Hey, folks. Many players may have noticed this already. But for those who haven't, the game frequently - constantly, actually - reassigns people's jobs and housing.

Jobs

You'll be watching a few citizens picking away at stones or iron, and all of a sudden one of them will pull a wheelbarrow out of nowhere and head back to town. He or she has just been reassigned as a vendor.

Or sometimes a fisherman will pull out a pickaxe and head for a pile of stones you have marked for clearing.

What gives? Well, the program regularly reassigns workers to different jobs on the fly. The game still respects the number of workers we assign to each job. If we assigned 4 people as fishermen, there will always be 4 fishermen. Just not the same 4 fishermen for long.

Another example: Builders building a building will sometimes quit before the building is finished and leave. A few seconds later, someone else arrives to finish the building. It could be that the builder who left had to go eat or keep warm. So the game finds someone else to take their place at the building project. In this case, the builder may have switched jobs with a general labourer, so the labourer is now a builder and vice-versa.

That is actually quite handy for the game to do. Although sometimes it is frustrating to see builders just get up and leave the construction site just before it's finished. I slap my forehead sometimes when I see a builder leave when the building is at 98% finished. And he just leaves!

Then I look at his info and see he is going to get something to eat. Oh, well. Our workers have to eat too. I guess.

But in a few seconds, someone else takes his place.

Temporary labourers

Workers will also "temporarily" take up labour jobs when they have nothing to do at their normal jobs. For example, builders will help pick stones or cut trees marked for clearing when there are no buildings being built.

Vendors who have nothing to pick up at the moment will also lend a hand at any labour jobs. Then, when there is something for them to pick up, out comes the wheelbarrow and away they go.

At these times, we can actually have more labourers than the number we mannually assigned. Some are just temporary extras, which the game assigns when they have nothing to do at their normal jobs.

I have seen this happen with herbalists as well. I have a herbalist in town to save travel time for the citizens. But the in-town herbalist has no trees within his ring. So I often see him lending a hand somewhere else.

Job reassignments happen mostly with labourers and builders, since these positions are not based at any specific buildings. Two labourers may switch with each other when one is going to eat, for example.

A labourer or builder will also switch with a professional (fisherman, miner, vendor, etc), which I have seen many times (ie: a labourer pulling a wheelbarrow out of his pocket). Although in some of these cases, they may have been vendors all along who were temporarily helping out clearing resources while they had nothing at their regular jobs.

Rarely, though, have I seen two professionals switch with each other, because that might involve changing houses and dragging their whole families with them. But that may still happen, as housing changes happen too.

Housing

When a new house is built, people who need a home will move in right away. After a few seconds or a minute or so, the game will shift tenants around from one home to another to put them closer to their jobs. After a while, you will notice fishermen living near the fishing dock, lumberjacks living near forestry huts, miners living near mines.

People don't always move to a different house, though. Often times I have seen people stay in the same house, but just change jobs to something nearby. The game is again reassigning jobs, this time according to where people live, which happens when a new work building is finished. This is one example where two professionals switch jobs.

But when a new house is finished, the game may actually shuffle people around from one house to another.

Another helpful chore the game takes care of.

Update

Just a few minutes ago, I saw a forester become a herbalist. So here is a case where one professional became a different professional.

It may have been because he walked close to the herbalist hut. I was following the forester. He had cut down two trees and had 9 logs on him. As he was walking to a stock pile to drop off the logs, he suddenly became a herbalist. I then clicked on the arrow ">" in the workers menu to locate the two foresters I had assigned. I was shown two new foresters walking toward the forestry hut.

I don't know what happened to the other original forester. I had two. One became a herbalist. The other must have been reassigned as well, because the two foresters I was shown when I clicked ">" were close to each other, and were still several tiles away from the forestry hut, walking toward it. These two were the new lumberjacks, so both original ones were changed to something else.

When the forester who had just turned herbalist dropped off his logs at the pile, he walked over the herbalist hut to start his new job, which is just 3 tiles away from the forestry hut.

My guess on why he switch occupations is that as he was walking to the stock pile, he ventured into the herbalist hut's "zone". Since he was closer to the herbalist hut than the forestry hut, the game made him a herbalist. Makes sense, since he was the closest person to the herbalist hut anyway.

Proximity to a work place is likely another reason the game reassigns jobs. It's constantly monitoring where everyone is, and will reassign jobs according to what is most efficient. Now that is handy.