Herbalists?? Helpful, or Not Needed at all??

[maiden4meldin]

The herbalist, is an interesting building. On the one hand, the herbs sell for the same price as firewood, and can be traded for food, easily. sometimes even from the General merchant at least, for Resources, or Tools.

But does a player actually "Need" the Herbalist??

Pro's:
1. Sells for 4 at trading post.
2. Boosts health for citizens with less than four hearts of health.
3. Clears the forest floor so more food can grow?? maybe?? This one I do not know for sure.
4. Can be left alone in a smaller space, without foresters, or other huts. And will do well to just be collecting herbs.

Con's
1. Early game, fills up barn space, leaving less room for food, and pushes players into building second storage barn sooner.
2. Causes players with marginal health to track the Herbalist down. Loses production time.
3. Gives only 1/2 a Health Heart Boost. Means the citizen has to return if still below Four Health Hearts.
4. Can be difficult to be tracked down, taking citizens longer to locate The worker, to administer the herb.
5. Extra boost to health is not a full cure, just a stop gap measure.

I personally, do not build Herbalists in my games. I find the cons to outweigh the pro's for me. And if I am losing health, then it is my fault, I have somewhere placed a house or two outside a market radius. Or I am not providing enough of a certain food group to boost the health of my citizens properly and permanently. It is the same for me and the Tavern. I am actually opposed to taking away my food, and not giving me back more food in return. The ale does sell for good coins at the Trading post. But, I just don't feel right about growing fruits, to turn into ale for a small boost of happiness. I guess if I ever had issues with Happiness I would turn to the Taverns. But for me the Churches manage it all quite well.

[olympe]

Personally, I usually build one herbalist for actually collecting herbs, and another around each and every market. This way, I have all the pros, but only few of the cons since the herbalists are easy to access for my bannies. ;)

Of course, herbalist #2 and further only come into play once I've established my colony well enough to provide all the necessities...

[kevinshow]

I guess my answer is, They are helpful, but they might not be needed.

I've gone as low as 2 hearts and it didn't go into some kind of death spiral situation like it does when people are struggling for food. Supposedly unhealthy people may experienced more deaths, but because we don't know that it was caused by being unhealthy, we just take it as a typical death situation in the game, and as long as we have enough backup population to handle it, we just move forward.

Eventually, the health comes back up. Whether that's because the really unhealthy ones died off, and the new average is higher, or because we finally got all the different kinds of foods available, it's good again.

So in my opinion, because a town can benefit from even just 1 herbalist, I have an herbalist job. Later as I want to depend on herbs for trading, then I may add a few more.

But in general, once I get to trading, I wouldn't have such a big need for the herbalist to heal the people anymore. It may still happen as all the villagers live and grow , but I don't notice that aspect of a villager needing the herbalist nymore since my attention is somewhere else.

The villagers continue to work decently well with 3 hearts of health and 3 stars of happiness, so getting it to 4 and 5 is just for our own mental goal of seeing it all full as much as possible.

[Vrayna]

Unhealthy people will sometimes stop working with a "looking for the herbalist" kind of message, even if you don't have one built.

If you manage to keep people over 4 hearts it'll rarely happen (never at 5 hearts) so it doesn't matter much. If your population's health drops though, people will waste a little bit more time so making sure they can visit the herbalist when they want to is a decent idea. The ideal solution is still to provide a prefectly balanced diet so no one's health can drop. In that case you can just keep the herbalist because the building is cute with its little garden, but it'll be useless except for herb trade.

One thing about herbs though: they use the same spawn points as wild food under the trees. If you have a forest node with a gatherer and don't get rid of the herbs, you can see the food production drop as herbs overtake the whole place. For that reason I always put an herbalist hut near the gatherer with as much overlap in their circles as possible (and then sell the herbs). If you've moved to purely using farms/orchards for veggies and fruits and don't use a gatherer, then it's nothign to worry about.

[maiden4meldin]

Originally posted by Vrayna:

Unhealthy people will sometimes stop working with a "looking for the herbalist" kind of message, even if you don't have one built.

If you manage to keep people over 4 hearts it'll rarely happen (never at 5 hearts) so it doesn't matter much. If your population's health drops though, people will waste a little bit more time so making sure they can visit the herbalist when they want to is a decent idea. The ideal solution is still to provide a prefectly balanced diet so no one's health can drop. In that case you can just keep the herbalist because the building is cute with its little garden, but it'll be useless except for herb trade.

One thing about herbs though: they use the same spawn points as wild food under the trees. If you have a forest node with a gatherer and don't get rid of the herbs, you can see the food production drop as herbs overtake the whole place. For that reason I always put an herbalist hut near the gatherer with as much overlap in their circles as possible (and then sell the herbs). If you've moved to purely using farms/orchards for veggies and fruits and don't use a gatherer, then it's nothign to worry about.

And yet again, something new I did not know. I didn't know the herbs shared the same code line as the food for spawning. So you are correct, needed or not, A herbalist will help to keep the food for the gathering post as high as possible. Now I hafta think about building the herbalists. Thank you Vrayna.

So do you put a Herbalist into every forestry node as well? Or do you do as I saw someone else advise, put the herbalists at the radius line, on either side of the forestry node? Takes two herbalists to do the job, but you don't lose the land space to the Herbalist. I have even heard of people putting the hunting post with the Herbalist, and making mini nods like that, without a forester, or gatherer, just in a smallish natural forested cove.

[Vrayna]

I tend to put my herbalist just across the road from the gatherer to pick the herbs. My other herbalist will usually be right next to the market and used for the herb consumption only.

The exception to my general "herbalist just across from the gatherer" style is when using mods that add a specific herb gathering tool. Then I'l often use that to clear all herbs every few years.

[avebury]

Try placing a herbalist in your housing area instead.

Originally posted by maiden4meldin:

The herbalist, is an interesting building. On the one hand, the herbs sell for the same price as firewood, and can be traded for food, easily. sometimes even from the General merchant at least, for Resources, or Tools.

It seems to be more taxing on the population's resources, time, etc to use fire wood as an income. I've always found herbs a much better money maker.

Originally posted by maiden4meldin:

4. Can be left alone in a smaller space, without foresters, or other huts. And will do well to just be collecting herbs.

I place my herbalist next to the houses to reduce worker's travel time. And I use gatherers or the gather resources tool to collect herbs.

Originally posted by maiden4meldin:

1. Early game, fills up barn space, leaving less room for food, and pushes players into building second storage barn sooner.

You can set limits on individual resources. They will just stop picking them up, unless you tell workers to clear an area.

Originally posted by maiden4meldin:

And if I am losing health, then it is my fault, I have somewhere placed a house or two outside a market radius.

The citizens will still use herbs if you don't have a herbalist. The healing is half as effective.

Originally posted by maiden4meldin:

But for me the Churches manage it all quite well.

All happiness affecting buildings and wine provide the same amount of happiness. You don't need one of each for maximum happiness. The church requires a worker and has a maximum capacity.

According to the wiki...

A cemetery reduces the happiness loss of a dead citizen's family. There must be space in at least one cemetery upon death for this effect to be applied. If there are no cemeteries, or if all cemeteries are full, they’ll be much sadder for a while, but they’ll head back toward normal happiness after a few years.

So, to be efficient in my saves I use just a well. A well at every group of houses (or two depending on the number of house), it saves burning buildings, saves space and greatly reduces travel time.
The wiki doesn't say wells increase happiness but my citizens are happy to idle there just fine.

[eatonpye]

I think it comes from Colonial Charter, but there's a mod that is kind of bayou themed, with lots of docks and so on. It has an herb grower and an herb mender, which I take it is the deliver end, and they are just little shacks you can build out over water, so it's very compact. I think the growers are more effective than herbalists, but they don't perform the cures, so there's that.

[piper.spirit]

The way you solve your problem is by building more herbalists. If you have market coverage for all your houses, and people are going looking for the herbalist, that means your running low on herbs.

[olympe]

Originally posted by eatonpye:

I think it comes from Colonial Charter, but there's a mod that is kind of bayou themed, with lots of docks and so on. It has an herb grower and an herb mender, which I take it is the deliver end, and they are just little shacks you can build out over water, so it's very compact. I think the growers are more effective than herbalists, but they don't perform the cures, so there's that.

In MM, there's also a herb garden. Lovely little thing. <3

[dixiechow]

Originally posted by eatonpye:

In MM, there's also a herb garden. Lovely little thing. <3

I always build an herbalist. In this culture and era herbalists were very important and it just seems right to have one. It is true you can get along just fine without them but I like to have them. And, that little herb garden in MM is great.

[ladicken]

Once I have my farms and orchards in production, I get rid of the herbalist building as it's not needed anymore.

[maiden4meldin]

Originally posted by piper.spirit:

The way you solve your problem is by building more herbalists. If you have market coverage for all your houses, and people are going looking for the herbalist, that means your running low on herbs.

No, that is incorrect. The citizen will go to storage, or Market if there is a market, to collect a herb. Then go looking for the Herbalist to administer the Herb for them. As it is "in its raw form at the markets" The Herbalist turns it into a healing drink?? Idk, but just having herbs is not enough to boost health. The Herbalist, won't just hand over a Herb, as she doesn't generally have the time to run to storage for each individual that knocks on her door lol. So the person needing the extra health, is responsible to get the herb before tracking down the Herbalist.

[dixiechow]

Originally posted by ladicken:

Once I have my farms and orchards in production, I get rid of the herbalist building as it's not needed anymore.

What do herbs have to do with farms and orchards? Herbs are not a food.

[Vrayna]

Heath depends on having all food groups. As soon as your people have a perfectly balanced diet, they no longer need to use herbs.
For me the issue is more often having grains than fruits, but if you're lucky with seeds at the start and have fields producing veggies and grains and a source of meat or fish, you only lack the fruits.

[ladicken]

I have to admit, I reroll the start a lot until I get what I want. If I'm going to spend weeks building up a large town I want to start with a grain AND veggie, my favorite combo being corn and bean. Wheat over time doesn't seem to do as well as corn. And if I'm really lucky, sheep as well. And next to water for fishing. But I seldom get all that because I get really tired of restarting the game over and over and settle pretty quickly for what I can get.

I use a lot of mods, I've basically turned the game into sim city. LOL. I haven't played a vanilla game in so long I don't even know if I could. I'm retired and am not looking for a challenge anyway. A little weed and some good crops and I'm entertained for hours.