What am I missing?

[mike]

Started 3 cities, had no fine stones on the map. Had two gatherer groups on high priority looking for them. No luck. Of course two of the trading villages wanted fine stones to trade, but luckily it wasn't for anything I needed. So, after quite a few frustrating hours, I started a fourth city. Have fine stone on the map, great! But after 500 game years, they've only found 3 Raw Stones. No raw stones and this city is a bust, too. Plus as I look at the trading villages, nobody is offering wheat grain or flax grain. I have never been able to harvest those in the wild, so farming is out in this city. Another failed city. 500 game years and they haven't built a single pelt or straw hut, because no raw stones, and the tribe is becoming unhappy. I've tried different starting locations, I've tried mountains, valleys, plains, and coast. What am I missing to get a start for a viable city? Half a millennia in game time, and not even a single hut, a fire place nor a stone wall built. Six hours of my time on another city that will eventually fail? I'm ready to give up.

[UncasualGames]

I assume you have played 500 historical years that are only a few game years. Please press CTRL+R in your last saved game so we can check if there is some kind of issue.

[mike]

By Game time I mean historical years. I'll open the game again and submit a report.
I'll send the city that failed because of the mud gathering. I set a top limit at 500 mud units and by the time I quit that city, I had 5,000 mud and 7 villagers harvesting mud. I removed mud a a resource to gather, and they still gathered it. That has to be a bug.

[LadyLillyno]

Originally posted by mike:

By Game time I mean historical years. I'll open the game again and submit a report.
I'll send the city that failed because of the mud gathering. I set a top limit at 500 mud units and by the time I quit that city, I had 5,000 mud and 7 villagers harvesting mud. I removed mud a a resource to gather, and they still gathered it. That has to be a bug.

It tends to be no bug, but player placing objects over a mud heap.
Before building can start, the area must be cleared first. Mud heaps has several thousand units of clay in them, so this will first of all have the tribe clearing like mad and do little else, so the object will not be built until this is done :D

You can try to watch this video and see if you can get a few hints and tip on how to start your tribe :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMHegXUQszY

[LadyLillyno]

Originally posted by mike:

Started 3 cities, had no fine stones on the map. Had two gatherer groups on high priority looking for them. No luck. Of course two of the trading villages wanted fine stones to trade, but luckily it wasn't for anything I needed. So, after quite a few frustrating hours, I started a fourth city. Have fine stone on the map, great! But after 500 game years, they've only found 3 Raw Stones. No raw stones and this city is a bust, too. Plus as I look at the trading villages, nobody is offering wheat grain or flax grain. I have never been able to harvest those in the wild, so farming is out in this city. Another failed city. 500 game years and they haven't built a single pelt or straw hut, because no raw stones, and the tribe is becoming unhappy. I've tried different starting locations, I've tried mountains, valleys, plains, and coast. What am I missing to get a start for a viable city? Half a millennia in game time, and not even a single hut, a fire place nor a stone wall built. Six hours of my time on another city that will eventually fail? I'm ready to give up.

Can we please have a report from a failing tribe as well unless it is the mud gathering one ? :)

[mike]

There was nothing placed to build on the mud pile, it was on the opposite side of the river. Unless they were clearing it to make a river crossing. My reed gatherers and hunters frequently crossed at that point. I've made a few successful cities that stretched for almost 10 year cycles. But failure becomes imminent because of a lack of something. Like it seems sticks don't respawn, which caused a failure in the most successful city I had built.
I did watch a few of your videos, and understand most of the concepts of the game. City builders are my niche of games. I've put 80 hours in this one so far, and do enjoy what I've seen. Building cities in Sandbox goes OK. The one thing I'm working on is this 'variable' work groups. I started a fifth city and all the resources I need are there, I can trade for wheat and flax. The hold up right now seems to be a lack of Fine Sticks. Where's my Fine Stick Maker? He's off gathering flint cores, which is all ready over the limit of 25 that I've set for my gathering group. He needs to go make the Fine Sticks, which is a priority task, and leave the flint core gathering to the gathering groups, which is not a priority task. I'll send a report when I open the game again.

[mike]

I submitted the reports. The one with the mud gathering is #9257. One of the ones with no fine stone is #9258.

[LadyLillyno]

Originally posted by mike:

Started 3 cities, had no fine stones on the map. Had two gatherer groups on high priority looking for them. No luck. Of course two of the trading villages wanted fine stones to trade, but luckily it wasn't for anything I needed. So, after quite a few frustrating hours, I started a fourth city. Have fine stone on the map, great! But after 500 game years, they've only found 3 Raw Stones. No raw stones and this city is a bust, too. Plus as I look at the trading villages, nobody is offering wheat grain or flax grain. I have never been able to harvest those in the wild, so farming is out in this city. Another failed city. 500 game years and they haven't built a single pelt or straw hut, because no raw stones, and the tribe is becoming unhappy. I've tried different starting locations, I've tried mountains, valleys, plains, and coast. What am I missing to get a start for a viable city? Half a millennia in game time, and not even a single hut, a fire place nor a stone wall built. Six hours of my time on another city that will eventually fail? I'm ready to give up.

Hello,
The mud gathering happens because you have used the Clear Area tool over several resource heaps in the wild.
If you x out the "Gathering" chores on Tribe main page, you will see that no more mud will come to camp.
You also have chopping and cropping in tribe tasks, x out whatever you wish to stop.

You also do have Fine raw stones in the locality, but you have placed easy to get and much closer resources without limits with the same group that is tasked with fine raw stones. You also have only 2 people tasked with these resources.
The problem for you is that fine raw stones are scarce, while raw stones and flint cores are plentiful and closer to camp normally, especially in rivers, which is where you are closely settled.
This result is fine raw stones coming to camp in far less amounts than the raw stones and the flint cores.

When checking the group and there is no yellow exclamation mark on the fine stones, it means locality has them.

To avoid this issue, have fine raw stones only with resources that tribe needs in less amounts that has limits, and not with resources close to camp that is wanted/needed in large amounts without limits.

Also be aware, the further away you are from mountainous areas the less stones of most types you will have, so dont expect to find hundreds of fine raw stones by any coastal area even on Sandbox :)

Group priority means people prioritising the group, however the tasks inside the group will all have equal priority, decided by vicinity and limits, subsequently the speed of income of these tasks are controlled by also the amount of work spots in the group.
The more the merrier :)

The reason your fine stick crafter is not making fine sticks, is because you have used clear area tool over an area, and this function is communal, meaning ALL of tribe can, and often will, free themselves up to do your bidding.
To reduce the amount of people doing communal tasks, reduce communal task priority in the policies by moving the slider to the left.
Good Luck! :D

BTW, I like your build style, please post SS in Discord or Steam so others can see it too :D

[mike]

Thanks for the response. Why would they be clearing that mudpile if it wasn't under the 'clear area' control? The report I sent on lack of stones was from a tribe that hadn't been around very long, so I needed plenty of resources to begin with, limits get set as the tribe becomes established. Usually, when the tribe gets big enough my Gather groups go to Single Item gathering, First priority usually Reed and Fiber Gatherers. I just lumped all the stone gathering tasks to one group, Knowing Fine Stones are a rare resource will change that. Then I'll usually have a shortage group who will be tasked gathering whatever is in need. That's most often sticks. I was under the impression that communal tasks were accomplished during the communal work time, the rest of the time they worked in their specialties. I believe both reports I submitted they were still set at 50%.
I do enjoy what I've seen so far in the game, but do get hung up on the 'variable' work groups. This is unique in AC, as far as I know, from other city builders.
I'll be glad to post screenshots. Did you see anything in particular that should be shared?
Again, thanks for the response. I'll change a few tactics and hopefully grab those last achievements I need.

[LadyLillyno]

The mud heap WAS under clear area control. When I removed the "Gathering" then all mud stopped coming to camp.
Remember, clear area tool targets everything: cropping, chopping, cutting/stripping, and gathering.

Small tip to get tons of stick in short amount of time: Use clear area tool over a lot of trees in 1 foul swoop, then remove all chopping and cropping, you will then only have gathering left = sticks.. plus the odd other gather-able items you encircled.

I like the way you cluster houses and angles, and the precision you achieve upon placements :) Was impressed with the bench system, I will prolly steal that from you :D

[mike]

I don't know how it got under one. I must have misclicked something when looking at that side of the river. I made a few changes in my current city and had a gather group just looking for Fine Stones. They are slowly trickling in.
I did post a couple screenshots here, one showing the tribe's gathering area. I'm glad you liked it.
Thanks for looking at the reports and replying. Those changes sure helped.

[LadyLillyno]

Happy to help :)

[m4gic]

Originally posted by mike:

There was nothing placed to build on the mud pile, it was on the opposite side of the river. Unless they were clearing it to make a river crossing. My reed gatherers and hunters frequently crossed at that point. I've made a few successful cities that stretched for almost 10 year cycles. But failure becomes imminent because of a lack of something. Like it seems sticks don't respawn, which caused a failure in the most successful city I had built.
I did watch a few of your videos, and understand most of the concepts of the game. City builders are my niche of games. I've put 80 hours in this one so far, and do enjoy what I've seen. Building cities in Sandbox goes OK. The one thing I'm working on is this 'variable' work groups. I started a fifth city and all the resources I need are there, I can trade for wheat and flax. The hold up right now seems to be a lack of Fine Sticks. Where's my Fine Stick Maker? He's off gathering flint cores, which is all ready over the limit of 25 that I've set for my gathering group. He needs to go make the Fine Sticks, which is a priority task, and leave the flint core gathering to the gathering groups, which is not a priority task. I'll send a report when I open the game again.

I have a city now well over 100 people and heading for 20 in-game years. At the risk of jinxing it (I do save frequently, just in case) everything is going fine and nothing is becoming scarce.

I've found the greatest tool for controlling what the people are doing is the individual vs communal work policy.

If you slide it to individual they will not spend much time (if any) on projects like gathering materials for current construction projects, even if you use the manual clear tool to indicate which materials you want immediately.

If you slide it toward communal then they will delay (or sometimes ignore) their assigned group task (i.e. "Woodcutter") and instead go gather whatever resource(s).

Whenever I have run low of a crafted resource I have simply assigned more Crafters. I tried once splitting the Crafters into several groups with specialized tasks but this backfired a bit when an old Crafter died and the knowledge of a few tools died with him!

Also, patience is key. The villagers have a lot to do in a day, and pathing is a [redacted], so if you're short of fine sticks you just have to manually Clear more, assign more Crafters, and/or wait.

[m4gic]

Originally posted by LadyLillyno:

I like the way you cluster houses and angles, and the precision you achieve upon placements :) Was impressed with the bench system, I will prolly steal that from you :D

Can we see the settlement?

[mike]

I have a city going on 20 years now, well over 100 people. I have gotten agriculture, and have my fields planted. First harvest went well, second planting didn't happen. As far as I can tell, it's because, again, a lack of Fine Sticks. My communal policy and work time is set to default. I have 5 gatherers getting sticks, their only task. Not a problem, getting plenty of sticks. I have, at this point, 5 craftsmen making Fine Sticks, but they don't do the job. I'm not sure why it failed this time. My birth rate is more than my death rate, so my city grows. I did find out that goats breed like rabbits, and are eating me out of house and home. Guess I need to cull them.
I did post a couple screenshots, I do want to get some more uploaded. Right now, the houses are falling apart faster than I can build them. So my city doesn't look so hot right now. I can open the sandbox and put something together that looks good. The shots I uploaded should be visible on the community page, maybe on my profile. Let me know if you can't find them.