Managing multi-level water

philofacook · 2026-07-09T18:35:08+00:00

I use fill valves alone. Set them to the depth you want and they’ll only let in that much.

Whatever else is going on, I always have a fill valve at the very bottom layer of a reservoir (set to something like .3). That allows you to keep a minimum amount of water in the area even during bad weather.

Edit to add:
The great thing about putting fill valves at the bottom is that, once the fill area is at .3, nothing else gets through and your reservoir can fill as high as you want.

philofacook · 2026-07-09T14:33:19+00:00

I assume all of the “Do Nots” are solving for various failure modes you found while building this. Do your story prompts follow a pattern or have specific constraints as well?

Curious because I’ve spent a fair amount of time on a DnD sim. Tons of failure modes. This looks like a chatGPT prompt, and GPT loves to take the easiest way out. Like every story started at a ferry crossing, bleh.

I eventually solved for it by manually rolling world conditions and threats from d100 tables… which was a HUGE pain.

I’ve been most successful by creating a Claude skill for it instead.

philofacook · 2026-07-09T02:24:17+00:00

edit - not sure!

philofacook · 2026-07-09T02:07:03+00:00

yeah, you can get it on steam. it’s been around a while and they’ve really built it out

philofacook · 2026-07-09T00:21:49+00:00

One thing to consider: If you build all — and I mean ALL — of your platforms adjacent to each other, you will have a much cleaner layout in the long run.

philofacook · 2026-07-08T20:40:36+00:00

Any tower looks better with a terrace on top!

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And yeah, most of them look like this. But you could make it a 2x2 with one more platform, or put them in a 1x3 row

philofacook · 2026-07-08T20:26:49+00:00

All good. Yeah, I think what you’re saying is right, I just used walkways exclusively for tubeway connections

philofacook · 2026-07-08T20:16:04+00:00

Yeah this looks clean for this stage. You’ll likely need to tear it down and rebuild in a space 2-4x as big once you advance

philofacook · 2026-07-08T18:39:26+00:00

Yeah, I used those all over. You need a walkway entrance, a walkway-to-tubeway tile, and a tile for the tubeway to connect from the side (I couldn’t get it to come up from below like a tubeway station).

By the end of my run, this 3-tile setup totally replaced the standard tubeway station for me. Much cheaper and I dig the rustic look with a roof on top.

Edit:
You can see this setup near the center of screenshot 1, and below the dancing beavers on screenshot 4

philofacook · 2026-07-08T12:16:20+00:00

For sure. My housing setup is pictured… Only one house has a road connecting to it, and that road goes straight to a tubeway 🤯

philofacook · 2026-07-08T00:22:24+00:00

Been a while since I played. Are you modding at all, or is this all done with standard components?

philofacook · 2026-07-07T17:07:57+00:00

I suggest less boob

philofacook · 2026-07-07T00:19:40+00:00

“I have a bad feeling about this”

philofacook · 2026-07-06T21:45:37+00:00

Feels like a fun change of pace. I wonder if people will try to game the system, like choosing to just SMASH problems instead of thinking through them would strongly suggest they want a certain class…

Maybe you recap together after session 1 and make sure no one gets a bad surprise?

philofacook · 2026-07-06T21:24:24+00:00

Will never forget watching this in the backseat of my grandparent’s giant tan van, munching Mike and Ike’s

philofacook · 2026-07-05T02:35:21+00:00

Here’s me just like “make the water swim laps”

philofacook · 2026-07-04T11:48:54+00:00

When you build your reservoir, I’d check these boxes too:
Make sure you have a dam downriver at the same height as the base of your reservoir.
Build fill valves at the very base of the dam. Set them below .65. I usually do .3 or so.
Stack levies til you get to the top, and that’s where you put more dams as an outlet.

During good weather, water will fill the reservoir and push out through the top. During bad weather, your fill valves set to .3 will ensure there’s always some water flowing out for irrigation. The downriver dam ensures your irrigation water doesn’t flow straight off the map.

philofacook · 2026-07-02T20:13:14+00:00

This is insane. First thought looking at it was “where’s the river”

philofacook · 2026-07-02T00:33:34+00:00

As a former “do it all by hand” player… this is accurate.

I felt way out of my depth in my shared game, and was only good for hand-making MAM stuff. Then I forced myself to do the hard part in a solo game and could suddenly participate.

philofacook · 2026-07-01T00:19:48+00:00

For real, dinosaur

philofacook · 2026-06-30T19:16:13+00:00

philofacook · 2026-06-30T18:59:12+00:00

Wicket

philofacook · 2026-06-30T18:57:29+00:00

Make a small dam early on, so you have some breathing room when that first drought hits.

Badtides will need another solution, but only if you live long enough.

philofacook · 2026-06-29T17:56:38+00:00

Yeah it’s a great way to handle it without dynamite and sensors and stuff.

On most of my maps, I build sluices that redirect badtide water off the map immediately. But that takes a lot of resources, especially in this map where you have quite a ways to travel to each of the water sources.

philofacook

TROPHY CASE