if you mine a block staircase out of the side of a wall the AI seem to ignore your mining orders when they can’t reach the blocks, and will not continue to mine unless you re-select the area you want to mine one small step at a time
this leads to a lot of problems having your hearthlings stuck on the sides of cliffs starving to death and not mining like you told them to
this isn’t really related to dev 3010 as this has always been an issue for as long as I can remember
http://i.imgur.com/jJsrnZv.png
as you can see they begin to mine the bottom, then go up and mine the top and then quit mining altogether
sometimes they might finish it a day or two later but usually never and you simply have to re-assign the mining zones one row of horizontal blocks at a time, until you reach the bottom of the steps
also they like to leave a single block un-mined for some reason, I find this all the time
This problem has been a nuisance for pretty much the entire testing. In my case, the soon to be stairs have sat unmined for almost 9 days. As you can see, my hearthlings have no trouble walking passed or even on this spot. They just refuse to mine it.
I am not alone!
Ive never had this problem, but i order them one layer at a time. Once they mined the first layer,only then will i order the next. Maybe its not the most time efficient way. But until fixed, they will mine it out.
thats exactly the problem.
this shouldn’t need micro management
It is a Hard Word. you start at top one line after another and it is done in 2 minutes. Micro Management it is. I’m agree that mining is still far from perfect but i think they have a lot more important things to do to reduce the micro management. Morever the major problem with mining from what ive observe is the fact that some mining orders seems to enter in conflict when they shouldn’t do. Exemple you ask them to mine 3 line of block and they get stuck when they mine the middle one for last. they can’t mine because the middle block is still here. well mine it i ask you to do it anyway but they can’t because their an error in the mining zone you created. For now the only solution is to remove the mining zone and mine the block that create the conflict alone. It is the same issue with building and i saw a lot of improvements in that matter with the latest dev release. Be patient im sure the time when hearthling can live their lives without you holding their hand is near.
haha 
for me this is a pretty big problem though, as its the best way to move items from different height levels of the map and I do it every single game I play
the AI is doing much better tho, I agree
I can understand i do multiple level cities every single game i play too and mining vertically can be quiet chalenging but im having a lot more brain lags with my customized buildings especially when you can manage to never mine vertically and still arrived at the wished result. What is frustrating for me is when my buildings get stucked because i missanticipate the scaffolding placement. That is more than micro management to me.
Still having a lot of fun with this game even in the current state possibilities seems endless and i hope the community will follow.
to me they are both AI problems, so maybe working on one will help solve the other 
Thanks guys! I’ve written some code to improve this behavior that will be part of the next patch.
I have been having the same trouble with mining ramps. Glad I am not alone. Maybe there could be a excavate ramp command added (like if you hold ctrl when designating a mining zone or something).
Does anyone have a good method for mining vertically? Placing ladders against the wall under the spot in question does not seem to work.
this is actually a bigger problem than I originally thought
so this time I dig from above and mark out an entire section to mine, the hearthings on top mine down mostly fine, until all of them leave one guy doing the work, then he falls off mining a block underneath himself and the ones at the bottom only mine out 3 blocks within that horizontal strip and nothing else, they refuse. now the mining has stopped.
again they love to leave a single solitary block untouched wherever they go
