Now the 24 Thaler question: has anyone sat down and worked out the return on construction, space, and population of workers for return of food from various sources like Hunter/Hunter Lodge, Barns, Orchards, and Best Return on various crops?
Realizing that there are dozens of variables that could apply to each, and many have ‘other’ workforce and resource requirements in Glassmakers, Cheesemakers, Smokehouses, Firewood Splitters, Coal and Sand Miners, Preservationists, etc.
Right now, my impression is that there is not a lot of increase in return per worker between Barn Herders, Vegetable/Grain Raisers and Cheesemakers, and Hunters in regards to Meat, Tallow and Hides. The big negative (at least on my maps!) is the limitation on amount of game available to be hunted. The best I’ve ever down was about 15 Hunters active on a Large Map, and some of those were a long trek away from the town they were supplying. On the other hand, it is not that difficult to have 6 - 10 Barns fully manned and fully supplied with fodder and pasturage with space for more as needed and not that far from the town by Improved (cobbled) Road
I’m just wondering now what’s the most efficient mix or amount of various food-producing chains in population and resources applied versus Food Output.
Like as an example, what effect would it have to pasture cows in the orchards? Starving Cows? More Fertility to the Orchard? Angry Arborists from not watching where they are stepping? I smell an experiment coming up later today . . .
And, agree, the new Arborist Rules are a vast improvement and the orchards look outstanding when done.
Well, test of Orchard as Pasture for a barn concluded, and No Joy.
Built a single small barn next to a single Arborist, orchard mixed 1/3 of each type of fruit tree, put 10 cows in the barn, designated the orchard as their pasture and let it run for four (game) years.
Results:
From beginning to end the quality of pasturage stayed at 36%. Not so much as a percentage point of change. Since with the planted clover fields my other Barns are getting 78 - 99% quality of pasturage, this doesn’t make Orchards quality pasturage in game terms.
On the other hand, by keeping the stocked grain and root vegetables at near 100%, the quality of the herd was 80% for most of the 4 years, right in the middle of the quality from the other barns, which was 74 - 100%.
Which makes me believe that all my work on getting top quality pastures with the clover planting may have been Much Ado About Nothing - quality and quantity of fodder stored in the Barn seems to be much more important in keeping the herd healthy.
When they deleted the Milking/No Milking option they forced a second feeding of stored fodder, (during Summer milking.)
This increased the amount of stored fodder consumed and altered the balance between it and pasture-provided nutrition.
It also forced a very short shelf-life food product into the Shelter Stocking rotation, increasing the frequency of needed runs to replace said when lost to rot.
Milking/No Milking must have been a choice before I picked up the game less than 7 months ago; wasn’t aware of the history of the pasturage/stored fodder balance.
Luckily, in the Clover rotation for the planted pastures a Root Vegetable planting works in quite well in a year of Hoeing/Clover which makes up for some of the spoilage. My non-orchard barns in the same test all have planted clover pastures with some root vegetable planting and after 5 - 8 years all of them are at 90+ % fertility and , as said, the pasturage is at 78 - 99% and the cattle are all at 75% or better Health.
Using the clover pastures and planting enough grain and root vegetables to keep all the barns well-stocked allowed me to keep 1000 population supplied with Pelts, Tallow and Meat with 6 fully-upgraded barns.
