This time I was playing Idyllic Valley with violence disabled. I still found the same problem - which is that the amount of micromanagement required I simply can’t get around all the facilities needed to support a population that size tweaking their settings and keeping an eye on their efficiency. My main problem is actually keeping enough logs coming in. Work camps are not really intelligent enough and kill too many trees so every year I am going around manually marking trees for harvesting. With the weather as harsh as it is (if this is meant to be mediaeval Britain then can I inform the devs this is nothing like our weather here in the UK - more like Siberia!!!) then no sooner do the laborers reach the targetted tree than it’s time for them to run for shelter, so very little logging actually gets done in comparison with how many trees I need.
It’s not meant to be medieval Britain, it’s advertised as a fantasy world.
Feedback I’ve seen on work camps is that if you have one or two workers assigned to a dense forest area they shouldn’t over forest, but in my experience I’ve seen otherwise.
One suggestion has been for us to have foresters who will take care of this. I think that, ultimately, that is the way to go.
In the meantime, I have set up woodlots, 2 of them, about 10x10. This does pretty well, except for the micromanaging needed. That can be a pain. Once you start really trading at the trading post, and get enough taxes and revenues from the markets, you should be able to buy all the wood you need from traders, especially when you get up in level and have more traders coming in.
More automation, or simplification of some tasks, would certainly help. With all the micromanaging currently necessary, we’ll be focusing our attention on one need – wood, for instance – and something could go to Hades in a handbasket (manufactured by our basket makers, of course) somewhere else on the map.
My advice would be to make sure you’ve got temporary shelters near your workcamps, as well as perhaps a stockyard and a road. Making little “outposts” with a hunter’s shack, forager’s shack, well, and log splitter (maybe smokehouse too) will make your work camps more efficient. Until the devs fix AI pathing you’re still going to have issues but not as many. Also, I have noticed that on Idyllic Valley deforestation can be an issue. I’m playing on Alpine now and it’s much easier with the logs.
If you are marking trees for harvest, make sure you have enough laborers to chop them. The work camp workers will only work in their radius. Also, it doesn’t hurt to shift the work camp radius every few years or so. I’ve found that shifting it around a 3-cycle allows the first set of trees to grow back.
“With all the micromanaging currently necessary, we’ll be focusing our attention on one need – wood, for instance – and something could go to Hades in a handbasket”
I don’t really get the problem here though, you can just pause the game and take as much time as you need, right? I always have a “next year planning” in December, where I change the work radius of every work camp, move the work area of fishing shacks around, figure out grazing areas and assign new crop fields around that, et cetera.
About woodcutting, I agree that the regrowth of trees is slow, which could be fixed either by making grow times faster or making the generation of new seedlings faster. Another possibility could be to allow smaller trees to generate new seedlings as well so you can safely cut all mature trees without having to worry that they don’t grow back too slowly. Or include a Forester, of course.
Up until that time, I just make do by ensuring I build stockyards and temporary shelters close by to minimize the time the workers spend walking back to the village.
I do the same, not as regularly as every year’s end, but I have also had times where I will just think it will take a second to fix X and in the meantime Y explodes. In that case, usually using the space bar (pause hotkey) is called for. I use it at the beginning of every raid, whenever I see a boar, and when my crops need rotating. Or when I can’t figure something out and need to spend time staring at it. I always pause whenever the traders come in too.
edit: forgot to mention that my most advanced town so far is ~500 people. Right now I’m suffering from lack of food since I expanded too fast but otherwise still going strong.
I was not favorably impressed with work camps, so I don’t use 'em. I have over 100 laborers and 45 builders. I would welcome a forester (more than one, actually). I used woodlots up until I accumulated enough income and gold from trading to be able to buy the wood I need at the traders. All my factories and processors and all are fully staffed. I’ve build temp shelters and often find them unstocked and uninhabited. Maybe too many, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that I’m 75 and my faculties aren’t as sharp as younger gamers has a role to play, too, in making the micromanaging somewhat overwhelming for me. However, FF is a beautiful game, and I’m finding it quite enjoyable – especially now, as I seem to have more of a handle on the food thing.
I understand that the work camps can be fairly underwhelming, but I do find them useful for a steady-ish supply (even if it’s not a torrent of resources). Sounds like in this case trading is your best bet! There are definitely AI issues with villager pathing (like the infamous can’t-find-the-soap and traveling-across-the-map-for-what’s-in-stock-next-door) and since this isn’t even version 1.0 of the game, I’m sure it will improve.
Haha, as a “younger gamer” myself I’m glad to see “older gamers” enjoying PC games. FF is indeed beautiful. Keep enjoying it! Most good games have a “grind” aspect to them, and we can only expect a game built around wilderness survival to be grind-y.
Pausing is fine for looking for what needs to be done, but the actual doing takes time, too, and involves lots of micromanaging. Probably the slower reflexes of us granny gamers has a part in it. I use the winter, after I’ve taken the cows in and selected the number to be slaughtered, to make any changes to fields, compost them, and set whatever else needs attention. Using decorative trees to replant is slow for all except oak. Oak trees do grow fast, which makes it nice for woodlots. Apparently, planted decorative trees don’t grow past 7, where as the “wild” trees grow to 10. Would be nice of the decorative ones could get to 10, too.
In spite of bit of a moan that I started this thread with I actually disagree that the trees grow too slowly. They seem to actually grow far faster than in real life. And as I try to harvest selectively, there are always others just about to get to maximum yield. Yes I am on pause while selecting trees. The problem for me is a) I think the weather is unrealistically harsh and each weather event takes too long out of the year. Blizzards usually last a couple of days at most - in this game they last a month! b)The micromanagement is because you can’t rely on the AI people to carry out tasks with the correct routing or priority. I mean, 4 laborers cut down a tree, then walk away without picking up the logs. They go home to eat, passing a store place they could have dropped the logs into on the way. Then another laborer has to walk all the way back to pick up the logs. I just want a little bit more intelligent help from the workers and the game will be everything I want.
One important thing the AI needs is a way for the villagers to plan ahead. So if a woodcutter decides to go get food or stock a shelter, first finish cutting the wood and transporting the wood back along the way, and only then switch to the next task.
It’s similar with barns right now, where herders try to milk but get interrupted all the time to restock the barn, which causes the herd to stay in the barn and eat the food there for several months during the summer. Just don’t have villagers interrupt the task they’re doing, instead, if they notice they need to do something like getting food, just plan to do it after the current task is finished.
I only use work camps for rock.
For trees I simply press H, select only trees and bushes and kind of mark everything on the map.
Sure the laborers will deplete some parts of the map from trees, but by the time they finished the whole map, those zones will have grown some new trees so I can restart the process.
You do have a problem on “small” maps though.
I play on “medium” sized maps, because there is no supply problem for wood (or rock until this point).
And “large” maps are SOOOO long to generate and charge, and the game can’t cope with large maps anyway. The logistics and AI aren’t built for it.
The barn food thing could be solved if they could get more stock in and if there were two levels of trigger for restocking. Level 1, get more food if you’re not busy, Level 2, get more food now even if you need to stop something else. Or when you have 4 workers why not have it set them specialist tasks like one is solely in charge of food and stocking, while the others herd and milk.
You’ve still got to keep checking so you move the camp work circle at the right time. Nothing’s gonna prompt you that they’ve only got baby trees left to harvest.
I don’t use work-camps for trees. Even with 2 workers they clear a zone and I have to move/micromanage it all the time.
I simply select the whole map with “H” for clearing and laborers do the work everywhere on the map (my soldiers got rid of wolf dens - so only the occasional bear to handle).
But true, once my work-camp mined all the stone, I’m not aware about it, so have to come and check once in a while.
The main reason why I absolutely need working camps is because the number of free laborers I have is constantly fluctuating, as they are the population every other profession draws from to fill newly created jobs. I now have a town of over 600 people and within a year the total number of free laborers can easily fluctuate from 3 to 35 back again to 3.
Obviously it would be a disaster to have to rely on them for my wood production. With working camps I have a relatively stable supply of wood and don’t have to worry about being out of firewood all of a sudden at the start of winter.
ok, with a 550 citizen city (vanguard so lots of soldiers and guards) I still have around 120 laborers left to do this job.
But I only produce things for my own needs (soap, clothes, candles, pottery), I don’t need the money. So I don’t need to use that many people for all those jobs.
I have a stockyard dedicated to wood. When I see that my wood gets down to 600-700, I select all the trees around my city to be cut down. Once I’m over 1500-2000 I deselect everything (so I have 120 laborers doing nothing and looking at trees regrow)
I’m impressed. With a population of 550, assuming that one fifth is infant or child, to be able to have 120 out of a working population of 440 standing around doing nothing, I didn’t think it was possible. Over one third of my fit to work population is needed in food production alone, mining and other resource production eats up another sizable chunk of my workforce, and I’m constantly struggling to produce enough clothes and soap to keep everyone happy and healthy. And then I also need to have a standing army of guards and soldiers who need to be drawn from the workforce.
Will try to show a screen shop of the “P” screen once I get back home.
(hope I’m not saying BS, since it’s from memory)
Amen. Someone has suggested that the first one or two workers in a factory, barn, or whatever be responsible for stocking, and the rest of the workers get on with the job of the factory, barn, or whatever. I’ve had a factory with 8 workers, and six of them have gone to stock the factory, leaving only two to do the work. I can’t imagine 8 are needed to do this restocking. Again, I would like to see a dedicated core of workers whose sole job is to get raw materials to the factories and shops that need them, and the finished products to storage or markets or whoever else needs them. Wagons could be use for this, so that it would not take many people to get the supplying done, as wagons can carry much more than individuals can.