Moving between/prioritizing stockpiles

[-SkorpionX-]

Hi,

I've been searching through and through the web and couldn't find it; is there a way to make a stockpile a prioritized one, that means it should be full all the time and when item is taken from it a replacement is brought from a distant one or at least a way to make citizens move certain items between stockpiles?

I want to have a small stockpile full of fresh vegetables and meat and with some sticks to make the fire in the kitchen and to refill it from my basement food storage. Right now the kitchen is very close to the basement and mid-range close to my material stockpile. All the cooks waste their time wandering around picking up necessary ingredients instead of acctually cooking. The kitchen storage is empty all the time because food and material storages are more convinient to access for the rest of the workers and therefore everything gets stored there. Also this could be helpful to have temporary stockpiles near the building site for the building time filled with materials all the time and resupplied when needed.

I feel like walking for resources consumes too much time right now. My villagers don't get enough sleep (get waaaaay too late to the bedroom) and sometimes skip meals (they have 2 hours in the morning and the evening for them) just because they have to walk long distances between storages and working/building sites. And I don't think it's a design flaw of my village, it's very tight packed. It's the resources (stone, iron, trees, animals etc.) being far enough for them to make them walk too long compared to the working/eating/building/playing/praying time.

Do you guys feel the same? What do I do wrong? What can I do to make my village's peaceful life smoother?

[Philtre]

You cannot prioritize stockpiles, you can only specify what they can hold. Having small stockpiles of supplies next to the utilities that use them is a good idea, but getting the little pests, er, your beloved citizens to refill them requires constant micromanagement.

I find it helps to give them a mid-day break, so they can eat/pray/whatever, as well as time before and after bed.

[-SkorpionX-]

Well, I gave them 8h of sleep followed by 2h of whatever they want, then they work for 5h, rest for 2h, work for another 5h and once again have a 2h break for they needs. I drives me nuts that I can't keep more than 25 meals at a time and often it drops to even 0! I mean I have 14 pairs of hands and all they do is waste the potential of my village :D

[ostlandr]

Originally posted by Philtre:

I find it helps to give them a mid-day break, so they can eat/pray/whatever, as well as time before and after bed.

I do a two hour morning anything break, then work, then one hour of anything and an hour of leisure at midday, then work, then a two hour evening anything, then an hour of leisure before bed. I find it really helpful to give my settlers that hour of leisure before bed. This gives them time to finish up the projects they're working on. Some of them still want to do "that one more thing" and get to bed late.

[ostlandr]

Oh, priority stockpiles would be great. One suggestion (not a dev here) would be, since every stockpile is an individual entity, to have the settlers split up the resources evenly between all the stockpiles accepting that good. This would allow for local stockpiles that would be kept topped up.
One work-around I use is to have only local stockpiles accept a good. For example, I have one-tile stockpiles in each bedroom where all the Packaged Meals are stored, so my settlers can grab breakfast on the way out the door, or a midnight snack (they do that.) I set the production level for Packaged Meals at the total of what those stockpiles will hold. I do the same for healing kits, since the bedrooms are where they get used.

[Wantoomany]

Originally posted by ostlandr:

One suggestion (not a dev here) would be, since every stockpile is an individual entity, to have the settlers split up the resources evenly between all the stockpiles accepting that good.

I am not so sure about that. I think a priority system would work better. Your suggestion would have your haulers in a constant frenzy to rebalance every shared stockpile each and every time something gets used out of it.

[-SkorpionX-]

Originally posted by ostlandr:

One work-around I use is to have only local stockpiles accept a good. For example, I have one-tile stockpiles in each bedroom where all the Packaged Meals are stored, so my settlers can grab breakfast on the way out the door, or a midnight snack (they do that.) I set the production level for Packaged Meals at the total of what those stockpiles will hold. I do the same for healing kits, since the bedrooms are where they get used.

This is brilliant! I must do the same ;) I was thinking about storing like up to 5 stockpiles of meals in the great hall to speed the breakfast and the dinners up but still I can't force them to move meals there since nice cold underground chamber is nearer.

My other tought since yesterday was that the soft limit of 20 villagers makes the game that hard to play. I have to actually test it but I think if one had like 30-40 villagers 5 of them could carry things all day doing nothing else while other would be banned from doing that and this could speed things up a little with no micromanagement in the middle (i.e. on seasons changes, immediate needs etc.). I should totally test it!