whats the point of herding animals?

[Ed/Rinstan]

lured chickens but dont know why i did it lol

[Attelso]

Chickens are an new player trap. In order to properly utilize them it requires a long supply chain and significant investment in tech. Stay clear of them until late game.

[Mdage]

Agreed. One thing I will say is that later in game eggs do become valuable so if you have spare pips always stock up while you can.

[Sharpnessism]

To use chickens you need the egg harvester building or butcher's table.

For the eggs they're used in a later tech for mass food production (you need to unlock this memory).

For the butcher's table you can make feathers or raw meat from the chickens. Raw meat can be used for mass food production (you need to unlock this memory). Feathers are used for production of advanced materials (also need to unlock this memory).

[MHarmless]

I would strongly disagree; you only need egg farms, chicken pens, and gathering huts, all of which cost only wood to build. Both techs are in growth and you should be able to get them both in under 30 research.

Once you have that, then you can build a stack of them that looks like this, where E is eggs and C is chicken pens, plus basic homes on the sides by the chicken pens:

EC
CE
EC
CE

you have 2 farmers in the middle two making 9 eggs each, and two on the ends making 6 eggs each, for a total of 30 eggs. You need 12 seeds to feed the chickens, so that means 4 gathering huts doing seeds somewhere on the map. Net output is 30 food from 8 workers and it doesn't care about seasons at all.

This base will cost 48 wood for the egg farms, 16 for the chicken pens, 4 for the gathering huts, and 16 for the houses for all eight of these pips. Total cost, 84 wood to feed 30 pips forever.

Later you can add a butcher and some barbecues to slightly lower the egg output in exchange for a bunch of cooked white meat, and then later still you can set up soup pots to turn each egg into over a dozen meals. Neither of these will require going back and retrofitting the egg setup, this column of egg farmers will sit there the entire game being the foundation on which a bountiful year-round food supply is built.

[Sharpnessism]

I build it as a 3x3 (H house, C chickens, E egg harvester):
HC...
CEC
...CH
You only need 1 pip per 4 chicken farms. The butcher's table and a road sign can go into the remaining corners.

[MHarmless]

Originally posted by Sharpnessism:

You only need 1 pip per 4 chicken farms. The butcher's table and a road sign can go into the remaining corners.

I used to use that layout, but it is actually much more labor intensive. Each chicken pen needs 3 seeds per day, which means 1 pip working a forager. So the 3x3 option gets 12 eggs but takes 5 pips working to do it.

An X layout like:

CE
EC

Is 6 seeds, so 2 foragers and 2 farmers, 4 pips making the same 12 eggs. And on top of saving one pip's labor over the 3x3, you save one productive land tile on the egg farm itself and another 2 tiles that don't have to be foragers. So -1 pip and -3 tiles for the same output.

The long form I posted up above just keeps improving on that, each time you extend that small X you are adding a farmer who makes 9 food from 2 pips labor, instead of 6 food for 2 labor.

[Kyresti]

TLDR: More setup and planning than hunting, but also more control over when and where you do it.

Just as important, so long as you have or can find seeds, egg production doesn't stop for winter - most other food sources do (including hunting over time).

[Nightfish]

It depends on what you do with them. Putting them in a pen alone doesn't help you, but there are lots of follow up techs that are very useful:

* Sheep provide wool which can then be turned into cloth

* Chickens provide infinite eggs regardless of the season

* Cows provide milk which you can use for food and cheese

The latter two are a very good source for bourgoise food which may or may not be annoying to come by otherwise. One of the main benefits is that hunting animals run out and require a lot of space while livestock generally does not.

[Gamer7956]

Animals can be powerful, but can also be nerfed by the random unlocks. Rabbits in particular are seemingly worse sheep (needing vegetables instead of barley), and their wool is useless unless you've unlocked sheep. Slaughtering them can yield more meat, but with the need for feeding them hunting is just better. Similarly, the building that gives milk from flour makes keeping cows for anything other than the tannery pointless

[Griffin]

Welcome to the game! Agreed on the "new player trap" as I lost my first game that way. But that's been a lot of the fun for me.

[GabeCube]

lmao idk about new player trap, eggs carried me through first winter. you get more eggs for each coop around the egg farm. If you plan out your houses right you can get an absurd amount of eggs per day.

[Attelso]

Originally posted by GabeCube:

lmao idk about new player trap, eggs carried me through first winter. you get more eggs for each coop around the egg farm. If you plan out your houses right you can get an absurd amount of eggs per day.

By winter your like 120 days into the game, by that time you should have all the tech and supplies needed to establish a chicken chain. But making them in the spring or summer is a trap. Especially for a new player

[Kryten]

I found that I never needed so much chicken pens, as I got the cauldron cooking thing next and turning one egg into 13 goop is pretty awesome :)

[DsnowMan]

Do wild chickens count towards egg production?

[Kryten]

Originally posted by DsnowMan:

Do wild chickens count towards egg production?

No