Sawmill not working

[Blue Gaiden]

My sawmill is not working, not constructing planks, despite having timber and one family assigned to it. Does anybody knows why?

[Androme]

It's a very Ox intensive building, assign a Ox to it. It requires one log for each time it's intended to work. If all the oxes are busy doing something else, they won't prioritize the Sawmill.

[Blue Gaiden]

Thx for your advice! So you need 2 Oxen, one to build constantly and one assigned to your sawpit?

[Lailantie]

You can never have enough oxen in your game, for everything :)

[Karsh]

Originally posted by Delicious Demon:

Thx for your advice! So you need 2 Oxen, one to build constantly and one assigned to your sawpit?

roughly yes , you can also not assign one (i did that in my playthrough but i whent for a fast 4 oxes . so i alway's had spare oxes going around

[Androme]

Originally posted by Delicious Demon:

Thx for your advice! So you need 2 Oxen, one to build constantly and one assigned to your sawpit?

Basically what Lailantie said: Oxen are very important, try to buy a new Ox once every month and make sure you have enough hitching posts/small stables that the animals are always within limit.

I tend to manually assign Oxen to my farmhouses, sawpits and logging camps, otherwise I just leave them unassigned.

Hope that helps =)

[SR-114]

I think I found the issue on this one. I found that when I set the Construction Reserve at the Sawmill and also the Desired Surplus at the Trading Station for values greater than zero, the sawmills wouldn't produce. Setting the construction reserve to zero, I could set the Desired Surplus at the Trading Station and the sawmill began working correctly again. Simply use the Trading Station to manage the floor amount of wood you want to keep.

[Saxon]

The first thing I do when starting a new game is building a second hitching post and buying an ox for it. I find planks to be one of the hardest things to automate in this game. I constantly micro-manage the sawpit and assign<->unassign oxen to it. I wish I could tell it to stop after having X amount of planks in storage.

[AlexGK]

What I do now is build animal trader as soon as I loot the first bandit camp (money to the village). Assign a family to it and order 3 oxen. Its the fastest way to expand. Also, while they haul those, I rush two houses to lvl 2 and go trade taxes reduction. Then order 2 more oxen, a horse and sheep (they are all cheaper now).
If you leave no free family for a while, most, if not all of the oxens will be perma guided by free manor servants staff. Its like having two bonus families working. It kick-starts the village and its wealth (two level 2 houses produce bows and shoes to sell), we are talking 600+ silver income by month 4 year 1!
You can never get the oxen/horse fast enough by ordering 1 per month.
Also wood/planck/mats/bows/shield industry is soooo broken! You get the best militia weapon + infinite source of the highest revenue chain in the game. But you need oxens for it, a lot of them.
You need the sawpits working, pronto :)