Families as workforce

[Dr.Daniel.PhD]

At first I found it interesting that the workforce was measured as the number of families in your settlement, but then saw how resources are consumed according to the number of settlers and that production was not scaling in all buildings according to the number of family members involved and realised this was the reason why so many people is struggling with famine.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that historically families would all work in the same job and were the main society unit. But from a gameplay perspective I think this system needs a tweek to be functional: instead of having all family members allocated to a job, it would be nice to see some diversification of the family members across each production line. For instance, instead of requiring a "family" managing the storage house for it to collect resources from the producing buildings, family members should be constantly moving their building goods to the storage or marketplace. Or even better, have family member be deployable for buildings of the same production line; for example, family members can be deployed at the windmill and the bakery, or at the malting and brewery. Needing so many families that consume such big ammounts of food and other comodities makes little sense and artificially increase the difficulty of the game...

[ApocalypseMeow]

I can't even figure out how to get my people to work. I had a a population of 37 a moment ago but couldn't get anyone to do the few jobs I had around the village. Do I need to build houses next to where I want them to work?

[Dr.Daniel.PhD]

Originally posted by ApocalypseMeow:

I can't even figure out how to get my people to work. I had a a population of 37 a moment ago but couldn't get anyone to do the few jobs I had around the village. Do I need to build houses next to where I want them to work?

Just need to open any producing building and add families to work there. Houses can be built anywhere. Make sure the producing buildings have the resources nearby

[MrAnderson]

These people having food issues don't know how to set up farms I guess. Once you have wheat turned into bread you have more than enough for people and extra to sell.

[Komissar Rudinov]

I agree.
Current system is clunky.
You have to add extra families to get more workers even though you have people just waiting around.

[Redemption]

Originally posted by Dr.Daniel.PhD:

At first I found it interesting that the workforce was measured as the number of families in your settlement, but then saw how resources are consumed according to the number of settlers and that production was not scaling in all buildings according to the number of family members involved and realised this was the reason why so many people is struggling with famine.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that historically families would all work in the same job and were the main society unit. But from a gameplay perspective I think this system needs a tweek to be functional: instead of having all family members allocated to a job, it would be nice to see some diversification of the family members across each production line. For instance, instead of requiring a "family" managing the storage house for it to collect resources from the producing buildings, family members should be constantly moving their building goods to the storage or marketplace. Or even better, have family member be deployable for buildings of the same production line; for example, family members can be deployed at the windmill and the bakery, or at the malting and brewery. Needing so many families that consume such big ammounts of food and other comodities makes little sense and artificially increase the difficulty of the game...

one of your points still works in my game. family members within the chain (at least to a certain point). i have my woodcutter and he got the first family due to building a house. His wife although technically assigned as part of the woodcutter family, carries the logs to the storehouse if ox is unused. maybe its because i dont have anyone assigned to take care of the ox and currently no one is assigned to the storehouse. dont really know why.

[ry0.saeba]

I think the other two do non productive jobs like transporting, the garden, construction.
Would be nice they stayed in the chain of production, or we could choose where they live and work, or get better at it with time, we'll see.
I swim in food, a bigger house with a bigger garden alone produces a lot of surplus from year 2, one field produce so much I can't process it all in time, can't get enough people, enough logs to build, how many people do you guys can get before having food problems? I got around 100 when all storing and transporting started to take to long and was all mixed, but I could still build more houses if I had the logs with all the food in storage and ready for the harvest.

[ShepherdOfCats]

I just tried starting a map and assigned one family to the logging camp, then clicked "enable idle laborers". I moved the hitching post closer to the logging camp, and assigned NO families, but clicked "enable idle laborers".

I started with no supplies so I can see what happens better (even though it says "none", it gives two logs to build the logging camp). The other 4 homeless "families" will 'procrastinate' or 'wait' for a time, then they will start assisting with logging, or guiding the ox, even though I only ever assigned the one family to the logging camp.

It seems perhaps the delay for unassigned workers to stop 'procrastinating' or 'waiting' is a bit too long, but they WILL eventually fill needed roles. By April, which I think is one month after the game started, there are 7 logs in my logging camp stockpile.

Now, I'm about to start new construction, which is very labor intensive and I expect all the idle workers to finish their current task and move onto the construction site of the next building, except the one I have assigned to logging, and someone should also guide the ox, even though I haven't assigned anyone to the hitching post.

EDIT: So, apparently they starve very quickly when you start with no food. 3 have died already, but not because they stopped working. They just didn't have anything to eat and I didn't get any deer herds this time so I had to build the berry gatherer's hut which takes longer (because the deer tents don't need any logs to be transported).

This concludes my experiment, though satisfaction is at 0% (I know right?) and I'm keeping it going because I'm curious to see if the remaining two will spark a rebellion as the tool tip indicates.

EDIT 2: The remaining 2 have died, and I'm greeted by the "game over [work in progress]" message. .

[TFTEnthusiast]

Having each family assigned to a single task works well enough without over-complicating it. The big thing is when drafting and military service comes up, you're going to be pulling from the males of households and if the assignment system is too granulated and rigid then suddenly there are jobs not being fulfilled because peasant 23 that was assigned to it got drafted. Granted there could be a bit of rework, for example I think it's a bit much to assign a whole family to running a single market stall just for distributing goods.