Small Questions

[snapster]

Their houses had no firewood and needed it. One was in their 70s and another in their 50s.

On a more positive note, my first fishing dock has gotten to 1.7k fish per season. A rather gradual increase in production over time has been something I've noticed a couple of times in this game. I seem to have interrupted it... no, my gatherer hut was doing better but I pulled workers from the fishing dock as well, although I don't think I checked their numbers.

What happens is when you first build something the guys that get assigned to work there may not live right there, so they lose time commuting. Gradually, guys swap jobs until they are more or less optimized for how far they have to walk to get to work. That improves productivity.

This is what accounts for it?

Things aren't obscure enough for a town hall, if that even answers some questions. I saw it on an image of yours. I'm pretty sure the lodges and huts will make the difference. And I'm not making surpluses at the moment for growing. It does feel kind of silly playing this game- crudely, just estimating overall surpluses or something and playing based on that.

[irrelevant]

Town Hall's got multiple panels; I've normally just got the overview up.

The production panel is vital. It gives you a snapshot of your production vs consumption.

The graphs in particular can be very helpful.

It can even show you what your guys have squirreled away in their houses. That stuff isn't included in the town summary panel counts.

[snapster]

Yea, some of it seems like it can be quite useful. What good is knowing what is in people's homes, especially overall?

[snapster]

Why do you have spaces between your farms, orchards, and pastures?

For crops and things that reach maturity sooner, like beans, wouldn't the optimal field size be bigger as a farmer would be able to make more trips?

[salamander]

Why do you have spaces between your farms, orchards, and pastures?

Do you mean the one tile spacing where roads have been built, or a larger spacing that maybe I'm really not seeing?  If the first, then it was so that bannies could move between fields more easily, and probably (only @irrelevant can say) for esthetics.

For crops and things that reach maturity sooner, like beans, wouldn't the optimal field size be bigger as a farmer would be able to make more trips?

There is obviously a limit on field size, I'm sure you've already seen it.  Some players routinely make smaller than max sized fields because they like the appearance, or because they don't want to have to have more than a certain number of farmers assigned, and I'm sure there are many other reasons.  For early-maturing crops like beans, it's often possible to have a larger field without increasing the number of farmers because there's more time to harvest.

[irrelevant]

Yea, some of it seems like it can be quite useful. What good is knowing what is in people's homes, especially overall?

This stuff isn't included in any inventory totals, the game already has "expensed" it. But this is what your guys have immediately available to eat. If your food inventory appears to be dangerously low, but there is like 50 food per person still in homes, that is six month's worth. No need to panic yet.

Same for fuel.

[irrelevant]

Why do you have spaces between your farms, orchards, and pastures?

Those are roads. Folks prefer walking around fields to walking through them. If enough people take a shortcut through a field with crops in it, the wear a groove in the crop. Don't like that. And, @salamander's right, I like the way it looks.

For crops and things that reach maturity sooner, like beans, wouldn't the optimal field size be bigger as a farmer would be able to make more trips?

Might be, some years, when the weather is good. But the weather is different every year. I use the sizes I use because they work most of the time, and now I have enough guys that I no longer need to worry so much about wringing every last erg from every last guy. I like having the farms be uniform. I build a 120-tile farm, pick a crop, staff it with two farmers, and probably never think about it again. Except to think "I like the way that looks" when the crop is mature.

[snapster]

Yea, some of it seems like it can be quite useful. What good is knowing what is in people's homes, especially overall?

This stuff isn't included in any inventory totals, the game already has "expensed" it. But this is what your guys have immediately available to eat. If your food inventory appears to be dangerously low, but there is like 50 food per person still in homes, that is six month's worth. No need to panic yet.

Same for fuel.

Early panic is good panic. And why does it seem to me that people consume 100 food per season rather than per year?

For crops and things that reach maturity sooner, like beans, wouldn't the optimal field size be bigger as a farmer would be able to make more trips?

Might be, some years, when the weather is good. But the weather is different every year. I use the sizes I use because they work most of the time, and now I have enough guys that I no longer need to worry so much about wringing every last erg from every last guy. I like having the farms be uniform. I build a 120-tile farm, pick a crop, staff it with two farmers, and probably never think about it again. Except to think "I like the way that looks" when the crop is mature.

So you essentially waste a farmer?

[irrelevant]

Early panic is good panic. And why does it seem to me that people consume 100 food per season rather than per year?

Maybe the food they had stocked in their homes was low, and they all restocked at once. Also are you putting food in a trading post? It no longer counts as food inventory when it is in a TP.

So you essentially waste a farmer?

Do you consider the money you spend on insurance to have been wasted? I don't like partial harvests, and I don't like managing my farms when I get past a certain point. Besides, I have plenty of guys, why shouldn't I staff my farms with enough labor to insure that I get 100% harvests 95% of the time? Nothing else is suffering because of the way I am farming.

[snapster]

You wrote/implied one farmer per 120 tiles is safe. Now two farmers harvest 100% 95% of the time?

[irrelevant]

I doubt very much that I ever said or implied anything about "safety." I expect I used terms like "optimum" or "efficient." Nothing is ever a sure bet. It's only ever merely as good as you can get it to be.

[snapster]

Why is the cattle pasture not producing anything?

[irrelevant]

It produces beef and leather when a cow/steer is slaughtered. Until the cattle count reaches the maximum for the pasture you have built, they will not be slaughtering, they will be increasing the size of the herd.

If you need beef and leather, you can adjust the pasture's slider bar down to a lower limit, and they will start slaughtering when that limit is reached.

Just keep in mind if you have fewer than ten in a pasture, you can't split the herd, meaning you won't be able to start a second pasture unless you buy more cattle.

[snapster]

What about milk? Cheese maybe?

Why does it seem like I'll never be upgrading to stone houses?

Do mines pollute orchards, crop fields, and pastures?

[salamander]

Milk and cheese are not part of the vanilla game, but @RedKetchup has a Diary mod that introduces them to the game.  Stone houses use less firewood, but do cost more in resources to build (or to upgrade from a wood house).  Some folks never build them, others do when they have the resources.  So far as I know, there's no pollution of agricultural areas by mines.  Mines do seem to have an effect on health and/or happiness (I don't recall which at the moment), but they don't seem to affect farms etc... directly.