I'm designing a farming system for a medieval game and I'm thinking how to model the available land and animals connection.
The base is that the player owns X acres of land and is using it to grow things (plants and/or animals) to sell for profit.

With plants there is no problem. Each plant uses acres of land, there is perfect competition (you want wheat you don't have land for flax). But for animals this is not exactly true, and it is not necessarily recommended for gameplay purposes. For example hens, these don't really use up land, these just eat some worms and you don't allocate any land to grow food for them (as long as you keep their population small, like a dozen per household). For pigs this is half true, these eat organic waste, things humans can't eat. But that's not enough and you have to suplement their diet by growing some plants for them. Cows are probably the fully competitive ones, you have to allocate some land for grass for them and cows can't eat waste like pigs.

So, I wonder if what I wrote makes sense (it does not need to be perfectly realistic, but it should at least appear so to the player) and if yes, how to model something like that?


For hens I could just make a fixed number per player allowed (or per acres of land since that would simulate the size of the estate), not sure through what to do if player want to make a chicken farm... For cows I could just make X cows per Y land allocated as pasture. For pigs I have no clue. Oh yes, I almost forgot about manure, this could be a nice reason to keep the farmland to animals ratio balanced.

I'd just go for "livstock", which would sum up all the animals you need, and animal feed as suggested above. That way you can allocate land to both.

If you feel you really need the chickens, pigs, cows etc distinction, have some sliders supply a mix -- each land unit will yield x% chickens, y% cows, z% pigs etc. Based on that, the production of eggs, leather and whatnot could be calculated.

Fodder seems to be the key question for livestock. So, what are the possible sources of fodder?
- wheat crops as a byproduct produce straw (which can be changed into low quality hay or just fed to cows directly, althrough this alone is not enough) and chaff (for pigs?)
- human household produce various waste perfect for pigs
- pastur brings hay and you can just let the animals loose there and they will graze (require dedicated land for animals)
- chicken can eat worms and small things even pigs can't, so a small quantity can survive for free

The issue is also the player recognition of these, but we could put high standards here, agriculture will be an importzant part of the game and the game is supposed to be heavier realism one, so it is acceptable if player is forced to learn a few things (still, a total confusion is not desired )

have some sliders supply a mix -- each land unit will yield x% chickens, y% cows, z% pigs etc. Based on that, the production of eggs, leather and whatnot could be calculated.

No... I don't want such industrial feel of the livestock production. It's more like a richer peasant/lower noble cottage/estate with fields, some chicken moving around, a cow waiting to be milked... Things like that Slider and cold calcualtion of production volume is not in the mood for that game.

Firstly, disease. Of course this depends on the type of game, but this has always been a factor in farming. Diseases tend to target one or two species only. You could have diseases that periodically decimate certain livestock types. This is realistic, though probably not very fun for the player.

Actually, several people mentioned disease/plague. I'm not sure if they will say it is not fun...

Thirdly, perhaps they could decrease in value as you sell them (assuming they are to be sold). Just like real trade, oversupplying would decrease the worth of that particular livestock and as such it would pay to diversify. While realistic, this wouldn't be very useful if you are producing meat for internal consumption.

I feel the diminishing returns would be the simplest in terms of explanation and gameplay, while also being the least annoying.

Not for that game. The player is assumed a small/medium fry, there is no way his actions alone could affect the global price. He is more like a peasant selling things in the nearest city market than a monopolist with thousand of livestock.

Ah, now I get the scope of the game! Thanks for clarifying.

Since the player won't be in charge of a large kingdom (as that is the impression I am getting here, feel free to correct me again), focusing on the smaller elements will be easy. And you could freely put more focus on maintaining servants, each type of livestock, some minor productions etc. A general description of how important the livestock is to the player could help clear this up a bit.

Having all chickens accounted for, each pig/cow taken into consideration shouldn't prove that difficult -- in the end, they are just integer values. You could just set flat values of animals per land unit -- like 200 chickens = 50 pigs = 20 cows, with possible upgrades that would decrease/increase that value or the output of the resource gained from that livestock.

A player will not think too hard if his land will be able to support 2k chickens. After all, only recently did the weapon count drop from 10 weapons to 2 in FPS games. There is this phenomenon (forgot how it's named) that actually bolsters the ignorance of "realism" in games. Humans aren't that good in assessing volume and/or space, unless they have specific knowledge and experience in that (as in, architecture or breeding animals) or they are shown an example that would be their point of reference (like, displaying a Farmville like graphic with all livestock accounted for).

Look up to Heroes of Might and Magic for example -- it is preposterous that 100 giants would take up the same space as a peasant or 10.

Also, don't introduce too much complexity via different food types. A player can only keep track of so many stats. Generalize the minor features of your game and elaborate on the core concepts (whatever they are at this moment)

I'd go with simple capacity per field approach. So you could have say 20 chicken/pigs/sheep per field or 10 cows per field that you allocate to that animal.



You'd also need to factor in a birth rate to work out how long it takes to increase your animal populations naturally.

For disease I'd only have that as a random event which either kills off a percentage of your livestock, reduces growth rate, or prevents you from earning income that turn from them.

But it all depends on the type of game.

I definitely don't want to allocate land to chicken. That's completely unrealistic for a medieval economy. Chicken are moving around eating worms and don't compete with cows (because if these were no one would keep any chicken since cows are much better). Of course there should be an option for the player to keep additonal quota of chickens if they desire, but it can't be the optimal choice. The "free chicken quota" Iron Chef Carnage proposed seems the best so far. But I still would want some option to keep additional chicken for some sort of forage cost.

As for breeding I though of making 5 age classes for each animal type (from young to old). After X units of time all animals move one class up and the adult ones produce new age1 animals. You can buther any age class but the most meat is from the 2 oldest age classes. I visualise it as 5 cow icons from top to bottom, with amount of animals on the left and "buther" option for each class (where you enter the amount to butcher). The 2 oldest classes would have "perfect buthering" icon.

This should work for pigs and cows but the chicken... (again chicken, I start to hate chicken ). These don't really breed by themselves, the human perfectly regulate the birth rate by amount of eggs he takes.

I have also problem with sheep. These were mostly used in regions where the soil was poor and density sparse. That's won't fit with the rest of the game (dense populated areas of medieval Europe). I can't really make "foraging" sheep This would sound very odd, everyone knows sheep are on pastur and you don't prepare and store additional food for them.

Unless this is a realistic game, I say go ahead and invent your own world rules. Have chickens the size of a monster truck or something.

But seriously, don't dwell too much on it. If a player takes too long to do one turn, it will become tedious to flip X turns each day, doing the same boring task of butchering animals, breeding new ones, regulating number of eggs etc. Think it through on a larger scale -- will it be the same fun after 10, 100, 1000 real time days?

It all depends on how realistic you want the game to be really.

I would have chickens take a field as that would include the chicken coop to keep the chicken, fenced in areas for them to walk around, places to store the grain to feed the chicken, etc...
Another option would to all you to upgrade a house to have a chicken coop giving it a small income boost.

Don't forget the main reason people kept chickens over cows is that chickens are cheap and easy to care for. A small poor farmer couldn't afford to buy and keep a cow. Like wise its easy to put a small a coop on your house and have fresh eggs and chicken.

Unless you need the details of 5 ages for animals why included it? Can you not have something simple where each turn a cow produces 1 to 3 bottles of milk or if you upgrade your barn they produce cheese? As well the birth rate would just mean that number of turns it takes before you get a new cow or for larger farms the number of cows a turn you gain.