Discussion Soil mechanic

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 minute ago, Vantha said:

How would the feature be communicated to players? And can we rely solely on the ground's texture to indicate its fertility?

At the moment I think will be represented by  a building 

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Vantha 

You gave me a good idea, how in real life do we know where there is good fertile soil?

2 years ago I traveled to the countryside to my girlfriend's farmland.

My brother-in-law taught him how to get soil for my plants.

He taught me to mix manure waste and soil from the ground ...

The ground/soil ..He taught me that it had to be from fruit trees. 

The land of trees, where fruits die, is fertile.

I have a video of that.

Getting back to the topic: the soil around fruits bushes or fruit trees can be excellent for fields.

Edited October 8 by Lion.Kanzen

[Lion.Kanzen]

Another idea would be to plant in areas where there were fruit trees and bushes.

Basically you just collect the fruits and then build a farm.

It also works in areas where there are trees.

And again it can work in areas where there is livestock.

In the end, the organic wastes of plants can work.

On the other hand, human waste pollutes and is not good for farming.

This means that the areas where the CC and the houses are are not good for planting.

Edited October 8 by Lion.Kanzen

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Another idea would be to plant in areas where there were fruit trees and bushes.

It also works in areas where there are trees.

And again it can work in areas where there is livestock.

In the end, the organic wastes of plants can work.

On the other hand, human waste pollutes and is not good for farming.

This means that the areas where the CC and the houses are are not good for planting.

So as not to make this so long.

Planting in natural areas = good.

Planting in urban areas = bad.

[Grautvornix]

For desert maps (my favourite subject, it seems), good farming area is where there is green patches in the sand. Bad area is where there is no natural green.

This could lead to a situation where you initially hunt animals and cut tress and put farmland where the trees used to be.

[Lion.Kanzen]

51 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

For desert maps (my favourite subject, it seems), good farming area is where there is green patches in the sand. Bad area is where there is no natural green.

This could lead to a situation where you initially hunt animals and cut tress and put farmland where the trees used to be.

Implementing that for now is complicated, that would be ideal, but it would have to be in a later development of the mechanics.

 

This proposal to implement it in the style of The Fertile Crescent (TFC) will take time.

@Stan` should be asked.

[Acanthis]

Virtually all organic waste, including human excrement, is excellent for soil; providing proper handling and processing (composting, fermentation). Human waste is suitable for use in food production. The collection and use of human excrement in agriculture has only ceased in modern times for a variety of reasons, although it is not entirely unheard of even in developed countries. Especially during the time frame of this game- before modern pharmaceuticals and plastics- human waste would not be something people would have neglected to use.

Not that you have to trust me, but I work professionally in agriculture and have used composted human excrement in a variety of contexts.

Back to the main topic, I like the idea of diversifying the primary production in the game a bit more. Personally I think it would be very neat to have a few more layers of complexity involved in the economy, not to say an Anno series level, but somewhere in between. For example, charcoal production could be made explicit rather than implicit in the cost of various upgrades and units.

But even more kinds of farms or a way to, building on Lion's suggestion, adding an agricultural "building" to "claim" berries/vineyards/fruit trees and turn them into orchards & vineyards would be cool. Simply from a variety and enjoyability point of view, the basic fields get boring and don't necessarily reflect the wide range of agricultural practices of the times and places the game depicts.

[Lion.Kanzen]

4 hours ago, Acanthis said:

Virtually all organic waste, including human excrement, is excellent for soil;

Yes, but it depends on the treatment.

https://daily.jstor.org/a-history-of-human-waste-as-fertilizer/

Urine decomposes much more easily in the environment.

The process with feces is more complex.

Apart from that, it is dangerous to contaminate a water source.

 

4 hours ago, Acanthis said:

Back to the main topic, I like the idea of diversifying the primary production in the game a bit more. Personally I think it would be very neat to have a few more layers of complexity involved in the economy, not to say an Anno series level, but somewhere in between. For example, charcoal production could be made explicit rather than implicit in the cost of various upgrades and units.

Something simpler would sometimes be that land is valuable simply for the sake of being able to cultivate it, not just for the extraction of resources.(Minerals).

It adds a layer of handicap but with the resources that the game has, such as animals and plants, it can improve the natural capacity of the soil.

Civilizations developed near water sources and where they had domesticable animals.

These are maps of the origins of crops.

Origins of Agriculture. Vavilov’s original map of the origins of agriculture ( 1 ) Mexico-Guatemala, ( 2 ) Peru-Ecuador-Bolivia, ( 2A ) Southern Chile, ( 2B ) Southern Brazil, ( 3 ) Mediterranean, ( 4 ) Middle East, ( 5 ) Ethiopia, ( 6 ) Central Asia, (7) Indo-Burma, ( 7A ) Siam-Malaya-Java, ( 8 ) China. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Animal Domestication.

 

[Grautvornix]

That's all very valid argumentation - but the original point was less about soil fertility itself that can indeed be improved by appropriate treatment, but more generally the suitability of various types of terrain for farming, i.e. a complex made out of water availablility and soil structure.

Irrigation systems are currently nbot part of the game (e.g. building wells, pipes, aquaeducts or the like) (apologies, you might tell from that that I have played "settlers" a lot in the past).

That would be a future possibility I would be looking forward to. BTW, destroying your opponent's irrigation system could be a strategy to weaken their farming yield, very much an economical impact like attacking their traders/markets.

The whole point is also not about technology within the tech tree but about different parts of a map could be more or less suitable for farming. Agree that this would need to be implemented within the map itself.

 

Sorry, here is a related topic (could not resist):

A more simple system could be based on climate or biome: I always wondered how one can grow e.g. a ricefield in an arctic environment. in those maps we should depend more on fishing or hunting, potentially also on livestock breeding. Could there be a general farming malus based on the biome type? (as an example nubian, sahara, arctic, or savanna biomes could have malus settings).

All these proposed changes, climate/biome dependency as well as terrain type, could add another little strategic dimension to the game - where to put the next farm, and possibly also where to put the next CC without being too complex.

[Lion.Kanzen]

57 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

A more simple system could be based on climate or biome: I always wondered how one can grow e.g. a ricefield in an arctic environment. in those maps we should depend more on fishing or hunting, potentially also on livestock breeding. Could there be a general farming malus based on the biome type? (as an example nubian, sahara, arctic, or savanna biomes could have malus settings).

All these proposed changes, climate/biome dependency as well as terrain type, could add another little strategic dimension to the game - where to put the next farm, and possibly also where to put the next CC without being too complex.

I thought that too.

[Feldfeld]

I like these ideas, if I find the time maybe I'll make a mod for that.

This can open the way for paired (maybe exclusive) technologies, for example whether compensating for low fertility or optimizing high fertility

[Lion.Kanzen]

4 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

I like these ideas, if I find the time maybe I'll make a mod for that.

This can open the way for paired (maybe exclusive) technologies, for example whether compensating for low fertility or optimizing high fertility

It would be nice to make several mods of mechanics like this, so the concept can be tested.

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 hours ago, Grautvornix said:

A more simple system could be based on climate or biome: I always wondered how one can grow e.g. a ricefield in an arctic environment. in those maps we should depend more on fishing or hunting, potentially also on livestock breeding. Could there be a general farming malus based on the biome type? (as an example nubian, sahara, arctic, or savanna biomes could have malus settings

It is necessary to differentiate a map for hunting and maps for agriculture.

There are maps where there are both, that's why I said that there are symbiosis between livestock and crops.

The other way is fishing, but it is limited.

Arctic map is a map limited by something you can't survive without advanced technology.