Not sure if this is a bug, if it has been reported as such or if someone has actually reported it in the first place. I could not find a thread discussing it under bug reports or known issues. Apart from very specific reports of certain building not being used at certain times, and some discussion under suggestions.
The villagers seem to spend a lot of time running around needlessly from one side of the map to the other to grab something they could literally have taken from the building next to them.
How the wagons prioritizes is also not clear.
The logistics of a larger village just becomes so inefficient.
I’m happy to elaborate on my experience if needed but some feedback on what the Devs make of the current AI pathing and prioritization on resource collection would be nice.
I’ve been in the same boat. A while back I made a thread about a “prioritization war” that occurs between villagers and transport wagons, in which foundrymen would rather run all the way up to a mine to pick up four ore rather than wait for the wagon to cart 30-40 of it down at a time and drop it off at the storehouse. Because they are constantly filling the immediate need of the foundry, the mined ore count for each mine is suppressed and prevents the wagons from going up there as frequently as they should to pick up a large quantity of ore. Even if the transport wagon can get up there and bring ore back, the foundrymen rarely pick it up from the stockpiles if there is an active mine and would rather still run up the mountain. I am all for not skipping leg day, but it is a highly inefficient arrangement.
Another pathing/prioritization issue regards a thread by McCloud I saw yesterday on Steam. He pointed out that more often than not (especially on larger towns) villagers will be just seconds away from completing a task before abruptly changing course to do something else, dropping everything in the process. Then another villager, typically one all the way across town, will pick up the job that the previous villager decided to give up on at the last possible moment. This new task-doer will then grab even more supplies (rather than pick up whatever was dropped) to complete the task, if you get lucky since they too could drop the task with little notice.
The second one is not exactly related to storage usage and resource collection, but I believe it is caused by the same tech wonk that is preventing the villagers from employing common sense practices at this time in the games development.
It’s a forum for bugs… elaborating is the entire purpose of the forum. It’s very hard to fix a “bug” when you don’t even tell them what the actual bug is.
I’m having that same experience, and I certainly agree that it is most inefficient. I have no problem with building four or five or even more Wagon Shops if the individuals will stop this inefficiency and stick to their primary jobs – mining, fishing, hunting, gathering, manufacturing, etc. Let the wagons pick up everything that needs to be picked up – ores, foods, even finished products.
Same frustration here about the foundry and the Ore ;
Foundrymen are going miles away to fetch ore from the mines despite having a storage full of ore right next to them
This creates useless wagons
One mechanic i think would improve the game greatly is to be able to have a storage building near mines/gathering structures to centralize gathered resources efficiently, then wagons move resources from that storage to main town storages where it should (currently it is not) be used by workers.
One solution is to ensure that production capacity by foundries is smaller than capacity of mines. If you start producing more ore than consume, you ore stockpile will grow, and foundry workers will stop running to mines.
Also the fact they do run to mines does not decrease their production, as it’s constrained by available ore instead.
The are multiple problems with logistics in general. The one You’re reffering is that they have u limited range in which they would seek resources. Ending with workers running through the whole map for single piece of ore/san/clay/coal or whatever. There are also multiple problems with nobody moving stuff to root cellar so it spoils in production building. For example Barn workers never transfer meat and other products only when barn storage gets full and it is a big storage. So before getting cheesemaker most milk just spoils. Meat spoils cause there’s no chance smokers will manage to use all of it unless You have like 10 smokers idle most of the year.
Well no, read again my post and other feedbacks above :
Foundrymen are going miles away to fetch ore from the mines despite having a storage full of ore right next to them
So i guess if you have a similar setup and its working as expected (i.e. Resources are available in storage nearby workers so workers use it instead of other far sources), its either just random or what i experienced as well as other users is just a bug…
Ran into a similiar issue with the Trading post. I request to stock up on X item in the post. The villager will then run clear accross the map to his house, to grab a wheelbarrow (why there isnt one at the actual trading post is beyond me) runs accross the map to the storage where said item was. Loads it… then Finally when hes running back to the trading post with the wheelbarrow full of inventory. STOPS, drops everything and runs back to his house to “Stock items”