Posted By Davepoleon at

I've asked the following question several times over the months and years and never gotten a real answer. Domain selection has put the need for an answer on a time limit.

I've build a lot of my intent and purchases around being a mayor/vintnor and will be pursuing the grandmaster vintner skills.

In earth biomes there are relatively few areas in the world that can grow wine grapes naturally. This appears to be mirrored in the biomes made available for settlement selection. Since Caspian has hinted at soil pH, temperature, moisture levels, and altitudes all being aspects of farming then its likely that K3 (NA-W, Map I) will be the only biomes that can effectively, and without extreme terraforming/earthwork efforts, naturally grow wine grapes.

With domain selection near, I may be forced to leave my kingdom and duchy of 2 years so that I can grow wine grapes. Or risk wasting hundreds of dollars of preparation on hoping that the extreme tip of an adjacent biome will still be a practical solution.

Can someone definitively tell me that wine grapes will be able to be grown in other biomes and which biomes those could be without having to double my efforts on irrigation or constantly force feeding the soil to an acidic pH?

I don't mind a little added effort if it means I can stay with my Kingdom and Duchy, but if its going to be a painstaking and boring grind hole to just get the soil and water to maintain a basic quality then I'll be forced to make a really disappointing and heartbreaking choice during domain selection.

fwiw: I don't mind the difficulty and grinding involved in working towards higher quality or rarer products, but I don't want to work 10 times as hard for basic results.

Mixed Leaf forest biome is the best for Wine, that's on K3 I believe.

Caspian has said:

The Mixed Leaf can be thought of as ideal biome for orchards and vineyards as well.

and

With a bit of help on the soil, so long as it's got the right biome cycle, lighting, etc. it's possible to grow stuff in other biomes. The Lower Montane, Broad Leaf, and Mixed Leaf can all grow similar stuff if you clear away parts of the forest and treat the soil.

But regarding picking your settlement he has also said that...

Dss is relatively blind. We are showing the locations of settlements and major landmarks and that's it I think. I honestly haven't looked heavily at the legend that was created for the maps.

This last info worries me a bit. Okay, a lot actually. If we don't get information about what is currently being mined/cultivated/produced/traded/whatever at or near every settlement, it's more or less a lottery do we pick suitable settlement for our plans, in which some of us have spend bunch of money. The world has been there before us, so it shouldn't be hidden from us what settlements are focused on.

Personally I haven't bought any of those profession X kits because I don't know are they viable when I pick my settlement. I do have spend x euros on EP which I can spend on whatever I can do in my settlement.

The obvious solution is to brew beer or distill whisky instead. Wine is dumb. ;)

The best version of this game will be made of people and small groups pursuing their ideals, goals and dreams to the fullest extent the game mechanics will allow.

Flexibility in your local situation, without compromising your ultimate goals.

"Best" at anything will take 'lifetimes' and your starting parcels will be a very small part of that in the scheme of things.

Carry On! Cheers!

Posted By markof at 01:27 AM - Thu Mar 14 2019

First of it is important to note that we have not much info on how wine will be made in game yet beyond a few things :

• "Is there anything more majestic than a towering mountain? Its craggy peaks, its steep slopes melding into fertile foothills, perfect for Hrothi vineyards" a hint from Snipehunter from rocky mountain steppe which at the very least imply that grapes can be grown and wine made in Kingdom 2.

So those tidbits of knowledge (especially the last one) are at the very least demonstrating that your assumption that only K3 will be "will be the only biomes that can effectively, and without extreme terraforming/earthwork efforts, naturally grow wine grapes." is wrong.

That's good info. I think I read that when it was first released. That at least confirms my hopes that there are other areas. I'm not a member of the kingdom in NA-W that will likely end up in K2 but if wine grapes can grow there then it may grow other places as well.

My understanding is that plants will be soil and seasonal weather dependent (like life, but with playable simplicity). That means, for grapes (my family grows them -- although I don't and am not an expert, but an eavesdropper) you want:

Temperate climate zone. Cool and moderately wet winter. No false spring (that is, once the frost ends, it stays gone). Warm (but not hot) summers with relatively cool nights and a relatively even temperature (no wild fluctuations). Dry days before harvest. Soil less important (wide range OK) -- but they prefer a sandy loam. That means enough drainage to prevent wet roots but still able to retain nutrients.

All these things seem like things that could be implemented in game.

Caspian's biome list -- the northern Neran lands and the Kypiq Broadleaf -- look like the best biomes to me, but shrubland should work if local weather is good or there is good compensating irrigation, and cleared alpine or lower mountain slope (with sun exposure) should work, too -- based on how I assume the simplified growing system will probably work. Avoid the South, and Taiga isn't great, either (which is why the northern Germans drank beer rather than wine and the Norse primarily drank mead -- and, on that note, here's hoping for lots of Brudvir beekeepers).

Imho it is still too early to panic about plant cultivation zones. ;)
At the moment we still know too little about biomes and plant cultivation.

Just keep in mind that plants are quite resilient and adaptable.

Maybe you can become the first to successfully cultivate grapes in your biome.

Posted By Turlorn at 1:21 PM - Thu Mar 14 2019

Imho it is still too early to panic about plant cultivation zones. ;)
At the moment we still know too little about biomes and plant cultivation.

Just keep in mind that plants are quite resilient and adaptable.

Maybe you can become the first to successfully cultivate grapes in your biome.

I don't think panic is what this about. But planning is. DSS is coming up -- and a person who wants to grow one thing, but selects a bad location for it in DSS, will either have to abandon their plans (no fun) or relocate (which has costs and would delay the plans). So, we need to work with what we know and make decisions accordingly.

We know that SBS wants an ambitiously real, but playable, agricultural system. We know that it has sought RL expertise in this regard. We have seen this desire for playable realism in other others. Therefore, we have every reason to expect that there will be plant zones and that they will matter.

That means no grapes in the swamps or deserts (at least without expensive and time consuming swamp draining or desert irrigation -- and even then the weather is likely to be unfavorable).

Much of California could be considered semiarid desert or temperate shrublands, and there are grape-growing regions in those biomes. Some of the best wines from France and Germany come from regions that are just barely warm enough throughout the year to grow grapes. Etc., etc. Obviously the wines from different places taste somewhat differently, and some people pooh-pooh wines that don't have the characteristics they like, but I think those facts are just some of the PvP aspects of viniculture and winemaking.

Posted By Poldano at 12:27 AM - Fri Mar 15 2019

Much of California could be considered semiarid desert or temperate shrublands, and there are grape-growing regions in those biomes. Some of the best wines from France and Germany come from regions that are just barely warm enough throughout the year to grow grapes. Etc., etc. Obviously the wines from different places taste somewhat differently, and some people pooh-pooh wines that don't have the characteristics they like, but I think those facts are just some of the PvP aspects of viniculture and winemaking.

Yes, much of California is semi-arid desert. A lot of the rest of the state is not. The grape growing regions are not in the semi-arid desert. In fact, the wine region of California has soil and weather almost ideal for grapes — a Mediterranean climate with better soil.

Grape growing in Germany is quite limited to certain grape varietals. Even then it occurs in the warmer areas. In any case, the German grape regions are marginal. Someone can have a vineyard there, but if you wanted to set yourself as the magnate king of vinyards, that’s not where you would go.

That said, based on what we are hearing, I think nearly half the map (essentially the entire northern half but for the taiga) could be OK for grapes. However, if I had this plan, I would pick the lower montane.

FYI you can make wine from more then just grapes.
You can make wine from pretty much any fruit, in fact.
So as long as your biome can grow some kind of fruit, you can make wine.

Colder regions are usually perfect for berries, which make good wines too.
Tropical and subtropical regions grow lots of fruit of all kinds.
The arid and semi arid regions may be a bit more tricky but even there you may have some fruits.

If you’re creative you can make wine wherever, just maybe not grape wine, but why limit yourself to just grapes?

If you do want grapes specifically, the grasslands would probably be the best, lower montane, mixed leaf forest, or savana probably being good alternatives.

Basically the neran biomes are where you want to go for grapes. (Savana is To’resk, but it’s close enough).

That being said, I’m going to be the biggest exporter of banana wine, watch me.

Posted By zimmah at 12:14 PM - Fri Mar 15 2019

FYI you can make wine from more then just grapes.
You can make wine from pretty much any fruit, in fact.
So as long as your biome can grow some kind of fruit, you can make wine.

Colder regions are usually perfect for berries, which make good wines too.

That is true. Dandelion wine is quite good. So, can we make wine from flowercup porcupines? If so, I think we know that the Yoru drink.

.

Posted By Beathan at 4:46 PM - Fri Mar 15 2019

Posted By zimmah at 12:14 PM - Fri Mar 15 2019

FYI you can make wine from more then just grapes.
You can make wine from pretty much any fruit, in fact.
So as long as your biome can grow some kind of fruit, you can make wine.

Colder regions are usually perfect for berries, which make good wines too.

That is true. Dandelion wine is quite good. So, can we make wine from flowercup porcupines? If so, I think we know that the Yoru drink.

Hmm, I wonder if that counts as vegetarian. Lol

I know we all get very comfortable with what we have already developed in our time so far, but everything at this stage should also be mutable and adaptable as well if you want to not get yourself painted into a corner so to speak. And I see that you are aware of the possibilities that your previous plans may need to be adapted. That puts you ahead of the game already.

An idea might be to first to look at the scope of what you want to do. It appears you want you want the be the greatest maker of all varieties of all wines?

My question to you is it even possible to actually do this?

I'll use brewing as an example, because my wine knowledge is limited at best.

Anheuser Busch InBev brews the most beer in the world, but I don't think anyone would consider any of their products the "best" beer in the world. And conversely those that are considered the "best" are sometimes classified that way based on something such as their exclusivity in either their ingredients or techniques involved.

Perhaps the Hrothi produce a variety of Ice Wine that is beyond compare in both difficulty and complexity to produce that makes the mastery of it itself far more difficult that the average Neran table variety?

Is it philosophically possible to be a mass producer and a Grandmaster at the same time?

Or are these mutually exclusive positions?

If this is the case, are you really not limited in your scenario as much by the environment as you are by your own goals instead?