Admittedly, I'm new to RTS/Civ building games. So I don't really know the standard tropes and tricks of the genre. I've opened this up a few times, and I've had fun with it. But I'm starting to get frustrated because I keep hitting brick walls and can't figure out how to do basic things- or maybe they just haven't been implemented yet. I can't be sure. Anyway, here's a list of things I can't figure out: 1) I understand that I can't just command workers to walk wherever I please, so how can I get them to explore the map? Do I just have to keep telling them to chop trees and clear terrain to reveal more of the fog of war? 2) How the hell do I get these people to cook and eat. I give them farms, I give them kitchens, and still they die of starvation. What am I missing here? 2.5) I tried customizing my work crews to fit my needs (have certain crews only farm and chop wood, others only work in workshops, etc.) but they won't do the jobs I need them to. Everyone's starving to death, and I have Mr. Percy IronTerwillagersmith's Blazing Pipes set to only work in the workshop, and have orders for tons of bread, stew and meat, but none of it is getting made because they won't stop tending the fields. 3) The leader of my militia died in a fishfolk attack, and the rest of my redcoats are without a work crew. Do I just assign them to a civilian work crew and use that as my new militia? Long story short, how do I get my work crews to do what I need them to do? Specifically, start eating and stop dying.
1) There are a couple of ways to explore the edges of the known world: a) There's an Explore button in the bottom left button panel. Clicking it will (somewhat redundantly) bring up another Explore button. Use that one to place an Explore beacon on the map. It will appear on your Job queue, as a task for one of your colonists to complete (in his / her own sweet time, as per usual). Someone will walk over to the beacon (or between multiple beacons), expanding your view. You can click on the beacons themselves to remove them from the map, because they don't go away otherwise, and will continue attracting explorers forever. b) There's a Military button in the same button panel. It gives you a Rally button, which places a beacon for your military to rush toward. They'll actually run, and won't be distracted by other things in the job queue. You can use them to explore, but it's also a good way to point them toward a fishman invasion. Again, those beacons must be removed manually. Kitchens, time for a deep breath: 2) Kitchens will only cook food if you've queued up some cooking jobs (i.e. clicked on the kitchen, and clicked on the item(s) you want the kitchen to produce). Assuming you've done that, you also need colonists to be completing that particular job - if there's nobody free to cook because everyone's busy chopping wood or mining ore, no cooking gets done. On top of that, there must be raw materials (in this case, ingredients) for the kitchen to process, e.g. Black Cup Fungus, Lingonberries, Raw Aurochs Steak, cabbage, etc. You can get the first two by Foraging, the third by hunting, and the last by farming. Additionally, the recipe you want the kitchen to make is limited by the corresponding ingredient: each cabbage stew needs one cabbage, lingonberry preserves need a bushel of lingonberries, etc. If you queue up 20 Steak, but have no Raw Aurochs Steak in stock, there will be no meat for dinner. So. Assuming you have successfully foraged or hunted for ingredients, assigned recipes in the kitchen, and someone is actually cooking, you will produce food. Colonists will eat whatever food is in your stockpile, raw or cooked. Cooked food will keep them satiated longer, which means you need to spend less time foraging. 3) Losing any Overseer dumps their crew back into the unassigned pool, and that also applies to Military Overseers. You may as well assign them to normal Work Crews, unless you have multiple Military Overseers. They'll still shoot at things with their weapons, but I don't believe you can Rally them without their own Military Overseer. Broadly speaking, if jobs aren't getting done, it's because there are too many jobs. I generally don't bother forcing specific crews into specific specializations - there's no reason an idle crew shouldn't be able to pick up the next available job, no matter what it is, but that's just my opinion. A good rule of thumb is to try to keep the job queue relatively short (say, no longer than the first page). Try only to queue up jobs as they become necessary, or you may find colonists are indefinitely distracted from a specific, vital job.
An excellent write-up, Alephred! I would also like to point out a possible error with the kitchen: the workbench is a required module, but the ovens that actually cook stuff is not. So it's entirely possible that your kitchen does not have an oven, and therefore things will not get cooked. At least, that's a problem I came across once or twice.
So it was an illusion! I was suckered in by the great words of Steam and the requirements of Cogs, and was given lies instead!
Wow, thanks! That was incredibly helpful. I guess I'll just have to be patient with my crews and give them a few tasks at a time instead of setting up a long list for them. I do kind of wish there was a way to say "This crew, your next job is to build this house, then go back to tending to the wheat." Maybe a To Do list for each crew in the Work Crew tab? Also, I have a terrible memory, so I keep having to check my Commodities tab every time I want to build something. Is there any plans to add a list of commodities to the UI? I was thinking of something similar to HoMM3 where the bottom of the screen was always a list of your kingdom's resources.
Ideally, when we're presented with our options for what to produce (be it berry preserves or planks or brass cogs or a solid gold idol of our new master who whispers to us from the sea), rolling over the various choices with the mouse will make popup windows appear with the material costs, as well as our current inventory; e.g. "Ligonberry Preserves. Costs 1 Ligonberry (12 available)"
Agree with that one. I've stopped many buildings because I had to go back and check my current commodities list to make sure everything would be ready.
Alephred addressed most of your points but here's a bonus tip that took me a while to learn: in your work crews menu, under your military crew, click the "hunting party" button to allow your military crew to indiscriminately rain down piping hot death on any and every edible creature that wanders into their kill zone. Your citizens will happily chow down on the now plentiful raw and still warm auroch as you get your farms and kitchen rolling, avoiding those early waves of starvation.
Also don't forget you can't just lay down a farm. Once it's placed you must click on it to select what you will grow.
