Looking through the forums, and on youtube, etc. I've noticed there is a lot of misunderstanding of how the AI works, functions, and a lot of this is causing bug reports, that I honestly don't think are actually bugs, but the AI working as intended.

I've since made 3 towns following my rule sets I've discovered for the AI, and found virtually all the bugs are non existent for me since then, minus a few (such as bought animals getting stuck on the border of the map).

I made this guide to help players understand how the AI functions, and how to better prioritize how they build their towns.

The AI will follow this logic from my experiences.

1) It will first care about its immediate house/living. Getting stuff it needs to fulfill its needs, and food, etc. (This includes if you have vegetable gardens, chickens, etc.)

2) It will then care about the assigned job it was given, and prioritize both internal, and external (player assigned) priority settings.

3) If assigned job is full, or cannot be done for any reason, it will attempt to fix that problem, by either assigning itself to an ox cart, to pull resources, or a log, or go get the resources required.

4) If something more vital to the town is necessary, or problematic, it may assign itself to that, to alleviate that choke point, or issue. (This is why sometimes when you try to un assign families to build, they auto assign themselves somewhere else.)

5) It will do all of the above, prioritizing what is closest to its home. (This is very important, especially for farms)

Note: I'm not saying the AI logic is perfect, some tweaking still needs to be done in my opinion, but ultimately this is how it functions from my tests.

A lot of bug reports I've seen, and experienced myself, after figuring out the above logic. I've realized are not really bugs. I've not once had any issues with farms since building my towns with the above in mind.

The reason why peoples villagers either
A) Don't work the fields entirely,
B) Don't Thresh
or C) Don't fully harvest is the above priorities I mentioned, but people report it as a bug, when it's not.


The reason why they aren't fully doing the job is because farming takes quite a long time to do already, and if they have to commute, or there are not enough family members, they may not get to the field in time, or have enough time to fully seed it, resulting in less goods harvested. Remember the above rulesets.

Initial Farming start/sowing

They will care about their initial home first, so that's 1 person going to the market at the start of the year, 1 person going to the veggie patch in the back to plant and harvest it later. For initial families before they grow to 4, that's already zero people in the field potentially, unless those needs are already met before the cycle started.

The farther away this is from the farm, the longer they have to travel after doing that to the farm to finally start doing fieldwork. This can result in them not having enough time to actually sow the field entirely.

Harvesting

Now its time to harvest, and they again, prioritize the above rulesets (market and needs should be mostly fullfilled at this point anyway so shouldn't get in the way). However....

They care about the towns needs, and what is closest to their home as well, and if a choke point in resources, or something else is in high demand, they may prioritize that over the fields in extreme cases.

This is where things tend to break down, as during the growing period, the farmers are not doing much, or worse, assign themselves to something else. Resulting in them being delayed to go farm, since their houses are close to multiple other things such as sawmills, granary, etc, and if those are in high demand or need, they may assign themselves, to those instead, or help deal with that situation.

Or if the player is not paying attention and just auto assigning families to work places, it may have pulled a farm family off the farm, since their house is close to the sawmill for instance.

Threshing

Another big bug report I see. Threshing is "normal" priority, meaning everything in the above ruleset that's hard baked into the AI logic will override it.

You've already got the grain, meaning you have food, and the AI see's it as that. So if you have enough berries to get throught he winter, or meat, etc. It will begin cycling through the above rule sets again. It will try to deal with its immediate house, needs, and any choke point issues the town has of other jobs in its houses vicinity.

Even if your farm is in the middle of the town, this doesn't fix the issue, as you have food(Grain), but you may have other hard issues in town, like a full granary full of berries, that requires marketplaces and people selling it, etc. It will prioritize that over threshing.

This is why Threshing has a manual setting for priority like building does. To override this initial ruleset if required.

However, if the AI have to commute a very long way, or the town is in a very bad way for something else, they may still ignore that priority for an extended period of time unless food is absolutely essential.

How to Fix the Farming issue

I've done this multiple times now, and its never failed so far.

1) Simply build your farm slightly away from the main town. (doesn't have to be far. Just a little bit away. For Measurement it can be as short as 2-3 in-game house lengths away. It doesn't require much distance.)

2) Build as many houses as you want families working the fields right next to the fields, and next to the Farm House(Barn building they use to thresh). So they are all immediately next to each other in some way.

3) Manually assign those families to the farm.

This ensures that the closest job to their houses is the farm. Meaning that internal ruleset will ALWAYS prioritize their immediate needs, and the farm above all else. This includes threshing. I've never had to set my threshing higher than normal, and they've always threshed immediately after harvesting and transported it to the granary or mill for processing.

4) Ensure you don't build other jobs nearby those families, so the farm always stays the closest job, and the one they stay assigned too.

Many people who play this game, are probably assuming it works like other city builders, or town builders, where markets and buildings have an "aura" like situation.

From my experiences, this is the not the case. I have had Markets supply buildings on the other side of a province before. (Each individual section of the map I'm considering a province for the sake of this guide).

There are 2 important things to keep in mind.

1) Markets are a "first come first serve" basis. Meaning houses closest to it, will get supplied first.

2) A family member has to spend time traveling that distance at some point that year to get the family needs met.

This means, that so long as you have enough goods in that market and province to supply all the houses in that province, you can do that, no matter the distance. However, you have to take into account that at least 1 person has to travel that distance to the market for the family.

I have had a family of clay miners on the other side of the province mining, and they were getting supplied by my market all the way on the other edge of the province, because I had enough resources to supply all families in that province.

So when deciding where markets, and houses go. You don't have to worry about distance too much, unless you plan to build those houses past tier 2, as 1 family member cannot transport enough goods for tier 2+ houses and all of their required needs, that will require more than 1 trip, and you'll be drastically cutting into your efficiency at that point.