vilagers needs?

[Vorcera]

Hey all,
Question for the veteran players XD

I got my village to about 83 people and had about 1/3 promoted to commoners.
I had one central area for housing and all work related parts on the sides. 1 church on the edge of the housing area.

For some reason after reaching about 90 citizens, I got messages about housing shortage.
Wich was weird because I had a whole field still open and accessible.
Everything was there, work around it, a well, market stalls.

But the messages kept popping up.
Then came the moment that a message said someone left the village and suddenly all upgraded house were half empty and not having its requirements met.

half the citizens suddenly left and now all production goods is stalled by it.

I have no clue what I was doing wrong.
Food was readily available as well as bread. Cloths were in the stalls and when looking at the citizens, the only thing they complained about was housing, while living in one.

I seriously feel the game, even though it is really fun, needs to do a better job at telling me what is wrong.
Just saying housing shortage doesn't make any sense. No unemployment, I saw no one without a roof, as far as I could tell. Enough space to expand, and still many left.

Small note: all the villagers that left with the "housing" need in red, lived right next to the nearly all the workspaces. So i'm clueless here.

[Raja]

I had a similar issue on a map that I was playing around with and I think I've somewhat got this weird "issue" figured out.

If you've promoted "too many" to commoners when their house doesn't already meets their needs, the game will start telling you that they don't have housing. Even if there is plenty of housing area open that does suit them. They don't seem to move out of the house to a more desirable location, thus the housing shortage message.

It's worth checking where a villager lives before promoting them to make sure that their house meets the requirements to upgrade.

The game also seems to really prefer you that up the housing density vs spreading out. So throwing a light fortification wall around your housing area and having a few folks on patrol will allow you to cram 100 or so people in a rather small area.

I'd also recommend only promoting a few people at a time and waiting for their house to upgrade vs promoting in mass. This can overwhelm your builders and leave villagers without a completed house.

[JudoBro122]

Yeah just to add it sounds like two problems happened here.

A). No housing was found for a commoner. This means that there was no houses that were beautified and/or were built in time (if you don't have the materials to build the new house) for them. You can see the requirements for the commoner housing as under it and see if you meet the requirements (note they'll move into any empty spots of a house that mostly qualifies if it's just missing the commoner qualification)
B). You failed to maintain the commoners basic needs for a few days. This is what causes them to leave for example if they don't have housing or two complex foods.

[Xecthar]

First, check the Level 2 houses and kick the "SERF" people from these houses. They don't deserve to live there. This was you'll open space for your "COMMONER" people.

Second, check if the available housing plots are too far away from the workplace. If so, people won't build there houses.

And finally, build a castle and start sending patrols around so all the houses will increase their density, thus housing more peeps.

Cheers!