Why am I losing villagers?

[mklangelo]

I've slowed down my building and still am losing villagers. That's gonna hurt me later when I need laborers.


Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

By the way, where in the directory do I find the saved games in order to post it? I looked but did not find. I was looking for something crazy like "saved games" or some variation thereof. lol

ty

MK

[Yahya]

The location depends on the version of the game. The Saved Games folder is right, and it is either at:

..\Children of the Nile\data\Saved Games\

or

..\Alexandria\data\Saved Games

or

My Documents\Tilted Mill\Children of the Nile\Saved Games

You should be able to find it in one of those three places, depending on your game version. (Most likely in My Documents.)

Now, to your problem.

Villagers will only populate two houses: farmhouses and servants.

As soon as you place either a farm house or a servant house, a villager will head over there, build it, and move in.

Of course, if there is an open building above that, say a shop or a manufacturer of some sort, the farmer or servant might head over there, leaving an open house, which will be eventually filled by another villager.

If you are running out of villagers, you are building faster than the scenario will allow. A good rule of thumb is to check how many villagers exist at the start of the scenario and plan accordingly.

If someone gives you 200 villagers, you can basically go nuts building. But if there are only 50 or so, that can quickly get used up, between the farms, servants, brickmakers, and shops when you first start your city.

For example, on a normal city, at the start, I place:

• Palace
• 4 Nobles

Therefore, I also place:

• 42 farms (only 22 will be taken initially, more will be taken as the buildings upgrade)
• 6 servants
• 8 common shops
• 6 luxury shops
• 8 brick makers
• 2 to 4 bricklayers
• 1 to 2 bakers

I do all that before I do anything else. Sometimes I add extra stuff.

If we add up everything that gets used right away, assuming 22 farms, 2 bricklayers, and 1 baker, the total number of villagers needed is 53.

So I'd run out of villagers before the first harvest and I'd be screwed. So I build slower under those circumstances.

The good news is that farm house children will eventually fill open spots, but it takes a while.

Others have more experience with handling villager shortages. I usually don't have a problem.

[Keith]

If you have the STEAM version of the game you'll find the game files stored in one of the lower subfolders of the STEAMAPP folder of the STEAM folder on your hard drive.

I try to stop building when the villager level gets down around one or two so they can produce children and slowly refill that part of the population.

Once out of villagers, you'll have to rely on the rate at which the citizens of your city produce children, to fill open jobs. This is generally a very slow process.

[Tinkerbell]

Howdy, mklangelo!

Villagers are what populate your homes until your city is big enough to have a population of children & childbirth to replace them. Basically if you build faster than your city's rate of childbirth, you will lose villagers. Brick buildings take time to build, so you might be placing too many buildings & not notice it untill much later when those brick buildings are complete.

Children come from happiness, food & wares. The best children growers are farmers. They are low class, will populate every class home & we have a bunch of them. This is why your starting villagers should be used to mostly make farmers, not high class homes. These farmer's kids will then populate your entire city.

You can also lose people from natural death, combat on the world map, and city unhappiness (they can become vagrants). Losing soldiers to unhappiness is especially bad, cuz you lose a full barracks of 3, but only get 1 vagrant or even all 3 will leave the map.

In general, unless your city is especially stressed, unhappy homes will repopulate with villagers before vagrants, but usually a mix of both.

Playing on hard difficulty makes this process harder.

I run out of villagers often, and it doesn't matter at all. My city still continues to grow.

As for game saves, you find them in your Desktop Documents folder, not in game files nor steam apps. This was done to make the game compatable with Vista and now W7.

However, TM has now turned off all file uploads to the forum, so you will have to use an offsite upload site & link to this forum.

[mklangelo]

Thanks, guys. This game is pretty unique amoung city builders. Food is money and people are truly your most important resourse. That's really a first in my experience.

[PantherX]

As it was for us all

[mklangelo]

Originally Posted by PantherX

As it was for us all

Ya. Enough wit' da' Romans, already.