Veg farming - some initial numbers

[dissent]

Spoilers ahead but I thought I'd get some numbers out there for those considering veggie farming with the new food types - Beans, Kail, Neeps and Onions.

All types require 5 seeds per tile. If you plant in tilled soil and water and fertilise diligently, the crop matures at around 20% per day, or 4 and a bit days to harvest. So you could comfortably get 4 crops in the Spring/Summer growing season, 5 if you're willing to let the last crop mature slowly in Fall. As per Flax and Oats, crops in tilled soil yield 50% more than wild crops, except for Beans. I'll double-check but it appears that both wild and cultivated Beans yield 20 plants per tile. Edit: nope, Beans follow the same formula of wild x 1.5 so it's 30 Beans per tile.

Each tilled tile will yield the following:
Beans - 30 plants, 12 seeds
Kail - 18 plants, 12 seeds
Onions - 15 plants, 9 seeds
Neeps - 15 plants, 9 seeds

So, as with Flax and Oats, buying seed stock is unnecessary. You will find enough wild plants to get your crops going, and each crop yields more seeds than is required to replant it. However, veggies are not as profitable as Oats/Flax which yield 3x (yield 15, replant 5) the seeds required to plant. For Beans and Kail, it's 2.4x and only 1.8x for Onions and Neeps. Still, you should over time build up a good seed stock.

Seeds are very expensive (150 Coin for 25, which is enough for five tiles) and you also need to get the associated trader to two stars before they will offer them. So it's best to harvest them from the wild. You won't find dense patches of veggies, just the odd plant scattered here and there. But look closely and you will find more than enough to get you started.

A final note is that all veggie crops leave Stubble - even in the wild. So that will need to be cleared, and the Clear All bomb doesn't do it. It has to be Clear Stubble.

Another thing to factor into your planning is that the veggies eat up storage space. Onions and Neeps can only be stored in stacks of 25 in the Serving Basket. Beans and Kail go up to stacks of 50. But even that is only half of what early staples like Mushrooms, Berries and Smoked Meat take up with their stacks of 100. It's important to get the Serving Basket asap, which requires you to pick 150 Berries and 50 Mushrooms. I invariably forget to pick enough Berries at game start because I get Eels up and running quickly as my staple food. Then by the time I get enough Mushrooms in mid to late Fall, there are no Berries left so the Serving Basket has to wait till next Summer. That is a big problem if you intend to pick veggies early. I built an 18 tile (3 Ice Jug pallets) cold room in my current settlement and it's already out of storage space in summer year 2. Veggies just hog space so compensate for that.

[dissent]

Thanks Blorf, this has been a fantastic update, really enjoying it.

Tech, I think it's fair enough that Stews offer less nutrition than the ingredients. After all, one is getting a nice bonus on top of the nutrition. It's just that knocking 50% of the nutritional value off the ingredients seems a bit steep. But at least it gives choices. If food is abundant and you want the buffs, you have the option. If you're down to your last 20 Meat in winter and keeping the clan alive rather than giving them buffs is the goal, you can always revert to single-ingredient cooking to stretch the food as far as possible.

The other factor is that if Stews gave close to the nutrition of their ingredients, some of it would go to waste anyway. The people tend to seek food when they dip below 50% and lose the Well Fed buff. So they can only take in 5k-5.5k food before their Food bar caps out at 100%. If a Stew gave 7-8k nutrition, you'd probably forfeit 2k of it anyway.

That said, I am absolutely smashing the Haggis. It uses Pluck which piles up if you're hunting and doesn't have much further use. The 10 Oats grain and 2 Onions per serving is trivial, and who doesn't want a 1.5k Mood buff and 1k Work buff? That's better than Optimist and Hard Worker all in one meal. And then 5k nutrition on top of that? Yeah, I'll have me some of that.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by TechRabbit:

I still think things like stews should be less nutritional value than raw components because cooking you lose some nutrients

For almost all types of food, cooking actually increases nutritional value, because it makes the material easier to chew and to digest. The development of cooking is actually thought to have been an important step in the evolution of the hominid lineage, allowing us to develop energetically-demanding brains rather than large intestinal tracts. For an interesting and informative discussion of the topic, I suggest Richard Wrangham's "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human"

[TechRabbit]

Originally posted by Philtre:

Originally posted by TechRabbit:

I still think things like stews should be less nutritional value than raw components because cooking you lose some nutrients

For almost all types of food, cooking actually increases nutritional value, because it makes the material easier to chew and to digest. The development of cooking is actually thought to have been an important step in the evolution of the hominid lineage, allowing us to develop energetically-demanding brains rather than large intestinal tracts. For an interesting and informative discussion of the topic, I suggest Richard Wrangham's "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human"

That's only with low heat cooking. Back when they didn't control the level of cooking heat they would lose more nutrient value than you are assuming. Not saying all nutrition is lost but at the level of cooking in the 1300s and the types of veggies they are cooking, it is safe to assume some nutrients are lost since vegetables begin losing nutrients the moment they are cut and cooking temperature really determines how much you retain. My point is that you will never get a 1:1 ratio of fresh:cooked nutrient per vegetable.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by TechRabbit:

but at the level of cooking in the 1300s and the types of veggies they are cooking, it is safe to assume some nutrients are lost since vegetables begin losing nutrients the moment they are cut and cooking temperature really determines how much you retain.

Some micronutrients (vitamins, mostly) are heat-labile or otherwise unstable, yes. But generally they are present in large enough quantities that it doesn't matter if you loose some during cooking, unless you are not eating very much of that vegetable to begin with. And cooking can effectively increase the amount of other micronutrients, by making the material more digestible.

However, the primary nutritional issue over the majority of human history has been getting enough calories (and to a lesser extent protein), and cooking help a lot with that, even unsophisticated methods like boiling.

[Blorf]

New version just went live to the testing branch v0.414. Has quite a bit of food tuning in there. Working on the change notes now.

Note: Haggis likely going to get more expensive next update materials wise. It is a bit low vs the power it holds.

[Rane]

"10 Oats ... per serving is trivial"
Ever since the whole 'don't eat the bread' thing, I just can't emotionally treat Oats as trivial. So much work goes into turning 5 seed into 15 oat sheaf.... I looked at Haggis and went ' * cough * how many oats??? well at least it makes four...' So like, balance how you feel is best, Blorf, but I, just, never ever don't buy Oat anything from the vendors. That is all.

[dissent]

For me, the trivial part is that it's Oats grain and not Bread. The other Stews mostly require 1 Bread per serving. That's 8.6 Oats grain so roughly equal to the 10 for Haggis. But then you have the labour of turning the Oats grain into Flour, then turning the Flour into Dough, then turning the Dough into Bread. Then the space that the Quern, Dough Table, flour pallet and Bread Oven take up. And it has to be heated space because they're cold-sensitive. Stews take a *lot* of resources - not just ingredients but also labour, time and space.

Just the fact that the recipes use Charcoal instead of Branches is significant. It takes 8 Charcoal to make 4 Stews. That's 16 Branches and around 19 Clay. Plus the labour of making the Charcoal. So you're using 4 Branches to make one Stew for 5k (now 7.5k) food value, plus another firewood Branch to bake the Bread that goes into the Stew. Cooked Meat/Fish you're using one Branch to make 3k food. Double that to make 2 Branches for 6k food value, and single-ingredient cooking turns out to be half the firewood consumption (and less labour) than recipe foods. Branch consumption is a game-long factor, you can never have too much firewood. Doubling that consumption is something to consider carefully.

[dissent]

Of the recipe foods, it appears Pottage offers the best deal, i.e. with the least loss of nutrition. The recipe is 12 meat and 24 non-meat ingredients for six servings. So that's 2 meat and 4 ingredients per serving. On their own, those would deliver 2x2k (if you use Eels) and 4x500 (if you use Berries) = 6k value. You will get at least 5k value from each serving as workers only eat when their Food bar dips below 5k and each serving tops them up fully to 10k. But I suppose you could ostensibly get up to 9 or even 10k value if the worker is starving when they eat. So you're getting close to, possibly more than, the nutritional value of the ingredients if eaten separately.

The 12 Charcoal is a bit steep, that's 4 firewood per serving. But having up to six meals readily available in the gathering room, with no bowls or lengthy preparation or cleaning up or storage required, is a good deal imo.

[dissent]

So after some experimentation, my food strategy is slowly taking shape. My clan's diet will consist of:

1) The single-ingredient staples of Cooked Meat and Cooked Fish. My Boar livestock operation will provide the meat (I don't hunt after year 1) and the lakes will provide the fish.

2) Pottage made with only Eels and Berries. I've taken Cooked Eels out of my rotation as the lakes won't provide enough for both Cooked Eels and Pottage. So Eels will be reserved for Pottage, and the annual mass Berry harvest should keep me in Pottage year round. I've lowered the desirability of uncooked Berries to prevent workers eating them raw. If I run out of Berries, I can supplement with a Mushroom harvest in Fall.

3) Haggis. The Boar operation provides Pluck, and the amount of Pluck produced by slaughtering juvenile piglets will determine how much Haggis I make. It also needs a small amount of Onions, which will be the only veggie crop I grow. And then it needs Oats Grain, which I will get from farming Oats heavily.

4) Brose in winter. This is ace food anyway and who doesn't want a bit of a Warmth boost when it's freezing. Brose is also dead simple, just some Oats grain and water. My Oats farming operation should easily keep me in supply. And there's always the Plains trader selling Oats sheafs and grain if all else fails.

The trick will be to get the Fish v Eels balance right in the lakes, that I have just enough Eels to sustain Pottage year round, but then also enough Fish to be a staple. The other balancing act will be to get enough Oats and Onions to keep Haggis going, which will be determined by how much Pluck my piglets deliver. If there is too much Pluck, I can always allow Pluck as well in the Cooking Pot should Eels run low.

With the above, I can dispense with the Break-making and also with Neeps, Beans and Kail farming. Needing only Oats Grain and Onions will simplify and focus my farming operation greatly.

This strategy will, however, be heavy on Charcoal as both Pottage and Haggis require it. The upside is that I won't run short of Wood Ash, a by-product of Charcoal production. But I am going to need Branches and lots of them. So I reckon a tree farm will be mandatory.

[fruteloop23]

I don't understand where you're changing the desirability of foods? Not too important yet, as very young colony coming out of our first winter... just tryin' to read and understand some things ;)

[Philtre]

Originally posted by fruteloop23:

I don't understand where you're changing the desirability of foods? Not too important yet, as very young colony coming out of our first winter... just tryin' to read and understand some things ;)

In the Inventory menu, go to the Food tab, select the item you want to change. At the bottom of the infobox there is a slider (except on raw foods that people won't eat unless starving, like raw meat).