My first ever game I managed to get a good population of 30. But soon I started to run out of fire wood and one winter almost 3/4 of my population died.
I was mining coal and had 2 foresters but my people still dies of coldness. I could not work out if coal acted as a fuel supply for homes?
Best Answer
Coal can be used instead of firewood for fuel. This was confirmed by the developer in a blog last year. I also confirmed this in-game by putting all my firewood into the traders and mining some coal. As you can see, the Coal was brought to the Market and then brought to villagers homes. Since the only use for coal is creating Steel Tools and for Fuel then we can safely assume that villagers will use Coal as a fuel source to heat their homes.
If your villagers are unable to warm their homes despite having coal and firewood it's possible they are unable to find the coal and firewood. The Help Menu states that villagers will gather resources from the Stock Pile nearest them if they don't live near a market. If that storage barn doesn't have any fuel in it that could explain your deaths from the cold. If you haven't already you should try building a market near peoples homes to ensure fuel (and other resources) are properly spread out amongst your villagers.