Ai Villager guide

This guide will help players learn how to manage there villagers.
You will learn how to:

-set up schedules to allow the villagers to be happy and productive.

-restrict storage access in workstations and warehouse

-create production chains

-manage builders

-Effective ways to ensure villagers survive

Villager Scheduling

To start managing villagers getting a working schedule is the best way to get them to act instead of idling. Depending how you manage your schedules and who you schedule; you will either get an effective ai or an encumber-some ai. There are three parts to schedules: Work, Leisure and Sleep.



Work: This is the time that they complete tasks either at a workstation or as a builder

Leisure: During this period the villager will attempt to find food to eat, water to drink, runestone to relax, and gear to equip.

Sleep: Affects the rest of the villager

Depending on how long the villager has to move in each of these time frames will depend on how many tasks they complete. It also affects there happiness when they can or cannot accomplish enough tasks during leisure and rest time. Happiness then affects how well they complete task during work times



This is the default schedule you villagers come with. I'll just say it this schedule will always result in a dumb ai. There is too much work and not enough leisure. This is done to make sure your ai doesn't just sit there when the spawn in. To effectively change this we have to make different schedules. to do this we go into a villager stats and choose the hourglass. Now change work, leisure and sleep time as you see fit. Click apply to make it active. Now the middle section has 3 options to create, load or delete. We are going to create a schedule save based on the current active schedule above.



As you can see you can make as many schedules as you want either for specific work stations or for times.



In this image you can see the effects of three separate schedules working together. Ensuring the villagers have time for leisure that doesn't conflict with the other schedules. Work time over laps to allow task to be handed of between change overs. Sleep times reduce villagers moving in and out housing.

Managing the time frame for Sleep to Leisure to Work is crucial in allowing the ai to transition between all task.



In the end your villagers will start to become happier. This will increase there effectiveness. Reduce the effects of negative buffs. Making negative attributes less of a hindrance to the villager.

Restricting AI

This is the most demanding part on the ai for villagers. The more they have access to the more they have to cycle through to find what they want. The more they can take out and drop. That then stops other villager ai from knowing its there. Whether they look at workstation storage or warehouse storage. Allowing all villager ai to access all storage causes confusion. By limiting the villager ai access; you limit the time between finding what they need and acting. It also stops them from taking items they do not need and keeping it in there inventory.

To restrict the ai properly you have to open the workstation or warehouse



after choosing said work station. find and open the whitelist/blacklist section marked by a single helmet



Inside there will be a box on the right with a green check mark. Click it off and a list of every villager will appear. They will all be marked as added and any new villager entering after making changes will be marked as added. Now go through and remove any villager you do not want to have access to the workstation or warehouse storage.

Now, your villagers have less to process and less to withdraw. Your villagers will have more inventory space. Your items will now remain where the right ai can find it. After some time you will notice your villagers acting smarter and dropping less items on the ground.

Create Production Chains

In this section you learn how to create a production chain by using the previously learned scheduling and whitelist/blacklist methods. Combining these two will further improve your village production; allowing you to increase you villager count. I'll be using an example of my food production chain.

In my example of a food production chain I show you the fishery, farm, gather hut, hunter, two warehouses and the cooking house. There schedules along with there storage restrictions.




To start in all of you food workstations make sure that only the workers for that work station are white listed along with the warehouse that will hold your raw food. Now you may ask why not put raw food, water and cooked food in the same warehouse. Simple splitting up the workload makes your ai focus on specific work stations in this case i have 5 farms, 4 fisheries, 1 hunter house, 1 gathering hut. This means my 2 villagers at my warehouse has to visit 11 workstations. This seems like a lot but in rotation and time they manage. Putting the Cooked food in its own warehouse that everyone can access makes your cooking house more productive. The Water bin is a good idea, but when your raw food warehouse worker tries to gather water while carrying items they tend to drop them at well. Next make sure your raw food storage can only be accessed by its workers and cooking houses. Now that your food workstations can only be access by those working there and the raw food warehouse you can move onto your cooking house and do the same. Leave the cooked food warehouse open to all ai since they will only go there for food.

With all your villagers restricted to only there work area, we work on there schedules. Your warehouses should work around the same time as your workstations so that way when they put items in storage the warehouse ai will go and pick up the item and move it.



In these images you'll see that the work time overlaps. This ensures that there is always someone producing food. In the case of the cooking house they have two work shifts the same as the cooked food warehouse. This makes sure that the cooking house doesn't stop producing due full storage.

Your food production chain is now complete and your villager ai will act properly. (except for bugs)

Manage Builders

Builders are not like other villagers. They have no workstation, but they will still access every other workstation and warehouse storage. This can cause issues between other ai. They could take out the fiber from your workshop that was meant to make rope. This can cause you workshop to not make an ax your woodworker needs. This stops your woodworker from chopping trees and gathering logs/sticks. This then stops your builder from completing a construction site. Now your Builder is standing idle asking why can't i find any resources. To resolve this you simply need to restrict there access to any workstation. If they can only access warehouses your ai at workstations will have what they need without interference. Now you need to manage your warehouses' storage. Specializing your warehouses based on the workstation or production chain there connected to. Example a wood production chain. Only the wood house, workshop with carpenter and builder would have access to the warehouse. Which would only have bins for items those workstations produce. This is one of the best layouts for a warehouse. It helps gather large amounts of resources for future projects.

As for scheduling its best to separate the builders between multiple work times. This way they have less impact on your production. Scheduling impacts your builders the most. They take what you produce and resources you use to produce it. So if your constructing many buildings they will negatively impact your production chains.

Effective ways to ensure Villager survival

Now that your villagers only do what they are assigned and have enough time to do what they need to survive. You can look at how you design your village. There are many ways to make your village(s). You can create small ones some distance from each other connected by markets. You can make a single large village with small outposts for basic resources and food. There all viable ways of playing ASKA. What you need to do to help your villagers to survives matters more on how efficient they move to and from there tasks. During with it's all about how you manage your heat sources.

First lets talk about roads. Not only do they allow you to run using less stamina, the ai will also prioritize walking on them to get where they want. This is the start of forming a village. To help keep the ai in check the fence is a great method or restricting there movement inside the village. Furthermore while your ai is traveling along roads they will use less water allowing them to go longer without drinking the small amount of water they can carry.



Next we'll talk about leisure time for villagers. They need to get what they need at this time. So the faster they can get what they need the sooner they can go to the rune stones. This is where they sit till there leisure time is up. While sitting at the rune stones they will gain buffs that increase there happiness, the longer they sit there the longer it lasts. When the ai sleeps they also gain happiness not through buffs. There sleep meter increases allowing them to work harder.



Let's understand the building placement. Just like how it takes time to go from how to workstation. Those workstations provide a positive or negative effect on housing. This can be offset by building gardens and such. You can also increase it by placing positive buildings next to housing. Now that is not to say you shouldn't put negative workstations near housing.

Finally, I will talk about winter. Many players dread this season. In my opinion its not so awful. With your ai restrictions and scheduling; they'll have the time to warm up if needed. Now you should make sure you put your campfires in the center of work stations and rune stones. Doing this will allow the campfire to passively keep your ai warm withing its heating radius. Next best thing is to switch from using firewood to using coal. Coal adds more fuel than firewood, while also allowing the ai to carry more. As well you can produce 100 coal for 40 firewood. This is why restricting ai from pulling resources has a great impact on the game. Another thing to remember is the fire inside your housing. If the ai is close enough to it they will go inside to warm up.

Conclusion

I understand that this game is still in early access and future updates may eliminate the need or make them easier to complete. This guide is to help players become more positive in there perspective. The game still has its bugs, some of the content seems clunky, while we can only hope that they will fix real issues. The current ai can still be improved, but its design being challenging to use and manage makes it unique and worth learning and using. In the future I may come back and update this guide to reflect the changes in the ai process.

Support

This being my first guide published. I really love ASKA, the future improvements it can provide. I have seen many games take terrible turns due to player complaints about systems that were to difficult for them to use or master. I would really love to see what they can provide without the negative feedback about systems that are working as intended(minus actual bugs).

That begin said there is much more content that I can create guides on to help players of all levels. If you wish to see more information and guides on subjects in ASKA please leave a like and a positive comment. I hope this guide has helped change players perspective on the current state of the game.

[casa06885]

Your welcome. I understand the headache the ai can cause. I am happy the devs put in the time to fix bugs related to them.

[JayOhh]

You sir or madam have saved me a lot of headache. THANK YOU!

[Nanaki01]

So, the most important building in every village is... Warehouse!! Without it, You will not be able to manage production chains properly.

[Jebbalon]

Okay. I do think your guide will help others. Thank you for taking the time to make and share it.
Also thank you for interacting with me in the comments.

[casa06885]

what constitutes figuring out how the ai works as beginner? How do you tell your not a beginner for understanding the reason for th ai doing what you don't want them to? Like i said this is for players to understand the ai and why they do what they do. Since there is no area in the game that says "Your ai eats the highest quality food first."or"Your ai will take resources from the closest place to them." This version of ai is advanced from most games that employ automated npcs. If your having troubles feeding your village. Then you should look at your layout as a whole. figure out where your problem is. If you want some help, ask. If you want to understand how others employ high amounts of villagers and produce food, then ask. Your picking apart one single part of a guide you mostly agree with to say "Oh, this is unnecessary." You may feel it unnecessary, while others may feel it helps them.

[Jebbalon]

...continued...
You say your gatherers/farms are overflowing and everyone is eating cooked food but that is not always easy to achieve as population grows. My current game is 105 villagers and I have 3 cookhouses in main village with 1 in each in 3 outposts. I calculate that I need 7 (not 6) for that population just based on the 15 bowl inventory of the cookhouse (105/15=7) so that is my goal tonight is to add a couple more cooks as I am going to grow from there. As well as a 3rd farm.

and yeah this is totally not a beginner thing, do what y'all are comfortable with.

[Jebbalon]

I'm confused because your guide's section on Restricting AI says it is a good thing to limit the access using the whitelist, yeah? But then you mention that the worker should have access as well and I was just pointing out that that is not needed.
I played last night and implemented (for my main village) the fully restricted food chain. Gatherers, farmers and cooks have no access to their own storage only the Raw foods warehouse worker does. The cooks are only ones with access to take from the raw foods warehouse. Then everyone has access to a cooked food warehouse. It works for the most part and I suppose I'll see if starvation occurs because raw food is not available.
...continued...

[casa06885]

In theory it might work like that, but your forgetting the ai will go for the higher tier food source. This comes to play the leisure time. When they get off work they will go pick up cooked food enough to last them till the next time they visit. This way the ai gatherers and farmers will not eat raw food like you think they will. I know this cause my farms always become over flowing with food that it gets dropped on the ground. The gatherers and farmers always have cooked dishes in there inventory when i check them. So in practice the system has already been put into place to stop ai from just eating the raw food they gather. Also like i said prohibiting ai from there own workstation will cause issues in player made changes. I understand what you are trying to say. You can manage your ai that way. For those starting out and those who don't want to constantly micro manage there workstations can choose for themselves.

[Jebbalon]

...
Allowing everyone to pull from all storages (no restrictions) leads to things like a cook adding raw ingredients to the cookhouse and some other villagers taking and eating the raw food before it is cooked. Seen that lots of times.
The cook does not need access to the cookhouse storage to be able to add ingredients and cook and move the cooked food from pot to counter. Pulling from the pot is not accessing the storage of the cookhouse. The warehouse worker then moves cooked food with their access.

This is complicated to explain and honestly I've had success just allowing everyone to have access all the time to everything. But, I am experimenting with restricting access for the food.

[Jebbalon]

Errmm, I disagree. Gatherers and farm workers will harvest then add items to storage - Then pull from that storage if they are hungry and eat it. Instead restricting that storage to only the warehouse worker will move that raw ingredients to warehouse and the cooks allowed to pull from the warehouse.. then, again, the warehouse worker is only one to pull from the cookhouse the cooked food back to a warehouse where everyone is allowed to pull from.
That would be a fully restricted production chain.

.... continued...