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Seasons, especially winter, affect nature a lot and there are jobs, such as the farmer, whose jobs change or even become useless during certain seasons. This is basically as much as I could find in the wiki.

I would like to know which jobs seasons have an effect on, which seasons are the most effective for those professions and if there's a better alternative for those jobs during the weak seasons (swapping farmers to gatherers for the winter, for example)?

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  • Your farmers will automatically operate like "laborers" during the winter months. When my colony was small enough, I would set up a big project each winter, like clear-cutting a forest. There is no need to move Farmers out of their job. They'll help with the project. As things have gotten more developed, I've ceased this practice, as starvation and freezing are a real risk.
    – Lumberjack
    Commented Feb 21, 2014 at 20:39
  • Anyone assigned to a job that doesn't have a task to complete works as a laborer until they are needed again. So say you have your Blacksmith hit your Tool Supply cap and he has nothing to do, if you order some land to be cleared, your Blacksmith will go with your other laborers to clear that land until he is needed again. This is true for all jobs so there isn't much need of swapping around until later. I usually only swap a few in and out of Mines/Quarry, Hunter/Gather/Fisher to moderate collection levels when I need a boost.
    – Prototype958
    Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 0:03

4 Answers 4

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Well like you said, Farmer is 1 of them. They will only do their farming from early spring to early autumn. Besides that, traders only do their job when a merchant is present. I personally keep the farmers on their job at all times. And take the traders off their job once there is no merchant in sight.

Finding the right balance for your farmers/traders in the "off-season" is really dependent on where you need them the most. If you need food, give them a gatherer job. If you need buildings send them off building.

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    Not quite true re: traders - they work when the stockpiles of goods in the trading post does not match the levels you set them at (moving from trading post to storage or vice versa).
    – walrus helmet
    Commented Feb 21, 2014 at 3:10
  • Thats something that I didn't quite found out. Yet I didn't play too much with the trading.
    – EpicLolWut
    Commented Feb 21, 2014 at 3:19
  • Also note that you do not need an assigned trader to trade (only for moving in additional goods if needed).
    – Tim
    Commented Feb 21, 2014 at 9:33
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One aspect not mentioned yet is that during the winter, any citizens which do not have indoor-jobs will visit warm houses for warmth from time to time. This affects the productivity of running-around jobs like hunters, gatherers, herbalists or foresters. It also greatly affects any resource-removal operations which take place far away from your town.

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    So its a very good idea to have at least 1 house in with the hunter/gatherer/forester/herbalist outposts. Even if that house is outside a market's operational area.
    – user71441
    Commented Mar 13, 2014 at 0:59
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Farmers actually need to spend very little time in the crop field:

  • They start planting in the spring, and plant up until the 'Harvest' button becomes click-able.
  • At this point, the field is fully planted, and they 'tend' to the field. This is completely unnecessary, and does not affect the yield of the field - they can be manually assigned to labourers in this period.
  • Once the yield reaches 100%, farmers are then required to start harvesting the crop.
  • Once this is finished, they are free until spring (and automatically work as labourers).

Farmers working in an orchard are free between late autumn and mid spring.

Hunters have a 2 month wait after killing a deer.

Other professions act as labourers when their product has reached your limits, there is no space for their product, or when there are no raw materials.

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I've been noticing people have been swapping people from one job to another, and I heard that would cause the people to lose happiness because switching jobs is undesirable.

also one of my biggest mistake is to not have any laborers, because it is only them who transfers goods from the location it was created to the storage, and vice versa. it is also the reason why you might not get a building started because no one is around to actually move the supplies to the building for the builders to build it. or no one is cutting trees down.

so instead of switching jobs, use them as laborers instead and get other tasks that you would normally wouldnt have the man power to do during those time of year. like cutting more lumber, clearing an area for future development, or just let them move supplies around.

as for what is season dependent, only farms it seems. hunters only hunt if there is wildlife in the area, and each hunter can only hunt so much each season. the only other job that is semi seasonal is woodcutters since firewood is used most in the winter time, and is used less during the other seasons when its warm (though its still needed in the warm seasons for cooking apparently) so you'll notice that they'll meet the quota during the summer, and become inactive (unless your limit is much higher) and then winter time, it'll deplete quite quickly.

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  • Builders are able to remove object and bring ressources for a construction. But, you can ask for laborers to help them by setting a high priority on a specific location. Anyway, Dealing with jobs isn't really a matter as you would better focus on allways having laborers. A city where every body has a job is worser than a city with laborers. Note that people that can't do their jobs because of the season will automaticaly behave as laborers but won't be count as if their where in the monitor
    – TCHdvlp
    Commented Feb 28, 2014 at 15:53

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