market stall proximity and food distribution

[dota matthäus]

i have several marketplaces in my town so people who live around them can build their stalls there and sell their goods, no matter where they live. but the only marketplace that is being used is the first one i built. it has space for 21 stalls, all built and occupied.

so naturally, there are now burgs that are a bit further away and i can't upgrade them because of a lack of food variety. if the market stalls are too far away (really it's just a few meters you lazy little people...), why don't they just set some up in the marketplace area right next to them? what do i have to do so that i fulfill the requirements to upgrade all my burgs?

one example is a burg lvl 3 that constantly complains about no or not enough food variety (i know you can't upgrade it any more, it's just for showing what i mean).
the main market place is right next to it. the burg itself has chickens. the market place next to it has all available foods except berries and honey (it is march right now). but the game indicates that the burg only has veggies available??
i don't get it.

[Sunscreen]

In my limited experience, it may be that the houses closest to your centre of distribution are using the available output. I believe that priority is given relative to distance from source, so those furthest away are the first to run short of requirements. My suggestion would be to potentially relocate your distribution hub to a more central location, ensure it is staffed so that it can open market stalls if required in order to supplement producers market output. Ensuring it is staffed also means carts will be used for transportation which is efficient relative to hand carrying, and consequentially allows your producers to expend more time producing and less time transporting.

To put it another way, there are two possibilities. Your producers (berry pickers, hunters etc) will acquire resources and then set up a market if market space is available. They will as a family unit also transport goods to market and man the market stall. Transporting goods to market requires an additional resource- time. They can not carry much and it takes time. Demand can easily outstrip supply in such a situation. Alternatively your granary workers can use carts to visit your berry pickers and hunters, transport more goods per trip to the granary, and set up multiple market stalls for single goods items if demand merits it. This frees up your resource acquisition workers to focus on that, increasing output and throughput.

I think I have that right, but without documentation your guess is a good as mine.

[CatPerson]

"physical" distance of houses from market makes no difference/this game doesn't use that kind of mechanic. It's more like ... there's an AI "check" of stalls by houses, which goes in order from closest to market first, then farthest away. Goods are "teleported" to houses, they do not have to fectch them manually. You could build a market on one side of the map and your houses on the other side of the map and it would still work. But something about the checks = mathematically, there may not be enough goods in the stalls to "reach" the farthest houses.

The more stalls there are (vs. population) the less likely all those stalls will be full because the goods get split up between too many stalls. There's something weird with that, it messes up the math in some fashion, I don't pretend to fully understand it - there are a lot of long threads trying to explain it, search for those.

But in essence, early game, keep the market small. One or two of each stall type.
If you get desperate, I find deleting ALL markets (so you have ZERO) and then building a new market of approx. similar stall size resets the mechanic, as ppl place their stalls again and fill them up again.

[Sunscreen]

Catperson makes an excellent point.

From the pinned known issues above-
"It’s important to note that Marketplaces have a range-like effect based on goods present. If you have 100% of your needs, you’re covering 100% of existing Burgage Plots regardless of location within the same region, however there is a proximity effect in that houses closer to the Market get their needs fulfilled first."

So insufficient supply can manifest itself even though you have technically enough output, because stalls are distributing inefficiently and effectively acting as a sink..?

Time spent transporting goods also is time those goods are not being usefully used. Its not exactly intuitive..

[dota matthäus]

thanks for your explanations!
i still don't quite understand it but i'm getting the picture that you would have to "know" how your town will look like after it develops so you have to place everything perfectly right from the beginning - or burn down houses and market places later on to rearrange your town? that's not very realistic tbh.

and how can i control how many stalls of each type there are, by what type of food i assign to the burgs?

[dota matthäus]

Originally posted by Sunscreen:

Catperson makes an excellent point.

From the pinned known issues above-
"It’s important to note that Marketplaces have a range-like effect based on goods present. If you have 100% of your needs, you’re covering 100% of existing Burgage Plots regardless of location within the same region, however there is a proximity effect in that houses closer to the Market get their needs fulfilled first."

So insufficient supply can manifest itself even though you have technically enough output, because stalls are distributing inefficiently and effectively acting as a sink..?

yeah, i think i understand. but it doesn't make sense because then i wouldn'T have the issues i described with the burgs right next to the marketplace complaining about lack of food variety (one lvl 3 burg even showing zero food variety when in reality there's like 5 of 7 food types covered in the market place).

[Sunscreen]

You can also limit what your granary throughputs. I have cleared market places and unassigned families en mass to tidy up my village. Also relocated granaries as required too. Its worth treating it like real life in the sense of asking what is needed, where.

[Sunscreen]

Originally posted by fubert:

Originally posted by Sunscreen:

Catperson makes an excellent point.

From the pinned known issues above-
"It’s important to note that Marketplaces have a range-like effect based on goods present. If you have 100% of your needs, you’re covering 100% of existing Burgage Plots regardless of location within the same region, however there is a proximity effect in that houses closer to the Market get their needs fulfilled first."

So insufficient supply can manifest itself even though you have technically enough output, because stalls are distributing inefficiently and effectively acting as a sink..?

yeah, i think i understand. but it doesn't make sense because then i wouldn'T have the issues i described with the burgs right next to the marketplace complaining about lack of food variety (one lvl 3 burg even showing zero food variety when in reality there's like 5 of 7 food types covered in the market place).

Thats a good point. No idea there. It may be worth making a plan, unassigning, demolishing market stalls, demolishing market land space and reassigning and rebuilding as required. That worked for me. Its opaque, and your issue is certainly unexpected and counter to what is described in mechanics terms.

[dota matthäus]

Originally posted by Sunscreen:

You can also limit what your granary throughputs. I have cleared market places and unassigned families en mass to tidy up my village. Also relocated granaries as required too. Its worth treating it like real life in the sense of asking what is needed, where.

yes, but isn't that how it's already supposed to work according to the game? the burgs are telling me what they need and the marketplace tells me that everything they need is there (with a little fluctuation of course) but the burgs don't get it..

[CatPerson]

There's only three stall types. Firewood/fuel, food, and clothing. It's just that everyone under the sun wants to make a stall for the same things.

Example: start of game, one builds a warehouse, granary, and, say, berry collector. Warehouse wants to make a stall (with only one employee, probably for firewood), the granary will too (food), berry collector, food. If you then get leather/linen etc, either another warehouse worker or the clothing manufacturer (tanner, weaver) will want to make clothing stalls. So early game if you simply make a market that's only 3-6 stalls large, it'll just happen.

When your town grows, you can make new 3-6 stall segments next to the original, or like I said earlier, delete entire and just make a new single market that's a little bigger, each time. Up to you. Or you can micromanage by deleting individual stalls (they get a corner trash icon if you click on them) and hoping someone builds a stall type you want to replace it - but more often than not that's a frustrating micromanagement tactic, which is why I don't bother trying to do that anymore. ;)

[dota matthäus]

Originally posted by Sunscreen:

Originally posted by fubert:

yeah, i think i understand. but it doesn't make sense because then i wouldn'T have the issues i described with the burgs right next to the marketplace complaining about lack of food variety (one lvl 3 burg even showing zero food variety when in reality there's like 5 of 7 food types covered in the market place).

Thats a good point. No idea there. It may be worth making a plan, unassigning, demolishing market stalls, demolishing market land space and reassigning and rebuilding as required. That worked for me. Its opaque, and your issue is certainly unexpected and counter to what is described in mechanics terms.

alright, well while i hate rearranging and burning down houses just to follow unclear game mechanics, i might do that to some extent. thanks for your help!

[dota matthäus]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

There's only three stall types. Firewood/fuel, food, and clothing. It's just that everyone under the sun wants to make a stall for the same things.

Example: start of game, one builds a warehouse, granary, and, say, berry collector. Warehouse wants to make a stall (with only one employee, probably for firewood), the granary will too (food), berry collector, food. If you then get leather/linen etc, either another warehouse worker or the clothing manufacturer (tanner, weaver) will want to make clothing stalls. So early game if you simply make a market that's only 3-6 stalls large, it'll just happen.

When your town grows, you can make new 3-6 stall segments next to the original, or like I said earlier, delete entire and just make a new single market that's a little bigger, each time. Up to you. Or you can micromanage by deleting individual stalls (they get a corner trash icon if you click on them) and hoping someone builds a stall type you want to replace it - but more often than not that's a frustrating micromanagement tactic, which is why I don't bother trying to do that anymore. ;)

yeah it may make sense altogether for the game in some way, but it's certainly not how you would expect it to work. i hope it will be reworked a bit so there's more transparency and you either have more control or the game mechanic for food distribution gets better.

[OKOK]

U can try to delete the first market when u completed upgrade those near by. With the new market, those nearest will be those that had not been upgraded.

[CatPerson]

One thing I've noticed in my game at least, is that if you always have a large "surpluss" of all the goods, but one of the stalls was built very early game, it may be full (max 50) of nothing but, say, a few items. Once full, that surpluss means it never alters it's inventory and won't have any, example, bread. Or clothes.

Thus why I think deleting/rebuilding resets it because then the newly built stalls will grab everything.

I've managed to make my last few towns market stable overall, only having to delete/replace them a couple times (up to 600 population), but I cannot say I understand the mechanics on a deep or math-y level. The only "design" element I feel like I need to do is keep warehouses/granaries/industry buildings fairly close together. An industry center, so to speak. Spreading warehouses/granaries all over your town willy nilly doesn't really seem to help with much, until maybe you're spread out across the whole map perhaps.

[dota matthäus]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

One thing I've noticed in my game at least, is that if you always have a large "surpluss" of all the goods, but one of the stalls was built very early game, it may be full (max 50) of nothing but, say, a few items. Once full, that surpluss means it never alters it's inventory and won't have any, example, bread. Or clothes.

Thus why I think deleting/rebuilding resets it because then the newly built stalls will grab everything.

I've managed to make my last few towns market stable overall, only having to delete/replace them a couple times (up to 600 population), but I cannot say I understand the mechanics on a deep or math-y level. The only "design" element I feel like I need to do is keep warehouses/granaries/industry buildings fairly close together. An industry center, so to speak. Spreading warehouses/granaries all over your town willy nilly doesn't really seem to help with much, until maybe you're spread out across the whole map perhaps.

imho, it shouldn't be necessary to understand the mechanics on a deep/dev level to properly play and enjoy the game..

[CatPerson]

I think there are some market glitches/bugs that make it all the more confusing etc.

But it does work - I think part of it is just that if one is used to the "typical" city/town builder ways of doing things, it's hard to wrap the head around the way this game does it. I kind of had to get past that (just speaking for myself) a bit I guess. Just like I had to figure out those wonky market ladies and "access walkers" in Caesar 3 way back when.