User:Henat

Papyrus Theories

I don't think spacing is the prime factor for whether multiple seed plantings interfere with one another; rather, time seems to be the cause. This is suggested by the fact that many papyrus can grow on one tile, with no readily apparent limit.

Perhaps on every seed planting the game prints a small rectangle shifted up about 150 coordinates and randomly moved around on the terrain grid, adding to the current value (which is somehow reduced every growth tick). On every growing tick (where the game decides whether or not to add a marker that will grow into a papyrus about 15 minutes later) the game checks this score. If it's one, it can grow as many papyrus as possible on that tile. The greater it is than one, the fewer likely papyrus.

This means that space would be one way to avoid the problem, but it introduces issues of its own. For one, the random shifting of the rectangle means you can't eliminate overlap, which will lower yield. Another issue is that there are many areas of the Nile that would be poorly suited to this growth system, so finding one ideal area and exploiting only that would maximise yield. Thirdly, it means that during harvesting you're running around more. Finally, the rectangle appears to be wider than it is long, which means that and curve in the Nile is either going to lead to more overlap or make it more likely for the rectangle to miss the Nile.