Comment 5 for bug 1252167

I wanted to quantify this discussion somewhat, so set up two crude experiments. Each was run at 1x speed and with six lumberjacks running at around 100%. In each test there were no other trunk- or wood-consuming sites.

Experiment one:
I created four Empire mill construction sites, not connected to the roads. I then paused the game, connected them and unpaused, timing how long it took for the construction of all four to complete.

Starting with 40 trunks in stock the experiment took 5 mins 41 secs to complete.
With no trunks in stock and four wood burners operating it took 4 mins 56 secs to complete.
(Yes, the results seem backwards!)

Experiment two:
I added two sawmills and two weapon smithies. The weapon smithies had all wares except wood set to zero. I set the wood lance target to 50. The weapon smithies were full of wood but 0 wood and 0 trunks were in stock.

Without any wood burners operating it took 22 mins 9 secs to bring the wood lance stock to 50.
With four wood burners operating it took 25 mins 15 secs to bring the wood lance stock to 50.

The first experiment showed that the supply of 12 trunks needed to build the four sites was not adversely affected. The second experiment, which obviously requires many more trunks, shows a detriment to the wood supply. In my opinion, this detriment is proportional and doesn't seem to suggest that the coal burners are "greedy".