Using Wheat to make Ale - DON'T DO IT!

[canis39]

That is interesting, in my vegetarian town, I am only using wooden houses. I have something like 250 houses and all are wooden except maybe 10 or so.

[mariesalias]

I can't even afford the resources yet to make a full half of the houses stone but I can upgrade some later.

[Dookie]

In my current town, I managed to build up a large stockpile of all kinds of resources (i.e. 80k food, 5k stone, 4k iron, etc.), and although the herbalists' production vary greatly, the citizens don't use herbs very quickly. 

The only issue is I always run short of is Ale.  When I use fruit, the fruits disappear way before next harvest because people eat them even while there's a huge supply of other food.  When there are fruits available, they get pulled around to other markets where there are no brewers or ones using a different recipe.  The only time I can consistently make ale is when I import tons of fruits.  It's such a hassle to micromanage trade with like 15 trading posts and switch the production to whatever fruit.  Playing that style with reliance on heavy trading makes the game something else, imo.

Like OP said, I don't mind inefficiencies; because if you're rich in other resources, it doesn't matter much.  Is wheat the answer to consistent ale?  Why do we have to use traders to snatch it up before everyone gets drunk and it disappears?  How come people smoke herbs at a slower rate?

[RedKetchup]

i think 2-3 trading post are OP, but having 10+ TP are just a pain. on every hour of play , i pass maybe like 45mins just cause the merchants. thats sad.

of course markets will always try to get of everything to sell in their markets, this include the fruits you would hope to keep for your taverns, you need to plan more fruits just cause that, you ll know their need their shared part.

[Dookie]

I took a look at the trading challenge; it doesn't seem fun. 

In any case, I don't think berries are the answer.  It's not as inefficient as wheat, but taverns produce berry ale much slower than using fruits.  This is probably due to the distribution of berries along the perimeter of forest nodes, and it takes the brewers and/or vendors time to grab them, and plus it dries up faster on conversion. 

I'm considering changing all fields to wheat to try it.  It seems easier to maintain a large stock?

[RedKetchup]

arent you scared to get out of food and everyone getting hungry and die ?

[irrelevant]

@Dookie  No, wheat is the worst. To make ten ale it takes 100 wheat, 60 berries, or 30 of any other fruit. This in itself wouldn't be so bad, as you can grow scads of wheat, but the limitation then becomes how many inputs the brewer can carry in one trip from storage to the tavern. The limit is 100 points (but so often guys only pick up 84 for some reason).

First, remember that only the brewer himself can move wheat/berries/fruit to the tavern for ale production.

That means that, using wheat, at best the brewer can make one batch of ale, then he has to go get more wheat; in practice he'll have to move three loads of wheat to make two batches of ale. With berries it's not quite as bad, but still the theoretical maximum is 3 loads of berries to make 5 batches of ale; in practice it will be 3 loads for 4 batches.  But with other fruits, from a single load of fruit he can make 2 or 3 batches of ale.

Of course each batch of ale takes the same amount of time to brew, regardless of what you are making it from. So time spent restocking is the critical factor; every trip to storage for more supplies significantly reduces the time available for production. In practice I find that annual ale output from wheat is about 25-35% of that from fruit, and using berries is about half. Which is intuitive, given the ratios.

The best way to make ale is to standardize on one type of fruit, and trade for tons of it. Use wheat to buy fruit, if wheat is what you've got. Grow some fruit to supplement your purchases if you can spare the land, but don't rely on orchards alone for serious ale production. I have 30 taverns in my trading challenge town, no way I could grow anything like enough fruit (~30,000/year, plus that much more that the people eat), and orchards just seem like a waste of land when I can mega-farm and trade beans and corn (and later, ale, when I'm producing oceans of that) for fruit instead.

I start out with my first tavern making ale from berries, because typically I have a tavern before I get a steady supply of fruit. But as soon a food merchant brings fruit of any kind, I switch to that.

[salamander]

@irrelevant -- Thanks for that explanation; it's one of the clearest I've seen.

I generally make ale from fruit if I can, but that decision's only based on the amount of wheat/berries/fruit needed ... I'd never even thought to consider the amount of time it takes to keep the tavern supplied.

[irrelevant]

@salamander  You're welcome! Over the years, I have studied taverns quite closely, from top to bottom, inside and out.

[irrelevant]

One more remark about ale. I think the key to ale production is tavern placement. The best possible location for the tavern is immediately adjacent to the market, fronting it. This will make the brewer's trip to pick up more fruit as short as it can possibly be, allowing him to brew more batches of ale in a given amount of time than he would be able to if he were located farther out in the market circle.

Actually, I believe this is the key to all production. There's a reason that markets stock resources for all production buildings. It's so that producers abutting the market can have the shortest trip possible to pick up resources, and therefore will be able to spend the greatest possible amount of time in production. Let the vendors search far and wide for the resources, that's what they are for.

[tomplum68]

how many breweries can a market support?  if you theoretically put no houses in a market's radius and only breweries, would the vendors get only the items the breweries were calling for?

[salamander]

Based on what others have seen, markets will stock resources to support a single production building ... ie, enough iron for one blacksmith, enough logs for one blacksmith and one woodcutter, etc ...

Taverns are a little different in practice because wheat/berries/fruit can be used for food as well as ale making, and markets stock a fair amount of food.  So, you may be able to support more than one tavern just because of the amount of food markets routinely stock.  On the other hand, I have taverns in market circles in which the market just doesn't stock the supplies the tavern needs.  Whether this is because the market is stocking supplies for another tavern in the circle, or for some other reason, I'm not sure.

[RedKetchup]

sometimes i wish we can do a ... Ask the Devs thread and get them answer our questions (like we often do with Blizzard and Warcraft)

[irrelevant]

I have a number of markets that are supporting two of each production building. I suspect they could support more than that, if the vendors had a nearby source for the needed resources. I do have one market that is supporting 8 blacksmiths, but there are 4 TPs pretty close by, and lots of stockpiles with iron. I'm assuming the blacksmiths are going to the market rather than to the stockpiles, because the market is closer, in between; the stockpiles being right there make it easy for the market to keep logs and iron in stock -- Screen 1

I think what the market does is, it tries to maintain a certain level of each resource. If that resource gets used, it sends a vendor to get more. If it keeps getting used, it sends out more vendors. If you have enough vendors, and the resources are near at hand, you can support a considerable resource flow through that market.

My production buildings rarely stop production, because I maintain very high inventories of fruit, iron, logs, and wool, coming in through 20 TPs, so the inputs are located from one end of the river to the other. Vendors rarely have to go very far from their markets to find critical resources. When I look at the markets that are supporting ale production, I normally see 200-500 fruit at each one, sometimes even over 1000. I have very little production at remote markets, though, mainly firewood, but also some coats and tools.

Most of my markets have 12 vendors, this is in a town with 2700 pop and 24 markets, so it is a fairly mature system. Obviously at earlier stages, there will not be nearly this many vendors, the first few markets when first built typically get only one vendor or possibly two.

edit: just got home and reviewed my markets; it had been some time since I had done that. The typical 12-vendor markets were showing some signs of strain (total lack of iron at some) so I have bumped the number of vendors to 15 or 20, depending on the situation.

Regardless of anything else though, every market had fruit, and lots of it. I assume this is because fruit is also a food, kept in stock for the villagers.

[irrelevant]

if you theoretically put no houses in a market's radius and only breweries, would the vendors get only the items the breweries were calling for?

No, markets will stock some amount of pretty much any item except stone, regardless of what is built in the market circle. I think it was @mariesalias who did some testing of this, but I can't remember exactly where that was posted.

edit: it was @slink, not @mariesalias, who did this testing.