Worker desertion

Why and when workers desert your city and how to prevent it

When workers desert

A worker can desert from your city if all of these criteria are met:

• He is not one of the 9 workers you start the game with.
  
• He joined your city at least 12 in-game hours ago.
  
• He has mediocre or lower happiness.
  
• He has no permanent job. Working in any city building is a permanent job. Resource gathering and building construction are not. I will refer to these as "volatile" jobs.

How to prevent desertion

• Keep all workers satisfied or jubilant. Avoid having any workers at mediocre or lower satisfaction.
  
• Keep workers busy in buildings. Avoid a large unemployed population.
  
• Brace yourself before passing population milestones. With their increasing satisfaction criteria, passing a milestone can easily push your population to mediocre satisfaction, putting you at risk for a desertion wave.
  
• If you don't think that you can swiflty increase or upkeep satisfaction after passing a milestone, then try to create more buildings to reduce unemployment.
  
• If you reach a milestone for the first time, there is a grace period of 6 ingame hours without desertion.
  
• Brace yourself before finishing quests. Kingdoms usually give you five new workers when you complete a quest of theirs. Will you be able to satisfy their needs and employ them on short notice? Will this push you above a population milestone?
  
• For example, doing a building quest and then immediately building the sky port would give you 10 new workers in a very short time span. Is your city prepared for that?

Is desertion problematic?

Desertion indicates that there was/is a problem with your city. But is desertion to be avoided at all costs? It depends on the specific goals of your playthrough, but usually desertion is something that can be recovered from.
Avoiding desertion entirely would require near-perfect city management with a lot of planning ahead and preparedness - paradigms somewhat at odds with an exploration-oriented game.

Since patch 1.1.0 recruits regenerate endlessly in settlements. This means that a loss from desertion can always be compensated - if you have the patience and can meet the recruit's demands.

Considering that desertion is practically the only way to get rid of workers (creative mode not withstanding), it might even be healthy and desirable in specific situations.
Before you try to fix your city after a desertion wave, take a moment to think if that desertion was actually good for you in that moment. It obviously reduces food and water consumption, and perhaps resolves a lack of housing.
Intentionally shedding the new rescued workers during the tundra mission might be a viable strategy.

When desertion happened

Situation: The desertion wave sheds all your workers of mediocre satisfaction. Only satisfied and jubilant workers remain.
Solution: Check what the current bottlenecks for satisfaction are and resolve them before more recruitment.

Situation: The desertion wave shrinks your city to the previous population milestone.
Solution: The lower population milestone has reduced the satisfaction requirements, making the game a little easier for now. Try to fulfill an additional satisfaction criteria with the current population level before recruiting more workers - or be ready to do so soon after recruitment.

Situation: You loose all your volatile workers to desertion. You have nobody left to gather resources and construct new buildings.
Solution: If you can recruit from the nearest settlement, do so immediately. If you cannot due to insufficient satisfaction, then remove some buildings to free up workers. In either case, take steps to resolve the satisfaction problem immediately. Otherwise your new volatile workforce will also desert soon.