Iguana farm

[Tam]

Is it worthless ?

Playing in extreme desert with hottest climate so I rarely see any caravans, maybe 2 at max per year, a nearest friendly settlement located within 15 days of traveling and I do not have any pack animals. Well, I do not have any animals at all except 3 iguanas lurking in the desert.

Is possible to set some decent farm with that animal or it does not worth any effort ?
I've looked into their stats and gestation time is damn long.

Their nutrition consumption seems low and seems like there is only training that requires pawn's attention.

[Astasia]

They are not the worst animal in the game, if they are "grazing" you will get some value out of it probably, and you can let them eat raider corpses if you aren't using them. I think it's probably best not to eat the eggs, slaughter them as adults. If nothing else it will keep your trainers skilled so that when a dromedary eventually wanders onto the map you should have an easy time taming it. Dromedaries are much better than iguanas and they do show up in extreme desert sometimes. You might still end up keeping some of your iguanas for raider cleanup.

[Tam]

Publicado originalmente por Astasia:

They are not the worst animal in the game, if they are "grazing" you will get some value out of it probably, and you can let them eat raider corpses if you aren't using them. I think it's probably best not to eat the eggs, slaughter them as adults. If nothing else it will keep your trainers skilled so that when a dromedary eventually wanders onto the map you should have an easy time taming it. Dromedaries are much better than iguanas and they do show up in extreme desert sometimes. You might still end up keeping some of your iguanas for raider cleanup.

I was thinking about them as corpse cleaners, but due to extreme desert corpses rot too quickly, and I do not have a proper animal handler who does not scare of corpses lying in the fridge till he training animals.

Discovered they are not pen animals, easy to manage their area with default tools.

[gimmethegepgun]

Publicado originalmente por Tamm:

and I do not have a proper animal handler who does not scare of corpses lying in the fridge till he training animals.

If you put the bodies on shelves then they are effectively invisible and pawns won't complain about seeing them.

[Tam]

Gave it a shoot, for now:

pros
- they eat absolutely everything: grass, insect meat, corpses
awesome for an underground base
- no pen animals, easy to move

cons
- gestation time it too damn slow - 6 days for 1/2 eggs is abysmal
- 60 wilderness has to maintain every 8 days with training, 60% chance only with 10 animal skill

As result, gaining some constant profit for meals seems nearly impossible for a small colony - it has to be a really large farm to provide meat/eggs for fine meals at least. And with hat size of the farm 2 pawns gonna spend whole their time training iguanas.

[Captain Nerdiepie]

If the nearest settlement is very far, you might not even want pack animals. Cost of caravan is very high in extreme desert region for longer trips, there is no grazing and you cannot grow hay in bulk, this makes it very costly to travel with pack animals. Dromedary is only good if doubled up as pack animals (which you don't in extreme desert).

Cows are 50-60% more efficient as dromedary as milk producers. And chicken is ~40% more efficient than even cows on feeds. Dromedary is a bit more viable if you breed them and slaughter adults for meat + milk. But this is still less efficient than chicken and produces an extreme amount of filth (even with strawmatting) since each baby will produce filth equivalent to their to adults and 4x that of chickens.

Buy some of those egg layers from traders (ducks and goose are slightly worse but still far superior to dromedaries) if your priority is getting the non-vegetarian food source for fine/lavish meal. Eggs are also 5x more space efficient vs. milk or meat and take a lot more time to spoil compared to meat (15 days vs. 2 days).

[gimmethegepgun]

Publicado originalmente por Captain Nerdiepie:

If the nearest settlement is very far, you might not even want pack animals. Cost of caravan is very high in extreme desert region for longer trips, there is no grazing and you cannot grow hay in bulk, this makes it very costly to travel with pack animals. Dromedary is only good if doubled up as pack animals (which you don't in extreme desert).

Depends on how far the extreme desert goes rather than turning into regular desert. Once it's regular desert they can graze.

[glass zebra]

Publicado originalmente por Captain Nerdiepie:

Cows are 50-60% more efficient as dromedary as milk producers. And chicken is ~40% more efficient than even cows on feeds.

That depends a bit on what you take into account and the total amount of your animals.
Chicken give 0.25 nutrition per day (if you cook the eggs) and eat 0.22. So 0.25/0.22 = 1,136363636 nutrition per day.
Cows give 0.7 nutrition per day and eat 0.86 per day. So 0.7/0.86 = 0.813953488. Milk does not block offspring though which when slaughtered as babies give 3 nutrition after 6.66 days or an extra 3/6.66 = 0.45045045 per day which is an extra 0.45045045/0.86 = 0.523779593 per feed, totaling into 0.813953488 + 0.523779593 = 1.337733081, which is about 18% higher than chickens. Since you need 1 male for this, the bonus is a bit harder to calculate and depends on total animal numbers.

Publicado originalmente por Captain Nerdiepie:

If the nearest settlement is very far, you might not even want pack animals. Cost of caravan is very high in extreme desert region for longer trips, there is no grazing and you cannot grow hay in bulk, this makes it very costly to travel with pack animals. Dromedary is only good if doubled up as pack animals (which you don't in extreme desert).

Dromedaries can eat simple meals on caravans and the milk contribution to that already feeds themselves half way. With that and depending on how the path and weight is, a dromedary in a caravan might very much cost nothing since it reduces the food need of pawns on the way and extreme deserts often have other patches for grazing along the way. Trading heavier goods / higher amounts is very costly without pack animals.

[Captain Nerdiepie]

Publicado originalmente por glass zebra:

Publicado originalmente por Captain Nerdiepie:

Cows are 50-60% more efficient as dromedary as milk producers. And chicken is ~40% more efficient than even cows on feeds.

That depends a bit on what you take into account and the total amount of your animals.
Chicken give 0.25 nutrition per day (if you cook the eggs) and eat 0.22. So 0.25/0.22 = 1,136363636 nutrition per day.
Cows give 0.7 nutrition per day and eat 0.86 per day. So 0.7/0.86 = 0.813953488. Milk does not block offspring though which when slaughtered as babies give 3 nutrition after 6.66 days or an extra 3/6.66 = 0.45045045 per day which is an extra 0.45045045/0.86 = 0.523779593 per feed, totaling into 0.813953488 + 0.523779593 = 1.337733081, which is about 18% higher than chickens. Since you need 1 male for this, the bonus is a bit harder to calculate and depends on total animal numbers.

Publicado originalmente por Captain Nerdiepie:

If the nearest settlement is very far, you might not even want pack animals. Cost of caravan is very high in extreme desert region for longer trips, there is no grazing and you cannot grow hay in bulk, this makes it very costly to travel with pack animals. Dromedary is only good if doubled up as pack animals (which you don't in extreme desert).

Dromedaries can eat simple meals on caravans and the milk contribution to that already feeds themselves half way. With that and depending on how the path and weight is, a dromedary in a caravan might very much cost nothing since it reduces the food need of pawns on the way and extreme deserts often have other patches for grazing along the way. Trading heavier goods / higher amounts is very costly without pack animals.

You need about 1 male per 4 female at least. And at lower numbers you need 1:2 or 1:3 to or you will have a lot of down time. And if you want to min-max, you can just fertilize all the eggs, chicks yield 12 meat each, which makes chicken unbeatable in food efficiency.

OP said the nearest settlement is 15 day travel time, simple meals won't half that long. Realistically, he should not caravan till he has shuttle and farskip. I would just hold off on pack animals until late game.

[Tam]

Thanks for the math guys, sadly i haven't seen any animals mentioned above, only 2 female dromedaries, lizards, and pigs I am trying to farm now since drop pods ruined my lizard farm.

Inspected dromedary info and saw pack+riding+milking, that looks op IMO. horse+yak+cow in one.

Goose is a wild animal, requires constant training like my iguanas.

Publicado originalmente por glass zebra:

Cows are 50-60% more efficient as dromedary as milk producers. And chicken is ~40% more efficient than even cows on feeds.
That depends a bit on what you take into account and the total amount of your animals.
Chicken give 0.25 nutrition per day (if you cook the eggs) and eat 0.22. So 0.25/0.22 = 1,136363636 nutrition per day.
Cows give 0.7 nutrition per day and eat 0.86 per day. So 0.7/0.86 = 0.813953488. Milk does not block offspring though which when slaughtered as babies give 3 nutrition after 6.66 days or an extra 3/6.66 = 0.45045045 per day which is an extra 0.45045045/0.86 = 0.523779593 per feed, totaling into 0.813953488 + 0.523779593 = 1.337733081, which is about 18% higher than chickens. Since you need 1 male for this, the bonus is a bit harder to calculate and depends on total animal numbers.

But do not cows require much more pawns work when we compare them to chickens ?

[glass zebra]

Publicado originalmente por Captain Nerdiepie:

You need about 1 male per 4 female at least. And at lower numbers you need 1:2 or 1:3 to or you will have a lot of down time. And if you want to min-max, you can just fertilize all the eggs, chicks yield 12 meat each, which makes chicken unbeatable in food efficiency.

Don't cows need much less fertilisation/males since their pregnancy is 6.66 days? Yeah slaughtering baby chicks is pretty efficient in resources, but the work load is so high. Iguanas even get a bigger boost from that than chickens and also provide leather. I did start the post with "That depends a bit on what you take into account".

Publicado originalmente por Captain Nerdiepie:

OP said the nearest settlement is 15 day travel time, simple meals won't half that long. Realistically, he should not caravan till he has shuttle and farskip. I would just hold off on pack animals until late game.

My answer was more to your answer which seemed to be based on "if you do it anyway". The pawns have to eat in that time too and dromedaries can always eat what pawns eat (except raw animal stuff), though sadly you can't milk them while riding. It gotta be a really specific map to not have any patch of grazing ground after simple meals run out. Milk(or berries) is a rather okay travel food too before you can make pemmican and if you don't have to feed dromedaries stuff like pemmican to make the trip work, they should usually reduce the total food needed for that trip, which should be closer to 12 days with dromedaries.

Publicado originalmente por Tamm:

Goose is a wild animal, requires constant training like my iguanas.

This should not be the case? They have a high wildernis, but are normal pen animals.

Publicado originalmente por Tamm:

But do not cows require much more pawns work when we compare them to chickens ?

Chickens need only haul work and no animal handling at all. Cows need to be milked once each day. Chickens are by far the most efficient animals pawn work wise if you cook the eggs. They do not require retaming if that is what you were pointing at.

[Captain Nerdiepie]

Glass zebra:

Cows mate about 1x every 12 hours with a 50% of having a baby, 50% longer than for chickens. This is equivalent to 3 coin flips every 2 days, each heads translate to fertilization. 1.5 days expected per fertilization per male with unlimited females. Hence the 1:4 ratio.

FYI with just 1 bull you need to add at least 1.5 days to gestation cycle, assuming the male is always ready (which he won't always be depending on how many female is waiting).

At very large numbers 1:4 is enough. Problem is that each failures will holds up the entire herd. Failing the first 2 tries is not that costly but failing the next 2, then have 2 cows are now waiting and failing 5x, 3 cows are now waiting. With 1 bull it's streaky and unreliable at times. This is why people recommend 1:2 / 1:3 at low numbers if feeds is no issue.

(FYI succeeding in mating rapid does not carry any benefits on the other hand, all benefits goes to moot on the other end, you get a bunch of babies at once and the next cycle your bull wont fertilize them fast enough.)

I do not actually slaughter chicks for the same reasons. The extra yield in efficiency is not worth the extra work of slaughter small animals. Milking/eggs are much less hassle to deal with than slaughtering, and given how efficient cow/chickens are as pure milk maker and layers I find the addition work not worth it compare to just having more egg laying chickens or cows.

About the point of "depends on what you account for," I am just pointing in the similar vein of baby slaughter, chicken are far superior to cows. But do I do either? No.

Also, I think you're just being unreasonable with the do it anyway. The only time I've even considered traveling for 12 day is to the spaceship. 2 fewer pawns can mean the difference between life and death for early game colonies. You should know this fairly well if you play on losing is fun.

[glass zebra]

Thank you for the detailed explanation of the cow mating, with the additional explanation how non-averaging rolls work. I always went for ~1 males for 8 females with cows and never saw an issue. I should take a closer look. I still would not put slaughtering a cow every ~7 days per cow as the same as slaughtering a chick every day per chicken, especially since the number of chickens is greater in comparison, but I do get what you mean. With 1:4 and even barely with 1:8, the male would cost food instead of creating food even.


I understood your post as "if you do it anway, don't use pack animals" and didn't mean "ignore it, do it anyway". I would never send away 2 pawns on an early or even mid game caravan if I would not have a ton at home already. If I get burden on a pawn that can decently shoot, they will always do the caravans alone early game. Otherwise I add 1-2 attack animals(rare since 1.3) for tanking or wait until I have better psy or a backup like honour squad or a lance.

In general I do many caravans on losing is fun in the early game, since I regard early game raids are practically always defeatable by a few wooden traps, animals or a split with a stone city wall+melee rush and always get too much harvest. Getting some shield belt or similar early can be pretty nice. If none of that is available (wood/animals are rare in extreme desert and not everybody likes the dryads), I would not go. As soon as you get 10+ pirates, this becomes very risky/costly. I think the longest caravan I did in early game was maybe 7 days and I only did that to turn an enemy to neutral and it was probably risky because I used berries as caravan food.

Edit: checked some of my cow saves and they definitely seem to have too little males for full pregnancy cycles. Seem to be 1:6 at most with luck. Thank you again.