Maintaining a wood stockpile

[Vox Multis]

In nearly every run I've made on this game, I've struggled to keep a stockpile of raw wood (and sometimes planks) available for use. Obviously I'm constantly gathering wood, but in the later game it gets snatched up for use so quickly my reserve almost never exceeds zero. This hasn't generally been a huge problem, though it has been frustrating when I need the resource right away for whatever reason.

But I've just started a run where this is potentially a game-ending problem: the Hostility 4 mystery is Sacred Flame Rituals - which, if I understand it correctly, forces me to pay three wood per villager or they'll leave. This means if the game proceeds as it usually does for me, if and when the Storm hits at Hostility level 4, every single one of my villagers is going to up and skip town, leaving their fearless Viceroy to fend for himself against the elements.

So I figure now is a good time to ask if anyone has any tips for maintaining a positive supply of the game's most plentiful resource. I'm guessing an alternative source of fuel for the hearth is a must. I always grab the Kiln blueprint when I can get it since coal burns a lot more efficiently, but then producing the coal still eats up a lot of wood, so that might not be the ideal solution. Maybe setting a limit to the coal produced to slow down production when I have enough? And similarly pacing myself when it comes to other recipes that need wood?

Any thoughts or tips from more experienced players is welcome! I'm currently playing on Viceroy level and figure I'll need to get a handle on this before I proceed much higher (my win rate at Viceroy is probably about 70/30; I tried Prestige 1 once and got eaten alive.)

[Mmm]

Build more woodcuters if you have spare parts and people. Nobody should ever idle or produce items that you don't need in nearest future.

Move your woodcutters closer to wood. If they are to far away from Warehouse, build a new one close.

If you have low level hearthes you can turn them on only when needed (during storm).

Producing coal doesn't "eat wood" aside from recipe, so Kiln is very wood efficient. Don't forget to turn wood off in Hearth and use coal in all recipes instead of wood, like jerky.

And planks production, obviously, though it should be possible to play without it.

Don't overproduce or sell items with wood in their recipes.

[arjensmit79]

start with 3 woodcutters. (9 people, 3 buildings) I always start with 3, you can destroy 1 if you need the parts for something else. If needed you can sometimes go to 4 even. My opening plan is always to get those 3 running, have 1 guy build 3 houses, a park, a crude workstation and a trading post meanwhile. Thats pretty much what happens in year one. Halfway year 1 take 1 or 2 woodcutters of their job to go into the crude workstation. If thats 1 or 2 and what their goals are depends on my embarkation. Their first goal is of course to get the materials for some basic buildings, the second optional goal is to produce a stack of 24 planks by the time year 2 starts. (when i will try to open multiple large glades and the planks are a possible resource for the events). By the end of year 1, i normally have around 200 wood to go. (And thats needed because my guys will be busy doing glade events during year 2, so they will barely cut any wood that year)

Pay attention to the map you are on. Base wood production, meaning just 1 wood per treecutting, is very little. Some biomes offer +1 wood by default, another offers +60%. So the base from biome is 1x 1.6x or 2x wood. You can also get +1 wood from corners stones. So be aware what your wood multiplier is. @1x wood, you must be super frugal on wood, you can barely use it for fuel, you must make sure you get an extra fuel source. If that is not possible, you will need to get a 4th or maybe even 5th woodcutter. (you take them off that job during storm, so hostility from woodcutters is pretty much a non factor). At 1.6-2x wood, you can play comfortably and use it for fuel. You can still run low though if your doing many things with it like producing tools, fueling 3+ hearths and trying to keep all your beavers in special housing. So you will need to pay some attention to how you deal with the wood, but not too much. At 2.6x wood or higher, you can pretty much consider it an unlimited resource.

You can limit wood consumption in the following ways:
-If the map has coal or sea marrow, find and mine them. This is the super easiest fix.
-Produce oil from grain. This can also be your fuel, one farm's grain can very will fuel your entire colony.
-produce fuel from wood in the Kiln. Its the last resort way to non-wood fuel. It only halves your wood consumption, which is better than nothing, but its not great. Note that only the kiln is suited for this, other buildings are too inefficient producing coal from wood.
-Have top quality plank production. You produce a lot of planks during your game. If 2 planks are made from 3 or 8 wood is a massive difference. If you have high quality wood production, also change the recipes that can use wood or planks to use planks instead of raw wood.

Finally of course the traders are a good fix for everything. If buy a stack of planks or coal/marrow from the trader, your probably good on wood for a while.

[Silberfuchs]

Get a way to produce coal or at least oil, and limit the amount of coal and oil that is produced to lets say 40 (more or less depending on your situation).

If you have the option use coal or oil in recipes instead of wood, and if everything else fails buy wood consuming products from a merchant to reduce the need for wood in the first place. Obviously planks aren't as plentiful if you need to save wood, hence you shouldn't build to many building that need a lot of them (no beaver houses for example).

[Narandia]

Originally posted by Vox Multis:

But I've just started a run where this is potentially a game-ending problem: the Hostility 4 mystery is Sacred Flame Rituals - which, if I understand it correctly, forces me to pay three wood per villager or they'll leave.

That effect is poorly worded. I'm not sure how its actually designed to work but I've never had more than one or two villagers leaving as a result of failing it. And its not a case of just being short a few extra logs for the final villager, these effects (like the one where they take coats from storage) are all or nothing.

As for my general approach to a good supply of wood, I tend to grab the 40% faster woodcutter cornerstone ASAP, or woodcutters prayer for the higher yield. Not passing up on the +15% perk or the 20% woodcutter movement speed perks if a trader has them on offer either. Failing that I might just run an extra woodcutter camp if I can handle the extra hostility and can spare the workforce.

If the biome has coal deposits, a mine or two is a handy place to shuffle woodcutters into during the storm, so they can still produce fuel without the hostility factor. If you have beavers, you even get them some extra resolve that way. Would recommend upgrading the mines with the Pony early on though, its a fairly slow production cycle otherwise.

[Matze3]

You should also look at your forest hostility.. Reaching level 4 doesn't happen every game. Especially if you are careful you can end the game before reaching it thus this mystery won't even matter. If neccessary you can just assign 1-2 woodcutters elsewhere to get below the threshold for the storm.
But yes the other tipps are good as well:
- limiting production to a reasonable degree(you won't need 500 planks lying around)
- using more effiecent fuel
- using more effiecent recipes(for example: tools workshop needs 1 plank or 6 wood.. many plank recipes are more effiecent and produce 2 planks for 6 wood which is an increase of 100%)

[Narandia]

Originally posted by Matze3:

But yes the other tipps are good as well:
- limiting production to a reasonable degree(you won't need 500 planks lying around)
- using more effiecent fuel
- using more effiecent recipes(for example: tools workshop needs 1 plank or 6 wood.. many plank recipes are more effiecent and produce 2 planks for 6 wood which is an increase of 100%)

I'm fairly guilty of overproducing building materials myself. Hard to resist doing it with planks if I have the cornerstone for barrels, though... but as long as I only have the crude workstation I always put limits on production anyway.
And yeah, I often switch tools to use planks instead of wood. That technically does come with an overall increase in production time for an already pretty lengthy recipe though, so I only do it when I'm already looking at a pretty substancial stock of planks.

Edit: Oh yes speaking of limiting production: Always keep tabs on Blight Posts. Unfortunately you can't have a saved limit set up like for other goods but then again its not exactly something you can really approach with a static limit. I usually start with a limit of 5 (or 10, if it took a while before I was able to build it), and then adjust overtime based on how many cysts come up per cycle. Towards the end of a game, its usually at least 20. Of course, by then I probably have ample oil or coal to switch to anyway, but early on unchecked production of purging fires will eat up a lot of wood for little gain.
Plus you'll get the ! mark above the blight post once they're done and you can put the worker(s) to use elsewhere until the storm comes.

[arjensmit79]

I see you guys talk about production limits.

I extremely rarely use those, only on packs of crops and packs of rations basically because forgetting about those can be doom for your food supply.
Otherwise, don't you regard idle workers to be a worse bane then overproducing some stuff ?(which will undoubtedly be useful later and allows you to take your guys off that job and be productive elsewhere)

[Narandia]

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

I see you guys talk about production limits.

I extremely rarely use those, only on packs of crops and packs of rations basically because forgetting about those can be doom for your food supply.
Otherwise, don't you regard idle workers to be a worse bane then overproducing some stuff ?(which will undoubtedly be useful later and allows you to take your guys off that job and be productive elsewhere)

In some sense, yes. Then again, the buildings do throw up the ! mark when idle due to production limits being reached, so I can take a look and reshuffle the workers if needed. Though in most cases its not like I have a building set to only produce stuff with a limit. So while the limit is reached, they can likely just work on another recipe without one.

For example I might have packs of trade goods enabled with a limit of 10 or so in my lumbermill, which obviously is going to produce a lot of planks besides.

And in some situations, I might let the idle workers be anyway. Sometimes I shelter people into resolve-boosting slots even if there is nothing I really want produced there (or lack ingredients). Might just be enough to get them through a storm or glade event penalty, or maybe I just don't have anything better to put them to work in for a bit.

[Vox Multis]

Thanks for the input, everyone! There's a lot to consider in there. I just finished that run, and with some careful management was able to keep my wood supply up without any issues - mostly by producing coal at the kiln and turning grain into oil. I'm sure it helped in this case that I was in the Royal Woodlands biome.

I've always been stingy when it comes to woodcutters as I don't like to ramp up hostility too fast (I think I'm too timid about exploring glades for the same reason), so the idea of starting with three stations feels crazy to me. In this run I only had two stations, and one of them was unmanned for most of the game. But I guess I need to remind myself I can always reassign my woodcutters during the Storm if it gets out of hand.

[Narandia]

Originally posted by Vox Multis:

But I guess I need to remind myself I can always reassign my woodcutters during the Storm if it gets out of hand.

That is a borderline essential approach to managing storms on higher difficulties (on Viceroy every woodcutter generates 24 hostility, so a fully staffed camp is almost 75% of a level).
Outside of that, 3 camps early on can still tank resolve enough to be a problem (mostly if you start with harpies). In that case, I would recommend getting your hearth upgraded to the first tier. Between getting most of your starting population housed and the +2 global resolve you'll be much better prepared to take another hostility level. Though if you start with the minimal 8 people I wouldn't even bother in the first year. At most that would be another woodcutter but realisticly you'll either want them producing building materials, provisions (if you want to start trading nice and early) or just be building stuff.
Including other gathering camps, so you have other work places available for every woodcutter you unassign for the storm. Which might be just about all of them in worst case scenarios.

[Megatherion]

Enable automatic pause when storm starts.
Often you can unassign some woodcutters (or even all of them), and turn on fuel sacrificing to get below hostility threshold. Negative effects kick in with a delay.
Also put beavers into woodcutting, and as other mentioned, Kiln is great.

[el Darkness]

I have another question, about Sacred Flame Rituals. One of you guys said it is poorly worded, but can anyone tell how exactly it works? When I had it, I noticed some of my workers leave (1 or 2?) but I had wood. Do I need to spend mentioned wood manually? How? Should I sacrifice it? Can anyone tell?

[Narandia]

Originally posted by el Darkness:

I have another question, about Sacred Flame Rituals. One of you guys said it is poorly worded, but can anyone tell how exactly it works? When I had it, I noticed some of my workers leave (1 or 2?) but I had wood. Do I need to spend mentioned wood manually? How? Should I sacrifice it? Can anyone tell?

If you have enough wood for every worker, its automatically removed. Otherwise you'll lose one or two villagers. It can only be one of the two.

[el Darkness]

If that is the case, it would cost 90 wood for a village of 30 people paid somewhere during the storm. I am preety sure I had enough wood for my villagers and still some of them left, but maybe I am wrong here.

[Die Happy]

i can only agree with what others have said but i want to add something.
if i dont get a good plank production building early i try to grab +1 or better plank production perks from contratcs. very often you get one of those in the first batch. (most of the time costs 7 building material)
it is an investment specially if you get it with planks but worth in the long run.
those are also good pickups from traders.