by Boas » Mon Dec 19, 2016 1:23 pm
To answer your question a bit more directly, one unit of soil will raise one vertex of terrain exactly 0.1m high. The max height difference between adjacent vertices is 2m. So in order to raise one tile to the max height, you need 20x4 (4 vertices for a single tile) units of soil or stone. That's 80 units of soil simply to raise one tile 2m above the surrounding terrain. Since you need to build a sloped base for anything higher than 2m, though, the soil (and labor) cost of building higher and higher grows geometrically. The base around a single tile raised 4m above the surrounding terrain will be 3x3 tiles wide. 9 tiles by 80 units soil per tile is 720 units of soil. Then the top of the pyramid, so to speak, will be another 80 units, for a total of 800. Stockpiles of dirt are 250 units, to that's more than three full piles of dirt just to make a little 4m high ziggurat.
If you're still interested in pursuing this endeavor (though as others have pointed out, a wall constructed in this manner will not necessarily prevent others from seeing your stuff), one useful tip is to pick up a unit of dirt and shift-click the ground. You'll automatically build dirt onto the vertex you've clicked and raise the vertex 0.1m per click, with another unit of dirt taken from your inventory and put into your hand each time, much like shift-clicking coal into a smelter.
As an aside, stone can be used as fill dirt. When it's dug up again, it will be dirt instead of stone. It will assume the soil quality of the tile you're laying it on, probably to prevent one from effortlessly converting high quality stone to high quality dirt.
Palisades, brickwalls and roundpole fences can be built on slopes with a vertical tolerance of 0.5m.
To see terrain vertices, you'll need to be using a custom client and (depending on the client, usually) hit ctrl-G.
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