Died of Starvation with Plenty of Food?

[White Rabbit]

I'm only about 11 hours into the game - just got it yesterday, but love it so far. However, in year six my population is around 35, yet one of my original "elders" died of starvation despite me having over 2,000 food reserves and a thriving economy. I don't have any idea why she starved. She had a house, a family, and was employed. Is it possible she wandered off and got lost? I saw one of my villagers get stranded on the other side of a river once.

EDIT: Oh, and I have one fishery, two gathering huts, hunters, and a strong yielding potato farm.

[Engineer Weierstrass]

Maybe i'm mistaken but if i recall correctly you needed to distribute food to houses in time and people need to be closet to it

[TheDiaz]

2000 units of food for 35 people is actually low. You need to have around 100 for every person so you should put effort into increasing food production to at least 3500 to support that amount of people. And make sure that you put markets and storage on strategic positions so it ois easy to access the resources everyone needs.

[Tony 101101]

Preventing starvation is more than merely having food in storage.

The mechanics of game dictate that Bannies eat at home, or, if not housed from a barn or market. They actually need to travel to these locations to eat. If their workplace is too far from home or a barn then they can starve while travelling.

Bannies can freeze to death in winter for similar reasons of having to travel too far to get warm.

So, the moral of the story is to plan for, and prevent, either starvation or freezing to death by making sure that distances are not too great and that good communications exist between work locations and home.
Also, productivity is a big issue in Banished - if your Bannies are travelling too far to get food or warmth then productivity will be terrible. make sure that Bannies work close by to their place of work and have barns and/or markets close to home as well. In addition make sure that Bannies have storage close by for whatever they are producing, be that food, tools, clothing, wood, or whatever. The Bannies actually have to deliver these materials into storage, not just produce them.

So, for lots of reasons, one wants to limit Bannies taking long distance hikes all the time...

[Kaya]

She probably got stuck somewhere like you already suspected. They can get stuck on the opposite side of a river, if you order some work to be done there. They can cross the river to do the job but not to go back.

Also they need way more food than that (see above).

[White Rabbit]

Thanks for the tips - restarted and I'm in year ten and population just hit 100, so far so good!

[Tony 101101]

Originally posted by *sNap*:

Thanks for the tips - restarted and I'm in year ten and population just hit 100, so far so good!

Brilliant - glad to hear it!

[TheDiaz]

Originally posted by *sNap*:

Thanks for the tips - restarted and I'm in year ten and population just hit 100, so far so good!

Nice job.