No settler has arrived for over three years

[tyzmqkerl]

Three years have passed with only 12 settlers. I don't think this makes sense. It's so hard to come. Marauders and merchants come easily, but settlers rarely come.

[TheLostPenguin]

I'm guessing that for performance reasons the chance to get new settlers drops off sharply to keep your population low enough that the game has a chance to keep running. I'm at 13 settlers on my current map (albeit a LOT of pets also running around hauling) and 30fps is a fairly rare thing to see anymore, if settlers kept coming as fast as the early years of a map and I kept accepting them I'd probably be near 30, and the game likely unplayable.
The alternative would be stacking negative mood modifiers for existing settlers from constantly turning people away.
This does however mean that my nearly self-sufficient settlement occupies a fairly small pocket of the map, the only things I go outside my first quick-and-dirty wall (that at time of building I expected to be far too cramped very quickly) for are to mine or send traders to try and trade for limestone so I can build stuff faster.

[Stoney]

Hmm that's weird, I am currently at 17 Settlers and the last one arrived not that long ago. I am thinking it could be due to the fact I have had 100% influence on the region for awhile now. I believe the influence affects your chances of recruiting a settler. So if it isn't very high you have less of a chance I believe to get a settler when the RNG gods descend.

[TheLostPenguin]

Originally posted by Stoney:

Hmm that's weird, I am currently at 17 Settlers and the last one arrived not that long ago. I am thinking it could be due to the fact I have had 100% influence on the region for awhile now. I believe the influence affects your chances of recruiting a settler. So if it isn't very high you have less of a chance I believe to get a settler when the RNG gods descend.

If influence has any effect either it's minor or I've been truly doomrolling every chance to get a new settler event, I hit 100% a long time ago with my first temporary buildings not even fully finished and have been there ever since (maybe if you fail to defeat raids it goes down, but this seems ludicrously easy to reach and maintain once you figure out the basics of the game).

Even though it didn't seem to matter early on when I was getting new settlers frequently I even went so far as building and fitting out extra spare bedrooms thinking it might increase the chances of getting new settlers, apparently to no effect given the long period I spent gaining no-one. Also so much food that it rots even in cold storage sometimes, spare clothes and weapons always lying around such that I could equip a newcomer with whatever essentially instantly, and still I'm wondering how low my population might end up dropping when people start aging out and dying, which given that my founders are now pretty old is going to presumably start happening quite soon.

[Stoney]

Now I am wondering what's effecting it so much. I haven't lost any settlers due to injury or anything on this playthrough, defeating every raiding party. So my settlement has just been slowly growing over time. I did however recently start focusing on setting up basically every type of room in my settlement and I have most of them now except the royal apartment and maybe a couple others, but I am working on expanding a building to meet the size criteria for the royal apartments. Maybe all that is having an increased appeal to my town for settlers?

[galadon3]

Its been said that the prosperity of the settlement affects it, so the more and the more expensive stuff you have built the higher prosperity, the higher the amount of settlers you kinda "should have".
And ofc its an exponential curve so later increases need more then the earlier ones.
So if you kinda stagnate in building up your settlement (or making it more luxurious) you wont really get more settlers.

[Stoney]

Originally posted by galadon3:

Its been said that the prosperity of the settlement affects it, so the more and the more expensive stuff you have built the higher prosperity, the higher the amount of settlers you kinda "should have".
And ofc its an exponential curve so later increases need more then the earlier ones.
So if you kinda stagnate in building up your settlement (or making it more luxurious) you wont really get more settlers.

I think that's probably what's going on, when I started focusing on adding the different room types throughout my settlement, I can see they all have Total Wealth attributes and they are typically quite higher than say a spare room. So in my effort to do this and fulfill the different room requirements I have added that "more expensive stuff" and increase my settlement prosperity and attracted more settlers.