Information about the population changes

Dear Settlers,

Before the maintenance that took place on 03.13.2014, the mechanism responsible for adding new settlers to villages was not working properly. In some cases, villages became over-populated (i.e. amount of settlers living in a village was higher than the population limit).

The issue was fixed during maintenance and the amount of settlers was adjusted accordingly. In case a village was over-populated, the script could modify the amount of unemployed settlers and, if that was not enough, it could also adjust the amount of working settlers. No military units were affected, hence no units trained in the Barracks were removed.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

• No new settlers are showing up in my village! What do I do?

  Check the amount of settlers in your village and ensure that it is not higher than the population limit. Example (population tooltip):
  
  

  http://static.cdn.ubi.com/0034/archi...on_example.png
  The amount indicated in green shows the current population limit.
  The amount indicated in red shows the amount of settlers currently living in your settlement.

  
  If the amount of settlers assigned to your village (indicated in red) is higher than the population limit (indicated in green),
  no new settlers will show up in your village.
  
  Solution:
  

  Improve the current infrastructure (i.e. upgrade and/or build residences) or lose military units that exceeds the population limit.

• I have space for new settlers, but new settlers just disappear ("0 settlers")! What do I do?

  If you experience this behavior, it means that the amount of settlers in your village was too high before maintenance. It also means that the amount of unemployed settlers was not enough to compensate the removed settlers (the ones that were exceeding the population limit); therefore, some of the working settlers had to be adjusted as well.
  
  In this case, all "new" settlers (added over time or with buffs) will be automatically sent to a working settlers group to replace the working settlers that had to be removed. Unemployed settlers will eventually start to show up after the gap has been filled and if there is enough living space for new settlers.
  
  Example:

  Population limit: 1000 settlers.
  Units before the maintenance: 950 military units, 100 working settlers and 50 unemployed settlers (1100 settlers in total).
  Units after the maintenance: 950 military units, 50 working settlers and 0 unemployed settlers (1000 settlers in total).

  What will happen next in this case (example mentioned above)?

  If you'd lose some military units (e.g. adventure) or improve infrastructure (residences), new settlers will not go to the "unemployed' group, but they will be automatically sent to the "working" group to compensate for the 50 working settlers that were removed during the maintenance. This will continue until the new settlers have filled the gap.

  Solution:
  

  If you logout from the game for approximately 30 minutes and nobody visits your island, the visual discrepancy will be resolved.

  
  

Happy settling!
BB_Rawren

I suppose I'm missing something here... Before maint, I had ~18800/20150 population with ~150 unemployed settlers. After maint, I have 0 unemployed settlers, meaning my island was overpopulated before maint (i.e. 20150+/20150, according to above explanation). So, shouldn't I be at 20150/20150 now? But now my pop is 18873/20150. So where did 1277 go?! What am I missing? Alternatively why did the script took away ~150 settlers if my island wasn't overpopulated?

I am also nowhere near the population cap for my island (2700/6200). Yet I lost 600+ unemployed settlers in the patch... Is this a common issue? Is this the intended behavior? It's a bit unfriendly of a change.

Edit: After a little more contemplation, this makes sense only if military units + employed units + unemployed units <> current population before patch. Is this the case? The original explanation makes it seem as if being over max population should be the only reason for loosing settlers.

I am 1000 under the cap and was the same before maintenance
I logged in this morning and had the 0 settlers issue
when I log back in tonight I am gaining settlers properly
but I lost all the settlers that should have been produced overnight plus the ones I added this morning to try to get some settlers for the buildings I replaced
will we be getting these back?

I have zero population (no matter what I do), used a 200% increase population buff yesterday before maintenance and was nowhere near my maximum population. I also, added 25 retirees this morning and they just disappeared. Additionally, each time it says I will be getting a new settler I get nothing! I also, have 2 mines and 2 wells that now say they need settlers?!?! Please help because the explanation above does not make sense when I was not even close to my maximum population limit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Otuwek

I suppose I'm missing something here... Before maint, I had ~18800/20150 population with ~150 unemployed settlers. After maint, I have 0 unemployed settlers, meaning my island was overpopulated before maint (i.e. 20150+/20150, according to above explanation). So, shouldn't I be at 20150/20150 now? But now my pop is 18873/20150. So where did 1277 go?! What am I missing? Alternatively why did the script took away ~150 settlers if my island wasn't overpopulated?

---

Yours didn't show "-150 Unemployed settlers"?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Katrina1116

I have zero population (no matter what I do), used a 200% increase population buff yesterday before maintenance and was nowhere near my maximum population. I also, added 25 retirees this morning and they just disappeared. Additionally, each time it says I will be getting a new settler I get nothing! I also, have 2 mines and 2 wells that now say they need settlers?!?! Please help because the explanation above does not make sense when I was not even close to my maximum population limit.

---

They understand your frustration as well as do I. It wasn't make sense this morning but last night your working settlers limit was at negative amount not a positive one. When they did maintaince, they changed the working settlers into a positive number and fixed the bug that has been there for over 2 yrs finally. Unfurtantely if you were at negative amount, that meant your max pop was higher then it was suppose to be so when they fixed it, it also lowered your maximum population.

Please take a look at your new population and see what it says.

They should have had used a screenshot before they fixed it and provided that and used that in the example in my opinion.

I was also 1000+ under cap - I had just completed an adventure - When I logged in I was at 0 and added 200 which did not appear - then when you "fixed" things the 200 did not reappear. Please check your assumption about max.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by davnator

I was also 1000+ under cap - I had just completed an adventure - When I logged in I was at 0 and added 200 which did not appear - then when you "fixed" things the 200 did not reappear. Please check your assumption about max.

---

Dude last night I was 600 away from max because I hadn't queed all the cavalry. This morning I logged in, I had 0 pop. I checked my population. I was now -600 pop instead of + pop. Then I took a look at my working settlers count after zbest told me the fix they did last night then I knew what happened so I know how this occurred. I was one of those people that had "-1.X" unemployed settlers instead of "1.X" settlers.

Before maintaince, my pop limit was almost to 11k, now I'm at 10.5k. I had to cancel some troops in my barracks log out and 6 hrs later log back in and it resolved the issue. So yes, I'm going "assume" your not bothering to check the population area like they are asking you and you probably don't recall your working settlers #.

oh goodness my pop gonna be all gimped up when or if i can can back in

This is crap. I'm 800 settlers over pop and I'm only at 3600 total pop after batch. So you want me to kill my recruits so I can continue with my Island production. I think this is the last straw, time to quit. If a game makes a mistake the error goes in the players favor not a crippling set back. Watch your player population decline...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ezequiel_Sarkar

Yours didn't show "-150 Unemployed settlers"?

---

Nope. Fortunately I never had the negative pop issue (could also be that I never noticed it), although I know quite a few that do. I'm guessing the hamster running the computer that hosts my account was doing a better job.

If I hadn't been in a position to buy 800 population worth of new residences, this would have been really crippling.
Woke up flipped from -1050 working settlers to +425 --- 1475 worth of population capacity.

http://i1312.photobucket.com/albums/...pse05c2f8a.png

Thanks for absolutely no heads-up there, BBs ... good frickin' job.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ezequiel_Sarkar

Dude last night I was 600 away from max because I hadn't queed all the cavalry. This morning I logged in, I had 0 pop. I checked my population. I was now -600 pop instead of + pop. Then I took a look at my working settlers count after zbest told me the fix they did last night then I knew what happened so I know how this occurred. I was one of those people that had "-1.X" unemployed settlers instead of "1.X" settlers.

Before maintaince, my pop limit was almost to 11k, now I'm at 10.5k. I had to cancel some troops in my barracks log out and 6 hrs later log back in and it resolved the issue. So yes, I'm going "assume" your not bothering to check the population area like they are asking you and you probably don't recall your working settlers #.

---

Ezequiel, I had 4150 pop limit yesterday. BEFORE the maintenance, I had a few unemployed settlers, but the population total was LESS THAN 4150. I did not ever have '-150' or anything like that. I opened the game this morning, and it was '0 unemployed.' I had 3189/4150, and as mines or wells emptied out, it never showed a new 'unemployed' settler.



I did not have excess population over my limit. Neither did davnator, according to what he posted.



zbest, you were operating well over the population limit, basically exploiting the bug.

I had about 3860 or so population limit, then after the maint, it dropped, now my limit is 3550, reason??

There were a few ways this could effect you:

1) put you over the population limit, in which case you need to first 1) kill soldiers or add pop building and 2) add settlers from star/let them grow in mayors until the "negative that you owe the server" is taken care of

2) You wont be over the population limit, but you didn't have enough available free settlers to cancel out what you "owe" the server. In this case, add population from star/wait for mayors to grow settlers

3) you are not over population limit and had more free settlers then you owed (this was the case for me). An example: I went from 22450/23500 with 2500 free to 22450/23500 with 2200 free. I "owed" the server ~ 300, and it took it out of my free settlers.

I think I detect a classic SNAFU.

I am in the same situation as zbest, but I do not consider myself as "exploiting" the bug; that term implies intent. I was totally unaware of my imbalance. It could take me days to get everything back in balance, assuming I have enough building licenses (I haven't done the math yet). To zbest's point, a little notice ahead of time would have been nice. If the bug has been there for 2 years, surely we could have been given a couple of weeks to get our numbers back in compliance before the rug was pulled out from under us. And all BB has to say is "Cheers" and "Happy Settling". Not even an "Oops, sorry!"

there was no "intent" on the part of the players that i know of to exploit this bug. I reported it back in June, NINE MONTHS AGO. The developers created this bug, and allowed it continue for a long time. At the least we should all get a noble. To "fix" it overnight with severe repercussions to some players just is not right ;)
please continue to advocate for the players, Rawren

I also had below my population max before maint... I believe it was 7620/8050. It could be just that number is stuck in my head, because that is what I was stuck with all morning after maint. When I logged in I had 7620/8050... no matter how long I waited... re-logged in... or added bread people and retired bandit population (several hundreds of them)... I could not change from 7620/8050. How about refunding us the bread people we used to buff out mayor to no effect due to this... "fix"?

I was 3982/4150 this morning. A 250 stack used 189 to refill, about 20 more than needed. I was lucky.

I was and still am nearly 2000 under my pop limit having recently completed many adventures. How is this possible. And why would my people I tried to add from my star menu just vanish from inventory when I put them in the mayors house?

Evidently because the server has actually miscounted in your favor all this time. It will correct over time, or by adding more settlers until the red 0 shows a number of unemployed settlers. Sucks.

my issue with this problem is I buffed my mayor house all the time because I adven so often, and now I'm losing out on all those buffs that I had applied to get my population up so high. I definitely think they owe us big on this one. I agree they could have given us a heads up, let us know whats up. Because if it weren't for us, you wouldn't have a job. I don't plan on giving up on TSO, but I hope that their error is rectified. And when I say error, I mean that I think they knew about this Problem long before this, I and many others were completely unaware of any problem, and lack of letting us in the "know." Everyone should ban together and put a complaint in EVERYDAY until we are adequately reimbursed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SIie

my issue with this problem is I buffed my mayor house all the time because I adven so often, and now I'm losing out on all those buffs that I had applied to get my population up so high. I definitely think they owe us big on this one. I agree they could have given us a heads up, let us know whats up. Because if it weren't for us, you wouldn't have a job. I don't plan on giving up on TSO, but I hope that their error is rectified. And when I say error, I mean that I think they knew about this Problem long before this, I and many others were completely unaware of any problem, and lack of letting us in the "know." Everyone should ban together and put a complaint in EVERYDAY until we are adequately reimbursed.

---

the negative workers has been a known glitch for a while (long while) by many. you should have seen by the numbers of licenses you used and total pop that something was off. all they are doing is correcting this accounting error. so if your pop is so low that you need to kill off troops or build/upgrade residences then whose fault is that? we were told of the updates a couple days ago I for one just killed a couple k troops and added bandits and just waited. yes my working pop went up over night but it shouldn't have been a big deal. and as for a not knowing you prob need to check the forums more often the patch notes have been out for 2 days no

im 1000 below my cap and no new pop is adding even when I take from star,cant produce anything since my pop is adding

My population is all messed up.
It says I have 5410/4280
Yet I have a bunch of mines with no one mining.
I still have 9 mines that emptied and the population never showed up to go to new mines.
:(

When is this problem going to be fixed.
QA

QA, you are experiencing the 'fix.'

TSO server had misallocated settlers in the past, giving us more than we deserved. You will need to either run adventures to kill off military units, or build more housing capacity. It sucks.

I think all players should be gifted 4x Frozen manors to correct the problem caused from the past maintenance

So if I understand: Through no fault of my own I now have to upgrade my residents to make room for the over population bug fix. I currently have no production in some (and soon all) of my mines due to a negative population balance as I don't refill my mines before collapse as I'm a fairly new player and my new built mines have no population to assign. So I can look forward to not only the loss of produced items, but also the mandatory cost of upgrading my residents before I was ready to. AND I now also have to spend highly coveted licenses on more residents.

TOS you REALLY need to rethink how this solution is impacting the players. TOS you really couldn't have sat down and come up with this fix and not take into account the cost to players? Could you?

AS is I have to come up with more than 80,000 Hardwood Planks and Marble to "catch" up to my negative population balance. In the mean time I will have no copper, iron, coal, or gold ore coming in. So with no ore coming in I have no weapons production, no tools production, and as my water wells dry up I'll run out of water as well since I won't have any new workers to assign to the new wells I build. I could go on but I think you get the picture. I almost bought your max gem package during your last happy hour, but I'm glad I didn't. As is I'm ready to give up on TOS if they can't come up with a fair resolution, to a problem created from an unknown problem to begin with.

OH and yes I know I can run adventures to kill off my military, but I am not able to run any new adventures right now with any expectation of completing them as I don't have enough troops to actually win any adventure I could currently play at my current level. TOS if you think I'm going to just kill of my military to fix your mistake you are gravely mistaken!! How then do I get back my resources and time put into those military units to begin with??

I think the bigger issue is that people's population will not go up again, even after they are below the cap. I tore down a well, and my working settlers decreased (as per normal) and my current settlers ALSO decreased, as if a military unit had died. Even if this did not raise my unemployed settlers, there is no reason it should lower my current population. Even if this is only a display error, it's still an error... why would you fix a bug just to allow another one?

PS: So, both the 'claim' AND the 'pay resources' button have been replaced by check marks. Why? Because you WANT people to be more confused? or so you don't have to use different versions of the button in different languages? lazy...
Signed, Mr regretting giving these people money.

It will go up again. Once your current shortage is made up, your population and unemployed settlers will begin to increase.


Well, if you currently have less settlers than your population limit. If you are over pop limit, you now have to build the housing you had already needed; but didn't 'need' due to the bug.

I must be an idiot. I didn't notice anything before or after. Oh well.

Something doesn't add up here - if you'll pardon the pun. I ran and adventure before this happened and was supposedly about 800 below my cap. No, I didn't actually add up all my troops and working settlers. I had known that the negative settler number was showing - it was somewhere between -50 and zero. So, without doing anything my unemployed settlers goes to zero overnight, then later on in the morning I have 95 spare settlers. So when I had zero how could I be at my max? I would have had to be more than 800 over my max for this situation. And - I got an increase in settlers since then. No one was killed off. That should not be. If there were actually two fixes made, the first one being when everyone got the zero, which was a bad fix, and then another one which corrected it, I will believe that - but can anyone tell me if I'm missing anything here? The good news - everything is adding up now, and I am only 610 below my max (ie - I'm adding settlers now).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by G_F_M

the negative workers has been a known glitch for a while (long while) by many. you should have seen by the numbers of licenses you used and total pop that something was off. all they are doing is correcting this accounting error. so if your pop is so low that you need to kill off troops or build/upgrade residences then whose fault is that? we were told of the updates a couple days ago I for one just killed a couple k troops and added bandits and just waited. yes my working pop went up over night but it shouldn't have been a big deal. and as for a not knowing you prob need to check the forums more often the patch notes have been out for 2 days no

---

Many of us did NOT have a negative workers number. I never did EVER. Less than 1400 military units, less than 400 workers and under 100 unemployed settlers does not surpass 3800 population. There was no reason for them to take away all of my unemployed settlers, make retired bandits vanish and take away workers leaving me with 0 for raw materials this morning effectively shutting down hire levels in production for the day. The reply to my support ticket amounted to I must have removed housing which is total bull crap and wasn't ever done. They hosed many of us for no reason. They screwed up.

If it was true, now that all things have workers again and I'm producing settlers again, under that logic and their math, I would be negative again. This is total bull crap.

This is BS Those of us who pay premium should be reimbursed For our time being wasted!

Everything was working fine till you guys did your update.

It should not be us having to do adventures to get population down
fix what you did or turn everything back to yesterday's settings.

We have wasted a whole day trying to deal with this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gwyn_ap_Nudd

So if I understand: Through no fault of my own I now have to upgrade my residents to make room for the over population bug fix. I currently have no production in some (and soon all) of my mines due to a negative population balance as I don't refill my mines before collapse as I'm a fairly new player and my new built mines have no population to assign. So I can look forward to not only the loss of produced items, but also the mandatory cost of upgrading my residents before I was ready to. AND I now also have to spend highly coveted licenses on more residents.

TOS you REALLY need to rethink how this solution is impacting the players. TOS you really couldn't have sat down and come up with this fix and not take into account the cost to players? Could you?

AS is I have to come up with more than 80,000 Hardwood Planks and Marble to "catch" up to my negative population balance. In the mean time I will have no copper, iron, coal, or gold ore coming in. So with no ore coming in I have no weapons production, no tools production, and as my water wells dry up I'll run out of water as well since I won't have any new workers to assign to the new wells I build. I could go on but I think you get the picture. I almost bought your max gem package during your last happy hour, but I'm glad I didn't. As is I'm ready to give up on TOS if they can't come up with a fair resolution, to a problem created from an unknown problem to begin with.

OH and yes I know I can run adventures to kill off my military, but I am not able to run any new adventures right now with any expectation of completing them as I don't have enough troops to actually win any adventure I could currently play at my current level. TOS if you think I'm going to just kill of my military to fix your mistake you are gravely mistaken!! How then do I get back my resources and time put into those military units to begin with??

---

I agree with this. My Island is going to get all messed up because of this so called fix. Why should we be paying with our troops and gems to fix your mistake. Who is going to compensate us for all of this?
I bought gem pits to help me in the game not to fix things that you guys did.
I sure am not going to waste them on nobles to get my population up because you guys had a bug in the system. I sure am glad now that I did not waste anymore money on this bleedin' game to get more gem pits in the sale the other day.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Queen-Andromeda

I agree with this. My Island is going to get all messed up because of this so called fix. Why should we be paying with our troops and gems to fix your mistake. Who is going to compensate us for all of this?
I bought gem pits to help me in the game not to fix things that you guys did.
I sure am not going to waste them on nobles to get my population up because you guys had a bug in the system. I sure am glad now that I did not waste anymore money on this bleedin' game to get more gem pits in the sale the other day.

---

Why are you complaining about them fixing a Bug? You know that there was a problem with the negative working settlers. They stated that they were going to fix it so you had lots of time to get your settler population under your population limit. It's not there fault for fixing the bug, its your fault.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RomanGodCamper

Why are you complaining about them fixing a Bug? You know that there was a problem with the negative working settlers. They stated that they were going to fix it so you had lots of time to get your settler population under your population limit. It's not there fault for fixing the bug, its your fault.

---

Why am I complaining!

My game was fine when I went offline last night before the maint. was done.
My population had absolutely no issues.
I replaced my mines before I went off so they could run while I was away.

Today I come on and none of my mines that were replaced have any people in them.
Then I see that the population is all wacked.

Then I come on here to find out what is going on and I am told that I am experiencing a fix????
And now you tell me it is my fault! piss off.

I come on here to play this game with my daughter and to help me relieve stress from RL.
I buy premium points every chance I get and now I am told I have to use MY Gems that
I paid for to fix something that this games tech people messed up to begin with.
If anyone should pay for the upgrades to get the population back in line it is the people
who made this game.
Not the ones who have already wasted their money in a game that won't take responsibility for their mistakes.

As for knowing there was a problem with Negative workers.
No I did not know there was a problem with that because when I left this game before maintenance everything was great.
I had no issues with any population problem before the upgrade was done.

I knew nothing of the sort till I came here.

I find it amusing people cannot adapt. Just because you did not go over pop limit does not mean you still owe the server some settlers. It might of wiped out your "free settlers" at which point - add some more settlers.

If you really dont have settlers to add...you need to start saving them up. It comes in handy later on when you might blow through 15k settlers in a day and 25k in 3 days.

So yes - i have 6.25m sitting in my star menu in the form of settlers (250k pop). Allows me flexibility. Something like todays update is a minor inconvenience compared to a server lagging during a block. I think their mistakes that have hurt blocking in the past give us a more legit reason to gripe then this fix that people did not know about (did you not read patch notes? but what is that, some knew about it? i knew about it and made sure i was under pop cap with free settlers to accomodate the fix...).

If you are in a pickle from this: its your own dang fault for not paying attention and reading. You deserve getting gouged by TH on nobles.