I know they help ward off attackers but in a peaceful game I don’t worry about attacks. Footmen don’t have any other uses that I know of.
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You are correct. No attacks of any kind in peaceful mode. The only thing I can think of right now that they could be useful for is exploring the map. As of Alpha 14 you cannot add non-footman to parties, so you would need a footman if you wanted to directly send a hearthling somewhere.
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awesome sauce, I have Alpha 13 right now. Another thing. If I just left my game running for a bit of time in small sessions. Not giving them any tasks, would that help with my items not being picked up and moved to stockpiles?
I also saw a post that said that if there are too many workers that could cause them to idle more… do I need to give more jobs? 10 workers, 4 farmers, and 6 specialists. I would figure this would be enough to get everything done and I’m not adding anymore 
Hello Hush, you are correct, if you leave your Hearthlings to themselves while you are away from the computer, they should clean up everything and pack it into stockpiles (provided you assigned the item categories to a stockpile).
6 Specialists sounds like not all professions are chosen, I prefer to have one of each (maybe no herbalist on peaceful mode, as nobody will get hurt - dunno right now if the herbalist has other uses). Other than that, everything should be fine.
The issues isn’t really that there are too many workers, it is that there are too many tasks for your workers to do. Tasks that involve long distances tend to affect performance more. @Albert and @not_owen_wilson can probably give a much more detailed explanation, but essentially what is going on when there are lots of things to do (like a bunch of items to put in stockpiles, some trees to harvest, an area to mine, etc.) is each worker (or professional with the ability to complete the task) is trying to “decide” what to do, but is timing out before it is able to complete the calculations of what to do/how to get there. When you encounter this issue is heavily dependent on how powerful your system is, the more powerful it is, the more Hearthlings and tasks you can have before the issue appears.
Oh I see. Well, right now I don’t have anyone doing anything aside from the farmers and I have good amount of wheat they won’t pick up even though it’s right in town. Then some other silkweed a little ways from town but I’m not really worried about that. I have my farmers clearing the fields to see if a “dry spell” might kickstart something.
I don’t have the footman, trapper, or shepherd. No need for footman… and I was leveling my blacksmith but then this mess started and I haven’t got around to the other two. I also don’t have access to the herbalist. That’s A14 right? I have A13. lol
Anyhoo… I guess if they don’t do it, they don’t do it… might just make another world and try again… hours and hours gone lol
IVE DONE SOMETHING.
I went through all my stockpiles turning each of the options off and on and it did something!
They are picking up the wheat finally!!! 
Edit: Actually… I think, It was just because I made a new stockpile to put some feed in… and I happen to add plant… which is what the wheat is…
Maybe my other 3 stock piles are… bugged or something lol…
kinda stupid question, but you did check to make sure they’re not full, right?]
make sure to click the stockpile so the UI comes up, as sometimes items get put in the same spot so it looks like you have more room then you do.
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As you have many task to be done, and many workers not doing it, you could try to pause your game.
It takes a lot of time and resources for the computer to calculate everything needed, and when you pause the game it will finally be able to focus into it and finish it all. Check the list of hearthlings idle while the game is paused, and see if they start (one by one), very slow, to be assigned some tasks.
Yeah they were not full, but things would not be added to them.
and Bruno, pausing wasn’t helping.
when does alpha 14 come
Alpha 14 is currently out on the Steam Latest Branch, which you can access through game Preferences on Steam. For details on the Latest Branch, and Stonehearth development in general, check out Development – Stonehearth