hardwood problems

[aindriu80]

Hi

I have a problem producing enough hardwood. I produce enough pinewood with fewer resources and I find it very annoying.

Currently I have 9 Hardwood foresters (2 at level 3 and 7 at level 2). I have 5 hardwood cutters (1 level 2 and 4 level 3). I have 4 sawmills (3 at level 2 and 1 at level 3).

I usually hover around 1,000 planks and 1,000 hardwood trees in my storage while I regularly top 23,000 for both pinewood planks and trees in my storage and with fewer units working.

I have all my resources pretty close to each other and the storehouse but why is production to low and limited ?

[Brankovics]

Hm. Hardwood chain buildings 3 time slower then pinewood chain. Also placing affects the productivity. All the production times, input/output can be find here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkRdxncWSR27dERwZHFKN2U4LU9uTmxCS0MyMEc0a UE#gid=0), also Econimic overview is a good tool to planning, so can be search a detailed answer there.

[aindriu80]

I see. Maybe its just slower but its painfully slow. Pinewood is so quick.

Marble too is very slow and also tools.

I can't upgrade the various hardwood buildings as they are now looking for granite.

[Dragavon]

Make sure you have enough storehouses close to your production buildings so the workers do not have to walk far.

A lot of players underestimate the impact walking time have on your productivity.

This guide is excellent:

http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/15560-Guide-Efficient-Building-Placement

It is also very important to place hardwood production in areas with hardwood deposits. If you have placed your hardwood production in the same area as your pinewood production chances are they have to walk a long distance to the deposits.

Having said that, hardwood is a problem, and you will need loads and loads for a long time.

As for your pinewood stores, build coking plants and make coal. You will never have too much coal :)

[aindriu80]

here is a picture of my setup.

http://www.zamzar.com/getFiles.php?uid=d823c8881394139741d9f4d28b86aa-3d62d15439f44f35&targetID=12Sr3NF0Ch8sOBNQrQinrOM_ZDHIILMpt

There are 3 store houses nearby. I noted the level of each of the buildings

[Brankovics]

Yes, and it will be more painful to obtain exotic wood / granit... But don't panic, in a certain aspect this is a 'build a functioning economy' game, with slow advancement and funny events, so day by day everything find its place. Building upgrade costs (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkRdxncWSR27dFRWQTFMNTBqY1FpSkdhYklENDVRV kE#gid=0) could be a useful link, too.

Edit:
I see the picture now. Two storehouse side by side not so effective. Further more of hardwood deposits mainly in sector 7, up north-west, also in 3, 6, 9 on east. The above guide is excelent, and can be find more in the forum...

[aindriu80]

should I move all my hardwood buildings ? I don't have any idea where the sectors are located.

[Wreckless-]

I have mine in S7

http://i.imgur.com/ukSsrtS.png

and S4

http://i.imgur.com/ukSsrtS.png

and that gets me this

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/8976/c4iu.png

Because I keep my sawmills buffed as much as possible.

[Brankovics]

should I move all my hardwood buildings ? I don't have any idea where the sectors are located.
Just hit the numeric keypad, and you will find out, wich number is wich sector. That little blue-white thingies are all around the borders of sectors. If you can remember, the fog lifted sector by sector on explorer initial routes. There have to be at least one storehouse in a sector before build/move anything else into it.

[aindriu80]

what level are your buildings at ?

[aindriu80]

here is my production level for hardwood with no buffs :

https://imageshack.com/a/img203/8060/y3fg.jpg

[aindriu80]

is it worth the move ?

[Splotch]

is it worth the move ?

The answer to that is it's totally subjective, it's up to you to make that call.

For arguments sake, say you have a hardwood cutter with 4m 30s base and say your travel times out are 14s + 10s and in as 10s + 14s. This means the total production time for that structure is 318 seconds.

Now say you move that structure so you're travel times are a bit better at 6s + 10s / 10s + 6s, you end up with a production time of 302 seconds so moving the structure has saved you 16 seconds, yay..? Maybe not, because this is where it becomes tricky.

By moving this structure you may get an increase in speed initially but if your planters aren't appropriately placed then that deposit that you moved to could depleat and that cutter could give you the same or less than you were getting originally thus totally negating your "improvements"... If it's not done correctly, you will likely end up moving things around again to try and compensate and if you don't fully understand what is going on that problem could just keep biting you.

That aside, 24 hours is 86400 seconds (24 * 60 * 60) so it's pretty easy to see the difference that the optimisation will make :

Original : 86400 / 318 = 271
Moved : 86400 / 302 = 286

The move, assuming it is all perfectly planned and executed, nets you +15 hardwood per level, per day when unbuffed... Placing one new level one hardwood cutter, as described originally, will bring in 271 hardwood per day so that covers eighteen optmisations to your existing cutters if everything is at level one... Placing a level one cutter would still account for moving three level five cutters.

The other thing to remember is that moving costs resources and the higher the level of the structure the more resource it costs, so moving lower level structures is always a better option than higher level ones. If you move a structure, regardless of level, it is going to cost you so what you gain from the move is absolutely nothing until the value in what you have gained overtakes the value of what you have spent for the move.

I've moved plenty of things around on my island but it's never been to bring in more resources because I needed the resources, it has always been to fine tune the balance between resource production and consumption.




A lot of players underestimate the impact walking time have on your productivity.


Everyone overestimates it in my opinion.

Assuming the +75 hardwood per day in my example is accurate at level five, moving a hardwood cutter would get you an extra 27375 hardwood per year. According to the trade price list hardwood is going for 15gc to 25gc per k on our server so you've just made yourself an extra 405gc to 675gc per year... You spend 200gc on the move so that's down to 205gc - 475gc per year so trickling in daily the improvement is going to equate to about 0.56gc - 1.30gc per day.

I suppose that's a really nice passive increase to your economy and a sound long term investment, if you're Ebenezer Scrooge. :rolleyes: