Brand New Village in RKEC - Everyone Is 100% Idle

[MarkAnthony]

Beats me! I have no clue why this is happening. 

I'm starting out small since I am playing in a Harsh climate. I got just the basics set down:

   
• Covered Stockpile (RKEC) - 1st priority.
• Colorful Little House (RKEC) - 2nd priority; waiting for Covered Stockpile to get cleared.
• Small Barn (RKEC) - 3rd priority, not paused so they can get a head start on clearing the land.
• Old Blacksmith (RKEC) - 3rd priority to make Iron for School House; on pause until Colorful Little House and Covered Stockpile are completed.
• School House (Vanilla) - 4th priority; on pause until Iron is made. Hurry up already! My oldest child is 7 years old and I still need to make the damn Iron!  Lol *sighs*
• Make Stone Tools (North) - on pause until tools start to run low.
• Forest Center (RKEC) - on pause until later.
• Wooden Bridge (Vanilla) - very small bridge, on pause until later.

Here were my orders for the Banies:

   
• I had placed a small amount of Dirt Road in front of the initial structures to be built and I set one Builder to the task.
• The remaining seven Banie adults were tasked with clearing a small area around the initial settlement area. Nothing was too far away from the Covered Stockpile or Colorful Little House or the Small Barn which are all unpaused.
• When I noticed the Covered Stockpile was not being cleared I set it as top priority with the Priority Tool.
• Banies continued to clear the area and build roads and ignored the priority given to clear the Covered Stockpile.
• I cleared all removal tasks to re-set the Banies and to get them back to business at hand - "Clear the damn Covered Stockpile and then get going on putting stuff away and get onto the Colorful Little House!"
• But they continued to ignore me, so I spammed the heck out of the Covered Stockpile and the Colorful Little House - many many times with the Priority Tool!

Nothing!  I clicked on each of the eight Laborers (Dirt Roads were completed already) and all of them were idle!  Why? What gives?  As you can see on the map they left all their wood and stone and Bison meat all over the place on the ground and they refuse to do anything except idle. I tried setting all of them to Builders for one month passing time even though there was nothing to build and then set them back to Laborers thinking maybe this would "clear their minds" but that didn't work either.


How can a game be messed up so early in the start? It's only August of the 1st year (6 months from the start - using Real Calendar mod). What can I do except to restart all over again on a fresh map?

Any thoughts? Am I somehow doing something wrong? 


EDIT:

Okay, three notes I must give:

(1) This is my first time ever trying a game on Harsh climate. Is this normal Banie behavior in a Harsh climate?

(2) I knew before making the Covered Stockpile that @RedKetchup said they could sometimes bug out. He suggested making roads on all sides to help reduce the chance of that bug happening so I did. I made roads around it 100%.

(3) When I realized no matter what that they were going to ignore me about finishing the Covered Stockpile I built a second (small) Vanilla Stockpile right next to it. They cleared half of it and then walked away and ignored that too!!! WTH! 


Here are the screenshots of what was supposed to become the Shueytown Settlement.





               

[brads3]

where are they suppose to store the items they clear? it looks like you rebuilt the pile. if you set the covered pile to be built larger than the original, then they need to clear stuff.the bannies will not take stuff and move it to construction projects. they need to place it in a pile or storage 1st. what i see is you have a cart.that stores food and firewood. is that cart storing fodder-thatch and stone?  to solve this simply find a space and lay out a general work pile of only a small size.1 square or 2x2 would be large enough.

  this is i leave the start pile alone and work to keep it under 90% full.then as soon as i can i buid more storage for materials.once that pile is full or removed,everything stops.to cover the original pile i would recommend using RED's ghost covers.the bannies would not have to rebuild the pile then.

[MarkAnthony]

I don't know what you are talking about @brads3 I didn't rebuild anything; that is the original and first time of me placing the 6x6 Covered Stockpile. I set it in one go. I did not set it, then destroy it, then rebuild it.

And like I said in Note #3 below (you were posting your reply when I made my edit so you may not have seen it) when I saw that no matter what they were not going to clear the Covered Stockpile, I built a small 4x4 (I think) Vanilla Stockpile near it one space away so that they would use that instead. But they cleared half of the Vanilla Stockpile and then walked away and ignored that too.

That cart is what the Banies had at the loading of the game. Hard Alternate start.

[Discrepancy]

You will need to build a stockpile on clear empty land, so it is automatically built and can be used. The bannies have nowhere to place the items they are removing.

[MarkAnthony]

That makes sense @Discrepancy but that's never seemed to matter before in my past games. If you build a stockpile that needs to be cleared itself, they seem to clear it, place the stuff down right in the footprint of it then the Stockpile is completed and the stuff is instantly added to it.

Anyways, this is not an issue anymore. Things are running again and I even got my School up in the nick of time! Whew! I was seconds away I am sure of it from my nine year old almost missing his first day in school.

Anyhow, in total the Banies were idle for three straight months!  After sitting here in the forum waiting for replies I said, "screw it!" and went back to the game; not because I was impatient for replies here but because I was perturbed with the issue of 100% idle. If I was going to have to restart the map all over again I may as well set it to 10x speed and see what happens.

The last screenshot of them being 100% idle was in July. After setting the game to 10x speed it was at the turn to October that they finally cleared the vanilla Stockpile, filled it up - then finally cleared the Covered Stockpile then cleared and built the Small Barn. Then they finished the Old Blacksmith and I set him to immediately make the necessary amount of Iron. After the Iron was made I tasked three Builders to rush that School!  They got that built and I immediately paused the game to prevent my 9 year old from turning ten before I could get a Teacher assigned to it.

As you can see in this new screenshot all is well now, except I feel a loss for those three months were they did squat! Nada! 

*sighs*


               

[RedKetchup]

your cart is full. the stockpile footprint has something on it to put in your barn (to free the footprint). but your cart is full ! they cannot take it out of your stockpile footprint !!!
till your cart hasnt some free space, the food/textile lying on your stockpile footprint cannot be processed.

[RedKetchup]

citizens who idle means 2 thing :

1: NO job assigned,
2: or they connot complete the job for X reasons that YOU need to find what is going wrong

[RedKetchup]

oh and please ! no 10X !!!
what you are searching ? hate that mod right from the bat ? lol

[MarkAnthony]

ROFL @RedKetchup

I don't like 10x speed either and no Sir, I am not trying to break RKEC!  Haha 

I only set it to 10x speed to say "WTF" since I was prepared to throw the game away and start over again. But when I saw them finally get their shit together in October I let it play out at 10x speed to see if I could still make it on time in getting that School built and a Teacher assigned to it. After I got the Teacher assigned I happily went back down to 2x speed where I enjoy it.

I'm a slow-builder. Always have been, always will be. I like watching the Banies too much at ground level.  I like taking my time in thinking about my next move. I'm not in a rush to get to end game like one would be in World of Warcraft for example; and it's not like there is really an end game here anyhow except for one you may arbitrarily give yourself. I like it slow in Banished because I am new and because I enjoy watching things; simple as that. I have no life lol, so I'm in no rush! When I speed things up it's only to 5x and that's only when there is nothing else going on while I am waiting for something big to get finished.

your cart is full. the stockpile footprint has something on it to put in your barn (to free the footprint). but your cart is full ! they cannot take it out of your stockpile footprint !!!
till your cart hasnt some free space, the food/textile lying on your stockpile footprint cannot be processed.

So true! I see it now, in hindsight in the screenshot. I may have even noticed it in game at the time all of this was happening but it just didn't "click in my head" as to that being the whole problem in a nutshell! -- *sighs*

Am I really that mean to have so easily blamed my Banies for being a bunch of lazy turds?!  Still, they shouldn't have put anything in the workplace in the first place!  They should know better than that!  They've been here longer than I have!

HAHAHAHA!   

               

[MarkAnthony]

@RedKetchup -- I'm having trouble understanding how the Forest Center and their associated Districts are supposed to work.

I first set the Forest Center down to be built. It was built and I then assigned two Workers there. After it was built I used the Forest Center's Path tool to lay down the special path. All areas inside and the entire perimeter outside was set with the special path. Someone (not sure if it was the Forest Center Workers or just normal Builders - Builders I think) built the special paths. After the special paths were built I started placing down the individual Districts I wanted. From top left to bottom right: Hunter District, Gatherer District, Forester District, and Barn District.

The first District I set down was the Hunter District in the top left corner. All Districts have their footprint arrows facing inwards toward the center of the Forest Center. That's correct right? Anyhow... I selected the Hunter District from the toolbar, got the visual of it and rotated the footprint of it so it was facing the proper direction inside the Forest Center and then I clicked the ground to place it down. Nothing happened; nothing appeared. No building footprint to click on so I can open it's building UI. Nothing happened so I did it again thinking "maybe I didn't place it down on the ground afterall?". So I did it two more times. Now my Builder count is at 9 Builder jobs available. Ignoring the fact I am not seeing any building footprints thinking, "Okay this is just like how @Discrepancy  does his Wagons" I then placed the other three Districts. Now I am waiting for all four structures to get built.

Now my Forest Center is there with nothing being visually built. I have Builders available to do their job, but all they do is come to the Forest Center, walk around inside and pick up "resources" and leave. The two Forest Center Workers I have there just go around inside and "rake the ground" and carry off resources as well.  So I open up the Forest Center UI to see what has been done there already and as you can see from the screenshot it's as if those invisible Districts were already built and assigned workers!

How is the Forest Center getting all these resources and food collected when I do not have any Districts built yet or workers assigned to them and why won't anyone build them?! Now my available Builder jobs is at 13... with apparently nothing to build.

I'm confused... again.  This is becoming my "theme" I guess.  *sighs*

[MarkAnthony]

Okay @RedKetchup you're not gonna like this but I went to 10x game speed again to see what happens!

Once again 10x game speed saves the day! Things finally got built and as you can see I still do not have any Banies assigned to those jobs yet. So I'm still wondering how the Forest Center is managing to collect all those goodies you see in the Forest Center's UI???

Anyhow, for your information Red, I did destroy those two extra Hunter Districts where all three were placed on top of one another. You unintentionally created a cheat I guess and I know you are already aware of it. So yes, they were destroyed.

Seriously Red, you worry that I may break RKEC with 10x game speed? I'm more worried that RKEC will break me!  Perhaps I am in Soviet Russia as the joke goes? Let me break it down for you:

   
• The first time I ever used RKEC the game crashed on me 6x trying to build the RKEC Town Hall. I quit that game and left RKEC.
• Today after all of that time away from RKEC, I am back to using it again. I just finished writing about the Banies who went 100% idle for three months... my fault or not... but still. 
• And then now this... weird Forest Center behavior  *sighs*

I seriously don't think your RKEC mod likes me very much, hehe What's next Red? Will the Bison start stampeding through my town killing everyone in sight? Will the duckies poop on them while flying overhead?  LOL OMG, I'm playing with Disasters on - who knows how often you set them to appear!  /shivers at the thought

But once again... things are back to "good" and as you can see my available Builders count is back down to zero. I just hate the fact that I wasted materials on two "accidental" Hunter Districts this early in the game or otherwise. Why do you and @Discrepancy hate building footprints so much? I find them very helpful because at the very least they let me visually see proof that I did indeed place a structure down to be built instead of wondering "Did I or did I not place that structure down???"

Anyhow -- can you still explain how the Forest Center is getting all of those goodies when I do not even have anyone employed at all the related Districts?

               

[Discrepancy]

I think the Forest Center is it's own building (road-buildable, the first you place) with it's own workers as you can see in the icon. They must act like gatherers and are collecting all those items.

Using the road build-able buildings allows us to make buildings that we can otherwise not make. I started using them when making decorations, to allow them to be built on roads, but then buildings like the wagons and the storage walkway in the latest townhouses.

It is the limitation of the modkit that does not allow you to click on the building site once placed. I have tried to find a way to allow some kind of interaction but cannot.

[MarkAnthony]

...They must act like gatherers and are collecting all those items.

It is the limitation of the modkit that does not allow you to click on the building site once placed. I have tried to find a way to allow some kind of interaction but cannot.

I heard of the infamous urban legend called the "Super Vendor", perhaps we now have a "Super Gatherer"?     Gathering meats and logs too? Did you seeeee those numbers! Hell... I haven't sat this pretty so early in a game before with such accumulated food and materials with barely any effort.

Awww.. that makes me so saaad!  (Your second part)

Maybe you all can give us a little heads up in the toolbar button description about something not having a footprint after placing it down? I'm not talking about the decorations, but normal stuff.


It's just habit developed by playing the vanilla game, or heck... many other types of games too.  You place something down, hear an audible sound verifying you did something... then it's backed up with some kind of visual proof too. So I hear that sound when I place something down (in Banished) to be built and then I don't see it so I immediately begin to question myself/doubt myself as to whether or not I really did set it down.

I know... I know... I'm the only one who has these issues because I never see anyone else saying anything about it... at least not yet I haven't. I'm still reading through every post in the forum!!!  lol  That's gonna take some time to do but as of yet... I haven't seen anyone else speak of this. So ... It's just me.

You and Red and anyone else... feel free to tell me to go away ROFL.  I get it.                   

[MarkAnthony]

Damn... where does the time go? It's almost 4 AM here, gotta get to bed!

Goodnight.

P.S.: Just thought I'd let you know I was leaving of my own accord, not because RKEC ate me up or anything.      Tomorrow will be RKEC trouble-free!