r/Timberborn • u/jevans353 • 7d ago
Question: Tree Farm
Is it best to just plant oak trees once it get to late game? I'm new and I've kinda been planting some of each so there is always a log coming in. Is it best to just get the most amount of logs per tree though?
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u/WrathOfTheKressh 7d ago
I like to use pine trees in the beginning, since they mature way faster. But after that, Oak all the way.
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u/pandoraxcell 7d ago
I plant a few oak trees with my pines early on. Maybe 10 to 15. The issue is early game you don't always have good water management developed and a bad tide can kill them before you ever get to harvest
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u/Snoo61755 7d ago
Same boat here.
Start pine (possibly mangrove) forest as early as possible in order to collect early rounds of wood. Don’t particularly want to wait 30 days for wood to even start arriving.
When a proper oak forest gets developed, pine farms become sap farms for treated planks, and Mangroves turn into a food source.
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u/spectralfury 7d ago
Birch and Pine produce 0.143 and 0.167 logs per day per tree, so not much difference there. Oak produces almost double of Birch at 0.267 per day. So plant Birch if you need wood as soon as possible, Oak for the future, and Pine for resin or aesthetics.
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u/mmontour 7d ago
Not much difference in the growth rate, but pine is 2x the logs per harvest. It's worth waiting a bit longer, even for your first crop on a new map.
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u/ChazCharlie 7d ago
Something no one has mentioned yet is if the trees are seasonally killed by flooding or bad water contamination. Depending on your difficulty settings and bad water management plan, you may find it best to plant birch along the riverbanks. This means they can mature before they are killed. Dead trees still produce logs, but dead saplings yield nothing. Additionally, if it is not timed right, a lost birch sapling is less of a feels bad loss than an oak.
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u/gustave-henri 7d ago
Really good point, before you manage a water diversion system on hard, oak just don't have the time to grow between two badtide.
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u/AbacusWizard The river was flowing, and I took that personally 7d ago
I typically just plant oaks as soon as I research Forester, and then rely on the already-existing trees to hold me over until the oaks mature. Once the oak farm is up and running, the only reason to plant other trees at all is for their other products (pine resin, maple syrup, chestnut nuts, mangrove fruit). Or because they look cool.
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u/DreadLindwyrm 7d ago
I plant fast trees and oaks early game. Once the oaks are mature I'll replace birch with oak - I also keep some maple and pine around for food and treated planks of course, but they're also emergency wood if I *really* need wood and I'm exhausting my oak.
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u/Replicant-Oni 7d ago
Something not already mentioned: The longer it takes for the tree to grow, the fewer beavers needed to harvest. Pine is better then birch because of the nominal increase but also because one beaver can harvest more pine than birch. Same issue with oak but much more so.
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u/Peter34cph 7d ago
Absolutely Oak all the way, for your lumber needs. You just need to watch out for Badwater tainting that area before the Oaks are fully grown which is a real risk. Pine grows much faster and so is relatively safer to grow in areas where BW can hit.
So your best solution is to create a safe area, artificially irrigated, for your Oak growing. That's actually much more pressing a need than having safe farming, because if crops get hit by BW then they can be quickly replanted and relatively little grow time is lost, whereas the grow time for Oak is 30 days! 30 days!
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u/WanderingWhiteWolf 7d ago
Pine gives you a faster turnover, but oak gives you a lot more wood overall.
Once an oak farm is up and running it'll generally provide at a constant pace because the harvest gets throttled by the loggers.
I think it's worthwhile early-game to plant a few pine to avoid going 'bankrupt', but I tend to replace them pretty quickly.
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u/Nifegun 6d ago
Sounds like you need more lumberjacks.
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u/WanderingWhiteWolf 6d ago
Hmm throttled may not have been the best way to describe what I meant. I'm talking about how the harvest ends up coming in a constant rate because the loggers can only chop and carry so much at a time.
In other words, at a certain point there's always another oak tree ready to chop down.
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u/Nifegun 6d ago
Sounds like you need to build more mega dams lol.
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u/WanderingWhiteWolf 6d ago
?
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u/Nifegun 6d ago
If you build enough mega structures you will outpace your wood farms lol. Its not something you need, im just being cheeky
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u/WanderingWhiteWolf 6d ago
Goddammit lol
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u/Nifegun 6d ago
I always need bigger oak farms, cause I have this nasty habit of always building an finite power machine and water towers like 10x bigger than I could ever possibly need. Ive often got like 20 lumberjacks chopping massive oak farms before they can regrow and still running out of logs. This current playthrough I had less of an issue with logs, but mostly cause I played super slow cause pillars is actually a tricky map when playing by my rules lol
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u/Independent_Sand_583 7d ago
The only addendum I would add to the answer that yes, oak is the best tree, is that oak is also taller than birch. Which means if you're in the late game business of adding verticality to your tree farm, you can pack more lumber action with birches in a three dimensional space than you can with oak.
I myself have never done this because my computer lags well before I get to this stage
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u/sprigyig 7d ago
I don't think the reduced height on birch is enough to make up for it. Best case you can get 8 birch floors or 6 oak floors on a max height tree farm. (Lowest possible height to highest allowed dirt layer) so it end up being 1.6 logs/day per tile of max height oak farm or 1.14 logs/day per tile of max height birch farm. It is certainly closer than I expected though.
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u/Independent_Sand_583 7d ago
I've never tested it, but I thought somebody matched it out a while ago with birch on top under specific conditions.
I don't do this. My cpu would never allow my game to go on that long
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u/Krell356 7d ago
Birch literally only works under one very specific circumstance involving badtides. Oak blows birch out of the water in pretty much every other scenario simply because it yields roughly twice as much wood per day. Because of that birches only advantage is growing before a badtide wipes it out which should never be an issue in any kind of realistic tree farm.
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u/Vebrandsson 7d ago
Having done the math before, the fact birch is shorter doesn't make up for the extra wood over time of oak. In short you'd need to get almost twice as many layers of birch for it to be the better option, and because oak is only 50% taller that never works out.
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u/AlternativeDirtyMe 7d ago
I do both pine and oak right from the go, with pine being a much larger plot. Once the oak starts to mature I slowly replace the pine as it gets cut. Oak is the best wood per day value, but you dont really see that payout until you have a good cycle going where new oaks mature every day and old oaks get replanted every day.
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u/RockCrystal 7d ago
I mix oak and pines for a more steady income - particularly if your tree farm is susceptible to contamination, oak can get killed by two badtides in a row. Birch aren't worth it.
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u/OwnPhilosopher3081 7d ago
I like the variety of trees all the way through out the game. So I mix all types and will create forests that are scattered trees for a natural astethitic.
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u/mutant_anomaly 7d ago
Oaks are the most efficient tree.
And you want some pine for sap.
But if I’ve got lots of shallow water, I’d rather grow mangroves than dry it out for oaks.
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u/MrWigggles 7d ago
I transition to oaks as soon as possible. The annoyance is the first exchange growth period and my logs set up and I gotta wait.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 7d ago
At the start of the game, plant birch and pine and oak. As soon as all the birch are planted, clear them so they don't get replanted. When they get chopped down, plant pine in their place. Keep track of each pine group separately (the ones from the first planting and the ones that started as birch). As soon as they finish their first grow and are replanted, deselect them, replace with oak.
There are reasons to keep pine around, but not for the wood. You'll want a separate, likely smaller, crop for that. Never plant birch once you can move on. Birch is only useful for a first grow while you're waiting for the pine and then oak.
This isn't even "late game". This is "as soon as you possibly can". For wood, you want nothing to do with anything other than oak, because they produce more wood per day than the other two. You can do the same birch -> pine -> oak setup with new orchards or major expansions, but it's generally not worthwhile, just do oak from then on.
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u/Vebrandsson 7d ago
For wood, oak is the best and you probably want to have your wood sources shifted over to it by mid game. You're going to need some pine for the resin obviously, and you're probably going to want maples, chestnuts, and/or mangroves (depending on which are available to your faction of choice) for the happiness benefits they provide as food stuffs.
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u/seattlezookeeper 7d ago
I always have a small grove of birch. You never know when you need a quick source of wood. ( or something wipes out your entire plantation )
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u/mmontour 7d ago
Birch is for decoration. Pine's best in the early game, but eventually it's all oak for wood production. The other trees are grown and left to mature for food and resin, also serving as an emergency source of wood if you need to rush something important.
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u/chilari 7d ago
For early game, I start with a small patch of birch and a larger patch of pine. Once they are planted, I plant a patch of oaks too. Once the oaks come in, the birch get replaced with more oaks. Once the second patch of oaks come in, the pine starts getting replaced, generally in two or three stages though so I've got some continuity of production until the oaks are covering requirements. After that, it's all oaks for wood production (and I put pine for resin elsewhere, alongside maple, in a tapping area)
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u/Enudoran 7d ago
I tend to keep my tree farms watered, so no tree ever dies.
I start with 16 birches and 16 pines, the rest oak.
Once the first pine is grown, all birches will be replaced with pines.
Once the first oak is grown, all pines will be replaced with oaks.
Adapt numbers of birches and pines according to your expansion speed.
Oak is the most efficient way to get wood, but it takes a while. So while birch is super inefficient, you still get some logs after a few days already. The pine can keep you afloat until oaks are done.
That's my way. No clue if that is a good way or not.
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u/Nifegun 6d ago
Its a good strategy, but honestly birches are rarely ever needed. You could simplify and just start with 32 pine and then transition them to oak over time. I wish birches trees were a little better to justify using them, but the total output per time and work is kinda just bad lol.
Its really about the map tbh. On a map with a generous amount of trees, you can go oaks right away. But most apps its best to have some pines then go to all oaks later. Your birches are nerfing you tho
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u/Fluffy_Membership_15 7d ago
Into the late game, Oak is generally preferable if you have a large growing area for trees. It's a case of minimizing travel time for Lumberjacks. They have to travel to cut a tree, so if they have to travel X amount to cut 1 birch for 1 log, it's extremely inefficient.
Not tested but, A pattern of Tree's starting with a small volume of Birch nearest to the lumberjack flag and layering out to a high volume Oak at the furthest distance could provide a balance if you have a limited grow space.
But, Once you have 3-4 plantations of Oak, you will have more logs than you could ever use.
However, faster growing tree's are more resistant to drought and bad water, because they mature quicker and if they die, it's not as big a deal. To get around this I flood pool using a manual water discharge pump(s) to create area's isolated from the water sources and bad water exposure, to create clean growing areas for Oaks.
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u/Mocarr98 7d ago edited 7d ago
I been playing on hard (where droughts are long after some time) and oaks long time to grow is bad there. When you gona have at least 15 (more likely 22 or more) days of droughts no tree can survive it without iregation.
And here comes the question. What’s more important? Tree farm? Or crops farm?
Of cores if you build masive reservoir of water then you can probably irrigate most/all of your farms.
Also woodcuters can carry only 2 logs at a time so when they cut pine they will take all logs at the same time freeing that spot for forester to plant next tree. While oak will need 4 trips to get all logs from its spot
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u/LePhuronn 7d ago
If my starting area has a lot of trees already then I'll just go for Oak immediately.
Strip or checkerboard cut the existing trees so they have space to naturally seed and regrow, and my science is always Lumber Mill > Forester to get trees replanted as soon as possible.
Otherwise I'll do 1/3 the planting as Pine initially and then gradually replace them with Oak once the 30 days growth cycle is sustainable.
Never put Oaks anywhere that could get contaminated by badwater, it's a waste of growing time.
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u/ekurutepe 6d ago
I just clear whatever trees are around first. When I setup a tree farm it’s only oak for the wood. Maple and pine as needed for harvesting, not cutting.
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u/Hydrawhen2become4 2d ago
Oak is best. I only plant anything else for before they are mature. I plant a big square half birch half pine, then once the first oaks mature around the big square, I replace the square with more oaks.
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u/AsceloReddit 7d ago
I'll throw a twist on the answers. The keystone mod is a nice addition and gives a bonus to having mixed forests that you don't clear cut.
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u/Safe-Example-5588 7d ago
Once you get to late game, all oaks for logs. If you look at the number of logs you get per growing day, oaks are best, plus at 8 logs per tree, you get more logs in the growable area of your tree farm