One hunter camp working on a 20 deer population not enough to feed 5 families

[Jabberwocky]

Hi folks!

In my current playthrough, I have just conquered and started to settle the central region "Waldbrand".

Followed the build order of many tutorials to the letter:

1. two lumber camps, one for work, the other for log storage.
2. granary and storehouse to get the supplies to safety (workers temporarily added)
3. hunter camp and forager hut, each staffed with 1 familly
4. 5 burgage plots with double housing
5. firewood chopper
6. sawpit.

Two burgage plots I immediately equipped with chicken coops, so theoretically they should be able to sustain themselves.
One burgage plot got a larger vegetable garden.
I started on first day of march.

Made a small market with room for 3 stalls, which theoretically should be enough for food, firewood and later clothing for this small community in the beginning.

By September my small settlement is starving. Two hunters on a 20 deer population, unable to feed five families - which should really be three families, as the other two should be able to survive on their homegrown eggs.

Any suggestions, help, anything? Or is my game just so bugged that food production does not work anymore at all?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3242777978

[Jabberwocky]

Publicado originalmente por Rebol:

Provide more info on hunting camp and deer. Is it far? Also, whats the hunting limit? 2 families on hunting camp doesn't really work unless you are in deer rich region. For 20 deer spots its just one family, putting more doesn't really help since you exhaust too fast that they do nothing.
Did you take deer related perks? If not, deers cuts barely enough, no family starves but you won't get any excess meat.

Thank you! The deer spot is about three farm house lengths away from the granary. My hunting camp is right next to it in the forest to the west.

Hunting limit is 10, but has been violated at least once already... last time I looked, the deer population had reached 7 after going down to 5.

I put my 1st development point into trade this time, because one of my other towns also had a famine before despite having plenty of veggie farms, orchards, bread baking, hunting and rich berry deposit, and I wanted to be prepared if that happened again. Last time I fixed the issue via importing food and exporting goods and materials.

[Jaunitta 🌸]

First I'm a she and I restarted 8 times until I found the right map.
The foods is mainly vegetables from Burgage plots some bread and eggs.
There is another we can get later that speeds up the respawing in the foraging
I am now trading hides and ores with some sheep with the livestock trader.
It only takes a couple once a month to grow the funds
Its my only regeon whatever that means I have no idea to get another and am not interested in wars.
1.7 k foods mainly berries, villagers dont eat much
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3242807231

[KrayZee]

Publicado originalmente por Jabberwocky:

Publicado originalmente por KrayZee:

Do people even take 1 look at the screenshot?
He has 33k influence.
Do people honestly think this is his first region in that playthrough? Or even the second?

Either way, I'm still wondering if you used "trapper" as a development point, because I noticed that people walk into far away woods to lay traps which might stop them from hunting.
Is the hunter's camp actually reducing the deer population properly?

If yes, then that means hunters are not able to provide enough foot and they "suck"
If no, then that means hunters are doing their jobs.

Thank you, at least one reasonable person who can read and comprehend. I appreciate it.

No, I had a similar problem in my last town which went past 400+ and experienced a famine even though every burgage plot apart from the artisans and goat herders grew vegetables or orchards or had a chicken coop, and I had built two additional wheat farms outside the town limits near a piece of ++ fertile land, with the whole bread making infrastructure attached and staffed.

In that last town I had to trade food in order to sustain the population. So this time I put the first development point straight into trade.

The hunter's camp has reduced the deer population to 5, even though I set the limit to 10. It is now recuperating slowly and is at 7. So no wonder the hunters cannot hunt anything at the moment. I wonder about the chickens, though... and my rather bulky vegetable garden plot. Will it only start producing the next year? Maybe it was finished too late in the year to be able to harvest the same year.

All my previous towns started out with either rich berry deposits or rich animal deposits or both, so this could definitely factor into what I am experiencing. I do have a savegame right before settling this region. Maybe I should wait until February to settle? Have a little head start with the initial oxen post, hunter camp, lumber camp and so on being built, so that my burgages can be ready in March or April?

I wonder whether that would help me have a veggie harvest in the first year of settlement.

Well the chicken will only provide 1 egg per plot, so it can feed 1 family
It's only good for diversifying your foodtype because people eat one specific type of food first.

So technically you can have one chicken coop accumilate 1000 eggs over 1000 months if people eat beriies throughout the 1000 months instead, and satisfy the food diversity need.

But that's often not gonna work in "bigger towns"
Since you have no other food source (or the town might even prioritize the eggs over meat) they will be instantly consumed the month they are created.

However, unless you have a trading post somewhere that sells food(?) I think this just means that the hunting camp is really bad. Although I've never seen it being this bad.
I usually start all my games with a hunting camp and I have enough food.

I still think a single goat farm and a berry-harvester is better though. So perhaps it's just safer to use that the next time around instead and hunting camp is simply just to put something down if you have unoccupied workers (at least if you don't own rich deer in that region)

[Rebol]

Publicado originalmente por Jabberwocky:

Publicado originalmente por Rebol:

Provide more info on hunting camp and deer. Is it far? Also, whats the hunting limit? 2 families on hunting camp doesn't really work unless you are in deer rich region. For 20 deer spots its just one family, putting more doesn't really help since you exhaust too fast that they do nothing.
Did you take deer related perks? If not, deers cuts barely enough, no family starves but you won't get any excess meat.

Thank you! The deer spot is about three farm house lengths away from the granary. My hunting camp is right next to it in the forest to the west.

Hunting limit is 10, but has been violated at least once already... last time I looked, the deer population had reached 7 after going down to 5.

I put my 1st development point into trade this time, because one of my other towns also had a famine before despite having plenty of veggie farms, orchards, bread baking, hunting and rich berry deposit, and I wanted to be prepared if that happened again. Last time I fixed the issue via importing food and exporting goods and materials.

One of the issues I can think of is that it is not your problem; deer counting going under usually comes from loading the game after a save ( at least its how I seem to get it bugged ).
Also, having multiple regions seems to cause issues like this too, I had a game where I was building up 4 regions at once to build my retainer army but some regions just suffered with food production.

[Don Cool]

Hunters are underwhelming in their jobs, they shouldn´t need upgrades to perform on a mediocre level which they don´t even come close to. They are good for early hides and to get your town up and running, other than that .... hunters are poor.

A "golden" hunter patch performs at about the level I would want a normal hunter patch to.

You can have a hunter on the opposite side of a deer spot and he will still deplete that spot.

[CatPerson]

Any suggestions, help, anything? Or is my game just so bugged that food production does not work anymore at all?

Distance of hunter camp to animal node can make a big difference. Too close, they hunt them too fast and then (sometimes) sit idle longer than they should (in my experience) vs. respawn time. Too far, walking distance, obviously. Sometimes more middling works better, because they have to walk a little bit, so it slows their culling, but not so far it's distance alone that slows it down.

Mostly tho, I find the deer nodes really inconsistent. One start, they're fine/adequate, at least in addition to the berry node if it was also closeish to your start position. Another start, they seem bugged in comparison. I've had rich animal nodes that produced like gangbusters, and other starts where rich animal ... did not.

So yeah ... if you're doing everything the same as you did in other regions, I'd say you've just hit one of those inconsistent nodes/times, or hunter AI issues, or something of that sort.

Did you try deleting the hunter camp and building it anew? Probably won't help, but never know.

[HiGenX]

Did you have any berries left on the bushes before the season ended?

[Ranzera]

Are you dead set on going primary meat? I think berries are by far the better staple food. You get far more than the marked carrying capacity if you're actively picking them. From a regular resource I walk away with something like 200 berries a year (picked March - June). Rich berries are even crazier, I get roughly 500 a year.

I just put a forager hut directly next to the berries and I put a Granary restricted to only berries next to that. I put multiple families on the forager hut and 1 family on the granary. They'll pick the bushes down to half-ish before the next growth tick hits. You get growth ticks about every half month or so.

[Don Cool]

Publicado originalmente por CatPerson:

Distance of hunter camp to animal node can make a big difference.

On my "Eggtown" I have the hunter on the opposite side of the deer patch, he still maintains the deer patch depleted (10 limit) at all times.

[Mazz]

I would say your issue settling that particular spot mid campaign is a bug !!!.

A Game spot with 20 animals and a berry deposit with 64 berries should be enough to get a 5 family region up and running at any point in the game. You only need 1 food type for your basic burgage plot and each family will consume 1 unit of food per month.

If you harvest 60 berries and 15 animals you should arguably have 15 months of food supply. And I haven't even accounted for the half monthly berry growth that happens which should arguably give you about 200 or so berries each year from a normal spot and about 400-500 a yea from a "Rich spot.

15 months is more than enough to get that village up and running with farming and trade and Vegetable/Apple/Egg production to have it self sustainable without needing micromanaging with 15-20 burgage plots.

I found that having a maximum of 30 plots at different levels per region to be a sort of soft cap on having that region be self sustaining and not needing me to change the number of workers in a specific job.

Also means that you're not chopping down so much wood for fire that you have a delay in firewood being distributed.

[CatPerson]

Publicado originalmente por Don Cool:

Publicado originalmente por CatPerson:

Distance of hunter camp to animal node can make a big difference.

On my "Eggtown" I have the hunter on the opposite side of the deer patch, he still maintains the deer patch depleted (10 limit) at all times.

Interesting, hasn't been my experience. But like I said ... they're inconsistent and I just think hunter AI gets wonky. Who knows tho.

I've also had berry nodes/foragers get a bit weird (I think), where even if I put max workers in the hut, the berry node never seems to get touched much. eg, the number of berries left/the circle doesn't go down hardly at all. Maybe that'll happen for a couple years, then suddenly they're picking berries again.

I don't know ... it's all so inconsistent. Which is why in the long run I spam/horde food, trading for it, producing it etc. But in the very start of a game/region - it would be a problem.

[Batfish J. Macaque]

Publicado originalmente por KrayZee:

Is the hunter's camp actually reducing the deer population properly?

I don't think so, the hunters seem to ignore the hunting limit.
I have 'rich animals' in my current game and have never had more than one family in the camp but after a while every time I hovered the mouse pointer over the animals it would always be between 8/40 and 12/40 so I tried upping the limit from 10 to 12 then 15 but it made no difference.
I then took the family out of the camp and left it for a couple of weeks or so then when I checked again it said 41/40 so now I'm just moving the family out for a while when it goes below 15/40 and I'm getting a lot more meat and hides.

[Jabberwocky]

Publicado originalmente por Fyra'Nok:

Publicado originalmente por Jabberwocky:

snip

OK looking closer at your screenshot, which is difficult to pull much from. Your eggaries have double homes and the vegetable burg looks unreasonable large.

Not entirely sure how vegetables "work", but wont be surprised if its similar to crops and if it's even affected by the hunting ground policy. I think the answer you seek is within the details of all that. Maybe your veggie garden owners were mostly busy on a different job.

The vegetable plot is large and wide on purpose. The bigger they are, the more they yield. I have personally found a size of 0.5 morgen optimal for them. At least in previous towns.

I'll check about the chicken coop houses maybe being too big with two family homes.

[Hrochnick]

Publicado originalmente por Jabberwocky:

No, I had a similar problem in my last town which went past 400+ pop and experienced a famine even though every burgage plot apart from the artisans and goat herders grew vegetables or orchards or had a chicken coop, and I had built two additional wheat farms outside the town limits near a piece of ++ fertile land, with the whole bread making infrastructure attached and staffed.

In that last town I had to trade food in order to sustain the population. So this time I put the first development point straight into trade.

In my experience, families can either concentrate on a job or a big vegetable garden, not both. I try to keep all my critical job families in houses with no garden and try to give no jobs to families that I expect to grow veg (try, because without a families/jobs/houses summary panel, it's quite tricky).

In my last play though (after having exactly the same issues as you in the previous ones) it seems to be doing well. Currently nearly 2000 veg in the main settlement of 500 or so; 1000+ veg, 500+ eggs and 200 or so meat in the small hunting village (100-200 pop). Only the new farming village (of 500 or so now) is still struggling. If only the barter system was faster and more reliable!

[Jabberwocky]

Publicado originalmente por KrayZee:

Well the chicken will only provide 1 egg per plot, so it can feed 1 family
It's only good for diversifying your foodtype because people eat one specific type of food first.

(...)

However, unless you have a trading post somewhere that sells food(?) I think this just means that the hunting camp is really bad. Although I've never seen it being this bad.
I usually start all my games with a hunting camp and I have enough food.

I was operating under the assumption that food consumption is per burgage plot, not per family, as that is what I heard in the most recent tutorial videos I watched. Has that been debunked?

No, I do not have a trading post up and running yet. I need more manpower for that, but at this rate, I'm not gonna get it.

Publicado originalmente por CatPerson:

Mostly tho, I find the deer nodes really inconsistent. One start, they're fine/adequate, at least in addition to the berry node if it was also closeish to your start position. Another start, they seem bugged in comparison. I've had rich animal nodes that produced like gangbusters, and other starts where rich animal ... did not.

So yeah ... if you're doing everything the same as you did in other regions, I'd say you've just hit one of those inconsistent nodes/times, or hunter AI issues, or something of that sort.

Did you try deleting the hunter camp and building it anew? Probably won't help, but never know.

Yeah, that overlaps with my own experience. We desperately need pigs in the game. At that time and in that region, almost everybody tried to have some pigs. The game needs a more reliable source of meat.

I am not dead set on having to hunt for meat, I only did it to try and sustain my first 5 families until I can grow more veggies with more citizens. But it seems that won't work.

Deleting and rebuilding the camp did nothing, but thanks for trying anyway. Appreciate it!

Publicado originalmente por Mazz:

I would say your issue settling that particular spot mid campaign is a bug !!!.

A Game spot with 20 animals and a berry deposit with 64 berries should be enough to get a 5 family region up and running at any point in the game. You only need 1 food type for your basic burgage plot and each family will consume 1 unit of food per month.

That was what I was expecting as well, but the game didn't agree with my expectation, it seems.