The latest patch, and the slewth of exposure-related deaths it has caused, has made me think that there might be a deep (though not very serious) problem with how exposure works in the game that goes beyond a balance issue. At least, an issue with how the player is exposed to exposure 
Looking at starvation first, a system that IMO works very well, as a baseline. Villagers consume food at a steady rate. The UI makes it very clear how many months of food you have in storage. And thatās just public storage, even if that is 0 villagers will still have food in their shelters and on their person that they can eat for a decent while. Only once all of that is expired will they starve. And because this starvation depends on when private stockpiles run out, theyāre pretty spread out. So, when it comes to starvation, the player has a very visible count down, and some grace period after that, and then a steady built up of deaths.
Exposure is almost the exact opposite. The UI tells you how much firewood is available, but thatās it. It doesnāt tell you how long it lasts. Itās also very hard to estimate, because consumption varies wildly. Even more problematic, because shelters have relatively small quantities of firewood, itās possible for houses to run out of it (and hence for villagers to die of exposure) while the UI is saying thereās still some around. On top of that, exposure hits everyone hard at the same time during the deadly cold winter months, so when things go wrong, they go wrong for everyone simultaneously. Hence, unlike starvation, itās pretty hard to have a grasp of whether youāre currently at risk of exposure and once you do realise itās already too late and mass deaths come in all at once.
[Iām aware that it is possible to identify potential firewood shortages by looking at reports of production / consumption, or clicking on houses and looking at their firewood meters. Or that you could have tens of thousands of firewood in public storage such that itās possible to spot the long term trends in stockpile numbers. But those are not exactly things that the game draws your attention to, or encourage you to do. At the very least, itās not beginner friendly.]
Now Iām not saying that exposure needs to work like starvation to be a fun game mechanic. But it would feel a lot less unfair if there was more warning that something bad was about to happen, or if the consequences of failure were more graduated. Identifying a problem and then racing to resolve it before it becomes a catastrophe is usually more satisfying than a bolt from the blue. Two potential ideas for this comes to mind.
Firstly, double or triple the amount of firewood that can be stored in each residence. Send a logistics request to restock it as soon as it drops below 50% (and urgent when it goes below 25%). This means that, when things are going well, a big buffer of firewood will be built up in houses, far more than necessary for a single winter. Exposure would thus only be a problem when public stockpiles of firewood have sat empty for a very long time. The player seeing firewood staying around 0 on the UI would thus be clearly notified that a problem is brewing far enough in advance to do something about it.
Secondly, is to not have exposure kill people instantly. Instead, suffering from exposure would first lead to a āWeakenedā status (using the disease system perhaps? Or reusing the frostbite / hypothermia diseases?) that comes at a hefty penalty to work speed. This status would remain for ~1 year, even if the villager gets warmed up again. Only being exposed a second time, while suffering from this weakened status, would cause death. Such a two-step graduated failure would make it very clear to the player that something has gone wrong (as the disease widget on the UI lights up with a large number of exposure-weaknesses), punishes them for it with reduced work speed, but gives the player a year to resolve the issue before it becomes a permanent mass death. Note that this is very different from the way the game currently links diseases to exposure, which is very much tacked on the side and where the vast majority of exposure deaths donāt come with a disease stage beforehand.
Apologies for the wall of text, but I wanted to explore in depth why I think fairly small changes would turn this game mechanic from something that feels like an unpredictable punishment, to an engaging and responsive challenge.