Production Lines: Do they encourage monoculture agriculture?

[Dookie]

When we were discussing how to produce ale in large volumes, I found myself switching all my orchards to only two fruits.  It was too difficult to manage many different inputs in the taverns, and we had established that wheat and berries were inefficient.  So, now I have map full of only peach and pear trees. 

The town I'm playing is testing RedKetchup's New Medieval Town mod and its bakery has gotten me switching all my farm crops to wheat and corn.  I'm sure those of you playing Colonial Charter are dealing with cotton and flax too. 

It's interesting how there's a whole variety of crops, but production lines give incentives for winding up with only cows and sheep (for leather and wool), and we can ignore chickens.   I keep them around for fun anyway. 

This phenomena reminds me of real world situations where for instance there's tons of potato tuber strains in all colors, shapes and sizes; but when we go to the grocery store we only have the one big bland potato because it easier to turn into french fries and other processed foods.  It seems that industrial processes also do this in Banished.

I was just wondering if you've encountered this while playing and what are your thoughts on mitigating it and/or balancing if several production lines are introduced.

[rkelly17]

I plant and grow everything just for the fun of it, but when I'm producing ale I have many orchards of the same fruit, usually the first one I get on a Medium start or by trade. Then I set all taverns to that fruit. I remember at one time @slink playing with only corn and beans, since you really only need one grain and one vegetable. The key thing is to grow or gather what you need for a Banished balanced diet: protein (meat, fish, eggs, nuts), grain (corn and wheat), vegetables (the non-grain field crops and the roots, mushrooms and onions from the gatherer) and fruit (non-nut orchard crops and berries). One of each would be enough, but I don't find that aesthetically pleasing, so I do them all. The honey in the exemplar mod is a universal food, though without a modded tavern you can't make booze from it (I use @RedKetchup's revised apiary to cut down on the massive production of the apiary in the mod kit and @slink's brewery to make more efficient wheat beer or mead), so I suppose you could keep everybody healthy just on honey.   I should also mention that I don't do milk/dairy or mill/bakery mods, nor do I play Colonial Charter. I'm kind of a "Keep It Simple, Stupid" kind of guy. I might give @RedKetchup's Medieval mill and bakery a try because I like the three-story houses so much. We'll see.

[Chon Waen]

I do like the mill/bakery personally because when trading for food, I would rather have 10,000 units each of everything rather than the ABCF diet of 100,000each Apples, Beans, Corn, and Fish.  But in having 10,000 everything means you tend to have fewer grains available map-wide since there are only 2 stock grains: Corn, and Wheat.  So, I end up buying more corn and wheat, and my millers/bakers make bread and cakes for better grain variety.

[marathon]

Of course production lines encourage monoculture... unless if you have a large town and many trading posts, in which case (and so long as you avoid ordering) it is easier to keep 5 breweries using 5 different fruits.
A way to avoid it is with conglomerations of orchards (15x4 for the unmodded game) with identical compositions: one peach, one apple, one pear, a couple more perhaps.
However it is not easy to have a little bit of everything, since there is a large need for grains while there are only 2 grains available (even mods have limited) while for protein there is a wide variety, including trees.

[RedKetchup]

i know @irrelevant only knows 2 crop food ^^ j/k
personally when i was playing... years ago (lol) i always tried to have all crops and make them equal in quantities.

[chillzz]

i know @irrelevant only knows 2 crop food ^^ j/k
personally when i was playing... years ago (lol) i always tried to have all crops and make them equal in quantities.

that will help you with a *much* steadier source of food, especially with crop failure due to pest or weather. i'll play the same,  not all the crops, but at least 2 of each food source.