Trouble Growing trees for wood

[Jacques]

I've been growing trees especially apple trees, but they always take long to grow, and i really need wood, and I've used groves, but trees just take too long to grow. Any tips to make it grow faster?

[LeoCean]

Well problem with apple trees is that if you tell your gnomes to clip the trees they will take the apples to which is bad now because of mants, but if you have the army just let the groves stay uncut for awhile clipping them until you have a good amount of extra and planet more trees if you want. It's hard to keep a good stockpile of logs without a good amount of trees in a grove 100-200 and that's just one kind for the birch or pines, and still if you are using logs for coal you burn through a lot.

[Jacques]

thanks, doesn't quite ask my question but has helpful info which doesn't need me to have an answer to my original problem.

[LeoCean]

Well if the game was moddable you could change the time it takes for the trees to grow but it isn't possible. You can maintain half of your grove for clippings and cut the other half down but I think it does effect the ai of the grove and you gnomes may not fell the trees without you telling them to in that grove. I think I experienced that I just can't remember.

[SmashedPumpkinG]

you need a large plantation of trees, you can set up one large grove or break it up into 3 groves. you can cut down 1/3 of your plantation at a time, also take clippings from 1/3 and plant. this way you should always have some trees ready to cut. its better to not use fruit trees for wood.

you cannot make trees grow faster. you just need to plant more so you arent always cutting down the same trees.

[Skev]

Lots of bad advice going around about fruit trees. Use fruit trees, they provide completely free fruit that you get without even taking an action (since 'cut clipplings' also gives the fruit), which will free up gnomes that would otherwise be farming to instead cut wood... which is what you needed more of in the first place. If you end up with too much food/drink, you can sell it.

Set your woodcutters to do horticulture instead of using the default where the farmers do it, since they're already standing on the right spot when they cut a tree down it saves a fair bit of gnomepower (it'll require a rebalancing of the ratio of woodcutters to farmers).

The most common reason for struggling to get enough lumber is smelting too many worn armour pieces/weapons. It's 10 wood (which takes 30 actions to clip/cut/plant), plus the time to convert it into coal, plus a heap of carting... to make one single bar. Unless you have a massive excess of wood you're usually better off selling the worn equipment.

[Kelderek]

I always have enough groves so that my gnomes could never work them all fast enough. Depending on their skill, that can be a lot of groves. Take advantage of winter to plant or fell some extra groves that you would never get to in the other seasons.

[SmashedPumpkinG]

Originally posted by Skev:

Lots of bad advice going around about fruit trees. Use fruit trees, they provide completely free fruit that you get without even taking an action (since 'cut clipplings' also gives the fruit), which will free up gnomes that would otherwise be farming to instead cut wood... which is what you needed more of in the first place. If you end up with too much food/drink, you can sell it.

Set your woodcutters to do horticulture instead of using the default where the farmers do it, since they're already standing on the right spot when they cut a tree down it saves a fair bit of gnomepower (it'll require a rebalancing of the ratio of woodcutters to farmers).

The most common reason for struggling to get enough lumber is smelting too many worn armour pieces/weapons. It's 10 wood (which takes 30 actions to clip/cut/plant), plus the time to convert it into coal, plus a heap of carting... to make one single bar. Unless you have a massive excess of wood you're usually better off selling the worn equipment.

With mants spawning now based on food levels, its a risk to use fruit trees for wood now.

[Skev]

"With mants spawning now based on food levels, its a risk to use fruit trees for wood now."

Fruit trees aren't any more of a risk than yaks are (oh no, extra drink... panic!). It's a significant free bonus that would require total incompetent bone-headedness to be a mant risk.

[lPaladinl]

Grow more Trees. Plant excess saplings outside of Groves if you need to and just chop them as needed.

[kevinshow]

If you're running out of wood, you may just need to make more groves. It also is related to your skills setup/priorities, but we can talk just about supply and demand for now. If you haven't prioritized professions or want more info, feel free to ask. The suggestion to make the woodcutters handle groves is also how I have my woodcutter profession set up.

You'll get a feel for how much you need to plant, but for my play style, I usually had about 300 tiles of the same trees, set up in 3 10x10 areas. 2 of them are the ones that I cut down totally for wood, and 1 of them is the one I just take clippings from. These clippings will be planted as new trees. In other words, it is a 2:1 ratio of groves being cut down and groves supplying the cuttings. This may not be the best ratio but so far at least with current growth times, it supplies plenty for the kingdom.

As the gnomes get faster at working, I may not actually need all this but I leave it as is because I can still trade extra clippings and logs.

Whenever I did have a shortage and the trees weren't mature yet, I would have to venture into the wild and collect some. However, this was usually only in the early game After a few seasons, this shouldn't be too much trouble anymore, because the wood grown by the gnomes should be able to suffice for the kingdom's needs.