Wood management

[Sverr]

Hey, everyone! How do you manage your wood? Especially when you play without beavers? When I started my profile and played the first few runs, double woodcutters could carry me through most of the game, three would guarantee I'd always have more than enough. I started at pioneer difficulty, no trade routes. Now I upped the difficulty to veteran, there are now routes to manage, harpies that replace my beavers sometimes, coral biomes that seem like it gives zero wood although I believe all types of trees yield the same amount, but by the end of second day I find myself completely out of wood. And midgame is usuallly the toughest in terms of resolve since I don't have services, houses and the food is simple and I need to sacrifice wood during the storm. Even though I build mines and switch the hearths to consume coal only, the wood is barely above zero even with 4 woodcutters. Truth be told, over the last 4-5 games I never got a single perk that would increase my wood or plank production.

What are your main strategies with the wood? When do you add 3rd (4th etc) woodcutter? (I usually do when I add the 2nd hearth) Or there is never enough wood for you?

[mk11]

Do you mean woodcutters or woodcutter camps?

I usually have 9 woodcutters (3 camps) as soon as possible. After the first year I will have reduced to 6 or fewer and will, often, destroy a camp to retrieve some parts.

Unless I am cutting my way to a glade, I move the camps close to the trees but near the hearth and warehouse. If I am cutting to a glade will keep the camp forward and, sometimes, add a small warehouse.

I keep an eye on plank production and try to get at least a 2-star building and try to avoid needing wood for other recipes. I'll buy pottery/barrels/waterskins rather than using wood to make barrels. - make sure to disable recipes that use wood immediately you complete a building (I use the setting that starts all recipes disabled) you don't want wood sitting idle in a building.

I'll only sacrifice wood if it serves a special need - e.g. for the Temple or, in a later year to avoid a nasty forest mystery. If you need to sacrifice to keep resolve up you can juggle, only sacrificing for part of the storm as you can afford to let some race drop into -ve resolve if you can then pull it out.

[el Darkness]

I took long break from the game, so my advice may be not so good anymore

I used to start (almost always) with 3 Woodcutters Camps (can we call them WC for short?) no matter the map. While on Royal Woodlands 2 WC would probably suffice, I made 3 anyway. There are some Cornerstones that will help, some of them you can get as yearly gift from our magnificent Queen while other you can buy from Traders (if you have enough Amber), some you can find lying around in Glade Events/Chests. Not only +X wood is good, +35% speed to cutting trees or +20% woodcutters walking speed is also nice, both of them increase performance of your WCs.

Perhaps better option will be to find alternate fuel. You can find fuel in Chests, Order Rewards and in rewards for solving Events, but they will not last long. Oil I think may work great in Marshland where you can find a lot of meat to make it, of course you need buildings to make it. Sea Marrow is great if you are lucky enough to find a node, but much more reliably you can find Coal. Coal can be mined, if you found Coal nodes, build a Mine over them and if you can spare some Planks, upgrade it. Unupgraded Mine is not great, but an upgraded Mine will solve your fuel problem for a long time. I usually upgrade Mine when I am able to mine 3 or more nodes with it.

If you do not have alternate fuel, well you need to save your Wood as much as possible. Sawmill will help, better Plank recipe will save you a ton of Wood. Also make sure to disable recipes that will sink all your Wood/Planks (I am talking about Building Packages, or whatever they are called, those little bastards that take 10 Planks to make with basic recipe).

Sacrificing fuel to reduce Hostility should be your LAST trick to save yourself. Are you upgrading your Hearth? Do you build enough Houses? Shelters are great if you cannot afford racial housing. Perhaps you do not try enough to start feeding your people with Complex Food? It should be a high priority to make at least 1 Complex Food for your most complaining race (I am looking at you Harpies).

[arjensmit79]

During year 1 i cut as much wood as i can. start with 2 woodcutter camps if i have up to 10 starting population, 3 if i have more than 10. During year 1 i do little else than building the basics (makeshift, trade post, housing, park) and cut wood. (also make some provision packs asap and gather some clay/stones/reed/fiber with extra guys when other jobs and building are done)

During year 2 i don't have time to cut wood because i open multiple dangerous glades that i have to deal with and i start building my production chains. For the rest of the game, wood remains a struggle because it just costs too much manpower that i love to use elsewhere. So I try to minimize my wood consumption as much as i can. Below P10, trading is good enough that you can get it to near zero almost every game.

Always try to get another fuel than wood. If you cant get on of these top 3 options here: don't build a third hearth.
+++Marrow is awesome
++Oil is great
+Coal from an upgraded mine is good
-Coal from a killn or an unupgraded mine is barely any better than wood.

Get a good plank production recipe if you can. The difference between *** and ** is big. But its not like you'll often get to choose between the 2.

Buy lots of planks from the traders. Below P10 this is so effective that you actually care quite a bit less about any building material production recipes including wood. Just buy all the build mats from traders. Buy stacks of fuel if you dont have a good fuel production as well.

[Nordil(Hun)]

There are a few things that can seriously disrupt your wood production.
For instance if you take in marshlands the fugi cornerstone. +1 to mushroom prod for every 25 mushroom gathered, farmed etc. Since the trees there hold mushrooms it is entirely possible that with a SINGLE cut, you get 15 mushrooms later in the game effectively makeing wood production non existant.
Something similar is also possible with the coral forest and meat.
There is also the forgot the name forest, where you can get copper from the trees. At one time i did not pay attention and increased my copper gain to +6. So effectively cutting down one tree resulted in nearly filling up the whole camp with copper:)

[BT]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Nordil(Hun):

There are a few things that can seriously disrupt your wood production.
For instance if you take in marshlands the fugi cornerstone. +1 to mushroom prod for every 25 mushroom gathered, farmed etc. Since the trees there hold mushrooms it is entirely possible that with a SINGLE cut, you get 15 mushrooms later in the game effectively makeing wood production non existant.
Something similar is also possible with the coral forest and meat.
There is also the forgot the name forest, where you can get copper from the trees. At one time i did not pay attention and increased my copper gain to +6. So effectively cutting down one tree resulted in nearly filling up the whole camp with copper:)

That’s absolutely hilarious as a side effect

[BT]

OP, I am a newbie, I found out that it is possible to eat through wood very quickly if you don’t do any of the following:
- replace the lumber/plank production with a 2 or 3 star source
- if you do not change the fuel to something else (any other source is more efficient except 0 star coal maybe?)
- maybe try to not set all your production to using wood if you have alternatives

[el Darkness]

Another good idea might be to limit your production. Especially Plank production, you do not need 100 Planks, your followers do not know when to stop making items.

[BT]

Ursprungligen skrivet av el Darkness:

Another good idea might be to limit your production. Especially Plank production, you do not need 100 Planks, your followers do not know when to stop making items.

Do you ever not set a limit in a building btw?

I always set a limit of all buildings to avoid creating a hog, is that what other people do too?

[Grimelord82]

The wood and plank production feels unbalanced. It's the single most important material due to to resource chain for Planks.
2 WC (6 cutters) if Beavers, is barely adequate, but a +1 wood yield cornerstone (there are at least 2) and beavers provides enough that I can burn stacks through critical storm years.
Lumbermill and Carpenter allow beaver to double planks sometimes, but they still won't keep up with needs considering they want plank houses and tools, and everything else. There's plank producer that Harpies can double on.

I'm about 100 hrs now, and the first 3 years are still quite a struggle. I have haulers or a cart that go from the main warehouse to wherever. That lets the cutters keep going.
Having a Harpy at main hearth bumps global carry to 10 units. There's another perk that can get cutters to 20, or using the Market for a global 20. Having a basic road and small warehouse close by helps a lot. Remember, most maps it's free to break and re-build.

Each workstation has an internal inventory to set. Default is 10 or 20. I'm not sure what's optimal.

You definitely need to diversify your fuel. 1 coal is generally 4 wood of time, so even a kiln that does 5 coal for 10 wood is a bit less than 2x more efficient than burning wood by itself. I've never seen more than a +1 coal perk. Always take that if you have a coal mine.
Oil can be made efficiently at several buildings, and I think the perk goes to +3, which is a 100% bump

[Samseng Yik]

My tips is,
- have woodcutter above all else within first 2 years. You don't really need much builder. I have only 2 builder at max even if I mass building stuff.
- only reduce wood cutter if you have other higher priority job. Or your people can reach reputation generation threshold in late game.
- get other fuel, such as coal.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Grimelord82:

The wood and plank production feels unbalanced. It's the single most important material due to to resource chain for Planks.
2 WC (6 cutters) if Beavers, is barely adequate, but a +1 wood yield cornerstone (there are at least 2) and beavers provides enough that I can burn stacks through critical storm years.
Lumbermill and Carpenter allow beaver to double planks sometimes, but they still won't keep up with needs considering they want plank houses and tools, and everything else. There's plank producer that Harpies can double on.

I'm about 100 hrs now, and the first 3 years are still quite a struggle. I have haulers or a cart that go from the main warehouse to wherever. That lets the cutters keep going.
Having a Harpy at main hearth bumps global carry to 10 units. There's another perk that can get cutters to 20, or using the Market for a global 20. Having a basic road and small warehouse close by helps a lot. Remember, most maps it's free to break and re-build.

Each workstation has an internal inventory to set. Default is 10 or 20. I'm not sure what's optimal.

You definitely need to diversify your fuel. 1 coal is generally 4 wood of time, so even a kiln that does 5 coal for 10 wood is a bit less than 2x more efficient than burning wood by itself. I've never seen more than a +1 coal perk. Always take that if you have a coal mine.
Oil can be made efficiently at several buildings, and I think the perk goes to +3, which is a 100% bump

Coal can be stacked up quite high;) In one of my runs i had +4 coal and +6 stone production. Basicly half the miners were just transporting goods:D
Also regarding oil, if you can produce enough resources it can be your most stable fuel supply. If you really stack it up you can get like +9-12 oil as a bonus from a single building.
Or...if you are as lucky(or unlucky) like me you get 5 times the same cornerstone. For every 10 flour produced you get 3 oil. I had that 5 times with +5 flour production. I kept burning oil on level 3 after a while because i could not run out. Having that time a Temple really helps as...that meant that basicly like every 40 seconds or so i lost 15 hostilityXD

[Sverr]

Thanks everyone :)