Pasture balance

[D-code]

So whats the reason of pastures being imbalanced as hell?

Just try a 20x20 sheep or cattle (ditch chicken) pasture with a single herdsman working on its and enjoy your stable 1200-1600 food + wool each year.

Just a quick comparison to crops and gatherers:
- A perfectly set up gatherers will yield about 4k-5k food each year while you can place at least 4 pastures in the same area
- A cropfield yields ~1600 food each year, gets destroyed on early frost

- Pastures do not care about temperature
- Pastures only need a single worker to function at maximum capacity
- Pastures get you materials for clothing aswell
- Pastures only cost logs to build

What is the point of using anything else?

Btw. the CC mod doesn't make this any less imbalanced.

Even if you overlap hunters and gatherers, pastures will outperform them on a food per land basis. You will also need a forester to maximize their production.
The ranges (radius) on those buildings are (in colonial charter, even worse in vanilla)
30 Forester
33 Hunting Cabin
35 Gatherer

Following their circular range of influence we get (all values are per year)

2827 tiles for Forester producing no food = 0 food per tile
3421 tiles for Hunting Cabin producing ~2000 food = 0.58 food per tile
3848 tiles for Gatherer producing ~3500 food = 0.91 food per tile

even if you overlap hunters and gatherers you get around 5500 food in an area of roughly 3800 tiles and you will need 9 workers (4 hunters, 4 gatherest, 1 forester) to man all the buildings.
Thats 1.45 food per tile and 611 food per worker

20x20 pastures are 400 tiles at ~1400 food = 3.5 food per tile and 1200-1600 food per worker...
If you place pastures all over the area you would normally have gatherers in you'd get about 13000 food instead of 5500 and still be using the same amount of workers...

[bmrigs]

Answer: balanced nutrition. High protein diet particularly red meats and your people will limp around with gout.

[pdoan8]

I usually get 1600-1800 from a 20x20 sheep pen with 2 workers. With more than 2 workers, it can't produce much more. At 800-900 per worker, it's the best of all food producing building.

4 10x10 crop fields (vege, grain) can produce at most 2400 food/year with 4 workers. Orchard can produce more but need more workers and a little more unstable.

Per land usage, hunter lodge is the worst. Gatherer is the second worst (pasture at third). However, hunter lodge and gahterer hut can share land (also with forester and herbalist), that would make pasture the most land hogging building. Fishing dock uses the least amount of land.

It's depending on whether you have more free land than people, or more free people than land.

[D-code]

Originally posted by pdoan8:

I usually get 1600-1800 from a 20x20 sheep pen with 2 workers. With more than 2 workers, it can't produce much more. At 800-900 per worker, it's the best of all food producing building.

Problem is, i get the same numbers with only one worker. Even when untrained and without tools. Try it.

Even if you overlap hunters and gatherers, pastures will outperform them on a food per land basis. You will also need a forester to maximize their production.
The ranges (radius) on those buildings are (in colonial charter, even worse in vanilla)
30 Forester
33 Hunting Cabin
35 Gatherer

Following their circular range of influence we get (all values are per year)

2827 tiles for Forester producing no food = 0 food per tile
3421 tiles for Hunting Cabin producing ~2000 food = 0.58 food per tile
3848 tiles for Gatherer producing ~3500 food = 0.91 food per tile

even if you overlap hunters and gatherers you get around 5500 food in an area of roughly 3800 tiles and you will need 9 workers (4 hunters, 4 gatherest, 1 forester) to man all the buildings.
Thats 1.45 food per tile and 611 food per worker

20x20 pastures are 400 tiles at ~1400 food = 3.5 food per tile and 1200-1600 food per worker...
If you place pastures all over the area you would normally have gatherers in you'd get about 13000 food instead of 5500 and still be using the same amount of workers...

Can you see how utterly imbalanced they are and they will always yield the highest food per worker and tile?

Problem with a comparison between crops and pastures is that a single early winter will completely destroy your crops, so its always a risk using them which i am not willing to take.
Also infections will just spread over your cropfields, causing your population to starve to death.
With pastures you only need a single empty pasture in order to clear the infected pasture and then send the animals back.

[JimmyLurks]

Originally posted by bmrigs:

Answer: balanced nutrition. High protein diet particularly red meats and your people will limp around with gout.

^This, basically.

Another thing when starting out is you do not have access to pastures (livestock) right away unless you play on Easy. It also takes a while before you can maximize the pasture yield since they have to breed to the max.

You will end up needing a Forester's Lodge no matter what which requires an unsettled area to return the most logs. So it is suiting to include other buildings in the same area such as the Herbalist, Gatherer, Woodcutter, Hunter, Stockpile, and Warehouse. Warehouses and Stockpiles increase productivity the closer they are to those depositing into them.

Disasters will devastate your Pastures compared to the Forest-type buildings. One wipe out of your animals can set you back a LONG way.

I personally tend to have too much food, but I rather have excess stock around the map in case of those bloody tornados!

ALE~!

[pdoan8]

Your numbers seem high for me.

Originally posted by D-code:

Originally posted by pdoan8:

I usually get 1600-1800 from a 20x20 sheep pen with 2 workers. With more than 2 workers, it can't produce much more. At 800-900 per worker, it's the best of all food producing building.

Problem is, i get the same numbers with only one worker. Even when untrained and without tools. Try it.

I don't get more than 1200 food with 1 worker in a 20x20 sheep/cattle pen. Not even close to that number with one uneducated and untooled worker.

[[GW] Darling]

Pastures are supposed to be late game, it takes a fairly long time to get animals then you have to grow them so the reward is bigger.

[mbutton15]

I agree with pdoan8 that some of those figures seem pretty high to me. Trouble is, the one I disagree with most is the Gatherer as I get 2000+ and don't think I've even come close to 3000, never mind 4000. So a lower Gatherer figure just strengthens your arguement !!

As JimmyLurks mentions, only Easy gives you livestock to start with. So a Medium or Hard start will force you to use other food sources. Hard start you don't even get seeds. All have to be bought from a Trader.

Any infestations I get never spread to other fields. I always act (by destroying the building) as soon as an infestation strikes so I never lose more than one plot at a time. I've also had 2 pastures hit with infestations (from different parts of the map) in close duration to each other, thankfully I had a second empty pasture I could divert my livestock to.

[D-code]

Originally posted by pdoan8:

Your numbers seem high for me.
I don't get more than 1200 food with 1 worker in a 20x20 sheep/cattle pen. Not even close to that number with one uneducated and untooled worker.

I certainly do. Maybe you didnt set them up at optimal conditions.
Did you set up barns and housing next to them so your workers dont waste time running around?
Labourers also make a huge difference since your herdsman doesn't need to carry all his food and wool/leather by himself.

See:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/88220071328487496/73865A222FEEE4A479704F7D24F6569915FD82CF/

Different part of town at the same time:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/88220071328539884/1B4469A8FFBC1FCE773D8CE77E600354D7B9CE23/

I get very stable 1400-1800 food out of them with a single worker (trained/tools in this case).
It's more likely to get 1200-1600 (used in my calculations) if you use unskilled workers without tools. And then im even comparing them to trained/tools gatherers.

My imperfeclty set up gatherers usually get about 3000 food. However thats with a herbalist and some mountains blocking some of their area.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/88220071328510050/CA38126873B7DF2B4FE3FEC22E16D00B40F4EDFD/

So i figured i'd give them the benefit of doubt and round it upwards to 4k or more.

Originally posted by mbutton15:

Any infestations I get never spread to other fields. I always act (by destroying the building) as soon as an infestation strikes so I never lose more than one plot at a time. I've also had 2 pastures hit with infestations (from different parts of the map) in close duration to each other, thankfully I had a second empty pasture I could divert my livestock to.

When using pastures you only need a single empty pasture as a backup.
As soon as you get an infestation you empty your infested pasture into the backup pasture and the infestation is immediately gone.
Revert the process and keep going as usual.

[mbutton15]

Originally posted by D-code:

When using pastures you only need a single empty pasture as a backup.
As soon as you get an infestation you empty your infested pasture into the backup pasture and the infestation is immediately gone.
Revert the process and keep going as usual.

I obviously go for extra protection as I move them to an empty pasture and then destroy/rebuild the infested pasture. It was during this destroy/rebuild phase that the second pasture got infected.

[pdoan8]

Pasture doesn't really need to be protected from infestation and doesn't need to waste land for a backup. For me, demolish and reclaim will do.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/88220071328510050/CA38126873B7DF2B4FE3FEC22E16D00B40F4EDFD/

So i figured i'd give them the benefit of doubt and round it upwards to 4k or more.

You will need 20 to 25% round up to get to 4000 (that's equivalent to an extra worker). A few dozens short of 3200 was the most I got in vanilla. However, you won't get that many food every year. Average out, 700ish per worker (2800).

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/88220071328487496/73865A222FEEE4A479704F7D24F6569915FD82CF/

Different part of town at the same time:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/88220071328539884/1B4469A8FFBC1FCE773D8CE77E600354D7B9CE23/

I get very stable 1400-1800 food out of them with a single worker (trained/tools in this case).
It's more likely to get 1200-1600 (used in my calculations) if you use unskilled workers without tools. And then im even comparing them to trained/tools gatherer.

1400-1800 educated, 1120-1440 uneducated (20% less than educated). Without tool, workers are just slower to produce. Farmers might miss a harvest, but herders won't be effected as much. Anyway, it's rather impressive to get average 1500 food per worker from a 20x20 pasture.

I think I set them up pretty good.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=856480798
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=856480798
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=856480637
One worker will never get more than 1200 a year. 800 is the average for one worker.

[D-code]

Originally posted by pdoan8:

One worker will never get more than 1200 a year. 800 is the average for one worker.

Are you talking about educated/tooled or uneducated/untooled workers now?

Also i changed my calculation to a 3500 basis for perfect gatherers, which makes them look even worse. :/
I mean 3.5-4 food per tile vs. less than 1 food per tile and you get incredibly rich at trading posts because you are drowning in wool and leather...