Dynamic soil would make soil fertility more useful. The addition of the moisture pump feels like a natural precursor to fertilizer and soil depletion dynamics. Crops should reduce fertility on harvest(different for each plant type) Sprites for soil are just a range, 110-140%=Rich, 80-110%=Regular, etc. Make the depletion greater than or equal to the average yield of each plant. That way you can just grow Hay to fertilize all your fields, as there would be either no net gain or potential even a net loss in fertility. Have butchering, harvest, animals generate waste. Waste is used to fertilize, Its just something you queue up like planting corn in the field. This would also be the precursor to the seed system.
Have the yield reduce the field by the nutrition of the food, so 20 vegetables reduce the fertility by 10% + 25% of the fertility decrease is added on top. So, 20 corn reduces fertility by 12.5%(10% from corn + 2.5% from waste). I'd yield one waste per 2.5% fertility lost. To give waste and easier method of tracking, don't track it's yield by the harvest, but rather by the decrease in field fertility on top of the harvest. So if 18 vegetables are harvested, from a full 140% field that has never grown anything, no waste is yielded, but if next season 22 vegetables were harvested, it also yields 2 waste.
Corpses and butchering yield waste as well. Calculated as waste=((meat+(leather/2))*0.25)/20. Have an option to convert a corpse directly to waste using the same formula except using 1.25 instead of 0.25. Essentially, this says 20% of the mass of the animal is inedible and only useful as waste. This uses the same assumption that nutrition of food is related to fertility effect on soil.
Animal waste would add small amounts of fertility overtime to soil that animals graze on. Animal grazing would return something like 110% of the nutrition consumed as fertility. So if harvesting a plant early would yield 10 food, the soil would lose 5% fertility, however if this same plant were grazed by an animal, instead of losing 5 fertility, the soil would gain 0.5% fertility. Effectively Keep mass soil depletion from wild animals.
Trees would be tough point to work out, as thrumbo and beavers consume trees, but they also have can self plant outside. I guess wood yield behave like nutrition, in that 100 wood would reduce fertility by 10% and have the 2.5% harvest decrease with 1 waste per 100 wood.
Have the yield reduce the field by the nutrition of the food, so 20 vegetables reduce the fertility by 10% + 25% of the fertility decrease is added on top. So, 20 corn reduces fertility by 12.5%(10% from corn + 2.5% from waste). I'd yield one waste per 2.5% fertility lost. To give waste and easier method of tracking, don't track it's yield by the harvest, but rather by the decrease in field fertility on top of the harvest. So if 18 vegetables are harvested, from a full 140% field that has never grown anything, no waste is yielded, but if next season 22 vegetables were harvested, it also yields 2 waste.
Corpses and butchering yield waste as well. Calculated as waste=((meat+(leather/2))*0.25)/20. Have an option to convert a corpse directly to waste using the same formula except using 1.25 instead of 0.25. Essentially, this says 20% of the mass of the animal is inedible and only useful as waste. This uses the same assumption that nutrition of food is related to fertility effect on soil.
Animal waste would add small amounts of fertility overtime to soil that animals graze on. Animal grazing would return something like 110% of the nutrition consumed as fertility. So if harvesting a plant early would yield 10 food, the soil would lose 5% fertility, however if this same plant were grazed by an animal, instead of losing 5 fertility, the soil would gain 0.5% fertility. Effectively Keep mass soil depletion from wild animals.
Trees would be tough point to work out, as thrumbo and beavers consume trees, but they also have can self plant outside. I guess wood yield behave like nutrition, in that 100 wood would reduce fertility by 10% and have the 2.5% harvest decrease with 1 waste per 100 wood.