Villager's happiness and food consumption reset on loaded game

[BlindBlake]

I know someone already addressed this issue on the forum, but I'm experiencing something a little different. I understood that individual happiness is not stored in saved games because of the size of the saved file, but I'm wondering if their consumption habits are stored or not.
Indeed, with a 250 pop town, when I'm at 100% happiness and quit the game, when I load it, it starts at 0 and goes up when they fill their needs, the problem is that I noticed some type of food, like bread or cheese, drop down from my warehouses even though I had plenty of them. It seems that they were not as popular as before I left the game.

This is quite an issue as I build my supply chain throughout the game based on what my people seems to need at the time and I plan my town accordingly. Are people consumption habits recalculated after I load the game ? If so, I don't if it's possible but I'd prefer them to be stored inside the saved game file.

Thanks for that great game anyway, I'm really enjoying it, and thanks for all the support you gave us on the forum.

[Minotorious]

I am not 100% sure what you mean by consumption habits, villagers will buy whatever food is available the closest to their house, they have no preference or history of what they ate to seek out again the same or to be forced to change their diet.

What happens when you load the game is that all need boxes are recalculated so if a need was fulfilled it counts as filled and if it was empty it counts as zero thus the happiness dive until they fulfil those needs again

[BlindBlake]

I don't really know what's going on, just that I managed to have 200+ bread inside a warehouse with only two wheat farm, a windmill and a bakery for 250 people, I was trading the surplus, but after loading a save game, it started to dwindle. I figured that people started to eat more bread and less cheese but if they choose the closest market from their home, my theory falls apart.

Maybe I didn't get how serfs, commoners and citizen consume food. Or the food consumption changed because of an earlier choice like upgrading my population.

Anyway, thanks for your help, I'll keep that in mind for my next game.

[Minotorious]

Regarding food the only difference between serfs and commoner/citizens is that the former have only 1 food source need while the latter have 2 of them. This means that serfs will only buy from the closest market stall to their house while commoners/citizens will buy from the 2 closest ones.

Note that if the markets are in a single monument the villagers will eat from the stalls in order of appearance and not at random, i.e. everyone will eat from stall 1 and commoners/citizens will eat from stall 2 too, stall 3+ will only be used if stalls 1 or 2 are empty.

[BlindBlake]

Thanks for the precision, I didn't know about the market stalls order.

[Minotorious]

Yes unfortunately this mechanic is not currently explained in game so your only way of knowing is either by asking or somehow noticing it yourself in game.

The UI/UX designer is working on getting this and other such hidden mechanics across through some kind of tutorial or tooltip etc. ;)

[BlindBlake]

That's a good idea, and maybe some kind of user guide inside the game that explains every mechanics. I often found myself trying to follow one villager, especially transporters and market tenders to find what was going wrong in my supply chain.

Having a real explanation in some sort of wiki inside the game would make it easier to understand where the problem lies.