Display optimal number of Laborers at all times in Production Screen, right now it only shows when you have too few and hover over the exclamation point. A ratio would be good, e.g., 37/40, 42/40, etc.
Further zoom out of the map.
When placing buildings at full zoom out, the Desirability overlay window is in the way of placing the buildings.
Cobblers, Smoke Houses, and Compost Yards may be imbalanced. Seems like I had to build too many of them in a city of 1000–12x Cobblers and Compost Yards, and 24x Smoke Houses.
Build Menu improvements. Move Apiaries and Wells to Food Production, I still look in the wrong place half the time after 60 hours. Create a Goods Production group and move all the non-Resource gathering buildings from Resources, e.g., Glass is Goods, Sand is Resources.
Yes, this would help. Perhaps configure laborers in the same way as builders, so we know not only how many we have overall, but how many are actually available/how many busy at any time.
Definitely need two people in each of these buildings.
Further: if root cellars are upgradeable, why not smokehouses?
The problem with smokehouse is that they will run to get firewood every time they used some from the 20 they can store.
So what they do is make some fish, then run to get some firewood to restock 18/20, even if its accross the whole town. Then get fish and then go again for 2 wood.
I think this is present on other buildings, but they countered by that other buildings have more workers.
“Cobblers, Smoke Houses, and Compost Yards may be imbalanced. Seems like I had to build too many of them in a city of 1000–12x Cobblers and Compost Yards, and 24x Smoke Houses.”
People have been asking for more job slots for the compost yard for some time now, but several updates went by without this happening, and because it seems like something that’s really simple to change, I think they have made the deliberate choice to leave the compost yard with just one job slot.
I have no idea why though, I can’t find anything about it on these forums, it would be great if someone with more inside info could explain this choice.
Because it is really easy to build another composter if you want. You can build four in a square and pretend they’re one big composter with 4 work slots if you want, it looks pretty neat.
It isn’t easier than building more of other buildings, in fact, the compost yard has a bigger footprint than most other buildings so you will have to waste more space on it.
Also, with this logic, why does any building in the game have more than one job slot? After all, “you can just build more of them”, that applies to literally every building with job slots in the game. Why give sawmills four job slots if you can just build more sawmills?
Or with your logic, why should we have to build more than one of any building when they could just have more job slots.
Clearly the game is balanced between those two logical extremes. Compost is supposed to take up space and smell bad. It adds a little grit and challenge to the task of designing your settlement.
Yes, there should be balance, which is why it doesn’t make sense at all to use “just build more buildings” as a catch all argument whenever someone suggests there should be more jobs for one building.
In the case of the compost yard, I have never seen a nightsoil collector even come close to reaching a third compost pile. When the first one is full and starts decomposing, the nightsoil collector starts with the second one and makes it about halfway when the first pile is finished.
That alone shows that the speed of one nightsoil collector is way too low to ever use a compost yard to its full capacity. And that is also why the “it’s supposed to take up space” excuse falls by the wayside, as I’m not even close to using the space a compost yard takes up. Instead, I have rows of compost yards, each having at least one and usually two completely empty compost piles.
And it doesn’t add grit or challenge, it just adds needless annoyance, because currently it just isn’t balanced right.
I played several more hours on a new map and had a similar experience. I guess I’m far less concerned with the number of them that I have to build, as the dislike I have for the Compost Heap Minigame it creates.
It depends upon how far from your housing you build you compost collectors… build them a very long way away and you’ll probably never have them close to filling up. Conversely, if you build them fairly close by, then they are much more efficient. I generally build a couple of shelters right by the tannery and compost heaps, which the poor sods employed nearby use.
I always build them as close by as possible, but not so close that the houses decrease in desirability due to the stench. Of course, later compost yards will be further removed because the town has grown by then, but even the first and closes Compost Yard will never fill two of its piles.
Make the Cobbler upgrade to a shoe factory with 4 workers. That way it balances better by including a requirement for the upgrade. Smokehouses also definitely need a second worker, as the first one spends most of their time getting wood.
Wooden shoes?
The Dutch version of Farthest Frontier!
Use your Mills to remove Lakes!
Tulip Fields for Decorations!
Each Pub with a different kind of Beer (No, wait, that’s Belgium . . .)