Linseed, woolens, metal

[BTA]

I am shocked at how useful linseed plants are (linen cloth, linseed oil wood preservative and cloth water proofing, flax seed food). I really did not know flax, linen and boiled linseed oil all come from the same plant. Hemp has a little competition.

I search the UR world over for quality woolens. I would love caring for a herd of sheep (eating my turnips and getting eaten by lynx and bears despite my best efforts) so I could collect their wool and make my own MasterWork woolens.

Now, metal crafting is a monstrous can of worms in URW, mining, smelting, alloys, smithing and imbuing with  ritual blessings and powers, that is a lot of programming work. But, I would like a more reliable source of my most coveted weapons and armor.

Or, OMG! A spell to find where that one masterwork woodman's axe is in the world?! LOL, not to mention where I saw silver jewelry and an anthill to request an audience with The Great Man of The Forest.

[davidor]

Why are people testing their AI at game forums

[PALU]

I don't know if flax was used in Finland during the Iron Age. If it was, yes, it would be useful indeed, at the time player crafting of non skin based clothing gets added.

Shearing sheep, etc. again requires the addition of the corresponding industry, but don't expect to create masterworks in a hurry: clothing making is capped at the Decent quality level because beyond that you'd need to put in serious amounts of time, and UrW currently does not support suspension and resumption of general tasks.

Mining wasn't a thing during the Iron Age: instead, bog iron was used.

High fantasy magic is unlikely to enter the UrW world. Do you have any historical evidence of ancient Finns using rituals to locate coveted items? For jewelry and ant hills, UrW provides the magic ritual called Markers, which allow you to mark the world tiles of interest, as well as what you found interesting. Ant hills aren't particularly uncommon in the terrain they appear in, but yes, remembering where you have a nearby one can be useful.

There are mods adding the above to UrW, and I think all the things are on the dev page.

[BTA]

I was joking or fantasizing about a spell to find coveted items. Besides, who would record an item finding ritual that it would become historical? I would think it would either be so basic and common knowledge or nonexistent

History

The earliest evidence of humans using wild flax as a textile comes from the present-day Republic of Georgia, where spun, dyed, and knotted wild flax fibers were found in Dzudzuana Cave and dated to the Upper Paleolithic, 30,000 years ago.[5][6][7] Flax was first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent region.[8] Evidence exists of a domesticated oilseed flax with increased seed size by 9,000 years ago from Tell Ramad in Syria.[8] Use of the crop steadily spread, reaching as far as Switzerland and Germany by 5,000 years ago.[9] In China and India, domesticated flax was cultivated also at least 5,000 years ago.[10]

Flax was cultivated extensively in ancient Egypt, where the temple walls had paintings of flowering flax, and mummies were entombed in linen.[11] Egyptian priests wore only linen, as flax was considered a symbol of purity.[12] Phoenicians traded Egyptian linen throughout the Mediterranean and the Romans used it for their sails.[13] As the Roman Empire declined, so did flax production, but Charlemagne revived the crop in the eighth century CE with laws designed to publicize the hygiene of linen textiles and the health of linseed oil.[14] Eventually, Flanders became the major center of the linen industry in the European Middle Ages.[14] In North America, flax was introduced by the colonists and it flourished there,[15] but by the early twentieth century, cheap cotton and rising farm wages had caused production of flax to become concentrated in northern Russia, which came to provide 90% of the world's output. Since then, flax has lost its importance as a commercial crop, due to the easy availability of more durable fibres.[16]

Are Switzerland and Germany close enough to Finland to count as speculative evidence?

[PALU]

I would expect the same people that record rituals to get a squirrel to sit still in a tree to record rituals for finding lost items (but I don't expect there to have been any rituals to find other people's items for theft or barter).

Germany is too far away culturally to provide much in the way of evidence for Finland. Even Scandinavia, if there's evidence from there, would provide only a slight hint, since Finland at the time lagged behind even the backwards Scandinavians.

[Ara D.]

To the linen discussion I don't know the historical accuracy but in the the Unreal World linen IS present. We see it for sale in villages and at prices that indicate local production. If linen was being brought in by foreign traders it would not be so common or cheap. So linseed plants are being produced invisibly by villagers.

[PALU]

Very good point, Ara D.

It thus looks like flax growing is waiting for UrW to implement player usage of it, i.e. linen cloth and clothing production (other usages are more or less bonuses, I think).

[caethan]

Flax is in my sufficiency mod!  If you want to add just it by itself, suitable for making flaxseed porridge and such, add this to your flora files:

Code: [Select]

.Flax.  (40) [grass]
[NAME:Flax]
[SIZE:L]
[TILEGFX:flo-flax]
[SPROUT:5]
[MATURE:110]
[FLOWERING_PERIOD:8]
[WITHER:9]
[SEED_VOLUME:pinch]
[SEED_SIZE:S]
[SEED_QUANTITY:3]
[FLOWER_VOLUME:bunch]
[FLOWER_SIZE:S]
[FLOWER_QUANTITY:1]
[CULTIVATED:western]
[REGION:eastern western]
[TERRAIN:grove meadow settlement clearing]
[CARB:0]
[FAT:41]
[PROTEIN:20]
[NOSEED_NUTRITION:0.1]
[HERB_KNOWN:western]
[EFFECT_RAW:alterative tonic]
[POPULATION:3]
[FREQUENCY:15]
[COMMONNESS:20]

[koteko]

I will just add that I've had to remove that flax recipe from my game - it's too good, it makes the game a bit too boring

The game is also missing oats and wheat, both cultivated in Iron Age in finland, but I couldn't add them for the same reason.

I actually went the opposite way: I restricted the quantity of barley and rye plants, and removed some cultivations from the Eastern cultures. I've also had to drop iron working (and destroy the bloomery, forge etc that I had built).. searching villages at least pushes me to explore

Just wanted to give this opposing view some days I'm actually tempted to go back to a completely unmodded game, where also food recipes are less convenient.