I have played over 400 hours of FF and I LOVE it. I am so grateful to the folks who developed this game.
That being said, I have a single complaint: The water system! Needing a well within a certain proximity to housing only to have that well run out almost immediately is so frustrating. I could build a well right next to a lake and it will still run out within a couple of years. Not only is this frustrating from a gameplay standpoint but it makes NO sense narratively. Why can’t people store water? We have a cooper, we can make pickles for God’s sake but we can’t put water in a barrel? We can build a grain elevator on stilts but no water tower??? It doesn’t make any sense and it is the most frustrating thing. I spend so much time moving wells around and it barely helps. It would all be fine if they just took out the requirement of wells being near shelters. Or maybe you have to build a cooper then water can go anywhere.
Like I said, love the game. This just really frustrates me.
Wells need to be covered by trees. So you can’t just place a well in a 2x2 spot next to house or roads. The well will always run dry. Making that. A 4x4 spot with trees all around greatly helps reduce outages. Just have to do a little more planning.
Another note: around each market and housing cluster I have 4 wells. Then more wells throughout. Really need a lot of them. But 4 around a market and housing cluster should not over lap if place correctly
So I have to waste valuable housing space because water can’t go in a barrel? It doesn’t make sense. I have tried planting trees but it never seems to help. I will try your market suggestion but I still think it is ridiculous
Honestly it’s fairly historically accurate. Yes if your close to a body of water the wells do much better. It was rare to come across a well back then with a refill rate of 40- 50 gallons per hour.
How is not storing water away from the direct source historically accurate? How is it accurate that people can preserve food and make glass but not dig a canal or put water in a barrel? How is it historically accurate to build a city next to a lake but take your water from a well?
While we’re at it, planting trees next to a well actually takes water away from the well because it turns out trees need water.
Well being that I am an agricultural major with 16 years professional experience in evapotranspiration I would say that trees actually use 40 to 50% less water per acre than grass or common herbaceous plants due to the shade it provides on the ground beneath as well as the stronger water cohesive coefficient of the xylem preventing higher transpiration rates.
“How is it historically accurate to build a city next to a lake but take your water from a well?” Lakes can easily be polluted. In the game, if the villagers have no source of water they will take from the lake. And then get sick more regularly than those drinking from a clean source.
The cooperage is only available at a specific tier. Maybe storing water should become available at that point. Without the appropriate storage items it makes no sense to remove the water from the well unless as needed, especially if it’s right in your backyard.
Or maybe you should rethink your town design. I have a well for every 100 people, roughly, and keep wells near distant locations such as shoreline fishermen. No problems, even though the well at the centre of my shelters almost always says it’s dry (and somehow still has water) with only another two wells supporting it.
And like ROBO said, tree roots will actually keep more ground water around them helping to improve the storage of the well. It also means there will be less loss of water through evaporation thanks to their shade and root structures. There are also ways to work the ground and then plant trees to further improve the amount of water in that location, potentially turning arid land into farmable soil.
My two tetradrachem’s worth here, as a published historian with 20+ years in the field:
Getting water was only the first part of the problem. From the earliest city-building (8 - 9000 BCE) an equally important problem was storing water so that it was available for both people and crops regardless of the climactic conditions. That required water-tight (or as tight as they could make them) caches that could be filled from flowing water in the ‘wet’ season and hold most of the water through the drier seasons of the year. Another argument for a post-release All Things Water DLC for the game that adds bridges, moats, fishing boats, - and perhaps dams and channels/canals to sequester and distribute water until and as needed.
Failing that, right now planting trees near a well seems to very slightly improve water retention and refill, but this is based on observation over several games, not actual measurement. Wells near water sources (lakeside, dark blue Water Overlay locations) do much, much better at filling up and retaining water. A well on top of a hill or rise, on the other hand, is almost always marginal - the game probably needs to add a ‘Jack and Jill’ graphic of small children struggling to haul buckets of water home from distant wells in that situation!
I will have to take your word on it with trees helping water retention because you clearly have the education, although the entire internet seems to disagree lol
Jack and Jill hauling water is exactly what I think is missing. If I have clay pots and barrels Jack and Jill should be able to carry water from the lake. And there doesn’t seem to be a dry season in this game so that isn’t an issue. Adding more illness in that case makes sense because of microbes. But people didn’t know about microbes at this period so they wouldn’t avoid the lake water. Irrigation doesn’t seem to affect crops so the amount of water needing to be hauled is limited to human consumption. I am fine with wells dying out at the rate they do but we should be able to transport and store water away from them once pottery and barrels are in the mix.
I just feel like having to manage water like this takes away from the gameplay. But I am one opinion.
I have given up on the idea of trees as a benefit.
Even using a single row of trees around a well costs 60 gold, takes up the space of three additional wells and adds nowhere near the water production you can get from four wells.
Each well should service no more than 12 shelters, maximum.
Build a well near any production building(s) that uses firewood or coal to prevent fires from consuming them, especially your Smokehouses.
By using the Prohibit Construction option as a way to form layout in ‘blueprint’ mode, it lets me place and develop Wells long prior to their need, allowing them plenty of time to charge to full capacity prior to any use.
The three upgraded Wells you can see here are examples.
