From the Help file in the game:
A market is used as a centralized location for all goods that a town produces. Market vendors will
visit many different stock piles and storage barns to collect
the full variety of resources that the town produces.
Citizens that live near a market will use the market to collect goods, rather than taking long walks to outlying storage areas.
The market can also provide citizens with a large variety of food which will help keep them healthy and happy.
Without a market citizens are unlikely to get a varied and balanced diet, since they'll collect all
their food from the closest storage barn.
Interesting. Thanks. Does this mean if you have a market with no houses nearby it will collect food that no one will ever eat? I might try that and see what happens.
Also, how do specialised (non food) markets work? Vanilla Banished doesn't have any of those. Does a specialised market vendor just collect all the different goods in their category regardless of what's needed in that area? From the description above it sounds like they will. That could actually slow down production in some cases.
The job of the Vendor is to make his market fully stocked. He will make sure there's food there regardless of who lives there just in case people move into the neighborhood. Specialized markets are great to bring goods near a manufacturer. For example, put an Iron Market cart near your Blacksmith. However, if the storage in the small market is too high, the Vendor still focuses on filling up their store and can gather up too much of that item, not leaving much for any other market. Size does matter.
#1. Say you have a house that is not in a market radius. Say the market is 50 yards away and the closest barn is 100 yards away. Which place will people from the house go to grab stuff?
#2. Say you have a market vendor and no laborers, will the market vendor pick up food and resource production items from the local buildings: A, only in radius, B also outside radius, C, will not do either?
If the house is outside the market radius, the people living in it will go to the closest place to get what they need. If the market is closer than the barn, they'll go there anyway and get a bit of everything. If they have a barn that only has fish in it near their house, they'll get food there and will end up with an unhealthy diet.
The market vendors will go anywhere on the map to bring goods to their market. The circle is the attraction range for the market's users, it doesn't limit the distance the vendor will go to find what he needs to fill the market's inventory.
