I’ve found that most people don’t build orchards. (Of course, I don’t do it either; the returns are just too low.) The functions of the Arborist and the Forager are also too similar. This gave me an idea: merge the Forager and the Arborist. Let the Arborist have a “transplanting” function—they can move wild resources that can’t be relocated, such as willow branches, mushrooms, hazelnuts, and berries, to designated locations. They can also plant various fruit trees. They can take care of and harvest these plants. The operating rules would be similar to those of a work camp.
1 Like
Arborists are decently strong - once you’ve built a preservist and have a decent supply of glass at least. It uses land that has too low fertility (and, especially, EFF) for crops, and requires very little labour for decent returns. And preserved fruit last for ages, and is the only scalable way to get that particular food type.
Transplanting stuff isn’t a bad idea, but the UX for it is absolutely dreadful at the moment. Moving blueberry bushes one at a time is such a a chore every time I do it, needing to do so with every single foragable resource sounds dreadfully dull. It would also break the balance of the game: on maps that have lots of those farming would simply be unnecessary, and make large maps much easier than small ones. It would also weaken the quasi-medieval immersion substantially, because that’s just not how villages fed themselves.
I get the idea in principle, but I think the drawbacks are too numerous and too strong in practice.
3 Likes
What? Arborists are really strong. Are you not planting in areas of high tree fertility?
Edit: Furthermore, the area where you can harvest fruit trees fits in an area only one square wider each way than a Cattle or Horse grazing area, and often the same space is ideal for both, so they can take up the same space with no losses to each other.
1 Like
Arborists can plant outside their harvesting area, I’m using mine to place multiple Hives. 60% efficiency, made up for by having lots of them.
You do need to be cautious with this, however: The tree fertility sweet spot seems to be somewhere around 50% farm fertility (or at least it was on my arid map where I was playing around with this), and you can’t stop animals from increasing farm fertility, so it will eventually start reducing your tree fertility somewhat.
You have to make me realize something. My obsession with planning made me overlook the time setting of the game. I suddenly realized that this is not a racing game. I used to keep restarting on the same map to try to reach a level-four town center as quickly as possible (the fastest I managed was in 14 years). This made me lose a lot of the game’s fun while constantly planning resource usage. Thank you for your hint.
1 Like
The problem is that, right now, the upgraded Forager isn’t an upgrade. The limited Garden was too strong at first, now too weak, but I think the real issue is the HOW. Taking a wide Work Area that you moved as needed and by season and making it a passive building makes it less fun.
What I proposed was to move only a few resources that would constitute the Forager’s Garden’s actual “garden” as the upgrade. Moving every single resource would be broken but moving a few isolated resources to within range, especially if your Hut/Garden is on good terrain for that resource? That’s an upgrade over the Forager’s Hut.
PS: I agree on all points about arborist. I use at least 3 groves in ~45-50% “farming fertility” soil that says 90-95% “tree fertility,” put the Glassmaker and Preservist next to them and Go. To. Town.
As for blueberries, I think of them as a resource that costs 60-100 Work (5 to uproot, 5 to replant, plus transit time) to get a berry bush at the location of my choosing, to keep the berry supply up.
willow branches.” Is this a resource that grows on land by the river? In my mind, it’s the branches of a willow tree. If that’s the case, I don’t think it’s reasonable to have second-level gatherers produce it. Shouldn’t it be transferred to the arborist instead?
As a Chinese person, I find it strange that medicinal herbs and roots are not widely cultivated (we even grow some herbs on our own balconies).
This difference in understanding agriculture may stem from cultural distinctions. I have overlooked the background setting of the game too much.
So the stuff in the game is based on pre-15th century (pre-gunpowder) Europe. So that’s the kinds of resources things are made of, foods produced, crops and fruits, forageable resources, etc.
I would love it if in the future they did remix versions of the game that are based on different regions of the world around that time, and have resources and buildings etc based on those places. An east Asian one would be pretty cool, as would a middle eastern/North African one.
IMO, the willow in the game is reeds rather than tree branches. The kind of stuff that you can weave into a basket via wickerwork rather than ‘real’ wood. That’s why the game spawns it near lakes (or even in lakes at time - annoyingly).
The medicinal roots look like mandrake, a plant that has a long history in folklore / witchcraft / alchemy. I guess you could imagine it to also include stuff like ginger, garlic or even non-roots like willow bark (aspirin). It seems to be a deliberate broad catch all term. I don’t think there’s much gameplay reason to have it exist as a separate resource to “herbs” to be honest, except in order to make it harder to make medicine. Which is probably why it’s deliberately been kept rare in game.
1 Like
gemeint ist die Korbweide. also ein Baum.
Since discovering that Arborists can plant trees outside their harvesting area, would it be possible to plant trees from which the populace could use for food? This is known as fruit drop, or windfall, and happen in the autumn months.
You mean, “Can passing Laborers that are hungry take fruit from the tree outside of the Arborist’s area if they need food?” I wouldn’t think so, engine-wise.
But they do, people have said they do that almost from the start of having fruit trees in the game.
Would they? I haven’t noticed and people taking fruit inside the harvesting area would be labelled thieves, if we had a patrolling militia.
I think it’s when people have placed fruit trees in towns, by roads, etc, rather than in the actual arborist’s work area. They’ve seen villagers grab a fruit while going about whatever task they’re doing.
I’ve also noticed that labourers seem to plant trees.
This seem to suggest that we only ever need one arborist building with no workers, in order to have the button to plant trees, and then we can “normal” villagers do all the work? That sounds like an exploit, if not downright a bug.