Long-term population issues

[BanDHMO]

I'm wondering what happens when all those kids your initial villagers have grow up. I read that adult kids can continue living in their parents' house, so shelter won't be a problem, but what about jobs? I'm assuming it'll take you MUCH less than 18 years to grow your village to the building limit, and you'd have recruited more villagers as you grew. That means by the time the kids turn 18, all the jobs are already filled by their parents and there's no more building cap for you to crew more jobs.

Then, do you just get a whole unemployed generation? What are the implications of that? I imagine it's bad for their mood, but assuming their houses are decent, probably it's not bad enough for them to leave the village. Do you guys just have a horde of young adults roaming around the village doing nothing?

[TheMole]

Depends on play style, many players get to generation 3-4 without reaching the build limit. It really does just depend on how long your seasons are and how you play

[BanDHMO]

Originally posted by TheMole:

Depends on play style, many players get to generation 3-4 without reaching the build limit. It really does just depend on how long your seasons are and how you play

But... how? The build limit is only 65. Each generation is about 20 years. That's less than 1 building per year. On default settings a year is at least 6 hours of real time gameplay. You folks build less than one building per 6 hours of gaming?

Maybe I was aggressive in my buildup compared to the average player, but I'm pretty sure I hit the limit before year 10 on my first playthrough.

Anyway, regardless of how it goes for your average player, if there's anyone else like me that builds up fast, I'd love to hear what your late game population looks like.

[TuppenceStick]

The build limit is 70 on default settings. I've never hit that. In my main save I'm in year 55 with about 45 buildings. So I had room to expand for the kids born and will have room to expand for their kids.
You can, if your system is ok for it, up the build limit to 140 buildings.

[pdoan8]

I built up fast. I have 103 buildings before year 10. Current population is 93 (33 couple including my + kids). I still have 7 vacant houses. I have too many food storage (14, I need 6-8). I can't balance my production, so I need 16 resource storage (fill ~60k). The biggest mistake would be inviting and pairing up everyone at about the same time (so they all have kids at about the same time).

Plant for the future:
- Build more. My laptop can support 120 buildings, so I can build some more.
- Reduce the house size to small for younger generation. Old couples may still keep their big houses.
- Some kids may have to remain single for life. I currently have too many girls.
- People need work to be happy, but they do not need to work hard. More work places, lower work load. Can some kids be apprentice for life?
- Mines and barn can have 6 workers. Hunter cabin and farm shed can have 4 workers.
- More market stalls to turn extra goods and materials into "weightless" coins.

My son is one and a half.

[BanDHMO]

Originally posted by pdoan8:

- Mines and barn can have 6 workers. Hunter cabin and farm shed can have 4 workers.
- More market stalls to turn extra goods and materials into "weightless" coins.

I was thinking mine too at first, 6 jobs per building is nice. But the mine makes very heavy stuff, so it'll be impractical to carry it to vendors myself. So, market stall to sell. But, a market stall only employs 1 person per building, and only sells 100 coins per skill point. So it would take multiple market stalls for each mine, which defeats the purpose.

So now I'm thinking hunting huts set to feathers for extra jobs. Feathers are light enough to be almost like currency, so can be carried around whenever you want to buy something, and saved in storage in huge quantities when you don't. Once too much storage space is used, they can just be set to relax production rates. And unlike most other light things such as grain the feathers don't need any additional processing in other buildings, have only one input to make, don't have seasonal variations to manage, etc.

[The REAL chris]

I'm a grandfather, in year 28 of game-play. Population 78 which includes 7 aged 17.. 87 buildings. So next year I will have 7 unemployed. I could open up another mine and ship them all there, or build some more farmland 3 to a shed. Or more market stalls just to sell 1 or 2 products. More kitchens to cook a wider variety of foods, which means more raw produce..or just set them up in a current work building that has space. Most of my workers are lazy by design, so a couple to each building where possible just set to 15-20%.

Remember if you set the 'kids' up in their own home both they AND their parents will attempt to fill an empty bed.

[pdoan8]

Originally posted by BanDHMO:

Originally posted by pdoan8:

- Mines and barn can have 6 workers. Hunter cabin and farm shed can have 4 workers.
- More market stalls to turn extra goods and materials into "weightless" coins.

I was thinking mine too at first, 6 jobs per building is nice. But the mine makes very heavy stuff, so it'll be impractical to carry it to vendors myself. So, market stall to sell. But, a market stall only employs 1 person per building, and only sells 100 coins per skill point. So it would take multiple market stalls for each mine, which defeats the purpose.

So now I'm thinking hunting huts set to feathers for extra jobs. Feathers are light enough to be almost like currency, so can be carried around whenever you want to buy something, and saved in storage in huge quantities when you don't. Once too much storage space is used, they can just be set to relax production rates. And unlike most other light things such as grain the feathers don't need any additional processing in other buildings, have only one input to make, don't have seasonal variations to manage, etc.

You missed the point just above those two. Add more workers, but reduce the work load (percentage). One mine running at 50% capacity, or two mine running at 25% capacity. The end result won't be much different. Just look at the amount produce per day. Market stall is just a contingency plan.

[BanDHMO]

Originally posted by pdoan8:

You missed the point just above those two. Add more workers, but reduce the work load (percentage). One mine running at 50% capacity, or two mine running at 25% capacity. The end result won't be much different. Just look at the amount produce per day. Market stall is just a contingency plan.

Yes, if you don't care at all about their productivity, that's fine. But then it's easier to just build a few Barns - same employment, no need to build in remote places. I think I'd rather have 4 jobs per building than 6, but with the ability to generate silly amounts of feathers on command, because of how light and flexible store of value they are.

[pdoan8]

It's totally up to you.

I plan for my own unique situation.

[jcmeerman]

By the time you have so much production from your villagers that you cannot sell it fast enough, then money is no longer a problem. Put your mines on stone production. Make throwing stones from it. Sell the thowing stones at the market stall.
Aka: just keep them busy.

If money is still important, then feathers are good as you can sell that to the other villagers (high value : weight ratio). And let your mine and smithy produce iron hammers and use a stall (or several) too sell them. That should take up a lot of your workers.

But to answer the original questions: As long as a villager is housed, fed, hydrated and warm, he will never leave. Employed villagers get a mood bonus based on the skill used for the job, but at that point mood only affects productivity. And an unemployed villager has none :)

So, unemployment does not matter.

Another way to have useless production is to make planks and only allow planks as fuel. Complete waste of production :)

[Casaseiji]

Hey guys , I've got a question.

I'm not familiar with medieval Europe village life. but know more about Eastern counterpart(Japan), in Japanese feudal system, every estate needs to keep up a certain amount of soldiers for their own security and also provide troops for their liege in some set ratio . it is about human resource ,jobs and duties.

In my limited knowledge about medieval Europe. Kings won't levy troops from village, Right?
They hire retinue themselves. But how about local security? For this game is too peaceful, bandits never raid village. Therefore no need and no such option to build a security team for protecting villages. if there is , people gets job as professional soldiers.

I quite like this game. but life is too easy(in default level) that makes all kind of resources plentiful.I know there are options to set game difficulty level. but I prefer a realistic mode than just turn up the tax rate or bandit's damage etc.

[BanDHMO]

Originally posted by Casaseiji:

Hey guys , I've got a question.

in Japanese feudal system, every estate needs to keep up a certain amount of soldiers

In my limited knowledge about medieval Europe. Kings won't levy troops from village, Right?
They hire retinue themselves. But how about local security?

European feaudalism was similar to what you described, though there were many different flavours in different places. The nobility's job was security. Whoever was the lord of the place was supposed to maintain a retinue of warriors and usually had an obligation to the higher lord to come join them on military campaigns when needed.

I don't think it was always on the village level, though, meaning a small place doesn't necessarily have a garrison of professional troops.

The game has this element completely missing because it's not really about fighting. One way you can rationalize it is that nobody in the valley is "noble". You pay taxes to the nobility, periodically provide resources they request, and they never really show up in the valley because it's so peaceful and they have better things to do.

The other way is you can roleplay the security part. Make a point out of developing surplus industry and have a number of young men in non-productive jobs to simulate military output of your village and warriors waiting to be called on.

[kirstentacular]

I have my young adults take over the jobs at 18 and have set about age 50 as retirement, lol. They can start dying at 60 so I think they deserve some time to sit around the fire with the old folks.