Why can't workers plant crops?

[thgoodwin@comca]

In the real world humans don't just farm where stuff is already growing. They plant crops and breed livestock. Seems to me that letting workers plant crops (or breed animals) might be a good upgrade to the game.

[rogerbacon]

Well, to me that's what the farm improvement is all about. The special food resources on the map are more like areas where those resources grow more abundantly, and not to imply that those are the only places those things grow.

Roger Bacon

[Blake]

The logic is that the area is ideal for growing corn or wheat or whatever, it can be transported elsewhere, but wouldn't grow in such abundance. Simplistic, I know.

[Optimizer]

What buggers me is that if you don't have a crop or a domestic animal, you will have to buy it forever from someone else, without the opportunity to grow it yourself.

Ideally, having access livestock or crops should not give any health bonus - but allow you to "build" them in each of your cities, and receive the bonus in this city. Hm - maybe someone should make a mod?

Terrain improvements would look best but require more coding. The easiest way would be creating city buildings.

Here is a suggestion.

* Make crops and domestic animals significantly more rare.
* Remake them into strategic resources, dropping the Health/Happiness bonus (though you can still get it from Granaries, Markets, Grocers and Supermarkets).
* Add City buildings, each providing +1 health/happiness and the required resource. They can be called Wheatfield, Ricefield, Pigsty, Banana field and so on. Maybe they could be limited to certain latitudes, too.

[thgoodwin@comca]

Now that's a very cool idea. I wonder if anybody else is paying attention?

[Rhianni]

Allowing this would get rid of a lot of the strategic points on the map. Would you also include migratory whale pathways and make fish disappear from over harvesting? In this case for me playability > realism

[Optimizer]

I never mod anything for realism only. This mod proposal would hopefully add strategic depth.

* Finding and cultivating one field of wheat will not be sufficient to get a health bonus all across the empire. You have to sow wheat in each cities - and it will not work in the lower latitudes! (Your tropical cities will have to grow bananas instead)

* Lack of an organic resource will not be so frustrating. If you don't find any wild pigs to domesticate within your borders, you can buy pigs from your neighbour and breed them yourself, and then sell them to other nations you encounter.

My current (preliminary) setup of buildings:

Health:
* Wheat silo - 30-70 degr
* Rice silo - 0-50 degr - requires water
* Corn silo - 20-60 degr
* Sheep ranch - 0-90 degr
* Pigsty - 30-90 degr
* Cattle ranch - 0-90 degr
* Horse ranch - 0-90 degr
* Banana plantation - 0-40 degr (need to find out another name instead of "plantation" to avoid confusion with the terrain improvement)

Happiness:
* Vineyard - 30-50 degr
* Spice plantation - 0-50 degr
* Silk plantation - 0-50 degr
* Dye plantation - 0-60 degr

Currently "non-farmed" resources: Whale, Fish, Clam, Crab, Deer, Fur and all mineral ones

[TomVeil]

I agree with Optimizer's idea. I would recommend that certain techs activate the various cultivation abilities, and that they come slightly later in the tech chart. Off the top of my head, Scientific Method is a good one for grains.