Originally posted by Fable:

On your note about where to place housing, I assume it also doesn't matter which way the arrow turns? When I first started playing, I kept placing them in rows of two, so that they'd each point towards a road lol.

It doesn't matter since villagers don't go into the houses to rest. It matters with most other workplaces though.

Adding one more optimization tip to the mix: If you are building something's that's movable for free after completed, build it next to a warehouse and then move it where you want. You save villagers a lot of time carrying the building materials to the build site.

"In the seal-specific biome, you can dismantle the glowing arrow sign-post things for stone and resin."

Game changer.
I'll keep reading the rest now.

Ive read that Houses dont need Roads attached to them and neither does it matter if their Doors dont face Ways Villagers can enter them. That is because the Villagers never interact with them.
So you can remove the two roads upside and downside the Row of Houses and instead place a additional Row there. It looks very ugly thought

Use the trader, don’t hesitate to rush him if you need resources

Originally posted by BT:

Use the trader, don’t hesitate to rush him if you need resources

On that note, if hostility is higher than you can handle, you can rush the trader specifically to raise impatience and therefore lower hostility. I normally find that hostility is a much bigger problem than impatience (except maybe during seals), so I've used this trick occasionally.

As for houses: they don't need roads and it doesn't matter which way they face.

Originally posted by Tokogawa GER:

Ive read that Houses dont need Roads attached to them and neither does it matter if their Doors dont face Ways Villagers can enter them. That is because the Villagers never interact with them.
So you can remove the two roads upside and downside the Row of Houses and instead place a additional Row there. It looks very ugly thought

But do villagers even go to the houses ? I read a post where someone says no...

Originally posted by Mr_Zayder:

Originally posted by Tokogawa GER:

Ive read that Houses dont need Roads attached to them and neither does it matter if their Doors dont face Ways Villagers can enter them. That is because the Villagers never interact with them.
So you can remove the two roads upside and downside the Row of Houses and instead place a additional Row there. It looks very ugly thought

But do villagers even go to the houses ? I read a post where someone says no...

They don't. It would complicate the pathing and the balance terribly. It is why they go to the hearth for a break.

@Olleus
Nice tips!

Some tips from me:

Fertile soil buildings (the ones that require fields around them, like farms and plantations, not the ones that are built on top of fertile soil) are heavily affected by season change and logistic efficiency. Planting is only possible in Drizzle and harvesting - in Clearance. Everything that is not harvested when Storm hits is lost. Harvesting is usually slightly slower than planting, so if you don't pay attention your farms will lose part of the harvest each year, therefore farming efficiency is, basically, harvesting efficiency. Among other things it means that cornerstones that increase harvest speed are much more valuable than cornerstones that increase planting speed.

The strongest factor that impacts harvesting is resource carrying time. The more time your farmers spend on emptying farm storage the less they spend on harvesting. Therefore building a storage near each farm (ideally "near" means "one tile distance between the doors of the buildings") is a priority. There are advanced methods like placing buildings that consume farm produce near the farms, so the workers would empty the farm storage, or assigning haulers, but shorter distance to storage is the easiest and the most reliable way. Note that carrying inefficiency will swallow any farm production amount buffs you have.

Hearth proximity is also an important factor, for the same reason, but much less demanding, so to say. As a rule of thumb, try to keep the distance between a farm and a hearth less than the standard diameter of hearth's settling area.

This is a very helpful thread, I pinned it. Thanks, Olleus!

I'd like to add some efficiency tips. They might sound very basic but these are based on mistakes I've seen a lot of new players make.

- Build a warehouse near a dangerous glade event before/while working on the event. This prevents your scouts from running back and forth to your main warehouse with the rewards.
- You can build other production buildings next to this warehouse, since all warehouse magically share the same goods.
- Do not forget to also build a new heart close to this new production hub. Otherwise your workers will walk all the way to the main heart on every break.
- Remove workers from your blightpost as soon as you've got enough ammo and put them back in when the storm starts.
- It's more efficiënt to put a camp close to a resource (especially true for trees) than putting it close to a warehouse.
- Without any bonusses: 1 farm filled with 2 workers can use 10 patches of fertile soil. So if you want to use 14 patches of soil efficiently you need 2 farms filled with a total of 3 workers. (you also need to make sure that a warehouse and a small heart is nearby.)

Originally posted by "Donut☆:

- Build a warehouse near a dangerous glade event before/while working on the event. This prevents your scouts from running back and forth to your main warehouse with the rewards.

If you've got the spare parts to build a warehouse (I don't think you get 100% back on dismantling either).Not to mention the time to build it might offset the gain. I find it more practical to open dangerous glades on the warehouse side (rather than hearth side) of my initial settlement in order to get much the same effect, while also making easier to place a second hearth. This is of course more applicable at the start opening of the settlement than later.

You can build other production buildings next to this warehouse, since all warehouse magically share the same goods.

But it probably isn't quite as good. Firstly, workers can take ingredients directly from other buildings, saving some warehouse trips. Secondly, dedicated haulers (if you have) work best with a single cluster. The main exception, IMO, is if you find a cluster if ruined buildings you keep.

Originally posted by Olleus:

Originally posted by "Donut☆:

- Build a warehouse near a dangerous glade event before/while working on the event. This prevents your scouts from running back and forth to your main warehouse with the rewards.

If you've got the spare parts to build a warehouse (I don't think you get 100% back on dismantling either).Not to mention the time to build it might offset the gain. I find it more practical to open dangerous glades on the warehouse side (rather than hearth side) of my initial settlement in order to get much the same effect, while also making easier to place a second hearth. This is of course more applicable at the start opening of the settlement than later.

Unless there's a map modifier at work, you'll get 100% back from dismantling every building including warehouse. Also, the gain of a warehouse near an event can be tremendous in case when there's a lot of resources to carry, in or out.

I'd recommend to build a warehouse near a dangerous glade before opening it. In case of a forbidden glade it is a must.

Originally posted by Olleus:

You can build other production buildings next to this warehouse, since all warehouse magically share the same goods.

But it probably isn't quite as good. Firstly, workers can take ingredients directly from other buildings, saving some warehouse trips. Secondly, dedicated haulers (if you have) work best with a single cluster. The main exception, IMO, is if you find a cluster if ruined buildings you keep.

Setting up the production cluster in a way that workers go to other buildings for resources is a very advanced technique. Can't say I mastered it yet :). And if you do it wrong you'll get longer commutes to warehouse because outer buildings of the single cluster are quite far from the storage.

In general I prefer small production clusters near each hearth. The sequence is generally like this:
- I build production buildings near the main warehouse;
- I open glades and find something that requires a hub nearby (fertile soil, ruined buildings, etc);
- I build the hub;
- at this point usually the closest spots around the main warehouse are taken, so I start building around the new warehouse.

You don't have the fill all the worker slots on a glade event.
- If it is not time critical you might put 1 in initially to bring any the materials needed.
- Go to full to do the event (possibly in Storm when you have spare ex-woodcutters)
- Reduce the number after the event is done if the materials are not high priority.

Putting a Warehouse near each farm may be impractical due to shortage of parts, Instead you can add a second farm building to staff during harvesting. The close warehouse only gives a benefit during harvesting.

If you complete a farm during Clearance there is no point is staffing it until Storm. If you complete a farm during Drizzle you may not get enough planted to need a full season's harvesting. Also, during Storm you may get the whole field ploughed and be able to reassign (but be careful it is staffed again at start of Drizzle). If you are building a farm during Storm or Drizzle build the farm first and then the fields - by the time staff arrive the fields should have been started and will build faster than the farm workers can use them.

Originally posted by Olleus:

• Dangerous/Forbidden glades are typically best opened right at the start of Drizzle. This gives the maximum amount of time to solve them before Storm starts: many dangerous events have nasty effects while being worked so doing that during Storm is to be avoided.

Gonna make an alternate suggestion: If I suspect that I'll need time to prepare for a glade's event, I prefer to open it closer to the end of Clearance, otherwise I may be forced to either work on the event during the Storm, or risk running out of time and triggering penalties.
Remember your people will need time to bring all materials to the event site, during which they will follow their normal break routine, which may significantly delay their start. And remember if you're lucky enough to have excess sea marrow, you can sacrifice it to reduce event working time.

If one faction *cough Harpies cough* has low resolve during the storm, don't hesitate to add pipes to a workshop for the sole purpose of giving a few workers a resolve boost; sometimes just pampering 2 or 3 individuals can bring up the average enough to prevent desertions.

Originally posted by IamMokume:

Originally posted by Olleus:

• Dangerous/Forbidden glades are typically best opened right at the start of Drizzle. This gives the maximum amount of time to solve them before Storm starts: many dangerous events have nasty effects while being worked so doing that during Storm is to be avoided.

Gonna make an alternate suggestion: If I suspect that I'll need time to prepare for a glade's event, I prefer to open it closer to the end of Clearance, otherwise I may be forced to either work on the event during the Storm, or risk running out of time and triggering penalties.
Remember your people will need time to bring all materials to the event site, during which they will follow their normal break routine, which may significantly delay their start. And remember if you're lucky enough to have excess sea marrow, you can sacrifice it to reduce event working time.

If one faction *cough Harpies cough* has low resolve during the storm, don't hesitate to add pipes to a workshop for the sole purpose of giving a few workers a resolve boost; sometimes just pampering 2 or 3 individuals can bring up the average enough to prevent desertions.

Reasonable, but it comes with significant drawbacks. Firstly, by opening the glade earlier, you get that increased Hostility earlier. Hostility is a much bigger problem in Storm, so I definitely don't want to increase it during storm unless I have to. Secondly, carrying resources can take a lot of time, but the negative effect that kicks in while working on an event is already in effect during the carrying stage. Those effects are bad enough that I absolutely don't want them active during the storm.

The 8min of Drizzle and Clearance are long enough to solve glade events, including carrying stuff there. It's even long enough to clear a cache or call a trader to get the resources I need if I don't have them already, even with the Prestige modifier (6?) that slows down work on glade events. If you're having trouble doing them in this time, the problem is more likely that you don't have enough roads or warehouses nearby.