Per patch notes i saw, there was a loyalty math bug that caused an increase in pregnancies as the numbers weren't going back down once they increased so everyone had great friends no matter how bad they were.

There was some other minor thing related to this not coming to mind as i recall. He said the target population for performance purposes was about 200 and their will be a big drop in reproduction at that point.

Population growth on a new game seems much less "rabbits humping themselves half do death" level reproduction rates which also had me going from feast to famin over and over with 90% of my population sitting around confused what to do unless i prioritized a task.

Your probable issue is you're replaying a game that let you push past the "soft limit" and now those mechanics are cockblocking you, literally.

Thanks for letting me know, that makes a lot of sense. Apparently I need to start a new save to get access to fishing so I guess I'll do that.

Originally posted by ledhead:

"rabbits humping themselves half do death" level reproduction rates which also had me going from feast to famin over and over

Watching my population grow felt like a biology lesson on Malthusian growth.

Originally posted by ledhead:

with 90% of my population sitting around confused what to do unless i prioritized a task.

I noticed this as well and posted about it, because that was the most annoying thing. I had enough food and resources to feed them if there hadn't been so many idlers.

But even when I prioritized general labor tasks, I still had idlers so that didn't even work fully as far as I could tell.

ya the lazy idlers i think is related to the developer trying to incorporate the auto reassignment form a mod and it wasn't implemented properly. They seem to have a high FU grading of i get paid in food to not work so feed me mentality. One of my recent restarts had a pop of like 40 that about 10 starved with a pile of oranges sitting under a dozen trees... they seem to think someone is going to put the food in their mouth and make them chew and swallow it. Meanwhile they are angry and want to leave.....

I think there is a 'soft cap' of like 200 or 250 or somewhere around there, for population growth.

But yeah... them breeding like rabbits, made me eventually give up and delete one village.
They narrowly avoided starving to death twice, the third time was the last straw. Turned into a micromanagement nightmare.
First time I just put up my hands, said 'f this nonsense, we've overshot to stupid to live territory', and just deleted a village.

The 'breed like rabbits' thing is basically destroying my present village, because for whatever freaking reason, the majority of those that join, are women. Of the last 5 groups, I got 1 adult and 2 elderly men (the only man in the groups they were with). And so 80% of the labor force are women that are pregnant or carrying a kid. Relying on elderly and kids, is not ideal, because one of the few adult men, is the only male hunter, and got injured due to hunting, and the other 6 are women that are pregnant or carrying a child.

Says a lot, when 32 newly grown berry bushes, makes me think I better triple that amount, to be on the safe side... or when I see I have on person without a bed, build another shelter with 8 more beds, and a few days later, now see I might be out of spare beds already... because holy crud, we might as well put bunny ears and tails on the women at this point, with as fast as they are pumping out kids in my villages...

Originally posted by ledhead:

ya the lazy idlers i think is related to the developer trying to incorporate the auto reassignment form a mod and it wasn't implemented properly. They seem to have a high FU grading of i get paid in food to not work so feed me mentality. One of my recent restarts had a pop of like 40 that about 10 starved with a pile of oranges sitting under a dozen trees... they seem to think someone is going to put the food in their mouth and make them chew and swallow it. Meanwhile they are angry and want to leave.....

I've had odd issues, with auto-assign... being off. Like what I mentioned above, of a village nearly starving to death. One reason, was a lot of raw meat, 'not' being cooked. Of cooking issues, despite having 3 camp fires, revealing 18 kids I never assigned basic cooking to, had it assigned. Which means the 5-6 I did have assigned, and that were skilled, rarely were able to do the cooking. It did the same for fire starting, had like a dozen or so kids assigned to it, that I had not assigned.
Micro-management nightmare.

For Sapians sitting around while starving, with food available.
They have a limited range, in which they 'see' things, like food and tasks that need to be done.
Just radius select their lazy butts and manually move them (closer) to the food.
I've had to do that, on at least one occasion, for sick/wounded people that were very hungry, but otherwise couldn't be bothered to getup and walk 50 feet to the food stockpile hut.


Maybe it's related, but I have not seen people do the 'move toward the light' thing... at least not 'normally'. Most will happily sit in the middle of nowhere, even when night falls, and then decide walking 200 feet to bed is not worth it, and just sleep where they are at.
Which is odd, yet one clue, is one time saw a person leaving the village, just the green move icon... saw them as they ran past a campfire, as they ran off into the darkness. Paused, wondering why they were walking 'away' of the village, at night. Selected them, saw they were 'moving toward the light'... as they were running into the darkness, moving away from the campfire they just walked passed... so yeah... guessing something to do with why they now do some tasks, even in darkness.

One issue I have, is they seem to put maximum priority, on hauling tasks.
So unless something else is set for a priority, they seem to ignore all other tasks, until the hauling tasks are done.
Extra annoying with hunters, who throw, miss, then stand there, as someone at the village then 'reserves' the spear to bring it back, so the hunter then has to return to get another spear...

The game could definitely do with some balancing and bug fixes and whatnot, before any new content gets added.

I have to say, the new patch was a massive improvement, but indeed, far from perfect. I have been running my current village for about 1300 in game days, the population still gets to about 240 quicker than I'd like and it just crashed down to 8, seemingly without reason. That kinda broke me for now....

Also, what's with the stored food virtually instantly disappearing again... I will have a round of harvesting, filling my stores to 3000 food units, and two in game days later, I am down to maybe 100 units of food....

Originally posted by msrgrt:

Also, what's with the stored food virtually instantly disappearing again... I will have a round of harvesting, filling my stores to 3000 food units, and two in game days later, I am down to maybe 100 units of food....

What kind of food is disappearing? Anything specific, or food in general?
Is the disappearing food, by any chance, being stored in stockpiles that are outside? Or is it stored in stockpiles that are inside, or otherwise under a roof?
Is there by any chance a stray sled or several somewhere, they may be storing food in, away from your normal food stockpiles?

Originally posted by rditto48801:

What kind of food is disappearing? Anything specific, or food in general?
Is the disappearing food, by any chance, being stored in stockpiles that are outside? Or is it stored in stockpiles that are inside, or otherwise under a roof?
Is there by any chance a stray sled or several somewhere, they may be storing food in, away from your normal food stockpiles?

Just all food in general, stored in indoors stockpiles. Any outdoors stockpiles I have I always limit in use to the storage of building materials. I have sofar gone without sleds and canoes as the game mechanics behind them somehow doesn't make sense to me...

Originally posted by msrgrt:

Just all food in general, stored in indoors stockpiles. Any outdoors stockpiles I have I always limit in use to the storage of building materials. I have sofar gone without sleds and canoes as the game mechanics behind them somehow doesn't make sense to me...

Most curious.
Do you, by any chance, happen to have a lot of people with the Glutton trait?
Or are you by any chance close to an NPC village?

It makes me think of one bug I ran across.
Hunted 4 alpaca. Confirmed 4 alpaca carcass. Set 2 crafting spots to each butcher 2. The second one of them came up as not having enough. The first crafting spot, later on, whenever queuing other things to craft, when someone carried over items for crafting, they would walk up, and after they stopped, an alpaca carcass would 'appear' on the crafting place for a split second, then it would vanish when the item needed for crafting was placed on the crafting spot. As in that happened many times, I think until I exited game, I don't recall it popping up the next time I had played after that.
Makes me wonder if it is a related bug. If something is causing them to 'misplace' things.

For me, sleds/sledges and canoes do fit in the setting, due to being glued to the History Channel when growing up.
Sleds/sledges were used in ancient Egypt (and apparently, even by Vikings).
Native Americans carved canoes out of logs. (such as 5 foot thick logs of Ponderosa Pine)

I make use of sleds for tasks with a lot of small items (fruits or berries) or many large items (large rocks, logs), to help speed up getting stuff moved to the stockpile, and so they stop hauling tools all the way back to the village, and minimize how long villagers are individually carrying single berries/fruits/whatever, to overall reduce how much time they spend (and waste) hauling stuff. Simply put, the game's apparent obsession with hauling tasks drives me nuts at times.
As Scrooge McDuck will say, "Work smarter, not harder."

That's something to keep an eye on.

The sled thinng is not about it not making sense in the setting, it does, I'm enough of a history buff to know that. It is the mechanics as they work in game that i somehow struggle with, which probably says more about me than those mechanics