasonal, again... In the Xenosynthesis thread, I mentioned that perhaps underground magic fields are seasonal, and quarry bushes need a magic type only available during certain times of year.

In my opinion, underground farming is seasonal and aboveground farming is not because:
  • Underground farming was made seasonal because, hey, it's farming, and that's seasonal.
  • Aboveground farming is mostly an afterthought in its current iteration.

In other words, I don't dwell on it much because it just seems like an arbitrary quirk of development.

Quote
This sounds like a pretty viable concept... although caves tend to be slightly colder, and a "stocky" body is better at retaining heat, so it would make more sense that they be better in cold climates, but worse in hot climates (meaning heat stroke would be a problem... maybe they don't sweat the way that humans do, either?)

The problem with this, however, is why do they wind up being good at working a hot forge directly over a magma vent, then?

Eh, maybe their metabolisms (or something else) just don't function quite the same way as those of humans. Also, retaining your body heat doesn't necessarily mean you'll be as good at fighting off things like frostbite.

Quote
  • Dwarves live in mountainous regions, where typical above-ground farming might be more difficult to begin with, although certainly not impossible.
  • As I said, dwarves don't seem to have the kind of expansionist mindset that humans have, and if that's the case, they might not need the kind of large-scale agriculture necessary for sustaining large human populations. This goes into issues of what dwarves are inclined towards doing as a race; whereas humans are big on survival/adaptation/expansion, perhaps dwarves are more content to live in smaller, more stable populations and focus on crafts and other forms of cultural advancement.

These are cultural claims, again.

Actually, it almost seems like you could say "Dwarves are humans that went to live in the mountains, where the metal ores are, and their bodies adapted to cave life", more than you can say "Dwarves are largely unsuited to surface life".

They're cultural, but maybe they also aren't. It depends why they live underground. You could develop a physiological basis for this for sure. Dwarves are good at seeing in low light, dealing with mineral-based toxins, and working in three dimensions in curvy passageways and that sort of thing. Those can be fairly innate traits, and one of those (spatial reasoning) already is. On the flip side of that, they need to be less adapted to outdoor life than humans are, or else, again, it doesn't make much sense anymore.

Normally, though, adapting to one circumstance means you're no longer adapted quite as much to the opposing circumstance... so how does that apply in this case? Maybe they don't see as sharply as humans do in normal/bright light levels (which actually is true of many nocturnal animals); they could even be very near-sighted in comparison, not having to see things a mile off like we do. Maybe they can't run as fast, although that probably doesn't matter too much. Maybe their brains don't really have circadian rhythms the way humans' do (how could you underground for generations?), and the day-night cycle screws them up or they rely on a completely different sort of biological clock. Maybe they're more susceptible to the allergens/toxins you find above-ground than humans are. For instance, water cleanliness being such a huge problem back in the day, it's possible they just can't tolerate those kinds of diseases as well, since underground water sources don't have those problems as much (perhaps in favor of different ones). Perhaps their skin and eyes are more sensitive to, and easily damaged by, sunlight. At any rate, the point is that reasons can be contrived or derived if necessary, and that dwarves living underground can certainly be said to have a biological basis/incentive if it's decided as such.

Also, dwarves could have any other number of neurological/innate psychological differences from humans, which for one reason or another would give them difficulty working above-ground. I can't think of any examples right now, though, except sense-related ones (including the more obscure senses; again referring to spatial sense, perhaps they have difficulty having a "feel" for a large area like a field, since they're adapted to tighter spaces, whereas they're better at dealing with corridors and corners and three dimensions?).

Quote
Maybe we just need something that introduces some societal ramifications to working aboveground?  Only an "untouchable caste" or the like can work aboveground? 

That, or make cave adaptation a much more crippling disease that is much harder to get over, and have immigrants arrive at your fortress through the caverns or make tunnel roads to reach your fortress...

Considering how much dwarves love labor, I don't see them ever really having a slave/untouchable caste to do work for them. After all, if you have a subhuman caste in your society, you don't have them do the stuff you find virtuous or fulfilling, and dwarves seem to think that way about toil and labor. That's just my opinion, though.

I think it's definitely a good idea to have dwarven settlements connected more via tunnels. They already sort of are, so I think that should be a possibility for dwarven fortresses, at least at some point after their settlement.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2011, 05:58:13 pm by G-Flex »
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Maklak

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #193 on: February 15, 2011, 06:53:22 pm »

I've read through all initial posts and some discussion afterwards, but not all of it.

Here are my thoughts on the subject.

I'm ok with grazing animals as long as I can just wall off a section of aboveground, put there a pasture and milking / cheesemaking workshop, animals will stay there and won't affect my FPS much. Maybe also give them a water source.

I'm ok with sometimes having to water my farmplots, but not with reallistic restrictions of water availability. I use "freezing water replicator" exploit, and just water from murky pools when it rains wouldn't be enough for me. A brook / river should have enough water for a town. Besides underground tree farms, and large-scale obsidian casting require large amounts of water.

I find keeping track of various nutrients to be more than I'm willing to bother with farming. I'd preffer to have just one abstract "fertilizer level" rather than NPK. It would gradually deplete, and deplete faster with the same crop growing over and over on the same plot, increase slowly when plot is fallow, and could be replenished by potash and some other fertilizers. I don't like current mechanics, where fertilizer dissapears entirely after each season, it should do so gradually. 

Brewing booze should require water.

Bigger plots would nerf farming considerably. If 3x3 plots only grew one plant each, people would need to build more of them.

Higher consumption, and overal balancing of cooking and butchering would also help farming considerably. 

Corpses don't make good compost. They rot, and attract bad kind of vermin and bacteria. In fact, one of advices in making compost, is not to add any animal leftovers. For composting you want plants, and maybe small amounts of gringed stones, eggshells, ash and bone. Still, I'd rather use my bones for crossbow bolts than fertilizer. 
Coposting would still be a nice way of getting rid of torn clothes, but I generally assume dwarfs do some things behind the scenes, including composting, and going to toilets.

Vermin is mostly fine as it is now, but it could be attracted to farms, and decrase amounts of crops.

Predator - prey equation from wikipedia looks too quirky. It only considers single predator and single prey, while to me it seems, that predators can switch to whatever pray is availible, and migrate. Still, I'm partly wrong in this view, as we are occasionally getting populational explosions of some species, just not as much as those equations would suggest. Still, that would make for somewhat interesting if game behaviour of animal populations. On year you get flooded by groundhogs, and 2 winters later sieged by packs of hungry wolves.

Look up permaculture. It is an attempt at creating sustainable agriculture. It is not one way to set up farms, but rather an umbrella term for many, including partially edible forests. It is generally based on the idea of creating diversified ecosystems composed largely of edible parts. It is not hyper-optimized for pumping out lare amounts of cash crops, requires much knowledge and work to set up, but is an interesting idea. Also, rather then fallow plots every now and then, it actually includes plants, that won't be harvested in every planting. I don't think something like that is applicable in DF, as we want monocultures, and I mentioned it mostly because you said, you haven't found any farming system, that gives crops every time.

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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Violate the Earth!
« Reply #194 on: February 15, 2011, 07:35:51 pm »

Maklak: I'll get to you in a bit.

First off, I understand the game currently doesn't simulate this well. I'm not talking about the game as it stands, I'm just thinking out loud about concepts.

Well, if the objective here is to come up with plausable interpretations for why dwarves are like the way they are, and there are meaningful differences between that and humans, then there's nothing wrong with making a suggestion that doesn't fly, it just means you need to go back to the drawing board for another one.  "I'm just thinking out loud about concepts," is a line signifying disowning your idea.

Saying that dwarves don't farm aboveground because of the risk of death while humans are willing to put up with a few attacks implies either that attacks against humans are not as bad as attacks on dwarves, human villagers are stronger and better at combat generally than dwarves, or that dwarves are either cowards or humans are suicidally brave.

I doubt all of those would be attractive options to the typical DF player...

It would have to be implemented in a relatively abstract way, yes, and I'm not sure how you'd do that. I agree that it's a difficult thing to propose, but I don't think it's impossible either.

I'd also have to ask "why don't they know, aren't there dwarves on the surface?"  Also, if the only bar to entry as an aboveground farmer is needing to do some research, then once it's done, there's no reason not to farm like a human.

Eh, maybe their metabolisms (or something else) just don't function quite the same way as those of humans. Also, retaining your body heat doesn't necessarily mean you'll be as good at fighting off things like frostbite.

That's fairly vague.  How could someone's metabolism be "different" in a way that they retain heat well, but are still vulnerable to frostbite?

Normally, though, adapting to one circumstance means you're no longer adapted quite as much to the opposing circumstance... so how does that apply in this case? Maybe they don't see as sharply as humans do in normal/bright light levels (which actually is true of many nocturnal animals); they could even be very near-sighted in comparison, not having to see things a mile off like we do. Maybe they can't run as fast, although that probably doesn't matter too much. Maybe their brains don't really have circadian rhythms the way humans' do (how could you underground for generations?), and the day-night cycle screws them up or they rely on a completely different sort of biological clock. Maybe they're more susceptible to the allergens/toxins you find above-ground than humans are. For instance, water cleanliness being such a huge problem back in the day, it's possible they just can't tolerate those kinds of diseases as well, since underground water sources don't have those problems as much (perhaps in favor of different ones). Perhaps their skin and eyes are more sensitive to, and easily damaged by, sunlight. At any rate, the point is that reasons can be contrived or derived if necessary, and that dwarves living underground can certainly be said to have a biological basis/incentive if it's decided as such.

Also, dwarves could have any other number of neurological/innate psychological differences from humans, which for one reason or another would give them difficulty working above-ground. I can't think of any examples right now, though, except sense-related ones (including the more obscure senses; again referring to spatial sense, perhaps they have difficulty having a "feel" for a large area like a field, since they're adapted to tighter spaces, whereas they're better at dealing with corridors and corners and three dimensions?).

Ahhh, the good stuff.

I've actually had some fun with the idea that "dwarves are neanderthals":
Dwarves, meanwhile, I've always thought of more along the lines of the Neanderthals.  They're shorter, stockier, better suited for slightly colder climates because their bodies are more compact.  They have short legs that make them poor long-distance runners, and poorly adapted for open plains, but they also have powerful upper body strength, and can make great ambush hunters where their slow speed and poor running stamina isn't as much a problem.

History Channel had a special on it, speculating that early humans would have competed with neanderthals over food resources, but while humans hunted with bows, neanderthals hunted like true dwarves would - they attacked the biggest, most dangerous game they could find (wooly mammoths, basically, elephants) by jumping on its back from ambush and trying to hack its throat out with a sharpened stone spear before the mammoth could toss the neanderthal off, and gore him/her horrifically.  Remains of neanderthals were examined to reveal hunters often broke multiple limbs on multiple occasions and had several wounds that implied they had been impaled in major organs in their short, violent lives.

Long story short, neanderthals were the real-life dwarves.

Something like having unease in eating aboveground foods or vulnerability to aboveground diseases sounds fairly interesting.  It could be similar to cave adaptation, in fact.  There could be a "cave food adaptation", where dwarves are not capable of handling aboveground foods or diseases after a long time underground, eating only underground food. 

It takes some serious work at acclimating to surface life for a dwarf, and maybe the dwarf could be seen as a little odd for having done it. 

The starting seven might be "surface acclimated", and capable of eating the strange above-ground food, but migrants might very well not be, and will be unhappy and probably even incapacitatingly sick until they can acclimate their bodies to aboveground food in small but gradually larger doses. 

Underground farming would just be an easier alternative, then.

Considering how much dwarves love labor, I don't see them ever really having a slave/untouchable caste to do work for them. After all, if you have a subhuman caste in your society, you don't have them do the stuff you find virtuous or fulfilling, and dwarves seem to think that way about toil and labor. That's just my opinion, though.

I think it's definitely a good idea to have dwarven settlements connected more via tunnels. They already sort of are, so I think that should be a possibility for dwarven fortresses, at least at some point after their settlement.

Castes in human societies are often divided along what jobs people do. 

Tanning leather requires letting the hide "cure" in urine, feces, and possibly even scrubbing it with the brains of animals.  It was such a horrid process, with such a terrible odor, that the real-life "untouchables" are the descendants of tanners.  In several of their religions, tanning is so horrid a process that ever having done it taints your soul and the soul of your descendants.

Compare to government officials, priests, and military generally being the top ranks of every society, as well as merchants and craftsmen forming a middle class, with a labor and farming class below that.

Maybe lumberjacks are the lowest rungs of dwarven society, while legendary microcline mug crafters, weaponsmiths, soldiers, and maybe miners are the highest-praised.
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