Herbalist huts only has a single worker, and have very little yield per year. This is balanced in being good early game, and for getting a multitude of generally valuable stuff late game. Herbs, berries, medicinal roots, eggs etc. Herbalists are pretty much essential in covering a variety of demands to fill holes elsewhere.
The change I’d like to see is being able to move any and all gathered plants to the area you want. midgame+ you can ditch them and trade bulk. Or you can keep a few, or many. However their usefulness diminishes due to their low yield and 1 worker cap.
Add an optional upgrade to herbalist hut. Botanist.
Gives +1 worker cap (1->2)
Allows botanists to move ANY plants (greens, berries, medicinal plants etc.)
Now we can make herb and plant gardens in selected areas to increase efficiency
A payoff (other than more labour, work and upgrade costs) could be that botanists require education. As it requires more specialized knowledge on how to create such herb gardens. Like farms, they can place marshy soil to grow Willow.
“Allows botanists to move ANY plants (greens, berries, medicinal plants etc.)”
Love this idea; great value add for the upgrade too. Could potentially be balanced/limited by time boxing the activity (can’t transplant during winter), only allowing the botanist to do the work and perhaps requiring basic education to fill the role.
What a great idea. I would love to see some form of re-locating all harvestable resources (similar to how blueberries already function) and it makes a lot of sense.
The main issue I see with this idea is- will the plants grow in the location you want to move them to? Blueberries IRL are fairly forgiving about where they grow- we have wild blueberries growing in all sorts of areas around our IRL property, though they produce best when they are near a good water source.
But willow or medicinal roots? Try growing those in infertile dry soil. Herbs and greens may be a wee bit more flexible, but they still aren’t going to do well in dry sandy soil, seeing that they are usually spawned in more fertile moist soil areas. Mushrooms (the edible types)? They grow on moist semi-rotted wood IR. Not going to do well being plunked in the ground near your hut if you don’t have trees to plant them amongst.
I would be happy with being able to move sumacs and hawthorns just about anywhere, since they already grow just about anywhere (though sumac seems to be a fairly rare plant to find). Greens and herbs- maybe being able to move them only to certain types of soil locations at a higher gold cost for relocation. Willows and medicinal roots? Nah. Those need to be near a water source- pond/lake/bog/wet soil. Those should not be able to be moved, IMHO.
For Willows you can use the same metric that is used for Wells. Each Well has a bonus based on the water supply. I’m thinking Willows would produce based on the water supply, just like fields rely on soil fertility.
I think instead of just moving them it would be more interesting if you could have a very small chance with the upgraded botanist to get a viable seed whenever you collect a resource. So slowly over time you would be able to plant them and shift away from long gathering trips. You could maybe also very rarely purchase a seed from a trader, giving you potential access to varieties that didn’t spawn on your map.
I think instead of just moving them it would be more interesting if you could have a very small chance with the upgraded botanist to get a viable seed whenever you collect a resource
The problem with this is that the majority of the plants that are gathered you would normally not start from seed. For most berries you would either transplant, take cuttings, or dig up runners ( which is basically transplanting ). Willows would be transplanting or cuttings too. For herbs you would get seeds, very easily, when they are annuals or biennials. On most perennials, while you can usually gather seeds, more often you divide the plant up as it gets larger. This produces results faster than simply planting seeds, and helps to keep the parent plants healthy.
Assuming that the compost in the game also includes plant scraps from cooking, then you will get plenty of herbs popping up as volunteers in the fields.
Sure, they could call it ‘viable clipping’, ‘transplant’, ‘seedling’, ‘sprout’, whatever. My suggestion is more about the game mechanics than the reality of propagating plants.
Yeah, the suggestion is basically to lock it behind an upgrade and then limit the rate with a low probability. The primary concern being to create a nice flowing transition from gathering herbs to cultivating them.
For wild berries, be they raspberries, black berries or wild blueberries ( not the domesticated shrubs you see nowadays ), they can be invasive if left to themselves. They can survive in low water areas, as well as very wet.
In FF all of the herbs you can find have been grouped together under a single large “herb” resource. There are herbs for every climate and growing condition. Herbs that need arid land, others that prefer sandy and good drainage, some are bog plants, or want for denser clay soil. Since all of the herbs are classified simply as “herbs”, it won’t matter where exactly you place them. My point is that if the herbs are growing naturally in your map, then in general they will thrive pretty much anywhere in that map.
The above is why I do not agree that there needs to be a low probability. I do like the idea of it being part of an upgrade. Or maybe tie the cultivation of berries in with the arborist, and the cultivation of herbs in with the apothecary shops, since most herbs have some medicinal value as well.
Yeah, the realism concern. I’m thinking about how it will feel to play though. If everything is just a move resource order after you unlock tier 2 gathering then you will pause the game, issue a hundred relocate orders, set gathers to never leave town, call it a day and never think about herbalists again. Which is fine but boring. With a probability it draws out the period of having something to do. Though it still ends eventually so it doesn’t become a chore forever.
I could argue that even from realism the success rate of just digging up every bush you find and plonking it down anyway isn’t likely to have a high success rate.
