Tips for Coal Mining
Coal production is crucial, especially in the early game when winter can tank your town’s happiness and m
ake it difficult to recruit new residents. Even later on, coal is needed not just for heating but also for iron production.
Happiness Goals
- Aim to keep happiness above 90% for 140% maximum effectiveness on Cruel difficulty.
- Letting it drop for part of the year may still work, but high happiness is ideal.
Coal Burner Ratios
- Have around 1 coal burner for every 30-40 residents.
- The ratio depends on how efficient your log to coal production chain is.
Production Setup
- Separate plank and coal production areas to avoid resource competition.
- Each lumberyard can efficiently supply 2 coal burners.
For 300 residents, have a coal area with:
- 4 lumberyards adjacent to 8-10 coal burners.
- 2 log stockpiles between lumberyards and burners.
For planks, have an area with:
- 3-4 lumberyards next to 3 sawmills.
- 1 log stockpile between yards and mills.
By setting up separate, optimized production chains for coal and planks, you can ramp up expansion efficiently while keeping your town warm and productive through the winters.
Tips for Increasing Happiness
Patrizia gave good tips. To help understand what’s happening a bit better, Fablings happiness calculation according to some others looks like based 60 +/- desirability variables from the environment. If they’re all at 60 average, it means their environment is a mix of desirability buffs and debuffs that are averaging out to zero.
Some houses are probably in noisy/smelly worksite areas like pigstys or sawmills which lower desirability (the red circle of doom), while maybe also being under the effect of an inn which would make the total desirability added roughly zero still. Moving worksites and service buildings around to move the green/red circles to appropriate areas will help a lot.
Another super easy thing that contributes to happiness is yard objects for hovels. The first 3 yard objects in the list give +3 desirability to the home each up to +6. Personally I like to use 1 desire object like a doghouse and 1 food object like an apple tree per yard so they get a bit of happiness and a bit of food, but if you need more of one or the other you can stack your yards up to compensate.
Additional Note: Make sure that there’s nobody starving, and that their houses aren’t build in a “red zone”, meaning they are not close to stone quarries, or lumber mills, or the buildings that produce coal (basically things that are loud, or make air pollution). Build Bakeries, Inns and Theaters in the Neighborhood. Commoners don’t like to live nearby peasents.
