World of Banished

Conversations => General Discussion => Topic started by: banisheduser on August 01, 2014, 09:25:20 AM

Title: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: banisheduser on August 01, 2014, 09:25:20 AM
I sort of find planting orchards is useless unless you're making ale.
For food, you're better off with a 20x18 field surely?
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: solarscreen on August 01, 2014, 09:40:25 AM
@banisheduser welcome to WOB!

Orchards do have their issues and you could easily import fruit rather than grow it.  I think it comes down to wanting orchards for design and appearance reasons or just wanting to grow your own.

Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: irrelevant on August 01, 2014, 10:31:17 AM
I probably won't ever use them in the future, except to make something pretty.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: RedKetchup on August 01, 2014, 10:33:01 AM
i mostly (98%) just importing fruits/nuts with merchants.

orchards need to be fixed. it takes 3 years before starting to get food, that, thats ok, but 2-3 years after you already starting to get 10%-80% chopped down and reseed, thats what it needs to be fixed cause that, the amount of food ridicously drop and looks extremly ugly. it makes it not worthy at all.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: solarscreen on August 01, 2014, 11:34:54 AM
Orchards should not go bad until 30 or 40 years after they mature.

It would be nice to have a good solid orchard to decorate the village with.

Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: slink on August 01, 2014, 01:20:52 PM
At the beginning I planted orchards because they were there, then for a while I never planted them because I can trade for fruit and nuts using more dependable field crops for trade goods, and now I plant them for self-sufficiency and because they vary the texture of the colony.  But I only plant one type of fruit now, except in the vegetarian challenge when I planted one type of fruit and one type of nut.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: rkelly17 on August 01, 2014, 04:11:03 PM
I plant orchards for three reasons:

(1) Aesthetics--I like the look of a farm that includes orchards (I tend to shy away from monocrop farms)

(2) Food variety. I know, I know, they are only arrangements of electrons, but, still, I'd resent it if the lord and master of my universe only gave me one kind of fruit.  ;)

(3) Ale production

I prefer not to trade for food if I can help it, though I do to make up an annual deficit. I don't like not being able to specify which food I want to buy without ordering--and even with ordering it's a crap shoot if one is auto-trading.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: irrelevant on August 01, 2014, 05:29:14 PM
If you're only ordering one kind of fruit, it isn't a crap shoot. You get what you order.

You need to have specific TPs for that though, so you can stock them with ale instead of firewood. Stock ale to autobuy fruit, firewood to autobuy everything else.

Unless you don't care. And sometimes you don't care, sometimes you just have that much firewood.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: rkelly17 on August 01, 2014, 06:34:04 PM
Quote from: irrelevant on August 01, 2014, 05:29:14 PM
If you're only ordering one kind of fruit, it isn't a crap shoot. You get what you order.

You need to have specific TPs for that though, so you can stock them with ale instead of firewood. Stock ale to autobuy fruit, firewood to autobuy everything else.

Unless you don't care. And sometimes you don't care, sometimes you just have that much firewood.

I could use some help on ordering alongside auto-trade, no doubt about it. First I have to get over my resentment at paying extra, but really none of you can help with that. What confuses me is this. In my trade settlement I needed a bit more leather than my cows and hunters were producing, so I set 4-5 TPs with orders for leather. Then I noticed that the resource or general goods merchants would bring me lots of leather but just sit there. My traders didn't buy any. So I thought, "I need to give them instructions to buy the (expletive deleted) leather--but in the auto-purchase window I could only tell them to buy "textiles," which I assume includes wool--which I did not need. With close to 40 TPs I wasn't checking closely, but the leather inventory went up so I assume it worked. My question: Is it possible to order X and get your traders to but X without buying Y and Z in the same category?

I only stock firewood early in the game when I need more seeds and the seed merchant will not take ale (Same may be true of livestock merchant, but I don't remember). After I have all the seeds I want I sell only ale, so the food merchant gives full value.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: irrelevant on August 01, 2014, 07:14:55 PM
You have a choice with textiles, either you can place an order for the one you want to buy, and pay extra, or you can take what you get.

If you want only leather and get some wool, just keep the wool in the TP to use to buy leather  ;)
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: slink on August 02, 2014, 04:45:23 AM
Quote from: irrelevant on August 01, 2014, 07:14:55 PM
If you want only leather and get some wool, just keep the wool in the TP to use to buy leather  ;)

That sounds like a marvelous plan!  Set the wool to 9999, and the leather to 0.  Auto-buy textiles, using something else the first (few) time(s).  Problem solved.  I bet it works with fruit, too.  Drain off the fruit that you want, and pay for it with the other fruits.  Anybody want to test that?
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: RedKetchup on August 02, 2014, 04:54:17 AM
Quote from: slink on August 02, 2014, 04:45:23 AM
Quote from: irrelevant on August 01, 2014, 07:14:55 PM
If you want only leather and get some wool, just keep the wool in the TP to use to buy leather  ;)

That sounds like a marvelous plan!  Set the wool to 9999, and the leather to 0.  Auto-buy textiles, using something else the first (few) time(s).  Problem solved.  I bet it works with fruit, too.  Drain off the fruit that you want, and pay for it with the other fruits.  Anybody want to test that?

euh if you ask your traders to go pickup 9999 wool, they will go empty your barns and markets till they have 9999 in stock stored
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: slink on August 02, 2014, 06:00:33 AM
Quote from: RedKetchup on August 02, 2014, 04:54:17 AM
Quote from: slink on August 02, 2014, 04:45:23 AM
Quote from: irrelevant on August 01, 2014, 07:14:55 PM
If you want only leather and get some wool, just keep the wool in the TP to use to buy leather  ;)

That sounds like a marvelous plan!  Set the wool to 9999, and the leather to 0.  Auto-buy textiles, using something else the first (few) time(s).  Problem solved.  I bet it works with fruit, too.  Drain off the fruit that you want, and pay for it with the other fruits.  Anybody want to test that?



euh if you ask your traders to go pickup 9999 wool, they will go empty your barns and markets till they have 9999 in stock stored

Only if you raise sheep.  ;)

Edit: replied in the wrong place
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: rkelly17 on August 02, 2014, 06:14:04 AM
All this higher math is too much for my simple mind.  ;D
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: canis39 on August 06, 2014, 05:07:01 PM
I plant orchards only for aesthetics. The actual yield is too small (and it takes too many years to start) to be much use otherwise.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: A Nonny Moose on August 07, 2014, 02:15:48 PM
I only plant orchards if I am sure I can staff them properly.  They generally take more farmers than a crop field and are less productive. 

Generally, the life of an orchard is far to short.  The simulation ticks orchard trees out of production far to quickly and then there is the pause while new trees grow and a slight production hiatus.

I think I've resigned myself to either trading for fruit or growing only for the Tavern as the increment in food production isn't worth it.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: heaven1 on August 08, 2014, 06:42:13 AM
When you plant an orchard an the trees start to go down, all you have to do is re-click on the type of fruit you planted and they will plant trees in place of the one's that fell.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: mariesalias on August 11, 2014, 10:13:01 AM
Quote from: heaven1 on August 08, 2014, 06:42:13 AM
When you plant an orchard an the trees start to go down, all you have to do is re-click on the type of fruit you planted and they will plant trees in place of the one's that fell.

Welcome @heaven1!

The farmers will replant the trees automatically, even if you do not re-click the fruit type. Once your orchard trees stay dying off, then your production from the orchard goes down and becomes unreliable compared to other food sources.

They do seem to start dying off much sooner then they should.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: rkelly17 on August 12, 2014, 08:07:47 AM
Orchards do go through a life cycle--which is much shorter in Banished than in RL. That being said, after a period of die-off and replanting they do come back to full strength for a time before the next die-off/replanting cycle. Field crops are more consistent, but don't forget that climate and work-load for farmers affects harvests in fields as well. And orchards just plain look nice.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: RavenSteele on August 15, 2014, 06:38:18 PM
Ever notice that your people age much faster than they should also?  And livestock, deer, and trees reproduce and age much faster as well?  I believe the game intentionally speeds up time for our own sanity.  It appears to be a year per season, so an entire year in the game would actually equal 5 years in real life.  When a season finishes the game skips a year, and shifts up to the next season.  After 4 seasons, 4 years have passed plus the 4 shifts in seasons, resulting in a total of 5 years.  For simplicity, the game pretends a single year is passing for the crop cycles, but for everything else it seems to go by this 4 season/5 year rotation.  I believe the life of trees in an orchard go by this logic as well, so when 10 in-game years have passed the trees have actually aged 50 years.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: mariesalias on August 15, 2014, 06:56:56 PM
@RavenSteele   I hadn't thought about it that way but it makes more sense that way. But it is confusing to have one type of crop age one way and the other type another way.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: RavenSteele on August 15, 2014, 06:59:07 PM
Yeah there is a disconnect there.  Harvesting the fruit goes by the same cycle as farming, but the trees don't.  I understand why the game is setup that way, but still its confusing :)
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: RedKetchup on August 15, 2014, 09:25:15 PM
but still, something needs to be done. nobody are using these orchards anymore (out maybe to do something about the game is lacking : 'visual' improvements items)
and it needs to be fixed.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: irrelevant on August 15, 2014, 09:54:24 PM
I keep thinking of using them, but each time I think, it's so much simpler to make that space into farms, and trade for the fruit.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: RedKetchup on August 15, 2014, 11:01:19 PM
in my new game, i have 200 citizens and i have 96k apples lol (after all citizens took their share part) and 0 orchard
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: RavenSteele on August 15, 2014, 11:44:56 PM
I think a simple solution to make them usable would be to increase their output.  Maybe double the amount of yield each year.  Suggestion for the next patch maybe.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: irrelevant on August 15, 2014, 11:56:48 PM
I'd be happy with them if they died off half as fast.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: RedKetchup on August 16, 2014, 12:40:36 AM
yeah i agree with @irrelevant  ;)
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: slink on August 16, 2014, 06:10:50 AM
It takes 3 world years for them to become productive, which is 15 people years.  That is too long for a fruit tree.  Then they only produce for about 3 years before they start dying.  That is 30 people years old, which is too short for a tree.  They were designed by a man who portrays herbivores as kneeling to graze, which may simply mean that he hasn't a very firm grasp of some aspects of rural life.  Or it may have been his way of preventing players from having a steady food source.  Worse desecration has occurred in the name of game balance in the past.  We'll simply fix the trees to our own tastes when he sees fit to release the modding kit.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: rkelly17 on August 16, 2014, 06:59:40 AM
Given that we have productive orchards of 100 year old apple trees in these parts, 30 year is definitely too short. Now if we wanted to simulate real life we'd have a major canning company get a government subsidy to build a cannery, convince all the farmers to plant canning peaches for the plant, then a few years later decide that peaches are cheaper in China and pull down the plant and abscond with the government subsidy money, thus resulting in the farmers digging up the peach trees to plant something else. Note: This actually happened in the Niagara Peninsula a few years back. Seriously.  >:(

While we're at it, once we start modding why not berry fields? Strawberries could work like field crops and blueberries and raspberries like orchards (without the constant replanting).

Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: RedKetchup on August 16, 2014, 07:34:16 AM
Strawberry fields forever !
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: mariesalias on August 16, 2014, 08:38:56 AM
I still plant orchards, both for looks and to produce some fruit for my people before trade starts really going.

It'll be interesting to see what can be achieved with the mod kit.
Title: Re: Do You Bother Planting Orchards?
Post by: RavenSteele on August 16, 2014, 08:45:18 AM
QuoteI'd be happy with them if they died off half as fast.

QuoteIt takes 3 world years for them to become productive, which is 15 people years.  That is too long for a fruit tree.  Then they only produce for about 3 years before they start dying.  That is 30 people years old, which is too short for a tree.

QuoteWhile we're at it, once we start modding why not berry fields? Strawberries could work like field crops and blueberries and raspberries like orchards (without the constant replanting).

I didn't work out the math; you are right that's way too fast for a tree to die.  I think having them die half as fast and adding berry fields are awesome ideas!