Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[juanm]

I was making an experiment to check how important terrain is for underground tree+plan farming.

Short answer:
The terrain doesn't seem to make any difference at all.

Long answer:
I was running the last version of Masterwork Version 1.9.5 for DF 34.11.

All test are run for 1 year, preparing the plots first and breaching all 3 caverns at the same time.

First I run a fortress with 10x10 plots. 1 for each of these:
-dry clay
-muddy clay
-dry sand
-muddy sand
-mudd rock
-dry clay with canal (11x10 plot with a 1x10 canal in filled with 7 water in the middle)
-muddy clay with canal

After this study results seemed very unclonslusive to me, except for the fact that canals really seemed to have no influence at all, so I ran a second test, this time with 8 10x10 plots for each of the above terrains. Note: I made sure not to dig under any of the plots in both experiments, just in case. So the possible influence of this is not meassured yet, but at least it will not spoil the data.

Results:
Experiments1+2   Full grown trees   Semi gown trees   Plants   SUM of trees  SUM of trees + plants   
Clay Dry            4                       77                      79           81              160
Clay Mud           6                       73                      82           79              161
Sand Dry           5                       71                      74           76              150
Sand Mud          5                       80                      92           85              177
Rock Mud          7                       78                      75           85              160
                                                      Average (900 tiles)       81.2            161.6
                                                      Average per tile           0.090222222  0.1795555556

There is a very high variance in results from one plot to another, even in the same category, which makes the variance found then totaling each group seem rather small in comparison. My conclusion is that the terrain probably makes no difference.

[Thatdude]

Good science so far. A question, how did you gather your results? A 10 by 10 plot has 100 spaces, yet the sum of trees and plants for each type was above 100? Were you gathering each fully grown plant and cutting down every tree as it grew? In which case this might seriously affect your results with dwarves trampling plants with traffic. Also, what happens when you try to grow on muddied rock?
Also, this kind of test would need more than one repetition to be of much significance. I might get round to trying this a little if I get time, but just putting it out there...

[juanm]

Thanks! Sorry I didn't explain that part.

The numbers refer to 900 tiles (100 from experiment1 and 800 from experiment2 for each kind of terrain). On the right I add the fully and partially grown trees first and then everything. And under that I average these values and under this I divide by 900 to get the final results of around 0.09 trees (fully+partially grown trees) per tile and 0.18 (trees+plants) per tile. Or if you prefer 0.09 trees and 0.09 plants per tile.

Please, take into account that this goes for Masterwork, where Meph introduced new trees and plants. These number are probably different in Vanilla DF. And maybe canals do have an impact on Vanilla, for instance (I think I once heard one species of tree or plant only grew close to water, but could be wrong...).

[Bigheaded]

anything about dead shrubs? i notice a lot of my shrubs just die underground, so was considering adding mud to hopefully let them live longer?!?

Might give you my science for stats for muddy tiles at some stage. Need to find a better way of getting water into my fort first.


The sand dry result is really low for some reason.

[juanm]

I didn't get any dead shrub. I get muddy shrubs in all muddy areas and shrubs in non-irrigated areas. In my experience shrubs only die when a dwarf (maybe pets too?) steps on them, but all this areas were free of traffic.

I believe the low results in dry sand are just a matter of luck, but it could be an indicator. Anyway, the average numbers in clay (muddy+dry) terrains equals 160.5 plants and the average in sand ones equals 163.5. So it seems like clay and sand have the same yield. And mud doesn't seem to have any influence in clay, so probably it doesn't have any in sand either.

By the way, I just noticed I wrote decimals with commas. Sorry. I'll edit it to avoid confusion.