Villagers stuck in a Swimming Loop and Dying

[Leader Bean]

So I noticed something weird the other day in one of my games. 5-8 people a year are straight up dying from dehydration and starvation despite my ample supplies of food and water and low tasking (I rarely task about 50% except planting and harvesting automatically increase the tasks). I even dotted wells and totems all over the farming, mining, and hunting grounds outside the town to get close resources of water and morale while they are out and about. I even moved granaries to the outskirts of my village and moved some huts to the corners as well.

What happens is that they are all automatically tasked to do something (eg. "going to get bow, clothing," etc.) then they all swim into the lake and keep swimming until they die. I now manually monitor the lake and reassign them to huts which seems to work for awhile and after a few seasons they start doing the exact same thing (retrieving item, swim, swim, swim, die). I also increased the amount of items (like bows and clothing) well past the amount I actually need for my citizens but they all still do the same thing.

I am going to start a new game and see if this continues but I was wondering if anyone noticed anything similar with the AI?

[buds]

It’s a bug maybe. Things like this happen from time to time to me and a trader/s keep on cycling near a lake or river with an empty cart having very low HP. Once it gets hit by lightning the cart breaks and produce logs which my villagers are trying to retrieve (far from my camp). I just delete the logs and continue the game.

Also some items that are dropped in a deep water either near the river bank or lake are bring retrieved using a cart or sledge which can’t be. So just delete the item and continue.

[Kroto]

I had a similar problem, and here's how I managed to fix it:

I realized that the problem was related to the doors and banners in my village. Initially, I had built banners in the middle of the doors, which seemed to work fine at first. However, I noticed that the villagers started swimming into the lake and dying after I saved and reloaded the game.

After observing their behavior, I found that the issue occurred when I forgot to build a banner at one of the doors. Villagers would go through that door to reach faraway places, but they would start swimming and get stuck. They'd swim until they died from starvation or dehydration.

To fix this, I removed the banners from the doors, and the problem stopped. The villagers no longer swam endlessly and stopped dying. It seemed like they were trying to swim to their destinations but couldn't make it back in time to eat or rest.

Give this a try in your game if you block your doors, and ensure no obstacles are blocking their paths.

This should help prevent your villagers from getting stuck in a swimming loop and dying. Let me know if this works for you or if you find any other solutions!