Market setup and villager assignment?

[Nickvet419]

Is it best to build one market with multiple stalls or separate markets with one stall each?

I find it almost impossible to figure out which stall is occupied or not with multiple stalls. There is nothing that tells me which stall is assigned to which worker.

[Minotorious]

Villagers buy products in order of appearance in the market, that means that if you have a market with 5 food stalls the:

3rd stall will only sell if one stalls 1 and 2 are empty
4th stall will only sell if two of stalls 1, 2, and 3 are empty
5th stall will only sell if three of stalls 1, 2, 3, and 4 are empty

i.e. you can see that for an adequately supplied market the probability that a 3+ stall will sell anything is minute.

The recommended market set up imo is 3 food stalls, 1 goods stall, 2 luxury stalls, all that per 50-60 villagers.

the market UI like the whole game UI will be fully reworked before the final release, so please bear with it for now, we know it is not super user friendly :)

[Migillis]

Be careful of this, I learned about putting multiple venues under one "marketplace" mid-game and it nearly crippled my town of 100 because people stopped buying bread and became so unhappy that people started leaving. I now just build the necessary markets near each other but not under the same umbrella, and that allows villagers to buy what their heart desires.

[Minotorious]

Originally posted by Migillis:

Be careful of this, I learned about putting multiple venues under one "marketplace" mid-game and it nearly crippled my town of 100 because people stopped buying bread and became so unhappy that people started leaving. I now just build the necessary markets near each other but not under the same umbrella, and that allows villagers to buy what their heart desires.

If all your markets were set up as e.g. berries, fish, bread then as bread comes in the third slot it will be rarely bought. To balance this out in your town you should interchange the positions between different market ensembles. e.g.

Market 1: berries, fish, bread
Market 2: fish, bread, berries
Market 3: bread, berries, fish

and so on

PS: note that if the villagers can get 2 different foods it doesn't matter which ones they are. i.e. they don't need bread specifically they have no food preferences, they will just buy e.g. fish and berries else if bread is not available.

[Migillis]

The problem I had is that I have a small marketplace here and a small marketplace across town. They each are selling berries, bread and clothes; I am playing on a map with no water and my people haven't displayed a want for fish so I've left it alone. If market A is selling berries first and B is selling bread first, but these markets are across town from each other, my townspeople appear to have to go across town to then pick up bread or vice versa as the slot 1 resource rarely depletes. I like the idea of having a HUB and an easy UI to check out all the markets in an area at once but my people appear to be forced to buy one item over another based on their slot order which has led me to leaving each market as its own individual thing (though usually in close proximity) as opposed to HUB'd together.

Also I'm not complaining, I know people come down hard on early access devs but I'm just sharing my experiences.

[Minotorious]

That is weird to hear tbh because when a 2 slot market has berries and bread they normally go to slot 1 buy berries then go to slot 2 and buy bread and then they leave the market to go fulfil other needs.

The only cases they would go to the other market across the map are:
1) the bread stall is empty at the time
2) the bread stall is not empty but the stock in it has already been reserved by other villagers on their way there

If you experience any other weirdness it might be a bug and we would be interested in looking at that save file if you can upload it on a file sharing service like dropbox :)

[Migillis]

Originally posted by Minotorious:

That is weird to hear tbh because when a 2 slot market has berries and bread they normally go to slot 1 buy berries then go to slot 2 and buy bread and then they leave the market to go fulfil other needs.

The only cases they would go to the other market across the map are:
1) the bread stall is empty at the time
2) the bread stall is not empty but the stock in it has already been reserved by other villagers on their way there

If you experience any other weirdness it might be a bug and we would be interested in looking at that save file if you can upload it on a file sharing service like dropbox :)

I'll keep that in mind, I think I see what you're talking about now. I thought you meant villagers could only buy from slot 1 until it was depleted. My reserves of bread were pretty slim at the time but I usually have between 100 and 400 berries. The market was showing that nothing in slot 2 of either market was being stocked up or sold even if the slot 1's from opposing markets were actively selling the same items. All stalls had an employee. I'll try to recreate the issue next time I need a market, I am still working off of the same save but that whole issue was sometime early last night and I solved it by breaking everything up. Have to study a bit but I'll probably jump on for a bit later.

[Minotorious]

What rank were your villagers at the time? Let me explain why I ask.

For Newcomers and Serfs only 1 food source is needed so in a combined market everyone will only buy from slot 1 unless it is empty when they will go ahead and buy from slot 2.

Commoners and Citizens on the other hand need 2 food sources so they will always buy from the 1st and 2nd slots unless one of them is empty when they will buy from the 3rd slot.

Hope this clears it up.

PS: feel free to join our discord server too for more direct support on any issues :)

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Minotorious:

Villagers buy products in order of appearance in the market, that means that if you have a market with 5 food stalls the:

3rd stall will only sell if one stalls 1 and 2 are empty
4th stall will only sell if two of stalls 1, 2, and 3 are empty
5th stall will only sell if three of stalls 1, 2, 3, and 4 are empty
...
The recommended market set up imo is 3 food stalls, 1 goods stall, 2 luxury stalls, all that per 50-60 villagers.

In other words when a villager goes looking for goods (in stall #4) it considers stalls 1-3 empty because it is the wrong good type?

Originally posted by Minotorious:

the market UI like the whole game UI will be fully reworked before the final release, so please bear with it for now, we know it is not super user friendly :)

Sounds like you are aware of an issue like Micgillis had where bread could be rarely sold because it was in slot #3 of the market.

Which would tank happiness and growth, which kinda explains why one of my games I struggled with happiness going towards citizen.

[Minotorious]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Sounds like you are aware of an issue like Micgillis had where bread could be rarely sold because it was in slot #3 of the market.

Which would tank happiness and growth, which kinda explains why one of my games I struggled with happiness going towards citizen.

No that is totally not what I said, this behaviour is intentional just not explained in game as there is no tutorial yet :D Let me explain it a bit differently.

When a villager is looking for food he will consider the slots in order of appearance. In total the villager needs a maximum of 2 food sources if he is a Commoner or a Citizen and a maximum of 1 food source if he is a Newcomer or a Serf.

What I really need to stress here is that it doesn't matter which food type that food source is, villagers don't have a food preference or a diet or anything like that, they will eat the first two food sources they find closest to their house.

So say for example that I have a market with 3 food stalls, berries, fish, and bread in order.

Now imagine the stock looks like this 10 berries, 5 fish, 5 bread. For the sake of the example assume the market tender doesn't bring any more food to the stalls and that all villagers are commoners and thus need 2 food sources.

Now the first 5 villagers who will go to that market will eat from the berries as they are in the first slot and the fish from the second slot.

Now the new stock is 5 berries, 0 fish, 5 bread thus the next 5 villagers will buy berries from the first slot and, as the seconds slot is empty, they will buy bread from the third slot.

Now all 10 villagers are fed and happy to keep working.

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

In other words when a villager goes looking for goods (in stall #4) it considers stalls 1-3 empty because it is the wrong good type?

If by goods you mean the clothes then that is a separate need category and has nothing to do with the food stalls. If a villager is looking to buy clothes he will ignore any and all food markets. This is why if you look closely on the market UI the slot numbering restarts from 1 for different good types. i.e. each market can have a maximum of 3 "Slot 1"s one for food, one for goods and one for luxury goods.