If a Mandate Order workshop is staffed but missing materials, check where its input is stored and whether Set Supply Sources restricts it to an empty source. For gathering buildings using Dedicated Shipping, inspect the designated destinations and their free storage space.
This guide combines the August launch logistics rework with the September 24, 2026 shipping and supply-source additions. The new rules use official patch notes and the Mandate Order team’s October 8 clarifications. We have not playtested the September 24 build.
The September 24 update changed the initial size of some buildings, including Cottages, and the developer’s announcement says existing saves are incompatible after the update. Keep a backup of an older save before updating.
Name the four locations in the stalled chain
Every blockage becomes easier to read when you name four physical places:
- Source: the resource point, field, hunting ground, well, or upstream workshop that creates the input.
- Carrier handoff: the pile, local storage, road, or assigned labor route between buildings.
- Processor: the workshop whose selected recipe consumes the input.
- Destination: the next workshop, consumer, storage category, armory, or construction site that must receive the output.
For example, if ore reaches the smelter but ingots remain in its output, inspect delivery to the Weapon Workshop. Adding miners will not clear ingots already waiting at the smelter. Check the workshop’s selected supply sources as well as the path between the two buildings.
Start with the live item view
Select the missing item in the top inventory display. The launch UI can highlight relevant piles and buildings across the map. Compare the total with the locations it reveals. An item counted somewhere in the territory may still be unavailable to the building that needs it.
Inspect three states separately:
- Raw ownership: the item exists in a source, pile, building, or transporter’s hands.
- Available stock: the item is not reserved, in transit, excluded by a category, or trapped in another building’s local storage.
- Delivered input: the item has reached the processor that runs the selected recipe.
If the top number rises while delivered input remains zero, production is not the bottleneck. Follow one highlighted item until the UI stops showing a next destination.
Read the building before assigning another group
Open the stalled building and check its state in this order:
- Construction is actually complete.
- A labor group is assigned and individual laborers are reaching the building.
- The intended recipe is selected and not paused.
- The production limit has not already been reached.
- Every required input is present or being delivered. If Set Supply Sources is active, inspect stock in the designated buildings.
- The output area has room and an allowed destination. If Dedicated Shipping is active, inspect the destination list and space at each destination.
Only add labor after those checks. A second group cannot make a capped recipe resume, clear a full output slot, change an incorrect recipe, or deliver an input that no reachable source provides. Extra assignment can make the settlement worse by taking people away from hauling, construction, wells, kitchens, or farms.
Dedicated Shipping restricts who can collect from a gathering building
The September 24 patch introduced an experimental gathering-building feature called Dedicated Freight in its English notes. The team calls it Dedicated Shipping in its clarification: collected goods can be sent to designated warehouses by oxcart. Check this setting on the gathering building whose output is waiting.
With Dedicated Shipping enabled, workers assigned to buildings outside its designated shipping destinations can no longer haul goods from that gathering building. Workers who have already started hauling are unaffected. A worker finishing an existing trip after you enable the setting is therefore expected; it does not show that the restriction failed.
If a designated destination is full, shipments to that destination pause until storage space is available there again. Inspect the particular destination that has stopped receiving goods. Free space elsewhere in the settlement does not show that this destination can accept another shipment.
Before adding workers, check that the building you intend to supply appears among the designated destinations and that it has room for the shipment. Clear space at a full destination or revise the shipping arrangement.
Set Supply Sources can leave a stocked settlement with an empty workshop
The September 24 announcement introduced Demand Source for the Weapon Workshop and Sawmill. The team’s current instruction is Set Supply Sources. Once you choose sources for a processing building, it obtains materials only from those designated buildings. Empty selected sources do not make it collect from other buildings.
If the item bar shows enough material but the workshop has none, open its supply-source settings and inspect each selected building’s stock. A nearby store with the right material is unusable to that workshop while it remains outside the selected sources. Replenish a selected source or change the selection to a building holding the required material, then observe whether the input reaches the workshop.
Check both ends when the selected source is a gathering building with Dedicated Shipping enabled. The processor’s source selection and the gathering building’s destination restrictions can both affect that delivery. Increasing the workforce will not fix a source selection that excludes the available stock.
Check shipment upgrades without rebuilding the connections
The team confirmed that upgrading a gathering building increases its maximum shipment quantity and preserves shipping links configured before the upgrade. You do not need to recreate those links merely because the gathering building gained a level. Upgrading leaves the shipping feature’s rules unchanged, including its destination restrictions.
The September 24 announcement separately says higher gathering-building levels increase dedicated-freight loading speed and the number of destinations you can specify. Those are different effects from maximum shipment quantity. Open the building panel’s Upgrade tab to see the effects of each upgrade; do not assume one capacity number describes all three.
The post-station explanation below comes from the August 12 rework. Use the gathering building’s Upgrade tab for shipment effects and the station’s own panel when evaluating its cart support.
Separate work time from travel time
A processor may complete its animation quickly and then wait most of the day for the next input. Watch a laborer through one full cycle. Count the legs of the trip: housing to work, work to source, source back to work, output to destination, and any personal-needs detour. If walking dominates the cycle, a faster recipe or another worker attacks the smallest part of the delay.
Shorten the route before multiplying the building:
- Put the processor between its largest input and its most common destination.
- Keep roads continuous and verify that walls, gates, mountains, or a new building did not create a detour.
- Separate food and water access from the busiest industrial doorway so personal needs do not jam the same point.
- Place related wood recipes near one log supply, but cap their outputs so they do not all pull at once.
The August 14 patch fixed one case in which laborers repeatedly assigned themselves tasks while walking to a completed wall. If workers still loop, save the evidence, test after the latest update, and use the in-game F9 report rather than redesigning the whole city around a reproducible bug.
Place the post station around busy transport routes
The August 12 logistics rework changed the post station from a building providing transport capacity into a range-based support building. Laborers working in buildings inside its effect receive small carts while transporting. The station itself is not a second workforce that hauls every item in the district.
Place it so its visible range covers buildings whose workers make frequent heavy trips. Then observe whether those workers actually use carts and whether the saved carrying time matters. A post station that covers a fast processor with an adjacent input may create less value than one covering a spread-out extraction or industrial cluster.
The August 12 launch notes removed most building transport-circle restrictions, except for gathering buildings, and allowed laborers to fetch construction inputs and consumables more freely. The September 24 dedicated-shipping and supply-source controls introduce specific restrictions of their own. Check whether those settings are active before applying the earlier hauling advice.
Respect the systems that still keep strict boundaries
Gathering buildings: the launch exception preserves their collection logic. Confirm the selected resource point or working area and make sure the deposit is not exhausted, outside the effective area, or blocked by terrain.
Wells: water remains in the well and is consumed on demand by buildings such as housing, kitchens, and farmland. A well needs labor. Do not wait for water to enter a general storage total before diagnosing the consumer.
Armory: recruitment counts only equipment that has arrived inside the armory. A completed sword in a workshop, a shield on the road, or armor lying in a pile is not recruitable stock. This is an intentional logistics gate, not a display delay.
Building-local output: production buildings can stop when their own output space is full. Even if the settlement has nominal storage room elsewhere, someone still has to clear the producer and the destination must accept that category.
Use limits to protect branch points
Logs demonstrate why production caps matter. One wood workshop can feed construction frames, boards or lumber, weapon blanks, carts, and fuel chains. If every recipe consumes without a ceiling, the most active branch can starve all the others.
Work backward from a visible target. If the next expansion needs frames, reserve enough logs for that batch and cap cart or weapon inputs at a practical buffer. If winter fuel is the risk, suspend luxury or siege branches until the housing buffer exists. A limit is not merely an anti-overflow setting; it states which downstream promise has priority.
Apply the same rule to metal. Copper can feed early weapons, bronze processing, bows, vehicles, and siege parts. Iron can become nails, refined ingots, advanced weapons, and armor. Before opening another recipe, name the output it unlocks and the stock level that ends the run. Otherwise an industrial district can consume rare ore without completing a single strategic objective.
Why supplies stop moving
| What you see | What to inspect | What to try first |
|---|---|---|
| Input total is positive, processor input is zero | Selected supply sources, stock at those buildings, reservations, and delivery | Inspect Set Supply Sources, then use item highlighting to locate the material |
| A selected supply source is empty, although another store has material | The processor obtains materials only from designated sources | Replenish a selected source or select a building with the required material |
| A gathering building’s designated destination stops receiving shipments | Free storage space at that particular destination | Free space there, then watch for shipping to resume |
| A worker cannot collect from a gathering building after Dedicated Shipping is enabled | Whether the worker’s assigned building is a designated destination | Check the destination list; allow already-started hauling trips to finish |
| Processor has inputs but progress does not move | Recipe, assignment, cap, pause, or worker availability | Read the production tab and watch the assigned group arrive |
| Output exists but production stops | Local output space, destination restrictions, and space at the receiving building | Inspect the destination before clearing an output batch or adding labor |
| Workers spend most of the day walking | Layout and personal-needs travel dominate | Shorten one route or add road coverage before adding labor |
| You expect the post station itself to haul goods | The August rework made it a support building for workers’ carts | Read its current panel and observe carts on workers from affected buildings |
| Kitchen reports no water while the territory has wells | Well operation or demand route | Check well labor, local water, consumer state, and path |
| Recruitment panel shows fewer weapons than the item bar | Equipment has not entered the armory | Inspect armory contents, workshop output, and ground piles |
Change one variable and watch one complete cycle. Moving a workshop, adding two groups, changing three limits, and building a post station at the same time may make the symptom disappear without telling you why. Once the item moves, keep the change that restored its route.
When the panel disagrees with a guide
Dedicated Shipping and Set Supply Sources are valid controls introduced in the September 24 update. A guide showing warehouse destinations or restricted material sources may be describing these features. Match its instructions to the setting visible on your building, and keep the older post-station support rules separate from the new gathering-building shipments.
If shipping still fails after you check the selected sources, destinations, and available space, record the game build, map, recipe, building level, shipping settings, and assigned labor. Save and reload using a save compatible with that build. If the problem persists, include those details in an F9 report.