Beaver Sheva is off to a rocky start. I didn’t realize how little food I start with on Hard, and was a bit slow to grow carrots. By the time I harvested my first crop, my beavers were less than a day from starving to death. Oops!
First drought came very fast, but luckily I dammed early. I assume Badtides will come fast, too.
My understanding is that the main difficulty of hard is water management. I’ve seen people say things like “droughts that last 30 days.”
The key concern for such long droughts is evaporation. One workaround before you get a nice reservoir set up is that barrel water does not evaporate. One block of water in a river or reservoir is 5 cups of water. Meaning if you have a large barrel full of water (1200), that is enough to fill 240 blocks.
Also, the most efficient size of an irrigation pool is 3x3. That is both efficient in terms of evaporation and also in terms of how far the irrigation extends.
That’s as far as I got looking into hard mode. I wasn’t excited about the idea of using barrels for water storage other than in the context of drinking water.
(I saw one guy talking about how the entire wet season was all about storing as much water as possible, and then during droughts is when they could get actual work done.)
I just have to say that I love this thread. I’m so glad folks are discovering and enjoying the game… it’s such a rare gem 
I really like the terrain layout on the map I chose for Beaver Sheva (Craters). The Badwater sources in craters in the center of the map will be interesting to deal with eventually, but in the meantime the rim my colony is built on is basically perfect. Using just dams and ladders, I’ve been able to irrigate a pretty ridiculous area. And while I still need to tech up to sluice gates, there’s a path I can use for a diversion for Badtides that should be very simple to implement.
The first incarnation of Beaver Sheva is wiped out. Unfortunately, I was not quite prepared for the first Badtide. I had a drainage ditch prepared, but it was two tiles wide at the narrowest point and therefore not sufficient to fully keep up with the incoming Badwater. This meant I got some Badwater in my main pond; and as my beavers drank the clean water, the pollution level rose. Eventually, this poisoned my crops.
The badtide was nine days long, which ended up being too much for my food stores to handle. The carrot harvest came in just as my beavers starved to death en masse.
Trying again on the same map.
So my second and third goes ended in disaster. I kept thinking about ways to future proof my builds for the Badtide which would mean I overreach and end up not getting the basics down, meaning I die on the first drought.
Fourth go I took it slow, built small dams early, and stockpiled lots and lots of food.
I managed to survive a few floods and complete a (temporary, ugly, and manual) diversion system literally as the Badwater arrived. A tiny bit sloshed over the shore and into my dammed river, but not enough to cause problems.
This Badtide will only last 6 days (compared to the 9 that killed me last time), so I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to survive and build a more permanent solution for the next Badtide.
Things are going much better. I’m setting up a new diversion system right at the top of the crater rim, where the water comes in. Badwater can get shunted right away when needed, using a trough I built out of levees (because iron is really far away on this map so I’m not rushing towards dynamite yet) and some natural channels. This will let me build a massive collection basin at the bottom of the crater rim, many levels high, which I will be able to trickle out into my base during droughts. (Though to make full use of this I will need sluice gates, which means going for iron after all - but only a little bit, for now).
It was definitely a rocky start, but I think that Beaver Sheva is looking pretty good:
17 cycles in, I’m dealing with a 20 day Badtide. My water reserves should be sufficient to survive this, but not nearly as comfortably as I’d like. Luckily, beavers (for construction) and logs are two things I have absolute boatloads of, so I am going to greatly increase the size of my reservoir in the near future. At the same time, I’m working on diverting some of the badwater sources offmap sooner, which should let me claim more mapspace for agriculture, which should help increase beaver happiness.
Made it through the 20 day Badtide! Water ran out (in the reservoir, not in the tanks) one day before the wet season, and some bends in the river I use for irrigation dried out while the fresh water was rushing down the crater.
I need to dig those down to 2 levels, so the water lasts longer in the dry season.
I’m also finding that my current industrial energy needs are handled by a few batteries on top of the dam and some windmills to top them off at night. So I’m putting my ‘harness energy from the Badwater diversion channel’ project on hold while focusing on the ‘get lots and lots and lots more water’ project.
Man, hard difficulty doesn’t mess around. I had like an 8 day wet season followed by another 20 day Badtide. I’m getting used to the idea that this is just how things are! On Normal, you have occasional droughts and badtides. On Hard, you have occasional wet seasons.
That said, I’m adapting. I can just barely make it through 20 days of no water (although I lose progress on many of the crops I’m growing whenever this happens), and I know it gets even worse from here. I heard rumors about 30 day droughts. I’m already adapting to this in two ways:
I’m building the expansion to the reservoir. It’s about twice as big as what I currently have, and will eventually be equally deep, though so far I only have the first two levels completed. I filled them up regardless, right now I’m dumping overflow from the original reservoir into the partially completed one, and I have a separate sluice system so I can feed those two levels into my river system during the next drought before touching my main reservoir.
I’m making my main river system deeper by dynamiting places that are only one level. This should buy me some extra time during long droughts where the reservoir runs out completely. I won’t be relying on this, but it will be a nice insurance policy (and also mean that when times are truly dire, I can stop feeding the top Z level where my farms are and rely on the deeper sections to buy me some more time before my crops die while the water pumps and underwater crops, that are a Z level down, continue to have water.)
Meanwhile, I have successfully diverted both Badwater sources (each of which is actually two sources in a crater). One spills through a crack in the rim and off the map while the other spills through and underground channel (that was naturally there when the map started) into another crater and then off the map.
The center of the map is still home to a big lake of Badwater (that’s hopefully going to dry up soon, and will be flushed out if not) and the only other clean water source flows through yet another crater and off the map. The way out is through a massively deep yet narrow canyon, which is at an extremely distant end of the map; but I’m slowly damming it up. Once I do, the water should flow into the center of the map and then out the same crater that the Badwater flows into.
I’ll need to set up a system to divert Badtides, possibly out of the same channel the water flows out of now, before being dammed. (But if I can put it *at the very beginning of the crater, I’ll be able to use the entire crater as a reservoir to water this part of the map… Hmmm.)
And I’ll need a reservoir big enough to sustain me through the very lengthy Droughts and Badtides I’m hitting now. (Which is what makes the crater idea so attractive). But once I have all that set up, I should be able to reclaim the vast majority of the map.
Also, maybe I was just lucky with wind last time around, but I really struggled to keep my industry running this Badtide, even with three batteries. Not sure what’s up with that. I’ll need to tap into the Badtide diversion channel eventually, and then link that up with my industrial zone. Or I might move the industrial zone - it’s built along what was originally a diversion channel, but now that this area is constantly fertile, it doesn’t necessarily make much sense to keep things here. It is a perfect place for the batteries, though…
Oh, the above doesn’t make sense if I don’t mention that the diversion channel gets flow during wet season, because once everywhere that needs water gets it I shunt the extra water to the diversion channel. I guess as my beavers colony grows and needs more water after every dry season, I’ll need more and more of a wet season’s flow to fill up the reservoir. So eventually, the only permanent place to put the power generation would be a Badwater source’s path directly to the exit.
I decided to try the same map on hard. Hard mode is no joke! I’m on cycle 17 and now have a 22-day drought. I’ve dammed up a fair amount of lake so I’m hoping I can last maybe 12 days before it dries up, and for the rest I’ll just have to rely on reserves. I will need to beef this up somehow eventually.
My beavers are massively inbred. Wasn’t prepared for a drought and virtually my whole colony died. Just a single breeding pair left! I’m back up to 24 now and am keeping it there. Sometimes I have to juggle the employment, but it works out ok.
Metal is pretty far away on this map; I just finished building a smelter. Among other things, I need it for the gravity battery… these droughts/badtides are killing me power-wise.
30 days, eh? I have enough food and drinking water. But it’s going to be rough if I can’t replenish in the wet seasons.
I just got through a 21 day drought on cycle 19. I ran out of water in my reservoir about 4 days before the drought ended, and my aquatic plants ran out of water 3 days before the end of the drought, meaning my Spadderdock died (but I just had one small field of it). A few other crops had their progress stalled but didn’t die. And my drinking water pumps never ran out of water.
My big reservoir extension should complete around during this wet season, which is fantastic.
I think my next step is to get into some higher tier production chains, like bread, biscuits, etc. And to expand the area I’m irrigating to make that possible.
I’ve diverted the other clean water source into the center of the map, but until I set up a Badtide diversion channel, I can’t really make use of the water yet.
I’m 13 days into a 27 day drought (longest so far by far) and I’m still working through the water in the expansion reservoir. The original reservoir is still untapped.
I also added lots more windmills and batteries and I’m doing good on industry through the dry season.
Currently I’m trying to clean up the center. I’ve blocked off one of the main badwater source craters and am working on the second (it just needs a tiny dam, but getting there is slightly tricky). I doubt I’ll bother with the other clean source, at least not for a long while.
27 days is rough. My beavers would survive but my crops sure wouldn’t.
I think I got through the drought before I saved with water left in the original reservoir. But as I keep expanding the area I irrigate I expect I will be using up more water faster.
As far as I know, water evaporates at a constant rate per tile (22 days for a full tile) and crops/trees don’t actually pull from water tiles (pumps do, though). So if you have a large independent reservoir, your best bet is to make only narrow canals so as to minimize the surface area. That might involve a lot of dynamiting and dirt mining, though…
I decided to build a big-ass reservoir along the lines of yours. It’s not finished yet, but it’s already getting me through 28-day droughts:
Badtides are automatically diverted, but until the reservoir is finished I’m basically not getting any power from water flow due to the way the sluice blocks work. Well, that’s fine; wind is working fine for the time being. But I’ll set up a waterfall once I hit the top of the cliff face. The walls will also make a nice place for gravity batteries.
My beavers aren’t exactly living in the lap of luxury yet. That will have to wait a bit.
Beaver Sheva itself is really humming along nicely:
I’m up to 124 beds and can go higher just by unpausing two more triple lodges. So far, no issues with water or food for this population.
Meanwhile, my massive damming project will be ready starting in the next wet season:
I have some projects to work on with the water I currently have, so I’ll wait to see how many wet seasons it takes to fully fill up the crater before I tap into that water source.