This is starting to look like a monastic communism.

[mariesalias]

@RavenSteele  You make a very good point.

I enjoy simple math but more complicated math gets too complicated for me to remember all the rules. I was a Comminications/English minor/major. I had to take Statistics and Math Logic in college twice (at least) before I passed them, and even then, it was only because I took the 5 week summer courses so I did not have time to forget everything. 

I rarely build more then 6 tradeposts and I manage all trading myself (no autotrading) so simple is better for me after a certain point. About the time my mines start running out, I start buying iron and just build iron tools and trade for steel because it is easier for me to manage. Since I always have at least half wooden houses, my people will take coal more quickly then my blacksmiths can use it up.

I do a smiilar thing with warm coats, buying wool (if I need to, sheep prodce a lot of it!) and making wool coats then using those coats to buy warm coats. Even if i have to buy wool, it only costs 5-6 each (I think) and wool coats sell for 15. I no longer buy leather buy sell it all once I have wool, because leather costs 10, where wool only costs 5, and it makes more sense to sell the leather to buy wool, to make wool coats and then buy warm coats with the wool coats. Honestly, I have no idea if it all makes sense math-wise. If i really wanted to, I could figure it out, but the amount of effort and time it would take me isn't worth it to me.

I'll have to see if I can come up with a way to make steel tools without losing so much coal to the villagers. Like @irrelevant, I also build blacksmiths next to all my markets so as long as I don't run out of iron, I never have shortages.Because of this, I guess it never feels like I am losing out when buying steel tools.

[RedKetchup]

personally i always prefer to get steel Tools rather than iron tool, if a crop get wasted into frost cause the guy's iron tool didnt last long enough... it worth it even if i lose some money to trade irons to buy steel ones. money is money , and money is set to be spent. i dont play or log in my game to just Watch and stare the amount of things i have to sell in my trading posts hehe. it meant to be exchange for something else

i always always put some mines here and there, cause i think give me nothing to have 300 or 500 or 800 laborers doing nothing (unemployement) in the game so i make them work. so i put coal mine. i have nothing against citizens using coal to warm their houses cause 'it NEEDS' to be warmed, being warmed by firewood ? or Coal ? doesnt matter at all. it needs to be warmed. each time they used 10 coal they saved up 100 firewood (i dunno the real numbers of amount spent in 1 year to warm an house for 1 year)

i play as i feel it. i dont love to start do maths, spreadsheet, or whatever. same in Warcraft. i play my city and plan it as i feel it, as the geography of the map plays on my feelings.

[rkelly17]

Another factor may in favor of steel tools is time.  A blacksmith has to produce twice as many iron tools as steel to support your population, which means twice as many trips to the market/stockpile/barn.

@rkelly17, it sounds like the difference is my citizens aren't using as much coal to heat their homes as yours.  What kind of houses do you build?  And what is your source for coal?

Wow! This thread has certainly stimulated the conversation. To answer @RavenSteele's question: In my last several towns I have not built mines or quarries, but traded ale for stone and iron. Once stone is at a sufficient level I build all stone houses, though before that I build a mixture depending on the materials in stock. Before I learned how to trade better, I built both mines and quarries. When I was building steel tools I was new to Banished and built mostly log cabins. The iron and coal were both from mines.

Has anyone tested to see whether citizens have a preference for firewood or coal? Is such a test possible?

[RedKetchup]

they go for the closest

[RavenSteele]

Agreed.  And it also appears that wooden houses are a much bigger drain on your coal.  Since wooden houses are less efficient, if your coal stockpiles are near your wooden houses they'll take that over firewood and burn it up much faster.

At first I did not notice this and something else was causing an anomaly.  So my wooden houses are all near my town center and two of my blacksmiths are there as well.  My blacksmiths are right next to the market and are closer then the houses, so my blacksmiths seemed to grab all the coal from the market before people would grab it for there homes.  The vendors would go grab more coal and while they were gone people would grab firewood instead.  Vendors would return just in time for my blacksmiths to restock their coal.

Then when my population increased by 200 and the number of wooden houses I had increased in the town center, this shifted.  The blacksmiths no longer could get the coal quick enough and my people took it all for their homes.  I converted many of my wooden houses to stone and that solved the problem.

[mariesalias]

Ah, maybe then when the mod kit comes out and someone makes some better looking stone houses, then I'll build more of them.

[irrelevant]

So I had an unexpected coal experience in my current town. An early resource merchant brought 50 coal, period. So having the idea of showing just how frustrating it is trying to keep coal around, I bought it. My blacksmith was active at the time producing iron tools, so I just switched him over to steel. He grabbed 6 or 8 coal, and the vendors gradually moved the rest of it into the market. I figured that would be the end of that.

I checked in on the experiment every month or two. The blacksmith plugged away making steel tools, and the coal sat there in the market. At first I got confused, thinking that instead of 50 coal I had bought 300, (300 was how much I paid for it) and I was looking at the 33 coal in the market and the 30-odd steel tools he had made by then, and I assumed that my point had been proved, that 250 coal had gone up folks' chimneys.

At the end, after a year, the blacksmith had produced 100 steel tools. The roundness of this number led me to investigate, and I discovered my error. So, 50 coal was bought, and 50 coal was used in making steel tools. The stock of coal sat in my only market, untouched by anyone but the smith, for the entire year. This experiment will bear repeating, with bigger numbers, to see if I can figure out under what conditions citizens use or do not use coal for heating.

[rkelly17]

@irrelevant, could it be that the houses served by that market were full up with firewood and didn't go looking for fuel? Or that there was a source of firewood (e.g., storage yard) closer to the houses than the market? One can't argue with concrete observation, but it dies sound a bit unusual. Do we count it as an anomaly or change our paradigm?

[irrelevant]

@rkelly17 Full-up with firewood certainly is a possibility, I had at that time perhaps 10 wooden houses and a boarding house. I've never had more than a few hundred firewood extra, but there always has been some firewood available.

The market on the other hand is much closer to most of the houses than is any pile with firewood in it. Of course there is firewood available in the market as well.

I'm not ready to switch over to steel tools, but this was an experiment that will bear repeating on a larger scale.

[RedKetchup]

in my mind, if the market has and firewood, and coal, both, the Citizen will take firewood first, he will take coal only if no firewood left in the market (if the market is the closest)

[irrelevant]

That's possible, and certainly would account for this. It's quite possible that my previous bad coal experience was caused by failing effectively to manage my firewood. That was during the first 30-50 years of the farming challenge, when I was still quite new to the game.

[RavenSteele]

In my coal only experiment, I did see this phenomena.  One of the first buildings I constructed was a coal mine, and I constructed it before any houses.  When my houses were finally built (late Autumn of year 1), I had a stock of 100 firewood (from initial supply) and about 12 coal.   My workers grabbed the firewood first and ignored the coal.  After a while, they started grabbing coal as well but when I looked at the inventory of the houses it was clear they were burning the firewood first and then switched to the coal when it ran out.

[rkelly17]

This could mean that if there is a surplus of firewood with a stock in every market, citizens would choose firewood over coal and leave coal for blacksmiths. I would really like to see that confirmed. Anyone up for a research project? Any grants available? 

[RavenSteele]

I think @irrelevant is best setup for that experiment right now

[irrelevant]

Yeah, if I get another merchie bring some coal, I'll buy it.