Ropemakers are not making rope/ bad balancing?

[jenaburwell]

I think it takes like a ton of yarn to make one rope. I have tried a million different configurations, and I cannot get my rope-makers to actually produce any rope unless I make my own wool, then have two sets of tailors, one for just making yarn, and then I STILL have to keep giving the rope-makers extra money and handing them yarn.

I think something is off with the normal prices of these goods. I can't get any rope making families to continuously make rope. They just go broke and never buy yarn. They always want huge amounts like 30 or 60 and then they make 2 yarn :/

Does anyone have the right set-up for this? I never have ANY rope, and you need it for higher-end items (and apparently mines, which I haven't gotten to yet). Thanks!

[Nowei]

i usually use stewardry for the production chain families. some of them are not balanced correctly, looking at the tanners, leatherworkers, blacksmiths, bowmakers and glassmakers. their good are just not in high demand and it is easy to overproduce and tank their markets. if you place them on stewardry and give them a steady paycheck to keep them afloat they will continuously produce their products which you can sell to the town market or caravans for some injection of gold into your closed economy.

right now the best profession in the game is smelters. they are gold printing machines set them to stewardry and sell all their bricks to the caravans. a family of 8 will make around 2-3g worth of bricks a season i usually have around 8 families of smelters

[jenaburwell]

Yeah I noticed that about Smelters. They are a gold mine, whereas Ropemakers and Leatherdaddies (sorry, I have to rename everyone something memorable lol!) are always starving and can't make any money. I'll look into using different taxation for these guys, because regular taxes aren't working at all.

[Nowei]

its a balance thing, some people like to only use socage, some like to only use stewardry. personally stewardry is the best since you control everything. but i think the game is meant to have a mix of the 2.

another trick i do is i give every family a small row of pear trees (usually around 8-10 trees) next to their home. you can do this with a farmland assigned to a farming family have them plant the trees and change the settings so everything is turned off except pear harvesting and pear tree planting. once all the trees are planted reassign the zone to the family living there. this accomplishes 3 things. 1 it passively produces more food for the town and at 20% socage for the entire town this can be thousands of pears a year. 2 it reduces the money spent on food which is most of their buying habits (in the case of the inn it is all they spend money on outside of clothing) and 3 late game if i am trying to remain socage and not take their full production i switch this zone to stewardry and whether they pick a single pear or not they will receive the payment. I have coined this my Pear-fare system. I will usually need to adjust payments since no 2 families are the same but after a few season this will be enough to keep them in the black and operational without having to micro manage taking their entire production and what to do with it or having to constantly keep bailing them out

[Nowei]

i will also add that while most of the zones need to be operated by their respective profession family, not all tasks in that profession are locked to others. harvesting fruit from tree is the easiest and most helpful example (you dont need a farmer to run your orchard farms just to plant them). a fishing family before yarn production will produce more food managing one of your orchards than they will fishing with just rods

the second most useful is that anyone can operate a forestry zone they will not make planks but they will harvest wood and rods

third is abusing both farm and forestry zones for animal care taking. anyone can shear sheep milk cow or gather eggs and fill feeders. you can assign these straight to the butchers who will care for tend and slaughter their own animals or even give a tailor a small pen farmland and give them their own sheep which they will shear the wool and make yarn from without having to pay the farmers

[jenaburwell]

Thanks Nowei. I actually have been using some of those ideas for a while. But I have been using Royal Forest land to add a zone by each house, made up only of Apple and Pear trees and blueberry bushes, and then zoning it back to the home family. I do a large zone for the clergy and the Inn too.

I have tried messing with getting other families to raise sheep, but I must have messed it up somehow on my first try, because the family just sold their sheep, (I think), and then I didn't try again. More attempts are required :)

[Nowei]

Ya butchers are really aggressive with the buying. They force the professions to sell their animals even if below your targets.

[Nowei]

Which is why I say start with all animals in the stables and then sell the extras from the breeding stock.