Free-range cattle

[Potjeh]

I think it's a bit silly how you can only get base quality milk and meat if you raise your cattle on a pasture. The Swiss drive their cows high into the mountains so they can feast on the lushest grass and give the best milk for fine cheeses. Cowboys drove cattle all over central USA, chasing the best grass that grew after rain, so that the beef reaches it's highest deliciousness potential. Fact is, free range animal products tend to taste better, and through-feeding cattle in a small enclosure is only done IRL because it's much cheaper.

Anyway, I'd like it to be viable in H&H to do that. The grass should deplete, of course, but instead of just disappearing like it does now it ought to lose quality. Quality of a grassland would be raised periodically on a local level, even if it doesn't make much sense without weather and seasons. That is, if you want the very best feed for your cattle, you'll have to follow the good feeding instead of just keeping them on one big pasture all the time. The grass will slowly diminish in quality on it's own (represents wildlife eating it), so you need to be at the right place at the right time. You can also use a scythe to cut it and get hay, if you find it easier to leave the cattle behind and travel on your own (though it means more work).

The real purpose here is to make nomadic life a viable alternative to the sedentary one, as a nomad could support a much larger number of animals. Also, this would lead to cattle getting lost now and then, which would give the newbs a chance to catch some pre-domesticated cattle. Who knows, if enough escape they might even establish a feral cow population (second generation and beyond), which could be a bit easier to tame than aurochsen.

[loftar]

Anyway, I'd like it to be viable in H&H to do that.

Me too; I am also quite disturbed by it. However, in the current implementation, that would be quite hard to attain, since grass cannot have quality (being part of the tile data). I've got a few future plans that I hope can both remedy that particular situation and introduce some other fun effects, like crop rotation.

[warrri]

But grass already has Soil quality, so you could just add grass quality too? There is even one sort of tile which has 2 different quality levels, the shallow water which has water and clay quality.

[loftar]

Well; those quality levels aren't exactly per tile implementation-wise, but I see your point. However, the look-up process for calculating such quality isn't exactly up to the speed that I'd need it to be to use it for grazing. That's another one of those things that I hope to remedy.

[Chakravanti]

But once you do this does fit in with the 'depleting resources' idea that Jorb is so fond of...

[ChrisWebb]

Humm, sounds interesting but at the same time, with so much time spent trying to find rediculously rare tiny spots of HQ resources oveer such a huge map, there's just a little thing called over-complication. No matter fun a game is, once it gets to the point where only 5 people have either the time or ability to do so much it can turn from "fun " to "unfun" pretty quick.

[niltrias]

The real purpose here is to make nomadic life a viable alternative to the sedentary one, as a nomad could support a much larger number of animals. Also, this would lead to cattle getting lost now and then, which would give the newbs a chance to catch some pre-domesticated cattle. Who knows, if enough escape they might even establish a feral cow population (second generation and beyond), which could be a bit easier to tame than aurochsen.

I like this idea, but we would need some sort of "cattle drive" option as opposed to the current "cattle pull" option...long range relocation one cow at a time would be mind-numbingly boring. Maybe this could come in with horses? Dogs?
Larger grassy areas would also help a lot.

[Jackard]

nomadic life isnt cool without caravans

[Potjeh]

Well yeah, covered wagons, horses and cowboy hats are a given. OK, maybe not the hats. I'd also love to see dog assistants, but I can't imagine a good interface for controlling multiple sheep dogs.

And I reckon that deforested areas should change into grassland after a while. Treeless forest terrain just doesn't make any sense.

As for the quality concerns, there shouldn't be that much difference between various location, and all tiles in an area should have the same quality, provided they haven't been grazed yet. It's really more about following the imaginary rain than searching for good soil.

[niltrias]

Another thing we would need would be transportable dwellings. I mean, there have been semi-nomadic groups with various permanent settlements that are only inhabited during certain portions of the year, but full nomadic just sounds more fun. It also removes the problem of claiming two different dwellings that are likely to be far apart.