The Wandering Village: Managing Happiness and Challenges

by Fernando Diaz / Articles, Misc. Guides / 08 May 2023

The Nyomans

The Nyomans are a group of people that used to reside in a peaceful, well protected valley. They had to leave their village many years ago because of a strong wind that carried in a flurry of toxic spores. Since then, they have been wandering the land as nomads, resting where they could. Now, the young ones don’t remember what their home was like anymore. Their ultimate goal is to find a new place to settle down. In a fateful encounter they meet Onbu.

Happiness

As the new village leader, it is important to keep your villagers happy. Happiness is displayed in the leftmost of the three widgets in the center of the top bar. Select the button next to it or the widget itself while in the ‘Village’ view to see more details about happiness.

Happiness: This is the main happiness stat that is displayed in the happiness widget. Happiness can be raised by solving villagers’ problems and providing them with comforts. It can also be affected by other factors such as certain events or buildings.

New hope: At the start of a new game, your villagers are enthusiastic about having found a new place to live on Onbu. This gives them a significant happiness bonus which gradually declines.

Needs: Once their new hope has worn off, your villagers will get used to life on Onbu and slowly develop increased needs. The current need level is displayed alongside happiness in the widget. It will not increase beyond a certain value, depending on the selected difficulty level.

Revolt: If happiness falls under the need level, your villagers will start to revolt. A red circle in the widget will start to fill up. Raise their happiness above the need level to stop the revolt. If the circle is fully filled, a portion of your villagers will leave Onbu.

Productivity: If happiness is higher than a productivity threshold, your villagers will gain a corresponding productivity boost. These productivity thresholds will also increase with the need level.

Problems

Problems arise when your villagers’ basic necessities aren’t fulfilled.

Hunger: Hunger needs to be satisfied with food. If your villagers can’t find any food, they will first become hungry, then starving and finally starve to death.

Poison: If your villagers are exposed to poison, they will get poisoned, then badly poisoned and ultimately die if not treated. A Village Doctor and herbs are required to cure them.

Homelessness: Housing can be provided by buildings such as Tents.

The severity of these problems will increase with the villagers’ needs. If not addressed, they can significantly lower happiness.

Individual villagers will occasionally indicate their problems with speech bubbles. Select a worker to get more in-depth information about this worker’s problems.

Comforts

There is a variety of comforts you can provide to your villagers in order to increase their happiness.

Housing Quality: Can be provided with higher quality housing such as Huts and Cottages.

Food Quality: Can be provided by producing a larger amount of more refined food.

Food Variety: Can be provided by producing more different kinds of food.

Decoration: Can be provided by placing decorations in the vicinity of housing. Higher quality housing can have higher decoration values.

Fernando Diaz

Fernando is doing what he always did, sharing his honest opinions about games whenever he can. The difference is now he is writing and not talking about it.
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