Download Save: http://www.mediafire.com/download/kycy8wky7ix49qw/Pinewood.zip
This is my latest town I’ve put together using the current unstable build on Steam. My main goal was to stress the pathfinder as much as possible and to create a more realistic scenario that a player would find himself in. I don’t know if the devs test the game in this manner. It seems to me they don’t, based on the bugs I find and how things just don’t work often times.
In a typical game, a player would probably have multiple buildings with various floors, overhangs, lofts, false dormers, and balconies. This causes all sorts of problems with the current pathfinder and it was readily apparent that the pathfinder just simply can’t handle this level of stress without some serious lag. I summarize below.
I started by building the Townhall. This took a lot of tries and reloads before the hearthlings were able to complete it. I got to about the Carpenter’s shop before I realized the system just can’t handle construction of buildings like this. You end up with severe Lua slowdowns to the point the game becomes unplayable, or simply the hearthlings refuse to complete a building. The Inn would have been impossible for the hearthlings to complete.
Additionally, the hearthling’s construction speed is glacially slow. By the time the Inn was completed, I had finished the entire goblin campaign (defeated the goblin boss and the wolf packs). That was just three buildings; Townhall, Carpenter’s Shop, and Inn. Unfortunately I had to revert to various saves since the hearthlings just wouldn’t build the inn’s third story. I used the console command “ib” to finish building construction.
From that point forward I pretty much used ib for all buildings as it was impossible for the hearthlings to do them. Once the building was done, I then had the hearthlings do the staircases and install furnishings.
The village is still a work in progress. Missing are the walls, several more towers, shepard’s house, a few more houses, and a keep which will take a bit longer to make (will use all slabs).
More pictures:
Town Guide
Blacksmith
Fisherman
Main street and food bazaar
Main Gate
Interiors: Note how complex the interiors can get. I’m sure others have more complicated ones, but I wanted to test pathfinding. Note how I built storehouses with various staircases and paths to the storage lots. Hearthlings take a while to “learn” them, but eventually they figure out where they are. All crates in the entire village are just decoration. I found out that crates are still severely bugged and cause all sorts of lua and pathfinder problems. I originally created a network of crates at each shop that contained each shop keeper’s resources. Workers would simply fill the crates based on shop requirement/type. That system worked for a two shops (the carpenter and the weaver) and eventually fell apart as I created additional shops (i.e. carpenter couldn’t find wood, which was in the crate). Do to these bugs and people not finding resources in crates, I made them all decorations by selecting “None” under contents.
Spawned enemies caused severe pathfinder slowdowns. I think this has to do with how the buildings are and the AI trying to find things to steal. Since a great majority of items are inside the buildings, the enemy pathfinder has to work extra hard to find how to get to them. For example, most of my valuables are inside the storehouses on the second or third floor. I notice that when the enemies spawn (undead or golbin mini-camp) the system hangs and lags until it resolves the pathfinding. Soon as this happens (I see the yellow on the status bar), I know that a goblin camp spawned (or undead if at night) and simply send my men-at-arms to dispatch them.
I think that the enemy pathfinder, or “item to steal” AI needs to be improved or changed in order to account for Storehouses, multi-story mills, basements, etcetera.
Regarding Stone Columns (under Stone Walls), would it be possible that you guys include those two colors shown in my pic? The two grey colors included in the Stone Column dialog, do not match the Stone Wall colors. I’d like to be able to color match the column to the stone wall so as to hide the column and make the wall look flush. If you notice all my towers have those dark lines on their edges. I would like to make the towers/fortifications/walls look natural as if the whole thing was stone rather than have different colored edges. I know I can do this by just making all my stone work out of Slabs, but there are some buildings (notice my mill and storehouses) that I would have liked to blend the columns into the stone wall as it would in real life.
). The new pathfinder doesn’t even break a sweat. 
