Do you specialize your settlement, or try to do everything?

[MrDave]

Do you think it's better to say, have a bunch of farm fields and a settlement built around food/farm production and then trading/buying for stuff you can't make, or having a "jack of all trades" settlement where everyone has different jobs and perform different tasks.

[lmill1]

My people are divided into groups. For instance, I have farmers caring for dairy cows and collecting milk; then I have a kitchen that specializes in making quark and one that produces cheese. Then I have a food stall selling the cheese. I have the same thing with the sheep; a group of shepherds collecting wool, and a sewing hut specializing in producing wool fabric, wool thread and wool garments' then a stall where the garments are sold. ETC. I guess you could call them supply chains. Miner collect ore. Blacksmith processes the ore into bars. Another smithy makes tools out of the bars. I sell some bars from the resources stall

[Morri]

There is no "better". If you want to have only two other villagers and a goat and live of raw cabbage, you can do.
So it all comes down to what you enjoy and what playstyle you like.

I personally build extremely slow - xp gains on minimum, taxes and villagers needs on max, 30 day seasons and only took a wife and one extra villager when she got pregnant, and will now only recruit the special villagers from the wife quests. My population will have to grow naturally out of the children born, so it'll take generations before I have big fully automated village.
But in the end that's going to be my personal end-goal. So I don't plan to specialize and want to be able to do everything in my village.

Because of lack of villagers, I do most of the work myself for now and the few villagers I have get moved around different work stations all the time.

So it really depends on what seems fun to you.

[invivo4u]

If you build more villages, you can easily specialize. I've got 7 spread over the map which allows me to have more resource barns which raises the storage limit.

[felmari]

i do not see much advantage in specializing as things are ig. roleplay and all that of course would be a reason to do it.

there are progressively better things you can make where those below would just be about less resources to make them if you have access to the high items mostly about cloths tools and food. for food there is no need for variety so over producing one thing is possible for needs and selling if you want. that also simplifies things.

there would need to be areas that only certain resources are available or in good amount and a few other things to really implement specialization.

[Kwalyz]

I agree with Morri that specialised vs ”jack of all trades” is not a matter of one being better than the other. With the specialised route where you buy what your vilkagers don’t produce you need to realise two things:
A) You will always be the one who goes to the other villagers to purchase the items (and sell if you chose not to have market stalls). You can not assign your villagers to purchase items for you.
B) the vendor NPCs in the various villagers have limited stock. It will only replenish when the season changes. This could cause problems if you need larger amounts of any particular good than they have available. For example, you play on a 10 day season and need 40 iron ore per day to make the iron tools ie 400 per season, but between the various vendors that sell iron ore there is only 120 …. You will run short.

[lmill1]

Originally posted by Kwalyz:

I agree with Morri that specialised vs ”jack of all trades” is not a matter of one being better than the other. With the specialised route where you buy what your vilkagers don’t produce you need to realise two things:
A) You will always be the one who goes to the other villagers to purchase the items (and sell if you chose not to have market stalls). You can not assign your villagers to purchase items for you.
B) the vendor NPCs in the various villagers have limited stock. It will only replenish when the season changes. This could cause problems if you need larger amounts of any particular good than they have available. For example, you play on a 10 day season and need 40 iron ore per day to make the iron tools ie 400 per season, but between the various vendors that sell iron ore there is only 120 …. You will run short.

Possible spoilers. I have the largest village possible, but in the beginning I just started producing a lot of wheat as my cash crop. Some use flax. Every time I go to a village to buy something I then sell the vendor some wheat so I am always ahead on the deal. Problem is I am up to $4 million coin by now. So, I guess it is just a matter of what you want to accomplish.

[bnt.colson]

Personally, I do flax at first. Because flaxseed is useless (except for saving some for replanting), and it makes easy money. Before, you had to make a pigsty as soon as possible to get fertilizer. Now, with the compost bin, it's a little easier. And selling allows you to increase your diplomacy skills quite easily, and therefore to lower taxes and sell more (better prize).

[Barmy Nimrod]

For me it was a progression. I started with farming flax, then went to crafts, then tools, then clothing and finally food. I then build one supply line for each market stall option.

In was fun building it, but now, I'm just a business manager, I need a checklist, so that I do everything needed to switch stuff over from season to season to keep it all running smoothly. Like a typical wealthy tycoon, I'm lazy, I don't even visit the other villages any more. I just make coin through my markets. I have slowed the extraction down to the bare minimum, and production to just enough to supply the markets. But I still find myself trashing tones of some stuff, like manure and straw. Most of my buildings are working around 50%. Currently, I'm rebuilding and organizing the village better, as I wait for jr to turn 18.