Builders not doing their jobs?

[UltimaGalaxy]

Whenever I assign something to be build reletively far from my main town, my builders always seem to preform one build action and then neglect it, idling or picking up recources. Quitting seems to temporarily fix this, but I don't want to have to save and quit every minute to get something built. Any fix for this? (Playing on 1.0.2)

[Kalashnikov]

that happens to me

[Banisha]

At scratch you have uneducated workers. Asign jobs nearby and don't let them gather far from home. They need homes to get warm and eat. The start needs patience and later you pick the fruits :)

[desperatemusic]

But if I don't build my foresters, gatherers, herbalists, and hunters close in a forest far from town, the resources in the forest will be destroyed before the forest has a chance to recover.

But, if I don't build my foresters, gatherers, herbalists, and hunters close to town, the builders will idle rather than build.

Catch-22. Already 7 of 8 foresters are dead of starvation after waiting around for a hunters' cabin to be built in the woods; the fisheries and herd apparently weren't enough for them.

[gonavy-beatarmy]

I'm a noob but I don't have this issue. Your first forester area should almost touch the bottom of your first housing project/large building. Pick a direction you wish to build in and then put the forester on the other side.

[UltimaGalaxy]

I'm 100% certain this is a bug, because like I said quitting and restarting fixes it, but only temporarily.

[Ragond]

I know if there are no idle workers or what-not, the builders will sacrifice building to take resources from on area to another.

[Nessa]

I too have been having this problem. I'm currently in a small mountainous map, so I have space issues. I needed more stone, but had to build my quarry far out of town. I've been trying to establish a settlement round it (houses, storage etc.) so my builders will live closer to the work, but even with a builder living opposite the quarry, it's still incomplete after 6 years in game! I have plenty iron and wood to build it, just my builders won't do their jobs!

[trustyweasel]

I find that if you're gathering resources that are far from your stockpile and then creating a building project that's also far out from your stockpile, then you run into a very long wait. The laborers have to gather the resource and take it to the stockpile and then (assuming the laborers are occupied) the builder then has to come and get it to take to the building site. It can all make for a very long wait. With my mine and quarry a ways out of my main settlement, I put an additional stockpile close by and that helped speed things along a bit more.

[Kalashnikov]

Originally posted by Nessa:

I too have been having this problem. I'm currently in a small mountainous map, so I have space issues. I needed more stone, but had to build my quarry far out of town. I've been trying to establish a settlement round it (houses, storage etc.) so my builders will live closer to the work, but even with a builder living opposite the quarry, it's still incomplete after 6 years in game! I have plenty iron and wood to build it, just my builders won't do their jobs!

[Kalashnikov]

same with me Nessa^

[Akarin]

Originally posted by desperatemusic:

But if I don't build my foresters, gatherers, herbalists, and hunters close in a forest far from town, the resources in the forest will be destroyed before the forest has a chance to recover.

But, if I don't build my foresters, gatherers, herbalists, and hunters close to town, the builders will idle rather than build.

Catch-22. Already 7 of 8 foresters are dead of starvation after waiting around for a hunters' cabin to be built in the woods; the fisheries and herd apparently weren't enough for them.

Sounds like your using my guide, unfortunately the dev broke the AI logic in patch 1.2 for long distance travel making them not work on projects due to being "cold" even though its the middle of summer and currently the only way around this is to build stuff close together which ruins efficiency for food gathering but nothing I can do about that unless the dev fixes his mistake.

The Villagers are not acually "cold" or even hungery but the script the dev added in 1.2 says hey you can only go so far away from your food source, which messes up stuff to the point where they will only build one building then neglect any other projects in that area while milling about the initial start zone.

all in all sad day :(

Forgot to mention beta for 1.3 is out which fixes this problem, but beta patches can and will be buggy however this distance issue with the builder breaks important distance mechanics so its worth checking out.

[Xeno]

I'm getting really annoyed with this. My builder will walk up to the project, swing the hammer once, then walk away.

[Vrayna]

Taking care of vital needs (eating, warming up, getting a tool or clothes, or bringing food/fuel to the house) takes priority over any kind of work. If they don't have time to do more than one swing when they get to work, you're either trying to build too far or have another issue in your town.

If it's a farawa project, patience is your best friend. Otherwise, make sure you're not close to entering a hunger spiral and that all needs are taken care of. If food runs "low"*, it's possible that your people can't bring enough home to feel good about their personal stocks, so they'll take a lot of time off to get food from storage whenever you produce some.

* "low" would be less than half a year's worth of food in advance, when each person eats 100 food per year. Usually when you drop to that level, your food is scattered around in various barns and people waste a lot of time walking to get enough to fill their home. A reasonnable margin is having enough food for a year in advance, the safe number would be enough for 2 years. (More and you often run into storage space issues)

[pdoan8]

Having more builders than you need would also help. Or, don't build a lot of building at the same time. You also need adequate number of laborers to move building materials. Builders who have nothing to build will act as laborers.

[kevinshow]

Originally posted by Xeno:

I'm getting really annoyed with this. My builder will walk up to the project, swing the hammer once, then walk away.

follow this builder and see what he's doing.

Is he hungry? is he cold? is he unhappy? is he idling?

When you can understand this aspect of your villagers lives, you can figure out what's lacking and try to make them all happier.

For example, I often hear the comment about "80% of my villagers are making food, but I still run out of food!" Let's rephrase that -- " I placed 80% of my villagers into food-making jobs, but I don't know if they are actually making food. They might be hungry, unhappy, cold, idling, uneducated , no tools, walking too far between home and work place, etc"

In a similar way, if you have a builder who just hits his hammer once and walks off the project, then there are some other potential problems you need to investigate.

There are a lot of variables so find out what your villagers are needing, and fix that up.