War on stone hoes

futurebird · 2019-03-28 22:58:15

No one likes a stone cold ho, and no one needs a stone hoe. That's not totally true here are the times you SHOULD make a stone hoe:

-There are no skewers, just none at all for 100s of tiles
-You want to be lectured to in groups of 4-6 characters by a child about how you are doing it wrong.
-You have too much string*

*explain how this happens please...

Anyone know the stats? It seems like a skewer lasts maybe half as long as the hoe, but it's free.

Possible objections
-What about home markers? Well the first home marker Eve makes become a weak skewer which can't hoe, everyone after her should re-use that same marker.
-The wood hoe last longer so it's more efficient since you don't need to gather. Thing is the wood hoe requires gathering 4 milkweed and a shaft. Two skewers means getting 4 fewer items and you get to use the rope for all the other damn things that need rope.

I've been setting up "home marker stations" with a basket with round and triangle stone, and the marker on a wood tile and the marker itself on the stone. They tend to get looted unless I have first brought in a load of extra round and triangle stones for the whole town. Anyone have any success with making such stations last?

Has anyone done calculations on the impact of farming string and trees for stone hoes? Is it even sustainable if you wanted to have a no iron hoe town?

Booklat1 · 2019-03-28 23:28:36

stone hoes arent bad at all lategame and stone hatcheds are great.
less iron per use even when you grow ropes

breezeknight · 2019-03-29 00:10:38

you have to see the bigger picture than just early farming

it's better to use the soil to set up a milkweed farm asap instead to set up a skewer farm
ropes are used constantly for the most vital stuff throughout the whole tech tree, better starting with it already in an Eve's camp

& why would you want to have a "no iron town" ?

Tarr · 2019-03-29 05:32:05

Skewer has an average 7 uses.
Stone hoe has an 21 uses.
Steel hoe has an average of 51 uses.

Early game it's better to skip the stone hoe as skewers should be much more plentiful than milkweed and most early farming doesn't use a bunch of tiling in the first place. Late game if you really wanted to make stone hoes you could as you'll be netting on average 17 uses while only the sharp stone is the only nonrenewable part of the hoe.

Personally I prefer keeping a few stone hatchets on hand if possible due to each one having about an average of 41 uses before breaking. This allows for each station or cook area to have a convenient way to make some kindling.

Basically for early game use skewers, if growing milkweed stone hoes are usable with steel hoes being preferable.

Anandamide · 2019-03-29 10:41:29

Well it depends on what you are optimizing for. If you want to minimize iron usage, grow milkweed and make stone hoes. If you want to save labor, then use steel hoes. Definitely use skewers as eve, but if you set at least one to the side, and plant milkweed with it you could make at least one hoe per skewer. If you can recruit one of your children to grow some more explicitly for hoes, then you can have a big farm by the time the forge is fired up. If I had my way, the only time the steel hoe would get used is to plant milkweed, single till if you already have compost and double till for milkweed if there is none or soil isn't very abundant. A steel hoe gets lots of uses, but you will still go through many, so by the time you dry up your deep well and go for the pump, your village may have gone through 3-6 steel hoes depending on the RNG. That is potentially over 100 compost cycles you could've done. Growing extra milkweed for hoes will require more compost, so you get more of the side food products, and with the new need for fleece for nets, I dont think anyone is gonna be complaining. By the time your village has ancient walls, if you only used skewers and then steel hoes, you will easily have used more than 10 iron, which is kinda unnacceptable imo. One compost cycle produces almost enough food to feed a fully clothed adult, and it is enough if they warm up every once in a while, which makes shovels far more important because there is no option other than the steel shovel. Using stone hoes saves precious iron in exchange for a different non-renewable in sharp stones. Fortunately, those are far more abundant than iron, and with just a regular cart, you can bring in enough to make more hoes than you will need in your lifetime.

JonySky · 2019-03-29 10:41:43

My thoughts on this: stone hoes save time.
the Skewer have 5 uses and when the useful life is over, you have to go and find another Skewer
the time used in this process can be used to plant a new line of berry bushes or go to look for iron
The Skewer are not practical for me ..

I also believe that the iron hoe should be the second / third item to create, after the ax or shovel if you need to create wells

Last edited by JonySky (2019-03-29 10:43:23)

Anandamide · 2019-03-29 10:54:45

My strategy for steel tools depends on what is currently available. If you are eve, or her kids, and you have just three iron, then hammer, axe, shovel. If there is 4-5, then an extra shovel and a hoe. If someone gathered 6 iron though, and we still hadn't forged and the farm is going, then id make hammer, axe, shove, file, chisel and then knife and get compost going. If the milkweed -> stone hoe cycle breaks down while compost is getting up and running, then id just gather a basket of skewers and go crazy with the milkweed. Hoes into shovels plsssss.

Last edited by Anandamide (2019-03-29 10:55:21)

Psykout · 2019-03-29 12:49:08

JonySky wrote:

My thoughts on this: stone hoes save time.
the Skewer have 5 uses and when the useful life is over, you have to go and find another Skewer
the time used in this process can be used to plant a new line of berry bushes or go to look for iron
The Skewer are not practical for me ..
I also believe that the iron hoe should be the second / third item to create, after the ax or shovel if you need to create wells

I think the time comparison is very valid for new camps. Sometimes you get lucky and there is plenty of skewers, sometimes burning a stone hoe up to get the first set of berries planted is a better option if you can deal with the rope loss. Usually if I spawn in the very first generations of a camp, when I am real young I will go get a couple baskets of skewers for farming, or if natural skewers are garbage I will just snag a rope to make a hoe. Once you start getting into more carrot farming or start getting ready for stew farming, you will want a steel hoe for sure.

pein · 2019-03-29 16:48:22

if you can grind it out make a mine, thats 7-8 iron (after making file, recycle chisel)
after that you can make a few hoes
if you got steel, making stone hoe is kinda dumb

skewers are good enough for early and berry doesn't require tilling, and if you pick the bushes down, maximize recharge, can be more effective than having more bushes, a bush sitting there with 1 berry is practically 1/7 of a real bush, and more bushes doesnt mean more food, means more work, the effective of them still wont be higher, if you plant them too close, will be even more annoying so rather low effectiveness

to be fair, a decent player wont start farming, even if people die
you arent at a stable state so you need to create it, so making food is not a good way to do it
you cant use more population, to do more work
if everyone focuses on getting iron and smiting tools, making pen, you can increase population afterwards, so just delay the hoe, help the smith to make axe, process iron then start farming after having a mine

Oblong · 2019-03-29 17:54:28

I’d love to just use a skewer as Eve but my kids don’t get it and make a stone hoe instead. Especially when that rope was needed for a snare/bow we don’t have yet. How are we going to advance? Of course farming does provide food but if there’s skewers laid next to soil and I come back with 5 home markers and a stone hoe, I feel like just dropping the run.

Last edited by Oblong (2019-03-29 17:54:44)

Ferna · 2019-03-29 20:04:01

If you've had a chance to explore the efficiency plotter from the Everything About Food thread, it points out some interesting conditions on how to use Stone Hoes. They may be a bit different than you'd intuitively expect!

2 Fertile Soil: 1 x Tilling these tiles with a (domestic) Stone Hoe gives the worst Food per Soil of any farming strategy, so you should never use them that way if you can avoid it. If you're mentally committed to the 1 x Tilling meta, that means you'll never want to use a Stone Hoe.

Hardened Rows: 1 x Tilling for Hardened Rows with a Stone Hoe uses more Compost but less Iron than a Steel Hoe, so it might be worthwhile if you're facing a significant Iron shortage. Foraged tools (either Skewers or wild Milkweed) give the best of both worlds, if you have them available.

1 Fertile Soil: 2 x Tilling with a Stone Hoe surprisingly uses both less Compost and less Iron than a Steel Hoe on 1 x Tilling. That means any craft which relies on crops that don't leave Hardened Rows (specifically Wheat, Sugar Cane, or Milkweed) performs substantially better across the board when planted with a Stone Hoe.

As you might have noticed already, that also suggests the Compost Cycle and all forms of Pie are much more efficient with Stone Hoe usage! Your entire food production chain receives a nearly 10% output boost if you grow the cycle crops that way (after accounting for Milkweed growing costs). That bumps up to 15% output boost if you can forage for Skewers / wild Milkweed to use instead.

While growing domestic Milkweed for Stone Hoes removes the capacity limitations of foraging, it does transfer a substantial amount of tool-making labor from the Smithy / Iron Miner over to the Farming folks. Its efficiency also depends on Farmers using 2 x Tilling consistently (especially on the Milkweed), otherwise it's about the same as using Steel Hoes.

Given how different that is from the current farming meta, I'd be really curious to see how a few villages fare when following the max efficiency farming strategies. If domestic Milkweed production flourished enough, I suspect a lot of the nervousness around Rope usage would evaporate within a few generations. Personally, though, I probably wouldn't favor it as a new farming meta since Iron consumption feels pretty trivial once you unlock Horse Carts for further exploration.

betame · 2019-03-30 02:34:06

From my understanding, generally steel hoes save labor, and stone hoes save iron.

Foraging meta:

Milkweed is 2x more common than skewers
In the grassland, rocks and maples are as common as skewers, so milkweed is the limiting factor for stone hoes.
Foraging for stone hoes should be about 2x slower, but you'll forage "avg tills" 1.5x as fast.
Note skewers can be carried in baskets so each trip will give 21 avg tills just like a hoe, or even more if you have a backpack/cart
The start-up milkweed tech (fire drill, bow and arrow, snare, bellows, excluding clothes and buckets) should leave a starting area of ~8 skewers

Therefore, early eve camps should forage skewers instead of stone hoes. Then forage a mix of 2 skewers for every hoe OR pair of clothes. I'd try to get compost up before growing hoes domestically (because wild soil pits put a threatening timer on the civ). Once compost is up, saving soil = saving labor, and saving iron = ?barely extending the potential length of the civ?

pein · 2019-03-30 03:16:56

time efficiency is one thing, a few days ago i played on public server and all my lifes i had to gather iron
it's like a spit on my face when people till one soil cause is more efficient for them to do that, rather than going again with a basket a few tiles
most of times i see a lot of backlog on composting and milkweed farming
this things need to be main priority in any city, so it's quite bad situation on people handing out jobs for the kids
also i see a lot of people moving poop out of pen

now this problem has multiple causes:
people not scavenging enough, they don't move out of city, they prefer static jobs and others to do them haul for them
people wasting too much resources on fancy walls and buildings, but the pens are rather tiny
the wheat field should be equal to the size of pen, and some more for hats and baskets, which would need 1 and 2 bread made each time
the threshed wheat is quite effective food source, cause it's already there
i rarely see cow pens and butter made to go along with the bread

the processing of berry is quite slow
instead of planting more, people should always pick berries into bowls, which should be equal at least to number of bushes, just for this purpose
each bush one bowl, it's not that a big of requirement, you could stay ahead of the famines, make sure the bushes are constantly on timer so you get more value out of the initial investment, also this would save a lot of work on fixing bushes left and right
also having empty spaces near bushes would greatly improve compost making and sheep feeding

actually you can get rid of some dung by overpopulating a pen, and for clothing making it's more effective to have multiple lambs, fil lthe pen, shear them, slaughter them and clean out
if you want clothes, i guess a smaller pen with no empty spaces would be better for the purpose, if you doing the composting, no way you can use up all the soil, all the dung, all the food
so generally you just end up wasting iron on moving dung
now that water isn't a big of an issue, having 2 pens could solve the issue, especially if you got no mouflon, you can just move one lamb to other pen, raise up the stock, clear the first pen, remove walls (adobe just needs water, which is cheap)
remake the pen elsewhere and use the newly made space to plant wheat and do compost, then repeat the whole thing
yeah moving a pen is better than moving all the dung
even if is stone blocks, you can move 3 sides of it or build a new near it, in long run still more effective

if you got plenty of iron, i suggest never to make a stone hoe, if you don't have too much, then planting branch tree can sustain a town for straight branches and you need to plant milkweed anyway, also you can gather back the lost sharp stones from around town, i guess it's viable in these conditions
skewers are superior, only that people should really focus on making that mine before mass farming

one soil tilling it's just not a good solution
you might argue that you don't have much soil
but then again you didn't focus on composting, milkweed farming and iron gathering
so rather do that, than saving up soil, which is abundant if you compost or even get a horse cart and run around a bit
saving soil while dumping it on bushes, also makes no sense really
what you really saving with it? your own time and dump the responsibility on your kids, and the blame on ancestors
blaming others wont fix a town
think logically and do it right

don't farm if you don't have soil. simple as that

Anandamide · 2019-03-30 10:45:12

pein wrote:

time efficiency is one thing, a few days ago i played on public server and all my lifes i had to gather iron
it's like a spit on my face when people till one soil cause is more efficient for them to do that, rather than going again with a basket a few tiles
most of times i see a lot of backlog on composting and milkweed farming
this things need to be main priority in any city, so it's quite bad situation on people handing out jobs for the kids
also i see a lot of people moving poop out of pen
now this problem has multiple causes:
people not scavenging enough, they don't move out of city, they prefer static jobs and others to do them haul for them
people wasting too much resources on fancy walls and buildings, but the pens are rather tiny
the wheat field should be equal to the size of pen, and some more for hats and baskets, which would need 1 and 2 bread made each time
the threshed wheat is quite effective food source, cause it's already there
i rarely see cow pens and butter made to go along with the bread
the processing of berry is quite slow
instead of planting more, people should always pick berries into bowls, which should be equal at least to number of bushes, just for this purpose
each bush one bowl, it's not that a big of requirement, you could stay ahead of the famines, make sure the bushes are constantly on timer so you get more value out of the initial investment, also this would save a lot of work on fixing bushes left and right
also having empty spaces near bushes would greatly improve compost making and sheep feeding
actually you can get rid of some dung by overpopulating a pen, and for clothing making it's more effective to have multiple lambs, fil lthe pen, shear them, slaughter them and clean out
if you want clothes, i guess a smaller pen with no empty spaces would be better for the purpose, if you doing the composting, no way you can use up all the soil, all the dung, all the food
so generally you just end up wasting iron on moving dung
now that water isn't a big of an issue, having 2 pens could solve the issue, especially if you got no mouflon, you can just move one lamb to other pen, raise up the stock, clear the first pen, remove walls (adobe just needs water, which is cheap)
remake the pen elsewhere and use the newly made space to plant wheat and do compost, then repeat the whole thing
yeah moving a pen is better than moving all the dung
even if is stone blocks, you can move 3 sides of it or build a new near it, in long run still more effective
if you got plenty of iron, i suggest never to make a stone hoe, if you don't have too much, then planting branch tree can sustain a town for straight branches and you need to plant milkweed anyway, also you can gather back the lost sharp stones from around town, i guess it's viable in these conditions
skewers are superior, only that people should really focus on making that mine before mass farming
one soil tilling it's just not a good solution
you might argue that you don't have much soil
but then again you didn't focus on composting, milkweed farming and iron gathering
so rather do that, than saving up soil, which is abundant if you compost or even get a horse cart and run around a bit
saving soil while dumping it on bushes, also makes no sense really
what you really saving with it? your own time and dump the responsibility on your kids, and the blame on ancestors
blaming others wont fix a town
think logically and do it right
don't farm if you don't have soil. simple as that

Are you ignoring the data that ferna has provided us? There is a soil and water saving on doing a double till with stone hoes. Saving soil, and water, saves iron. Every steel hoe is one less shovel. If you have a lot of iron, its not the end of the world making a hoe, but since everything both mundande and fun in this game depends on iron at the end of the day, every one you use is one less you have. If you dont have compost, a steel hoe is useless unless you have more than six or seven soil deposits that are untouched by the time you fire up the forge to make said hoe. Even making a knife would be more worth while, as you could free range a sheep or two and get a bit of compost going. I guess you can do that without a knife but you cant let the sheep go crazy unless you protect your carrots. Sharp stones are the main non-renewable input in that cycle, and if you spend time planting a decent field of milkweed, you can make a number of hoes and stone hatchets and have more to spare. Doing a double tilling before compost for milkweed makes even more sense because that same field of milkweed will save enough soil to replenish the bushes a couple times potentially. An average stone hoe is able to make a bit more than two hoes worth of milkweed doing double tills. Do this for a while and you will have a bunch of hoes in the farming area and a few lassos to bring back to camp (pls bring as lasso, will be harder for noobs to make something useless with the rope).

pein · 2019-03-30 15:23:31

Are you ignoring the data that ferna has provided us? There is a soil and water saving on doing a double till with stone hoes. Saving soil, and water, saves iron. Every steel hoe is one less shovel. If you have a lot of iron, its not the end of the world making a hoe, but since everything both mundande and fun in this game depends on iron at the end of the day, every one you use is one less you have. If you dont have compost, a steel hoe is useless unless you have more than six or seven soil deposits that are untouched by the time you fire up the forge to make said hoe. Even making a knife would be more worth while, as you could free range a sheep or two and get a bit of compost going. I guess you can do that without a knife but you cant let the sheep go crazy unless you protect your carrots. Sharp stones are the main non-renewable input in that cycle, and if you spend time planting a decent field of milkweed, you can make a number of hoes and stone hatchets and have more to spare. Doing a double tilling before compost for milkweed makes even more sense because that same field of milkweed will save enough soil to replenish the bushes a couple times potentially. An average stone hoe is able to make a bit more than two hoes worth of milkweed doing double tills. Do this for a while and you will have a bunch of hoes in the farming area and a few lassos to bring back to camp (pls bring as lasso, will be harder for noobs to make something useless with the rope).

saving what?
you don't need to save water, you need to make an upgrade on the well
soil worth something, but a shovel use for compost is net 15 bowls of soil gain, also using it on a depleted soil deposit is 30 bowls of soil

only unshorn sheep eats full lines of carrot, now you either pick one off or shear the sheep, both works, also shorn sheep is biome locked

also 4 milkweed is 8 soil, to make a rope for using a stone hoe for like 15 tills?
double till and you got invested half of the hoe to remake itself

now you can make 2 ropes or you can make a lasso, with the lasso you catch a horse, one more for a cart, get 4-5 soil a run, that's the correct way

but this case you are already late with a pen
might worth moving out and start new camp with more soil near it?
or grind out to make a pen and have enough soil

on hatchet i agree, no reason to cut other than branches and stumps into kindling (now you even get sugar cane as i see, which can keep up a fire but not sure how much it worth it, keeping bowls clogged with ketchup or making constant ice creams?)

i might collect branches and sharp stones next time in older cities, might be viable but part of efficiency is not to be annoying to work with, and stone hoes breaking sound annoying to me if you got no spares

Anandamide · 2019-03-30 15:42:48

Sugar cane for some reason only works with a steel axe and not the hatchet so farming it for fuel is bad, and should just be seen as a mildly beneficial waste product until or if Jason changes it. I dont really get what your point is about shovels, because im saying we should make more shovels and less steel hoes. If your civ has piles and piles of iron and all the tools then go for it, but if you have other tools that are needed you shouldnt be making hoes. Each hoe is one less iron for planes and engines and pumps. Assuming compost and no other iron, You can make more food with two shovels and stone hoes than you can with one shovel and a steel hoe. Chances are, that steel hoe will break long before the shovel does if its only used for composting. If you never made engines and pumps then it wouldnt matter, all that iron could keep a village alive for a very long time, if you have enough wells for water regen to supply your needs. But we do make thinks like planes and pumps and machine tools and those need a lot of iron so there is no point in wasting it on something that can be achieved without using iron.

Anandamide · 2019-03-30 15:44:54

That iron for the hoe couldve made a chisel so you can get stones for a pen, or a shovel to dig up tule reed stumps for adobe for a pen. No matter what way you look at it, long term, steel hoes are a waste and you are better off putting that iron into other tools that help to unlock more resources.

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#1 2019-03-28 22:58:15

War on stone hoes

#2 2019-03-28 23:28:36

Re: War on stone hoes

#3 2019-03-29 00:10:38

Re: War on stone hoes

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#8 2019-03-29 12:49:08

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#11 2019-03-29 20:04:01

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#12 2019-03-30 02:34:06

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#13 2019-03-30 03:16:56

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#14 2019-03-30 10:45:12

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