Looking at the viability of sustainable farms to build villages.

Tebe · 2018-03-10 09:58:32

Constant farm tending is super crucial now. ABH - Always Be Harvesting. Don't let them flower if you don't need the seed, because you lose the soil.

If there's a carrot surplus and all the stocks are filled, it seems best to leave the carrot plots unwatered until there's room in the baskets. Keep the compost nearby to replace the wheat and emptied carrot seed plots as soon as possible.

Tend the berry bushes just as carefully as the carrots, and it seems worthwhile to reap the occasional wheat for pies. 1 bowl of dough makes 3 pie crusts. One mashed carrot or one skinned rabbit can make a pie. So 1.2 plots equals 12 servings of food if you're harvesting 1 wheat and and a carrot. As long as you can keep enough bushes to compost, this just makes tasty sense. And it feels so civilized to be eating pie, especially if you're wearing a shiny new seal fur coat.

Matok · 2018-03-10 18:07:35

There are some very efficient carrot farmers out there for sure, but I have to ask why they should continue to increase the carrot stores when there's already enough to feed a generation. Wouldn't it be wise to spend some of that time on.. oh I don't know... anything else other than picking even more carrots?

I think there hasn't been a lot of 'study' done on the time efficiency of various forms of food sources.

For example, carrots are fairly easy to figure out. A single field grows in about 4 minutes, and you get 5 carrots. They feed 8 'pips' of food each, so that's 40 food per harvest or about 10 food per minute, give or take (mostly take because of the time it takes to harvest, plant, and rewater slowing it down some) So a single carrot plot can, at best, get you up to 10 food per minute but is probably less than that.

However, I've been messing around a bit with the different pies, and I'm still recording some findings. I've found that a simple carrot pie has about a break even food per minute compared to raw carrots (if you consider that a wheat field takes 6 minutes to grow and you have to wait that long to get your dough for pie crust). You have to use 1 carrot for the pie so that 8 food goes into it, but you get a pie out that has 4 slices at 8 food per slice. You do use a field for wheat instead of carrot growing and the wheat does grow slower, so you have to consider that in the time spent per food output, which is why I say the end result is about a break even for carrot pies and straight carrot farming, but the slower growing could be considered a good thing. Less frantic harvesting. Another advantage the pie has is that it has 4 slices that you can store in a single slot, so you can travel much further away from the village on one pie than you can on one carrot without risk of starving.

Then there are the berry pies. I haven't figured the food per minute on those yet because I've been getting my berries from wild bushes, but if you take 4 berries off a wild bush with a bowl and make a pie out of it, you turn those 4 berries which are 24 food into a pie that is 13 food per slice for a total of 52 food for the pie. That's a considerable increase in food amount. I practically lived off just 2 of those for the second half of one of my lives, and was free to roam around instead of standing over carrot fields for an hour.

I think we should try stretching food supplies further with baking, could free people up to do more things.

Baron X · 2018-03-10 18:16:02

Great work Matok, I appreciate the approach you're taking - we should start a docs file for comparison, that way we can collaboratively compile data. I can create one and we can start logging various techniques so we can find an optimal strategy and push civilization onward.

I just bought the game a couple hours ago and I am definitely having fun with it. Great work Jason Rohrer!~

SovietBear · 2018-03-10 18:58:48

Matok wrote:

Wouldn't it be wise to spend some of that time on.. oh I don't know... anything else other than picking even more carrots?

To be honest, from my last dozen runs I have not really seen anybody who wants/knows how/cares at all about farming. And I am not even talking about making compost piles thus creating self sustainable farms, just simple farming. It's either I spent my life farming/making pies or village dies out.
Every newborn kid tends to do whatever he can except for food production. Literally anything, but not farming. Closest they get to food production is rabbit hunting.
And in those rare cases when somebody finally decides to help farming he usually screws everything up by eating berries, watering everything even tho we don't have any free storage, plants milkweeds in the middle of carrot farm, just fails to pick up carrots and destroys soil.. There is like 1001 different ways to screw up civilization and it will take more than a life to explain everything to the new player.

I am sorry about that post guys. I need a brake. May be few weeks later people will get better at this game and trying to make civilization work will not be such pain in the loincloth. Right now the game is super easy in "singleplayer mode" and super hard once you have at least two other players around.

Also.. Jason, please, make a singplayer mode of this game, I want to make a perfect civilization at least once after my 55 hours of gameplay xD

Matok · 2018-03-10 19:35:21

Well if you find yourself in a village that appears to be taking advantage of your kindness, perhaps you should make a smaller farm for yourself somewhere else and leave them to figure out how to feed themselves.

The problem will work itself out one way or another fairly quickly.

My method lately has been to snag a basket and get to looking for clothing or materials to make some as soon as I'm able to take care of myself, and I'm able to live off wild berries fairly well most times which keeps my impact on the village low. There are the times when all the bushes within sight have been picked clean and things just don't work out for me, but usually, if I can live long enough to get a shirt and pants, I'm good from there to be able to provide for myself and then some.

However, if you try to single-handedly save an entire village and succeed, what are you teaching everyone? That they don't have to do anything themselves and they can just mooch off of you.

Cooperation is a great thing and some people need a little support and teaching before they become useful, but there is a point where you have to let them sink or swim on their own or they'll just drown you with them. It's not your job to save everyone. People will learn how to farm when they get tired of running to dry carrot fields and finding no food.

breezeknight · 2018-04-11 08:22:21

SovietBear wrote:

Matok wrote:
Wouldn't it be wise to spend some of that time on.. oh I don't know... anything else other than picking even more carrots?
To be honest, from my last dozen runs I have not really seen anybody who wants/knows how/cares at all about farming. And I am not even talking about making compost piles thus creating self sustainable farms, just simple farming. It's either I spent my life farming/making pies or village dies out.
Every newborn kid tends to do whatever he can except for food production. Literally anything, but not farming. Closest they get to food production is rabbit hunting.
And in those rare cases when somebody finally decides to help farming he usually screws everything up by eating berries, watering everything even tho we don't have any free storage, plants milkweeds in the middle of carrot farm, just fails to pick up carrots and destroys soil.. There is like 1001 different ways to screw up civilization and it will take more than a life to explain everything to the new player.
I am sorry about that post guys. I need a brake. May be few weeks later people will get better at this game and trying to make civilization work will not be such pain in the loincloth. Right now the game is super easy in "singleplayer mode" and super hard once you have at least two other players around.
Also.. Jason, please, make a singplayer mode of this game, I want to make a perfect civilization at least once after my 55 hours of gameplay xD

at least there are more ways to screw up a running farm than to keep it going

in my perception there are indeed more players interested in something else than farming, though from time to time players want to learn farming

i tell those hanging around a farm always how to farm sustainable, no matter if they ask or not, because it's rather easy to screw up

One Hour One Life Forums

#26 2018-03-10 09:58:32

Re: Looking at the viability of sustainable farms to build villages.

#27 2018-03-10 18:07:35

Re: Looking at the viability of sustainable farms to build villages.

#28 2018-03-10 18:16:02

Re: Looking at the viability of sustainable farms to build villages.

#29 2018-03-10 18:58:48

Re: Looking at the viability of sustainable farms to build villages.

#30 2018-03-10 19:35:21

Re: Looking at the viability of sustainable farms to build villages.

#31 2018-04-11 08:22:21

Re: Looking at the viability of sustainable farms to build villages.

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