Hello everybody.
So this will be my first suggestion and certainly not the last one.
If i tell you Daily update i’m pretty sure you’ll hear it sound in your head.
Indeed, this suggestion concerns the way Hearthlings join your settlement - or should i say your city?
So, what?
As the days go by, you’ve certainly waited for someone to show up on the road.
It’s not easy to attract people and most of the time the road remains empty.
What i suggest here is to change the way this daily update shows up, by making it trigger less often.
Well in this case it wouldn’t be a daily update but some kind of migratory update.
It could happen one day or another, with an hidden timer that could be a bit random (every 3-6 days for example).
This wouldn’t change much the population growth of your city since it’s rare to have a newcomer twice in a row.
But, why?
This migratory system could open doors on a new mechanic: choosing who will join you!
Yes, a bit like when you roll new citizen by starting a new game but without rolling dices.
I’ve made a little photo-montage to illustrate how i see this:
I’ve got pretty nice rolls when i made this but this wouldn’t be always the case, for sure!
Now this could give you some choices depending on your needs:
Do you want to recruit someone with a great mind because your town’s looking for a new blacksmith? “Let’s see what we’ve got!”
Furthermore, this could be a big struggle! Imagine yourself looking for a well minded Hearthling but someone with 6 body and 6 spirit shows up. “Well, screw it, i can’t let it go!”
This would also be impacted on whether you have enabled or not the random stats option.
Sure, but how much?
The number of people showing up in this migratory update would also depend of the quantity of food and net worth you have.
For any surplus of supplies, the number of people claiming to join you will increase slightly.
I am not sure about the balances, but that could be based on 2 people (having a choice, even cheap sounds important to me) +1 every 20% of extra supplies (20% more food + 20% more net worth), up to 7 people.
From now, we have many different possible scenarios:
- You don’t fit the basic requirements: the road remains empty.
- You fit the requirements without any surplus: 2 people will show up and you choose one.
- You fit the requirements with 20% extra: 3 people will show up and you choose one.
- You fit the requirements with 40% extra: 4 people will show up and you choose one.
- You fit the requirements with 60% extra: 5 people will show up and you choose one.
- You fit the requirements with 80% extra: 6 people will show up and you choose one.
- You fit the requirements with 100% extra: 7 people will show up and you choose one.
- You fit the requirements with 100%+ extra: 7 people will show up and you choose one.
In the example above, we’ve got 3 people requesting, that’d mean we reached the requirements with a 20% extra.
Okay but isn’t it discriminatory?
For sure, having a choice wouldn’t give any chance to the poor Hearthlings with mediocre stats.
That’s why, every time someone shows up in this migratory panel would increase slightly his chances to appear again later.
This way, if you refuse middling Hearthlings too often, you’d someday find yourself with only these middling people showing up. At the contrary, if you refused someone with really good stats because you only needed one particular thing, it is probable that this person will come back later.
I am aware that this is not perfect and could be problematic somehow, but i am sure we can find the right solution out of it.
But there is a problem…
Effectively, there is an in-game option that can limit the number of Hearthlings you have.
You could just set this number to 20, make your people living in wealth by stacking a lot of supplies, then increase this limit and see yourself overflowed of amazing people to only choose the bests among them.
And the only answer i got for this would be to set this option only when you start your game.
Well, that’s it.
Let me know what you think and how we could possibly improve this system. 
Until then, enjoy!