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Topic Title: A tip for silo placement - Overlap Topic Summary: Each silo overlay adds extra productivity per fam up to a max Created On: Oct-25-2009 10:08 PM Status: Post and Reply |
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#1635376
Oct-25-2009 10:08 PM
| (This tip will be in the Hints and Tips sticky as well. This thread is for discussion) This behaviour is a little bit like the water tower tip I put up before. I originally placed my silos apart, so that the radii overlapped as little as possible. The thinking was that the effects would not stack, so I wants to maximise coverage per tower. I just noticed that farm productivity is increased by 20% for each additional silo radius even if they overlap. To a maximum of 100% of course. This method is the only way I could find to improve farms that were suffering from nearby road pollution. In my example I had farms in silo coverage, with plenty of water, and still only 45% productivity. The brute force method of adding more silos cured that sicky figure. (By the way I found that pollution was the cause via the holiday overlay rather than the pollution overlay which doesn't show traffic pollution very well. Thanks heaps to site400 for that awesome tip in the Hints and Tips sticky). Of course using more silos gives you the added benefit of being able to unlock more Fertiliser plants (1 per 5 Silos I think it is). I am not yet sure if Fertiliser plants benefit from overlap. It also made me think that it may be most efficient to make each farm plot as small as possible (85% zoning). You require 20 farms to unlock a silo. Therefore the more farms you can get into the same space, the more silos you will unlock and the greater you can push your efficiency and the more fertiliser plants you can unlock etc.. I hope that has helped someone else. Please leave your thoughts and personal testing results below. |
Edited: 10/27/2009 at 01:45 AM by Jack_Hawksmoor
#1635382
Oct-25-2009 10:31 PM
| Hmm, just doing some more testing and can't replicate the results again. More tests are required... For shorter posts, please edit the previous post, thanks. --Liv CXL Forums Moderator |
Edited: 10/26/2009 at 02:14 AM by Simtropolis Moderator
#1635406
Oct-25-2009 11:29 PM
| Okay I'm starting to wish I hadn't begun to look in to the mechanics of Silo placement.... At this point I think the relavant factors to silo impact on farm efficiency are: 1) Distance from silo to the farm's structure (by that I mean the barn or shed that comes with each farm when it's built. I'll just call it the farm building from now on). 2) Overlap. In my test I have a farm running 40% effiency on it's own. Adding 1 silo far away so the radius edge overlays the farm but NOT the farm building, had no impact on farm efficiency at all. Adding one silo far away so the radius edge JUST overlayed the farm building increased farm efficiency by 2%. Adding a second silo far away so the radius edge JUST overlayed the farm building increased farm efficiency by another 3% (cumulative increase 5% now). Adding a third silo a medium distance (half of the radius) from the farm building increased farm efficiency by another 40% (cumulative increase 45% now). I then deleted all silos and returned the farm to it's 40% efficiency state. Adding a silo directly opposite the farm building (ie on the opposite side of the farm road) increased farm efficiency by 50%. It is now operating at 90% (which I believe was it's max due to traffic pollution nearby) Adding a second silo directly opposite the farm building (ie on the opposite side of the farm road) had no impact on farm efficiency. Adding a third silo far away so the radius edge JUST overlayed the farm building had no impact on farm efficiency. Likewise two neighbouring silos at roughly half of their radius distance from the farm building each contributed rougly 25%, thereby bringing farm efficiency up from 40% to 90%. I couldn't get my test farm over 90%. But I do have other farms (without the benefit of fertiliser) that are sitting at 100%. Perhaps a farm building's maximum efficiency is governed by it's distance from freight or something? I tend to think it was traffic pollution in this case. So I'm willing to pitch this theory to the Simtropolis community for testing: "Silos each contribute up to 50% efficiency to farms based on the silo's proximity to the building on that farm. The benefit from multiple silos can stack, but only to the maximum possible productivity of the farm (which is affected by water availablity and pollution"). As always all thoughts, testing, and feedback are very welcome. The productivity level of the silo doesn't appear to affect the farms efficiency (until the silo goes bankrupt of course). However, as a frustrating aside: I noticed that the tax rate on silos varies depending on their productivity. And the productivity on some of my Silos goes up and down quite a bit for some unknown reason (i.e. when I am not making any changes to the city). Does anyone know what would make silo profitability go up and down? Maybe freight delays and catch up's due to traffic lights? |
#1635426
Oct-26-2009 12:26 AM
| Probably worker churn. Unemployment is stated as a percentage so you can have zero unemployment and zero jobs and still have open jobs. If you do your population will churn jobs. Raise your unemployment to 1 percent and see if it steadies down. |
| Enough fun. Think for yourself , I do. This is my very humble opinion and not to be confused with truth or the facts. |
Edited: 10/26/2009 at 03:24 PM by morriswalters
#1636514
Oct-28-2009 04:28 AM
| More feedback on silos, this time from contributor Sincx. I didn't know this so thanks for the great tip. Maintenance at the moment, but will test it myself in a few days to compare notes with you 
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#1639913
Nov-03-2009 04:06 PM
| You can check my city at Caliban, it is called Reese City. The layout I used for the farms is near the most efficient I could get. Offcourse if you spend few more hours there might be a few % to be gained but ok. Farm BUILDINGS need to be CLOSE AS POSSIBLE to the the Silo to gain maximum benefit. Hence the difficulty getting as many farms as possible to connect to this 1 silo. Also the Next building in line which you obtain after getting I think 50 farms also generates extra farm efficiency. Instead of getting like 100C in taxes some farms now get me over 250C. Nice input from you there Jack, cheers for testing !! The point of this thread is to maximize the income of taxes and tokens ( and trading credits ) form the farms. |
#1642012
Nov-06-2009 04:04 PM
| Wow Sin, the layout concepts on that city look awesome. Great job!
I tried to make a ring road city when I first started but I didn't really know how to use the curved road tool very well at the time. I also love your experiments in roading and planned communities. The whole thing is very feng shui
Anyway, to the topic at hand. Awesome farm design! I particularly like the way the vegetable crops are laid out because every single structure is located at the silo end of the farm. What's your tip for ensuring the game places the structure at the right end of the farm plot? I wish when visiting other peoples cities you could still see things like overlays (eg traffic) and profitability stats. |
#1642394
Nov-07-2009 05:39 AM
| Ye I wish you could see more statistics of other Cities as well. Maybe in the future. As for my City, the design I got in mind is good but I deleted it all again ( accept the farms ) because I was only half way zoning for that part of the map and already had problems feeding traffic to the right places. Could only partly solve it so ..started over as I would have run in severe traffic problems and really don't want to comprimise the looks by just placing unplanned extra roads. Only with the wll placed farms and 4k citizens I still make 100k+ in cash each tick. So got about a empty map with 100million credits to layout a better roadnetwork. Super  ANYWAY as to the farms..... I build the Silo in the middle of nowhere. ( Make sure you obtained one by placing 10 farms random at other side of the map for all I care. !!  Now I plaed the Silo tacticly in regards of the FERTILE AREA's of my specific map. Then I zone farms around it and everytime I use only a small part of that farm connecting to the farm. Also you need to try and have the farms on the 2nd ring which wont connect to the farm directly still be as close as possible to the silo. Now when you got them zones around the silo leave the roads intact but ONLY delete the farms. ( so you will be left with just the silo and the farm roads. ) Now replace the farms but now try and get the farm buildings as close as possible to the Silo. This will be a matter of experimenting by starting the build farm on a different point. If your farm is a square and you will start to draw the farm in the bottom left corner...and you draw to the right then up then left and then down the buildings will be on the left vertical road. If your farm is a square and you will start to draw the farm in the top right corner...and you draw to the left then down then right and then up the buildings will be on the right vertical road. Just try it out and you will see |
#1642431
Nov-07-2009 07:33 AM
| Awesome. Very good explanation.
I am thinking of starting (restarting) my messy city again so will give this a proper go when I do. Thanks heaps. |
#1645324
Nov-12-2009 03:28 PM
So I applied Sincx's placement tip to my latest farms and tried to model a layout based on farm buildings hugging a central silo. I'm not as creative as Sin when it comes to layout so effectively mine ended up being attack of the grid. Here's what I came up with. That's a central silo with a square 'wheel' of 8 farms around each one, plus fertilizers plopped in the middle for good measure. I really wanted to have 10 farms per 'wheel' but it just takes too long to make when you can't take advantage of the right angle roads. Since the fertile zoning is an irregular shape you end up adding extra farms around the periphery anyway so the 10 farms per silo requirement is still met for each 'wheel'. With this layout in a non-pollution city most of my farms are in the 200-225 tax range and 100% profitability. In my old city where I have chronic pollution I was seeing only about 150-180 with the benefit of overlapping silos and fertilizers (And I just found 1 that is still operating somehow with 55% profitability and 7 taxes! lol). For perspective, a farm outside my silo range in my non-polluted city operates at 80% efficiency and brings in 46 tax. So a bit of planning can reap you a lot more reward. |
#1645337
Nov-12-2009 03:52 PM
| How many silos and how many fertilizers and what map? Also where does the overlap end? I'm trying to makeup a benchmark number to use for comparison, right now it's (meter squared/credit). Thats the area of a farm divided by the taxes. I'll post some pictures tonight of two layouts. I used that quilt pattern in the beta a lot, It's pretty neat. I'll try that again on my test farm. I'm looking for some metrics useful for planning. |
| Enough fun. Think for yourself , I do. This is my very humble opinion and not to be confused with truth or the facts. |
#1645413
Nov-12-2009 10:11 PM
| Interesting layout, Jack...very nice to look out |
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#1645540
Nov-13-2009 12:25 AM
| Thx Masochist How many silos and how many fertilizers and what map? Also where does the overlap end? I'm trying to makeup a benchmark number to use for comparison, right now it's (meter squared/credit). Hi Morris. I haven't finised the fertile area yet so probably not enough data for your needs, but here's what I have so far. Hope it helps in some way. MAP: The Grassy Cliffs (1 x water, 2 x fertile, 1 x holidays) SILOS: 16 so far FERTILIZERS: 3 so far Number of farm plots: 157 Tokens generated: 41 Total taxes: 27,220 @ 26% coporate tax rate Average tax/farm: 173 @ 26% coporate tax rate (you can see the fringe farms are killing me until I get another silo and fertilizer) Highest tax: 237 Lowest tax: 37 (lol, I know. My next lowest is 109 and it goes up from there) Average farm size: Probably about 93% Pollution: 0 IMAGE I hope the image makes sense. I spliced two together to show both the north and south ends of the map in 1 image. The north is not done yet of course. And the farms to the left are just throwaway ones to activate the silos option before I started. I have left them off the above stats. I'm not sure what you meant by overlap but I hope the picture reveals what you want to find out. As you can see I have heaps of fringe farms. They are definately not as productive, but I'd rather use the space than not. I also plan to add 1 extra silo and fertilizer to this existing zone when I hit 20 silos by expanding up north. It might be a while before I get to the northern fertile zone. But if I remember I wil come back and update the figures so you can update your project. I'm very keen to see your results. In other news.., I just manually counted up the tax for every single farm on my map to work out those stats out. I think I may have OCD  |
#1646641
Nov-15-2009 08:10 AM
| Very nice and detailed research there Jack and good job on the breakdown in numbers. And ye I can only confirm your findings. Your farms are most likely a little more 'effective' then my layout due to the fact all your farms are directly connect to the Silo's and Fertilizers. The further away your farm is the less positive effect it has on that specific farm. Currently I am pretty happy with my farms layout in my current City and am now focussing on the High Tech and Elites. Still have a *****load of ground to cover but I am building it slowly Also means that my 'freight'on some parts is just enough but could be more as you might figure.Here a few quick pics:   |
#1646934
Nov-15-2009 08:14 PM
| Okay Jack, Here's what I found out about farms, silos, and fertilizer. This information would loved to be verified, but right now I have had all of farms that I can stand. Silos effect has a gradient. The highest is 100 the lowest zero. The effect of this is that the best way to get maximum effect from silos is to keep them separated by at least 700 meters. silo 1 0 25 50 75 100 silo2 100 75 50 25 0 total 100 100 100 100 100 If you put them side by side silo 1 100 75 50 25 0 silo 2 100 75 50 25 0 total 100 100 100 50 0 I have no idea how they accomplish this. My test was 4 square 100 percent farms stacked on top of each other. I moved a silo from 200 meters to 100 meters to zero meters and read the numbers. I assume the gradient is smooth and continuos but it could be discrete and in steps. I thought of a test to infer the numbers but my eyes gave out. Testing Fertilizers in this way would have required me to build up my test bed and I chose not to do so. But I am willing to stake money that Fertilizers work in the same way. Before I talk about efficiency let me give you some numbers. Silos require 10 farms. Fertilizers require 5 silos. The first farm upgrade requires 250,000 units of agriculture. The second farm upgrade requires 350,000 units of agriculture. Of course 1 farm produces 150 units of agriculture. As you can see by the foregoing numbers efficiency will be the key to unlocking the first two upgrades. There is a three star ag map in SP and PO called The Wetlands. I have one in the PO that I maxed out on farms. But apparently I chose the least efficient way to lay it out. It was also my test bed in SP. Matters of beauty versus utility aside the two least efficient were random farms and rectangular farms. They fell out of the going early. Jack Hawksmoors quilt farm was very efficient but the winner was the circle farm. the included screens of my testbed farm show the layout. That the circle farm won is inherent in the way silos and fertilizers are done. The metric used to measure this was the area of the farm divided by the money it produces. The farm size was chosen so the outer ring of the silo effect touched the outer border of the farms or was close to it. This meant that the rectangular farm had parts outside the effect, but was totally enclosed by the fertizer zone. The maximum effect of both silos and fertilizers is 100 but because fertilizer has a greater range it is the dominant factor inside the circle. This is because in my testbed the silo bonus was maxed out and the fertilizer bonus dropped if you aimed the farms the wrong way. That's why on the quilt farm the best layout was to aim the points towards the center. It also explains why the circle farm won out. There is no wasted land. The total area for the quilt farm was larger because it was a rectangle. This is true even if you set silos on the perimeter. Quilt farm-----324.44 meters squared/credit Circle farm----254.42 meters squared/credit Ah bonuses. Here things get murky. Farms are easy enough, each farm has a built in bonus of 20 percent for silos and 25 percent for fertilizers. How to apply the bonuses from silos and fertilizers. I came to the conclusion that the bonus was 100 for silos the way I had them set up. The bonus from fertilizers I estimated. Sixteen farms at 100 and 16 farms at 50. For my city the numbers seemed to work this way. I'm open to discussion on this. But it's my best guess.  |
| Enough fun. Think for yourself , I do. This is my very humble opinion and not to be confused with truth or the facts. |
#1647109
Nov-16-2009 12:45 AM
| *jawdrop*
I just nominated you for a Trixie Morris. (You too Sin!) Oustanding research and great looking patterns. I can't wait to try the circle method when I get up to my next batch of fertile area. Thanks heaps for all your hard work. I think we can all take a break from farms for a while now! I'm not sure how to succinctly sum all of these discoveries up into one tip, so I will probably just edit my post on the Hints and Tips post to point here
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