TL:DR I think as a farmer levels up different crops should be unlocked. These crops should be dependent on the biome and not the race.
I don’t remember the name of the two playable races so I apologise for any confusion.
Last night I noticed that the crops that a race grows are independent of the biome they are in. This makes me wonder if perhaps they should be race independent and instead biome specific.
As i continued to play I wondered if it would be a good idea to have the only one or two crops available at the start and as a farmer levels more crop options become available. I understand this might be more complex to get going.
Thank you for reading
3 Likes
i think as the game progresses in development and additional crops are added this will be easier to do otherwise one race may have a harder time as there isn’t a food equivalent for example.
The suggestion that the farmer unlocks certain crops with lvlups is quite interesting.
Let’s say your newly promoted farmer can only grow turnips, carrots and some pumpkin(all the not so tasty food).
unlocking the more sophisticated crops like wheat and corn at lvl2 and 3.
high lvl crops like fruits or whatever TR comes up with might need lvl4+.
Silkweed could a exception from that lvling system because it is unlocked for farming when you find and harvest your first silkweed-plant out there in the wild. This would incite players to go out there and explore the wildlands instead of focussing only on their town. The farmers could get their own workbench/table to research the found crops to gain access to the seeds and do other farming stuff(stuffing plants in pots for decoration or putting grain/corn in bags - not just throw it on the ground; crafting fertilizer on a compost pile)
Additionally to finding and researching it you could maybe buy the seeds from a traveling merchant(at a very high price 1000G+).
This system would allow to add more and more crops at different difficulties. And would serve as an explanation why Rayas Children have the same crops to grow as the Ascendancy.
May twist it a little that Rayas Children learn corn at lvlup and have to buy the wheat seed from the merchant whereas the Ascendancy learn wheat but have to buy the more exotic corn seeds.
As for the proposal to make the crops biome dependant…
I wouldn’t say biome dependant but give the crops different dependancies towards the soil, availability of water and insolation for healthy crops to grow.
The desert biome has lesser fertile soil and poor humidity but the sun is more intense than in the temperate zone. The temperate zone instead has a lot more humidity and low water crops could flourish there like crazy but the lesser insolation slows down their growth:
e.g.
- In the desert (in a far futuristic update maybe) irrigation may improve the farming results tremendously so you want that engineer class to build a watering system. In another suggestion thread there was the suggestion for fertilizer made of leftovers from crafters and rotten food.
- In the temperate zone irrigation might not so much improve the farming results but soil enhancement might prove very useful and the engineer might build something to help the crops grow with materials only available there (greenhouse?).
4 Likes
Yeah but rayas children can’t grow silkweed so they are already up against it in my view.
However I take your point on making a balanced choice to starting food options for each race
Hey there @Alasdair_Taylor, welcome to the Discourse! Great suggestion!
The drop dependancies to where they grow could be further split up… or let’s say deepened:
Soil isn’t everywhere equally good (or bad for that matter). Looking at the map of the temperate zone there are the different colors indicating the height of groundlevel (above ground). This could be linked to the fertility of the soil at that block/chunk of the world:
The greener the soil the more fertile it is.
which means: The deep green soil is the best to farm on. The higher grounds have less soil (up to none soil but bare rocks and snow) so farming there might be not so rewarding but might be needed for some crops that need more insolation.
It would be up to the player to determine where to grow which crops:
- wheat? May be a good idea to plant this in the rich soil low-lands with an irrigation system
- turnips, carrots and other roots? qwith their low soil requirements it can grow nearly everywhere and therefore is great for higher grounds and the more barren soils. does not need much insolation, soil or water: great starter crop! with low nutrient lvl
- corn as crop that needs some decent soil and lots of sun is a more desert-like plant but needs lots of irrigation to grow at decent speed. good to grow on higher ground as long there is some soil and water.
So these dependancies vary by crop and ppl might want to think of where to grow what instead of just planting everything in one spot and be done with the farming part of the game.
To add depth to this mechanic some improvements to farming could offer mid to late game changes in the villages structure:
-
soil might be improved by farmers using fertilizer (fertilizer may be crafted by farmers themselves as the first and early improvement to farming)
-
irrigation might be built by engineer-class (engineer lays groundwork and some parts of the pipe system may get built by normal workers
-
insolation and warmth may improved in a small scale by the engineer building some greenhouse-like structure. which is desirable to build but has high upkeep (engineer has to repair/adjust… do work on the structure regularly to make it work efficiently)
So improvements would come in waves over the whole game:
at start: no improvements at all normal growing crops (some crops might take en eternity to ripen up)
1st wave/early game: soil enrichment by fertilizer the farmers can craft
2nd wave/mid-late game: engineer can build some greenhousing for special crops(needs attention/work from engineer)
3rd wave/late-end game: engineer can build irrigation system which needs also constant attention/work from workers (filling the watertower)
4th wave/endgame: engineer and magmasmith can build some machine(steamworks? 
) to power pumps and stuff to lower the workload on the earlier built improvements (freeing up workers and engineers)
2 Likes
had i discussion but that topic in my thread:
http://discourse.stonehearth.net/t/savegame-coop-passive-multiplayer/20267/15
basicly a culture adapts and is influneced by their habitat and biome. so rayya should never have non-desert crops and recipies for these, with the same issue with the ascendants, why should they have any seeds and recipes for all types of food? so cutting of the access makes sense, but needs a bit balance gameplay technically, like shapeless recipes: flour and later bread can be crafted with corn and wheat since the basic technic is the same. So corn and wheat could havethe the same role in the cultures, they could have bonus yields according to a fitting placement/biome, but there’s no need to disable 'em completely (= players could trade if they want all kind of crops and you can still play a culture in a unfitting biome)
additionaly you can make differences with flexible crops and biome specific ones: rice in a desert = nope, cactee in swamp =nope, so these two would be biome specific and obviously culture specific, corn and wheat would be flexible accoridng to the biome, so they could be used as culture specific ones and having the same role in the food plan.
and level depending crops is a bit boring and makes no sense, why not seperate them in, basic culture crops (absolute basic and needed food stuff), advanced crops (some special food items and raw resources like silkweed), green thumb (farmer can now plant and yield all kind of crops). to create diversity you can have alternatives for some crops, which look different but are technically the same like corn and wheat, and limit the access by trading and exploring requierement. So you have at start 2 food seeds and 1 resource seed and all other seeds need to be found in the enviroment or traded with merchants or other players (something like in banished)
Level dependant crops might seem a bit boring but it still makes sense.
Think about it: Almost everyone can put some bean seed in a piece of dirt and it grows like crazy - looking at you, Mickey Mouse! - but not everyone can grow… erm cactee or other difficult plants that require a wee bit of knowledge what this particular plant prefers in terms of soil, insolation/shadowiness and watering.
E.g.:
My nephew came over last summer and wanted to grow some tree-seed he found. End of story: he drowned the sprout and its roots rotted. -> Dead plant.
I don’t want SH to be the next big farming simulator!
But as the hearthlings work and accumulate knowledge about their work (carpenter, smith and weaver unlock more difficult blueprints, healer and cook learn more sohisticated recipes) the farmers could learn how to handle the more demanding crops.
So as high lvl soldiers are precious and should be kept alive … high lvl farmers should be pecious too. (Hopefully in the far future we get a version of SH where we get new hearthlings by birthing and not just daily reports… but also your hearthlings might age and die… 
)
Splitting this progression in three steps like @Zardimooo mentioned seems reasonable to me:
- basic culture crops: basicly needed at the start of the game
- advanced crops: after working a while (1st lvlup is achieved quite quickly) the resource crops like silkweed are needed
- green thumb: The crops of other cultures are bought from merchants or found in other biomes. Yay!
This would serve as a learning curve for starters and has some logic behind it for the experienced players as well.
3 Likes
ehhm i didn’t ment the ability to grow crops properly being level depending, otherwise my suggestion wouldn’t make actually sense, just an additional physicall requierment like seeds, i mean just because i got the ability to grow 'em doesn’t mean i have automatically all seeds. So let’s say you start with basic amount of seeds and instead of being able to plant them in infinite amounts you have to multiply 'em and manage to provide enough food and seeds for future fields.
Just think of the silkweed plants you find in the wilderness. let’s say you can find wild versions and you need to cultivate 'em, so a wild plant grows 1 fruit with 1 seed and is destroyed after being gathered, but a cultivated version needs to be cared of with water and fertilizer, but you can yield more fruits from one plant. this way you actually have a reason to explore and cultivate plants. (i personally exploited berry bushes and wild silkweed plants, by placing them near my village and could yield 'em every day = tons of resources with no cost)
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Yeah, but eventually Hearthlings get sick of berries. [Currently there’s not much of a way to show this to the player besides the journal.] And, well, I find I can’t ever get much wild silkweed because it has to be marked for harvest every single time, though that might be less of a deterrent for someone less lazy / less focused on building than me.
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I am lazy. You have my vote for the devs to make some area dsignation where we can transplant our wild silkweed and berry bushes and have the damn farmers harvest them on a daily basis… damn i’m drunk! C U tomorrow!
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Mmmh maybe not sick, but bored. maybe add something like attributes for food and dishes?
3 types: sweetness, calories and nutrition/water.
so every food item or even dish has different values at this attributes and the player has to think, what to grow and to cook. That way we always have to to change the diet plan and can use the whole content properly. And it also enables new mechanic like sickness (fat hearthlings!!!).
while we’re talking about auto harvest, i think this would end up with full stockpiles if they don’t add additional content/usage. Like juice from berries as drinking supply, you place a barrel with a squeezer and farmers auto refill it with berries and if a specific amount is gathered they press it into juice. Let’s say 10 baskets = 1 barrel of juice.
For such resources an mainting function for stockpiles would be handy, so auto gathering and production is enabled until a specific amount is made or it only start if a specific amount is stored. So you can smelt all ore automaticly aslong it is possible and people automaticly restock resources…
i think xen2001 already drank a few barrels of berrywine…
Nope. That was a heavy load of weissbeer at Saturday night. 
Anyway… I think i wrote this idea somewhere already but having kegs full of juice (berry juice or apple juice) and have it age in the stockpile. Instead of rotting it would turn into alcohol like the mentioned berrywine or cider. (We have at least 5 different types of fur. Therefore i want at least 4 different kinds of alcohol: Berrywine, cider, tequila and BEER!)
Nevermind… 
Would be cool though.
On a side note: Rises the PEGI rating of SH if we get alcohol implemented in the game? gotta google this…
3 Likes
I think fatness would be too hard to implement, but a “tummy ache” mechanic from not eating the right foods (Berries again?) might be adorable. Maybe it slows them down.
3 Likes
Anything to make farming more interesting gets a thumbs up in my book.
Seeds would be interesting, but the backend for that might be a little too high. Need a way to get them, a way to store them, a way to use them besides farming, etc. Would be cool though.
Biome/Level specific crops definately interests me. Makes certain goods more valuable in certain areas, which makes the game more entertaining as a whole.
The only big downside is that the cook and the shepherd are both dependent on the farmer, unfortunately. The cook requires a large amount of food to be created to actually be useful, and you also need food to feed any animals you have. Might be better to have the farmer unlock better versions of crops at higher levels, as a way of increasing yields or something. Maybe get magic into it somehow.
Overall, makes farmers more interesting.