How do I increase housing desirability?

[Pastor of Muppets]

Title says it all. I was going along just fine and then I got a message that all of my new homesteads are going to be abandoned unless I increase their desirability. However, I have no clear idea how to do that. The houses are all packed close together so I can't plant gardens and whatnot around them, the roads can't be upgraded yet, and they all seem to have adequate access to supplies, so I'm kinda lost.

[ChristianDavies]

I have the same issue, all my houses upgraded and i placed gardens and marketplaces close by. I closed the game and re-opened it today and now every single house is abandoned and all of the population is homeless..? Feels like a bug!

[Waiwai]

First thing of all, new gamesave or gamesave before v0.7.6?

And what was the town size before it happened?

[Matthew]

Shrines have a decent radius. They are the same size as a house, so you can always move a house and replace it with a shrine in a central-ish location.

You can place small plazas under roads and the increase stacks so it is like placing "gardens" around your houses if you don't have any open space.

Large gardens have a huge radius and can cover an entire housing district. They are expensive, but worth.

[Waiwai]

One more thing, while garden and other decoration provides static desirability, desirability from pub, healer's house and other buildings are dynamic, if those buildings are shutted down in some way (shutted down completely, or no people is working in that facility), it will lose its desirability bonus.

[mikeydsc]

Originally posted by Waiwai:

One more thing, while garden and other decoration provides static desirability, desirability from pub, healer's house and other buildings are dynamic, if those buildings are shutted down in some way (shutted down completely, or no people is working in that facility), it will lose its desirability bonus.

Im not sure this is correct. When I place a bakery for instance, the houses get the bonus and I have not assigned any workers or even baked a single loaf of bread. I shut the bakery down allot due to over producing.

[Pastor of Muppets]

Originally posted by Waiwai:

First thing of all, new gamesave or gamesave before v0.7.6?

And what was the town size before it happened?

The gamesave is v0.7.6

My population is 80, with enough houses for everyone (before five of them upgraded to homesteads and then this happened). I'm having trouble keeping enough food for everyone as game is in short supply on this map, but no one is starving yet.

EDIT: I do have the healer's hut shut down to save on gold atm, but no one has required its services lately, and my houses never did this before I had a healer and people were getting sick.

[Pastor of Muppets]

Originally posted by Matthew:

Shrines have a decent radius. They are the same size as a house, so you can always move a house and replace it with a shrine in a central-ish location.

You can place small plazas under roads and the increase stacks so it is like placing "gardens" around your houses if you don't have any open space.

Large gardens have a huge radius and can cover an entire housing district. They are expensive, but worth.

Thanks for the tips! I'll try them out.

[Pastor of Muppets]

Ok, here's what I've learned:

1. There is a desirability overlay (G key). Doh! I had completely forgotten about it. By looking at it, I could see that your starting shelters are not affected by desirability at all. I have several with ratings in the negative double digits. I guess when the choice is between surviving and freezing to death, it's any port in a storm.

2. When your shelters convert themselves to homesteads, that's when desirability becomes an issue. Your homesteads need to have a minimum of 30% desirability to avoid abandonment.

3. I placed some plazas under the roads to bump my homesteads up over 30%, but I haven't been able to determine yet whether they help or not. Maybe they work over time or only in the spring or something. What DID work was turning my healer back on. It gave all the homesteads in the area a 5% boost, which was enough to solve the problem. (Turns out that selling the suckers snake oil drives up property values significantly in FF lol.)

Maybe this will help someone else. Thanks to all who replied.

[Waiwai]

Originally posted by mikeydsc:

Originally posted by Waiwai:

One more thing, while garden and other decoration provides static desirability, desirability from pub, healer's house and other buildings are dynamic, if those buildings are shutted down in some way (shutted down completely, or no people is working in that facility), it will lose its desirability bonus.

Im not sure this is correct. When I place a bakery for instance, the houses get the bonus and I have not assigned any workers or even baked a single loaf of bread. I shut the bakery down allot due to over producing.

For now, just man one baker instead of two to reduce production.

About the overproduction, if you have two 12×12 farm field, which rotates with wheat, buckwheat, greens or roots, you should have more than enough to support one barn, one brewery and one windmill with full manned at those buildings 24/7.