IIRC wells basically act as a method for preventing thirst decay in civilisation within a certain radius.

I don't know any actual facts regarding radius and population density I'm afraid but I personally would hope that both would have some effect on the number of wells, taverns and other services a city needs.

Correction:. 1 well for 3x3 parcels

That wouldn't make 100% sense though, Not many medieval towns have 30 wells.

Posted By Gunghoe at 6:28 PM - Sun Apr 29 2018

That wouldn't make 100% sense though, Not many medieval towns have 30 wells.

A lot of medieval towns were built along waterways to avoid having large numbers of wells (which would be an interesting mechanic to add in).

Obviously, 30 wells for an immense 90 parcel city would be a bit over the top - but ten wells would be a pretty valid number for that. If that 90 parcel city was incredibly densely populated I could see a requirement for maybe 20 wells or something like that - but I think one well for a 90 parcel city would be dumb.

Some buildings will have a passive AOE (area of effect), if you want a parcel outside of the area of effect to benefit from the effect, you'll need to add an other building.

The buildings we know working like that so far are , the well and the tavern, so depending the size and shape of your settlement, and the purpose of different areas, you will need several of them.

Now as you can see i used shape and purpose.

Purpose, because as far as wells are concerned, the effect is double, first it prevent thirst from dropping, second it works as irrigation. So if you provide enough wells for your housing quarter and the other parcels are dedicated to mining for example you might not need a well for those, only for the housing part.

Shape, because if you mange to build and use land according to the area of effect you might need a little less wells, concentrating your settlement on where the effect is already active.

This area of effect of buildings will not be limited to wells and taverns, they mentioned crafter's shop as a potential source of AOE passive buff, they also talked about synergy and proximity effect between buildings. But the general idea is that some buildings will provide AOE buffs and to extend the area covered by those AOE you'll need to build several of those buildings.

From DJ 18: "As your hamlet grows into a village, into a town, etc. so too must your infrastructure grow. The well we first built only covers a 3x3 area. So as you expand, you'll need to put in more wells, fields/farms for food for the taverns, windmills, etc. Of course, any plot of land along a river automatically gets water. So no need to build additional wells there."

So a well covers 9 parcels and the well is in the center parcel.

Posted By Protey at 2:46 PM - Sun Apr 29 2018

From DJ 18: "As your hamlet grows into a village, into a town, etc. so too must your infrastructure grow. The well we first built only covers a 3x3 area. So as you expand, you'll need to put in more wells, fields/farms for food for the taverns, windmills, etc. Of course, any plot of land along a river automatically gets water. So no need to build additional wells there."

So a well covers 9 parcels and the well is in the center parcel.

Now that is what I was looking for!! 3x3 parcels of effect is excellent. So that means village with a well and an inn makes perfect sense.

Is there any info on the AOE for the buildings? How many parcels might they help? I’m thinking from a community design perspective. If the land is flat you could build using squares, but if it is rolling and curving how many of these AOE buildings might you need?

Well = 9 square parcels Inn = ? Shop =?

I just had another thought... if my 9 parcel farm has a well and several families in addition to mine, does that make it a hamlet? If it is outside of any communities that is. Is it automatic or do I need to appeal to the Count? I forget what I have read about this.

Parcels with streams in or adjacent to them will have water automatically. Water is a necessity. Therefore, parcels with access to streams should be expected to carry a premium price compared to nearby parcels not adjacent to streams.

I wonder if lakes and ponds have the same effect?

Irrigation may not always be necessary, but drinking water will always be. Some farms in appropriate climates might be able to succeed without supplemental watering. Even in fairly wet climates, however, there may be dry spells of a duration sufficient to require supplemental watering.

I was thinking for wells in cities, couldn't there be a mechanic where you just improve and expand the well to have it reach a larger population. Something along the lines of this pic below.

Couldn't you also just hide it with a fountain. If you look at Rome, I think I read that people would just use fountains a source of water. So you could make a nice fancy well for the city center and smaller wells/fountains spread out. Though I don't remember if they have talked about aqueducts yet.

Posted By Poldano at 11:22 PM - Sun Apr 29 2018

Parcels with streams in or adjacent to them will have water automatically. Water is a necessity. Therefore, parcels with access to streams should be expected to carry a premium price compared to nearby parcels not adjacent to streams.

I wonder if lakes and ponds have the same effect?

Irrigation may not always be necessary, but drinking water will always be. Some farms in appropriate climates might be able to succeed without supplemental watering. Even in fairly wet climates, however, there may be dry spells of a duration sufficient to require supplemental watering.

Location, location, location...lol

I think it should be considered the most important resource as it will effect all the inhabitants no matter their roles.

Depletion, loss of control/ownership, or contamination of these could have massive exponential effects.

So, I would like to point out that digging a well virtually always means digging deep to get to the water table and below it. So how would you use it for irrigation? The act of irrigation requires the use of channeling water so as to seep into the ground around the channels, watering the crops between them. As far as I'm aware, pumps weren't invented in the bronze age and in fact I believe the first one to be produced of any sort available even to the rich was round 300 BC. Not a clue when it was available to common farmers. So that means any plant watering will have to be water drawn by hand over hand, pulling a bucket of water up, one at a time if you're going to try to use a well. Now...I've actually watered a garden by hand....it's incredibly labor intensive for even a tiny garden like the one I had, just under a tenth of an acre....let alone an acre or two or ten. So keep in mind, it's incredibly likely that if they are going for even a tiny bit of realism here, SBS meant that the well would be for people in that 3x3 town, to prevent dying of thirst, for the people. Any farm growing food or raising livestock will need a lot better water source than a well.

@Dariusacmar,

I believe you are correct that large-scale irrigation prior to the invention of pumps would be very difficult to carry out with wells alone, unless they were artesian wells. Small-scale irrigation, such as watering a home vegetable garden, could be carried out with a bucket-and-windlass scheme. So could providing drinking water to a small number of livestock.

There's some reliable evidence that Archimedes Screws or similar devices were used in the Iron Age, specifically in Nineveh. The actual devices at Nineveh seem to have been made of bronze. Something like an Archimedes Screw would definitely be within the technological capabilities of the Bronze Age, even if our current name for it comes from the Classical period.

Posted By Poldano at 10:22 PM - Mon Apr 30 2018

@Dariusacmar,

I believe you are correct that large-scale irrigation prior to the invention of pumps would be very difficult to carry out with wells alone, unless they were artesian wells. Small-scale irrigation, such as watering a home vegetable garden, could be carried out with a bucket-and-windlass scheme. So could providing drinking water to a small number of livestock.

There's some reliable evidence that Archimedes Screws or similar devices were used in the Iron Age, specifically in Nineveh. The actual devices at Nineveh seem to have been made of bronze. Something like an Archimedes Screw would definitely be within the technological capabilities of the Bronze Age, even if our current name for it comes from the Classical period.

Well, the device you're referring to was only referenced to by king Sennacherib in one of his writings and is very debated as his description of it is widely open to interpretation of being an Archimedes Screw. Any actual proof has not been found, neither drawings nor actual prototypes....and even if the interpretation is correct, the description he gave would have made it 2-3 tons heavy and still again, only used by the king for his gardens.

So, sadly, it is highly unlikely that it actually existed and if it did, wouldn't be even close to feasible for common or even large scale farmers.

One way to use a well for irrigation is to add a Sakia to it.

if your water source is a river you'd rather use a Noria but both designs are from the same idea, an idea that seems to date back 200 or 300 BC so sounds like plausible in Elyria

@Markof Yes, but in specific we were speaking of wells and their viability for irrigation and even medium scale livestock watering. I can totally see building full other buildings like the one you posted there to make it multi use....but at the moment, wells seem to only be viable/usable for settlement thirst maintenance for the people that live in each 3x3 without large scale upgrades.

Edit: Also, keep in mind that the Sakia requires a significantly larger well than most that existed back then. Some of your wells back then, especially ones that were located in the center of a town, had small diameters, ranging from 4-8 feet and depending on the depth of the water table, some had steps carved into the stone for those to walk down in a spiral to get to the water and haul it out by hand while others just used buckets to draw up the water. A few, using the Sakia would be larger, but almost all of those were too difficult to dig and/or maintain without more silt leakage through the stone walls than most humans were comfortable with in their water and so was used for animals almost exclusively. Those wells dug outside of towns that used Sakia were never an issue because they were almost all used for livestock watering and a few for irrigation....but again, that requires a much larger construction scale than most were able to do/afford.