feedback for gatherers
I assign a work area for the gatherer, and they gather everything in that work area. they run out of work to do and start idling. or the seasons change and there is no longer resource nodes in that area of the map to gather but other nodes have become available so it’s like the game wants me to manually change the work area.
having to manually change the work area at least once or even twice per year is TEDIOUS and MONOTONOUS GAMEPLAY. if you have a very large city with 6 or 8 gatherers, this turns into an insane amount of micromanagement.
suggested solutions:
option 1: allow us to specify a secondary work area for the gatherer hut: one for spring/summer and one for fall/winter. the gatherer hut will automatically switch between these two work areas as the seasons change, ensuring you do not need to manually update them every season.
option 2: rewrite completely how gathering works. allow us to select the resources on the map and mark them for gathering, and nearby gatherers will automatically try to gather the marked resources (preferring to gather ones that are closer to the hut when possible).
feedback for farmers and arborists:
since farms and arborists only need workers assigned during certain times of year, keeping workers assigned to these year round feels very bad. to play optimally, you would need to unassign workers when they are idle, and reassign workers when there is work to do. this means at least twice per year you will need to interact with every field and arborist building to assign/unassign workers. it feels really bad to have to micromanage whether workers are assigned every season - especially since the larger your town grows, the more micromanagement you need to do every single season.
suggested solutions:
option 1: workers will no longer ‘idle’. Instead, they will continue to be productive as (temporary) general laborers. they will chop trees, gather stones, and other worker tasks, preferring to do tasks close to their assigned building. once there is work to do at the building they have been assigned to, they will work normally at that building.
option 2: field and arborist can be configured with a target number of workers. so if you have a field you can set the target number of workers to 5 for example. during those times of year when there is work to do, up to 5 general laborers will automatically become farmers. when there is no longer work to do in the field, they will be automatically dismissed and will become laborers.