Struggling to build a more or less self-sustaining village.

[Buxor]

Hi,
i already downloaded that MD management excel, but i still believe something is wrong in my management.

I have 11 inabitants at the moment, me, my wife (mother) my 6 month old son and 8 workers.

4 are hunting 100% for meat, 1 is cooking 100% roasted meat and the food isn't enough to feed all 11 settlers. The other settlers are producing wood/fire wood (2), distributing water (1) and foraging berries or mushrooms (1). Everything i do, is buildung houses or crafting buckets, stone knives or axes.

The only way to gather more food would be more workers hunting or gathering, but then are no more workers for argiculture or workshops. More workers need more water and fire wood. So more workers there and the food will not ne enough again.

Is there anything i can to balance and manage my workers more efficient?

[Ookapia]

1) Wait (and help them hunt). Over time they get better and one day you will have too much of everything.

2) Modernize homes and workplaces as quickly as possible. They feel much more comfortable in isolated stone houses with some decorations and therefore work more efficiently.

[Mussidenn]

With higher skill, your workers will work faster. Your hunter has skill 3 (or higher) or skill 1?

[Buxor]

1) okay, but that limits my crafting and building time
2) i'm already isolating my woodhouses. does building workstations do anything? or is it better, to decorate my houses?

[Krougal]

Hunting was once the way to go, but they nerfed it, badly. Many people complained that it was pointless to do anything else because the hunter brought in so much meat and they way overcompensated.

I use the hunter to get leather and because I am trying to make my village self-sustaining as well but the fact is I bring in hundreds of meat per season just running across wolves and pigs. Combine that with the trapping, which is great for bringing up skill and I have even less need of the hunter.

Finally the hunter levels up very slowly, I am trying to find the end-game stable village numbers and I'm at max XP gain and the hunters are like level 5 or 6 while most everyone else is 7-10.

Farming on the other hand, you need very little crops to feed a large village. Most of us way overplant. Sure rot is great for fertilizer until you get your pigs off the ground, but you just don't need to over do it.

Was trying to put a shot of my current spreadsheet in of my village of 36, but that doesn't seem to be a thing in Steam. I have fields of 16 cabbage, 24 carrots (cabbage & carrots do get planted twice, so double that) & beetroot and 40 onions, also 16 wheat going to flour. Also 24 oats & 24 rye strictly for making animal feed.

Now I use a lot of meat of course, but the 2 lvl 10 cooks make about 10 potage, 20 stew, 9 meat w/gravy, 5 soup and some assorted bread and mushroom stuff. My production is 32137. My needs are 8820. I think I am pretty future proofed for a population explosion. In hindsight, I would start out with about 1/4 of that and increase to 1/2 of it, other than the grains. With a little extra straw from the excavation shed 24 oat/rye makes enough animal feed for horses, pigs, chickens, sheep and I've probably still got enough leftover for some cows.

I could still use a few more market stalls and I haven't unlocked the tavern & windmill yet, but I will probably stop around 40 and see how it goes. The first 4 children were just born and more are on the way, so I am losing workers of course.

Once I am finished with this I am planning to start over on a slow game, with default settings, but at least now I have an idea of the kind of production numbers I need and how to balance for growth.

My biggest takeaway has been to not make yourself insane with trying to plant hundreds of tiles of crops right off the rip. It winds up taking all your time, and sure the money is great but then you put it all back into fertilizer, plus your time hauling the ♥♥♥♥.

Oh, and 300 flax does seem like a good number for 2 level 10 sewers, assuming wool/leather/fur production and goods as well. They make around 5 trousers with cuffs a day (most of the people making guides don't really understand the concept of profit, these are highly profitable, don't let anyone tell you otherwise) and that is all a level 10 merchant stall can sell. I also make 1.34 long fur hood, which I sell manually, they are not the most profitable, honestly just selling wool fabric would probably bring in more, but I have tons of fur to use up.

[Banisha]

Maybe you can plant some fields with cabbage yourself and go hunting yourself. Also take responsibility for the harvest. Cook meat with gravy in the pot. This satisfies more and your people are therefore less hungry and you also earn technology points to unlock more recipes, among other things.
Invest in a hoe, a bag, fertilizer and canola.
Good luck!

[Krougal]

Oh, as far as houses. For one thing, the English word y'all are looking for is insulated, not isolated. I can understand why it translates as such, since that is what insulation does, it isolates, or at least tries to. I don't know why it drives me nuts to keep reading that over and over.

Fully insulating the house is important, it raises mood, it also makes firewood needs more manageable. I'm pretty sure the house size doesn't matter (see below) but the materials do. Stone walls & wood tile roof will insulate to 100% (with limestone of course). I don't know offhand what the daub & wattle will go to.

So I haven't tried to crunch the numbers for mood vs production, other than that the effect is definitely there. I also don't know if the bigger house does more, but I highly doubt it, considering my wife isn't any happier than anyone else (but then she is a snob anyway). We have a very decorated full-size house, the rest have small simple.

I have read the decorations don't matter, just any 10 will do, and I am inclined to agree with that statement. So you can't go wrong with 4 straw himeli. I like to have lights because it makes the village look much more cosy, so the porch light and a candle inside the door. Then fill the floor with rugs, since you've probably got fur from rabbit traps if nothing else.

[gerald2]

putting worker on water well is waste of worker imho u can haul enough water for week in maybe 5-10 minutes if you do it yourself

[Krougal]

Originally posted by gerald2:

putting worker on water well is waste of worker imho u can haul enough water for week in maybe 5-10 minutes if you do it yourself

It is, the same as making firewood (vs how many more logs you could get), except when you forget to do it and they are unhappy.

The other thing is it is 1 of the faster skillgains for extraction, so it's a good training place.

They really do need to do some tweaking, but some buildings main value is for allowing full automation and really not much else.

[Wizard of Woz]

Originally posted by Buxor:

1) okay, but that limits my crafting and building time
2) i'm already isolating my woodhouses. does building workstations do anything? or is it better, to decorate my houses?

As far as your first point, don't feel like you need to rush. This game is a slow burn and is best enjoyed by taking your time.

[Oga]

If you want to save on firewood, I wouldn't isolate wooden houses but make them stone first.
With the amount your hunters are gathering, this will increase over time as they level up their hunting skill.
I didn't do the math, but it looks like it's something like this:
level 1 gathers an X amount
level 2 gathers twice the X amount
level 3 gathers three times the X amount
leve... and so on.
Which means that when you level up your level 1 hunter, you double the meat income and if you level it up again, you get half more again and on next level... a third more again... and so on.

- - - edit - - -
Btw: What Wizard of Woz just said, it maybe the most important reply you've gotten here.

[Limmin]

Yes, do farming and grow cabbage and flax as early as you can, as the benefits are major and can really put you on the path to self-sufficiency. It's easy and largely automated once setup. Unlock potage soup (buy the scheme at your cauldron) and also mushroom soup (ditto). The mushrooms are free and plentiful in the autumn; with wooden bowls (another unlock) you've got a great way to supplement your meat.

And I believe it makes villagers happy to eat these soups, and (in the Oxbow at least) they can give you benefits like resistance to the cold. So they may complain less, be happier, etc. during the cold winters.

[Ookapia]

Originally posted by Buxor:

1) okay, but that limits my crafting and building time
2) i'm already isolating my woodhouses. does building workstations do anything? or is it better, to decorate my houses?

1) I also agree wizard of woz, take your time

2) Anyone who hunts collects fur anyway. This could be used for a floor decoration and doesn't require linen or wool. The residents' mood will immediately improve.

I found this to be the easiest way to improve the mood in the early game.

[Krougal]

So the windmill if you are doing 100% wheat flour (and why would anyone do anything else?) with a lvl 10 farmer at 78% mood makes 51.58 wheat flour/day, which uses just over 400 fields of wheat (you'll need that lvl 3 barn fo'sure).

Highest I have gotten anyones mood is 95% by the way, that is in a small simple house, full limestone, 10+ decorations, lvl 10 at their job. I'm not sure what else factors in, because many of mine in the same category are at stuck at 90%, maybe they haven't gotten married to their housemate or maybe it is having children gives a mod boost (you would expect it to be the opposite)

I agree with what the others have said, take it slow and don't try to do too much at once and you will probably enjoy the game more. If you play on the default settings and try to push yourself too hard to get stuff done, it will feel very grindy.

[Limmin]

>> If you play on the default settings and try to push yourself too hard to get stuff done, it will feel very grindy

Krougal seems to be suggesting to change the number of days per season. You can do this in settings. I'm using 5 days/season, while the default is 3. Actually thinking of changing it again to 6.

This gives you more time to complete quests that must be done within one season, slows the rate at which your food rots, and so on. I'm liking it a lot better this way, compared to the default 3 days/season.

[Macdallan]

Part of the problem is that some of the villager management and gathering/crafting mechanics are pretty silly or just plain broken. As noted above you're better off spending 5 minutes filling water buckets for everyone in the village than you are assigning someone to do it for you because of how slow they perform that task despite the fact they should get it done in just a few minutes because it's such a simple job. Same issue with hunters - a couple hunters bring in a few food per day but you can hunt for 5 or 10 minutes and bring back enough meat to last the entire village for a year or more.

Villagers are very inefficient at first, and you do have to craft and build too much yourself. It's honestly pretty good advice to play slowly. Take a few years to do nothing but work on quests, build up your skills, build up a good amount of resources, improve your reputation, then expand the village once you're well established.

Originally posted by Limmin:

>> If you play on the default settings and try to push yourself too hard to get stuff done, it will feel very grindy

Krougal seems to be suggesting to change the number of days per season. You can do this in settings. I'm using 5 days/season, while the default is 3. Actually thinking of changing it again to 6.

This gives you more time to complete quests that must be done within one season, slows the rate at which your food rots, and so on. I'm liking it a lot better this way, compared to the default 3 days/season.

I also play on 5 day seasons and I'm tempted to bump it up to 7. Having 3 day seasons always feels like they are a bit too short to really get anything done. I would caution people on setting this too high as certain things only re-set or advance when the season changes and you may not want to wait for 8 or 10 in game days for that to happen although you can simply rest in a bed and skip days, or skip to the next season, if you wish.

I think short seasons can be beneficial in the late game when the village is well established since certain things like crops only grow as the seasons change, but when you're doing a lot of things on your own having longer seasons seems to be a boon.