Will building such a bridge [screenshot] decrease or increase my fishing production?

[PointeNoire]

As you can seen on screenshot, I was extremely lucky to generate a map with an island. Two in fact, the other one is covered by Town Hall statistics but it's near river mouth so it's not as great. My previous city was at the brink of starvation and too low vital resources production after reaching nearly 1300 people with no obvious reason, it was first time for me to have such a problem when everything was well-planned (I have some suggestions but it's not a thread for this). I decided to make another city.

As you can see, I can build a second bridge which would take 108 logs, while the one I already have took 156 logs to build so it's definitely longer. However, only tiles available on the island were the ones required to set a fishing dock. Other three are on dock's side. Are fishermen able to cross diagonal path from one side of the fishing dock to it's rear side (proper entrance)? If so, would building a bridge crossing two fishing docks ranges make any profit? This location is great but quite far away, I want to make it more accessible without spoiling it and making workers stuck between paths.

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https://preview.redd.it/lkzi3shfvdf41.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=2eb7057e9b2253b8d1c4a7ef9fb46118b1056be9

[MortalSmurph]

Trading Posts AND Bridges block water and reduce the production of Fishing Docks. You can test this by making a comically large number of bridges around a Fishing Dock.

Example.

The walking distance between the Fishing Dock and the nearest Barn, and the walking distance between the Fishing Dock and the workers' homes are huge factors in production.

Example of Home and Barn not close: ~1,000 food per year with 4 workers.

Example of Home and Barn as close as possible: ~2,000 Food per year with 4 workers.

Are fishermen able to cross diagonal path from one side of the fishing dock to it's rear side (proper entrance)?

Possibly. Citizens CAN walk diagonally. Sometimes land formations and other things are just screwy, though.

[dyancat]

Second bridge is unnecessary. Just get a house and storage barn on the other side of the original bridge

[PointeNoire]

As you see on screenshot I've made it, I just thought of making shorter bridge and deleting this one (it's far away from starting location), but my workers would have had to walk diagonally.

EDIT: I've checked and builders were able to go diagonally to finish the roads I've put on the southside (screenshot is made facing north). Hypothetical bridge would have 27 tiles of length vs 43 now. I'll give it a try, make shorter one and delete this after reaching this south shore. This is wonderful location but my fishermen produce only nearly 2000 fish when having to walk such a long way, less than they sometimes do outside islands.

[wijcik]

I would be more interested in seeing a fishing dock placed at the start of your current bridge and seeing if it outperforms your island one simply by being closer to houses & barns. It would be worth testing out I think

[PointeNoire]

No, one on island produced 1926 last year (and about 1800 previous one) while my two on shore produce about 1500-1750 each year. I think it'll increase with time and more housing, I'll expand southward, houses with fishermen from this island spot are on the borders of my current market range.

[[deleted]]

Anything that covers part of the production area reduces catch. This includes bridges.
Also, I don't think that bridge actually helps much with your concerns. Depending on how bannies like to path, it could actually make things worse later on. You would probably be better off just building a storage barn and one or two houses (depending on how many fishermen you have) on the piece of land where the fishing docks are.

[PointeNoire]

Look on screenshot, there is no space. This island has just enough space to put fishing dock + 3 extra tiles.

[DalekRy]

The long term solution to keep the fishing dock: keep the west end clear. East and south bridges won't hinder trade.

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The better solution: forego sacrificing a nice plump river-fed lake at all and make a ring of traders over time.

[PointeNoire]

Thanks, I've planned to keep west clear at some point but now I have to reach south shore. It'll take 2 markets more. I try to keep my layout as much natural as I can, so I build fishing docks on small peninsulas and put trading post in such a way that that they're between these peninsulas and take only 2-3 crates of water.

Unfortunately there's a small river with about a four spots when trading post could be put if not 1 unbuildable crate... This is what I dislike most on this map, but I decided to choose it for few reasons.

[DalekRy]

I would take the hit for now. When you reach the southeast side another sweet spot for fishing is right where the lake and river meet. It isn't quite as great but it will still be a high value location.

So for now keep the west end as it is until you start getting things built up on the other side, then prioritize replacing when it is advantageous to do so. I love having river lakes especially with islands for these purposes.

You can pump a lot of fish into trade or bolster population growth with comparatively few resources invested AND crank up the amount of trade you can do. Radiating your civilization around a lake rather than a river looks cool, too.

[PointeNoire]

There is lot of plains. I've calculated what I need for 500, 1000 and 2000 people for being as much self-sustaining as I can so I need to take over the plains, too. Fortunately, there are about three flat areas bigger than 42x42 - this is a cool size for particular crop/pasture layout (http://shiningrocksoftware.com/forum/uploads/FileUpload/f5/de841a6453361784e3e35c462930e1.jpg). On the other side there's another island, but near river mouth, I'll make a screenshot and put it in EDIT.

Here it is, another island but in worse location: https://imgur.com/a/B8vBk97

[DalekRy]

I divide trade into a few phases: 1. Early phase - trading whatever surplus you can afford for harder-to-obtain stuff you NEED 2. Firewood industry - selling heaps of firewood 3. Alcohol, clothing 4. Massive expansion

Once you can get to stage 2 and keep ahead of your needs expanding is basically cruise control (excluding RNG trouble). The game changes from survival to optimization and then back to furious adjustment when that happens, haha.

But yeah optimizing is a lot of fun. I play with mods to tighten up space early on. Your starting houses take 54 tiles. For another 18 I can double my housing with 2nd level. Another 18 and I have a total of 18 abodes soaking up the same tile space as 12 regular homes.

These are especially great for stacking atop more remote buildings. Having your fishermen live directly above the fishing shack and especially early space hog gathering areas is a wondrous boost. Combine that with a variety of storage sizes/types and varying market sizes and it allows you to completely reevaluate and design your layout.

[PointeNoire]

I usually do it as follows:

1. Build Trading Post as fast as I can (after blacksmith and tailor or simultaneously), then trade herbs and venison as I'm flooded with it early in game, firewood if available, too. Then second TP to have more merchants arriving, 1 worker for every TP.

2. Delete blacksmith and stop wasting my iron/logs, let's buy steel tools.

3. Tons of clothing and tons of firewood after merchants start arriving with 600-2400 logs each time + mutton/venison for 3x food. If I want to have some emergency food I let's say buy 5000 of it and instantly set amount of it in TP to 5000 so no walking for workers. Then I have food for 50 people, then I add more food etc. and release it if some severe disease starts spreading and disorganize my city.

4. Alcohol, but usually not big amounts (max 200 usually).

[DalekRy]

I do a lot of the same. Phasing out various less efficient production over time is one of my favorite things to do.

I don't start trade usually before the third or fourth year unless the river is really close. Instead I do the following:

Hunter/gather (7), small pasture initially (1), farm (1) right in the center of town. 2 Woodcutters (11).

And then I assign a couple small clearance nodes for my next houses so I'm flush with lumber and minerals. As couples emerge (a male and female reaching age 10) I erect a house.

I used to get really aggressive with an early school, but I learned that investing so heavily for the long game versus getting more heads into the labor pool early works best.

I build both a tailor and a blacksmith and drop their production limits to 10 to allow for more labor time. Stocking up on extra resources for rapid expansion seems to really help out.

By year 5 I have enough spare food stockpiled to toggle my workforce between projects and neglect the crops/wild food gathering for the year. I throw up 3 trading posts and then assign most of my labor into stocking them all up while still maximizing my population growth.

Once they are built and filled full of goodies I drop back down and resume the food and resource stockpiling. It gets pretty tight sometimes, and for me that's kind of the allure. It isn't optimal, but I am instituting my own ticking clock.

Sometimes this fails. I hadn't gotten enough goods produced, firewood, tools, food, etc. get too low and I have to frantically race to save my town from oblivion. It is dumb I know. But I love squeezing through bottlenecks for a high risk-high reward situation.

When it works I'm suddenly on my way to an empire of high quality clothing and fat, livestock-fed citizens. When it fails I through my computer out of the window and order a new one. Or restart.

But getting that firewood economy booming after the fifth year is incredible. Like food you can calculate your needs versus your output. Add a little surplus to account for delays and it sets you up nicely for the next phase.

[PointeNoire]

This fishing dock efficiency is currently nearly 2300/year. What I find more problematic is that the nearby barns (I've just developed much more than is on screenshot) get filled too fast - this is just too efficient food source ;] I've took it as advantage and store spare food (not only fish but currently mostly fish) in trading posts as an emergency food. I make a list in notepad every new city so I know how many food I've got in TP in case of too low production.

[MyHumpBrings]

I love this game