Hungry citizens aren't finding food?

[Murphywants]

Hello! I'm sure if I'm doing something wrong or what, but when I get low on food (not out, just low), my hungry citizens just kinda walk around and starve without ever attempting to get food. Is this a bug? Am I doing something wrong? 90% of the other times when food is plentiful everyone is fine finding their food. And again, I'm never out of food, I just get lower than other times.

[Ottomic]

Villagers will starve if you set collection jobs too far from their homes, or if they have to walk for too long to get to their jobs and back, or go somewhere far away to get something (firewood, for example). Make sure you even everything out by making sure everything is at a walking distance by either balancing houses, storage and jobs, or by using markets.

When you run low on food, people will get it as soon as it reaches the barns/markets, meaning, they will spend more time in transit to get their food, and more time going back because they are hungry. These hunger spirals have been hugely nerfed in later versions of the game, but they are still dangerous. To get out from them you should focus in getting a huge surplus of food, cancel collection duties and close nonessential, non-food jobs to ensure food is distributed, houses are restocked and you get the situation back on track.

[Kosmozuikis]

This game is too hard or bugged. I play on easy, with no disasters and all my 35 people died from starvation, i don't know why, there was more than enough food but suddenly after 15 years i was out of food. I had 2 pastures, 2 gatherer huts, 3 hunter cabins and 1 fisherman still it's not enough. I think it's time to search for some mods which make the game easier and more realistic.

[Ottomic]

Originally posted by Kosmozuikis:

This game is too hard. I play on easy, with no disasters and all my 35 people died from starvation, i don't know why, there was more than enough food but suddenly after 15 years i was out of food. I had 2 pastures, 2 gatherer huts, 3 hunter cabins and 1 fisherman still it's not enough. I think it's time to search for some mods which make the game easier and more realistic.

Fields are once-a-year food resources and pastures are incredibly slow to produce (and orchards are both), and you shouldn't use them at all at the beginning. They are tier 2 buildings, so to speak, so don't skip steps and stick to the tier 1, constant sources of food.

Aside from that, those workplaces should be enough to feed your people. Either your workplaces are far from the homes of their workers (reduces efficiency), far from a storage (reduces efficiency), are inefficiently zoned, or what have you. 4 gatherers can give you up to 1500 food per season, 4 fishers 1200. Any lower than that you're just doing things wrong on your end.

This game is not hard, but you need to learn to play it. Use the pathing tools and common sense to figure out what's wrong instead of calling it "unrealistic". If anything, this game is pretty damn realistic for a city planner.

As for the game being "bugged"... players have been reporting their suckiness as the game's fault since launch. That's not a bug, not in the strict sense of the word.

[Lenkdrache]

Having just come over from the forum for another game, I am struck by the thorough answers given. Not only is Banished a nice game, but it makes you think about cause and effect. Add to that the wonderful community, and we have a winner!!!

That being said, I found that buildings work better if you drop a house next to it, or near it. When I build my towns, the fisher folk have their homes near the water, and close to the fisher buildings. Same for the farmers, ranchers, and other professions.

In the good old days, people tended to live close to where they worked, and if you follow that logic in this game, you will be amazed at how well things come together. So spread out the houses, and save the clustered housing for when you build the "downtown" district with the rows of houses, shops, etc.

Each "farm" has a house and a barn. Later, let the marketplace vendors worry about where they get their food. That's their job :)

[Kosmozuikis]

Originally posted by Ottomic:

Originally posted by Kosmozuikis:

This game is too hard. I play on easy, with no disasters and all my 35 people died from starvation, i don't know why, there was more than enough food but suddenly after 15 years i was out of food. I had 2 pastures, 2 gatherer huts, 3 hunter cabins and 1 fisherman still it's not enough. I think it's time to search for some mods which make the game easier and more realistic.

Fields are once-a-year food resources and pastures are incredibly slow to produce (and orchards are both), and you shouldn't use them at all at the beginning. They are tier 2 buildings, so to speak, so don't skip steps and stick to the tier 1, constant sources of food.

Aside from that, those workplaces should be enough to feed your people. Either your workplaces are far from the homes of their workers (reduces efficiency), far from a storage (reduces efficiency), are inefficiently zoned, or what have you. 4 gatherers can give you up to 1500 food per season, 4 fishers 1200. Any lower than that you're just doing things wrong on your end.

This game is not hard, but you need to learn to play it. Use the pathing tools and common sense to figure out what's wrong instead of calling it "unrealistic". If anything, this game is pretty damn realistic for a city planner.

As for the game being "bugged"... players have been reporting their suckiness as the game's fault since launch. That's not a bug, not in the strict sense of the word.

How do i know what tier the building is? And as i said it was ok for 15 years, i couldn't increase the people count so there always were 30-35 people and they had enough food.
My workers are doing only 200-400 food per season. sometimes 600. I played on a small map so i didn't have much choice of where to build everything and how do i know where to build them? Game should tell me if it's a good place or not and how much food will it produce and how much food do i need. No it's not realistic when people are dying from starvation when there's food everywhere around them. They should just go looking for food themselves or something and that should influence the happines and work.
Found a mod which gives you twice the resources, will try that probably.
I'm not bashing the game, i like it very much.

[Ottomic]

There are no "tiers" to speak of, but every building has a very specific place in the development phases of a city: hunters and gatherers benefit of large swathes of open terrain, which you need anyway for foresters but specially benefit of early stages of development. Farms need less space, but are once-a-year buildings that require both a buffer of food and an already decently developed city to be effective.

If your buildings are not producing effectively, it's because its workers live far away or because they have no storage nearby forcing them to walk more to access it and shortening your resources per hour. It's OK to suck at this game and be frustrated by it (believe me, EVERYONE who has played this game has sucked at one pont and been pissed at it), but the really neat thing about this game is how you can get good at it by stopping, looking at stuff, determining what's killing your people and correcting it. Making it easier will only get you bored quicker. Use the tools the game gives you (pathing, priority) and read the indications instead of just being pissed at not doing things right.

[Kosmozuikis]

Originally posted by Ottomic:

There are no "tiers" to speak of, but every building has a very specific place in the development phases of a city: hunters and gatherers benefit of large swathes of open terrain, which you need anyway for foresters but are specially benefit of early stages of development. Farms need less space, but are once-a-year buildings that require both a buffer of food and an already decently developed city to be effective.

If your buildings are not producing effectively, it's because its workers live far away or because they have no storage nearby forcing them to walk more to access it and shortening your resources per hour. It's OK to suck at this game and be frustrated by it (believe me, EVERYONE who has played this game has sucked at one pont and been pissed at it), but the really neat thin about this game is how you can get good at it by stopping, looking at stuff, determining what's killing your people and correcting it. Making it easier will only get you bored quicker. Use the tools the game gives you (pathing, priority) and read the indications instead of just being pissed at not doing things right.

Thanks for a nice post. I'll try to build a new village full of lazy fat people :D

[Sebathius]

One question I have, when is it about right to start educating your people? I built a school at around 30/0/4 peeps, and compounded with not enough living arrangements which I figured out and fixed immediately, my population dropped to 19/4/3. I thought about it and wondered what would happen if I were to turn off my school and it seemed to do the trick....but I dont want to do this forever. About when should I turn it back on? When I have a labor force close to 10?

[Dude]

Originally posted by Sebathius:

One question I have, when is it about right to start educating your people? I built a school at around 30/0/4 peeps, and compounded with not enough living arrangements which I figured out and fixed immediately, my population dropped to 19/4/3. I thought about it and wondered what would happen if I were to turn off my school and it seemed to do the trick....but I dont want to do this forever. About when should I turn it back on? When I have a labor force close to 10?

Schools is a double-edged sword and I haven´t really gotten around to using it much myself. However I do believe the 'general consensus' is that IF you feel you have a 'flow' in your game you should build it and use it as soon as possible. Educated workers are supposedly twice as effective as uneducated ones and even if you loose 5 years of production it should pay of heavily in the long run.

I also think educated workers are less likely to die from work related accidents which is something that would be a huge bonus since loosing workers to accidents is a disaster.

[Ottomic]

Originally posted by Sebathius:

One question I have, when is it about right to start educating your people?

I build my school within my first year, right after the blacksmith, tailor and woodcutter. Educated villagers are worth every trouble.

[AlP]

Originally posted by Sebathius:

One question I have, when is it about right to start educating your people? I built a school at around 30/0/4 peeps, and compounded with not enough living arrangements which I figured out and fixed immediately, my population dropped to 19/4/3. I thought about it and wondered what would happen if I were to turn off my school and it seemed to do the trick....but I dont want to do this forever. About when should I turn it back on? When I have a labor force close to 10?

You could even do it immediately at the start of the game. It depends on how many children you start with. They all become adults within the first or the second year of the game, so if you start with like 8-12 children, an early school is well worth it. If it's only 4-5, might as well leave them uneducated, and build a school at year 4 before the next batch of kids starts growing up.

That does make you more vulnerable, and you simply need to assign more villagers to food production. Either more farms, or more gatherers etc.

If you have to turn off the school to save your village, it shows that there's a flaw in your food/firewood production.

[Sebathius]

Originally posted by AlP:

If you have to turn off the school to save your village, it shows that there's a flaw in your food/firewood production.

I rarely ever go below 200 in extra firewood (actually I dipped to 70something when I started losing people left and right to old age with no replacements) and I had a stock of over 8000 food with variables of fish/gathered foods/hunted foods/mutton/corn and potatoes....so Im not sure if that's the issue.

I still have my school off and got my population to 53/0/11 so Im going to experiment again by turning it back on and see where the pieces fall on it.

Thanks , all of you, for your comments. They help