The wall of Carlsberg

[Madknight]

I've created a nice wall with spiked wall to top it around a nice area for my town to expand in. As it stands my graveyard is outside one gate, and my barracks make up the main entrance so sieges go through my soldiers, and trap trench leading into it. I was planning on making it a flooded tunnel, but I can't seem to find a way to remove the water once it's settled without using the remove fluid command. I did at one point set up some flood gates to fill and drain it though. i just ended up with water in a ditch i could do nothing about. Any ideas?

[Jon_jon13]

If water is not in the "full" state, it eventually evaporates. If you create an expansive enough ditch, it may just remove the water effectively.

[Madknight]

Thanks! my draining ditch must've been too small. Soon I shall be flooding sieges all day.

[tom k.]

I came to this thread fully expecting some kind of reference to an alcoholic beverage ^_^

[Jon_jon13]

BTW: This video I made last year might be interesting to you, specially around 13:10 and forth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsrZ0DQEr-k

;P

[YetiChow]

Another good way to drain the water might be to dig a tunnel under your "floodway", which collects the water up into a reservoir by sending it through a "pipe" and then up a column of water elevators in a vertical pipe. The added bonus is that you don't have to wait for the floodway to fill from the river, you can set up the reservoir/holding tank to release all the water at once. Remember, you can build floodgates on top of each other to have a whole "floodgate wall" if you really want a tidal wave

For some reason, even the biggest and most impressive water project seems lacking unless there's a diversion outlet where some of the water goes into a beer-making setup... But this sounds like quite the sight to see, will you be uploading any screenshots?

[Colombo]

yeah, Towns could definitely utilize more physic and overall functionality. So one could build functional things from parts. Rain collectors, wind-mills, water-mills.

And change behaviour of animal farms. The simplest (and most elegant) way how to make them could probably be setting up zone. Zone size would support some number of animals, either living off land OR change mode of that zone to permit feeding of animals for higher breeding rate (and thus output of meat and stuff).

[Madknight]

I'll have to look into using the water elevators as I haven't used them yet. Once I get an impressive looking flood tunnel I'll upload it, and maybe toss up some screens of what I have now.

[YetiChow]

I'll have to look into using the water elevators as I haven't used them yet. Once I get an impressive looking flood tunnel I'll upload it, and maybe toss up some screens of what I have now.

A couple of tips on aqueduct building and other fluid-based fun (because it's no fun learning these the hard way, especially if your water feature runs through the middle of the town... )

1. ALWAYS have a "cut off" valve in the form of a floodgate between the river/source and the water elevators, so that if the worst happens you can stop the flow right back at the source. This could save you a lot of headaches later on. It's also a good idea to put floodgates at the ends of each "section" so you can do maintenance work without having to drain the whole thing, but if you follow point 4 then this is probably redundant/

2. Obviously you need to use "Fluid Blocker" blocks, but be aware of an odd interaction with fluid blockers and non-blockers when it comes to diagonals - water can flow diagonally but doesn't always do it for some reason, but if you put a non-blocking block (like an archway) diagonally adjacent to the water it will "pull" the water through the corner, because it updates the water's physics to take the opening into account. The easy way to avoid all these issues is to make a canal with a U-shaped cross-section rather than a V-shaped section; i.e. when you look at it from the side it should look like a U. The classic "3 wide, 2 high, channel down the middle" shape is the easiest, but with point 3 it's probably better to make them 5 wide with a 3 block wide channel.

3. Water likes to spread out as you will have seen, but it also likes to "flow back" - if you have 2 or 3 water blocks and there's some "spare" water moving around (water that won't fit within the volumetric size of the other blocks, but isn't enough to even out all the other blocks to the next level), it will move around/side to side at least as much as it moves "downstream". If you use a wider aqueduct, there's a much greater chance of there being water flowing into a cell when the game looks to create a water block there... to skip the pointless technical stuff, wider = fills faster and, assuming you have enough inflow to keep it full, less evaporation (compared to a 1-wide canal that risks evaporation every time the end is opened and the water level drops, a wider floodgate has less overall water drop and thus spends less time exposed to evaporation).

4. when filling the canals, water only travels a short distance on flat terrain; and when it spreads out it's much more likely to evaporate. To avoid the water reaching a certain point and then going no further because it's too spread out, you can divide the canal into short sections by using floodgates and then only open up each section when the previous section is full. It's a lot slower, but if you have a long canal then it might well be the easiest way to make sure the water reaches the end. Once the canal is full you should be fine, as long as you keep the inflow as higher/slightly higher than the outflow.

5. Finally, if something is going wrong then remember that lava works the same as water does, you can add some lava into the flow as "marker dye" to check for leaks and the like. Lava is also great for temporary dams, it overrides the water and stops it spreading; if you do have a spill and need immediate barricades then you can place a line of lava and use it to hold back the water while your townies put up a more permanent dam or plug the leak.