COMMUNITY - FORUMS - GENERAL DISCUSSION
Domain Selection and Viticulture

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.


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3/13/2019 11:59:19 PM #1

soil amendments have been hinted at

and transitional biomes are a thing

so i would recommend looking at which biome in K3 is most amenable in your opinion to growing grapes, and then if your kingdom adjoins K3, settle as close to the desirable biome in K3 but still within your kingdom, as possible?


3/14/2019 1:00:13 AM #2

If the biomes are like earth biomes then the transitional biomes would be quite strange. Map I k3 is bordered by extremely high snow peaked alpine mountains, grasslands (alkaline pH to a point of being terrible for wine grapes), semi arid desert which lacks moisture, rocky mountain steppe and lower mountane might work but they haven't released enough detail about them to make a judgment beyond the cold winds and hard soils could make them inhospitable.

I could maybe see the bottom left hand corner of the lower montane region working but again, that's just conjecture. I don't know what it's expected pH, temperatures, or moisture levels would be like.

Do they expect to provide that information before someone locks in a location?


3/14/2019 1:14:13 AM #3

i don't think it will be that detailed tbh


3/14/2019 1:21:14 AM #4

This is the problem I see here. As much as I agree and would like some more information on issues like this, I wonder if that possibly ruins a part of the exploration quality of the game.

The explorer in me thinks people didn't just show up to areas around France and Italy and find grapes growing everywhere and think "well this is a great place for a vinyard" Those things were discovered, as well as the conditions to make them flourish.

Personally, if I need to move somewhere new to chase my CoE dreams... that's a part of the adventure. Also, I don't think things Elyria will be such a carbon copy of Earth... that's kind of boring right?

Verisimilitude vs Veracity and all that, right Snipe?


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3/14/2019 1:31:29 AM #5

I always had the thought that stuff can be grown basically anywhere. Just you get, for your example, different type of grapes. So what you grow in Neran grasslands, would be different than what you can grow in the snowy mountains. Or maybe you just wouldn't get as many grapes in the, not so good biomes.

But if you are 100% locked in on doing just that. Well it was always better to pick the spot best, over locking yourself into a kingdom and now either hoping for the best or giving up on your ideas.


3/14/2019 2:18:56 AM #6

When I first got into the idea 2 years ago it was certainly with the same assumption that you just grow whatever varietals exist in your region. Since then world maps were built and hard lined kingdom and duchy boundries have formed. As we've gotten more information its become likely that some places just won't have the capability to grow wine grapes. That's sort of what I'm hoping to get from the initial post. If there are varietals in say all but the most arid deserts then great I'll work with that.

And you're right that I got myself into a kingdom before knowing that it meant I'd be forced to make this kind of decision down the road. That's entirely on me. And if it really does come down to having to pick between the two I'll have to pick switching Kingdoms and Duchies.

But this is why I wanted to get an actual answer from a dev. If there's a middle way I'd like to find it. If there's not then I guess it would have been nice to know a while ago that it wouldn't be wise to engage in the elyria community until kingdoms were looking at putting flags on the ground.

And really, even as close as it is no one can say with any certainty which kingdom is going where. All this secrecy makes for some light drama but really it just gets in the way of finding a community to really try to bond with.


3/14/2019 2:37:41 AM #7

Posted By JohnnyViscerate at 6:21 PM - Wed Mar 13 2019

The explorer in me thinks people didn't just show up to areas around France and Italy and find grapes growing everywhere and think "well this is a great place for a vinyard" Those things were discovered, as well as the conditions to make them flourish.

I get your meaning, but nearly all the areas around France and Italy are Mediterranean or broadleaf temperate regions. . Everywhere the early kingdoms went was capable of growing wine. The whole of western Europe and much of eastern Europe exist in those biomes. Whereas in our maps those biomes (Mediterranean doesn't strictly exist in CoE) amount to somewhere around the size of just France.


3/14/2019 2:42:41 AM #8

Well, let's hope Earth and Elyria are quite different?


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3/14/2019 3:44:41 AM #9

Don't count it out just yet. One thing you can do during DSS is checking settlements in your desired kingdom for their main industries and exports. Even if none of them explicitly list wine or grapes, you can look for something else which grows in areas where grapes do. It might be an indication of a location that can grow grapes even if grapes aren't listed, and you might settle there for your growing.


67CAC0

"Different denotes neither bad nor good, but it certainly means not the same."

-Just a lowly beekeeper

3/14/2019 3:57:40 AM #10

Posted By Draguta at 8:44 PM - Wed Mar 13 2019

Don't count it out just yet. One thing you can do during DSS is checking settlements in your desired kingdom for their main industries and exports. Even if none of them explicitly list wine or grapes, you can look for something else which grows in areas where grapes do. It might be an indication of a location that can grow grapes even if grapes aren't listed, and you might settle there for your growing.

That's a great idea! Thanks for posting it.


3/14/2019 4:07:37 AM #11

Im going to take a stance I dont usually take, the hard practical one. The issue you are seeing is the exact one that we are going to see community wide during selection.

I started typing up a pretty hefty post, but I'm going to distill it. If your in game goals and community all line up during D&SS you are lucky. Simple as that. Not to say I expect the norm to be broken communities or ruined plans, but I'm not expecting it to be rare.

Many communities and players are going to be forced to decide between sticking together and giving up prior plans, or breaking apart and pursuing individual goals, and that is just the unfortunate nature of selection.

That being said, the devs have iterated multiple times that the biomes are based on real earth biomes so using real life information as well as info you can gather during selection (like what draguta suggested) is going to be your best bet.


3/14/2019 4:10:50 AM #12

There is a lot of speculation that will have to go along with this, and as a result I really dont think we will know early on. I think this is something the devs want to let us figure out through playing.

I guess some questions I have are how profitable do you want this to be? Is this project an aesthetic you want just for fun, or are you making a business out of it?

I would guess you could grow your grapes in most kingdoms with the right conditions, but it might be highly restricted by season, and you may have to move to a kingdom boundary to move outside of the extreme conditions. This may not result in the highest yields.

I would say you have two solutions if I'm wrong. The first solution is to remain a part of your kingdom and create an alt, or simply travel somewhere to maintain your crops outside of the kingdom where they are more suited. The second option is to look into higher quality items. It sounds like you've been around for a while, so I'm guessing you have a little bit of IP/EP sitting around. You may be able to buy better quality seeds, soil treatments, etc with the EP/IP. The flip side of this is breeding your own seeds, as I think they'll work like breeding animals. It may be difficult to start out, but you might be able to breed your grape seeds for frost resistance for example.

Either way, good luck to you. I look forward to hearing what actually happens. It's good to have goals, and I love to see people so passionate about them. Maybe i'll get to come visit sometime.


FC: 13AB08

3/14/2019 4:31:09 AM #13

The only kingdoms that are likely to be entirely inappropriate for wine growing are K1 and K6. All the others may have areas of microclimate where some grape varietals may be grown. K3 is probably the most amenable, as the OP states, but K4 is similar in latitude and in some biomes.

We're not certain how extensively CoE will model microclimates. If every biome is treated as homogeneous then there is no such modeling whatsoever. What we find on earth is a fair degree of variation in climate conditions even in areas that are largely considered homogeneous. Variations in proximity to seashores, prevailing winds, altitudes, ground water supply, and so forth matter significantly.


3/14/2019 5:38:16 AM #14

Posted By ilakyd at 9:10 PM - Wed Mar 13 2019

There is a lot of speculation that will have to go along with this, and as a result I really dont think we will know early on. I think this is something the devs want to let us figure out through playing.

I guess some questions I have are how profitable do you want this to be? Is this project an aesthetic you want just for fun, or are you making a business out of it?

I would guess you could grow your grapes in most kingdoms with the right conditions, but it might be highly restricted by season, and you may have to move to a kingdom boundary to move outside of the extreme conditions. This may not result in the highest yields.

I would say you have two solutions if I'm wrong. The first solution is to remain a part of your kingdom and create an alt, or simply travel somewhere to maintain your crops outside of the kingdom where they are more suited. The second option is to look into higher quality items. It sounds like you've been around for a while, so I'm guessing you have a little bit of IP/EP sitting around. You may be able to buy better quality seeds, soil treatments, etc with the EP/IP. The flip side of this is breeding your own seeds, as I think they'll work like breeding animals. It may be difficult to start out, but you might be able to breed your grape seeds for frost resistance for example.

Either way, good luck to you. I look forward to hearing what actually happens. It's good to have goals, and I love to see people so passionate about them. Maybe i'll get to come visit sometime.

Thanks for the well wishes. To answer some of your questions, I want it to be very profitable, I intend to be the largest producer of the highest quality wine on NA-W and I want to have that kind of charming winery aesthetic. I'd welcome you to come visit my estate when there is something there to show.

You're right that I've been around a while. I have been around since the kickstarter. I've been making trade partners, arranging distribution, and planning research collaborations for years (a big part of why I don't want to jump kingdoms). I'm a governor with nearly 20k influence and 5 digits EP all of which will be going towards the sole goal of improving the quality and rarity of my lands and grapes to the ends of making grand master vintner.

As you mentioned, I can get the kits and to improve soil and produce quality, but that all means relatively little if the cold snows kill the plants, if pH always returns back to alkaline, or if there are not varietals that can be farmed for more than 1 season a year.


3/14/2019 8:27:04 AM #15

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 :

  • wine is "A seemingly simple concoction of grapes and time" from the Vintner's Starter Kit description
  • wine production involves a Wine Cask, Wine Yeast and Grapes from Vintner's Starter Kit description
  • "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.

On a less gamy note, grape is one of the most wide spread plant on earth and is cultivated nearly every where except the most extreme biomes. On earth not all grape vine are used to make wine, not because they can not produce usable grape but because of the taste, not sure that notion will be in game. So as long as grape can be grown it is safe to assume that it will be usable for wine.


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