Farming and Flow Efficiency
Joe lives in the fictional game world of Stronghold HD. He has a simple life. He tills his field, plants his wheat, harvests it, brings it to a stockpile, and eats food from the communal food store.
Life is good for Joe. In fact, it would be exactly accurate to say that Joe is happy if he is fed.
Joe wonders sometimes, in the lonely expanse of his life, big questions. Where did I come from? Where do I go when I die? Can I have children? Why do I live in a shack and not a house? But mostly he thinks about this: Where does my bread come from?
Well, once Joe drops his wheat off at the stockpile, boys from the nearby Mill collect it and mill it.
(It's not a good screenshot, but the mill is on the right, the stockpile is the white stone floor, and the little ginger looking kid with a green shirt is a boy picking up wheat)
The boy, after having milled the wheat, drops a sack of flour off at the stock pile for a Baker to collect.
The Baker bakes bread and delivers it to a Granary for the population to eat (Joe's favorite part).
Joe isn't real. Joe is an animated sprite on my screen. He represents a mouth to feed and a way to gain materials to feed him and others.
As a player, Joe doesn't really matter. A player can make 30 of Joe. The player has other things to think about, like walls for his farmers and building an army for protection.
But all of those little sprites gotta eat. A player will very quickly realize that a Baker won't bake unless there is flour, and if there is no grain, the boys won't mill it.
So, most players will build lots of Farmer Joe, make sure there is a lot of grain for the boys to mill so there is lots of flour for the baker. They will add more of each, ensuring that there is always a stockpile of these materials to process.
Joe, the Baker, the Miller boys have a lot of work ahead of them.
This is how most of us work.
Plenty of work to do means you're doing plenty of work.
But is Joe getting fed any faster?
Let's consider this question for a moment. By building lots of Joe, Bakers, and Millers I have lots of food streaming in as a player. Everyone is well fed. In fact I have so much food, as a player, I can sell the excess for money.
But for the sake of the voice in my head nagging me, I'll look at what I've actually built.
Pulling out my stop watch (What a freak!). I note the following: From the instant Joe starts farming, until he can eat it, it takes 4 minutes and 32 seconds. Now, that's not terrible, especially since I've built so many of them that food is coming in every second or two.
Then I notice something else. 2 minutes and 50 seconds are all it takes for the Farmer, Miller, and Baker to actually do their work. The rest of the time is spent walking around like a bunch of idiotic sprites.
Maybe I can be better. Maybe I can feed Joe faster. If I feed Joe faster, I feed everyone faster. If I feed them faster, I don't have to build as much.
I build all of the buildings needed to create food as close as the game allows and start my stopwatch again.
Here's what I found. The total process took 3 minutes and 30 seconds. I was able to eliminate an entire minute of work that didn't matter out of this equation.
That means, that as a player, I can build layouts like this, and generate food much faster and cheaper than my old way of just piling more on to keep them all working and busy.
This, though trite, and silly, is an example of how looking at things from the perspective of an item of value (Food), instead of from the perspective of resources (Player), can increase your overall efficiency and flow.
romaincrisis
pixelskylines
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theartofmadeline
snowghoul
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