Suggesting that to gather roots and berries in the forest, one needs a specialized "gathering lodge" requiring hefty investment in resources is ridiculous. This requirement creates structural unemployment reminiscent of specialized industrial economies - you need to gather roots and herbs, but you can't, because you have a specialized "employee" that only hunts, and won't gather unless you build him another huge "gathering hall".

In fact, survivalist communities must be highly flexible, able to adapt to changing conditions and take advantage of opportunities. If a herd of animals is sighted, everyone grabs whatever weapon and goes hunting.

Also, stone houses are not better in providing warmth than wooden cottages - just touch a stone wall in church or sit on a stone bench. Stone is a thermal conductor, wood is a thermal insulator. The advantage of stone as building material is durability and ability to resist conditions like humidity, temperature changes, fungus, etc.

If you look closely many games are inconsistent with "reality"

I beg to differ : I know from experience that a real good stone house of the older styles -i.e. with the 50-80 cm thick walls you find in the old farms in the countryside around here, like my parent's home, or the early 20th century homes built with good rocks such as "meulière" (millstone), has a very nice insulation. Warm in winter if you sufficiently heated it first, and fresh in summer if you close the door.

Look at the building requirements ingame : Stone houses require MORE wood that wooden ones, so I guess the wood homes ingame are a bit on the flimsy side, easily built cabins, while the stone ones are the sturdy, durable kind.

Whichever way you look at it, it's a gameplay decision. It has to be this way, because eventually it's easier to get wood than stone.

Stonehouses can be warm though. Takes a long while to heat them up, but once they are warm, they are lovely, and don't easily cool off again either. Then you have the help of the sun too, which will make stone houses rather warm. You can't hold your hand against such a wall for long ;)

Pretty much my thought. Heh.

So wait I'm confused its not got a bonus to temperature control; but it does. ;)

Interestingly houses in the UK are oft stone in the north and wood in the south. Now considering that wood was plentiful in the north and the north is colder than the south either all northerners are daft or stone might possibly be a superior building material when available in plentiful supply next to wood.


Also churches are huge with huge glass windows and a single vaulted room. So often as not they don't even bother to heat the building let alone insulate it with regard to retaining heat.




Also generic stone VS wood battles are silly one must compare specific building materials and construction methods of specific periods in time to get a reasonable idea of how they compare.

And even like that, they're quite good at keeping warmth OUT during canicular summer days, so they should keep it in if anyone bothered to warm such a big room.

(ooops! Is my geologist "stone is awesome!" bias showing? ^^)