Priority and other problems. My experience thus far for a week of play and only reaching about 30 population.

This game is frustrating due to not understanding how to control the people (because it is not designed to control them directly). So... tell me if I'm wrong.

I've noticed that too much harvest command for your laborers will overide construction. When trying to use the priority tool it is red when you select construction areas, so I'm assuming that only works with harvesting. So what I do to bring construction back up to speed is to cancel all harvesting orders. Would be allot easier if there were a master cancel button. Nothing like watching the guys on your screen walking right past a construction plot LOL.

I find that you can stave off hunger the best by placing extra fishing docks since they seem to produce food the quickest. Then try to reach and maintain allot of food. About 3,000 or more. Ya, fu** starvation LOL. Not too sure how much gathering and hunting help, but it seems fishing is faster. Of course later you can herd cows, chickens, and sheep too.

For homes I always start with a boarding house. Hey it works. Then build homes when you can and upgrade them to stone in order to use less firewood I would surmise.

Trading! Not understanding some of it , but I've resulted in only trading firewood when starting. Get that chopping going nonstop, set your trading post to 1,000 firewood and of course your woodcutter up to 2,000. Much easier to manage without running low. Of course you have to keep harvesting trees too.

Forresters and Stonecutters (quarry and forest lodge). At first it makes sense that these would be your main sourse of wood and stone, but ohhhhh nooo it isn't!! They produce very slow. Don't rely on them. Maybe it's because I'm not giving them the "cut" command? You tell me. I don't see to run low on iron too much.

Managing people who become idle. Sometimes professions are not needed when they have nothing to do. Clothes and tools fall very slowly. Teachers without students, tailors without skins, etc or even when you are maxed on clothes, tools, and herbs. You can unassign them so that they can be assigned elsewhere. Then reassign them when you need them.

Now where I have a problem is everyone dying of old age. Nobody having babies. No nomads coming in. What do I do?

Build more houses - if it is not already too late.

A household is limited (normally) to five people - man of the house, woman of the house (a married couple if you like) and up to three juniors. I'd say children, but I need a word encompassing under-10s, students and adults (grown-up sons and daughters waiting for a chance to move out to a home of their own).

Only the woman of the house will have babies, and only up to about age 40. Grown-up daughters still at home will not. No grannies living with married daughter in this game.

To get married and start a family, a couple need a house to move into. The boarding house is not acceptable for the honeymoon (generally speaking). Though a married couple who become homeless can move into a boarding house and still have babies there.

One thing that helps free up houses for new couples - the newly-widowed always look for new partners to move in with, or have move in with them. But only within a 20-year age difference.

NOMADS

To get nomads applying for citizenship, you need three different buildings:-
- if you don't have a town hall, they won't be able to apply
- if you don't have a market, they won't want to come
- if you don't have a trading post, they won't know there is anywhere to come to (you need visiting merchants spreading the word).

Wait wut? How do you figure this out or is there instructions LOL. Anyways thanks for the good advice. Did not realize there were so much to "family management" in the game.

New question. Been having a church. Seems to keep them happy. Haven't gone with the brewery yet, but maybe that helps folks have babies LOL.

Trader. I remember when I first built it, I set a little bit of everything to trade and noticed not much was valuable, but then after a while only firewood showed up as tradable. Sure was fine because that was more value.

"To get nomads applying for citizenship, you need three different buildings" I believe I found that somewhere in the in-game information (the ? button). But the explanation is something I came up with myself to help remember it by.

Most of what I know about the game comes from careful observation, my own and what others have shared in forums (not just this one). Each trading post gets visited by five different merchants - food, general, livestock, resource and seed. Everything we can put in the trading post is tradeable, but not to all five. All take firewood, tools and coats (the manufactured commodities - doesn't this make it an anomaly that one of the five, I forget which, does not accept alcohol?) But food is not tradeable to the resource merchant for example, nor logs or leather to the food merchant. Is it firewood that one - the food merchant? - takes at a discount, value 3 instead of 4?

I reckon the game is over-generous to us in valuing firewood at 4. Or less than generous (when exporting) in valuing iron tools at 8. From one log a woodcutter - if educated - makes 4 firewood, total trade value 16, whereas an educated blacksmith makes 2 iron tools, same total trade value 16, but has used up one iron additional to the log. Forest lodges must have "cut" on (lit up in white) for foresters to produce logs. I do rely on them to keep woodcutters supplied, once past the early start-up years. Learn how many foresters per woodcutter for how many houses.

As for the original question about priorities, another long post coming shortly; meanwhile, I do agree the game mechanics can be frustrating, especially if we try running to a tight margin on anything.

Oh oh oh. I've been testing Priority up arrow. It appears to work when selecting a construction site. I think the selected "grounds" turns from green to red is correctly marking it. Just like cancelling a harvest command that selecting a section of forest marked for logging will highlight the trees within the section "red". So this I misunderstood as an "invalid" selection, but it is in fact valid. Yeah!
So ya, they seem to run over to the construction site right away when I prioritize it.

Ya, hate running out of enough laborers. I guess the key would be to do what you can by always having a minimum amount of laborers instead of 0. Getting a mass die off of your people and you have to take away from your professions.

People with nothing to do in their profession automatically help out with general chores, without us having to unassign them.

When there are students in school, always have at least one laborer (spare worker). That way, if the teacher dies, somebody will instantly and automatically be assigned to take over, saving the students from being thrown out of school as uneducated adults. The button has its limitations. Here's what I reckon

A building project has three stages. Builders do the actual construction. Before that, bringing the materials to site is general chores. So is clearing the site, which comes first.

Builders do first their professional work, that is construction (with road-making second) and general chores last. If the house ordered second is ready for construction, but the one ordered first is not, then the builders will start erecting the second house rather than fetch the stone that the first is waiting for. (Somebody else can do that.) The up-arrow "priority" button won't affect that - it will move the first house's stone-delivery to the top of the general chores list, that's all.

"Builders do first their professional work, and general chores last." When they work at all, that is. Sheltering from the cold, going home to lunch, shopping in its various forms, and "idling" (rest breaks) all take precedence. What is worse, once a particular piece of work is allotted to somebody - constructing the house to this builder rather than that one, or removing that tree to the herbalist with no herbs to gather rather than to the tailor unable to make coats - it has to wait for that person to get back from sheltering, eating, shopping or idling. Nobody else is allowed to cover for the absentee. Though with two builders allowed at once on the same house (more for some of the larger buildings) the chances are that one at least will be getting on with the job.

Another complication: the rule seems to be, "I've started so I'll finish". This is how production information gets messed up. Enquire of a fishing dock how the fishermen are doing this "season" (year): if their output is shown as 300 fish and 3 logs! it is because a forester going to cut down a tree was reassigned to take a turn as a fisherman, but finished cutting the tree first. Which then got attributed to the fishing dock, not to the forester lodge.

This affects the up-arrow "priority" button. Say that after ordering some trees harvested somewhere half across the map, we order a cemetery built in the opposite direction (which will mean clearing a lot of stones first) and mark it as the priority site. Result: our laborers continue walking to the trees, cut down one each, THEN start back towards the cemetery site. To make them switch immediately, cancel the tree-felling, as you discovered.

Well it appears it's best to handle one thing at a time when possible. I do swear that I've seen Farmers "idle" in the winter instead of helping. So not sure what up with that.

I am getting a better hang of it. Thanks for all the advice. I've even resorted to starting over. First thing I do is pause the game and build half of the town plan and pause each building. Then I play the game and unpause the buildings I want worked on when the town is ready for them. A bit easier to handle that way.