In my current game, it seems like burning charcoal is actually the superior option when compared to coal mining - At least as long as I have plenty of logs coming in. It seems like it uses fewer workers (Even when accounting for the firewood usage) and I can place the production where I need it.
So - I figure I am missing something. Is it really as much of a no-brainer as it seems?
For charcoal you need workers at kiln, workers at firewood cutter and workers to cut tree and likely more workers at work camp to plant the trees.
Then, you have to factor in, that each of those workers have travel time, the goods need to be moved.
If you factor all those in, you realize that coal mining is actually better workforce wise, if coal is available.
I would say this depends. Wood to firewood can be extremely efficient on the right map/biome type and a well organized transport chain. If you only cosl mine is far away (,frequently the case on my maps) coal mines are not more efficient
Extra workers to harvest trees/extra workers to plant trees, longer trips transporting them to a dirty charcoal kiln, extra workers to work the kiln. Trades trees for coal seam, not sure about comparative production speed, though.
I do think it’s possible to quantify the support workers, but it takes a bit of legwork:
First, of course, you have to turn all your production limits off for a year. (I production-limit really aggressively, so that’s as much a reminder for myself as anything.) Or, at least, production limits for coal, firewood, and regular wood (and really hope you have enough wood production that it isn’t the limiting factor…)
After running things for a year, note how much coal one coal kiln and whatever reference coal mine each produced. (I suspect the main competition here is deep mines.)
From the amount of coal produced by the kiln, you can calculate (via the recipe) how much firewood it consumed. Then, look at one (or more) of your firewood splitters and figure out how many worker-years of firewood splitter work it required, along with how much wood was needed to be split in that time. Then, check your work camps to figure out how many work camp worker-years it took to produce that wood.
Add up the worker-years for the different stages (including the people at the kiln) and divide the coal output by that number to figure out how much coal per worker-year you produced, and then do the same thing for your reference coal mine and compare your results!
Admittedly, this assumes they both end up doing about as much wagon hauling and that everyone is stocking things themselves, but also I put my splitters and kilns right next to a stockyard, so I assume travel time to get materials is negligible.
Okay - I’ll eat my words - I just opened a fresh coal-mine and sure enough, it seems to out-produce by far any of my charcoal burners. I think my issue was that my intial coal-mine was almost out of coal when I checked the yearly production.
Yeah, I wouldn’t bet on the charcoal except for maybe against deep mines.