I play this game since a year and have yet to get pass tier 2, it’s so difficult, mostly food issue. I have a population of 56, 3 hunters, a 5x10 crop field with beans, 3 forager, 2 smoker, a root cellar of course too, currently building 2 orchards and 0 food left. Trader is too unreliable and rarely ever has food and I have an extreme lack of laborer, only 2 or 3, so I won’t even have enough people left to tend the orchard once it’s build…
I don’t really have any much else, only claypit, sawmill, shrine, basketmaker. The only solution would be to build more houses, to get more laborer, to get more food but then I need more food again… I don’t really see a solution to this neverending starving cycle.
I typically have 4 each of foragers and hunters at that # of villagers, plus the field, although it takes me longer to build the orchard.
I think part of it is prioritizing a certain # of your people to food creation rather than other things, but I move my people around a lot and micromanage them.
It’s hard to balance, that’s for sure.
At population 50 I don’t usually have orchards or even farms. 4/6 Hunters and 3/4 Foragers are usually enough to take care of the job. If you have water nearby I also get 2/3 fisherman going. Also get a smoker built to allow food to last longer.
I then start building 8x7 farms (I think it is, 4 farmer size) to control the number of farmers. I start my fields with food that will last through the winter and always build three fields and stagger the same crops.
Example rotation:
Year 1 Carrots Beans
Year 2 Peas Clover Farmer
Year 3 Clover Flax (to get ready for clothing production)
Do you change your soil mix for each rotation? I think I may be putting too much emphasis on that.
I just ran into the same problem as the op but I am at 295 people. Watching my dingbat smokehouses, they are not getting the meat and fish out of the cellars and keep having the ‘no meat, fish’ icon. Then the majority of it spoils when they could have processed it and increased the food supply.
Tier 2 is IMO the most difficult part of a fresh map. Constantly fighting food shortages, and dont have enough population coming in to really grow. I found this to work the most:
Make sure start in area near Deer or Fish hot spots. Boar is really good too, as long as you have arrows, although at the moment you kind of have to manually make your hunter hunt them.
Depending on your area, focus on whats near you. If you have more good fishing spots near you have 2-3 fishers and 1-2 hunters. Vice versa if you have more hunting spots.
Keep track of their yearly amount made, there can be an empty fishing hole or hunting area suddenly so now nothing is happening.
Once you have 2 of either fishers or hunters, build a smoke house
Usually only have 2 gatherers max for this stage, they’re good but not amazing
Build a farm after hunters/fishers are rolling. I’m really a fan of 5x6 farms. You only need 1 farmer, and they generate some good resources.
Prep your field before plant food. Get weeds/rockiness to 0%, and fertility >70%. This make take a year or 2.
If struggling with vegetable spoilage, stick with root veggies like carrots & turnips. Otherwise Leeks & Peas are great.
(Theres some really good info on farms here if you want some juicy optimization reading material)
When I have the resources, tools, and population, build a farm for generating flour, and get that bakery going. The amount of food you make/resources used is some of the best in the game.
This usually works pretty good for me, getting hunters/fishers started in year 1 and pushing through the T2 stuggle.
Also, while I havent really tested it, I dont think arborists and barns are worth it until you’ve started to balance your food supply near the end of T2.