There are two types of adults in Banished, Laborers and Workers.
A Laborer is a general worker that can go out and gather basic resources from the land (wood, stone and iron). They are also responsible for carting around resources from certain locations to others though I am a bit less clear on this.
A Worker is someone who has been given a specific type of task to do like fish, mine, teach or farm. As long as the materials they need are available to do their work they will keep at their specified task. When there are not enough materials however they seem to revert into being just a laborer again. The easiest example I have seen of this is a farmer during the winter will go around and gather stone and wood like the other laborers.
Now another thing a laborer is supposed to do is move resources around, thus allowing your workers to keep on working when they need to. What is a good ratio of laborers to workers to try and keep my workers from wanting for resources? Or is the ratio more along the lines of laborers to resource production areas (buildings)? I am looking for a general field park number of people not to send off to a specific task.
I have seen it mentioned in other questions and answers that you need to have laborers to keep the materials moving around and I am wondering what is a good worker to laborer ratio? 1 to 10? 1 to 5? 1 to 20? I am unsure. I have seen a blacksmith not be able to make steel tools because I can not get the coal away from the mine that is maybe 12 blocks further away than where the iron comes from.
Best Answer
A ratio is not helpful because there are a lot of variables. Just like food, tools, and any other resource in the game, the real question is "How many people should I allocate to get the work done?".
Laborers pull work from the labor queue. The key to having enough laborers to work everything in the queue is managing that queue.
Scenario 1.
At this point, the labor queue has 3 things in it. Harvest resources, clear obstacles from build site, carry material to build site. Harvest resources was issued first, so the other two must wait. There are no build sites ready, so the builders act as laborers and go to the resource area. To fix this, use the priority tool on (the entire area of) the buildings. This causes the clear and deliver tasks to be done before the resource area task, and will cause the builders to build those houses sooner.
Scenario 2.
When work is stopped for any reason, those assigned workers will pull tasks from the labor queue. In the first wave, farmers and miners will respond and make the journey to the resource area. During that first wave: your smith, tailor and woodcutter may need more material and so place actions at the end of the labor queue. Since those workers are out of material, they pull the top priority item from the labor queue and join the distant gathering. Now you have a tools, coats and firewood shortage.
Avoid this trap by not gathering large areas of resources at one time.