Working Farms

[ChoDoBoy]

I think there is a serious issue with how so many of the production chains work, especially farms. In the beginning I set up some farms and they were producing huge amounts of produce. Up till around 100-120 people I always had a massive excess of food.

Once you get to the 150 mark and start expanding out the farms just don't get worked. I was going from producing huge amounts of food to producing nearly nothing. Same happens with my medical herbs. I have 5 herb fields and two medicine makers and producing nearly no medicine. I have at least 15 farm fields that are now producing less than when I had half that number. I even have 5 trading companies constantly bringing in food but it's still not enough.

It seems like it's an issue with workers not actually going to the farms. I have set it up that houses are built near all of the farm land but maybe the workers for each location don't live nearby and are coming from all the way on the other side of the map. No one is working them anymore.

This is absolutely infuriating and has happened in the last three towns I've built. It's making the game unplayable once you get past 150 people.

[StewieII]

So i played all the way till 750+ Pop. I had exactly the same problem, i had a lot of farms working and doing great always having like 10K+ wheat. Then all of a sudden after my pop kept growing my farms where doing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Felt like they didnt even bring in anything anymore. So i build more farms and more and they started working great again. << that was around 300 Pop to 500 Pop. Then afterwards i kept expanding and expanding with also expanding my food resources. Then i hit 700 Pop and everything went to ♥♥♥♥, nothing got done, no food income no buildings being build. Really frustating but nontheless a great game! Hope the dev can look into this AI problem <3

[VogonPoet]

My biggest problem is my idiot laborers don't haul anything they harvest.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2280605015

As you can see from that image, I have tons of dye on the top right, tons of wheat in the middle, tons of medicine on the left. All that has been sitting there for YEARS. They plant right over it and completely ignore all those good.

And yes, I have like 10 Warehouses and TONS of space.

[Legion = surrender]

Do you have laborers? If you run out of laborers, the death spiral starts and the game ends.
Also movement distance is critical in the game because there is almost no food buffer for your peasants. They start looking for food at around 70/100 food bard and if they travel far, they may return to the last location with 60/100 food because of lack of buffer.

[Siger]

i think the problem is that ppl decide its a good idea to stop working the assigned job and go grab that log from 10000 tiles away to bring it to a stockpile another 10000 tiles away,and when they finish that they go eat,get fun then because it took 5 minutes (real time) and they dint do the assigned job they get reassigned to something else,and the person that got reaasigned is 90000 tiles away from the job and now when that dude gets there he works for 2 sec then goes home to eat fun ♥♥♥♥ whatever.

Follow a citizen in a 300-400 pop city around for some time you will notice they spend 90% of the time doing random stuff instead of working the asigned job.

This problem is very big for farms and ranch because they only get 1 job and if that guy spends 10% of the time actually working then nothing ever gets finished.a workaround for now is to build the farms smaller and sorround them with roads and the farms to be placed in the middle of your city and around the farms to have most of your workplaces. so that when spring comes and ppl get reasgined all over again they spend less time walking around like idiots.

[buds]

I guess the luxury items play a big part on this game while you are expanding, as I’m trying to figure out how my settlement wil gradually evolve. Having produced too much wit little luxury seems like slavery. I’m still trying to find a way to make them really productive and keep happiness to the highest.

[Earthshine]

Thank you very much for your inputs guys :)

Yes, citizen AI can act weird sometimes.
I'll try to fix up citizen AI behavior very soon to alleviate these problems.

[Flike01]

It's very refreshing to see your interaction and interest in our input, Earthshine. My wife and I both purchased this game and have been playing it for the past couple of days. It has been extremely relaxing and enjoyable to play.

I've been reading this community page tonight quite a bit after having played our first game through +20 years, and many of our own concerns and experiences have been echoed by the other players -- both bugs and positive feelings and excitement about the game alike.

Back to the topic: We've definitely both noticed some issues with what seems to be already addressed in this topic, with the programing driving worker priorities in gathering/building/housing/etc, so I'm very happy that it is getting attention. It doesn't completely break the game, but it does add frustration when your settlement starts failing because of forces outside of your own power. I managed to sometimes "reset" the workers by fiddling with priority starring, and changing the laborer/builder auto/manual settings on the town hall, but it's definitely not working 100% how it was intended to work at this point.


All in all, we both love the game so far, it is extremely engaging and time seems to completely slip away while immersed in this builder. I look forward to the upcoming tweaks which will surely unlock the incredible potential this game has to offer. Thank you :)

[Kim Kosmos]

Please implement some way of changing the priority of what laborers do. Hauling in the harvest is way more important than paving the road with stones. People dying left and right while walking past fields full of harvested cabbage

[VogonPoet]

Originally posted by Earthshine:

Thank you very much for your inputs guys :)

Yes, citizen AI can act weird sometimes.
I'll try to fix up citizen AI behavior very soon to alleviate these problems.

A decent stop-gap fix might be allowing items to be gathered via the "gather" feature (like we do when we have them chop wood/collect stone). Then we can just drag a selection box to pick up/gather items within. Add a checkbox for it and we be good!

Either that or add Haulers as a third option to the role list with Laborers, Builders. Make the haulers only job to pick up items.

Anywho, I'm sure you have ideas on how to go about it. Thanks for the response!

[kaneeden]

There needs to be temporary overhousing. For one winter people should be able to take shelter with their neighbors. They aren´t all that bad people that watch their fellow citizens die on the streets .. i mean.. not all all of them..hopefully.

[DotNL]

i have around 500+ people and basically no problem? except for lag

[buds]

Logistics needs to be setup properly imo when growing. Proper distribution works just fine with me at 200+ pops, it remains to be seen as I play a slower growth and sustainable settlement.

[uɐɐılʎʇs]

Originally posted by Siger:

i think the problem is that ppl decide its a good idea to stop working the assigned job and go grab that log from 10000 tiles away to bring it to a stockpile another 10000 tiles away,and when they finish that they go eat,get fun then because it took 5 minutes (real time) and they dint do the assigned job they get reassigned to something else,and the person that got reaasigned is 90000 tiles away from the job and now when that dude gets there he works for 2 sec then goes home to eat fun ♥♥♥♥ whatever.

Follow a citizen in a 300-400 pop city around for some time you will notice they spend 90% of the time doing random stuff instead of working the asigned job.

I wish you could designate occupants from a certain housing area to work locally. Instead of they guy who lives in the 2-3 housing area you built to extend range deciding to go back to the main city to work, while some guy in the city tries to work in your new extension area 40+ tiles away.

As it is sometimes i have to disallow meds from certain storages and sometimes build a 1x1(or bigger sometimes) storage spot reserved just for meds+ food only storage at an extension housing area just so they dont always walk half the territory away when sick or hungry.

Originally posted by Siger:

This problem is very big for farms and ranch because they only get 1 job and if that guy spends 10% of the time actually working then nothing ever gets finished.a workaround for now is to build the farms smaller and sorround them with roads and the farms to be placed in the middle of your city and around the farms to have most of your workplaces. so that when spring comes and ppl get reasgined all over again they spend less time walking around like idiots.

Actually watched they highlighted worker to see why a certain building wasnt getting any progress. He was walking from what id guess was maximum range, getting to site then info would say hes hungry and hed return back to where he started. Most the times you can figure a work around to stop it but it isnt ideal.

[Foxer]

Went to 1000+ peeps and had the problem at around 600.
One solution i used is to accumulate immigrant card to 50+, let death for starvation to 100- peeps and mass use card after winter.
Not THE solution but If this help some =)

[kitkat107242]

Not sure if this has been noticed or commented on yet, but i have noticed the pathing of villagers goes to the closest available source. for instance food. if you have food in a stockpile across a river, but there is no direct path, a villager will bypass other storage piles of food to get to the one closest tile wise, but is forced to take a long roundabout path. Perhaps this is contributing to farms not working as intended as well?

My solution for farmers not working is to find a farm not producing and then just follow that villager. I noticed (playing on Deity) that my farmers would have to go for a stone tool quite often, and i just so happened to only be making stone toosl on the opposite side of my city so they had to make quite a long trek. that combined with them leaving for food left my farms producing nothing.