The biggest frustration I have about this game (I love so much about it, but this one sticks in my craw), is that when jobs are sparsely spread out, and housing is built next to those jobs … it works okay early on but as the village grows it causes productivity to plummet to zero.
New jobs and housing clusters that are placed distantly from the village (mines, hunter shacks, herbalists), work well enough early game as new people looking for homes move in and take those jobs. However, as the town ages and years go by, as villagers die and new ones arrive or are born, they don’t relocate or preferentially select those homes next to the jobs. Even if I delete / replace the home they’re living in, they won’t relocate closer. This means that newer workers that take over those jobs end up walking halfway across the map which causes supply chains to crash, people to starve and overall the town dies.
I recognize this feature for workers and/or families (as Banished seems to do it), to relocate nearer to jobs in available housing does not seem to exist yet. I’d love for it to be included in a future update.
However, it is the biggest obstacle I have currently to sustaining a low density, sparse and spread out village on any map. Outside of mods that force re-optimization of workers/jobs, it just doesn’t seem feasible.
Is there anything I’m missing features wise or alternative work around to fix this issue?
I was thinking of having a census every 20 turns, villagers would be required to relocate closer to their jobs. To justify this I was also thinking of having a deliberate error creep in the stats, you would have to manually check stuff instead of falling asleep at the screen waiting for the years to end.
A few actually. Mostly it occurs in satellite locations away from the core town. Example, herbalist who lives in a house in town walks from across the map to work in their hut rather than from the house right next to the hut.
I’m happy to provide a save file or screen shots if it helps.
Hmmmm, I wonder what’s causing their productivity then to drop compared to earlier? The town has been fairly stable until workers aged out and new ones from different residences (further away) took over.
Is there anything I’m missing? Just at a loss I guess as they seemed to be producing just fine before and now … aren’t.
I appreciate your explanation as it was a mechanic/interaction I had incorrectly understood. Just trying to better understand how things work so I can work through this next hurdle.
I can’t say why you’d notice a reduction in her productivity.
Looking at the breakdown in your screenshot, roughly half of her time is spent dropping off goods, which not exceptional given how far from town she is working.
