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[Thisfox]

Has anyone else noticed trees.... growing slower?

I mean... I'm usually desperately logging to keep my merchant avenues open... and now I'm seriously considering shutting down the forges. I checked if I was in a different biome, but no, it's the same as always, a high timber biome, no worries. I've started forcibly logging the underground just to survive. I've not got any fossil fuels on this map, just the makings for good bronze and endless ribbons of gold nuggets, and I'm beginning to realise I could log this little slice of dwarven happiness dry.

I've noticed there are fewer tree explosions (Something has collapsed on the surface!!!) but it took me a while to realise there was a direct correlation to the lack of lumber to actually cut down and fire the coal fires. Has anyone else experienced this?

[wierd]

Personally, I would wonder why you are using charcoal for anything other than steel production, which requires either charcoal or coal for production--- All other metals can be refined using magma, which can be dippered out using all manner of contraptions.

As long as a small pit contains more than 4/7 magma, a magma appliance can be built on top of it. This means a minecart can dump directly into a 1-tile sized hole, and then the workshop can be built on top.  (and using constructed minecart tracks, this is not terribly hard to have accomplished. The wood spent on building the rollers will be more than made up for.)

I am kinda of the opinion to point out how wood is not something to be treated as infinite, and to remind that compared to previous versions (Especially .20d!), we are literally ROLLING in wood logs now. If you are still running out, you are not managing your resources correctly.

Unlike days of yore, where you had to be either supremely lucky or very studious in your embark site choices to get magma, you are now guaranteed to find it if you dig deep enough-- and as long as you can forge some level of magma safe minecart, you can get it anywhere you want it to be. Those are MAJOR things compared to all the crazy you had to go through in previous versions.

That out of the way-- and purposefully ignoring the obvious--- it could be possible that you are just logging faster than full tree maturation allows.  By that, I mean trees continue to get "bigger" as they get older.  You cut down all the old, big trees, which produced more logs when felled-- and the new trees that have grown up are now smaller by comparison, being younger and not having had the same time to mature, and you are getting fewer logs per tree as a result.

You can perform an experiment to determine this.

Divide your map into 2 parts. On one part, continue your aggressive woodcutting. On the other, institute bi-yearly cuttings, (or longer). Compare the wood yields from both sides. Report on the findings.

[The Bard]

I think he means the trees are growing back/i] slower.

I've noticed it too. In 40.13, I had to designate rOads constantly to stomp out trees in my pastures for fear of three or four springing up on a season. Now in 40.14, I'm in the third year and my immediate embark area is still clean of trees even though I now want some harvestables around.

[Tacomagic]

I think he means the trees are growing back/i] slower.

I've noticed it too. In 40.13, I had to designate rOads constantly to stomp out trees in my pastures for fear of three or four springing up on a season. Now in 40.14, I'm in the third year and my immediate embark area is still clean of trees even though I now want some harvestables around.

I'm seeing this too.  Underground pastures are growing far, far fewer trees than they used to.

For the most part I'm kinda fine with slower tree growth.  But it might be scaled back just a little bit too much in 40.14.

[Thisfox]

I think he means the trees are growing back/i] slower.

I've noticed it too. In 40.13, I had to designate rOads constantly to stomp out trees in my pastures for fear of three or four springing up on a season. Now in 40.14, I'm in the third year and my immediate embark area is still clean of trees even though I now want some harvestables around.

She does indeed     There used to be rather a shorter amount of time between clearfelling a section of the map, and going back to clearfell it again.

Flippant remarks aside, I've got my "fruit collection area" which I'm not touching, and half the map I've been carefully logging, so I could indeed test the theory by cutting down one of my fruit trees.

I haven't found the magma yet, I've gone down uncountable levels, and through two sets of caves (one a barren wasteland of silk, which I'm slowly turning into clothing, the other full of mushroom trees (yay!) trolls, reachers and other such things, which is leading to some great training moments for my two military units) and I'm still searching for the third cavern set before I get to the magma level. Even so, I'm only using the coal for a few things: making armour/weapons for my military and making clay trinkets and glazing trinkets to sell to the merchants for -shock horror- iron. I've also made rather a few gold nick-nacks to sell to the merchants as well, they sell incredibly well, although the elves seem to think they're too heavy... Everyone's a critic...

Anyhow, I've been doing the obvious test, and timing when I last clearfelled an area. Three years later, I'm beginning to wonder if there's tree seeds I should be planting, 'cos the area is still clearfelled, bar a single regrowth tree. As you pointed out, it will take a while for that to reach a full size maturity.

(As an aside: Do the elves care if I cut down the mushroom trees, down below? Or do they only care about the above ground arborial conditions?)

[utunnels]

Wait, the tower caps that grow on your floor can actually grow up? 
I think I have waited for years but yet I haven't seen one that can be chopped down.

[Tacomagic]

Wait, the tower caps that grow on your floor can actually grow up? 
I think I have waited for years but yet I haven't seen one that can be chopped down.

They need at least 2 z-levels to grow.  Otherwise they just take up space that would otherwise be useful pasture.  They eventually die and leave a dead twig in the ground that likewise doesn't do anything useful.  Only way to get rid of either is to make dirt road over it.

[utunnels]

Interesting. Perhaps I could use some tree farms next time to see how efficient they are.
I always buy logs from caravans and use magma forge to smelt things.

[Tacomagic]

Interesting. Perhaps I could use some tree farms next time to see how efficient they are.
I always buy logs from caravans and use magma forge to smelt things.

Same here.  One or two years telling the liaison that I'll pay double for logs is enough to set my fort up for 10 years worth of needs.  Unless I go crazy with the steel production.

[StagnantSoul]

Wait, you're paying double for that stuff? I thought it was saying that you really need this stuff.

[Thisfox]

Yeah, you pay more for stuff you request, than for stuff you didn't request. Not necessarily double, but more. Depends on how much you request it, I think.

What do you do to manufacture beds? They all take wood. And do you hunt with metal bolts? That must get expensive as well. I use wood for a myriad of small tasks.

[StagnantSoul]

I normally put copper into hunting bolts. Bars: 544 iron, 1089 charcoal/coke, 108 steel, 6848375135645750846736276 copper, 18 bismuth bronze.

[wierd]

For hunting purposes, chicken and turkey bones make acceptable crossbow bolt making material. Not suitable for use against enemy combatants, as the bolts lack sufficient penetrating power to pierce armor. At a minimum, copper bolts are thus required for military use. Sadly, there does not seem to be a very foolproof way of preventing Urist McHunter from cabbaging onto those shiny metal bolts instead of using the slightly "fried chicken" scented bone ones, short of micromanagement with burrow restrictions and clever abuse of civilian alerts. (for bolt collection afterward)

I typically use wood for the few things where wood is simply indespensible:

Beds, Rollers, and Windmills/waterwheels.

If coal is available, I use that for making steel, otherwise, charcoal is necessary.

I guess I started playing too early, (.20d) and got used to treating wood more gingerly as a resource-- something to hoard until you REALLY needed it. back then, you couldnt make stone pots, and had to choose between metal barrels or wooden ones. Wooden ones were easier to make at the initial outset, and having enough wood to make both beds and barrels for a rapidly growing fortress was a challenge in and of itself, but I digress--- I just learned to be miserly with wood, and to only use it as needed, and to always seek alternatives.

If you have a moody dwarf, and *NEED BARS NAOW!*, then I can see making charcoal early to satisfy the requirements, so you can get the metal bars you need to satisfy an early weapon/armorsmith mood-- but my typical startup industry is cloth crafts. Light weight, and easily embellished to over 300* per item. Not very glamorous, but accepted universally by all trading races, and easy to mass produce. (even easier now, if you can get 2 or more surface plants that produce bast fiber-- say, hemp and ropereed. One can easily produce over 400 cloth per season this way.) However, there is a downside to that, in that it promotes dwarves to have clothing moods, and not the more desirable metalcraft moods. There's always something to look out for, no matter what your choices are.  Still, one can trade for wood and metal bars from human and dwarf caravans, and sustain a sizable metalcraft industry, fueled exclusively by a dedicated clothing industry cranking out crappy cloth crafts. keeping the number of dwarves involved in the cloth industry to a minimum will still enable charcoal powered metalcrafting for the larger part of the fortress population.

[Kaos]

Sadly, there does not seem to be a very foolproof way of preventing Urist McHunter from cabbaging onto those shiny metal bolts instead of using the slightly "fried chicken" scented bone ones, short of micromanagement with burrow restrictions and clever abuse of civilian alerts. (for bolt collection afterward)

what about the ammunition screen? you can set your hunters to use only wood bolts and squads to use copper/silver/steel bolts... bone bolts is a bit trickier you have to set it up using white colour...

[omega_dwarf]

It's hard to trade for metals because if you only want steel, you can only get 4 steel bars. (And 4 iron and 4 pig iron and 8 coal, plus rocks (including ore), and whatever other iron/pig iron/steel trinkets you can find. Which is a pain in the butt.)

I mean, yeah, you can clad a dwarf or two per human/dwarf caravan that way, but that's pretty slow military growth by my mark.

Wood is tempting to overuse as a resource, and it seems to be that way in most games...I think it would be interesting if DF actually forced you to conserve it. It's more dwarfy to use the other options, too. But more likely, this is just Toady trying to re-balance things from ZOMGSOMUCHWOOD-land in the early 0.40s. I bet he'll raise the rate again in the next update if people complain loudly enough.