Hey, folks. I'm loving this game. I have a primary frustration right now: the lack of control over the monastery workers or the distribution algorithm. In a new town, I set up a new monastery for an herb garden. There is nothing else this monastery does, but then I get the advice to trade the herbs, so I create a grange. And now, for a monastery with only one purpose, the herb garden with 12 slots, the monastery divides my 8 months and sends 4 to the grange? Now all 4 are asleep waiting for work in the grange. That makes no sense when there are herbs to grow.
This is incentivizing me to make a separate monastery with 1 nun to work 1 slot in the grange. That doesn't feel good. Either let me control it, like with a "close position" on a workplace, or make the monks go where they are needed rather than spreading them out evenly, please.
#Monastery worker distribution
normal jay
civic pilot
yup yup yup, I want this so bad... from what I understood, the devs wanted to make monastic life’s gameplay different by not allowing you too much control over it, but right now, it’s just not working out, the very example you’re talking about happened to me as well and it just doesn’t make sense
I get that monks and nuns should have a different gameplay, but this just is not it
normal jay
yeah I'd love it if the monastery offered a more hands-off approach, as it's clear the devs wanted. Instead, as it is, it almost takes more management to get even close to sustaining herbs. I guess an alternative would be drastically increasing the output rate, like maybe 3-4x... I'm open to alternatives.
copper echo
wouldn't you still have needed to add a refectory to feed the monks/nuns? and dorms?
the trick to success with a monastery is to just grow it out in a controlled manner, and to be patient, it's one of the best sources in the game for profit.
the monks/nuns are distributed evenly between all available jobs, and you can use the monastic emissary to speed up recruitment every 7 days for some influence
i remember being annoyed in early release when they made the monastery work this way, but once you get used to it, it's a non issue and like I said, such an amazing profit center
normal jay
yeah but in my previous town I had one giant monastery with both monks and nuns, and I had to add about 60 folks just to get a few extras in the herb garden because I had all the sub-buildings. everything was so overstaffed and I could never get the herb garden to sustain (edit*). I don't mean it couldn't keep the grange full, I mean I never had, like, more than 6 herbs.
*edit: because it took adding so many people to the monastery just to get +1 into the herb garden, then all those new ones took more food, which took more herbs, etc. vicious cycle
copper echo
mines at 354
i have about 1k herbs and 1k honey in storage constantly, and sell off extras I don't need, I do harvest grapes for wine, but I think in the future I won't bother making wine
also probably wont bother with vegetables, just seems to make more sense to make even more berries than take up space on another field type
If i had to do my monastery again, I would building stack it more, drop veggies, grapes, and go all in on honey, herbs and berries
spark blaze
Just hire more monks/nuns to fill the slots? This isn't really that big of a deal. I've done the monestary challenge, and I've never had issues with filling slots or wonky balance if you build it out slowly and properly. Treat the monestary like a seperate town within your town, and build it accordingly, while keeping the housing up to match the job slots like you normally do, and you have no real issues.
unreal harness
same issue here- all my nuns/monks assigned themselves to the grange and then had nothing to move due to nobody working the herb garden
I’ve reached a critical mass now where it’s not gamebreaking anymore but it was really bad for the first couple ingame months
they seem to prioritize the grange and the refectory at the cost of actually producing food
copper echo
same issue here- all my nuns/monks assigned themselves to the grange and then ha...
you don't even really need to build a grange right away, start with dorms, refectory, and berry garden, and a place to pray, novices only need berries at first, fill up those positions, then make more berry gardens, expand from there, keeping an eye on your food production/consumption, you can expand however you like as long as you keep them fed. you only need cooks and scribes once you want to upgrade them to brothers/sisters. and once you do go to upgrade them, I would recommend going golden gruel as your main monastic meal wheat + honey is better than the alternatives
civic pilot
you don't even really need to build a grange right away, start with dorms, refec...
Building a monastic grange is part of the first quest regarding monastery, that's why so many new players (including myself) build one right at the beginning. I agree that passed a critical mass of monks/nuns it's not an issue anymore, but it really slows us down at the beginning, when every villager counts
copper echo
I guess it would depend how early you try to build one, it's usually something I do once I've expanded a bit already, because in previous saves I liked to put the monastery in it's own area, giving it tons of space for vineyards and other production, so by that point i can just let every new immigrant join, and spam the monastic emissary for an extra 5 monastics every 7 days
civic pilot
Regardless of when players start building monastery, I still feel like something is off with this mechanic. I think something better can come out of it
copper echo
Regardless of when players start building monastery, I still feel like something...
I wholeheartedly disagree with that, but we'll see what the dev's decide!
maybe they'll surprise me and change it in a way I really enjoy, but I am satisfied with the current state