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A poor decision

Started by michaelrym, October 11, 2014, 09:55:10 AM

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michaelrym

I think making labourers carry things was a poor design decision.

Labourers already act like retards with ADHD when collecting resources. They constantly cross the map to perform a single task at a faraway site, then return to where they started to do a single task and so on - I'm sure everyone here knows the drill.

Entrusting those morons with a second, different type of responsibility wasn't a good idea. I also don't quite understand why there are so many different classes of people doing haulage work - labourers, traders, vendors,  plus others when you use certain mods. Wouldn't it be simpler to have a single class of porters, and the ability to assign them to specific buildings?

I'm starting to suspect this was done on purpose to make the game more difficult. Then again, I hear this game is rooted in medieval times, when most people were superstitious morons, and the ones that weren't were superstitious psychos.

But maybe it all comes together in big cities? Could someone enlighten me? I yet have to reach a population above 50. I'm playing exclusively Adam & Eve, so it takes time.

Sorry for the long post, I'll sweeten it with this titbit: had a four-year-old settlement wiped out by an outbreak of mumps. Hospitals can be useful even if not accepting nomads, it seems.

Lovely game, very addictive. If I could only find a way to turn off the chant and the humming...

Mahnogard

The Adam & Eve start does change things a bit. Normally, you'd have a larger number of laborers available to you far earlier than what you're getting with that start. There's always a balancing act at the start, but starting with only one couple extends that balancing act out quite a bit longer, I would imagine.

Why are they crossing the map? What's over there?

Carrying stuff is the laborers' primary job. Clearing resources for you is secondary. Approach it that way and things might improve. Clearing resources is meant to be a part of expansion, but not necessarily a full-time activity that ties up all your laborers. There is more than one way to acquire every resource - sometimes those other ways are better. Yes, you can do it by clearing land, but if you don't have a lot of laborers to handle it, it's going to have a negative effect on the overall efficiency.

When clearing land, select one red square (or less) per laborer if you want them to get done and get back to town quickly.

Leave time in between clearing jobs, not only so they can do important stuff like eat, visit the herbalist, have a bit of idling time, and see to their main jobs, but also to keep your housing from getting bunched up. If you build houses while you've got all your laborers working on one side of town, those new houses will initially be all builders and laborers. Housing should be optimized for a functioning town, not for whatever bit of land you're clearing at any particular moment.

It gets better, I promise. Once you have 50+ laborers, it's so much easier. When you've got 100+, you can clear out huge chunks of land in one trip. Yes, larger towns present their own challenges, but they are different challenges that you haven't had the change to experience yet.

Pangaea

As mentioned above, it gets better with time when you have more hands on deck. That doesn't really fix the problem, it just eases it because there are more labourers. I also suggest to not pay too much attention to it, as it can get annoying to watch one labourer walk halfway across the map, break up one piece of stone or iron, and then walk back to eat or whatever, without carrying anything with him. Then another person comes over to pick it up, without doing anything else while there.

Like all things programming-wise, it's a balancing act, and there is logic behind it that decide all their actions. But take it too far, and they'll be picking up and hacking stuff despite being hungry or having other important tasks, and then starve while out there (which was a huuuuuuge problem in the early versions of the game on big maps).

michaelrym

#3
Okay, I don't think I've been clear enough.

Say there are a couple of trees marked for cutting in spot A. X tiles away, in spot B, there are a couple of stones marked for cutting. Labourer goes to spot A, chops up a tree, leaves the resulting logs to walk to spot B, smash a single stone, leave the cut stone there, go back to Spot A, pick up the logs, cut down another tree and leave the logs there, go to Spot B - get it? And there are interesting variations too, for example midway they can just drop everything on the ground because the game in its wisdom decided they should become fishermen, even though the fishing dock is on the other side of the town, and there already are other labourers over there.

It's so silly I suspect it's WAD, to make the game more difficult by wasting over 50% of a labourer's working time. And did I mnetion that quite often, while they're doing this little dance, they're carrying half a dozen tools or coats that are desperately needed?

Paeng

Quote from: michaelrym on October 11, 2014, 09:55:10 AMI think making labourers carry things was a poor design decision.

Who then should carry these things? Your professionals (instead of producing goods)? Your farmers (instead of seeding, bringing in the harvest)? Your vendors (instead of picking up/delivering to/from barns and stock piles?

If any, the "poor" decision was to start the initial tutorials with something like "Draw a large rectangle, then click on 'Collect all raw materials'" - which to me is the worst one can do at the start of a new game. At early game it is much better to concentrate building needed structures with the few materials you can gather close at hand, instead of sending all your people off on long hauls to clear-cut huge areas and bring in large amounts of materials you don't yet have a use for...  ;)

If many peeps regularly take long hikes to pick up whatever, there is something amiss with the planning and/or layout of the town...

* Sure, there will always be some "Little Idiot" with his own agenda (seemingly)... but this should not be the regular way of things.

[i]Heads are round so thoughts can take a turn[/i]
[color=teal][size=8pt]Editor's Choice [b]here[/b][/size][/color]

irrelevant

#5
Personally I have no problems at all with laborers; I think they are quite reliable. I find they always do exactly what I tell them to do; if what they end up doing is stupid, I figure that was on me.

The priority tool and the "undo resource collection" tool both are extremely effective.

I do understand your frustration with the little do-si-do they can sometimes do, but that is just a feature of the laborer queue mechanic.

michaelrym

Yeah well, maybe my irritation with labourers has something to do with the Adam & Eve start, where every little bit counts. You have only two people working, and when they waste so much time it's infuriating.

However, having watched those two peeps plod back and forth (I don't speed the game up; I play for relaxation, so it's single speed all the way) I'm still of the opinion a single class dedicated to hauling stuff around would have worked better. IMO labourers should have been restricted to collecting resources (depositing stuff they'd collected, not one load of 3 logs at a time but 9).

It may be that I'll change my mind once I've actually managed to build a sizeable town with several hundred inhabitants.

slink

Might it be impertinent on my part to point out that it apparently hasn't been relaxing for you to try to start with only two people and no supplies?   ;)

A Nonny Moose

The biggest aggregation I've been able to get so far is around 125 people.  I've noticed a few inefficiencies that drive me to distraction at times, but what the hell, it's not my program.

One of the things that irritates me no end is the failure of the AI to choose the shortest path to something.  When I have a big construction program with resources being collected in the vicinity, I often lay down a new stockpile close to the work.  The sprites ignore these for the most part and use the original stockpile.  It takes a long time before the new stockpile is recognized and used.  The AI really is an oxymoron.
Go not to the oracle, for it will say both yea and nay.

[Gone, but not forgotten. Rest easy, you are no longer banished.]
https://www.haskettfh.com/winterton-john-hensall/

michaelrym

#9
@slink

I relax by playing games on extra difficulty. Takes my mind off the real world, you know.

@ nonny moose

Interesting. I have the opposite problem. My moronic subjects will carry all sorts of stuff to the construction stockpile instead of the main one  - at times I swear the distance is actually longer by several tiles.

I tell you, it's WAD. The guy who developed the game all by himself is a brilliant guy. Maybe he also smokes something wicked and had some the night he was doing the labourer's AI. And next day said to himself, what the hell, I've been working on this thing for two years, f it, I'll leave it in and then laugh at the posts of players trying to decipher the workings of the labourers.

slink

@michaelrym: Then being irritated and infuriated should be something you enjoy, not complain about.   ;)

salamander

I'm getting too old ... WAD???

irrelevant

WAD="Working As Designed"

irrelevant

Quote from: A Nonny Moose on October 12, 2014, 08:24:21 AM
The biggest aggregation I've been able to get so far is around 125 people.  I've noticed a few inefficiencies that drive me to distraction at times, but what the hell, it's not my program.

One of the things that irritates me no end is the failure of the AI to choose the shortest path to something.  When I have a big construction program with resources being collected in the vicinity, I often lay down a new stockpile close to the work.  The sprites ignore these for the most part and use the original stockpile.  It takes a long time before the new stockpile is recognized and used.  The AI really is an oxymoron.
I think that when a laborer reaches the top of the "available" queue, he is matched up with the project at the top of the "task" queue. The task includes what is being picked up, where it is now, and where it is to be taken to. So when a pile of freshly-harvested logs or stone shows up lying on the ground, it already has baked into it what stockpile it is going to. If you build a stockpile after that, makes no difference.

Of course I have no proof for this, but it would explain the maddening laborer behavior that we all have seen, over and over.

michaelrym

@ slink

You win. How's that?

@ salamander: Sorry, I should have made that clear. It's a good acronym - note the pejorative connotation that's appropriate for the feeling one has when encountering one of those things in a game.