Do homes have walls or do i need to build them separately? Also, Tech points drain?

[Sililos]

I noticed when placing them down they have a black square around them, including when placing multiple at once.
Are the black squares walls or just boundary's?
Like do i have to manually place wooden/stone etc walls around them?

Im noticing im losing more tech points than i gain which is making it impossible to unlock new buildings, i only have 3 techs unlocked but have not been able to get more than 50 tech points since the 3rd, it just all drains away every time it gets up past 50 or so.

[Spiffy]

Homes only come with boundaries allowing you to pack 'em tight while shop rooms will require proper walls even when built next to homes to keep isolation high and maintainance upkeep low.
Tech is not very intuitive and lacks some explaining in tooltips/tutorials so far.
You'll want to keep expanding your labs or building new ones to pump tech up as your settlement grows with more and more pop. Keep assigning more and more people to it over time and get the lab upgrades when you can as they each increase your knowledge generation for the room by 50%.

[Sililos]

TY for the reply.
Sadly im struggling on my game with pop so cant keep putting people into research without losing vitals but i also cant advance new buildings to try fix it because i dont have research points.
Im VERY early in the game and feel stuck in a catch 22. 1 person joins, 1-5 people die from fights or disease and this early i have no way of combating those problems, and even if i unlocked the buildings, it would take industry's in itself to provide building mats not to mention the population numbers i dont have to man them without causing my people to starve or not have wood or some other vital material.

I just dont have the population to grow my peoples happiness, but i (Guess?) i dont have enough happiness to allow my population to grow?

Im only focusing my main race as when i allow others in, they all fight and die rapidly.

I feel like theres zero breathing room and its putting me off playing.

[Le'Stranger Wuv'Bottom]

There are a few neat mods that can help.

[Ethonal]

Originally posted by Sililos:

TY for the reply.
1 person joins, 1-5 people die from fights or disease and this early i have no way of combating those problems,
Im only focusing my main race as when i allow others in, they all fight and die rapidly.

Brawls happen when you have incompatible species, you can open up there tab and see who they like/dislike, there meant to only fight if they live within 32 tiles of each other but this doesnt seem accurate/still bugged, ive had brawls with species i have over 100 tiles apart (homewise), im sure there are more creative combo's but cretonian's (farmer) human (admin) and dondorian (mine and production) are all compatible and make for a fairly strong team

Just wanted to add, are you having your odd jobbers gather food from around your map? its alot more effective than farms early on (id still have farms of course)

[Halby]

shift-click the techs you have researched to un-research them, then research services which increase happiness, and therefor population... use that extra population to hire more researchers, repeat until you have sooo many citizens that you can afford to use other techs as well.

[Ancamarth]

Ok... after the walls that you have to build manually (but why isn't the construction system for rooms and houses harmonized at this stage?), there is the door.
Wait. How I build a door manually. There must be a command, wait, I'll find it.
An hour later: wtf? How do I specify that I want a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ door here in this house?

The game is awesome in some ways. But by others, gosh, it's no longer exploration, it's caving without light

[Ethonal]

Doors dont technically exist, there just holes in the wall with a ceiling over them, so you can just deconstruct the square you want a door in and rebuild just a ceiling above it. it isnt very intuitive but is a viable workaround.

[Spiffy]

Yours is a common problem, starting out can be rough depending on your map but you a hunter/gather setup goes a long way while getting the basics researched. When able transition to farmer/baker and build a nursery to really make your town grow into a big city.