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[BlueTrillium]

Hello, all. I read very recently a post, I think on Reddit, wherein Putnam confirmed for someone how overlapping zones vs locations works relative to the value penalty. *edit* Link to Reddit Post. *end edit* I also searched the wiki, but only the Zone page even mentions cost penalty, and it's not fully accurate for Steam (doesn't show the 100% value loss). Location page doesn't mention value at all unless I missed it. But anyway, the gist of the quote I found was Putnam said:

"Overlapping zones (dining halls, bedrooms, tombs, offices) have their value lowered to 0. Overlapping locations (anything you designate from a zone, so taverns/hospitals/temples/guild halls/libraries) don't get a reduction at all. (emphasis mine)

(We are talking Steam version here, in case that's pertinent)

So this lit up some ideas in my brain like "Whoa, I could overlap a temple with my tavern so they could pray to the god of beer while drinking!" (which as an aside, I've never actually seen a god with the alcohol/beer domain in my couple forts so far. Does that exist? Because if it doesn't it really should, and if it does I've been really unlucky. xD but I digress)

But I tried it out and I can't 'overlap' locations so I'm not sure how to apply Putnam's advice (or if perhaps, I misunderstood?)

Here are my assumptions/steps I've gone through, and I'm hoping people can point out where I'm wrong, or suggest other things to try:

1 - Any number of Zones may overlap (floor tiles), but if you do, the value of all overlapping zones falls to zero.
2 - You can not create Locations on their own, they must and can only be created from a Zone and will only function when attached to a Zone.
3 - (assumption) the value of the Location is the same as the value of the Zone it is attached to (so, if the Zone's value falls to zero due to overlap, the Location's value is also zero).
4 - While you can create any number of Locations from a single Zone, only one Location may be active and attached to that Zone at a time.

all of which lead me to this:
5 - The only way to 'overlap' Locations, is to have overlapping Zones and tie each location to a different Zone. But then, because the Zones overlap, the value of everything would still be zero.

Is that correct? But then is there any benefit to Putnam's statement up above? That's where I need the help.

Here's a concrete example I tried last night:

- I created a Dining Hall Zone, and created a Tavern Location attached to it. All good, dwarves are socializing and eating etc.
- I created a new Temple Location (all-gods) from the Dining Hall.
--- Both the Temple and the Tavern Location now exist, but
--- the Temple Location is the one that's active/activated connected to the Dining Hall (since it's the one I created last)
--- and the Tavern is just... floating around I guess, not connected to anything.
- I was able to switch the Location attached to the Dining Hall back to the Tavern, but that left the Temple floating around unattached.
- By then it was midnight and I had to get up at six AM so I failed to go back and cross-check values and watch if dwarves switched activities and such. I can try to continue testing that next time I play.

So yeah, I couldn't figure out how to overlap Locations without also overlapping Zones. Is there a way?

[Salsa Gal]

While this wasn't an important part of the post I wanted to point out that the things gods can be gods of is chosen from the list of available spheres (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Sphere) which sadly doesn't have alcohol

[BlueTrillium]

Aw, that does kinda make me sad. Given how much dwarves depend on booze for life, they would absolutely swarm to a Dwarven Dionysus, haha. Deities are missing a prime opportunity!

(Truly though, I hope that Sphere list can be expanded to include Alcohol someday. Even if it turns out we can't have a Temple overlap a Tavern without penalty. Would fit right in with the Festivals, Revelry, Dance, Song spheres!)

[Blue_Dwarf]

If there was an alcohol god, all dwarves would warship him exclusively.

In fact, there may have been one, and the other gods arranged an accident to get rid of the competition. Possibly turning him into candy. So when players are mining the candy, the gods are having a laugh between themselves like, "Haha you don't know what that really is!".

[Salsa Gal]

Armok is definitely the god of alcohol thats why he's the most powerful!

[BlueTrillium]

You know... I could get behind that idea. Dwarves basically live off alcohol, so one might say alcohol is their blood... Armok god of blood... blood = alcohol... Dang, Dwarf Dionysus is suddenly a lot more scary. xDD

[Bumber]

5 - The only way to 'overlap' Locations, is to have overlapping Zones and tie each location to a different Zone. But then, because the Zones overlap, the value of everything would still be zero.

Have you confirmed that the values of the locations are actually zero in this case?

[BlueTrillium]

That's something I keep meaning to confirm each time I go back in to the game, and each time, I get distracted and keep forgetting to test it. >_< I will do so soon though, I hope, and report whatever I find back here. (Hopefully later tomorrow, is the current plan).

[BlueTrillium]

Some initial testing this morning while it was at the top of my mind:

This is a bit difficult to test, since at least in-game, values are not displayed for many zones and locations. Some we can get at indirectly though, so it might be enough to draw a fairly solid theory.

Non-overlapping zones:

• dining hall zone with tavern location -- I can't directly see the value of either one, but if I assign the dining hall to a dwarf they say it is 'modest' (so 100-250 value). A manual calculation of walls, floors, and furniture gives me 120 as the actual exact value.
• meeting zone with temple location -- 16 value (yeah it's just 4 smoothed diorite floors lol. just for the test).

Partially overlapping zones:
I expanded the dining/tavern to completely overlap the meeting/temple.

• The dwarf to whom the dining hall is assigned now says it's downgraded to 'meager' -- so yeah dining hall value is down to 0 as expected, even though it has 20 tiles that are NOT shared with the meeting zone. Unknown if tavern value was impacted since tavern value is not visible.
• The temple location however still shows a value of 16. (value of the meeting zone is likewise invisible, but I think we can assume since the dining hall went to 0, the meeting zone did as well)

Fully overlapping zones:
I expanded the meeting/temple to completely overlap with the dining/tavern. Both zones (and both locations) are now fully overlapping, sharing the same 24 total tiles)

• The dining hall is still showing as 'meager' -- still value 0, as expected from partial-overlap results. Tavern still unknown since it doesn't show value.
• The meeting zone also doesn't show value. But the Temple location is now showing a value of 136 -- which matches 120 + 16, covering the entire area.

Current Theory/Results
Based on observations thus far, it does look like the value of the zone and the value of the location are indeed separate, and that two locations which overlap, while the zones that contain them go to zero, the locations themselves retain their value.

This would mean that (so long as you're not bothered by not getting good thoughts from high-value zones) you can overlap locations to your heart's content.

Further Experimentation
I want to try with a different combo (one that hopefully shows more of the value), and I want to try it with the game actually running instead of paused so I can see if dwarves actually do get negative thoughts from the zone and/or positive thoughts from the location, or both.

I think I will attempt to overlap a hospital and a doctor's guild and try to make them higher value as well, and see what happens. This will take a while since I'm not currently in a spot on this fort where I can actually properly build the hospital yet, but I'll work towards it. In the meantime I will leave the dining/tavern and meeting/temple overlapping and see what thoughts I get from my dwarves.

I think also in the future when I can get a proper temple going, I will try overlapping multiple temples and see how that goes as well. (e.g. a nondenominational temple with a handful of dedicated temples).

By all means if other people want to experiment with this and see what findings they get, please do! I have a tiny/just-started fort right now, and this stuff is probably easier (or at least quicker) to test in a larger, more established fort.

[Schmaven]

I'm not sure how to see the value #s for the hospital zone, but you got me thinking, it would be much better to have the all the medical guilds in the hospital's common area, rather than in the basement below the hospital.  I first added the surgeon's guild, without deleting it from the basement area, and the value of that guild increased.  Erasing the guild zone on the lower level reduced that guild's value (as one should expect).  Erasing the overlapping guilds however, 1 at a time, did not result in the remaining guilds increasing in value at all.  Down to the last guild that was moved, it's value remained the same the whole time.  I have not found a way to create guild overlaps that reduces their value at all. 

Erasing the zone either in 1 click with the button, or with the eraser did not erase the guild zone on the floor above.  I was relieved to find this is the case. 

For guild halls, in order to create multi-z leveled halls, you have to make a new zone on each z level first, then assign it to the zone.  Each additional chunk assigned in that way does increase the total guild hall value.

I would like to see if I can wall in the artifact pedestal in the basement, reduce all those zones to that 1 tile, and see if everyone moves their gathering to the common area above, while keeping the artifacts safely secured boosting their guild values equally.  But the trade caravan arrived for the first time in a couple years, and there is a lot of designating to do...

Edit: As BlueTrillium has found above, I also confirmed that adding a guild hall over the pedestal in the "royal mausoleum" reduced its value to a "grave". 
If I'm understanding it right, it seems that the top level zone creations (bedrooms, offices, dining halls, and tombs at least) go to zero value when overlapped with anything.  But the locations assigned to those zones overlap without penalty.  I was under the impression that the values were reduced linearly in proportion to the number of zones present and not all or nothing.  But all or nothing is indeed simpler. 

To keep everyone dining together, I'm adding some pedestal-view dining sections to the main hall for the various nobles.  Still very much a work in progress

Spoiler: VIP dining hall (click to show/hide)

[BlueTrillium]

Nice! Yep, all of that seems to align with what I've found so far.

I did find something interesting in my latest testing, unrelated to value, though --

My overlapping zones of the dininghall/tavern and the meeting/temple -- the temple kept its value, but the dwarfs did not use it. I ran it with my dwarves mostly idle for nearly two seasons, and I saw dwarves eating, socializing, singing (I checked the song, it was entertainment music not religious music), telling stories, and reciting poetry, but not a single one worshiped. Nobody danced either, but I think I don't have a big enough dance floor so I didn't worry overmuch about that.

I tried a couple things - I added an altar to the overlapping zones, but nothing changed. So then I created a separate meeting/temple zone that did not overlap with the others, and yep, immediately dwarves zoomed over there, several with purple 'Worship!!' activities. That temple was a 'no particular deity' temple. I layered another meeting/temple on top of the new one (this one to a specific deity), and the dwarves kept worshiping, but I'm not sure if that proves anything yet. (other than that layering temples doesn't just deactivate them).

I am wondering if only the first zone/location placed is actually used by the dwarves. So next time I play I am going to try changing the layered temples to both be only for specific deities (no 'all deities' one) and see if I notice any dwarves praying to the second deity, or if they all only pray to the first one.

Another interesting but totally unrelated find - my new meeting/temple zone included a slab dedicated to a dead dwarf, and the meeting zone changed its default name automatically to a 'memorial meeting zone'. I just thought that was neat. (Perhaps that's well known/common, but it's the first time I've tried/seen that myself.)

[Schmaven]

Another interesting but totally unrelated find - my new meeting/temple zone included a slab dedicated to a dead dwarf, and the meeting zone changed its default name automatically to a 'memorial meeting zone'. I just thought that was neat. (Perhaps that's well known/common, but it's the first time I've tried/seen that myself.)

I just noticed that too, which gave me pause to what sort of artifacts I had on display in the farmers' guild museum, and what animals were in the guild's assigned zoo.  While the chains add to the value of the zoo (measured by the increase in the guild value), animals assigned to those chains do not increase the value.  Even animals adorned with chains do not add to the value. 

Edit: Installing a pre-caged animal, with a combined higher value ignores the animal value in the guild value calculations as well, still counting just the value of the cage alone.
Lead cages were a bad test cage material to use...

[BlueTrillium]

I've never gotten to the point of building a zoo, but definitely good to know that the animals don't contribute value. Makes sense I suppose now that I think about it.

Slight update on my experiments -- I haven't gotten to a place where I can try any of the guildhall experiments I want to try, but I have created a nice super-temple that seems to be working very well right now. It is basically a large room which is designated an all-deity temple. Then there are multiple alcoves around the edges and each one is dedicated to a single deity/religion (so the area of that temple overlaps the all-deity room + the specific alcove). So far, so good, but I'm still watching the dwarf thoughts because I want to catch one of the "...in a dedicated temple to religion x" thoughts. I think if I see one of those thoughts it will confirm that *all* the temples are working and not just the all-deities temple.

So far though, my tentative belief/assumption is that dining halls probably should not be overlapped, but temples may (even better if there are small areas that don't overlap), and guildhall testing is still pending.