Any way to draw a preferred path for villagers?

[ohener]

They keep trying to zig zag through peoples gardens instead of going in a straight line through the area i left open for a street.

[Edu Freeman]

Try closing houses gardens with fences. The "original fences" will dissapear after you place new ones so feel free to design their gardens as you like (but respect its shape or the house will dissapear, it happened to me sometimes)

[Sir Snuffles]

Originally posted by Edu Freeman:

Try closing houses gardens with fences. The "original fences" will dissapear after you place new ones so feel free to design their gardens as you like (but respect its shape or the house will dissapear, it happened to me sometimes)

thanks, i didnt know that

[ohener]

I've tried that but it doesn't seem to work unless i basically wall in the houses entirely. Once they've started wearing paths through the gardens they seem magnetically drawn to them and will go out of their way to use those paths even if it means taking a really bizzare path.

The only other option seems to be setting forbidden zones on either side of the path you want. This destroys the houses there since the forbidden zone brush undoes the residential zoning. Then you have to wait a million years for the paths you don't want to turn back into grass.

I don't get why i can't just draw new paths myself.

[Mimilette]

The best way is to just draw a temporary forbidden zone on the path they're currently using and they'll "recalculate" a faster path and start using that one. Once that new path is well used, you can unforbid the older path, and they should still use the newer better path

[Dregora]

Originally posted by ohener:

I've tried that but it doesn't seem to work unless i basically wall in the houses entirely. Once they've started wearing paths through the gardens they seem magnetically drawn to them and will go out of their way to use those paths even if it means taking a really bizzare path.

The only other option seems to be setting forbidden zones on either side of the path you want. This destroys the houses there since the forbidden zone brush undoes the residential zoning. Then you have to wait a million years for the paths you don't want to turn back into grass.

I don't get why i can't just draw new paths myself.

It's part of the whole organic expand thing the game is going for. I do understand what you're saying and it feels like a chore to manage it, but essentially villagers will always take the ''fastest'' routes to where ever they have to go, what you also can do is just watch where they're making the road and then place houses alongside it. Or just draw a forbidden zone and remove a pathway between the forbidden zone so they can only walk over that path.

But in terms of gardens of houses, you have to prevent them from taking that path to begin with because as you said, once the path is drawn, they'll stick to it like horny bees. So your best bet is to make sure they cannot, but easier said than done lol

[Fossa2]

Build benches in a line of a path you wish to create. They do not have to be real close together. As the villagers use the benches, they create a path. Once the path is created, you can delete the benches.

[Feral Grumpicorn]

Please keep an open mind about how bad these paths seem until you have seen high density housing. It changes the appearance of a settlement a lot. The plots get autofilled with houses so paths there are gone and you end up with streets between the house blocks. One interesting thing about that is, that the houses are dynamic. If you place a decoration into them some of the houses get removed to fit it in.

So inside the city walls you have neat streets between the plots and smaller settlements have a more rural vibe with those more chaotic paths. I see now why they made it like this and I like it.

[mansman]

I just wish the housing had priority over the paths. If I lay down a residential area that has a random path through it. Please ignore paths when allocating house plots. The paths can be rerouted after the allocation happens. This is especially frustrating when some random messenger or whatever decides to wonder through your fresh land purchase and ruins your entire build strategy.

[Killer Rabbit]

Originally posted by Dregora:

essentially villagers will always take the ''fastest'' routes to where ever they have to go

I wish I had a recording of the path some of the villagers were taking, snaking around houses and going in circles instead of the straight path I created to guide them. I spent hours trying to deter them by using the forbidden zoning, fences, etc. The forbidden zoning is tricky to use with existing residential because it often conflicted with the residential. I finally said screw it and drew a red line across the map with the only opening being the straight path. Some of those little buggers though found it "quicker" to go outside the map boundaries though.

All that said, I still do enjoy the organic nature of it! I only wish villagers were more likely to go around the housing plots instead of through them if there were gaps between them.

Originally posted by Dregora:

once the path is drawn, they'll stick to it like horny bees.

After battling villagers using the existing paths, I 100% agree with this analogy!

[Killer Rabbit]

Originally posted by ohener:

The only other option seems to be setting forbidden zones on either side of the path you want. This destroys the houses there since the forbidden zone brush undoes the residential zoning.

I do wish that the land that a house takes up was more visible so that it was easier to draw the forbidden zone outside of that. The min brush size is still too large to get that fine level of detail in a single pass. So many times I'd draw a line and then get the message that the house was going to be destroyed.