Messaging

[NetTech]

I have to say that I think that this game could be significantly improved by improving the messaging.

Far too many of the most common messages are incredibly vague, leaving me to try to guess just _why_ they are occurring.

e.g.
"Villager path blocked" - the log message states that villager couldn't get to destination, allowing me at least to see _which_ villager had the problem, and _which_ spot the villager couldn't get to, but often there is very little indication of _why_.

"Housing insufficient" - this often occurs when I've got lots of space available to build housing, but the game doesn't want to use it, and there is no indication why. Is it too far away? Is it too narrow? Something else?

"Housing unavailable" - again, I get this message, and it seems to refer to a specific villager, who _has_ housing, but is complaining about it. No indication of just what the complaint _is_, just that there is something wrong?

Try taking your car to a mechanic and telling him "something's wrong" How likely do you think it is that he'd be able to fix the problem? Similarly, if I, the player, get a similar message, how am I supposed to be able to find and correct the problem?

This game has the potential to be fun, but as it stands, the frustration level is higher than it needs to be.

[City Builder]

Have you clicked on the message? It should bring up the book allowing you to click to view the villager and click again in the book to see where it's blocked.

Sadly with all the trees I struggle to see the house their usually trying to get to. An option to make trees gone would be helpful.

[NetTech]

Originally posted by City Builder:

Have you clicked on the message? It should bring up the book allowing you to click to view the villager and click again in the book to see where it's blocked.

Sadly with all the trees I struggle to see the house their usually trying to get to. An option to make trees gone would be helpful.

As I stated, the log provides the information you mentioned, but it is still often unclear why the villager in question cannot reach the spot indicated.

I just think that more detail would be useful; e.g. the access point is blocked by this or that building. Or there is a tree in the way. Or that is in a forbidden zone. :)

Or rather than (or in addition to?) the "Housing unavailable" message, perhaps, "housing is too far away" or "housing is low quality"

Also, for the "Housing insufficient" message - I think it would be useful if the interface gave some indication of when a zone was large enough (in all dimensions) to support a house. Often, I get this message, and I'm left scratching my head, because I have lots of housing zone, and it _looks_ large enough. Mind you, I suspect that one is occasionally a bug - I've had it occur and I've saved and quit to do other things (deal with life, basically) and then not had the issue reoccur when I picked up where I left off later.

[NetTech]

And now I'm getting the "Villager path blocked" error again. I've got sheep herders complaining that they can't get from the sheep farm outside the walls to their housing inside the walls. No indication why - there is a gate - several, actually - but rather than using the closest gate they were choosing a gate on the far side of the town and walking all the way around the town to get to and from work. When I blocked that, then I started getting the "villager path blocked" message. Evidently the path involving the closest gate is blocked, but there is absolutely no indication just _what_ is blocking it.

[City Builder]

Originally posted by NetTech:

[

As I stated, the log provides the information you mentioned, but it is still often unclear why the villager in question cannot reach the spot indicated.

I just think that more detail would be useful; e.g. the access point is blocked by this or that building. Or there is a tree in the way. Or that is in a forbidden zone. :)

Or rather than (or in addition to?) the "Housing unavailable" message, perhaps, "housing is too far away" or "housing is low quality"

Also, for the "Housing insufficient" message - I think it would be useful if the interface gave some indication of when a zone was large enough (in all dimensions) to support a house. Often, I get this message, and I'm left scratching my head, because I have lots of housing zone, and it _looks_ large enough. Mind you, I suspect that one is occasionally a bug - I've had it occur and I've saved and quit to do other things (deal with life, basically) and then not had the issue reoccur when I picked up where I left off later.

I agree, for me its infuriating to be able to see what object they can't get to but can't figure out what is causing the issue, I've asked a couple time why the game isn't highlighting what is breaking the pathing to the object, like if it's another house the game should highlight in red both homes causing it, at least then we'd know deleting one or the other **might** clear up the issue.

In my experience it only gets worse as the game builds the homes itself and expands and packs them in.

[NetTech]

Originally posted by City Builder:

Originally posted by NetTech:

[

As I stated, the log provides the information you mentioned, but it is still often unclear why the villager in question cannot reach the spot indicated.

I just think that more detail would be useful; e.g. the access point is blocked by this or that building. Or there is a tree in the way. Or that is in a forbidden zone. :)

Or rather than (or in addition to?) the "Housing unavailable" message, perhaps, "housing is too far away" or "housing is low quality"

Also, for the "Housing insufficient" message - I think it would be useful if the interface gave some indication of when a zone was large enough (in all dimensions) to support a house. Often, I get this message, and I'm left scratching my head, because I have lots of housing zone, and it _looks_ large enough. Mind you, I suspect that one is occasionally a bug - I've had it occur and I've saved and quit to do other things (deal with life, basically) and then not had the issue reoccur when I picked up where I left off later.

I agree, for me its infuriating to be able to see what object they can't get to but can't figure out what is causing the issue, I've asked a couple time why the game isn't highlighting what is breaking the pathing to the object, like if it's another house the game should highlight in red both homes causing it, at least then we'd know deleting one or the other **might** clear up the issue.

In my experience it only gets worse as the game builds the homes itself and expands and packs them in.

Well, "some pathfinding issues" _is_ on the short-term road-map, so hopefully that includes better messaging.

After all, if I am not being given enough information to _find_ the pathfinding issue so that I can correct it, then it is indistinguishable from a pathfinding bug.

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by NetTech:

"Villager path blocked"

Villager path is a bit wonky, but for the most part it seems to be an issue with them reaching a specific task (like a tree a woodcutter felled that went into the water) or entrance (house spawned too close to a fence and blocked an entrance for itself). Sometimes you can just ignore it and the issue will resolve itself or you can adjust a building a bit to compensate.

I do recommend forcing the villagers to carve out main pathways through your settlement to your center, as that helps relieve a lot of issues.

Originally posted by NetTech:

"Housing insufficient/unavailable"

It might be a commoner wanting to move into a commoner-house instead of the serf-house they currently live in, or an issue with their workplace being too far from any available rooms. (100m or less is preferable, but 150 is the max I believe.) so try to compensate for those and see if it helps.

[NetTech]

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

Originally posted by NetTech:

"Villager path blocked"

Villager path is a bit wonky, but for the most part it seems to be an issue with them reaching a specific task (like a tree a woodcutter felled that went into the water) or entrance (house spawned too close to a fence and blocked an entrance for itself). Sometimes you can just ignore it and the issue will resolve itself or you can adjust a building a bit to compensate.

I do recommend forcing the villagers to carve out main pathways through your settlement to your center, as that helps relieve a lot of issues.

Originally posted by NetTech:

"Housing insufficient/unavailable"

It might be a commoner wanting to move into a commoner-house instead of the serf-house they currently live in, or an issue with their workplace being too far from any available rooms. (100m or less is preferable, but 150 is the max I believe.) so try to compensate for those and see if it helps.

I don't have anything but serfs at the moment. I don't have the resources that commoners require, so I haven't promoted anyone to that status yet.

The most recent instance of "Housing unavailable" messages seems to have been the game being slow (really, really slow) to recover from the "Housing insufficient" problem I'd had earlier. (I was working on upgrading the housing density) It seems that while the game had assigned housing for all villagers, it didn't stop throwing the "Housing unavailable" messages until each and every villager had actually entered his assigned housing.

I am hoping that improving the messaging is on their road-map - it is frustrating to get a message and not have enough information to figure out what is causing it.

[City Builder]

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

(100m or less is preferable, but 150 is the max I believe.) so try to compensate for those and see if it helps.

It may sound stupid but is there a tape measure in game to see distances?
Thanks

[Wantoomany]

I saw it said somewhere else that the largest paintbrush square is about 40 meters.

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by City Builder:

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

(100m or less is preferable, but 150 is the max I believe.) so try to compensate for those and see if it helps.

It may sound stupid but is there a tape measure in game to see distances?
Thanks

No, but generally a maxed out farm will be about 90m is my guess. Although it doesn't matter for the farmers since they (like a lot of jobs such as woodcutters) operate on an additional distance limit based on their workplace. I.E. woodcutters being able to go quite far away from the village to cut some trees due to it being a job-related thing and not village-related thing.

The max distance for travel for a villager is probably around 350 or 400m though. But idk if that's written down anyway. They tend to start floundering and struggle to continue their processing at around 150 which is why we call it the max; though some villagers will power through like one builder of mine who lives like 250m from their workplace yet has no issues. (no idea why they're fine).

[NetTech]

I'm having "Housing Insufficient" problems yet again. I have enough housing zoned for five basic houses; as in, the unused housing zones are precisely the same dimensions as other zones that have that many housed on them, total. Yet, I am getting "Housing insufficient" messages, with exactly zero explanation. _WHY_ is my housing zone insufficient.

Is it too small? (unlikely based on above) Is access blocked? (unlikely - tree cutters could get into clear the trees) Is it too far away? This is possible, I suppose, but just how close does a housing zone need to be? I see nothing in the help about this, nor any indication of how close is close enough in the interface.

I really think that this game would be less frustrating and more fun if the shear amount of guesswork was reduced. This game has a lot of potential, but d**n it can be annoying trying to guess just what it's complaining about this time.

[City Builder]

Is the housing area too far away from their jobs? I just had this in a new game and found my villagers not building houses in available spaces and then realized they might have been too far away, at least by a little, so I was forced to build residential zones closer and they immediately started sprouting homes.

I don't know exactly how far away we are allowed to build them but I think there should be some sort of mechanism that is obvious if we are building too far away.

I don't know if possible but maybe as painting residential houses the game should cycle through the villagers missing homes and notifying us that it's not close enough to their work places so that we paint closer to the non-homed workers.

[AmesNFire]

If you're maintaining high happiness (think rough 86+ on the villager list screen, not the overall happiness) you could kick people living far away from their workplaces out of their homes and force them to move because you put residential zones near their workplaces.

(Try to do the reverse with Commoners since they should be living near your town center anyway. aka firing them from their far away job and placing them in a closer one.)

Also I highly recommend pursuing residential density and slapping down a light fortification wall around a huge area where you plan to have farms, hunting, your actual village and market/industry center, and church. It helps a lot.

[bruenor3624]

I also was having this problem so put on pause and started looking. Found the solution. In the Royal Book pull up the Villagers tab... or press F5. On the right hand side look for a red triangle. Hover your mouse over that and it will say "I am unable to find a house close to my workplace".
On the left it has Follow, View Home, View Workplace. Click on View Workplace... will have to close the window... but it will show where the villager works at. You can then make an appropriate housing location.
I also am messing with how big a housing area the villagers need. I also found another shortcut for the paint brushes... press and hold CTRL and rotate the mouse wheel. Can make fine adjustment on the size of the paintbrush.

[NetTech]

Originally posted by bruenor3624:

I also was having this problem so put on pause and started looking. Found the solution. In the Royal Book pull up the Villagers tab... or press F5. On the right hand side look for a red triangle. Hover your mouse over that and it will say "I am unable to find a house close to my workplace".
On the left it has Follow, View Home, View Workplace. Click on View Workplace... will have to close the window... but it will show where the villager works at. You can then make an appropriate housing location.
I also am messing with how big a housing area the villagers need. I also found another shortcut for the paint brushes... press and hold CTRL and rotate the mouse wheel. Can make fine adjustment on the size of the paintbrush.

Thank you, that information is remarkably well hidden.

Yes, it did indeed turn out that one villager said that there was no housing close to his work. (a new iron mine) However, this leads me to wonder (again) if every single one of these villagers has mobility issues. There was housing just over 150 meters away. Now, I know it's just a d**n game, but a person of only average heath and fitness can walk 150 meters in two minutes. I find it a little annoying to need to spam housing all over the place.