farming

[Jos Elkink]

I know it's silly to be the founder of the game and then have to ask other players how to play it, but I've been out of it for so long.

I love the new animal domestication stuff, but is there also similar developments in other aspects of farming? E.g. is there any possibility of growing vegetables or spices that are not native to the town? (Probably not, but just asking.) Or other things a farmer can do, other than taming and using animals for production?

[SekoETC]

I think people were thinking that if it was possible to grow vegetables everywhere, then it would lead into people no longer traveling to far away lands because as long as you saved some of the previous harvest, you would never have to go back for seeds. If it gets implemented, it should be somehow different from the herbs system because that is totally out of balance. It wouldn't make sense if fields produced less per day than wild plants, but they should take investments and require planning.

My suggestion:

A field should have a cycle that's at least 20 days long, maybe even 30, 40 or 60. It could depend on the type of crop. The harvest would happen near the end of the cycle. The field would need weeding on a regular basis, and if weeding was neglected, it would affect the final yield. The final harvest could also be affected by rains during the growing season. If it rained too much, it would rot the seeds, while if there were too many sunny and very sunny days, the plants would dry and wither. Planting a field should be a gamble and it should be possible to get a zero yield, so you could lose your seed crop and have to go to the source to get more. Also it could be that you required multiple people to do the final harvest, and if you used a less than optimal number of people, you wouldn't get the maximum yield. Also if the cycle length was less than 80 days, snow would automatically kill the crops, so people would have to observe the seasons and plan ahead when to plant the seeds in order to be able to harvest before winter.

If we go even further, people could have different mutations of seeds and some would be drought resistant, some moisture resistant, some frost resistant, some give a larger yield, some grow faster etc. Then you could crossbreed to make optimal plants. But this would require separating seeds from other resources. Instead of planting say, 100 g cucumbers, you would harvest cucumber seeds and plant those.

[Crownless]

Herbs, spices, and lemons can be grown in flower pots or window boxes, or in gardens with fertilizer and water.

[Jos Elkink]

I think people were thinking that if it was possible to grow vegetables everywhere, then it would lead into people no longer traveling to far away lands because as long as you saved some of the previous harvest, you would never have to go back for seeds.

Yes, but you could do a few things to address that:

- only some types of plants can be transplanted, others cannot
- it requires getting seeds from a place where the plant already grows
- human-made planting is much slower to harvest than natural ones
- most importantly, for different plants, it will still be fixed in what regions it can grow, it will just be more widespread than now. E.g. a whole island that currently has potatoes in some parts will be able to grow potatoes, but another part might not be - i.e. climate based etc.
- we might even invent some new plants so that the existing ones stay as they are (although we already have a large number of types)

[Jos Elkink]

Herbs, spices, and lemons can be grown in flower pots or window boxes, or in gardens with fertilizer and water.

Cool!

[Tiamo]

From a pack of tamed animals young animals are born.
Tamed animals can be slaughtered to get various types of meat (not the generic meat from hunting).
Some domesticated animals can be used for transport. Some can be used for hunting.

I like the inclusion of seasons in an agricultural cycle (ploughing, seeding/planting, tending, harvesting), as Seko suggests.
Maybe only the most common types of plants should be possible to grow this way (potatoes, rice, wheat, corn), so less common plants would still have to be transported.
Maybe even climate can be introduced in the weather (regional differences in the chances for various weather types), making some areas more apt for agriculture (or types of crops) than others.

[Millhouse]

There was a suggestion for seed farming that Wiro put a lot of work into. It's found here.

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=26987&hilit=seeds

It seems pretty complicated on the surface but it's kind of an elegant solution for people that want to devote characters to farming.

[Alladinsane]

Climate has to exist.... if you are chasing realism at least.

We have a sandy soil in florida and brutal summers where certain plants will -not- grow, the sun just kills them.
Apples, pomegranates...to name a few. Of course, I don't think pomegranates are a cantr fruit.
On the opposite side, the mountainous soils of Montana (banana, pineapple,mango) and Colorado at not favorable for certain types of citrus.

How do we figure climates on a world shaped like a donut?
indoor hydroponics?

Does this mess with trade?

[computaertist]

How do we figure climates on a world shaped like a donut?

As someone pointed out in another thread, Cantr might not actually be donut shaped as it doesn't display any evidence of those curves, it's just "mathematically" a torus (don't ask me what it means for something to be a thing mathematically but not actually, I've only barely grasped it myself). Climates may as well be chosen arbitrarily based partly on terrain type, partly on surrounding terrain types, partly on each other (if I understand right, weather is somehow partly based on surrounding weather, so similar to that could apply to climates), and -maybe- partly on native resources and animals (what climates they thrive in on Earth). ...That's enough inputs to not really be arbitrary in my mind, actually... But if, after all of those inputs, there's still a list of options that would be available for a spot, then arbitrarily pick one of those, maybe favoring ones that would otherwise be picked less often.

[Millhouse]

Like many things about Cantr II it would just need a healthy amount of suspension of disbelief. Rather than base climate systems on any theoretical physical properties of the game world, use existing game features. Use location type with some modifiers like weather and resource slots. So large grasslands in summer would give different results than winters in a small mountain location.

[nateflory]

The probably easier solution would just be make "wheat/rice" and maybe corn/potato be able to be grown in windowboxes or herb gardens.
That would "solve" the solution of making them available in more remote mountain/desert/etc towns?
I know first-hand, that I grew some wild rice in a bucket, on my porch, since I didn't have a real garden after a recent move IRL. The yield was paltry, and enough to make a small side-dish or three, rather than a proper Field of Rice would feed me for a year, but... it worked.
Likewise, I've done Potatoes in a 5-gallon bucket. Didn't produce more than a handful of potatoes, but starting from one small quartered tuber, it "multiplied" well enough for the experiment.

[Jos Elkink]

Like many things about Cantr II it would just need a healthy amount of suspension of disbelief. Rather than base climate systems on any theoretical physical properties of the game world, use existing game features. Use location type with some modifiers like weather and resource slots. So large grasslands in summer would give different results than winters in a small mountain location.

Yes, exactly. I would use current features of weather and landscape, and then also hard-code a bit that in some areas certain things grow or don't grow. You could even imagine using the current distribution of raw materials, like, plant X only grows in locations where you can dig for sand, plant Y requires the presence of limestone, etc.

I nice combination of location type, weather, current resources, and latitude / longitude should provide sufficient variation to encourage interregional trade.

[Shaudawn]

Water may also be an additional factor. Most transplanted resources require extra care, and so besides fertilizer, applied water is often a consideration. The availability of water from wells and other sources can make a farmer consider whether it is better to trade or grow something locally.

The movement of crops is one of the prime social factors in the world. One of the big issues with the Roman Empire was how food staples were supplanted by luxury crops such as olives and grapes given to retired soldiers. And foods originating in the Valley of Mexico now are major crops worldwide.

I was thinking of like plants being a indicator of what can grow in a given region. For example, tomatoes growing native could indicate cucumbers grown as a transplant. However, perhaps other resources, like the limestone or sand, might be a better indicator of soil conditions and allow for greater distribution of transplants.

Just thoughts. Brainstorming.

[*Wiro]

I was working on a system that would allow planting of new seeds by sifting soil, but obviously that hasn't been finished. The idea was that each region had its own soil type and thus its own unique seeds that needed to be crossbred with foreign plants (i.e. with coffee, pumpkin, etcetera) in order to produce a seed that could be planted and grown into a new plant (most importantly chocolate and peppers). It was intended to stimulate trade and interaction by utilising new mechanics such as plants that decayed at a fixed rate meaning that multiple harvesters would be necessary to maximise the output before the plant wilted.

Originally the implementation was going to be unorganised and nonsensical, but then some behind the scenes changes made by Greek enabled me to streamline the whole idea into something that could've actually worked. Unfortunately I think I've lost access to the excel files and graphs.