Saturday Buildings - 12th of April 2025

[Mef]

@Pavía Not sure if you'll see this question here, I'll ask in the thread tomorrow if not.
If charcoal is also considered to count for the coal good, does that mean that locations which have historically produced a lot of charcoal to fuel industries should be given the coal RGO?
I can think of a few like that (basically replacing lumber there), but so far I was always under the impression that coal RGOs were for coal only.

I guess the answer is probably no, because certain advances should only apply to coal and not charcoal, so these locations I'm thinking of would probably be represented by starting out with charcoal buildings?
But these types of buildings were presented as being intended to be used if you don't have access to the relevant RGO. That makes charcoal look like a substitute for coal and not a proper good of its own, even though in reality it was basically the other way around for almost the entire timeline - charcoal was the industrial fuel of choice.

(Edit: Pavía answered this question in the West Africa feedback thread, so go there if you're interested in the answer! Although I have to say that I disagree with the building using lumber as an input when it's already placed in a forest, tools and masonry would be better inputs)

 

[korandder]

One issue with making charcoal equivalent to coal is that charcoal does not ship well. Charcoal is quite friable so transporting it more than a few kilometres degraded it past the point of usefulness. Ore was typically shipped to where there was abundant wood supplies given the huge amounts of wood required to make the large amounts of charcoal. Note that modern charcoal for say a barbecue is typically in the form of briquettes where charcoal has been pressed with a binder to produce something much more durable for transport; briquettes post date the end of the game by several decades.

 

[VoodooDog]

if just one of the entry materials are missing, nothing gets produced, right?

 

[Mef]

One issue with making charcoal equivalent to coal is that charcoal does not ship well. Charcoal is quite friable so transporting it more than a few kilometres degraded it past the point of usefulness. Ore was typically shipped to where there was abundant wood supplies given the huge amounts of wood required to make the large amounts of charcoal. Note that modern charcoal for say a barbecue is typically in the form of briquettes where charcoal has been pressed with a binder to produce something much more durable for transport; briquettes post date the end of the game by several decades.

It wasn't viable to ship industrial demand worth of coal over large distances in this time period either, that's why industry was built mostly near coal deposits. Both charcoal and coal work the same in this regard, they should ideally not be profitable to trade.

 

[Signthe]

It wasn't viable to ship industrial demand worth of coal over large distances in this time period either, that's why industry was built mostly near coal deposits. Both charcoal and coal work the same in this regard, they should ideally not be profitable to trade.

They could add a higher maintenance cost to the export/import of that good to reflect that.

 

[Mef]

They could add a higher maintenance cost to the export/import of that good to reflect that.

Yep, although in bigger markets it would still be way too much range for coal to be teleported around.

 

[Metz]

Is ivory really necessary to build a supreme court? Can't another more accessible resource be used?

 

[Mef]

Is ivory really necessary to build a supreme court? Can't another more accessible resource be used?

Tax Assessor buildings also use ivory, and they even need it to function. Just looks like a generic suite of luxury resources that are consumed by government buildings like that, likely to a) create demand for these goods and b) make it so you can't just build them in the middle of nowhere.
It does look weird though if it's impossible to have tax assessors or supreme courts without access to ivory and gold...