Sawmill

In-game Description

"Produces wood from surrounding trees."

General Information

Sawmills are the game's most basic resource producing building, and the only building which produces the first tier resource wood. A sawmill is a 2x2 building with a 3 tile resource gathering radius that together covers a 8x8 area. For each forest tile within 3 tiles of the sawmill, the sawmill produces 0.5 wood, with the result being rounded up to the nearest whole number. No sawmill can be placed so that its resource gathering radius overlaps that of an existing sawmill.

Tips & Strategy

Since wood is critical to building almost all of the games basic infrastructure, it is essential that a highly productive sawmill be built as early as practical in the game. Since most buildings require wood in some multiples of 10, a sawmill that produces at least 10 wood per cycle is considered essential to avoid having significant delays in early construction, and the inability to place such a sawmill is considered a significant challenge to have to overcome - much worse for example than a nearby Village of Doom unless indeed it prevents placement of the sawmill.
A second sawmill built during the early game is generally considered necessary to fund all the needed early construction.
Since the player begins with 20 wood and the game attempts to place the Command Center near a forest, the player has the means to build sufficient Tesla Towers to reach a nearby forest and construct their first sawmill even if the nearest forest is some distance away. But if this starting cache of wood is wasted on some other construction, a player that doesn't take sufficient stock of their available forest assets at the beginning of the game could be in for a very short game indeed.
Once at least one Market has been constructed, Sawmills offer a small but welcome boost in income in the later portions of the game. On most maps, the ability to produce wood will eventually outstrip the settlement's need for wood, owing to transition to later game technologies based on stone and iron. Although wood is the least valuable of the stockpileable resources, it is far and away the cheapest to produce and the one with the readiest access. As such, in later portions of the game, it may be worthwhile to build a Sawmill on a highly productive location even if you do not need the wood production, but simply to boost gold income. The time to repay a gold investment in a sawmill, assuming all the wood produced is sold at market, and discounting the time to build the sawmill is given in the table below:

Wood Production Per Cycle ⇅	1 Market ⇅	2 Markets ⇅	3 Markets ⇅
1 Wood	Never	Never	Never
2 Wood	Never	Never	Never
3 Wood	Never	2400 hours (100 days)	1200 hours (25 days)
4 Wood	Never	1200 hours (50 days)	600 hours (25 days)
5 Wood	2400 hours (100 days)	800 hours (~33 days)	480 hours (29 days)
6 Wood	1200 hours (50 days)	480 hours (20 days)	344 hours (~14 days)
7 Wood	800 hours (~33 days)	400 hours (~17 days)	272 hours (~11 days)
8 Wood	600 hours (25 days)	304 hours (~13 days)	224 hours (~9 days)
9 Wood	480 hours (20 days)	272 hours (~11 days)	192 hours (8 days)
10 Wood	400 hours (~17 days)	240 hours (10 days)	176 hours (~7 days)
11 Wood	344 hours (~14 days)	200 hours (~8 days)	152 hours (~6 days)
12 Wood	304 hours (13 days)	192 hours (8 days)	136 hours (~6 days)
13 Wood	272 hours (~11 days)	160 hours (~7 days)	120 hours (5 days)
14 Wood	240 hours (10 days)	152 hours (~6 days)	112 hours (~5 days)
15 Wood	224 hours (~9 days)	144 hours (6 days)	112 hours (~5 days)
16 Wood	200 hours (~8 days)	128 hours (~5 days)	96 hours (4 days)
17 Wood	192 hours (8 days)	120 hours (5 days)	96 hours (4 days)
18 Wood	176 hours (~7 days)	112 hours (~5 days)	88 hours (~4 days)
19 Wood	160 hours (~7 days)	112 hours (~5 days)	80 hours (~3 days)
20 Wood	152 hours (~6 days)	104 hours (~4 days)	80 hours (~3 days)

Another good use for wood during late game is as upkeep for Power Plants.