FreeHolder Alpha 8 Hotfix 3
3.22.2020
See dev notes below, if you're interested.
PLEASE NOTE
**!!Please note with the changes to pasture data from adding barns, pastures from old saves may be subject to corruption when loaded. Your animals will probably be fine, but you may for example have the barn icon showing even though you don't have one, and will be unable to take the build action. New saves should not have any problems. Thank you!!**
New Features
Animal Features
-Animals not kept in a barn are subject to possible spooking by storms and blizzards (except for Mules)
Husbandry Features
-"Move Animal" a free action which allows you to move animals from one pasture to another
-"Build Barn" an action which costs 2 points and 10 timber, upgrades all pastures in a hex
-Barn prevents weather roll and fatigue penalties for animal actions, as if you were in your villa
-Barn provides some protection against wolf effects and attacks
-Barn prevents animals from spooking due to storms and blizzards
Bugfixes
Animal Fixes
-Incorrect animals such as mules can no longer become pregnant
-Mules now correctly exhibit the "stubborn" trait that makes them immune to spooking and its associated friendship loss
Tile Fixes
-Cliffwall Moor and Shaded Gully tile bonuses now work properly, i.e. they provide a free barn and free pasture spaces
Changes
Action Changes
-Lowered cost of Fence Pasture from 5 to 4 Timber
Animal Changes
-Animals are spooked for just the current month unless they escape from a wolf attack, which inflicts 2-3 months.
-Animal friendship penalty from being spooked has been reduced
-Slightly reduced difficulty of milking goats in general
-Lowered cost of lamb to 1d and sheep to 2d
-Lowered cost of foal to 1d50s and mule to 3d
Farming Changes
-Fields now require twice as much fertilizer (20) for the apply fertilizer action
Skill Changes
-Genius' composting skill is now twice as effective as before
Developer Notes
Animal Changes
I spent quite a bit of time testing animals this week and I came to the conclusion that they are a bit too hard to use out of the gate. I was particularly concerned with the fact that a goat being spooked by wolves could prevent collection of cheese for as many as 3 months, which is pretty excessive. Now this will only happen in the rare circumstance where an animal survives being hunted by a wolf. This makes much more sense. Animals being harder to use and less reliable than other methods of food collection is going to discourage people from using them, which I do not want.
I made the milking a LITTLE easier, not much, but it was necessary given the new weather penalties and such. This raises the question of how your animals are protected from the elements. To avoid complications I didn't bother with barns or fodder storage and such originally since it would add even more work to animals and I do want animal keeping to be somewhat less labor intensive than farming. You can handfeed them for extra health, but it doesn't take extra time.
On the other hand, barns are probably a necessary upgrade for realism. Basically, you can build a barn on any hex with at least one pasture, and thereafter all pastures in that hex are upgraded to use the barn. What does this mean? One, all animal interactions ignore weather as if you were performing villa actions. Milking goats or shearing sheep in a storm or blizzard will no longer be insanely difficult or fatiguing. Two, it provides somewhat increased protection against wolves. Animals still spend most their time outside, so it's helpful but not wolfproof. Three, it removes the chance (that I just added) of animals being spooked by storms or blizzards, which should have been in there before, except that there was no way to counter it at the time. You still need pasture space for each animal as that ensures a food supply for them.
As a side note, the Cliffwall Moor and Shaded Gully tile bonuses now essentially provide a free barn and pasture spaces when discovered. The natural features of the hex essentially mimic what a barn does, except of course you don't have to build anything. However, as a trade off the tiles hold 2 fewer animals overall than they could in a normal hex of that type (6 for meadow, 4 for heathlands).
Finally, I don't think sheep should be any more expensive than goats. Goats keep you alive, whereas sheep provide you wool quite slowly as a luxury item, so why they should they cost more? They're argaubly less immediately useful. I also dropped the cost of foals and mules in the hopes that more people could recover from having their mule killed by wolves. That tends to be a game-ender, and it would be, but perhaps this will allow people to squeak by a bit more.
As a side note, I didn't like the fact that a few animals would basically give you enough fertilizer that you never had to worry about crop rotation, cover cropping, or any other nutrient tactics ever again. Now you need 20 per field, which still means 3 farm animals can still provide for almost 2 fields a year, but it's a little more reasonable than before. I also doubled the effectiveness of the Genius' composting skill to compensate for this.