Knights and Merchants.net Forum

Hi I was wondering if it wasn't possible to add to a building the status of the citizen working in it,
it could be useful to see when they're getting hungry.
I was thinking of something like this:

Or to show the status when you click on the citizen's icon.

I'd like to know when my towers or bakers will be empty, it could be great to avoid certain trouble because sudently they decided to eat.

What do you think?

i think this is an good idea, so you know when workers will eat instead of only serfs and labourers.

If that would be difficult to do because of the lack of space, what about putting a little hunger bar at the Carpenter's icon (the one near the building icon etc.)

Thats an interesting idea, but how is it going to help you, what can you do seeing if Baker is at 90% or at 7% ?

I'm not sure when it would be useful either. Unfortunately it's not going to fit on our minimum resolution in the way you mocked up, but I think we could put a really small condition bar just below the carpenter icon instead. Here's a really quick mock up:

But still, whats the use of this feature? You can't command citizen to go to eat, you cant make another one take his place when he is about to go to eat? Thats seems just like cluttering UI with interesting, but useless information.

What's the use of seeing when your serfs are going to eat? Knowing when to build/open inn.
I would say in early game to know when there will be citizens hungry all the time so you can provide enough serfs to fill the inn, open your bakers so they start producing bread...
Later in the game when you're a bit sparse on resources and you want to feed your soldiers, to make sure you won't prevent your butcher, baker to produce food because they can't feed themself.
For towers: You can see that your towers will be empty so you send some troops to prevent the enemy from sneaking in there.
Same in a push-situation, you know your recruit will get hungry so you send some xbow to prevent pushing. (To will agree on this, he once almost lost his baracks because of this )
So I have to say it might not be the most useful feature but I can imagine alot of situations where this could have prevent a disaster from happening.

The small condition bar you showed would be good enough, it shows all the information we need.

1. You need to build an Inn in early game at fixed point in time - when your starting serfs/workers get hungry.

2. I don't understand this situation, how do you prevent your butcher from producing the food looking at their conditions? If you are short on food, there's no way you could compensate that in 5min to keep both army and citizens conditions. And if you choose between 1 butcher who is gonna get hungry now and a squad of warriors - how that a practical choice? Next citizen will get hungry in 3min..

3. Towers are meant to have this weakness, also, thety are usually built in groups, so having one recruit away does not harms that much. You need backup troops nearby anyway.

4. What is a push-situation?

Besides, do you plan to inspect all of your houses? What about the fact that all citizens are trained in different times? I don't see any use of this feature, only clutter.

1. Yes 17 min, but then just some units get hungry.
Knowing my goldsmelter will get hungry means a lot of people will get hungry, wich actualy affects your economy.

2. Well if your butcher will get hungry you wait with feeding your troops until he has eaten, so his production won't be slowed down.

3. In open maps you can't place troops on every entrance, this would give you a realy weakness in battle. Knowing wich side to protect when allows you to build less towers.

4. Push is having range in front of your town, who come closer every time they can. When their range can shoot on the roads to the towers your recruits get killed all the time, same with your serds trying to refill the tower. Yes you can close your towers, that will save the serfs but recruits will keep comming. Maybe when you close a building prevent a new citizen to come to it?

And of course I won't inspect all houses, but sometimes you'll need to micro your economy, this can realy help on that.
Maybe it won't have any use to your playstyle, I'm just talking about my experience.

I wouldn't probably use this feature a lot, but I agree it might be useful sometimes. When you don't have enough food you might want to watch your farmers/bakers/butchers/breeders, because if they die your problems will get even bigger. So if you see one of them is about to get hungry and you won't be able to feed him, you can already train a new one in the school. This means you can focus on battle so you don't have to check every building every minute.
Or maybe a message: 'The villager that occupied this house has sadly passed away.'

I don't think this feature is necessary at all, but I'd say it'd be "fun" to have.

1. This is not connected. Knowing your metallurgist will get hungry in 7min does not helps you to fix a problem of missing food. The only sane thing is as TDL said - train a new one in advance, but that is not intended gameplay style.
2. Sorry, can't believe that you will spend 2min inspecting your citizens houses to see if you can afford feeding the troops ))
3. Building one tower is no defence either, and do you mean to inspect your towers every 10min to see how they are doing?
4. Blocking houses from taking citizens is viable, but how on earth is that connected with condition bar? Is the enemy going to watch your single(!) tower till recruit goes away?

@TDL: You contradict yourself "So if you see one of them is about to get hungry and you won't be able to feed him, you can already train a new one in the school. This means you can focus on battle so you don't have to check every building every minute". To see if any of your citizens is hungry you need to scan half of your town I agree on the message "passed away", that would be a good addition to messaging system (ignoring the clutter problem we intend to solve separately)

Once you start producing gold you start spamming citizens.
So when your goldsmelter gets hungry it means you will soon have to feed a spam of citizens.
Who said I would spend 2 mins inspecting houses? Checking backers takes 3 sec.
Inspecting my towers every 10 min is an option indeed, and for a sneak attack some players do wait until the tower comes out.
It also wouldn't be the first time that 70% of your towers get hungry at the same time since you build your towers at the same time.
So I'd say again, for your playstyle it might not be usefull, if you don't want this feature then don't implent it, but you don't have to convince me that it won't be usefull, I know I could realy use it.

I don't think that this is necessary. To a new person (or anyone who doesn't know what it means) it would just be another confusing feature to figure out.
I can see it now: a dozens of messages poping up every time your town gets attacked by the enemy. That would be a great way to add stress to the chaos in an invasion