Housing & Work Efficiency

[dpw85]

I am trying to build the largest population I can to see how my pc runs with a large population and i guess see how the game runs overall, that i would like advice if there is a solution or to bring attention to it for fixes in the future

I am nearly at 1,000 people and feel like i can go towards 2k rather simply from here except the following.

My initial starting houses are very well protected so i decided to start another mini camp a bit out of town. I supplied it with 26 houses, market, school, firewood splitter, hunter, gatherer, I could keep going on and storage. To try and make it have everything I needed to venture to the end of the map that is a long journey away. Building wasnt a problem however, people have moved from 100+ desirable homes into 10-30 on the other side of town from where they work. i have 940/1300 spaces available so I was hoping that the people moving into houses would choose ones closer to the new development causing chaos when the deadly cold comes in. Not to mention they run past my temporary shelters on the way home and die from exposure or run past 15 wells all the way home and die of dehydration. i have planted fruit trees and have a market, storage with food but my workers will walk half a year home to eat, drink or get out of the elements while the people working in the industries have all decided theyd move to the new development so their issues are reversed.

Is there a way to counter this or is there any plans to optimise this in the future so we can spread our towns out to smaller dedicated towns specialising in certain industries before filling in the empty grounds between the original town and new developments

I would like to say that having 12 wagon buildings really helps in this.

[wabbithunta]

Just a thought, but have you tried moving their original homes to the new locations? It's probably due to that reason, as to why people are not moving into your "new town" and walking, back home, across the map. That's what appears to work for me, unless houses are full they won't move, until newly born, or a fresh intake arrives.

[dpw85]

Originally posted by wabbithunta:

Just a thought, but have you tried moving their original homes to the new locations? It's probably due to that reason, as to why people are not moving into your "new town" and walking, back home, across the map. That's what appears to work for me, unless houses are full they won't move, until newly born, or a fresh intake arrives.

Im open to trying anything to streamline. So would you suggest to build the places of employment first then relocate the houses down after that?

[mikeydsc]

This is an FYI in case you arent aware.

During EA, the game pop is capped to 1000.

ATM, there is no way to control the distance they walk to work.

Some folks reported that they evict the housing occupants once a year so they would move closer, but I am not sure that works well.

[wabbithunta]

Originally posted by dpw85:

Originally posted by wabbithunta:

Just a thought, but have you tried moving their original homes to the new locations? It's probably due to that reason, as to why people are not moving into your "new town" and walking, back home, across the map. That's what appears to work for me, unless houses are full they won't move, until newly born, or a fresh intake arrives.

Im open to trying anything to streamline. So would you suggest to build the places of employment first then relocate the houses down after that?

It's also dependent on what, and where the work is, in my view.
If it's mining, or a work camp, that has resources that are too far from home, and it saves those workers from taking long (way too long in my view) trips back home, then yes.

I build the workplace first, (i.e; mines, with temporary housing for the workers needed for the initial builds) and then I'll add the required builds to support the move, as required.
You can add/place buildings and then turn off the build instructions and do the same for homes too, so when the need for housing is there then turn the build instructions on when built, then the expected influx will (or rather should be able to move in right away, near to their new workplaces and not have to go back and forth across the soddin' map everytime.
Use roads between locations to move your population faster, as it's more direct than them wandering through forests etc. You may need to add towers between locations, for added protection, i,e; if lairs/dens are nearby and cause problems.
You'll probably need to add more carts to help in moving items back and forth too, if you don't have enough of them that is.

It's basically a balancing act that's required, if you're population is not large enough to support a move of a significant size you are talking about ("New town" build type of thing)
Ensure that your population-workforce-builders.. and spare for towers and armies are there and you have enough to cover the move, because no doubt you'll have raiders and armies ready to attack and if there's no defences in place. Everyone has their own idea on what to do, and this is how I've done it, and it's worked for me (so far..)

Watch your workers too, to see where they travel too and from, distance wise, one would assume they'd prefer to move into newer homes near(er) to their workplace, but I've had them walk right across the map, and die in the freezing cold(!) just to go to work, so I moved their homes to their new work space and even though there was a temporary drop in their home type it picked up again after they started to stock up on the required items.

You could always replay from an earlier save point and try again if things do go tits up, raiders etc.

[SgtScum]

There are two types of homes. The upgradeable housing and temp housing. Normal housing is what you want to concentrate around the markets and other desirability increasing structures. Temp homes are what you use for distant work sites as it reduces the workers travel to once a year to stock the town home. As long as enough temp housing is built near the work sites then workers will go to those to get food and to find shelter in winter or during animal attacks. For large long term work sites like multiple large mines I also find it useful to set up a forager along with hunter and smokehouse with well and root cellar. This will decrease the trips needed by large wagons to stock the temp homes and allow them to carry more ore.

[Asheira]

Was suggesting this before,
that the game auto-redistributes all villagers on loading a save game,
based on where they work.
And re-assign those villagers first to homes close by that also need to do a lot moving in between's, restocking markets and such, or hunters, gatherers.
Professions that are seasonal could have a lower priority for their home-to-workplace auto-redistribution.
Static professions such as healers, teachers, guards having the lowest priority,
i.e. their homes would be re-assigned at the end, which means those could potentially have the longest ways to travel, but it won't matter much.

If this was done on every loading the game it certainly can help a little.

The other way would be to manually remove all villagers from assigned professions, then DIY

[dpw85]

Originally posted by mikeydsc:

This is an FYI in case you arent aware.

During EA, the game pop is capped to 1000.

ATM, there is no way to control the distance they walk to work.

Some folks reported that they evict the housing occupants once a year so they would move closer, but I am not sure that works well.

Thank you for letting me know as I was unaware about the population cap. I will try the eviction style to see if this has any impact.

Hoping that the cap is raised a little soon to 1500 or so to test the game-play at this level

[dpw85]

Originally posted by Asheira:

Was suggesting this before,
that the game auto-redistributes all villagers on loading a save game,
based on where they work.
And re-assign those villagers first to homes close by that also need to do a lot moving in between's, restocking markets and such, or hunters, gatherers.
Professions that are seasonal could have a lower priority for their home-to-workplace auto-redistribution.
Static professions such as healers, teachers, guards having the lowest priority,
i.e. their homes would be re-assigned at the end, which means those could potentially have the longest ways to travel, but it won't matter much.

If this was done on every loading the game it certainly can help a little.

The other way would be to manually remove all villagers from assigned professions, then DIY

I do like this but the game lags on auto save a bit as it is. I wouldnt even mind if it was a micro manage option by closing the worker spaces then re open them and the closest person that is a labourer or builder takes the position. it wouldnt need to to be done that often so its something i think would be manageable manually

[Asheira]

Just on loading a save game would be enough I think.
Not on each and every time the game does a save.

[dpw85]

Originally posted by SgtScum:

There are two types of homes. The upgradeable housing and temp housing. Normal housing is what you want to concentrate around the markets and other desirability increasing structures. Temp homes are what you use for distant work sites as it reduces the workers travel to once a year to stock the town home. As long as enough temp housing is built near the work sites then workers will go to those to get food and to find shelter in winter or during animal attacks. For large long term work sites like multiple large mines I also find it useful to set up a forager along with hunter and smokehouse with well and root cellar. This will decrease the trips needed by large wagons to stock the temp homes and allow them to carry more ore.

Thank you for your response. I have that set up in between, but trying to start a housing development with all the basics near it and have the wagons distribute the goods etc. It would be good to choose the housing location of locals or to choose the employment

[dpw85]

Originally posted by Asheira:

Just on loading a save game would be enough I think.
Not on each and every time the game does a save.

Would be a great idea

[SgtScum]

Originally posted by dpw85:

Thank you for your response. I have that set up in between, but trying to start a housing development with all the basics near it and have the wagons distribute the goods etc. It would be good to choose the housing location of locals or to choose the employment

That will have to be something they change in the future. At the moment the housing mechanic doesn't really support large distances between housing plots to form smaller towns centered around work sites. Thats what the temp housing is supposed to be used for. But the way the villagers ai works could certainly use some tweaking and thats part of their road map in the EA. They already did a bit of work on task priorities and I see much less work stoppages and slowdowns now with the most recent patch.