Silos in Sector 8

I received the below layout proposal from Fexno (from Sandycove) to take a look at covering the area towards the left of Sector 8.

Brown numbers are farm locations, yellow are silos, and the black 0 is the proposed field location.
Total time Farms = 340 seconds (48.6 sec on avg)
Total time Silo = 336 seconds (48.0 sec on avg)

This is a pretty good layout. No production building that uses wheat cares for a travel time of lower than 48 seconds, so basically nails the benchmark to go for.

For a small comparison though, I've made up a diagram of the same layout in the same location with the storehouse in the same location, but, I've moved the field over diagonally to the left.

Now, same general layout, but the total walk time for either half (blue or black) is 316 seconds, or 45.1 seconds average per building. This 3 second average will not account for a whole lot of wheat in the grand scheme, but why the difference?

The key comes down to how travel time is calculated.
Settlers need to walk from the storehouse to the workyard (farm in this case), then from the workyard to the deposit (the field), then the actual production occurs, and then they get to perform the return trip (deposit -> workyard, and workyard -> storehouse). It's a lot of walking for the little guys, and it winds up being in your best interest to try to shorten one part of these trips where possible. That is, you want the farm to be close-ish to at least one of the two buildings it needs, the storehouse or the field.
What the initial scenario presents based on this is that for a number of the slots on the right you have your little guy walking from the storehouse waaay over to the farm on the right, which frankly is a bit of a hike for some of the squares, and then once he gets there, he realises he now needs to head over to the field, which is even further away than where he started from.
Depressing.

Pushing the field out slightly like in the second drawing does two things.
First, it helps make a few more of the squares closer to one of what it needs.
Secondly, since since all regular buildings like the silos, farms and storehouses have the exit point being at the bottom/front of themselves, pushing the field slightly lower means more of the buildings can head straight to the field without needing to walk outside, then around themselves to get to the field.

This doesn't mean you want to go separating the field and storehouse by great distances, or you may wind up with scenarios where some other production group nearby has the closer storehouse for one of your farms and messes up your count, or other horrible things.

Good luck settling everyone.

Master Architect Box

Just a quick note about the upcoming Master Architect Box coming in the Christmas Event.

Nietzsch over on the TSO subreddit has made a thread for results of the architect box. There's a googledocs sheet where users have entered results so you can get a vague idea of the percentage chance of getting the various items.
http://www.reddit.com/r/settlersonline/comments/1rl327/testserver_christmas_event_master_architect_box/

Mostly looks pretty good. 50% chance of getting a decoration, and 50% chance of getting a reasonable building of some sort.
For just 95 gems there may be good reason to get a few for the overall chance of getting some decent gear.

Ratios for Simple Science buildings

Unlike most buildings, the science system buildings clearly weren't created with synching production times up with the buildings that feed them. Some numbers can still be worked out for them though as guides.

From left: Storehouse, Finesmith, Simple Papermill

Finesmith needs 4 copper ore to make a nib, and has a production time of 15 minutes. Copper mines have a production time of 3 minutes, but you need to take into account that they need to do 4 trip (thus 4x walk distance) in the time the finesmith only needs to do 1 walk. If your copper mine needed a 24 second walk, they would pluck 4 ore out of the ground in 13m:36secs.

So if you have 1 level of copper mine for each level of finesmith, your copper will come in a quicker than the finesmith uses it, but will only be quick enough to drop to 4 levels of copper mine for 5 levels of finesmith if your mine's are very close to storehouses.

The Simple Papermill uses 2 pine logs and 2 water to produce a piece of simple paper every 10m:30secs. At that pace, it only winds up needing around 260 logs over the course of a day.

A level 1 pine cutter brings in around 700 - 800 logs a day. It uses up somewhere between the amount of logs a sawmill uses and a coking plant. 

If you wanted to have that many mills, the  ideal ratio is 2 cutters : 3 foresters : 3 papermills.

Otherwise, 2 cutters : 3 foresters : 1 papermill : (2 sawmills/1 coking plant) would work out alright with a small log surplus.

For water, a level 1 well brings in 350 - 400 water a day, your papermill is going to use around 260, so 1 well easily feeds it.

So at the end of it, the ratio for finesmiths are 1 level copper mine : 1 level finesmith, although with copper mines sufficiently close to storehouses, you can have 4 levels copper mine : 5 finesmith.

Simple papermills are: 

1 papermill : 1 well : 2 cutter : 3 forester : (1x coking plant/2x sawmills to use up the rest of the logs).

for a lot of paper

3 papermill : 2 well : 2 cutter : 3 forester.

Christmas Event, the Shop

Looking at items that will be available in the Christmas Event tab in the shop.

First, the production buildings

1. Deerstalker Hut: Costs 595 presents, and you can get up to 2 from the event. They produce meat without expending any resources, and can be levelled up to 5. They do have a production time of 8 minutes, slower than the 6 minutes your hunters take, something that needs to be taken into account for swap outs.

2. Rarity Provision House: Costs 995  presents, and you can have 1. At this stage they are not upgradeable.
It has:
Gamekeeper Snacks: Turns 40 bread into a 500 meat refill (can create stacks of 25).
Fish Eggs: Turns 120 fish and 80 water into a 500 fish refill (can create stacks of 25).

•   Slightly oddly, compared to your regular provision house these are the wrong way around current. The regular provision house turns bread into fish, and can turn fish + water into meat. Part of me thinks this is an error. Regardless, it's a discount if you would usually be getting both, frees up your regular provision house for other duties, and since 1 item is 500 versus it being 100 from the provision house, this means a stack will be 12500 instead of 2500, which will save on some RSI.

Employee of the Month: Turns 300 hardwood planks, 300 marble and 50 gold ore into a 3x workyard buff for 6 hours.
Magical Ink: Turns 200 simple paper, 150 intermediate paper and 100 advanced paper into 50 map fragments.


3. Recycling Manufactory: Costs 295 presents, and you can have 2 from the event. Produces coal without expending resources, and can be levelled up to 5. Has a 3 minute production timer like a coking plant.

There's also the Arctic Mine. Costs 295 presents, and acts as a level 5 iron mine, just without needing a license. If it depletes, or you tear it down, it's gone forever.


Next the Decorations.

Decorations don't do anything special, they just look pretty.

1. Snowman:  Costs 40 presents, no special animations

2. Christmas Tree (small): 40 presents, no special animations

3. Christmas Tree: 60 presents, has sparkling lights all over it.

The Buffs.
Hot Lemon Tea: Costs 40 presents and triples village school production for 24 hours
Christmas Feast: Costs 60 presents and increases population growth from your mayors house 6x for 2 hours.
Cookies: Costs 80 presents and triples output from a workyard for 32 hours.
Fermentation Accelerator: Costs 60 presents and quadruples output from a friary/brewery for 24 hours.
A Thousand Snowflakes: Costs 40 presents, and covers your island in blinding snow
Solar Flare: Costs 1 fish, and clears away snow

The Adventures. The present costing adventures are new this year, and I can't tell you much about them. Save the stolen feast if it comes up for a quest will be given to you, and gave fairly decent XP per troop loss in the past. Stolen Sleigh is probably similar. Not sure they're worth spending gems on, previously Save the Christmas Feast gave XP only for a reward, likely unchanged.
More Secluded Experiments: Costs 95 presents
Return to the Bandit Nest: Costs 95 presents
Save the Christmas Feast: Costs 95 gems
The Stolen Sleigh: Costs 95 gems

Gem -> Present packages
Small Present Package: Costs 90 gems, gets you 30 presents
Large Present Package: Costs 300 gems, gets you 100 presents

Exotic Flotsam: random resources (95 gems each box)
Mastert Architect: random buildings (95 gems each box).
The buildings appear to include items such as :

• Raving Rabbid
• Pirate Residence
• Pavillion
• Dark Castle
• Xmas Tree 
• Arctic Mine
• Frozen Manor 
• Storehouse 
• White Castle
• Witch Tower
• Angel Monument

Some stats for opening them from the test server can be found down in the comments.