The one mistake that almost cost me my whole village

[Maxamillion-X72]

I have a level 4 village about 80 years in, 660 people, everything going swimmingly. My one problem: I have no ore or rock formations of any kind within my explored area. I'm on a large map and have almost half of it explored already. So I sent out explorers, who discovered a mountain full of gold, iron, and coal. The problem was, it's all the way over to the far edge of the map.

What to do other than start a new settlement near the mountain, with a nice road between it and the main village. Built 20-30 houses, a market, pub, bakery, the works. HUGE MISTAKE . You see, workers do not seem to move to a home near where they work. Which is bad enough in a large village, because some workers spend more time away from work stocking their residence than they spend working. So now I have 660 people in one group, 100 or so all the way across the map, and they spend all day travelling on the road from work to home. In the winter, they often drop dead on the road. When the raiders come, they don't go to the nearest home, they sprint for the other side of the map.

The end result was about 350 villagers dying, my main community falling in to disrepair, and raiders destroying everything at the second community, I managed to recover by abandoning the second settlement, half my main settlement, and slowly rebuilding my main until I was back up. Currently at 114 year with 770 villagers, although if I don't find stone soon I'm not going to be able to do much more.

I've been taking notes during my game play and this is some of the stuff I'm come up with:

Needed game changes:

• Compost: I think this should be handled the same way as all other produced goods, have it go in to inventory, usable by farmers. A single bin will fertilise a 12x12 field, but it also take s a full bin to fertilise a 10x5 field. Each bin should convert x amount of "waste" to 144 units of "compost", and farms would use 1 unit per square of field. It would be stored in the open store yards like stone and logs.
  
• If spaces in homes are available for a worker to move in to close to work, they should do so. I've got a 16 year old nightsoilman who works in the west side of my village, but lives in a manor house with another dude and 3 children on the east side.
  
• Wagon Drivers are the dumbest MFs on the planet. Raider's are attacking and the alarm bells are ringing? I guess I'll just keep going about my business as if nothing is going on, driving straight in to the advancing raider group. When the alarm goes off, they should return to base. Getting over-run by raiders or a bear is attacking? Get off the GD cart and run for it you fool!
  
• Where are the chickens, sheep, and goats? Surely they had time to pack a couple chickens and a rooster in to the wagon before they set off for the wilderness?!
  
• Beans and Peas are useless. There is no way to preserve them. They are not fodder for cows (which they should be). They increase fertility but you're better off with clover; at least it doesn't fill up your storage and then rot. Why can't the villagers dry peas and beans so they last a really long time?
  
• Work Camps: Why do they not replant as they cut? Just boost the regeneration of trees within the work camp circle. The work camp circle is no nearly big enough, it should be at least twice as wide.
  
• Foragers, hunters, and rat catchers should allow 2 workers per building. The result of adding a second worker should be a 50% increase in the diameter of their coverage without having to build more buildings in the same area. Plus hunters working in pairs should be able to hunt boar, beer, and wolves.
  
• UI adjustment: The ability to turn on/off the alarm should be on the main UI, rather than having to open the building and turn it on. Also, it should auto-shut off once the raid is finished
  
• Arborist: Instead of the player having to manually plant trees for the arborist, the user should just select what kind of orchard to create, and they plant/replant as necessary. Instead of a circle of activity, set the orchard up like the barns, where you indicate a 10x10 square for the orchard. Increase the variety of trees that can be planted to include walnut (to produce nuts) and pine to produce logs.
  
• Nightsoilman: Why doesn't this have an area of operation, like the rat catcher? I have them stationed on all 4 sides of my village, but when I follow them, they're collecting waste from the far end of the village, walking past homes that need collecting! If we got that and the ability to add a second worker, the diameter of coverage should increase 50% as well.
  
• Rock quarry: desperately need a rock quarry building. Set it up like the barn, select a 10x10 quarry block and they start digging. Could have stone deposits, like coal/iron/gold. Once a quarry is mined out, it should be abandoned, but not removable. It could fill up with rain water though, for added realism, maybe create a fishing resource.
  
• Boats and bridges: why can't we build a bridge across a river? Why can't fishers build boats to fish further out on the lakes?

Player tips (just my opinions of best practices, welcome to offer your own or disagree with my analysis):

• When creating fields, I opt for smaller fields in groups of 3. This makes setting up a rotation easy because all three will use the same plan, just a season offset from each other. a 10x5 field is the biggest you can have with 2 workers, but a 10x10 needs 5 workers, and a 12x12 needs 7 workers. So three 10x5 fields makes up a 10x15 field but needs less workers than the 12x12.
  
• Barracks can set a flag where the soldiers will hang out, nice for setting a perpetual guard on the main gate
  
• Turnips are a cows best friend, fast to grow, hardy as a MF, and can top up their fodder.
  
• Jobs: Always ensure the number of labourers exceeds 10% of your total population. Always ensure you set the number of builders to 5% of your total population. If you do not, you will end up with degraded buildings and a lack of wood/stone.
  
• Foundries: Build lots of foundries and fully staff them, especially late game. 3 per blacksmith at least, and at least one or two more. Large Houses require iron to repair, and if you don't stay ahead of the blacksmith, cooper, and new building construction, your upgraded houses will be abandoned when they degrade.
  
• Guard houses: Instead of just plopping them inside the main walls, make a little space for them so they're surrounded on all side by the wall and a gate. This will help prevent them from being over-run and destroyed if the raiders get inside the main gate. Two gates on the main entrance also help.
  
• When designing crop rotation, if something isn't very heat tolerant, plant them early or late in the season. For example, one of my fields has turnips at the start, then clover, then turnips again, slid all the way to the end of the season. This keeps them from being hit with heat death mid summer.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[KO]

Workers not living near their workplace was also a problem for me. Unless the devs change something players are going to be pigeon holed into making just 1 big settlement where all houses are clustered. It stifles creativity and replayability.

In the meantime, I just build a temp house, 1 well, 1 firewood splitter and 1 forager near the mine to make sure they have enough basic stuff.

[Jesus Man]

Very good suggestions. Nicely done!

[larsi64]

Originally posted by Badger:

Very thorough and insightful. Thanks for the info! Agree with every single one of your suggested changes!

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Totally agree

[Smokey Johnny]

Originally posted by Maxamillion-X72:

Originally posted by Smokey Johnny:

nice. Seeing as you progressed quite nicely, any tips on setting up mining camps? I agree that second settlement does not work due to the poor house choosing mechanism you mentioned. Work camp with stock temp shelters around does not work for me either, those shelters are never used, they always walk back to the village. I'm stuck due to this at only year 20 and 150 pop as I've ran out of stone and my only iron mine is around 4 house of walking distance - by the time they go there, they decide they go home for "stocking shelter"...

One thing to have enough of is wagons. Wagons will stock temp houses automatically, but you have to have enough to do it. You basically almost need a wagon per temp house, especially if they're far away. If the miners get hungry they will go to the nearest place with food. If that's the village, then so be it. And when they get food, they go home to eat it, or store it. They DON'T BRING IT BACK WITH THEM!!! I've watch many a miner go home to get food, not take any ore with them, then get food, go eat, and head back to the mine with nothing! I have 20 wagons for my village, and I don't think it's enough. And since wagon drivers are the dumbest MFs on the planet, they die so quick. Every raider attack I lose at least half of them. I have cemeteries that I swear are filled with wagon drivers.

interesting, I do have my temp. house next to the mine stocked but they still wander back home to "stocking shelter", which is basically their home shelter. I've never ever seen anyone using the temp shelter yet though it's fully stocked. I'll keep trying, thank you!

[Asheira]

Would suggest to (re-) assign villagers on loading a game based on the homes closest to where they have their job.
It would make it somewhat more manageable to branch out small settlements away from the main town area.

[A.L.E.X.]

Let's keep this one up :)

[Maxamillion-X72]

Originally posted by Asheira:

Would suggest to (re-) assign villagers on loading a game based on the homes closest to where they have their job.
It would make it somewhat more manageable to branch out small settlements away from the main town area.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but something needs to be done. If only to make it easier to further develop the available map options. I posted above about being able to build bridges and boats, and combined with effective housing management, could make for some cool starting maps. Think about a map that's all river delta, with multiple smaller islands with many rivers. Prime spot for a settlement, but can't be done in the current game as there is no way to access an island, or have people live there away from the town center.

[A.L.E.X.]

Originally posted by Maxamillion-X72:

Originally posted by Asheira:

Would suggest to (re-) assign villagers on loading a game based on the homes closest to where they have their job.
It would make it somewhat more manageable to branch out small settlements away from the main town area.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but something needs to be done. If only to make it easier to further develop the available map options. I posted above about being able to build bridges and boats, and combined with effective housing management, could make for some cool starting maps. Think about a map that's all river delta, with multiple smaller islands with many rivers. Prime spot for a settlement, but can't be done in the current game as there is no way to access an island, or have people live there away from the town center.

That sounds nice, yes :)
I've started around 6 maps already, almost all of them I reached 700+ people. But late game starts to get tedious due to some micro managing that just does not work good (like the wood and the soldiers/guards).

[=7CAV=SPC.Henson.K]

I would advise against building satellite towns for now. I also tried to do this with disastrous results. I really would like to be able to send trade missions outbound to bring back goods and gold.

[Matthew]

Beans and peas are op. Not only do they raise fertility, but they prevent scurvy and have the longest duration before spoiling.

Also, the default amount of farmers can be manipulated if you pay attention to how tasks are lined up. A farmer takes a short time to seed and then another time to harvest and transport. Everything in between means they idle (if not helping with another field).

You can drag crops around to set which month they start. If your crops are lined up in such a way that there is little to no down time, you can often get by with much less workers than what the game defaults at.

3 10x10 fields rarely need 15 farmers total. For example 3 wheat fields with off years being clover and a field maintenance can be reduced down to 1 farmer each. Or 3 total, instead of 15.

[Don Cool]

Maxamillion,

thank you for your input, I agree with most points having tested the game extensively. The foundation of the game are not the buildings, all building games have them and they simply represent a tile in which numbers are moved forth and back. Villagers, goods, money and prosperity are the typical numbers.

Before big changes are made the "number moving" needs to be be addressed. Anything you build needs a solid foundation, the foundation in Farthest Frontier are the villagers, they move all the numbers in the game.

Example: A builder will gather 1 wood which his friend just chopped and travel 50 miles with that piece of wood to a remote house. That builder could have walked 10 meters to a stockyard and gathered all the wood needed to make just one trip, instead you might see several builders doing the same trip.

My example applies to all stages of "number moving" in Farthest Frontier, all goods/food manufacturing need to be placed in the correct order for your villagers to not constantly haul the lesser number.

If villager AI is addressed then you all of a sudden have a totally different game on your hand, one that definitely needs rebalancing. Villagers are idiots in Farthest Frontier, they do the very basics without considering distances, amount hauled and where to get their needed goods.

[larsi64]

Originally posted by Ziriguidum:

Originally posted by Maxamillion-X72:

I'm not sure what the solution is, but something needs to be done. If only to make it easier to further develop the available map options. I posted above about being able to build bridges and boats, and combined with effective housing management, could make for some cool starting maps. Think about a map that's all river delta, with multiple smaller islands with many rivers. Prime spot for a settlement, but can't be done in the current game as there is no way to access an island, or have people live there away from the town center.

That sounds nice, yes :)
I've started around 6 maps already, almost all of them I reached 700+ people. But late game starts to get tedious due to some micro managing that just does not work good (like the wood and the soldiers/guards).

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[redhongkong]

all i m thinking is maybe a secondary town center + town divider. make ppl stay with the town center and houses in that region.

or allow us to assign ppl to houses if they cant switch on their own.

[WhocareZz]

Originally posted by Maxamillion-X72:

• Wagon Drivers are the dumbest MFs on the planet. Raider's are attacking and the alarm bells are ringing? I guess I'll just keep going about my business as if nothing is going on, driving straight in to the advancing raider group. When the alarm goes off, they should return to base. Getting over-run by raiders or a bear is attacking? Get off the GD cart and run for it you fool!

This one is awesome :)

[Dallas]

Originally posted by WhocareZz:

Originally posted by Maxamillion-X72:

• Wagon Drivers are the dumbest MFs on the planet. Raider's are attacking and the alarm bells are ringing? I guess I'll just keep going about my business as if nothing is going on, driving straight in to the advancing raider group. When the alarm goes off, they should return to base. Getting over-run by raiders or a bear is attacking? Get off the GD cart and run for it you fool!

This one is awesome :)

Agree, the wagon drivers always seem to die first.