Highest number of people in a village? Optimal number?

futurebird · 2019-04-12 11:50:44

I tend to think what kind of players you get to work with is a bit more important than shear numbers. It's tempting to separate players by experience and knowledge, but that isn't AS important as those players having a sincere desire to keep the family and town alive. People focused on sabotage or who just don't care what happens to them or the town are the real danger not new players. People who are more focused on trying something out than the meta game are going to hurt any settlement. So, one answer to the "optimal" question is "Any number as long as they are focused on making the town better and keeping our family alive"

I'm curious, though, what are the highest numbers you have seen (those who use the mod) in one family? The town that I wrote about recently where my daughters brought back loot with me from an abandon village had 15 fertile women at one point. I think the gender ratio was off (more women than men) but that still implies a population of around 30+ people since not all women are fertile and a lot of people in that town were living to old age.

What are the largest numbers you have seen?

Since we only have around 100 people playing at a time there is a kind of hard upper limit. I really hope that the size of the player base can increase and it might be worth talking about how that could happen in another thread some time.

NYC is 8 million people. And it feels totally different than a city of 1 million or 10k. I would like to see cities of 100s of people in the game, though I don't think we have enough of a tech tree for that to happen yet. You only really need 4 people to make a town run: farmer/baker, smith/woodsmith/woodmen, tailor/nurse/first aid, explorer/resource fetcher. That last one is optional. These task split up so the baker isn't farming soon, and soon the farmer is only working with one crop, and then you have some one who is just concerned with water and cisterns and another person focused on compost ... but beyond that point there isn't enough tech to split job much more than:

Stew Farmer
Water management
Compost
Sheep management
Baker
Berry management
Tool smith
Rubber Maker
Horse collector
Iron gatherer
Branch and Kindling supplier
Woodsmen (chopping and collecting but logs and firewood)
Trapper
Tailor
Chef (cooking specialty foods)
Burrito Barron
Tech smith
Builder
Rock gatherer
Wood smith (making carts, buckets boxes)
Nurse
Baby teacher (assistant to the nurse who gives babies tours)
Wheat, milkweed and carrot farmer
Supply runner
Bone and junk removal

So around 23 jobs, call it 25 since some of these could use more than one person. On the surface one looming problem might seem to be that everyone tends to want to be the smith, builder or the baker and no one wants to be the branch and kindling supplier or the ... rock gatherer. The thing is this isn't true. I have had really enjoy able lives doing more support related jobs and I see others doing this too and seeking it. That's part of why some players ask "Job?" a question that is hard to answer. Doing a support job becomes unrewarding if others are not playing their parts too. So, I could spend a life bringing flour to the bakery but if no one is baking or if there is no water in the bakery because no one is managing water or if there is no knife so you can't make bread or if there are no plates etc. there is a bottle neck and my job isn't important anymore.

So, realistically you have to do multiple jobs in a life, moving to whatever seems most in need of help, but this destroys dependability. So I stop getting wheat and fix the water issue, now that the bakery has water. Pies start getting made, but now they run out of wheat because I stopped doing the original job.

I think one key to keeping specialization is SURPLUS if there were a way to store tons of materials where they are needed jobs could persist in a more specialized way over generations. A big city like my home doesn't fall apart and have no food if someone forgets to pick the carrots. If something goes wrong there are massive stacks of whatever is needed and it takes some time for the error to propagate.

A real bakery can probably keep working for at lest a few days if not weeks without deliveries of supplies. Storage and surplus are key to making specialized jobs like "glass maker" exist. And I think it's important for increasing the max stable population of a settlement.

So in addition to increasing complexity we need storage options that make large surpluses possible, we are able to produce surplus materials in the game without much difficulty. (for example poo) but rather than supporting greater specialization since there is no way to store the resource it just becomes a hinderance to development.

pein · 2019-04-12 16:45:44

clayton family s2, population 132
you got a lifelog data to show how many people were there at your time of birth
awbz mod was around 25-27, and considering that more people are born male, similar or lower number old female
i kinda believe it was 132, it's very hard to believe, but yeah, it was fully packed

there was nothing you could do, the smithy was at the right spot, south with a snow bank, north, on top of the grassland
a rather small berry field which grow bigger, i tried to clean up, take out pork meat for example, it just got back to the camp
the reason why the claytons were so many might be because it could sustain enough people at once if the work was done, but it were huge drops in pop each time the berry gone for 8 min

was after the steam release, i was playing marathon on s2, and lot of people joined, then the other server was taken off

the other was a life where i was born into a berry field which was 2 tile away from the kiln,

i think this one
was a huge swamp to right, and south diagonally
in that life i found like 30 baskets around camp
girls pumping out kids left andright but they died the same way, they had some iron but the babies didn't let you smith there, i made axe somehow, then a 7x7 adobe waleld sheep pen, yeah double adobe, all the reed stumps i dug out, it was like 50 min constant chaos until finally we were down to 2-3 females
ginger update was the same crazy

back in the old days, was a city which had 3 biomes in the ice, full of bones (after the bones decay update. but still long ago)

specialization would require communication
now there arent too many static jobs
so generic jobs like baker, smith and hunter are commonly taken up by new players, but it's not like you need a smith without iron, or a hunter who loses a bow somewhere, or a bkaer who makes the final step of the pies but doesn't gather up the wheat
most annoying are road makers, people who actually bring back bones to dig in middle of camp and roleplay doctors who make pads constantly but don't feed any sheep, and wait for someone to get injured so they can heal them, generally the first person is stabbed is the griefer who has big mouth low skill, and gets saved, or a chain stabbing and all the pads gets used on random people

while things like compost making, milkweed farming, firewood gathering, kindling gathering (hatchet in pack and kindling in basket, cart/horse cart, generally yew branches are quite optimal like this)
lot of people don't even know how the newcommen works but even if they do they don't do charcoal

also people tend to build ovens in random locations, then before you could say anything they put down floors and put walls around it

i would say 12-15 people with one pen, oven and smithy is ok
this is controllable, the elders die and the young people get clothes
the noobs can be taught and 3-4 good players can keep it clean

sure it can be more but then you get space issues and chaos
the general number when problems start is 7 females and 7 girl kids or similar
cause they all grow up and pump out babies, the little locusts eat down the berry field
a pro player can pick down like 20 bushes, make compost, plant new plants, make hats, baskets, bread, sheep skins
worse case scenario everyone eats berry so you need to pick down bushes into bowls, soil, water
even this way you can only sustain 1 person per 4 bushes per 3 minutes, if it's a naked who doesn't know or care about food producing
now one composter can make one compost per 10 min and plant back the wheat and carrot
if the carrot doesn't get eaten, then with each compost pile 15 bushes can be fixed

the numbers for wheat and mutton pie are uch better and eating pie as a kid is better than eating berry
don't get the wrong impression, more bushes together just makes composting worse and relying on berry will kill someone
that 4 bush per person per 10 min is true, medium skill people will get confused, misclick, get unlucky, the average age of people will be lower when the poulation is high cause each kid that dies a few minutes after grows hair, will consume, ask questions and their total life minutes add up on "fuel cost"

best thing is to make an outpost, just a berry field with a basket a bowl, a skewer and a flint
bring soil there, plant bushes and take out some people to live there and check upon them later

breezeknight · 2019-04-12 17:51:52

some comments :

futurebird wrote:

Stew Farmer
Water management ? [strenous with newcomen pump, kerosine could be already too wide to handle alone]
Compost [Maker]
Sheep management ? [too boring to do alone]
[Pie] Baker [hard since others barge in]
Berry management ? [is like herding a sack of fleas]
Tool smith
Rubber Maker
Horse collector [temporary]
Iron gatherer
Branch and Kindling supplier
Woodsmen (chopping and collecting but logs and firewood)
Trapper
Tailor [defined too narrow]
Chef (cooking specialty foods) [too wide, has to be broken down]
Burrito Barron [Tacos as well]
Tech smith [can be thrown together with tool smith]
Builder [nope, needs town planner]
Rock gatherer
Wood smith (making carts, buckets, boxes)
Nurse [not enough to do]
Baby teacher (assistant to the nurse who gives babies tours)
Wheat, milkweed and carrot farmer [wheat farmer goes together with compost maker]
Supply runner [?]
Bone and junk removal [probably a boring job, even if it's expanded to undertaker]

additional jobs :
Fisherman
Potterer
Milkman
...

also
every of the workplaces would need an actual place with enough space to work properly
we have atm extreme mismanagement, it's really like Babel i imagine
& space problems, missing tools, missing skill are the things that had to be improved

i will make an own Jobs thread

pein wrote:

...
specialization would require communication

yeah, that's why i suggested a craftable info board
that would be communication not in a direct manner with speech
but i still think it would be used because some sort of management of settlements is needed

...
also people tend to build ovens in random locations, then before you could say anything they put down floors and put walls around it

yep
see that everywhere
not enough space to handle all the future load but already putting boards around no matter what
same goes with kiln & newcomen pump, which is not even destructible & stands often somewhere middle in the way of something

i've been now to some towns, where i just suicided cause improvement was impossible anymore, people have made houses with stone walls, completely dysfunctional, small, narrow, next to fast roads, meandering roads between doors, have even built those dysfunctional things further as i was there

i am trying at least to do some minor improvements like putting a stone foor on crossroads, on tile with door
but some towns are just to run away from
if people additionally are there obnoxious or rude, then i sure just quit

Bob 101 · 2019-04-13 03:03:23

For optimal it depends on the type of people. Most towns have only a small core of people actually keeping the place afloat.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-04-12 11:50:44

Highest number of people in a village? Optimal number?

#2 2019-04-12 16:45:44

Re: Highest number of people in a village? Optimal number?

#3 2019-04-12 17:51:52

Re: Highest number of people in a village? Optimal number?

#4 2019-04-13 03:03:23

Re: Highest number of people in a village? Optimal number?

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