Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

DestinyCall · 2019-11-17 19:13:21

One of the stated goals of the "family specializations" update was promote trade between families. In order to access higher tech ingredients, like rubber, horses and oil, you will need to cooperate with all the flavors of humanity. Just like you need to find someone who has the proper skills for smithing if you want to make a steel hoe, now you will need to find a Desert coffee person if you need a horse or a Jungle chocolate person to help you harvest rubber or a Tundra ginger person to drill for oil and mine for gold.

On the plus side, this does encourage different families to work together in peace for their mutual benefit. On the downside, it does NOT promote the trade of rubber or oil or horses. It actually encourages people to trade for coffee, chocolate, and ginger. Long distance trading is problematic, because it takes time and planning. Well tap-outs force villages to establish pretty far apart, so travel between villages is quite time-consuming and difficult. It is easy to get lost along the way and if you live apart from each other, you cannot easily communicate with each other due to language differences.

The obvious solution is to combine your families in a single multi-family town. The rich selection of flavors will allow your town to gather all resources and grow stronger together, once your powers combine Captain-Planet-Style. By removing travel distance and language barrier from the equation, it becomes much easier to coordinate and work together for a common goal of village survival.

....

Okay, so we now have beautiful melting pot cities (and doomed single/double family towns). But what about trade? We still don't have inter-village trade, because family specializations are a property of the people, not a property of the place. You must go to the tundra/desert/jungle to gather the special resources, but you do not need to live close to those resources. Everyone has the same temperature tolerances and the same starting requirements, so everyone ends up making making settlements and establishing villages in the same general region. Other than finding an viable source for long-term water (untapped spring) and enough wild dirt to get your farms going, you can pretty much live anywhere in the green belt. There's no reason to make outposts or settlements anywhere else on the map.

But what if there WAS a reason to live in other places?

As part of the jungle specialization, Mangos and Rubber trees can only be planted IN the jungle. What if this was true for ALL crops? Instead of being able to gather seeds and bring them back to your village, what if crops required the environmental conditions present in their native biome to thrive? If they were planted outside of the correct biome, they would wither and die.

In the real world, plants from tropical regions do not handle the chill of winter in a colder climate and plants that are adapted to live in a drier climate will develop mildew and other health problems in a wetter climate. Some plants can tolerate being planted in a wider range of conditions, but many have very specific growth requirements.

Right now, we have a wide range of crops available to plant. If some of these crops could only be planted in certain regions, it would encourage people to setup "farming outposts" to grow the necessary plants to keep the big city supplied with food variety. These smaller communities would be able to provide the city with foods that could not be grown in the green zone and they would need to be provided with supplies, like replacement tools and more buckets, to continue to farm their valuable crops.

...

I think this kind of approach has the potential to address one of the major barriers to inter-village trade in OHOL, because it would create a reason to PRODUCE a product in one area that would be unavailable (and desired) in a different region. Supply and demand is at the core of any economy. As long as all villages have access to all the same raw materials, there is no reason to travel long distances to trade for something that could be more easily produced within your own town. But if some crops were not available due to your villages location, this would give you a reason to travel somewhere else to grow those crops (if you wanted to have them for your village) and once you were there, you would probably want to make the farm more comfortable, since traveling back to the village for supplies would take too much time. I could see little "family homesteads" developing in different biomes as a particular family took up farming, created a small outpost to supply their basic needs while they farmed, and then delivered their surplus back to the main village in exchange for things that they were unable to easily produce themselves due to limited infrastructure at the farm site.

...

Enough about the theory, how could this work in-game? Well, if the goal is to encourage farming outposts, then there needs to be a few important changes made to the core gameplay to achieve a good balance. Otherwise, it won't be possible to make a sustainable outpost (or even a viable main village) and the whole idea will fall apart before it gets off the ground.

Most importantly, to be ABLE to farm you need dirt and water. Swamp has lots of ponds, but NO plants are currently found in the swamp region. In contrast, prairie has a ton of plants (carrot, wheat, beans, corn, squash, rose) but NO dirt and limited water access. Badlands only have a single crop, which is fine, but there is also no water/dirt in the badlands. Jungle is not very hospitable to life (too hot, full of mosquitoes) and lacks easy access to dirt/water, but it does have a wide variety of interesting plants (tomato, pepper, mango, rubber tree). Grass has a decent variety of crops (gooseberry, onion, potato, milkweed), natural dirt deposits, and tends to occur near swamps, so it is obviously a great choice for early farming. But in order to grow crops long-term, you need to be able to make compost, which would require gooseberry/carrot/wheat and sheep dung. Since carrots and wheat would be grown in the prairie but gooseberries must be planted in the grasslands, this would either require that every village find a spot at the nexus of three biomes (swamp/grass/prairie) to allow all the necessary crops to be grown together ... or it would require a lot of extra busy work as people transported carrots/wheat and berry bowls back and forth between distant farms.

One possible solution is to change the composting cycle to allow for a simpler recipe. Currently, a pile of compost is made by adding a mashed bowl of berry/carrot to straw, adding a bowl of water, then adding a pile of sheep dung to kick off the compost cycle. When it is finished composting, you gain seven baskets of fresh dirt. But this doesn't need to be the ONLY way to get new dirt.

Instead of requiring two bowls of berry/carrots (one for the straw and one for the sheep dung), the composting recipe could be changed to allow for a few alternative outcomes, depending on your available resources. Either a bowl of berries OR a bowl of mashed carrot could be added to the straw to produce a dry compost pile. You could then add sheep dung to start composting like normal. However, what if you don't have sheep? No problem ... after 5 minutes, a wet compost pile would transition to a composting pile automatically. HOWEVER, this dung-free compost would only produce FOUR baskets of dirt instead of the regular seven baskets. This means that you could easily produce a lot of dirt, even without access to sheep, but involving sheep in the process would make things faster and better.

Another change would be that WHEAT could be replaced with TULE REEDS as a starting point for compost. We can already use reeds to produce baskets, so this would be a natural substitution and open up the possibility of locating your grass village far away from the prairie. In the green lands, villages could be started near swamps with access to berry/reed to make early compost. In the prarire, villages could be started near a spring (for water) and farmers would use carrot/wheat to make early compost. Later on, after the village got sheep, you would want to get both carrot and berry in your village so you could feed the sheep and make better compost piles.

The purpose behind these changes would be to allow a farming outpost to exist away from the main village or even for two villages to develop in different starting biomes independently. Sheepless composting means that a farming outpost could focus on crop-production without requiring full village infrastructure. Water and dirt are the main requirements of farming, so any outpost will need to have a viable source for both.

To facilitate early boot-strapping, it might also be nice to add a small number of natural ponds and dirt deposits to the prairie, since it has so many biome-specific crops. This would make both green and prairie viable as starting locations for the average village and encourage the formation of geographically distinct villages. Swamps would be primarily a source of water for nearby villages, rather than a place to set-up your farms. Alternatively, reduce the tap-out distance on wells, so that a green village could travel to the nearest prairie and setup a second well to begin farming there or vice versa.

Keep in mind - most of the best FOOD crops are grown in the prairie (wheat, corn, carrots). But milkweed must be grown in the green biome. It isn't edible, but it is vital for development. Your village can live in the prairie to grow food and gather wild milkweed for a while, but eventually millkweed farms will become more practical. Alternatively, you could live in the green biome and eat berries, but eventually you will want the wider food variety offered by the prairie.

Of course, straddling the border between green and prairie is another solution for this problem. This would elminate the need to travel between farming zones and save time. But this is not necessarily the BEST option, especially since wells eventually dry out. By spreading out your farms, you will deplete water sources more slowly and be able to remain in a particular region longer without exhausting all the available water.

.....

TLDR:

Crops only grow in the biome where they are found naturally (gooseberry in green, cabbage in badlands, corn in prairie, etc).
Composting is changed to allow REED = WHEAT and the Mashed Carrot Bowl or Berry Bowl instead of Mashed Berry/Carrot bowl.
No-Dung Compost Pile gives significantly less dirt but doesn't require sheep.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-11-17 19:41:42)

Toxolotl · 2019-11-17 23:16:04

I like these ideas. I could see the biome restrictions limiting the ability of towns to grow into megacities though. I really like the idea and it would create an interesting diversity for settlements. Maybe an alternative could be that non native plants do not preform as well outside their biome (60% of base production), and plants from an extreme biome cannot grow outside of them. Perhaps over time, maybe 1000 years, the plants adapt and go back to 100% of base production. Many plants have adapted and been genetically refined over the course of centuries. Just look at corn for example. Sometimes plants grow better outside of their native environment as well. This would likely overcomplicate things though. Biome restriction or a base cut on production would likely be easier to implement.

As much as this flavors of humanity is a cute idea, it is a bit confusing. Just as easy to say black, brown, white, ginger. Another issue is when you describe someone as a vanilla person its hard to distinguish if you mean their skin tone or if they are a non mod user.

Wuatduhf · 2019-11-17 23:35:45

https://github.com/Civcraft/RealisticBiomes/wiki

Earlier in the year I suggested for Jason to take a further look into CivCraft, which was essentially OHOL in Minecraft. One of the aspects of it that I was trying to highlight - among all the other things it did right - was crop biome restrictions, which is basically this thread.

What I disagree with is preventing crops from growing outside of the terrain where they are normally located; that would just emulate the Specializations issue on another level. Jason could make a 'list' of which biomes the crop/tree is allowed to grow in, and potentially also set a 'value' for how quickly it grows, with the secondary biomes going slower.

pein · 2019-11-17 23:49:13

we could have cash crops like Tropico

coffee, cocoa and tobacco then those could be sold on ai market or some sort of other official trade for tokens to be used for unique content

Coconut Fruit · 2019-11-18 01:47:41

Maybe instead of thinking about biomes and food, maybe it would be better if some technologies were available only for specific races. Let's say only black people could use newcomen hammer, only gingers could use newcomen roller and so on (I mean not exactly newcomen tools, but maybe new technologies, new content, idk). And it should be optional and not necessity. You want to thrive even longer when oil is over? Then it's best time to start looking for technologies that you are unable to make without help of other families. But to be honest I don't like it either, forcing interaction with other families... Vanilla users can't see shit (like 5x3 tiles view lmao), things like this won't be vanilla users friendly, they won't keep up, they already can't, it will be more depressing for them than actually fun.

People, stop asking for trading, pls... Who would you trade with? With another family? Not really, you would trade with one random person who will probably not care anyway if he/she is a vanilla user. There are many ways to improve the game, trading is not necessarily one of them, not in a game where communication almost doesn't exists.

I wonder how this game would look like if everyone was forced to use vanilla version... Who would want to spend their life on searching for things like tarry spot? You decide to sucrifice and do it for your family? That's very altruistic, nobody will be waiting for your comeback, nobody will be thankful, because nobody will even know about it. I doubt that there is serious communication between vanilla users...

I also wonder how this game would look like if everyone was forced to use modded client. I feel like this game is a pain for vanilla users, no wonder why they quit it so fast :P

DestinyCall · 2019-11-18 01:59:05

Coconut Fruit wrote:

I wonder how this game would look like if everyone was forced to use vanilla version... Who would want to spend their life on searching for things like tarry spot? You decide to sacrifice and do it for your family? That's very altruistic, nobody will be waiting for your comeback, nobody will be thankful, because nobody will even know about it. I doubt that there is serious communication between vanilla users...
I also wonder how this game would look like if everyone was forced to use modded client. I feel like this game is a pain for vanilla users, no wonder why they quit it so fast

Almost everyone plays the game without mods. There are statistics to back this up on a thread somewhere, but simply put the majority of people are playing with the vanilla view distance and every single new player is likely using an unmodded client.

A lot of veteran players use zoom mod, of course. Personally, I would quit OHOL forever if I couldn't use zoom. It is literally game-breaking for me to be restricted to that tiny view distance. I usually play at around x3 zoom. When running long distances or hunting for something in a large area, I'll pull out to max zoom. I never play on regular zoom.

It's like wearing a cardboard box on your head.

...

I think one of the best improvements to quality of life would be adding zoom to the standard client so everyone could use zoom out of the box without relying on third-party modding. Unfortunately, I don't think it will ever happen, which is a real sadness.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-11-18 02:00:49)

Coconut Fruit · 2019-11-18 08:58:42

DestinyCall wrote:

Almost everyone plays the game without mods. There are statistics to back this up on a thread somewhere, but simply put the majority of people are playing with the vanilla view distance and every single new player is likely using an unmodded client.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Over the past 60 hours, we've seen these lives lived:

     13 client_wonlife  (0.1%)
    544 client_milkweed   (5%)
   1541 client_hetuw     (15%)
   1582 client_awbz      (15%)
   6595 client_official  (64%)
-------------------------
  10275 TOTAL

3680 modded lives vs 6595 vanilla lives. That's far from "Almost everyone plays the game without mods". It says a lot about how shitty this game is with this joke view size.

DestinyCall wrote:

I think one of the best improvements to quality of life would be adding zoom to the standard client so everyone could use zoom out of the box without relying on third-party modding. Unfortunately, I don't think it will ever happen, which is a real sadness.

I'm pretty sure it would increase player base drastically. Like a lot.

This game is already developed for veterans/mod users. Poor vanilla users lol.

Edit: Sry, this post is offtopic I guess. But the thing is, if game is developed for mod users it won't succeed.

Last edited by Coconut Fruit (2019-11-18 09:01:21)

DestinyCall · 2019-11-18 10:06:19

Yeah, not only is the game balanced around mod-users, the difficulty has been repeatedly ramped up to challenge the veteran players who are responsible for keeping most towns alive long-term. I feel sorry for the average players who only play occasionally and don't have mods to make the challenge less frustrating. They must die an awful lot.

Coconut Fruit · 2019-11-18 10:57:54

I saw people were making many good and funny ohol memes on discord, why nobody posts memes on forum? Please start doing it.
I'm too lazy to make memes, but if I wasn't I would make a meme with a vanilla user that can see only 2 tiles in each direction and asking "where is shovel?" Then mod user seeing whole town with search function answering him "it's right behind you"

Greenwood · 2019-11-18 16:15:10

I don't use mods and it hasn't been noticably bad. Sure, finding the right equipment for your stuff around town can be annoying, but most of the time I don't notice it. If you've been using mods for a long while then perhaps it seems strange to image not using 'em. That being said, I've never had to search for a tarry spot before.

DestinyCall · 2019-11-18 16:27:37

You should try zoom mod. Seriously.

It is like getting glasses for the first time as a near-sighted kid. You had no idea what you were missing.

Kaveh · 2019-11-18 17:41:01

I've been playing modded since day 1 (saw a streamer play like that, bought the game because of her stream and then asked her how she got to see some extra stats and zoom out). Whenever I go back it really feels like I can't do anything, just because I'm used to being able to see more. I'll spend ages looking for stuff and everything feels even more cluttered than it does already.

If you're used to it it's probably fine, but it's terrible to go vanilla if you're used to the zoom. Even a little bit would help, especially when looking for things or traveling. I don't usually zoom all the way out, but just have that little bit more to see stuff.
Want to know what it feels like? Set your 1920x1080p monitor to 1280x720p for a little bit and work like that. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it's terrible, and mostly it just feels very very odd.

Saolin · 2019-11-18 21:25:30

I stuck with vanilla for a long time, not wanting to have to mod the game, but I eventually became too frustrated with all the time I would waste running laps searching for basic objects in town.

Anyway on the topic of the thread, I think this is a cool idea, and might even help lay some foundations for trade depending on how it was done. If it just resulted in setting up a farm in another biome right next to town, it wouldn't accomplish much. But if there were several region locked food items pretty far away, personally I'd be at least a little motivated to get them to my town. I'm not sure it's that different from the update Jason just released, but seems a little more in the direction of facilitating trade.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-11-17 19:13:21

Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#2 2019-11-17 23:16:04

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#3 2019-11-17 23:35:45

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#4 2019-11-17 23:49:13

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#5 2019-11-18 01:47:41

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#6 2019-11-18 01:59:05

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#7 2019-11-18 08:58:42

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#8 2019-11-18 10:06:19

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#9 2019-11-18 10:57:54

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#10 2019-11-18 16:15:10

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#11 2019-11-18 16:27:37

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#12 2019-11-18 17:41:01

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

#13 2019-11-18 21:25:30

Re: Biome-specific Crops and Farming outposts

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