Water Physics/Strategies

[Tnarg]

OK some thoughts on water physics/strategies. All information in this post is what I think is going on, some all or none of this information is correct.

The first dry season is 3 days long, a small one high dam will see you through or even a load of water tanks but the second dry season is 15 days long so we will need to understand how water works.

Water leaves a tile in one of 3 ways:

• It can flow out.
  
• You can pump it out to drink or too use in Irrigation towers
  
• It evaporates.

It’s worth noting that water height is not effected by how many trees, crops or grass tiles it is watering, unless your using Irrigation towers in which case that counts as pumping it out.

So how fast does it evaporates? I found that one tile high of water lasts about 15 days. Good you might think that’s what I need... the problem is 2 fold, 1 your also pumping water out to drink and 2 you don’t have a full tile of water. A dam only holds back about 90% of the water height.

This means that a one high dam will only last 13 to 14 days at best and maybe a lot less if you are only holding a small section of water and pumping lot out if you have a load of thirsty beavers.

So how can you last the whole of the second dry season? Well a number of ways:

• Large flat lake: dam a large area to 1 high, this will mean as you have a large area so, height should not be changed too much by pumping some out to drink so you should get close to 14 days of water after that you can live off the water you have stored in tanks.
  
  
  
  
• Mid size area with deep bits: works much the same as above but once you run out of the first layer you make steps down and build pumps to get water at the bottom layer.
  
  
  
  
• Second dam upstream*: The idea is to have 2 sections of water, a lower one that you use and a second higher one to refill it. You want them to be large but they don’t need to be as large as the first 2 ideas to work. When the lower section is running out you delete a section from the upper dam and let it fill up the lower section. The trick is know when to break the upper dam. You don't want to wait till both sections have evaporated out. Ideally you want to break the upper section at the point where it just fill the lower section with out over flowing. This should be around day 8 of the dry season but will depend on the sizes of the 2 sections of water you dammed off.
  
  
  
  
• A crazy amount of water tanks: Not something I would suggest doing but listed here for completeness. Water in tanks does not evaporate. Build a lot of tanks and fill them during the wet season. This, with or with out the small season 1 dam could see you through. Make sure you have food to last you as your crops might dry up.

One last tip... When building you dam you might want to research levees first they are 40% cheaper. You still want to about 3 dams in the middle to stop flooding. Also levees are a must have for making taller dams.



*This is normal the easiest way of beating the demo and the way I would suggest people try first.

[bcrehore]

Lots of good points. your last point about a crazy amount of water tanks is valid, but you also can't use the large tank (300 gallons) that can't be used in the demo. One of those equals 10 small tanks, so a lot less wood and space.may be needed.

[fire_s_mk2]

Im using 4 dams to stop flooding.
place levee in front of these but pause to build when progress is around 90% until cycle 2 dry season starts.
some water will flood cycle 2 day 1 , so timing is the key. also. if you want to keep water in different height, make sure to complete building lower side levee first.
if you success to block water only by levee in cycle 2 day2, you can use these water in whole cycle 2 dry season without worry about dry up.

[PirateFish]

You missed 1 other option. The no dam/limited tanks colony. I think I did one play through with no dam and about 5 small tanks.

For irrigation use explosives to make holes in the riverbed. Builders can build explosives in the river from the shore. I think I made them 2 levels deep but I think it might work with 1. When dry season comes the river bed dries up but the holes retain the water. each hole irrigates a circle with a 10 tile radius. You start with 15 explosives and can make 8 2 tile deep holes that give plenty of irrigation for farming. Save all the irrigated land for farming food and new trees. Also you can use the river bed for farming too in the 2nd dry season.

For drinking water both maps have spots that retain water even at the end of dry season. Plains its the middle of the lake. Canyon you have to flood the offshoot across the river. As long as you have a road out there you can build a couple of pumps then 1 small tank at the maximum allowed distance and then 1 trading post can probably reach your main water storage area.

[Sprayer2708]

Came here for water physics, only about 10% is info about that tho