Idle workers while wood production stalls

[Inconmon]

Hi,

My sawmills don't produce because no carrier picks up the wood which is urgently needed for construction. The sawmill workers don't move it 1 space to the plank storage next to them. A dozen citizens are idle standing near the houses not doing anything.

Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/cGC2kZx
Sawmills bottom left, houses to the right.

My guess is that a single worker is carrying one plank at a time from one end to the map, to the other end of the map. I can't see a way of fixing the issue beside building more sawmills to that I don't need to increase the number of carriers.

Cheers!

[Inconmon]

Same idle issue with potato farms -- nobody is picking up farmed potatoes, yet there's tons of idle citizens and I've set minimum carriers to 50% of my population by now.

Same idle issue with roads not being build despite idle citizens -- max builders has been increased and there's capacity that's unused.

Similarly my market isn't getting stocked frequently enough from full warehouses, despite idle citizens/carriers that are unhappy about the lack of food.

A lot of it seems to be related to building too much too quickly. If build store houses in the right places, wait until they are full, then build few buildings at a time and wait until they are completed, the issues are not present.
I think a lot of this could be solved by giving the player slightly more control over carriers, which would also be more fun when setting up supply chains. If you could attach carriers to specific buildings or even specific routes, it would be immensely helpful. I'd like 5-10 carriers just restocking my central market. I'd like 2 carriers supplying the carpenters doing furniture. I'd like 5+ carriers getting planks from sawmill into my warehouses.

---

Regarding the plank production: After building a lumberjack and a sawmill closer to some of the areas where I'm building things, they now do the followings: The Sawmills with ready planks next to the lumberjack are ignored. Instead they carry the lumber across the whole map to the other sawmill and then use those planks.
They should always aim for the closest option.

I tried a second game to investigate. If I build two wood production centers (3 lumberjack building, 3 sawmills, 3 forresters, etc surrounding a central forest) the first one is busy, the second one will be fully ignored. See bottom left is completely idle as carriers ignore it while the other one is super busy: https://imgur.com/a/z8wvQz9

[Rudy (Snowy Ash Games)]

Hiya!

I'll investigate the issues you are describing. It seems there are several different problems there. There's a few similar cases I am investigating and I will hopefully nail the issues.

Originally posted by Inconmon:

The sawmill workers don't move it 1 space to the plank storage next to them.

It seems that a recent change isn't working the way I hoped. Workers were supposed to prioritize their own work, but it looks like this also means they will let a carrier miles away do the delivery even if it's next to them (and even when their own output is full). I'll try to adjust it, but it seems to need a relatively much more complex decision-making than I initially thought.

The unstocked market issues sounds like something else going on. Does it say there are expected deliveries when you mouseover the item in the building selection window?

Originally posted by Inconmon:

I think a lot of this could be solved by giving the player slightly more control over carriers, which would also be more fun when setting up supply chains. If you could attach carriers to specific buildings or even specific routes, it would be immensely helpful.

That's probably something I will have to add. I really want the game to "just work" and the carriers to be smart enough to not cause issues. But that's turning out to be extremely difficult and having control over them might work out better for players who want to have such control.

[Inconmon]

So despite the issue I went quite far with the game and managed to "fix" the market issue: By having 150 carriers at the time that fulfilled every single delivery. It meant about 30 were idle at all times (despite work to be done!), but enough got restocked. Basically with 2/3s of your pop being carriers, it works.

When the market wasn't supplied, the issue seemed to be that a single carrier went to restock a single item and he potentially did so by being the furthest away and having to move there. Only once this was done, the next item was added to the queue for a different faraway worker. It meant that the market was constantly empty because as soon as a good was supplied, it was immediately carried away.

Similarly the lumber factory in the second screenshot was finally used: Once I had so many carriers that they served everything at once (including 20% being idle on top), it got used as well. The thing that infuriated me most while watching is that they went to the idle second "lumber factory" and took the logs from the lumberjacks and carried it all the way to the first "lumber factory" saw mills if they had spare capacity. They didn't use the much closer saw mills. It made any attempt at optimization fruitless.

I assume the decisioning is "the closest sawmill needs wood, find the closest wood". The problem is that "closest" doesn't always equal most efficient. It works if you work around it , or have enough carriers that it doesn't matter.
Furthermore I think they currently prioritise planks from the closest sawmill even if that sawmill cannot produce enough. Meaning that a sawmill further away with ready planks will be ignored in favour of restocking a closer sawmill that is overwhelmed. If the carriers would go "I need 30 planks and there is 12 available in various sawmills, I'll go and get them all at the same time" it would solve this specific problem, because further away sawmills wouldn't be ignored. But it would potentially create additional issues, where it would be much more efficient to use a closer sawmill to produce wood instead of carrying it from far away.

The very first game I played (and finished) all my buildings were setup very inefficiently, and it just about worked because I didn't have many multiples in each industry. In further games when I tried to have a smarter and bigger setup, the "AI" logic failed me each time.

[Rudy (Snowy Ash Games)]

Sorry for long delay.

I've been tracking down and narrowing issues with deliveries. The difficulty is that it's several different problems that collide and it's extra-hard to adjust them when they get in each other's way.

That said, I think I have possibly fixed the issue you were having. I've had trouble reproducing it, but I believe the reason was bad logic in item proportions, which only became apparent under certain situations and economy timing and not just a specific layout.

I will keep adjusting and improving; I have a bunch of ideas (including what was mentioned above).

[Inconmon]

Awesome, I'm looking forward to playing again

[highwind]

My issue isn't directly relatedwith wood production, but it seems similar. Generally, I have a lot of deliveries idling (at least I understand that the red icon suggests so), while multiple workers are just standing and doing nothing. Unfortunately I'm encountering such issue since around three updates ago.

https://imgur.com/a/qguWcZa

Or maybe I just don't understand why the carriers icon is being red.

[Rudy (Snowy Ash Games)]

Originally posted by highwind:

Generally, I have a lot of deliveries idling (at least I understand that the red icon suggests so), [..]

It is probably fine since the difference is so small. It might be one or two deliveries stuck, but may be they are just taking a long time to get assigned. The number is "happy to go red" even though everything might be fine, just not absolutely perfect.

I've been thinking about deliveries, and I need a more player-controlled way to do so. It's a big task, and I'll be working on it in the new year.