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Socialist

Initiation of Agriculture

9 posts in this topic

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Many people have had many complaints about how brief the stone age is. There have been many suggestions for requirements before the development of metal, and other artificial limitations, but this is neither accurate (historically), or overly believable. The main development that allowed people to stay in one place and develop the technology and innovations that we want to delay was agriculture.

 

As it is, agriculture is extremely easy to start in TFC. Seeds are obtainable from any wild plant, ripe or not, and immediately plant-able in quickly tillable dirt. This is what should be changed. Agriculture should be much harder and slower to start, and with that, the necessity of travel for food will slow the advancement of other technologies desired for later in the game.

 

In the beginning, seeds should not be obtainable by harvesting wild crops. All that should be obtainable from crops is the raw food, assuming they are ripe. When eating the raw crops, there should be a chance that the crop is "planted" on the tile the player is on, a chance which is tiny at first. Better would be to make some way so that an indication that they have been "planted" is not immediate, and only after a day or two in-game do the first signs (1st wild stage of the crop) appear. These crops, that are semi-wild, would give food, as well as something like "crop parts", which could be used on grass or dirt for a much higher chance of creating crops. (These crops should be immediately view-able) These second-stage human-grown crops would drop seeds as normal, and from there, agriculture as it is.

 

After a certain agriculture level has been achieved, it is possible to get the intermediate seeds directly from new wild crops. At an even higher level, getting new crops should be essentially as it is in TFC1, you find it, you have the seeds and can plant it. Following this model, it would require a moderate agriculture level before growing things you don't directly eat (jute, sugarcane), was possible.

 

A crude form of quern should also be available, like a mortar and pestal or something, that is much slower and more inefficient, but does not require metal to make. It should only be usable with grains, not the minerals, but should allow for bread before metal.

 

If this was implemented, the natural abundance of wild food should decrease. It shouldn't be possible to collect enough food for a few months in a few days, then work to develop metals while just starting with agriculture. The scarcity should be such that player need to work for food, at least until they have a good agricultural base going.

 

This isn't to say metal should be impossible to get before agriculture, it should also be possible to advance as a nomad, and herd animals and such to survive, and develop metal, all without plant agriculture, but it should be much more difficult, and a much slower start. (For this, think of how the mongols were pre-global conquest)

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Interesting ideas - A lot of the *ideas* I quite like.

The one thing I don't like is suggesting that wild plants are less common.

I have seen many many seeds where you have to walk for *days* before finding your first non-seaweed food source - even in temperate climates.

Also, if you make wild crops less common and planting crops significantly harder, then that's a sure-fire way to depopulation.  You could quite easily end up with those precious grains simply no longer being available.

 

I think that perhaps something like making it impossible to till soil until a certain skill level in agriculture has been reached is a more practical (and practicable) solution

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I like some of your ideas, but not all of then.

The truth is that ancient societies were so efficient in surviving by hunting and gathering, that it took many thousand of years before they decided to settle down in one place. To this day we still have hunter gatherers tribes in some remote locations.

There is a difference between Nomad and Hunter gatherer, and yes a tribe can be both, but it can also be just nomad or just gatherer.

The Mongols were Nomads, but they had Cattle, sheep, goats, horses and camels. Another very important thing was commerce, since they were not self sufficient Yes a very powerful empire, but it depended on conquering and taxing other people.

Was it possible for some mongol smiths to work metal tools? Yes off course. But there is no way a nomad tribe will be able to efficiently mine for ores, specially if they are also only hunter/gatherer and do not have domestic animals.

It is widely accepted by anthropologists, that setting down in one place and developing agriculture and animal husbandry were conditions for the discovery and development of metallurgy. Even pottery was not that much for nomad/hunter/gatherer tribes, as clay is heavy and everything needed to be Carrie in your back.

The main thing that agriculture gave to man was the possibility of having few people working a field and still feed the whole tribe. This free up others to specialize in different professions, Now it was possible for someone to dedicate time and effort to be the best pottery maker, and trade his product for food. The same held true for smiths, leather workers, cattle caretakers, It also made possible for large cities to evolve, with government and religion.

All that came before metal work. The truth is that one of the main thing that convinced man to settle down was the ability to live in a house, well protected against the elements, and the food security that agriculture gave.

The problem is how we can translate all that into a game? every time someone talks about limiting inventory, we have such an uproar from the weenies that any discussion is made impossible.

Some things could be added to the game to help with that, Other could be tweaked, but many people would not like the changes. Body temperature is one of then, the necessity to be protected from the environment would help.

An easy change could it be for example slowness every time you have a barrel or large vessel in your back. So you can move them around, but to actually transport them you will need burden animals. Animal hunger is another feature that could help, just because you would actually need to plant and feed your animals.

So many other things, but I do not believe they will ever be implemented.  

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 The suggestion with regard to wild crops would definitely make the start very hunter-gathery.  Personally, I wouldn't mind the stone age being longer, but I'm not sure I want to have to wait through a season of crops to farm food, much less jute, and especially if it's combined with scarcer wild food.  And I don't think this suggestion will prolong the stone age. 

 

I don't think this suggestion will extend the stone age because there's not been any tech dependencies suggested to make that true.  Which you did say is fine, but it sort of conflicts with the opening statement suggesting that extending the stone age is a goal of this change.     This change merely hoped that by increasing the food workload, the metal progression will suffer as a result.  But the metal progression in the game is relatively simple as it stands - gather surface nuggets, pit kiln them.  Making a clay vessel and a couple molds is very fast, they won't be hindered at all if they don't change significantly.   And really, making the player an obligate hunter-gatherer in the start is going to require they wander more, which will in turn mean they probably will find plenty of nuggets.  Picking nuggets up is easy. Putting them in a vessel is easy.  So overall, I don't think what you suggest will impact metal progression all that much.   So people will have a pick and saw, but maybe not the time to mine.  I think that will frustrate people, and in general I'd imagine most people aren't really looking for an extended hunter-gatherer phase.

 

I do like the general notion of a tree of devices for all production.  In my mind it's not really a tree without at least 3 steps, so in the case of grain grinding your first step could be a grinding stone.  

 

I'd suggest plants should not give seeds unless mature.  That would reduce the ease with which players can get seeds.  

 

If more difficulty were desired, it might be interesting if early on, when the player has low skill, they don't just get seeds popping off, but instead have to somehow sacrifice food to try and get seeds.  That sets up a choice - food or seeds - which was actually a very real choice historically oftentimes.  Offhand I'd say soaking in a large vessel for a time (more clay and large vessels used!).  Potatoes wouldn't work for that obviously, but since they are already I think 1st or 2nd highest producing crop, maybe you just can't get seeds from them by soaking.  Them or onions.  You have to increase your skill with other crops, then eventually you get seeds from everything via harvesting.  If the player manages to get a saw before he's teched up in agriculture, then he can soak seeds more efficiently, since barrel is double the capacity of a large clay vessel.   I just feel like forcing players to wait through and entire season of crop growth to get seeds is not going to be fun or interesting (and the way suggested requires a bunch of additional items).   But giving the players a choice to make via which they can balance their food and seed needs, might be.

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Since metallurgy was a learned skill, any way to prevent people from advancing too quickly into it will feel artificial. I personally would prefer a learning skill system, the type where you have to do something to unlock something else.

It's not like Hunter/Gatherers went about collecting every single piece of metal they could find on the surface in preparation to have enough for metal tools and immediately start digging out mines.

I am prepping a server using the progression mod to try to extend stone age, but no matter what I do all the other areas of the game still lack in depth.

Just imagine if farming had as much depth as metallurgy does.

Let me make a comparison. How much more evolved is metallurgy in tfc versus metallurgy in vanilla minecraft? Like 10 times more elaborated.

Now how different is farming in tfc versus farming in vanilla? It's better, yes. but not so much depth.There is so much more that could be done in farming to make it more challenging and rewarding. 

Just ask any real farmer if farming is just about to drop a seed on the ground. 

There is soil correction, not all plants grow everywhere, that could work tying plants with different kind of dirt.

There is proper irrigation, with finite water it would require to be close to water.

There is Fertilizers and composts. Seriously, do you think anyone playing ARK is gross out to have to pick up Dino poop? Or their developers cannot code poop? Anyone who owns a garden knows that we use cow manure to fertilize our flower and vegetable gardens. 

There is weed and insect control.

All that just about Farming, the same holds true for other aspects of the game, like Animal Husbandry, Pottery, clothing, food preservation and whatever else you can think about.

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There is so much more that could be done in farming to make it more challenging and rewarding. 

Agreed.  The OP seemed focused on the very beginning though, so I tried to limit myself to that.   I think a lot of different areas of the ag system have been touched on in a lot of other posts.  Just no overriding topic for it I believe.

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I don't know If I like this idea, because I don't think it is done in the right way. I think that farming should become more difficult, modelling history/real life, with the player(s) having to switch form a small steady source of food (hunter gathering) to large but seasonal source of food (farming). This should be done by making field preparation more important, like the soil's pH, irrigation, fertilizers, and other facets of farming become key to being able to plant crops. Another thing is I hope that temperature and food are the driving, as well as limiting, factors in making you want to get metal, with keeping warm and fed occupying most of your time, but with metals making it it much easier to do both of those things.

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I think farming already so annoying because of the excess of variables, all that we need is a alarm at calendar to remember all things to do

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I don't know If I like this idea, because I don't think it is done in the right way. I think that farming should become more difficult, modelling history/real life, with the player(s) having to switch form a small steady source of food (hunter gathering) to large but seasonal source of food (farming). This should be done by making field preparation more important, like the soil's pH, irrigation, fertilizers, and other facets of farming become key to being able to plant crops. Another thing is I hope that temperature and food are the driving, as well as limiting, factors in making you want to get metal, with keeping warm and fed occupying most of your time, but with metals making it it much easier to do both of those things.

I really like this. Just imagine if you had to clean the fields of pesky weeds that keep sprouting and if unattended would make the crop give no harvest.

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