Why do my Communal Ovens not work?

[AngerIsAnEnergy]

I started on a region with piss-poor fertility and its taken over 4 years to get to the stage where I can get bread and ale to allow upgrading to Lvl III burgage plots.

I had accumulated ~300 flour through multiple tiny harvests. - it is all in a granary. I built a communal oven, staffed it and expected the 3 families to get baking. All the families went to get firewood/charcoal - great. Then they just sat at home "waiting" or going to the tavern. Once 1 family got flour and made 2 bread - then stopped. I watched them for a month like this. Dismissed the workers, assigned new workers - same thing. In total, for 3 months (May, June, July) they have made 5 bread - judging by how much flour they have used. There is no bread in market/granary or houses. The Food surplus occasional tells me -3 or -2 bread or 0. I have no idea what that means, except the 0 , of course.

I built a new communal oven - exactly the same issue. I demolished and rebuilt both ovens. Still the same. I tried (as I had read on internet) to not store firewood in the ovens - made no difference. I set stock limits to the flour (1) and bread (50) demand - no difference.

I was expecting ~200+ bread from these ovens and got 5 in over 3 months. I can't upgrade any burgages to Lvl III to unlock a dev point to get bakery extensions. Well, I "could" import bread I suppose but that feels wrong having worked for 3 years gathering the flour.

What can I do to get bread made please? Any suggestions?

EDIT: I reloaded the save - no difference. I restarted the game and loaded the save - no difference. I am playing on the pre-release branch - 0.8.0.0.6 (I think)

[Didz]

We are still on 0.8004, so perhaps your playing a different game.

[AngerIsAnEnergy]

It seems I am playing 0.8.003, so ...

[SgtSpud]

The negative numbers indicate your people are eating the bread first that may be why you are not seeing a surplus.

[Didz]

Originally posted by AngerIsAnEnergy:

It seems I am playing 0.8.003, so ...

That's weird! Why are players of the Early Release version of the game on such disperate versions. Mine seems to just get updated automatically by steam.

[AngerIsAnEnergy]

Ok, communal ovens now work, and here's how...

It is September?October and the wheat harvest came in (32 wheat, what a bonanza). I set all fields to fallow so the farmer do nothing and they threshed into grain. The miller made new flour and suddenly both ovens started working. 1st they took the new flour from the mill (I disabled flour in the granary, so it was not collected). At some point in that process the bakers started to take the flour from the granary, and continued to make bread when the flour ran out of the mill, ie, exactly what I would expect.

I don't understand why this occurs but I'm going to make a presumption (both dangerous and stupid) that the chain of production needs to be complete and active - wheat -> grain -> flour -> bread.

Confused but people are eating bread and drinking ale, so Lvl III burgage on the way at long last.

[SgtSpud]

Originally posted by AngerIsAnEnergy:

Ok, communal ovens now work, and here's how...

It is September?October and the wheat harvest came in (32 wheat, what a bonanza). I set all fields to fallow so the farmer do nothing and they threshed into grain. The miller made new flour and suddenly both ovens started working. 1st they took the new flour from the mill (I disabled flour in the granary, so it was not collected). At some point in that process the bakers started to take the flour from the granary, and continued to make bread when the flour ran out of the mill, ie, exactly what I would expect.

I don't understand why this occurs but I'm going to make a presumption (both dangerous and stupid) that the chain of production needs to be complete and active - wheat -> grain -> flour -> bread.

Confused but people are eating bread and drinking ale, so Lvl III burgage on the way at long last.

Try not to make changes to your fields on the fly, it can mess things up just set crop rotation and let it go if you are able. Right now i'm running 4 or 5 fully staffed farms growing Barley wheat and flax. 4 communal ovens and 2 windmills and things are running quite smoothly population nearing 900.

[DragoonMaster89]

Just found out In one of the updates they made it where Malt Houses and the ovens need fuel, and the ones we built before do not have the option for fuel. I made a new one and immediately started making bread and malt so just rebuild them.

[Clovis Sangrail]

My experience with community overs is that they suck. Invest a point in Bakeries so you can build a Bakery backyard extension. You get twice the bread, plus your bakers are full-time bakers. They won't be farting around with their orchards or gardens or whatever.

Since your farming appears marginal that extra bread production will come in handy.

And don't mess with the crop rotation for your current field. It will bite you in the ass.

[Spud]

Maybe it's the wooden doors?

[Razorblade Nipples]

you should have expanded into a fertile area within 4 years and made that your wheat district

[Zin]

As with all food types the people eat it as it's produced. You really only start seeing excess of anything once you have an abundance of once thing in the same category. Same happens with charcoal. There's currently no option to say make them eat more eat and leave the bread, they just eat it as it comes out of the oven so it seems like none is being made. That's also assuming that the place has fuel and the workers aren't tending to their garden at home etc.

[Didz]

That's not how the game works.

Approval is based upon satisfying Demand.
Demand is satisfied by Supply on the market.

You can check the extent to which your market is satisfying demand simply by right clicking on it. If Supply v Demand is 100% then everyone is getting the what they need and you should have no approval penalties.

However, if Supply v Demand is less than 100% then the shortfall in supply is reflected by those residences farthest from the market showing a lack of supply and thus generating an approval penalty.

Nobody actually eats any food, it simply disappears from the market and is then replaced by the pedlars.

So, the context of the Communal Oven, nobody eats the bread from the oven. The Oven makes the bread and stores it in its generic storage until either a granary worker or a pedlar comes to collect it. If the Granary Worker collects it they usually store it in the Granary and the Pedlars will collect it from there, but if the Granary is empty or non-existent then the pedlars will collect the bread directly from the oven. Nobody collects food and eats it directly from the supplier.