Dragon Quest Builders 2 civilation simulation is trash.

I have played Dragon Quest Builders 2 now 212 hours but I probably just run through the story and be done with it. That is fucking shame because when I play Velheim or Minecraft I don't really have good reason to build cities or towns. I will be alone anyway so why build something that is going to a obsticale. Dragon Quest Builders 2 give me a reason and mechanics to do so. Game can decleare closed in two block hight (or one block hight fenced) area as a room. This room can be made spefic room like kitchen or bedroom by placing certain items in it. There is also fancyness score and certain items tally to certain ambiness. This means decorating as great emphasives which means I have a reason to create buildings and challenge my self to build certain kind of rooms.

Problem is that Dragon Quest Builders 2 simulations the civilations in the most absolute trashy way possible.

AI Pathing and Queuing

Let's start with AI pathing because this is first thing I noticed. In Furrowfield the town area has this rock area in the middle of the town surrounded by one block deep dig. Later there is a side quest to fill this dig with water to make a pond. I had guessed this so I filled it early. I noticed that even though I made paths surrounding the pond, AI would run through the water. Essentially AI seems to path it self by setting target point and send character by most direct path for a bird. When mount too high is on the way it is when reached that any type of obstical avoideness kicks in.

This is weird AI behaviour because simpler way would allow player to place nodes which would direct AI close to the target and then fall to direct route. Another way would have constly path exploring AI where pathing graph slowly updates to close what looks good. So before water been added to the pond AI would run through. After water is placed AI would start avoiding getting wet or would just calculate going through the water is slower then walking next to the pond.

That said, deal breaker this behavior is not. Not only because it is small problem but because Dragon Quest Builders 2 is rather great of hiding some of the mechanism of the game to a visual appealing items. This hiding avoids spreahsheet simulator problems of rather gamey buttons and controls. Clearly this was a design decision. Also, there is some smartness in the pathing. When in the main island I build the pyramid I made a stairs to the upper floor from the middle platfrom. AI did realize this path so somekind of dynamish was used. Still in the main island AI seems to prefer climb mountains rather than goinging in the valleys.

Other weird pathing behavior happens with queues. Game can create queues to toilets or showers to make then a resource. There are multiple reason (at least in theory) why player benefits faster queue times. So when I was trying to optimize my community shower in the Furrowfield I was shocked to notice that first in the queue was not moving to the free bath. This behaviour was because baths are NOT allocated by first in the door first out of the door way. After observing queus behavior is essentially following:

1. Game starts updating character in civilian behavior list which is sorted by order of appears in the story.
2. Check on civial needing to go to shower returns true.
3. Game at that moment places the civilian to the lowest queued bath and sets it as the target to path to.
4. Game moved to next civilian on the list.

This happens REGARDLESS how far a way the civilian is. So because civialian's need go to shower is same tick everyone elses the update list decides the order of the queue. This means that other civialian can reach the door of the shower before the civilian that show is locked to making them wait for nothing.

With toilet's it was harder to see this behaviour. Mostly because to toilet need to trigger civilian must have eaten something. This makes the tick toilet going is decided more even between the civilian. I usually saw the toilet queue forming at the closest toilet of the kitchen. Unlike with baths which I only had one room in the Furrowfield I had toilets cross the town. It still seemed like that the toilet closest to the kitchen got all of the traffic. I'm not 100% on is that the case. It feels bit odd that toilets cross the town where not used evenly. Maybe the room character ends up using is decided by proximity and queue size is not a factor.

Queue formation direction is also problematic. With the Furrowfield shower I had it on elevated possition. Front door had 2 to 3 blocks before 3 block cliff face. This meant that the queue would mostly form at the bottom of the cliff rathen along the road I placed between the door and cliff. This plus the wierd queue waits meant that I stopped optimizing showers in furrfield because there was literally nothing I could improve ugly design or redoing the showers. I should have realized this queue problem is also with toilets. Later on the main island I made toilet which door faced directly to wall which otherside was stairs up. Civilians somehow got caught top of the stairs and could not path to the toilet anymore.

Other weird queue thing happened with pyramid. I placed toilets next to private rooms. This was a mistake for reasons I explain later but the for some reasons AI decided that these toilets where only place characters could be in. So they crowed the toilets. There is no pathing mechnism to go a way when density hits certains highs. With barn I saw farmers go in it to search something and place the created item to the storage chest. This means at time farmers would just hang with tidy density next to the community chest. It looks fucking weird.

Job system and chests

At the begging in the Furrowfield farmer are introduced. They are probably most fuctioning job in the game terms of usefullness. Maybe dancers and bar tenders function better but there job is just to exists and carry drinks. Farmers plow the field, water the fieds (to improve grow speed), later in Furrowfield they can place seeds if barn exists, and even later on the main island they can gather the ready vegeties. Both the barn and gathering need a community chest to be placed. Idea is that community chest in the barn which houses seeds would be used to automaticly keep the fields going. The gathering chest needs to be placed outside on the farm (or at least that is how I understood it) and stuff is place in it.

So what is the problem? Well, the system seems to work. There is a work allocating problem because on my main island beds for the farmers are way too far a way. This means that farmers don't have time in the day come to the farm. But when they are there they are doing there job. Except when they gather from the fields they seems to place at any chest I have on the near by area. I don't know is this problem where chest are not linked to certain farm plot rather AI decides closest free chest and orders farmer to go there. Also since for some fucking reason farmers take out too many seeds from the barn chest and place the remaining seeds to these community chests. So do these seeds get used or not is not clear! Furrowfield made pretty clear that seeds need to be in the barn community chest!

This unclearness about what community chests is for major hickup of the system! I noticed this first with cooks. So kitchen has a community chest to place food items into.