MKMoose Posted Friday at 05:03 PM Report Posted Friday at 05:03 PM (edited) Motivation Farming in Vintage Story is currently a rather old and simple system, certainly functional, but arguably underdeveloped. There is a number of things which can be considered to be problems from a design perspective: almost all land use is nearly set-and-forget - this is expected for some plants, but it can get samey when that's all there is, there is little meaningful difference between many food sources - grains and vegetables are both produced in the exact same way through farming, berry bushes and fruit trees provide the same nutrition, and are cultivated in a very similar way, animal fodder and Seraph food are almost all the same items, many components of the system like moisture, fertilizer and crop rotation don't tend to play a meaningful role in practical gameplay, at least for most playstyles (including arguably the most optimal ones which many people will naturally gravitate towards), different plants are very inconsistent between each other - nutrients work completely differently for crops and bushes and are irrelevant for trees, fertilizer serves a completely different purpose for crops and bushes, water is only relevant for crops but nothing else, soil preparation is necessary for farming but irrelevant for everything else, growth systems are implemented differently for all plants that can be cultivated, replanting methods are distinct between everything, the bush trait system is completely distinct from everything else (frankly, I really hope that when herbs are implemented, it's not gonna just be new mechanics again). As I've been reading through some historical works like De Re Rustica and Liber Ruralium Commodorum, I've been noticing just how much interesting and realistic depth could be added to agriculture. These historical texts as well as some other sources are what I'm taking most of my inspiration for this suggestion from (for a quick reference, relatively high-level summary on some of these topics can be found in something like Wikipedia's Agriculture in the Middle Ages article, as well as the History section from the Kitchen garden article). I'm focusing primarily on European agriculture, but similar patterns can be found in almost all regions of the world. Goal Introduce meaningful differences to the variety of cultivated plants, in the method, scale and intensity of cultivation - though risks and maintenance have to be added carefully and only where it really matters, while most food sources should still remain mostly maintenance-free and multiplayer-safe. Add more depth and complexity to the overall farming system without making it unintuitive or tedious. Focus on historically accurate methods of land use. Context The medieval agricultural system has naturally evolved to produce a number of key land types, where various plants were cultivated at different scale and intensity: Gardens - small-scale plots located near houses, used primarily for growing vegetables, as well as herbs and fruiting shrubs (primarily the smaller ones, like strawberries or raspberries). They have very varied plant species, and they were themselves also zoned into segments with different plants. They were characterized by relatively high input (added organic matter, including fertilizer), continuous maintenance (tilling, weeding, pruning, watering, replanting, propagating). Their purpose was maintaining a steady supply of high-value food and medicinal plants, but they naturally provided little to no bulk foods. The plants which were grown in these gardens were selected as a natural consequence of their higher sensitivity to environmental conditions, soil quality, nutrient levels and moisture, as well as often relatively poor resistance to weeds and diseases, all making them unreliable for large-scale cultivation. Small scale and stronger reaction to fertilizer made gardens them a more valuable avenue of utilizing the limited manure, since it provided much better return when concentrated in a small, high-value plot than when spread out over large fields. As an extra note: in richer households, the decorative purpose of gardens was very important, even overtaking the practical uses in some cases, and it would be cool to have a good selection of ornamental plants (though with little to no maintenance, if their purpose is purely decorative). Orchards - larger-scale areas characterized, naturally, by fruit trees, as well as nuts, certain shrubs (primarily the larger ones, like currants or gooseberries), and grapes (with some caveats). Established orchards are very stable and can produce reliable yields over many years. They can receive maintenance and organic matter input concentrated on the trees, but it's less than gardens, and making this difference a bit more extreme could be valuable for gameplay. It can be viable to plant them on lower fertility soil due to trees' root systems being much deeper than smaller plants. Fields - large plots of farmland, used primarily for bulk grains (wheat, spelt, rye, oat, barley, etc.), as well as legumes and certain vegetables (peas, beans, potato, turnip) and in certain regions industrial crops like flax and hemp. The main requirement for a crop to be grown at this large scale is that it has to be low-maintenance and low-risk, which makes this the most set-and-forget area with concentrated seasonal labor (plowing, sowing, harvesting). Using fertilizer on massive fields wasn't generally practical, so crop rotation and fallowing were the primary means that allowed the land to recover. Pastures - mostly covered in grasses with interspersed legumes and forbs, used for grazing to feed animals during the warmer months. Meadows - similar to pastures in that they are primarily used to grow grasses, legumes (especially clover) and forbs to an extent, but different in that they're not grazed continuously - their primary purpose is producing hay to feed animals during the winter. Naturally, the boundaries between those types of plots are somewhat fluid: orchards, with all their space under the trees, were often also used as pastures, meadows, or for growing vegetables, some plants like potatoes, legumes (e.g. clovers, peas, beans) and root crops (e.g. turnips and beets) share certain traits of both vegetables and bulk grains, making them viable to cultivate both at higher intensity in small gardens and at lower intensity in large fields, and they also reduce some aspects of reliance on meadows for fodder, there are some fairly distinct, nonstandard systems, like grape vineyards which are similar to orchards but need more intensive pruning and training, or rice paddies where water is an especially important constraint and larger fields may require more maintenance, different climates will naturally influence the dominant crops and the farming methods, although the general pattern tends to remain similar. What allows this to take proper shape is manure - the single most important fertilizer. It was highly valuable for improving crop yields, but constrained by limited supply. Where manure was limited, secondary sources of fertilizer and other methods of renewing weary soil gained value, primarily natural nutrient cycling with plant debris, compost and nitrogen-fixing legumes, but manure was always in high demand. Since animals need to eat to produce manure, this creates a natural chain of connected systems - pasture and meadows sustain animals throughout the year to achieve a steady supply of manure, which is used to maintain gardens (frequently for medicinal and culinary purposes) and to a lesser extent orchards (for larger quantities of fruit and nuts). With fields being the primary source of satiating foods, this requires careful balance between all types of plots and offers quite a lot of potential for gameplay depth in the overarching system and options for meaningful distinctions between various plants. Gameplay changes Historical reality is one thing, and in-game implementation another. While there's a million changes that could be made, here's a loose selection that I would propose: Greater dependence on environment and soil => overhaul the soil nutrition system, in a way that would encompass all cultivated plants in an intuitive way, and vary between plants more significantly: different plants should be planted in different areas due to varied requirements beyond just temperature, and factors like the amount of rain or the type of soil may make certain plants suboptimal or impossible to grow in some areas, both as a result of deficiency and excess of various parameters including moisture (soil could then be less about fertility which can be amended with fertilizer, and more about soil types which are more or less suitable for different plants), soil types may primarily involve sandy and clay-rich soils, reacting differently to moisture and fertilizer, and potentially even with different pH levels assigned to them, maybe modified in some ways, relying entirely on rain should be more viable (in the appropriate conditions), and it should also be relatively safe without risk of waterlogging, unless it's quite extreme rainfall in warm climates, irrigation, as well as potentially drainage and raised garden beds, could be implemented to allow more precise control over moisture levels, especially near water bodies and rivers which would normally easily cause waterlogging, as a general rule, fertilizer should primarily serve to greatly boost yields from crops (with bulk crops generally having much lower return per portion of fertilizer, and vegetables having the highest return) and allow to improve the soil nutrient levels to make it more suitable for demanding plants, partially circumventing the climate and soil restrictions instead of just accelerating growth. Require regular maintenance for certain plants => implement weeds and potentially pests, which would compete with garden crops and herbs (but pose little to no threat to bulk crops and larger plants). They would grow in the same block as the crop or as part of the farmland block and reduce yield of the main crop over a long time, until eventually overtaking it entirely unless removed. This could also allow collecting farmland blocks once they are overgrown with weeds, though there are some other easy solutions to this. Implement a seasonal labor cycle for bulk crops => revise growth to be properly seasonal and add tillage of harvest residue, so that maintaining a field would primarily involve two stages: sowing and tilling (autumn for winter crops, spring for spring crops) - tilling serves to remove weeds, improve soil quality and increase the survival chance of planted crops (and also gives a real purpose to the hoe), harvesting and tilling (summer for winter crops, late summer for spring crops) - harvesting the crop, incorporating the harvest residue back into the soil, and leaving the field fallow to recover nutrients, additionally, fallow fields could be tilled up to several times during the season, as well as weeded, grazed and manured, but this isn't really necessary to implement in-game and could in certain cases be excessive. Add a risk factor to some crops => implement crop diseases or pests, which would normally pose little risk except when planting the same crops in the same area multiple times consecutively, and pose much greater risks to certain higher-yield crop varieties, where low reliability due to vulnerability to disease would be an important balancing factor. Wild animals should also have more interest in some of the garden crops, and generally less interest in grains, encouraging the player to fence off their garden but not necessarily entire fields. Implement meadows => see the dedicated post for meadows. Constrain the system with fertilizer availability => reduce access to fertilizer (potentially remove bone meal), implement manure, increase livestock maintenance cost but increase continuous products. I believe that the best way to implement manure is through something akin to straw bedding, which would get dirty over time near domesticated animals, to keep the system more intentional, controllable and tidy. Note: maintenance requirement is borderline necessary for fertilizer to be relevant, because if there is no driver for space efficiency, then fertilizer requirement can be circumvented entirely by just planting more. Practical plant categories Looking at it from the angle of "and what am I gonna actually do with this in the game?" (purely from a gameplay perspective and taking a few small liberties relative to what would be most realistic), this is roughly what would be most relevant to the player: Bulk grains and industrial crops - simple staple: low yield per unit of area, but good yield per time investment, safe and reliable with practically no need for maintenance, can be planted in low or high fertility soils without much difference, with low benefit from fertilizer, no need for watering in areas with half-decent rainfall or near water bodies with some irrigation channels, good tolerance to temperature and moisture variations. Clover, peas, beans, potatoes, turnips, beets - fodder and special crops: also lower yield per unit of area and good yield per time investment, harvest times are less constrained by time of year and may in some cases be more frequent than once per year, can be planted instead of leaving fields fallow in certain cases to maximize yields, more risky, may require some maintenance, more benefit from higher fertility soils and from fertilizer, additional complications over simple bulk grains, but also additional benefits - legumes improve soil by fixing nitrogen, root crops make very good fodder. Vegetables - high yield, high effort: very high yield per unit of area (as much as 3-5x the yield of bulk grains, per unit of area per year), characterized by more continuous harvests, not periodic or fully seasonal like other plants, high maintenance requirement to prevent fast decline, mainly due to weeds and potentially pests, the greatest benefits among all plants received from fertilizer and planting in fertile soil (easily 100-200% higher yields when fertilized sufficiently), more sensitive to temperature, moisture, and nutrient level changes (temperature sensitivity would encourage using greenhouses, which should ideally actually stabilize the temperature and not just increase it). Herbs and spices - medicinal and special uses: cultivation similar to vegetables, although maintenance and fertilizer requirement can be lower (they're generally needed in low quantity, so there's an argument for making them especially expensive and valuable, but it could also be easily overblown - it may be better for the most part to just have relatively easy benefits over challenges which nobody will bother to repeat after the first world). Fruiting shrubs - higher-maintenance, versatile fruit: high yield per unit of area when maintained well, and high benefits from fertilizer, requires more attention in the form of pruning and moisture control which tends to be less important if present at all for other plants, and may include some of the only plants (especially blueberries) which get damaged by an excess of fertilizer, not overtaken by weeds like vegetables and herbs, the primary early-game challenge lies in soil preparation, as they require very specific conditions to reliably take root (may require forest soil and/or mulch in some ways), but other than that they can be set up much faster than fruit trees, they can be planted in larger quantities, but, when maintained less intensively, their yields will be no better than wild bushes, and then may potentially die off due to diseases or pests if planted in less suitable soil, many berries are more nutrient-dense than other fruit, and they may also have medicinal uses or other niche properties (e.g. poison). Fruit and nut trees - long-term stability: low yield per unit of area (but naturally can be mixed with meadows or gardens), soil preparation and maintenance requirement to establish a cutting and during initial growth, little to no maintenance and risk once the tree grows up enough, good return from fertilizer, though lower than berries, compared to berries, they require much less long-term maintenance, but take a long time to initially set up and have little to no use outside of food supply - even late into the game when trees can provide plenty of fruit nutrition, maintaining a few berry bushes would remain valuable due to their special uses. Meadows (grass, legumes, forbs) - fodder and aesthetics: absolutely zero maintenance requirement, so they can be easily created at massive scale for aesthetic purposes, provides hay and/or fodder, depending on how it's implemented, which is practically the single best source of animal feed (could be second after certain root crops like turnips, but those require nonzero maintenance and are less reliable). Note on the area taken up by each type of land: most medieval households with some 5 people and one or two cows would need some 10 ha or more of combined land area on top of a shared pasture (the practical reality was still less in many areas), of which the majority would be fields, a smaller part would be meadows, and a very small part (less than 1% in many cases) would be a garden and orchard, so the majority of nutrition would still typically come from grains. Naturally, there were exceptions or nonstandard systems (e.g. olive groves or vineyards may shift the balance a lot), and there were people who didn't own any fields and maybe only owned a small garden (especially those who had other jobs). This is obviously way too much to require in-game from 5 players (10 ha is equivalent to 100 000 blocks, or a 100x1000 area), but the ratio between different categories of land is what's more important here. As a general rule: very small garden, similar or slightly larger orchard, an order of magnitude larger meadows, and even larger fields. Adjusting them a bit for the game would be absolutely acceptable. Closing thought Of course, implementing something like this would be a massive undertaking, likely spanning over multiple updates, and even a small part of what I've described here could make for a much more complex and involved system than what we currently have. There's also no way that I could describe all the changes in detail and account for every possible complication in an amount of text that remains remotely digestible. Any given suggestion could have a variety of details added, adjusted or removed depending on the preference of the next person, so I prefer to avoid an excess of detail and focus more on the general direction. I would be quite interested to discuss it further either way. At least one question will inevitably focus on crop maintenance, on which I have two notes: the required maintenance and effects of proper maintenance or lack thereof can be adjusted a lot in many directions, and different plants can have completely different maintenance requirements, some requiring almost none and some requiring regular attention - that's what meaningful variety implies. It's not like all farming would suddenly require much more maintenance, because implementing realistic features does not necessitate scaling and balancing them in a perfectly realistic way. Edited Friday at 09:43 PM by MKMoose 1 1
LadyWYT Posted Friday at 06:01 PM Report Posted Friday at 06:01 PM While I wouldn't mind seeing more complexity in farming, ultimately it boils down to a couple of things for me: player preference, and how much work the average crop takes to produce. Playstyle plays a pretty big role, since not every player likes to farm and not every player cares about aesthetics. It's already possible to make small backyard vegetable patches, and I'm sure that some players do, same as it's easy enough to till a large field for grain. But I'm guessing that most players end up opting for the "eight farm tiles around a water block" style, since it's the most efficient way to farm and covers most crop types well enough. Likewise, orchards need a lot of space, but if players don't bother with fruit trees... 36 minutes ago, MKMoose said: At least one question will inevitably focus on crop maintenance, on which I have two notes: the required maintenance and effects of proper maintenance or lack thereof can be adjusted a lot in many directions, and different plants can have completely different maintenance requirements, some requiring almost none and some requiring regular attention - that's what meaningful variety implies. It's not like all farming would suddenly require much more maintenance, because implementing realistic features does not necessitate scaling and balancing them in a perfectly realistic way. This is my main concern on the second point: how much effort does it take to get the average crop. It's why I'm not a fan of pretty much any weeds suggestions that I see, since having to check crops daily or every other day for weeds isn't fun, especially for large scale farming. I want to be able to go explore and enjoy other aspects of the game too, without feeling like I have to forgo farming or otherwise take a penalty to harvest just because I didn't want to babysit crops. Likewise, I also appreciate that deer can't just jump over my fences and eat everything, despite the fact that realistically they should be able to. In any case, I applaud the effort of the write-up, but at a glance I think all of this is a bit much for a game not exclusively focused on farming. So I'll touch on the favorable standouts. 45 minutes ago, MKMoose said: Add a risk factor to some crops => implement crop diseases or pests, which would normally pose little risk except when planting the same crops in the same area multiple times consecutively, and pose much greater risks to certain higher-yield crop varieties, where low reliability due to vulnerability to disease would be an important balancing factor. Wild animals should also have more interest in some of the garden crops, and generally less interest in grains, encouraging the player to fence off their garden but not necessarily entire fields. I like this, though I would simplify it to crops just being more at-risk for disease/pests if planted in the same place for multiple plantings. I'm not sure it's necessary to distinguish between the two. In any case, this would lend more value to rotating crops, and push players to plant more options than exclusively turnips and flax. 49 minutes ago, MKMoose said: Constrain the system with fertilizer availability => reduce access to fertilizer (potentially remove bone meal), implement manure, increase livestock maintenance cost but increase continuous products. I believe that the best way to implement manure is through something akin to straw bedding, which would get dirty over time near domesticated animals, to keep the system more intentional, controllable and tidy. Note: maintenance requirement is borderline necessary for fertilizer to be relevant, because if there is no driver for space efficiency, then fertilizer requirement can be circumvented entirely by just planting more. I like this idea too, though I don't think manure needs to replace bonemeal or other fertilizers, necessarily. As for livestock maintenance, I would add that the player should need to feed their animals once in a while to keep them in good condition, as well as get manure. If the animal doesn't eat, it doesn't poop, and not eating regular meals is going to mean less product from slaughter. I'm not sure that I would be mean enough to say that dirty bedding can make the animals sick, but if the animal is confined to what's basically a box stall and can't go outside/otherwise have plenty of room to roam then I'd say it might be a fair risk. Probably shouldn't kill the animal though, that's a bit much. 56 minutes ago, MKMoose said: most medieval households with some 5 people and one or two cows would need some 10 ha or more of combined land area on top of a shared pasture To my knowledge, this is also why sheep and goats were popular--they're smaller animals and thus require less space/food. Sheep in particular yield wool in addition to dairy and meat, in addition to having multiple offspring and maturing faster. 1 1
MKMoose Posted Friday at 08:36 PM Author Report Posted Friday at 08:36 PM 4 minutes ago, LadyWYT said: In any case, I applaud the effort of the write-up, but at a glance I think all of this is a bit much for a game not exclusively focused on farming. Often the most difficult part is not to actually create a system, but to make sure that the system makes sense in a broader context of the game, not just in isolation. Can't say I get that down consistently, and I do agree that some components of this suggestion could be a bit much. 42 minutes ago, LadyWYT said: This is my main concern on the second point: how much effort does it take to get the average crop. It's why I'm not a fan of pretty much any weeds suggestions that I see, since having to check crops daily or every other day for weeds isn't fun, especially for large scale farming. I want to be able to go explore and enjoy other aspects of the game too, without feeling like I have to forgo farming or otherwise take a penalty to harvest just because I didn't want to babysit crops. Likewise, I also appreciate that deer can't just jump over my fences and eat everything, despite the fact that realistically they should be able to. That's a very valid concern, and the problem I've run into is that any attempt to make the maintenance required for different crops much more varied will practically inevitably end up increasing the average level of reqiured maintenance as well, simply because everything that we have in the game is currently clustered quite tightly on the set-and-forget side and can't really be made less maintenance-heavy when there's no maintenance in the first place. I do agree that having to babysit crops wouldn't feel great, and I think that it would just have to be appropriately balanced. The basic rule is that any issues should progress at most about as often as you'd be expected to check up on the plants if you were unaware of the potential problem. Grains and similar crops wouldn't significantly change according to what I've suggested, with just one sowing and tilling, then one harvesting and tilling per year (and possibly one extra tilling to get rid of weeds at the end of the fallow period), and little to no work besides that - more effort per harvest than in the current balance, but a single harvest could also be larger to counterbalance it. Pruning bushes and trees, if added, should probably be done just once per year. For vegetables and herbs, I would expect likely about one weed growth stage per month (stacking up to ~4 stages) at most - but keep in mind that this is for continuously harvested plants, which you might want to visit every other day either way to put fresh vegetables on the plate. For plants which don't outcompete weeds but are harvested less frequently, weed growth could be even several times slower. And for crop fields where weeds don't grow at all unless the field is fallow, you'd just till the field to incorporate those weeds into the soil which would give an extra boost to nutrients. The more nebulous factors are nutrient levels and moisture, primarily for vegetables and bushes (and optionally pH for specific plants), which are a bit more difficult to estimate but I think it wouldn't impose too much maintenance, if any at all. Moisture should probably mostly focus on initial preparation to have a irrigation or drainage setup that matches the climate, and have little impact unless in dry or extremely wet areas. Even then, it would reduce yield rather than kill, so obfuscating the theoretical maximum possible value and current debuff to allow players to shift their mindset away from pure optimization could help a lot. Nutrient levels should be mostly a matter of maximizing yields (and maybe resistance to disease, only relevant in the low ranges like ~0-30%), and they generally wouldn't be something that you have to keep an eye on more often than one or two times per year, maybe three times for specific, extremely demanding crops (and no fertilizer at all would be necessary for a large portion of crops, naturally, as long as fields are left fallow regularly). Animal husbandry would be a bit more effort-intensive with increased fodder consumption and the added effort in collecting manure, though if I recall correctly you've also said in the past as well that something like this would be a pretty good change. 20 minutes ago, LadyWYT said: I like this, though I would simplify it to crops just being more at-risk for disease/pests if planted in the same place for multiple plantings. I'm not sure it's necessary to distinguish between the two. In any case, this would lend more value to rotating crops, and push players to plant more options than exclusively turnips and flax. I got that part of the idea from you initially, so it's the one thing I was certain you would like. The reason for the addition of specific crops much more vulnerable to disease or pests is separate from that variety driver. The primary purposes of it are (1) to make crop disease actually relevant in regular gameplay, not just when playing "incorrectly", and (2) to give players an optional risk that they could engage in. Plant a better crop, say with 50% higher yield per successful harvest or perhaps some other benefits, but at a 20% risk that it all goes to waste - it's still 20% higher yield on average, providing an avenue for optimization as well as added depth and variety in crop selection, but it's not something that you'd want to try in the early game when food security is a winter away. And ideally, if that is introduced, then there should be some method of reducing those risks. It's ultimately not a necessary feature, though, and punishing repeated planting of the same crops is indeed the more important part. 11 minutes ago, LadyWYT said: I like this idea too, though I don't think manure needs to replace bonemeal or other fertilizers, necessarily. Manure certainly shouldn't be special enough to outright replace other fertilizers, and the reason for placing manure on the pedestal is that it would tie multiple systems together quite naturally. Vegetables and fruits need manure for good yields, which drives the player to invest in livestock. Animals consume food, which drives the player to create meadows. If external sources of fertilizer play the primary role, you lose the first link in that chain, so animals and meadows would be largely disconnected from the rest of the system. Granted, just the fact that animal husbandry provides a lot of other products can make manure useful just as a byproduct of something more valuable. There's quite a number of arguments that I could make in favor of making manure either more or less important, and I'm not entirely sure which way to go, which is a case where I tend to lean towards realism and historical accuracy, which in this case both strongly support manure being a highly valuable resource central to any farm where it is available. 2
Bruno Willis Posted Friday at 10:10 PM Report Posted Friday at 10:10 PM (edited) 5 hours ago, MKMoose said: Spoiler Bulk grains and industrial crops - simple staple: low yield per unit of area, but good yield per time investment, safe and reliable with practically no need for maintenance, can be planted in low or high fertility soils without much difference, with low benefit from fertilizer, no need for watering in areas with half-decent rainfall or near water bodies with some irrigation channels, good tolerance to temperature and moisture variations. Clover, peas, beans, potatoes, turnips, beets - fodder and special crops: also lower yield per unit of area and good yield per time investment, harvest times are less constrained by time of year and may in some cases be more frequent than once per year, can be planted instead of leaving fields fallow in certain cases to maximize yields, more risky, may require some maintenance, more benefit from higher fertility soils and from fertilizer, additional complications over simple bulk grains, but also additional benefits - legumes improve soil by fixing nitrogen, root crops make very good fodder. Vegetables - high yield, high effort: very high yield per unit of area (as much as 3-5x the yield of bulk grains, per unit of area per year), characterized by more continuous harvests, not periodic or fully seasonal like other plants, high maintenance requirement to prevent fast decline, mainly due to weeds and potentially pests, the greatest benefits among all plants received from fertilizer and planting in fertile soil (easily 100-200% higher yields when fertilized sufficiently), more sensitive to temperature, moisture, and nutrient level changes (temperature sensitivity would encourage using greenhouses, which should ideally actually stabilize the temperature and not just increase it). Herbs and spices - medicinal and special uses: cultivation similar to vegetables, although maintenance and fertilizer requirement can be lower (they're generally needed in low quantity, so there's an argument for making them especially expensive and valuable, but it could also be easily overblown - it may be better for the most part to just have relatively easy benefits over challenges which nobody will bother to repeat after the first world). I really share your goal with this suggestion, but I don't think we need to change so much to get there. I think the current nutrient system is a real strength which can be worked with. I particularly like your idea of separating out bulk, low maintenance plants, and cared for, garden plants. That feels really right to me. Here's an alternative way to get there: Add weeds, and tie weed growth to quality of soil and proximity to grass and weeds: the better the soil the faster weeds spread across it. The Closer grass is, the more likely a weed will generate in one of the garden plots. That would mean potentially any crop could be grown intensively on quality soil, but would require tilling. It would also mean bulk crops planted on lower quality soil would be more resistant to weeds, especially if you edged the outside of your bulk field with stone walls or paths (as a later game improvement). That's not a change in the plants themselves, nessisarily, just giving a sort of value to low fertility soils. They become good for set and forget farming. Tilling, as you suggest. As you suggest, make crops like cabbages really thrive (and possibly continuously produce) when kept in good quality soil. Do realistic hydration. We really need a way for rain to be enough, in a normal year, to keep gardens at a reasonable hydration level. I'd say that's a combination of making more hydration good up to a point, with reducing rates of return, and then eventually getting worse again (see diagram), and also adding more light rain potential in the early early mornings. It'd be good if a really rainy year could have some consequences too, but that's an added extra. The main thing is to allow realistic gardens. You don't need, or even want, water sources right up against your garden plots. Give animals food preferences - drawing on what you suggested, have animals prioritize specific foods. Hares would really go for cabbages and more delicate greens, but would ignore grains once they get past the first stage of growth. That way the only animals you're worried about grazing on your unfenced field of rye are deer and goats, which themselves are an asset, something good to hunt, if they come wandering close to your bulk fields. As you said, nitrogen fixing crops/plants would be a good addition. Manure... I really don't know. I've played with a mod which added it, and it was pretty over-involved, which maybe contributed to it being less fun. I think if it needed to be piled up, like bones can be, but when it reached max, it would turn into a full block of manure which could then be used, that might simulate letting the manure develop, without adding too much unintuitive gameplay. I don't think manure is quite as critical as you're suggesting though. Useful, but not the end of the world if you don't use it. I don't think diseases are the best idea, except maybe in glass houses? If we add diseases, farming will get more fun and more realistic, at the expense of the rest of the game? Saying that, I do really like the idea that rye grown in over-soggy soil might develop a psychodelic mold on the grain, which when eaten could have effects like the liberty cap, as a slightly inaccurate reference to the dancing plague of 1518 https://retrospectjournal.com/2025/03/30/dance-until-you-drop-the-dancing-plague-of-1518/ (I tried to make your quote hide so that people didn't need to read it twice, but now it's extra hidden and I don't know how to fix that, so... oops.) Edited Friday at 10:13 PM by Bruno Willis Making Mistakes 2
MKMoose Posted 20 hours ago Author Report Posted 20 hours ago 7 hours ago, Bruno Willis said: I really share your goal with this suggestion, but I don't think we need to change so much to get there. I think the current nutrient system is a real strength which can be worked with. I do agree that not all the changes I've listed out are necessary and simplifying some things more like you've described could be in certain regards better. The main reason why I've mentioned reworking soil nutrition is that I think growth speed being variable and yield being constant is kind of backwards. Variable growth speed leads to issues with planning out crop growth times and can cause different parts of a crop field to desynchronize (especially annoying when planting crops further than directly adjacent to water). I think it would be better if growth times were something more universal and predictable once the bare minimum fertility and moisture requirements are met, especially for the crops with more seasonal growth, like bulk grains (it could have a bit more effect on the frequency of harvesting faster-growing or continuously-producing plants, but there's no need for it either). Optimization can be focused more on just increasing yields and better matching some stricter requirements, less on reducing inconsistencies and frustration. 7 hours ago, Bruno Willis said: Add weeds, and tie weed growth to quality of soil and proximity to grass and weeds: the better the soil the faster weeds spread across it. The Closer grass is, the more likely a weed will generate in one of the garden plots. That would mean potentially any crop could be grown intensively on quality soil, but would require tilling. It would also mean bulk crops planted on lower quality soil would be more resistant to weeds, especially if you edged the outside of your bulk field with stone walls or paths (as a later game improvement). That's not a change in the plants themselves, nessisarily, just giving a sort of value to low fertility soils. They become good for set and forget farming. Those two are interesting and quite reasonable, and I'm just not certain that the benefits would outweigh some potential problems: if weed growth is constant irrespective of soil quality, then that's a strong incentive to plant the crops less resistant to weeds (vegetables, herbs) in small gardens with high quality soil, to maximize the ratio of output over maintenance effort - making weed growth increase with soil quality would at least partially remove this benefit, and in the extreme it could inadvertently incentivize making gardens in low fertility soil (even if it was still suboptimal, the perceived benefit of less frequent weeding could nudge players in the wrong direction), if weed growth is constant for all farmland blocks regardless of location and only affected by the crop growing on the block, then maintenance effort is a very predictable part of the system that can be easily balanced with positive and negative effects - tying it to proximity to grass and weeds could encourage some potentially cheesy strategies (isolating gardens from all nearby grass) and interfere with the added reward for removing weeds (preferably a small boost to nutrients for the soil block, alternatively a plant debris item) which is intended to make weeding less a purely detrimental chore and more an integral part of the farming cycle. 9 hours ago, Bruno Willis said: Manure... I really don't know. I've played with a mod which added it, and it was pretty over-involved, which maybe contributed to it being less fun. I think if it needed to be piled up, like bones can be, but when it reached max, it would turn into a full block of manure which could then be used, that might simulate letting the manure develop, without adding too much unintuitive gameplay. I don't think manure is quite as critical as you're suggesting though. Useful, but not the end of the world if you don't use it. My thought is that manure really doesn't have to be complicated. Put straw bedding near domesticated animals, pick it up after some time, and spread it in the garden soil. Some added steps could be added for the sake of realism if nothing else, but taking some liberties for the sake of gameplay is perfectly fine as well, and I think this is a good example of a feature where added complexity has little purpose and doesn't solve any problems, and may easily even be detrimental for the purpose of manure being the superior type of fertilizer. 2
LadyWYT Posted 12 hours ago Report Posted 12 hours ago As far as fertilizer goes, what about allowing the player to use a hoe to work it into the soil? Sprinkling fertilizer on top could be useful for boosting growing crops, but taking the time and effort to mix fertilizer into a farmland tile with the hoe could restore nutrients instantly, as well as perhaps be a more immersive way to upgrade the quality of farmland tiles. For obvious reasons, the farmland can only be worked like this while crops aren't growing on it. 2
Tabbot95 Posted 6 hours ago Report Posted 6 hours ago straw bedding would be a great way to implement saltpeter harvesting.
Bruno Willis Posted 6 hours ago Report Posted 6 hours ago While we're talking about manure, I'd love to see bats and sea birds in the game, along with guano in big fly-swarmed piles in the places where they nest. That'd make the sea-side feel more sea-like, and caves feel more nasty and dangerous, and give us access to a very valuable fertilizer. Guano! Guano! Guano!
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