A poor soul in my village suddely died from starvation for no apparent reason. There is plenty of food.
Poor soul no 2 dies from starvation when there is food available (coincidently geographically close to where the first guy preished. The upgrade arrow over the well visible in the top picture, is the same well as can be seen just below the villager number in the lower picture).
Pro tip: Add temporary shelters in places like these as Wagons will fill them with food and water to prevent this from happening.
I usually add temporary shelters in the following places:
- Any mine that is even slightly away from the town
- Any major area where hunters and foragers often travel to
- Cross roads where multiple people intersect often and where wells show signs of use
Thanks, I’ll do that. I also build shelters as you describe, but the two guys that I reported about here, died enroute on a road between two places. It is not extraordinary far between (iron mining site and the village) and lots and lots of villagers do this trip on a daily basis without any issues. It is a bit strange that a villager dies on its way to work. I’ll add a couple of shelters and see if it happens again. But, again, IMHO villagers should not die of starvation on their way to work. Why not go grab a snack before they go?
A couple of things can cause this really. The first: Marketplace influence. The circle marketplaces cast allows marketplaces to cover those homes within its circle. Homes without a marketplace influence will force villagers to find cellars and stockrooms to get food from. It’s silly, but they literally will walk across the town to a cellar than a marketplace which may be closer. This in turn causes villagers without a marketplace influence to spend more time getting provisions and they will often go to work with less food or any at all. So, when a villager heads out to work, they can starve.
The second. Distances covered to work. Foragers with a long walk and laborers asked to clear trees will spend excessive amounts of time outside of town. During that time, they do not eat. What makes things worse is when they get scared from a boar, wolf or raider as they will flee the area yet return later to try to finish their job… all without eating.
The third. Time worked. Foragers with a lot to gather, laborers with many trees or stones to clear, miners in mines and hunters with a lot of traps will be out even longer than those with a lot of space to cover. Having a temporary shelter near where they work encourages them to stay longer, travel less and work more. It also helps preserve the lives of the other two conditions above.
Miners and others can literally be next to your village and still cause deaths if any of the conditions listed above happen unfortunately. The AI is simply not smart enough to go get a snack or a piece of smoked meat before work. Temporary Shelters are the only thing I’ve found to prevent the AI villagers from doing dumb things like this. Oh, and temporary shelters helps prevent deaths caused by heat waves and blizzards too!
Just do not build too many temporary shelters. Too many will tie up all your wagons trying to fill them. Instead of putting temporary shelters where I suggested above, someone in the FF Discord recommended putting 1 temporary shelter and 1 well halfway between your town center and the edge of a map on each north, south, east and west side for small and medium maps or two temporary shelters on each compass side spread out between those points (edge of map and town center).
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Thanks for taking the time to elaborate @c0mad0r , much appreciated
One last tip to the excellent summation by @c0mad0r :
When developing areas of the map, it helps a lot to develop a single area completely: place all necessary/desired Hunters, Foragers, Fishers, Mines, Quarries, Work Camps, etc, before moving on to another area. That allows a quick calculation of how many Temporary Shelters you will need in that area (and if it is worth it to set up a separate village from your main town). It also keeps your carts going to the same area to refill temp. shelters that they are also going to pick up resources.
As an example, on my last map I had what I termed the Big Rock Candy Mountain of resources about a third of the way across the map from the main town. It had massive amounts of Iron, Stone, Gold, Sand, and Clay either on the mountain or near the base. Also several Deer spawns around it and lots of timber to the north. I ended up with a crossroads at the base of the mountain with one road leading up the mountain (after several years of terraforming!) to the mines, one leading to the Clay Pits, and one leading north to Work Camps and Hunters/Foragers. I had 5 Temp. Shelters clustered around that crossroads until I reached Tier 4 and, having opened up Deep deposits of Stone and Sand, put a village (Market, Rat Catcher, Composter, 12 - 15 houses) nearby to house the workers.
There was one other location away from the town with coal mines, but all my carts except for that went straight back and forth between the Mountain and the Town.
And, of course, that road was also one of the very first that I Upgraded to stone surface, to speed up 90% of my Cart Traffic.
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This is odd. I built two shelters, one on either side of the site where the first guy died of starvation. They are now fully stocked with food. Yet a guy now perishes between the two shelters. There is a very high likelihood he passed one of then just before he perished. So why did he not stop and have a snack? 
Any thoughts on that @Zantai ?
Depends on what the villager died of. If disease, animal attack or lack of clothing due to the snow I could see it. AI definitely needs tuning and the developers know it, but I’ve never had them die due to starvation, dehydration nor blizzard/heatwave when temporary shelters were nearby.
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Sorry, should have explained that this guy died of starvation, after having just passed a fully stocked shelter and two wells. I don’t think that should be possible.
I asked several in discord about this and they say it appears with so many dying at that same spot they are traveling a long way from somewhere.
Further, as stated above, if their home does not have influence from a marketplace or food is scarce to their home particularly, this can happen. Remember, the AI is not that smart and you must fulfill their needs for them to survive. Also, those 2 temporary shelters are too close together. If there is a mine nearby, put it right next to the mine.
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