Lumbermills? [Quick query]

[Micky Onimusha]

Lumbermills take forever for me to build even after Archery, so a quick question and then I'll bugger off back to gaming:

Which tech(s) lowers the build time of Lumbermills?

Thanks, Micky.

 

[UNIT 666]

I think there is a bug with the build time of improvements when building over forests and ancient forests. As it stands, for example, chopping down a forest and then building a cottage, using two different orders, is faster than just building a cottage and cutting down the forest in one command.

This bug affects lumbermills the worst, as there is no way to avoid it.

And, to answer your question, the tech Iron Working reduces the time it takes to build a Lumbermill by 75%.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

Thanks for the bug info and tech info

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it could be nice to set archery to be the one that allows to build them faster, since it's an earlier tech and you don't want to leave your forests unimproved so long...

 

[Pohlmann]

with the new change of ancient forest being able to be improved by lumbermills, lumbermills are the most potent improvement lategamewise.

health, food, hammer from forest, best yield right after watermills and windmills but buildable anywhere on the map

expand, adopt fol let forests grow everywhere, tech machinery, adopt industry, get 100 hammers base production per city

 

[WarKirby]

Currently, we have a bug where build times are not discounted in ancient forests. If something takes 30 turns to build in an AF without the tech, it's also going to take the same 30 turns WITH the tech.

This is obviously not intended. Fixing it is beyond my expertise though, so we depend on the awesome skills of xienwolf to zap this bug.

 

[Hroth]

I think Iron Working gives you a bonus to build times for Lumbermills.

 

[Pohlmann]

warkirby this is not true. it took me 6-8 turns to build a lumbermill in an ancient forest (repeatedly)

mby this goes for elves but dural are fine

 

[admtanaka]

I think Iron Working gives you a bonus to build times for Lumbermills.

This was my problem. I thought it was bugged until I realized the tech was moved from archery.

I still haven't experimented with an ancient forest.

 

[Merddyn]

I can actually agree with both sides of the argument for the lumbermills being at archery, and for them being at iron working.

On the archery side, there's the game-balance issue of spreading out all the improvements and buildings over more techs... After all, how many are down the metal line? I know there's notably more than the archery line. Also, there's the fact that archery is considered to be more of a wood-working tech, although bows are normally made, now, out of metal or composite materials. At one time they even used bone for bows, as I recall.

As for the Iron Working side, there's also game balance to be had. People seem to consider lumbermills rather powerful improvements, and in a way, they are. +1 hammers, maybe +1 commerce (I forget, but I think they have a boost on riverside) AND you get to keep the forest's health bonus for the town? That's not really something to shake a stick at. However, you also have to think about how a lumbermill works. From my understanding of them, they use a large circular METAL saw blade to cut the trees into appropriate size segments, after they've been chopped down of course. Not only does this need to be a rather strong metal to not chip or bend every time, thus why copper/bronze isn't exactly ideal, but it also needs to be repairable and replaceable, thus needing iron working instead of just smelting.

... Personally, I'd rather it be archery myself... I use them all the time and having to wait for them to build for so long is annoying, but I think having it at iron working makes more sense.

 

[xienwolf]

Well, with our system we can easily have BOTH, reduce costs 30% at Archery, and 45% at Iron Working, for a net 75% with both.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

that sounds pretty good.

 

[UNIT 666]

Good thinking, xienwolf! That makes the most sense to me.