If there was a desire to extend how many types of animals that could be farmed, there could be interesting resource-play with the 2 remaining animals we regularly farmed. These animals will not supply Leather, so they don’t oversupply Leather while avoiding redundancy.
Sheep
Produces: Tallow, Meat, Wool
Use: Wool could be used in later game to create Clothing. Alternatively, a new Clothing item that villagers prefer in supply that takes a bit longer to weave, but lasts longer (and sells for more in Trading). Would work well if more uses for Flax are introduced to free up supply.
Pigs
Produces: Meat, Lard
Use: Lard as an ingredient for Pies (a previous idea of mine; single item that counts as both Grain and Fruit for Shelter supply) made in a Bakery in Tier 4.
They can be fed with expiring food (Pigs role as a garbage disposal in history) as long as your settlement has excess food, which is the highest quality food for farming them by a wide margin. This puts limits on how many pigs their relevant building can handle.
If there was ever a mechanic introduced where production could be improved (either speed or amount of product) by an optional ingredient you could check on or off, then Lard could be used in that (soap, beer, buildings with Heavy Tools)
Great ideas, here! I like that pigs might be given food that is going bad, too. I’m sure things just wouldn’t be allowed to go to waste.
I also had a thought about vineyards / wine making and having pubs be able to become full scale inns with some gold coming in as passer throughs might stay the evening. Wine also as a luxury item would make sense.
I had that idea in my post with Pies too. Basically, it brings more interest to the Arborist by reworking the Pear Tree to give the item Pears instead of Fruit, which can be made into Perry (typically enjoyed by middle class) and also add Grapevines to make Grapes for making Wine (typically enjoyed by upper class). Demand would be highest for Beer still, but would be followed by Perry, then Wine. Gold earned from it’s use (as well as it’s sale on the Trading Post) could be higher for Perry, and even more for Wine (balancing out the high Military costs of this patch)
The Arborist probably wouldn’t be an upgradeable building, but Pears could become available to plant in Tier 3 and Grapes in Tier 4. Perry could probably be sold in the Level 1 Pub. But an upgraded Pub, a Tavern, could sell Wine in Tier 4. The question would be if the Brewery was upgradeable to start producing Perry and Wine, or if a new building, a Winery, could become available at Tier 3 also (thus making you pay more resources and take up more space in order to get it, rather than just add workers to a single building).
A separate Winery building could be interesting also, because an additional ingredient to it’s production could be Casks, made by the Barrel Maker.
I do love the ideas of wines, increased foods from the bakery, and the additional tiers this could add to some existing current buildings. Coopers could also produce the casks required for a winery, glass makers could make bottles for wines and spirits, and a distillery could even be introduced (although the preferred metal for distillation pots was typically copper, I can accept an iron one ).
The good news is during the last live stream Zantai did confirm that although Tier 2 bakeries didn’t make it into this update as planned, they are still in the works. He also confirmed that sheep are something being considered for future addition, but they want to add them as a full production line (produce wool, a production building like a spinner to produce usable wool thread, then adding wool to the clothing production), so possibly at a later date.
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