How many villagers are enough?

[mayree]

I have 85 villagers and thinking that may be to many.

[LemuresXL]

It's a decision only you make for what's enough.

[Object108]

pull the other one it plays jingle bells

[Jebbalon]

For the main village ? or including outposts ?

[Forced2Finish]

Originally posted by mayree:

I have 85 villagers and thinking that may be to many.

3 per building if the building allows it.
I have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd shifts. So everything is running 24/7

[mayree]

Thanks for the info and response. I was only running two shifts maybe ill spilt it to three.

[Aurelius]

I recently pushed to 100 villagers and I'm still stabilizing things.
Food supply got wonky between 75-90 where I went from completely stable at 2 round-the-clock, fully staffed cookhouses to 4 because my food stocks crashed in like 2 game days. I can't explain that. That was happening right around the back-to-back patches at the first of April and I have seen some strange AI behavior since then, where a given worker will just stop working for some unknown period of time, and I think this impacted it. Noticed several times that the pots were completely unmanned for a meaningful period of time even when I'm theoretically running three shifts on them. This was with full meat and fish racks in the warehouse adjacent, and everybody had access to knives.

All this to say - you CAN grow to larger and make it work, but I can't think of a single thing you couldn't do with 75 that you can do with 95, unless you're wanting to expand to exploit the other mines, lakes, etc., with several outposts. Logically you'll probably want some labor expansion to make those work.

[Jebbalon]

Originally posted by Jebbalon:

For the main village ? or including outposts ?

To answer the question.. I'm at 110 villagers currently. Main village is about ... oh, have to calculate total minus outposts.. about 10 per outpost so 40 currently. 110-40 is 70 in main village -ish.

My 5th outpost at the 3rd mine is quite some distance and have only built there no villagers yet. The builders that head out there often get exhausted it is so far, need to send one out there but want cottage completed first. The road is done though. I did make a midway outpost with market to transfer from mine to midway and midway to main. Big project there.

here is map...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3458088861 ..3rd mine is in south.

[Zarubine]

I like my games lean and efficient. I find the more people you have and the more you need to ramp up everything, the more things get out of wack. By which I mean, production of food, tools, firewood, etc. doesn't keep up with the number of people required to run everything smoothly, which can very easily result in a vicious cycle.

So I have only 25 people - 19 in my main town and 6 in a mining/hunting outpost. One worker per production building except for the kitchen and warehouses. One shift only.

I'm on day 188 and I can't see a need for any more people at all unless invasions get substantially more difficult. So far I get by without barracks or archery range or healer. Also, no workers to tend the altars. My villagers' happiness is above 90 for all of them.

[Jebbalon]

Originally posted by Zarubine:

I like my games lean and efficient. I find the more people you have and the more you need to ramp up everything, the more things get out of wack. By which I mean, production of food, tools, firewood, etc. doesn't keep up with the number of people required to run everything smoothly, which can very easily result in a vicious cycle.

So I have only 25 people - 19 in my main town and 6 in a mining/hunting outpost. One worker per production building except for the kitchen and warehouses. One shift only.

I'm on day 188 and I can't see a need for any more people at all unless invasions get substantially more difficult. So far I get by without barracks or archery range or healer. Also, no workers to tend the altars. My villagers' happiness is above 90 for all of them.

There is no wrong way to play.... here is my take on this though..

There are like 28 building types in Aska currently. With average of 2.3 villagers assignable to them (fully upgraded). That means a village with 1 of each building (including 1 outpost building) would be population of over 60 villagers. That of course would require more cookhouses to support and more food production to support that. Thus the endless cycle.

More workers means more efficiency - like if I pin a repair for a structure - it is Very nice to see some of my 10 builders rushing over to grab items and get that repair done before I know it.
Having 5-6 workers at the metal/carpenter is so nice when the builders rush over to grab wall materials they are restocked in matter of moments.

I've gotten to the point of excess and it is honestly kinda nice to watch it happen.

Resin is still a thing - I have a forester for hardwood and just added a forester to only do fir trees for resin/firewood

[Aurelius]

Agreed with Jebbalon;
Some excess labor in the builder pool is really nice to have - you can adjust your supply chain more quickly, either by adding folks to existing tasks or by building new buildings. Same goes for large terraforming projects. If you want to build some large flat areas or earth walls, having 7-8 builders out there makes it dramatically faster and less frustrating.

Bringing on some extra villagers is also nice for optimization of existing tasks; Even if you've got 100 skill built up on older buildings, you may not have the perks to run efficient 24x7 operations if you don't have enough folks with the night-time happiness perks. Also, getting some extra folks with the specific gathering or crafting perks later game can allow them to come up to "expert" speed very quickly. Same goes for combat skills. The randomness factor means that continuing to bring villagers onboard lets you be more choosy about who gets what jobs, with your low-skilled or bad-perk villagers eventually making it to the builder pool, etc.

Resin remains a weird mid- to late- game constraint. I'm at the point of having to kick people off my altars and downgrade the torch maintenance for builders so there's enough resin to keep the mine lit.

[Bobman]

I'm currently at 135, im going for 200 in my main village, then ill start with outpost.

[mayree]

Originally posted by Bobman:

I'm currently at 135, im going for 200 in my main village, then ill start with outpost.

Nice!

[mayree]

Originally posted by Jebbalon:

For the main village ? or including outposts ?

Including outposts

[mayree]

I’m just tired of searching through such a long list of names to assign to posts or add to whitelists. So time consuming. But i do think we need a large population to rebuild the civilization (which is our goal?)

[Aurelius]

Originally posted by mayree:

I’m just tired of searching through such a long list of names to assign to posts or add to whitelists. So time consuming. But i do think we need a large population to rebuild the civilization (which is our goal?)

I think that the tools need to evolve to assist with managing larger populations. It would be extremely valuable to be able to sort people by attributes \ perks, shift time schedules en mass, etc.

I don't really know if the devs have picked a sweet spot for the ideal size, but at a certain point, perhaps above 100 villagers, it does become extremely difficult to manage things productively.