Soil = Sustainable Lineage: Composting Guide and Maths

betame · 2018-08-17 12:40:09

TL;DR: CIVILIZATION IS SOIL. Making soil takes water and a little iron. Oh, and the byproducts are clothes and pies! So PLEASE COMPOST LOTS!

Many family lines are still dying/struggling from famine, or struggling to get the building supplies they need. I’ll explain how to complete a full compost cycle and how it solves these challenges. Every city must compost (so you’re not saving any resources by ignoring it), and going low on soil backs up many other projects. In fact, over 1/5 of your plots must be allocated for soil replenishment. By making soil, you also create mutton pies and clothes from a bit of water and tool uses with zero other costs to the city.

Agriculture allows for civilizations to centralize and accumulate goods. Steel age farms utilize composting so you don’t have to go far for soil. Plus having soil also saves you long trips for rope, baskets, skewers, and wood by planting them at home. The only thing you need to leave the city for are other minerals.

Taking into account end game problems of finding iron, I worked out the maths for a sustainable farm that uses as little iron as possible. Some linear algebra of the full composting cycle shows that investing 4.25 soil returns 21 soil as well as 1.00 sheepskin and 4.00 pies, but costs only 5.18 water plus 1.47 hoe and 2.00 shovel uses total. Thats 494% more soil than the cycle began with! Or over 1/5th of your plots dedicated to composting.

I recommend using the extra soil on low-iron milk from corn, or on berries*. And of course the extra soil can be used for diverse foods for increasing your YUM! You can even grow straw hats which don't rot (yet).
*One compost brings enough food for a whole hour life, if the 16.75 soil produced is spent on berries - with the pies, 800+ food! (with a cost of about 0.05 iron). -Math here

Compost is made from 1 wheat, 1 water, 1 dung, and a bowl of 6 berries and 1 carrot.
The ingredients’ cycles are explained below, also functioning as a tutorial for new players / beginners.

Berry Cycle

In: 1 soil, 1 water
Process: Place the soil then water on a darker bush. Pick the berries from a nearby bush.
Out: 7 berries

Carrot Cycle

In: 8 soil, 7 tillings, 7 water
Process: Water 7 plots of carrot seeds. Harvest 6 plots and use the seeds from the 7th to reseed new plots.
Out: 30 carrots
*recommendation: If people are eating the carrots too much then do this cycle in small chunks; carry/hide your seeds and carrots

Sheep Cycle

In: 6 berries, 1 carrot
Process: Feed a bowl of these to a hungry lamb. Slaughter it as an adult.
*neglecting to have the adult slaughtered/bones dumped will fill up the pen, preventing dung from spawning
Out: 1 dung, 4 mutton, 1 sheepskin (or use sheers to make it fleece)

Wheat Cycle

In: 2 soil, 1 tilling, 1 water
Process: Plant and water wheat, then harvest.
Out: 1 wheat ***do not separate until all compost ingredients are ready

Compost Cycle

In: 1 wheat, 6 berries, 1 carrot, 1 water, 1 dung, 2 shovelings
Process: Mash a bowl of 6 berries and 1 carrot with a sharp stone.
Place the harvested wheat near the pie station then thresh with a curved or straight branch.
Take the straw from the threshed wheat and place it where you want to make the compost pile.
*the straw has a 4 minute decay timer
Add the mashed bowl to the straw, then add water, and shovel the dung onto it.
Out: 1 compost pile (8 baskets of 3 soil = 24 soil), 1 wheat grain [ty for catching, Brazier!]

Pie Cycle

In: 1 wheat grain, 1 water, 4 mutton
Process: Grind the wheat grain in a bowl. Add water and immediately place dough onto four plates. Add raw mutton.
Out: 4 Mutton pie

Supporting matrix, rref using https://www.gcalcd.com/calculator/matrix/

soil   berry  carrot  grain   straw   dung   mutton    pie    skin    water   shovel  hoe
21	-6	-1	0	-1	-1	0	0	0	-1	-2	0
-1	7	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	-1	0	0
-8	0	30	0	0	0	0	0	0	-7	0	-7
-2	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	-1	0	-1
0	-6	-1	0	0	1	4	1	0	0	0	0
0	0	0	-1	0	0	-4	0	4	-1	0	0

RREF:
1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.0597	0.2388	-0.3093	-0.1194	-0.0875
0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0.0085	0.0341	-0.187	-0.0171	-0.0125
0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0.0159	0.0637	-0.3158	-0.0318	-0.2567
0	0	0	1	0	0	4	0	-4	1	0	0
0	0	0	0	1	0	-4	0.1194	4.4775	-2.6185	-0.2388	-1.1751
0	0	0	0	0	1	4	1.0671	0.2683	-1.438	-0.1342	-0.3317

NOTE: This is as of June 8th’s Big Farm Update (v108) thru current version (175+)

edit 3 Sept 18: Realized compost has 8 uses instead of 4 (didn't see update in v103). I feel very silly for not having noticed this!
edit 24 Sept 18: Realized shovel is used twice when moving dung.
edit 19 Nov 18: Compost now has 7 uses.

Last edited by betame (2018-12-11 20:32:55)

carbon · 2018-08-17 17:51:45

Thanks for this post. The information and calculations are great references.

I am Pharo · 2018-08-17 18:20:29

bump bump bump

sanchez · 2018-08-17 21:11:50

also horse carts help

Auner · 2018-08-17 23:05:10

Glorious, thank you for this! Bump!

betame · 2018-08-22 15:15:51

Thanks for the support y’all!

I did more math out of curiosity, looking at maximizing soil production at the cost of iron:
Even if you tilled plots twice instead of once where possible you would still need about 1/4 of your plots dedicated to composting;
(double tilling with 3.18 soil returns 21 soil for 2.53 hoe uses
v single tilling with 4.25 soil returns 21 soil for 1.47 hoe uses)

Ultimately, the 1/5 v 1/7 minimum doesn’t have a big bearing on the decision of whether to compost or not; the more the better for the farm’s stability! And the decision to sacrifice 1 tilling to save 1 soil still exists when planting many crops.

sanchez wrote:

also horse carts help

YES TRUE!!! Horse riders greatly expand the radius for resource collection. If they’re not busy getting mineral/wood they could easily get soil faster than composting. I have trouble guessing at what radius it might become inefficient to search for and collect the soil.

Last edited by betame (2018-11-19 17:22:02)

Catfive · 2018-08-22 16:39:41

I wonder if this guide will mean less people chasing down the last remaining scraps of food and instead preparing the way for the future by composting and ensuring famines are left to noob camps. First priority is make sure the place can survive, then move on to making crowns and pretending you're something special in a game

Turnipseed · 2018-08-22 18:56:03

Catfive wrote:

I wonder if this guide will mean less people chasing down the last remaining scraps of food and instead preparing the way for the future by composting and ensuring famines are left to noob camps. First priority is make sure the place can survive, then move on to making crowns and pretending you're something special in a game

Good luck with that... there are wayyy more griefers, and sponges than productive members of society.

(Not lumping in RP, because it can be fun for breaks in between jobs if its used properly. It also gives dedicated farmers something to do between crops)

Lily · 2018-08-23 08:59:21

If anyone remembers back when the big towns would have like a 20 carts, full of baskets, full of carrots and there is carrots as far as they eye could see? I wouldn't mind seeing that with compost. Just have an entire screen look like a strip mine, with piles of dirt every where. I would like to see that.

Blazier · 2018-08-24 03:48:34

There's a small mistake: in the "out" part for the compost cycle, you should also list that you get wheat grain, as you call it.

Last edited by Blazier (2018-08-24 03:48:48)

betame · 2018-08-24 04:27:23

Glad to see the shared dreams of mass compost!

Blazier wrote:

There's a small mistake: in the "out" part for the compost cycle, you should also list that you get wheat grain, as you call it.

Fixed and credited, thanks Blazier!

gabal · 2018-08-24 07:51:30

What is the proper way of disposing of dead lambs? I messed up the first time when I tried to learn composting when I filled up a trash pit that was the border of the sheep pen. I tried to keep the pen clean and I ended up ruining the pen. I really had no idea trash pits had capacity as I haven't seen a full one before that.

betame · 2018-08-24 09:35:05

gabal wrote:

What is the proper way of disposing of dead lambs? I messed up the first time when I tried to learn composting when I filled up a trash pit that was the border of the sheep pen. I tried to keep the pen clean and I ended up ruining the pen. I really had no idea trash pits had capacity as I haven't seen a full one before that.

A common learning experience!
Trash pits fill up after 20 items are put in (usually there's at least 1 in already to prevent shoveling it)
Dead lambs despawn in 5 minutes, and can be placed outside of the pen if there's no space.
Dead sheep bones (once you take the meat off) despawn in 2 epochs, so those need to be carried outside of the pen using a basket.

Typically, pens need only 1-2 live sheep (unshorn=>fertile).
In an unkept pen with 1 sheep, about 7 spaces would be filled at all times;
1 new lamb leaves its parent's side about every 80 seconds. The new lamb dies in 1 minute, then rots away after 5 more minutes.

Managing space is essential so thanks for seeking knowledge in the quest to help!

Last edited by betame (2018-08-26 10:34:36)

betame · 2018-08-26 16:41:26

Some early, very rough numbers on the age-old question of carrying capacity.
see non-rounded iron numbers in new topic

With the Newcomen Pump, iron is the limiting factor.
1 iron produces about 15,200 food worth of berry and pie
(ignoring axe/hammer uses for cooking pies and forging ~0.1+ iron, which would push it to ~13,800 food per iron)

Noting that recycling broken tools reduces iron consumption by 1/2 long-term:
0.5 iron = 1 shovel =~ 40 shovel uses
0.5 iron = 1 hoe =~ 50 hoe uses
0.5 iron = 1 axe =~ 100 axe uses
With the Newcomen Pump, 1 axe use = 40 water (neglecting the background tool usage to keep a central fire)
Therefore 1 water = 0.000125 iron

Looking at the first row of the RREF matrix, and ignoring skins
1 soil + 0.0597 pies = 0.0875 hoe uses + 0.1194 shovel uses + 0.3093 water = 0.0023675 iron + 0.3093 water
1 soil + 0.0597 pies = 0.0024062 iron
1 iron = 416 soil + 24.8 pies

spent on berries 1.052 iron = 14,560 berry food + 1,488 pie food
1 iron = 15,200 food (eating berries and pie)

~ ~ ~ ~

Here i'll assume the limiting factor is water (rather than labor or iron). So the question becomes:
how much food can be produced sustainably with the water renewed in a well?

Numbers:
Deep wells produce 53.33 water per hour on average (20 in a drought)
Update 175: Deep wells produce 5.714 water per hour, (still 20 water/hour minimum once emptied though)
Update 178: All groundwater regenerates 1 water per hour on average. (Well technology increases reserves only.)
Newcomen Pump creates 40 water per 1+ kindling or 1+ axe uses

With no clothes we consume about
1800~746~433~178~163.6 food per hour depending on the climate:
extreme~wetland~desert~jungle~ideal

A full compost cycle with the remaining soil going into berries (for simplicity) yields about
820 food pips (with no yum or overeating)
using about 22 water

Wetlands

{(20 WaterPerHourPerWell/ 22 WaterPerFarmingCycle)*820FoodPerFarmingCycle}/746FoodPerPersonPerHour
=1.00 people per well
22 WaterPerFarming Cycle * 746 FoodPerPersonPerHour / (1 WaterPerHourPerWell * 820 FoodPerFarming Cycle)
= 20.5 Wells per Person

Desert or a population clothed to 67.3%

= 11.6 Wells per Person

Jungle

= 4.8 Wells per Person

these are ideal cases, with all water going straight into an ideal compost cycle and food production with adequate labor and no waste
~~~DontBlameMeIfYourVillageDies

Last edited by betame (2018-12-06 02:46:00)

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#1 2018-08-17 12:40:09