August 17, 2018

Resources VIII: Timbercutting


I need wood references for Demoland.

But how much is a reference? How much can a man cut in a day? At first I tried to base something on how much yield a timber stand can give; this site gives 2000 board feet (24,000 cubic feet) per acre as a rule of thumb. But is that feasible in a pre-modern age? Perhaps with magic, one could harvest a great deal. But that's something we won't consider for now, and certainly won't be available in Demoland.

So that's a lot of wood. If we consider that much of Demoland is forested, and if the available forest depends on the infrastructure, then there are about 12 million acres ripe for the sawing. Even if the yield is only 200 board feet per acre per year, that barely changes the effect.

At that point, it becomes more an issue of the available manpower. The largest timber-producing town in Demoland is Malis, with a population of 604 (also remember that the reference system only accounts for what is collected to be sold, and doesn't necessarily stop a peasant from collecting wood for personal use, although that may be relevant for legal/political/story reasons). Since Malis produces only wood, if we assume that half the men (so ~150 people) are involved in timber felling, then they could potentially average 1280 cubic feet per day each, and therefore 192,000 cubic feet a day as a whole. Assuming the weather is good enough for 75% of the year, that's around 53 million cubic feet of wood. I've defined wood (for now) as 31250 cubic feet a reference - but in light of my new calculations, that seems a little silly. How about a million board feet (83,333 cubic feet) per reference? That gives Malis a total of 635 wood references, a more manageable number. I'll probably use that as the maximum of a randomly chosen amount.

This is the process I expect to go through for every reference. Given the available tools, how much can a place reasonably be expected to produce?

Perfectly consistent, as all things should be.

No comments:

Post a Comment