Reputation spiral...

[alkalinecube]

Trying out the new beta. I was disappointed that the new play modes are locked until you meet the goals without them. I was looking forward to trying a game with all of them at once!

But apparently, I have a new challenge to overcome first, because the new reputation mechanic is a royal pain in the butt. As soon as you lose citizens, whether that's from plague, raiders, natural deaths, social issues, needs or not happy enough, reputation goes down. Migration slows. There are less and less people coming in. I got to 300 people once, and then shrank all the way to 180.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here. Maybe I should change my laws? Is there something I can do to increase my reputation? Maybe it should be an expensive option you can trade for at the trading post? I desperately need migrants. They keep showing up, then immediately leaving again, one way or another.

Any ideas?

[Far Road Games]

Yeah, the mods being rewards you unlock isn't great for old Early Access players who have already beaten the game admittedly. They're more aimed at brand new players. Perhaps we could add a cheat code to let people unlock them all!

Reputation is just a bonus to migration, it won't be the cause of your population crash from 300 to 180, that's probably be something else, something killing citizens that you've missed. If you take a screenshot of your stats screen I might be able to guess but it's hard to tell without knowing the condition of your town.

[KOUSH]

I have a similar issue, there seems to be a glitch, something is causing a downward spiral, i checked all of my stats, plenty of resources, but the population keeps shrinking very slowly.
All of the needs bars are quite high.

It seems to be when you have a larger population and something happens when a bunch of them die or leave, then you can't recover from it. Citizens slowly die of plague and old age. Reputation keep decreasing, and eventually you dont have enough workers to provide the services. Even when you try to de-allocate workers from other buildings.

The work allocation/de-allocation is quite tedious. You just need to be able to turn a building on and off, maybe that would allow you to respond to changes more rapidly. I click auto assign workers on every building anyways. The current mechanism doesnt add anything.

[Far Road Games]

Population drops are one of the puzzles of the game so I don't want to say too much about them (as it would spoil the challenge).

Occasionally players send me their save games and so far, it's always been something they missed in their town that was causing the problem. A few changes were able to reverse the decline.

Looking at the Town Hall stats screen can usually give you a clue about what the problem is.

There's also a "Work" menu on the Town Hall menu, which lets you prioritise where new migrants should work.

[KOUSH]

Don't get me wrong, i understand and enjoy the challenge of balancing the needs. Its what makes it fun, the constant feeling of despair.
But after several play-throughs and reading other peoples comments around the community, it seems almost like the population drops so rapidly, that you don't have a chance to recover until its too late, almost like the dynamics are so tightly coupled.
At least in easy mode, it would be nice to be able to grow a bit easier and not have people dies as easily or something like that. Gets a bit frustrating.

It seems like there is no way to get people into the actual buildings you need, like if i want to get people into 4-5 dew collectors i cant, i have to block all the work slots of every other building until people get allocated to the dew collectors. Would make dealing with shifting needs a lot easier.

Also, there is no statistic for adults who can work (so not in jail, or not having babies), and also no stat for overall work spots.

Great game btw. So different to anything I've ever played.

[Imparapler]

It still gets better in the decaying spiral, as the people leaves the town there's not enough in the repairing teams, so all the buildings begins to collapse at once, as only the major is not enough to repair them on time. I dropped suddenly from >300 to 150 people without any real warning, just a drop in reputation.

[KOUSH]

yes, so i use the worker's menu to focus everyone onto the repair shacks. It can take about 1 hr of real fine tuning and slow grinding, and once you get over a hump, the population pops back up. But like i said, it makes it a bit tedious.