How to keep farmers?

[Rameses]

Hi people!

Just started playing CotN yesterday and I'm having a great fun! However after a while all my farmers just stop working and move away or go do something else, how do I stop this from happening?

I have read some of the tutorials on this site and they are very helpful so I'm going to go and try some of those hints and tips just now, but if someone can help me keep a hold of a strong farming workforce I d be really happy :D

Thanks

[Keith]

Make sure you have some common wares shops near the farmer's houses. If the shrines and temples, or the apothecary and hospital aren't properly staffed with a priest or two and aren't working that will contribute to their disastifaction.

Farmers also get their supply of grain from the threshing area. That's that area where the grain is stacked right after the harvest. If there isn't enough food there to last them they will move out. You want to grow enough food because the grain also serves as "money" which is used for trading for goods that the need.

What are the sastisfaction icons in each farmer's infromation box showing you when you click on their homes. If they have complaints they will be red or yellow.

Food, goods, religion and healthcare access are important to the farmers.

[sakasiru]

I'm not sure what you mean, maybe you can upload a savegame when this happens?

If you have this problem in the first year of your game: That's a normal process! Your first farmers are done with their season, and move into shops and higher paid jobs. New villagers will move into the farmhouses and keep up the food production. Once all your houses are occupied, the moving will go back to a minimum.
Try not to overbuild, so that you always have villagers left to take over the empty farmhouses, or else you will have problems to keep the food production running.

[Tinkerbell]

Howdy, Rameses!

Let me take a wild guess building on what Keith & sakasiru posted. You built much too quickly, ran outta villagers & your farmers moved into your upper class homes.

If you are playing the tutorials, they don't start with very many villagers, so you need to only build exactly what you are directed to & not much more.

If you are playing the campaign, you have to be careful in the first few years with upper class homes. Upper class is anything but famers, servants & laborers. COTN people love to move up in class & if you build upper class homes, your farmers will most definitely disappear into them & be replaced by villagers if you have villagers. No villagers & you are in deep trouble, but fixable by stopping building & deleting the empty upper class homes not yet populated.

You don't get new villagers in canned scenarios & can use them up quickly by building incorrectly & especially quickly on the upper class homes. Later homes are populated mostly by farmer's kids but farmers need time to make kids.

If none of our posts help, then if you could paint us a better picture of what exactly is happening or a game save using your Manage Attachments below the posting box will definitely help.

[Rameses]

Hi Guys!

Thanks to everyone for your time in replying to me.

I am afraid I am guilty of building to fast while playing the campaigns.

However I have started again this morning and took it kind of slow to start with and Im getting bigger as I go along. I am still losing farmers thought, but due to tinkerbells advice I think I am building to many noble homes to fast to get more farms, but this means the farmers just move out.

Tinkerbell also mentioned you dont get more villagers in the campaign mode! Does this mean your city will never get bigger? I was under the impression that as my city got bigger more and more people would 'move' into my city to start working for me and living in my city.
If this is not the case can anyone tell me how you play on a 'world' level as such where people will move into your city etc....

This is what I have so far...

All my people are happy all bars are in the green, however I have NO villagers just now. I have lots of brick works and lots of Noble houses (enough for 80 farms) however I only have 17 farmers at the moment after having about 60 previosly. I have managed to get 5 priests and a scribe also.

I think my problem is no more villagers... if this is the case and I have to build slow... what does this mean? How slow do I build? Have I always got to have some villagers in my city, if so how can I get more people to move so I can expand?

Im playing the first campaign level at easy Nekhen

Thanks again guys!!!

[sakasiru]

Hi!

I'm glad it did work! :)

Regarding your question, no, in CotN, no people will come frome outside the map like in other (most?) city builders. Only the nobles will come from outside, but all others will come from your initial villagers and their children.

So yes, your city can grow, and it will, but it will take some time. If you have a solid lower class (farmers, servants and laborers) which is happy, they will produce many kids, who will move out, marry and move in new empty houses. Upper class will also have children, and they will go to school and fill the educated houses (priests, commanders, overseers, scribes). To let your city grow, you not only have to build the houses, but you have to wait for children to get born and some of them get educated. So if you don't build too fast and care about the people's needs, your city can grow to tremendous sizes ;)

[Rameses]

Hi!

I'm glad it did work! :)

Regarding your question, no, in CotN, no people will come frome outside the map like in other (most?) city builders. Only the nobles will come from outside, but all others will come from your initial villagers and their children.

So yes, your city can grow, and it will, but it will take some time. If you have a solid lower class (farmers, servants and laborers) which is happy, they will produce many kids, who will move out, marry and move in new empty houses. Upper class will also have children, and they will go to school and fill the educated houses (priests, commanders, overseers, scribes). To let your city grow, you not only have to build the houses, but you have to wait for children to get born and some of them get educated. So if you don't build too fast and care about the people's needs, your city can grow to tremendous sizes ;)

Thanks my friend!

I shall go and start again and focus more on the lower classes and not just build lots and lots of Noble houses!


...

I will also check back on here in about an hour to see if anyone else has left more advice for me :D

[Tinkerbell]

Howdy again, Rameses!

Adding Nobles will not cause you to lose farmers but it will cause you to lose villagers if you keep placing new farmer huts. What might be going on in your game, is that with Nobles, you also add higher-class homes that eat up villagers & when no villagers left, they eat up your existing farmers. Common & lux shops are such higher-class homes & I guarantee these will eat up farmers & villagers like they were candy.

The issue with class is that in COTN it is very difficult to get people who have moved up in class, to go back down in class. Thus a shop's kids will not want to become a farmer. It is basically a one-way trip up in class. When out of villagers, new farmers will basically only come from farmer's kids.

Nobles evolve their townhomes & thus we can have more farmers in steps of 4 to 6 to 8 famers per townhome. The palace can also evolve to give us 6 to 8 to 10 farmers.

Noble townhomes consume a lot of food each day at exactly 8 PM (three times per year) for enhancement upkeep/maintenance & this is why we must stay at MAX FARMS on your People Report, or your Nobles will have problems.

Your city will support as many Nobles as you can keep at Max Farms.

As you have now figured out, there is no immigration per se, in COTN like in the Classic CB games opf Ceaser, Pharaoh, Zeus, Emperor. We start a scenario with X number of villagers & that is all we get. [Note: There is a Editor exploit that unfortunately far too many modern scenariomakers now use to give us never-ending new free villagers to mimmick the Classic CB game's immigration & destroy the game's difficulty, but you will not find this exploit in COTN canned scenarios nor any scenario that I design.].

We can build an extremely large city of well over 2000 people from a start of only 82 villagers as in Campaign city E3 Itjtawy, but it has to be done slowly & carefully.

Villager management in COTN is what you need to master & this is done by spending your initial villagers on mostly farmers only. Farmer's kids, as I posted originally, will populate the rest of your city & this takes time.

I run outta villagers in every COTN scenario I play. I even claim the fastest record speed to do it. AND, it doesn't matter at all! I don't save villagers & build slowly. I spend them & spend them quickly on FARMERS. You just have to do it properly & be careful with higher-class homes. Here, I am not talking about Nobles as higher-class homes. Nobles are different, they are populated differently.

[CharleyK1]

Hi Rameses!

Everyone who has posted before me has been giving great advice, but I just had to add my two cents anyway! :D

You seem to have decided that you are indeed trying to grow your city too quickly, and reading through the posts in this thread, I agree. But so far, no on has mentioned one obvious piece to this puzzle, so I thought I would. Pay attention to your reports (in the lower middle of the screen), as that's where you can find out how many villagers you currently have (along with counts of every type of citizen). During your "building frenzy", watch that number so you can slow down BEFORE it gets to zero and make some decisions as to what is most important with the few you have left. Then, look for a "balance" where your city is happy and your farmers are no longer "moving on up" to better jobs. In that happy state, as Sakasiru pointed out, you should get some kids that can fill later needs.

Most importantly, keep learning and have fun! :)
...Charley

[Rameses]

Hi guys,

thanks again for ALL your help and advice!!! I have managed to correct my wrongs and I am really having fun now!
I completed the first campaign but decided to just keep playing... now have my great pyramid at 30% completed :D

Thanks again to all!!!

[Keith]

Enjoy. :)

[Tinkerbell]

Hi guys,

thanks again for ALL your help and advice!!! I have managed to correct my wrongs and I am really having fun now!
I completed the first campaign but decided to just keep playing... now have my great pyramid at 30% completed :D

Thanks again to all!!!

Bravo! I knew you would. We all went through this. ;)