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[jevph]

Once a sapling has popped up into a mature multi-tile tree, will the tree continue to increase in size over the years or does it just remain the way it is?

[Fleeting Frames]

It'll keep getting bigger slowly. You can see how big x year old tree would roughly be in arena mode (and note how there's some randomness involved).

Tallness comes much faster than width, but trees are still something you grow for years, decades or even centuries. Also, speed of growth varies - you may get 8z tall tree in a decade, or still have not gone past 5z after three decades. Some trees also have lower maximum trunk height than 8z, like black-cap.

I think my most amusing case would be 3z Birch popping up after 3 years as sapling - and being just 3z of trunk pillar. Next spring, it grew branches to the sides.

[jevph]

Is there a way of telling when the best time is to harvest / chop down trees in a tree farm?

Should I cut them as soon as they're mature to make room for the next generation, or is it better to give them an extra 3 years or so in order to increase the yield per tree?

[Fleeting Frames]

Haven't tested, but I cut non-orchard trees down as soon as possible just because the canopies of older trees block newer trees from maturing and because dwarves can get lost in trees and trees drain fps (a heavily forested embark has lower uncapped fps than one with no vegetation, dependent on embark size - at 16x16, for me it was 85 to 25 when I last tested, though just single embarks are merely anecdotes). Though I do think 2z cavern tree farm trees yield less logs per tree than the on-embark cavern trees.

[jevph]

Thx, I tried out arena mode now and I can see what you're talking about. Great feature, you can literally let trees grow for thousands of years!

A 30-year old tree would have to be ten times bigger than one that just popped up for it to be worth the wait though, and that's far from being the case (looks more like it's just 2 or 3 times bigger). I'll follow your advice and cut them asap, much obliged. 

[PatrikLundell]

Optimizing tree growth/harvesting for yield is basically pointless in the current DF version as there are going to be so much wood from growing trees that you'd have to do something really strange to use it all. Tree farms are mostly redundant as well, but if you have a really hostile embark you might have trouble securing a cavern (but once you do, your problem will be to manage to cut the trees down fast enough to ensure passages aren't blocked rather than getting hold of logs), and the same goes for the surface if it supports tree growth.
In fact, in the two years it takes for tree farm trees to mature you ought to have been able to secure at least a part of a tree supporting cavern unless your work force is very small and your focus is elsewhere, obsolescing it around the time it starts to be productive.

[jevph]

The problem is I'm playing a 1x1 pocket world, due to my crappy-laptop FPS issue.

I ran out of wood immediately and humans and elves stopped trading. I'm not even getting any more migrants at this point, so my fort is slowly but surely going extinct. Currently there's about 50 dwarves left...

[Grand Sage]

Take a look at http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156319.0Archcrystals. Its a multigenerational fort. I think you will find that a fort can survive just fine without any more migrants, seeing as incest is not really a problem gotta love DF

[Larix]

Tree size has a pretty big influence on wood yields - a poorly developed tree can give as little as two, a large and well-developed one well over forty logs. Every time a tree makes a growth check (every year or so), it can increase its height and grow extra branches, which can result in substantial gains over the years. Keep in mind there are strict upper limits to height and width in the raws, so the gains should stop at some point.

You could try not clear-cutting whenever new trees sprout, but rather leave a few standing, in about a 10x10 tile grid and harvest those after ten to twenty years.

The arena unfortunately does a very poor job of simulating tree growth. Its results bear little similarity to what you'll see in a fort.

[jevph]

Take a look at http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156319.0 Archcrystals.

Awesome!

That game is absolutely inspiring. Perhaps my fort could survive, if it weren't for my single digit FPS... (despite all my maximization efforts)

[Grand Sage]

a smaller world size and a smaller embark, combined wit not breaching or walling of the caverns does magic there, pathfinding=FPS death

[Fleeting Frames]

Perhaps my fort could survive, if it weren't for my single digit FPS... (despite all my maximization efforts)

Sometimes, retiring-unretiring a fort can bring quite a bit of fps back due this problem. Might be worth making a backup and trying.