World of Banished

Sightseeing => Village Blogs => Topic started by: Nilla on February 28, 2019, 01:58:56 AM

Title: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on February 28, 2019, 01:58:56 AM
After playing these two nice and easy games with RKEd, (not without challenges, if you want to play well but no problems to survive) I want it a bit harsher: I decided to go back to the North and play an "Ironman" game. If I remember it right, I have only played "Ironman" with the new happiness system once and it was on "mild", and I had a lot of farms. This time I will try it on "harsh".

I started this game the day before yesterday and played more yesterday and I must confess: I failed! :( I think I played too "aggressive"; I wanted the settlement to grow and took too many nomads. I will make another attempt tonight, this time slower, maybe even on the same map.

I´ll show you some screenshots of my failure.

First picture
Mods, map and settings. I thought of playing "Survivors" but I think "Harsh" is hard enough, so I chose the "Shepherd" start.

Second picture
Everyone is settled. You can see the poor health. They eat mostly meat and some wild blueberries and mushrooms. Here I´m about to build a herbalist. I´m not sure if it´s the right thing to do. It takes a long time, to walk back and forth to the herbalist. If there isn´t one, the working brake is much shorter.

Third picture
The start went well. I don´t think I had this much food in my stores to any time later in the game. I guess it made me a bit over-optimistic; too many nomads, too early.

Fourth picture

I stopped the game here. There is some food in my store but only because I had some in my trading port, that I put back. I see no chances to produce enough food next year. The area is over-hunted, the herds are getting smaller and smaller. The people idle too much to pick enough wild food in the forest in summer and I don´t have enough goods to sell, to buy much food.

I tried to farm. First I bought some rye seeds. I tried it for 4 years; maybe totally 100 rye (2 times 0). I remember that turnips grow a bit better when it´s cold, so I ordered some seeds but this idle farmer is hopeless. It wasn´t a very cold year but he needed to idle and go to the herbalist so often, that when I wanted to start the harvest in August, the field wasn´t even fully planted! And when he finally started to harvest, he harvested 1 (!) plant, then went away to the trading port to idle. When he was back, the temperature has reached the freezing point and very little turnips were harvested. So, I guess farming can be forgotten on harsh, at least as long as you can´t get your farmers happy.

Fifth picture
Production numbers.

These turf houses are really lovely. But I´m not sure I like the happiness detraction. I can understand your arguments for this @Tom Sawyer; that an old fashioned house without windows and furnace isn´t very comfortable but this also makes them quite useless. And that´s a pity. I can´t think of any scenario where it really would make sense to build them.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: RedKetchup on February 28, 2019, 08:55:48 AM
Quote from: Nilla on February 28, 2019, 01:58:56 AM
After playing these two nice and easy games with RKEd, (not without challenges, if you want to play well but no problems to survive)

i am so sorry >< if i make it harder... people dont like :P
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Tom Sawyer on February 28, 2019, 01:36:27 PM
Nice to see you back with blogs and also fighting through the harsher conditions @Nilla. Maybe it can give me some fuel to go further with version 7.

The scenario for turf houses is actually a new "Seafarer" start where you settle far west in a rough land with small birch grooves and struggling with wood as a rare resource. Also in North 7, log cabins will need some window glass. That will make turf houses to the best choice there in early game with good warmth and low building costs. The happiness penalty hits you in this Ironman game but normally it's not so relevant at the very beginning where you don't have chapels and taverns. It will be the reason to upgrade your first housing to log cabins and then to chic cottages. This idea is of course not yet obvious with North 6 and the preview turf house. :)
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on February 28, 2019, 02:21:33 PM
Quote from: RedKetchup on February 28, 2019, 08:55:48 AM
i am so sorry >< if i make it harder... people dont like :P

Don´t be sorry, Red. Not every mod need to be survival extreme and as you know, there are challenges when you play RKED as well but in a different way. And I wouldn´t like to play "Ironman" all the time.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on February 28, 2019, 01:36:27 PM
Nice to see you back with blogs and also fighting through the harsher conditions @Nilla. Maybe it can give me some fuel to go further with version 7.

The scenario for turf houses is actually a new "Seafarer" start where you settle far west in a rough land with small birch grooves and struggling with wood as a rare resource. Also in North 7, log cabins will need some window glass. That will make turf houses to the best choice there in early game with good warmth and low building costs. The happiness penalty hits you in this Ironman game but normally it's not so relevant at the very beginning where you don't have chapels and taverns. It will be the reason to upgrade your first housing to log cabins and then to chic cottages. This idea is of course not yet obvious with North 6 and the preview turf house. :)

We´ll see, how long this game will last and if it can give any output. I don´t even know if it´s possible to develop a settlement on "harsh". Have you tried it? Or do you know of anyone who has? And I´m pleased, that you have thoughts about scenarios, where the turf houses make sense. They are too nice to be neglected. But you are wrong about detraction having no importance at the beginning. If the workers produce average 20% more with 5 stars than with 3, it makes sense to assign a priest for 5 adults. With the turf houses, you´ll need alcohol as well. Harder at the beginning but probably relevant, if we settle in the Viking period. ;)
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Tom Sawyer on February 28, 2019, 03:23:04 PM
Yes, let's see how it works in the new version but with your Vikings in overseas, you will probably not have another choice than turf houses at the beginning. Just like the real guys also did not have. Ironman on Nordic harsh is brutal for sure. I played it for testing but did not try how big a settlement can grow there. Also, I don't remember if it was before or after we changed the happiness, which made it even harder. Maybe I should do such a test too but actually, watching your attempts is more fun. ;D
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 01, 2019, 01:49:21 AM
More fun watching? :-\  Probably!  :P But it's also pretty fun to try this.

I just realized, that I only made one screenshot yesterday and no save at all to go back and show something. Busy surviving! And yes, I think I now have a better strategy to survive this a bit longer. This game has very little to do with my usual games, where I like to grow as fast as I can. 13 years; 11 inhabitants!  :P ??? ::) :-\  I'll tell you a bit about my strategies with the pictures. The map and settings are the same as in my first attempt. I just changed the name.

First picture
This game only had 1 child from the start. As she got adult, she became a much finer house than the rest of the population. In Ironman children get adults/students with 12 and move together with 16 (or maybe 15?). It will take long until she gets a mate.

My first strategy: never more than 50% children/students. But of course, I want the settlement to grow, so as Elleen became a labourer, I let her move out to give room for a sibling in the small goahti. Later I plan to make some of the inhabitants happy. That's the reason that I built the cottage without happiness detraction. It has room for 3 children. That may be a hazard later but I will let people move around between the houses in order to have the number of children I want.

Second strategy: no nomads until we have sustainable support of produced food and export goods.

Second picture
Year 13. Still no more houses. Elleen changed homes for a short time with one of the couples: The consequence; little Montgomer. So now one family of 4 are squeezed together in that small hut while Elleen again lives alone in the big house. Life isn't fair in this settlement!

Another major difference between my first attempt and this is, that I now hunt more sustainable. As I stopped that game, there were often no deer to be seen, here you can see some smaller flocks close and there's also one big flock just outside the picture; there's now deer somewhere close, every time I want to send a hunter.

We are staffed for the summer on this picture. More or less everyone is out in the woods, picking berries and mushroom. (It was a bad, cold year).

Third picture
Here we are staffed for the winter. From time to time I change some occupations and productions.

You can see here, that I build a wagon vendor. It's very early for that and it's seldom occupied. I built it because I had problems to distribute the food I bought. It looks like the trader prefers the barn behind the sheep pasture. It was full of bread and cabbage but in the houses, there were mostly meat and fish. Maybe it was a mistake to build it so far away but I want it there to shorten the ways, the people who picked wild food need to walk.

I've built a herbalist but I'm not using it all the time. I want to find out if it makes sense. My feeling so far, is that it doesn't pay off but I don't like people without stars, so I will continue my experiments.

The food graph looks good. The big drop a few years ago came as I put some food (mostly smoked meat) into the trading post.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Tom Sawyer on March 01, 2019, 04:19:56 PM
It looks good and way more stable so far. Maybe the problem in your first attempt was just caused by the effort in crop farming, buying seeds and all the work without yield on harsh. To not rush with the chapel can also be a good idea. I think in general under extreme conditions, it's risky to spend resources where the effect is not yet worth it. With the herbalist it's probably the same or worse. Will be interesting how you judge herbalism here. I doubt it pays off but difficult to estimate. Also, could be interesting to somehow note or compare Ironman games on Nordic harsh to see how far towns can grow under the hardest conditions and with what strategies. :)
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 02, 2019, 02:36:10 AM
I feel much more comfortable in this game. I guess you are right @Tom Sawyer; in such extreme games, you can't afford to spoil resources or working time on anything that gives too little back. But in that game, my main mistake was the growth. I tell a bit more about how it has worked this time to the pictures.

First picture
Oh, no! Dysentery! I have no doctor. You can build a vanilla hospital but I don't find it fitting in these surroundings. The bad thing is, that a person who is sick without a doctor, can never be happy. (At least as far as I saw in my earlier games.) But luckily only this one fisher got sick. Besides, I guess it will take some time until I can work with the happiness.

The main strategy for food is pastures. I process the mutton to smoked meat. It doesn't give much more food but you increase the trade value from 2 to 3. I also process wool and tallow for export. I let one herdsman "manage" two pastures. We'll see later; maybe it can even be 3.

The hunter out in the woods is very successful. I estimate that I hunted about 10 deer each year manually in that other game and the deer got very rare. As far as I remember the hunting lodge is sustainable. But I can't really understand the difference.

Second picture
On your homepage @Tom Sawyer it says that in Ironman and Norseman women can have children until 45. I don't think it's correct. It looks more like 40 is the limit.

Now the village has a chapel and I have taken 1 nomad couple so far.

I have found a strategy for using the herbalist in a way that might make sense; I use it to support a fast recovery of health when I have a full diet. If I don't have all the food categories, I let the health drop but as soon as I get grain and more vegetables, I also let the herbalist work until I have 4-4½ star.  I don't know if it pays off but at least it looks better without costing too much. I'm pretty sure, that it doesn't pay off, to use the herbalist to raise the health, if you don't have a balanced diet.

Third picture
The food graph looks good.

You can see the content in my trading port (There's a lot of different "stuff", so I cut in the rest right in the menu). I order bread and cabbage from some merchants but I don't always order and buy other vegetables, grain, salt, sugar, gold, silver, iron, tools when I can afford it. If someone brings cattle I will also buy it (if it takes too long I will even order some) I only sell to the higher price. My estimation is that I can't afford to sell anything to the lower price in this game.

Fourth picture
The output from my hunter went down. I don't think it's overhunting. I followed the hunter, it seems to be a religious guy because he was constantly on his way to the chapel (idling). It looks like he spent more time on the road than by hunting. After I built this well out in the woods the output has improved. And there might be a fire out there far away from the river, so I guess this well pays off.

You can see at the inventory, that there's a lot of meat. But as I said; that's the strategy. The amount of blueberries and mushrooms will soon increase. A lot of people are out in the woods.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 03, 2019, 12:34:29 AM
I've played with the same strategy for some more years. It works; not too much to report. The first death of old age was an initial settler in his early 50s. Times are hard but that's much earlier than in a vanilla game.

First picture
Overview of the whole settlement. The pastures are good. Sheep and cows don't idle! ;) I´ve said it before; I find the output of milk is low compared to meat. These are more beef cattle. I would prefer milk cows.

It has been a while since there was a merchant with a boatload of grain and vegetables. The health has dropped to 3 stars. I don't use a herbalist here but I will again when I have all kind of food.

Second picture
Food graph: things under control. The drop some years ago came after I built the second trading port.

Third picture
The output of the hunter has gone down a little bit but it looks sustainable and still very good; mostly 700, 800, 900 venison and a few birds.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Tom Sawyer on March 03, 2019, 04:05:25 PM
Yes, these animals are much better workers... never idling, freezing or starving. Only need some hugs from a herder to breed. ;D

I checked my citizen mods and you are right. For some reason the value of max age for childbearing is set to 40 years. I was sure we talked about it and I changed it to 45. But obviously I did not.

The max age of people is set to 70 years with a tolerance of 20, so from 50 - 90 as your have seen in your game. I changed it for a smaller range from 60 - 90 which also means an increased average age of natural death of 75. I want to update both mods but will wait for your suggestions. Maybe you find some more things or others have suggestions how to tweak the people.

Your herbalist strategy sounds reasonable and while I'm looking at the citizen code... There are 2 values defining health state, maxHealth = 10.0 (5 hearts in half steps) and unhealthyLevel = 8.0. Means a citizen counts already as unhealthy with 4 or below 4 hearts and I guess a lower health or even 0 hearts does not have any other effect than the fixed higher risk to get hit by a disease. So, if your herbs are not enough to close the gap up to almost full health together with a good diet, then they are actually useless or even lead to addicted people always on the road to a herbalist.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 05, 2019, 01:20:26 AM
Quote from: Tom Sawyer on March 03, 2019, 04:05:25 PM
Yes, these animals are much better workers... never idling, freezing or starving. Only need some hugs from a herder to breed. ;D
I´ve tried to check out how big difference in growing it is, to employ a herdsman for 1, 2 or 3 fields. It´s hard to say for sure in this game (because of all idling, eating....) but it looks like the difference between 1 and 2 fields is less than between 2 and 3 fields. So I normally, I employ 1 herdsman for 2 pastures. If I have an uneven number, say 5; I use 3 herdsmen. If it´s a warm summer I might take them all away to pick blueberries in July and August.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on March 03, 2019, 04:05:25 PM
I checked my citizen mods and you are right. For some reason the value of max age for childbearing is set to 40 years. I was sure we talked about it and I changed it to 45. But obviously I did not.

The max age of people is set to 70 years with a tolerance of 20, so from 50 - 90 as your have seen in your game. I changed it for a smaller range from 60 - 90 which also means an increased average age of natural death of 75. I want to update both mods but will wait for your suggestions. Maybe you find some more things or others have suggestions how to tweak the people.
In this Ironman game I was quite relieved when no children were born after the women were 40 but in a Norseman game, I want fast growth and would like it, when it was longer. Maybe it could make sense to keep it 40 in Ironman, increase it to 45 in Norseman. I can live with it in any of these ways but it´s good when the description tells the right number.

I don´t really mind a large interval in which people can die of old age. But I find one thing important; the age difference of a couple ought to be adapted to this. I´ve played some ageing mods that reduce this to 15 years. With young couples, it hardly matters but there was a lot of single widows/widowers occupying houses. I´m not sure, how it is here but if people can die of old age between 60 and 90, the max age difference of a couple should also be set to 30 years.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on March 03, 2019, 04:05:25 PM
Your herbalist strategy sounds reasonable and while I'm looking at the citizen code... There are 2 values defining health state, maxHealth = 10.0 (5 hearts in half steps) and unhealthyLevel = 8.0. Means a citizen counts already as unhealthy with 4 or below 4 hearts and I guess a lower health or even 0 hearts does not have any other effect than the fixed higher risk to get hit by a disease. So, if your herbs are not enough to close the gap up to almost full health together with a good diet, then they are actually useless or even lead to addicted people always on the road to a herbalist.
I think too, that a herbalist has in fact very little importance; it´s more "cosmetics". I´ve looked a bit more careful; with herbs, the recovery is faster when they have a full diet, they will get there without herbs as well but it takes about the double of time. I can also tell when I have 4 harts average, most people have 4½-5 and a few people (often the fisher) less.

One question @Tom Sawyer; if I remember it right you have increased to probability to get a disease if you have bad health; maybe this could be played with a little more to make the gameplay more interesting.

I´ll write about the game later.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 05, 2019, 12:08:50 PM
Why does this always happens in my games! Again I had a bug! People get stuck in the mountain far away on the other side of the lake, where they starve or freeze to death! In our Nordic mythology, we do have the word "Bergtagen" (taken by the mountain), I'm no expert on mythology but if I remember it right, it can happen, that trolls steal people; mainly young women and keep them in their homes in the mountain. Maybe the cunning @Tom Sawyer has added a "Bergtagen" effect to Banished. But in that case, I guess we should at least from time to time see a troll.

It started after a big fire. The 15-year-old daughter from one of the homeless families was the first to be taken. (Yes, a young maiden! ::) ) I didn't look at the other two who went missing; maybe young women as well.

In that other game, I stopped this weird behaviour by building bridges across the rivers and streams. But that was not this far and fully happy people with a normal appetite. I don't think it's possible to build anything that far away with Ironman. The people will turn around to idle or starve to death before they get home again.

So I decided to stop this game. What can I say more about it?

It's very tough to play Ironman on harsh. One of the problems is, that the trade doesn't really work. I had 3 small trading ports but that's not enough for maybe 40 people. To get along, you absolutely need the high price for everything you sell. That means that many merchants are useless, unless you have managed to "buy" some coins from the merchants who want your goods. But that isn't easy, because you also need to order bread and vegetables to get enough of it. I should have built a large trading port. I don't know if it would have helped. But at least worth a try.

I tried to make at least some of the inhabitants happy. I have 6 nice houses all in the area of all happiness buildings except an inn, but when I assigned a priest only 3 adults were happy. All of the children who lived in the area were happy but none of the original settlers. Normally most of the adults should have been happy but I guess the conditions have been too hard for too long: No house at the beginning, bad diet, a long time in a house with happiness detraction........

Yesterday I wasn't sure if I wanted to start a new ironman game or not but I've been thinking and have a few ideas, so I will start a game after I've posted this. I've cleaned the registry and downloaded the game fresh; ON we go!

First picture

Fire!
It's quite annoying but I kind of like that fire is a bad thing, that not only one or two houses are destroyed. I remember how it was in the very first version of Banished where more or less a whole town could be destroyed. I was quite disappointed when it was changed in the patch to this lame version we have now. I could never understand why people complained so much about it, that Luke felt he needed to change it. You mustn't play "disasters on", but when you do you want disasters not minor nuisances.

Now in this location, the well doesn't help. Everything except it was burned down. I guess it's because there aren't enough people close to extinguish the fire. Good to know!

Second picture
Young Symond disappeared into the mountain.

Third picture
There are trolls in more than one mountain on this map. The other two persons disappeared in a different place.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: galensgranny on March 05, 2019, 02:39:48 PM
Oh my!  Trolls taking people!  ???   
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: RedKetchup on March 05, 2019, 02:55:54 PM
oh all the fire thing.... you can have a seperate addon that will make it harder :D
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 06, 2019, 01:08:17 AM
Quote from: galensgranny on March 05, 2019, 02:39:48 PM
Oh my!  Trolls taking people!  ???   
Trolls! Yes, @galensgranny it seems so. I would gladly pass them on to you or @Abandoned. You two would have made much more out of it in your stories!

Quote from: RedKetchup on March 05, 2019, 02:55:54 PM
oh all the fire thing.... you can have a seperate addon that will make it harder :D
I think I have! :) Tom has "improved" the fire effect. And I do like it better this way! You know me, I´m a bit weird!  :-[

Now to my game. I thought I had such brilliant ideas but none of them really fell out the way I thought.

Changed strategy: No effort at all to give the people a healthy diet. Give them the cheapest; meat and fish. Don´t process anything for just a small profit. (This strategy might work but the means didn´t)

Use the mods I have loaded full: Use the Food Merchant from Kid´s Tiny mod, that I have loaded because of the town hall. Use the Tiny Fisher, where you can put two fishers in the same site and so on. Now, the tiny food merchant brings 125 food once a year at the most (population 13). That´s not even enough for 1 Ironman Banni! Each Banni his own port? That doesn´t work! You can put two fishers in the tiny fishing dock but one catches less than the Nordic fisher. You can only use one in the Nordic dock but he also needs less space. I remember that Kid´s tiny mod is good balanced. That´s one of the reason, I´ve always liked it. So no real complaints about this.

Buy only the cheapest food; fish and meat. Sell expensive blueberries and mushrooms, together with the not eatable surplus and export goods, Buy only the cheapest food; fish and meat. But no merchant from the trading dock offers any! Normally that´s good. I would never want to buy it anyway. But here it was part of my survival strategy.

After I´ve realized that it didn´t work the way I thought, I stopped the game. The strategy might work anyway with a slight modification. I will try it but maybe not as my next game.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Tom Sawyer on March 06, 2019, 04:26:22 AM
Those trolls are really an issue. I have heard, the female trollets are even the worst, taking young men and so on but in version 5 or 6, I added a new suppression function to the map generator. Some people might have seen this in the loading screen. It should be better since then but maybe it's not really working.

With merchants from other mods, I would be carefully. They are often not so present here taking a long time between visits and bringing only a few resources. When it comes to supporting a settlement far north in harsh climate, it can also be a strategy to order exactly what you need, even for the 25% mark-up. Just imagine a full boatload of grain instead of a small chance to get only one or two stacks in the lucky bag of a merchant.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Tom Sawyer on March 07, 2019, 02:13:19 AM
I did not answer about health and the chance of diseases, @Nilla. In Ironman, these values are unchanged but it's a good question if to do this or at first how it actually works. As with the happiness and other things we can only guess or test how it's calculated. I will just write my knowledge here since your blogs are always also nice discussion threads.

In the external resources (which we can mod) are 3 chances of disease.. for healthy and unhealthy people as well as arriving nomads/merchants. Every chance is defined by 2 values (years and population) and they work probably as divisors like Luke used it in other cases too.

RandomSelection _diseaseChanceHealthy
{
   float _years = 20;
   float _population = 500;
}


In my understanding this means 1 case of disease of 500 citizens every 20 years. So, especially in early game it should be very unlikely to get hit with healthy people. Let's look at unhealthy:

RandomSelection _diseaseChanceUnhealthy
{
   float _years = 1;
   float _population = 400;
}


As we guess from the other code snipped, this is the case of a health at or lower than 80% (4 hearts) and it is 1 of 400 people every year. If this interpretation is right then it is a 25 times higher chance with a bad diet.

In simple numbers it means 0,01 % chance to get a disease for every banny every year, increased to 0,25% if unhealthy. If you have 100 unhealthy people, it's already 25% chance to get a case of disease in your town this year. Question is, should these values be changed to make things more interesting or is it actually good as it is. I was not sure back then and kept vanilla values. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts. :)
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: brads3 on March 07, 2019, 05:50:29 AM
these behind the scene's formulas that LUKE uses make the game interesting but frustrate modders. you say 25% chance to get sick if un-healthy.
the formula seems to be far more complex. how un-healthy,per star drop? plus i do wonder if the un-happiness changes you made have some affect. in other words a bannie who is down to half hearts plus unhappy will be more likely to get sick than say a bannie who is very happy but have 1 less health heart.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 07, 2019, 06:59:21 AM
These values sound interesting. My feeling from all the games I've played says, that I think you've interpreted the codes right. And as far as you've seen the difference is only between 4 and 4½ star. That's pretty blunt. My guess is also that it's not the average value that counts, each individual is calculated extra.

Can this be tweaked to make the gameplay more complex (and fun at least for people like me) in a similar way, as you did with the happiness? The difference in probability between 0,01 % and 0,25 % for a disease for each Banni is already big but the values are low. Now it seems to pay off to have a perfect diet, perfectly distributed over the place but there's no difference between quite a good diet and a real miserable diet. I guess the code doesn't allow to have more steps than these two; healthy/unhealthy. Nothing in between or worse. A pity.

If my assumption is right, I find the cut between 4 and 4½ stars on the right spot. In a normal game, after the initial years, you will have no big difficulties to get 4 stars but more might be trickier on an individual basis. Maybe it would be fun to get a more visible punishment; to increase the probability say at least 10 times for the unhealthy people. It would really make it pay off to have a good diet, well distributed to every corner and enough herbalists.

First picture
Anyhow, I decided to give the ultimate challenge; "Ironman on harsh" a final chance. I had a save from my attempt with the Mini Food Port just before I started to build it. I played some years after that. Now, I will start to build a large port soon.

Second picture
It's ugly but it illustrates that not all weird things in Banished are bugs. Here are two:

The sheep pastures produce no wool! A bug? No, the limit for textiles is reached but there's no sign for it on the pasture. (Maybe it's possible to add one to the pasture)

Macker, the builder was found out in the woods on the other side of the small stream; too far away from the filled stores, so he died of starvation. The troll bug again? No, it was a man and I have never heard of these troll women who fancy young men. And besides I was careless when I searched for gold, made a mistake and clicked on one gold piece on the other side of the stream without a bridge and the obedient Macker went to get it.  :( :'(
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Tom Sawyer on March 07, 2019, 01:00:45 PM
I have the story about Bergatrollet and Herr Mannelig from Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2kc570KwUs). It also can be found in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herr_Mannelig). I have read again and she seems not so evil actually. :)

About health I had the same thoughts.. It's too simple and there should be more than one step. Best would be a higher risk with every lost heart or any other kind of scaling. But it's not possible to mod. And if we have only this one cut then I also think that from 4 to 4.5 is the right spot just because there is the difference to a managed diet or to the use of herbs. And also yes, 25 times higher sounds much but almost nothing x 25 is still almost nothing. To make the chance higher may be a good adjustment. Another thing can be to make some diseases more dangerous for a higher impact on your settlement. This usually makes events more interesting than just increasing their frequency and we have access to them.

The sheep pasture can be fixed I think. If not even to remove this textile limit there. It is actually more confusing than useful for sheep farming because not a specific wool limit.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 08, 2019, 02:58:26 AM
OK, @Tom Sawyer, I give up! It's "proved" that also female trolls might fancy handsome young men. But if I read the poem right, the troll woman tried to bribe the man but when he still didn't want to marry her, she went away. She didn't steal him. And as I said, I'm no mythology expert and the trolls I've heard of steal young girls, preferable princesses, like on the picture.

I might have cracked the code! A prosperous settlement playing Ironman on harsh. My settlement is still small but it produces quite a large surplus and I have no intentions to let it grow fast out of control. This time I follow these 3 strategies.
1. Patience! Let it grow very slow. Control the number of children. Use houses for small families. First I had only 1 person houses, now I have started to also build the turf houses for 4 people, but I might relocate young couples to the goathi and give elder couples the larger houses. Resist the temptation to take a lot of nomads.
2. Don't give one thought on happiness and health. Let them eat meat and fish, import only the cheapest.
3. Process as little as possible: Keep it simple. Sell wool instead of coats. In the other attempts, I used to smoke meat and sell it for other food categories. If I make "my classic calculation" it's profitable, mainly because it increases the value of the product. But for the Bannis mutton is as good as smoked meat or bread or fruit or anything I can buy.

We will see how long I can follow this. I feel quite comfortable. The production is much simpler, so I can reduce all micromanagement. It makes it easier to run on 5x speed. I just slow it down from time to time to look a little into the houses and to plan some extension of the settlement.

I use the large port to sell various goods and order much at the two small ports; bread, vegetables, roasted meat (the only goods you can buy for 2). At the moment I don't need to buy all they bring even when I can.

In one way it's quite a boring game, it's slow, not much is happening but on the other hand, it's very exciting to see, how long this can work.

First picture
Whole settlement. Food graph looks almost ridiculous. Hard to think it's ironman on harsh. It's not a pure Nordic game. I have decided to use the mods I've loaded as far as they make sense. You can see the town hall and hospital from Kid's Tiny mod and the hunter and forester from his Forest Outpost.

Second picture
Here are the reasons for the food graph: High production and mostly meat in the inventory.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 09, 2019, 12:14:42 AM
Yes, I definitely cracked the code. Cracked is maybe too soft; I rather blew it! 100 inhabitants. Very prosperous. It´s a rather boring fast running game, no more micromanagement, no new development. Just a few pastures, houses and barns to be built, a little manual trade, always the same. I even run 10x from time to time, so I think I will stop here. The fun part is done: Finding out if my ideas work. I guess I could go on building pastures until the map is full but repeating the same, isn´t much of a challenge.

First picture
This picture shows the most important source of supply; the pastures. Houses and barns; a lot of barns around them and forest at the edge. You can see, the people only lack two things; health and happiness.

Second picture
You may see on the production numbers, that I don´t really need these two ports to buy anything. In fact, I built the second port to get rid of export goods. I sell for coins but I rarely buy anything. This settlement certainly would need a bank! The inventory shows how this town runs; meat, too much export goods.

Third picture
My starting area and a few graphs.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Tom Sawyer on March 09, 2019, 07:11:25 AM
That's really impressive how your settlement grows in this setup! So, the shepherds are the Ironman champions?^^ Maybe to summarize your strategy as specializing in pasture farming, keeping things small and simple, as well as consequent abstinence from any comfort including health and happiness.

Looking how the Norse people managed their conditions, especially in Iceland and someplace else, it is actually a realistic scenario. They were also pastoral farmers mainly with sheep and cattle, had only small settlements or scattered farmsteads and a simple life without comfort. No fancy houses, big marketplaces, churches or lots of luxuries. Nice how this comes out also in Banished.

One reason why pastures are still so broken on harsh is of course that they have just no connection to the climate. This "shelter/fodder in winter mechanic" would solve it in a great way but not possible to mod and I don't want to replace cows and sheep by simple production buildings. What I already did for v 7 is reducing the output of meat. It will somehow balance it, at least in a general way. And the other thing I want to do is punishing this specialization in an unhealthy diet by increasing the chance and/or the impact of diseases as we said. This I can do now and with a test version of North 7 I have to come up soon. :)
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 09, 2019, 11:37:59 AM
Yes, sheep and cattle are really the champions.

I´m looking forward to test your test version of the North. :)

A few more thoughts about the gameplay.

In the harder starts, you need to hunt a lot to get enough deer hides for clothing: A lot of hunting with the instant hunting tool. Maybe the inhabitants only need a coat every 4 years or so, but each baby needs a coat, so does each nomad and at least I want a small store, to be able to provide this. Since you need to kill 2 deer for each coat, you need a lot of deer.

The venison from the instant hunting tool is necessary at the beginning of a game, where you can´t farm from the start. Maybe 100 meat is a bit high but not all too much. It´s not always so easy to hunt this way, so I don´t want it to be (much) lower. I would rather like, that you only need 1 hide for 1 parka. Let it take longer than now to make one at the campfire, change it to be fair clothes instead of warm clothes, make them only possible to make at the campfire (the new tailor can´t make them but I think the vanilla looking tailor can) and make them uninteresting to sell. I think that this will neutralize the difficulty at the beginning.

About the pastures; Opposite to vanilla, your pastures are free to build. I don´t know if I find this so good. It´s easy to build one, if you want it bigger or locate it elsewhere, demolish it and rebuild it; no costs. After all, there is a small hut at the pasture, so I wouldn´t mind that some wood is needed. I guess, that the output is connected to the animal, not to the pasture; that it´s not possible to make an expensive pasture with a higher output. But maybe it is possible to replace the hut with a more expensive "Fähus" (like some of the pictures connected on the North thread), that can hold more animals on the same space as the normal pasture.

Now there are 3 different pastures, each adapted to a special animal, each of them of different maximum size. That´s fine with me but you can put chicken in the huge cow pasture if you want to. Why this?
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Tom Sawyer on March 10, 2019, 01:10:04 AM
About the parka we had some thoughts here (https://www.banishedventures.com/topic/parkas-op/). I want to keep it as warm coat (because it is a Reindeer Parka) and also from more than 1 animal but making it less interesting for trading is a good idea. From the tailor shop it was already removed if I remember right.

At the pastures I can take a look again. I liked the idea of open pastures because it feels more realistic for me to move a sheep herd to another area without demolishing and building actions, especially over hilly terrain where the fences tend to make glitches. What I would like to add are some more reasonable costs for the small shelter, the coop and such but I could not do this. Pastures have a hard coded function to calculate the costs per surrounding tile (fence segment). I did not see a way to define a fixed amount independent of the dragged size. The only option was to remove the costs at all and to add only small things with neglectable costs. Such a Fähus would be really nice but I have no idea how to include it with reasonable costs and functions.

The different pasture styles are only for aesthetics. If I could, I would limit the animals to avoid chickens in a pasture but except of this, there is actually no reason to misuse them for the wrong animals because they are all free to build. To do this, we would need some custom select groups in addition to field, orchard and pasture. And we could also create some more interesting things with that.

In the last months I had some of such situations with new ideas and trials for acceptable workarounds but at the end impossible to include because of technical limits with the Modkit. A reason for decreasing motivation to mod further at this game. :/
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 10, 2019, 05:25:57 AM
I can understand that it´s frustrating to have ideas that aren´t possible to make real, but remember; you have achieved a lot of gameplay improvements also with the limitations. :)

I can also understand the argumentation around clothes on your homepage. For me, the main reason that I asked for a change, is that it´s boring to have to hunt so much at the beginning. It´s not really difficult but you need to spend a lot of time searching for deer, that could be spent on funnier things. The venison you get "for free" fills the stores and you don´t really need to bother about much other food production at the beginning (other than for diversity). I can´t remember that I´ve ever used the trout fisher early in a game. As I said; I would find the gameplay right at the beginning more funny, if you don´t need to hunt so much for clothes. As far as I´ve seen the export of parkas is not so interesting. I don´t think, that any merchants pay the high price for it. I´ll rather keep them for my population; early and late game and sell wool/leather coats for the higher price (or in Ironman/harsh, sell wool and cowhides).

About the pastures; I like the fenceless pastures, too. I wouldn´t complain about it but it is kind of weird if the small shed would cost much more on a large pasture than on a small. But maybe a small amount of wood would be better than totally free, anyway.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 14, 2019, 05:29:39 AM
I haven't written anything lately but I have played a little. I'm still in the North. It's no way an upsetting game so I haven't blogged it; no Ironman but I want to play with the happiness, so it's Norseman. To make it a bit more challenging it's "harsh" and on a mountain map. I don't know, @Tom Sawyer if you've tweaked the map to give it even more mountains than vanilla or if I'm just "lucky". This map has only one larger spot of land to build on and the starting land isn't very big.

One main goal with this game is to use a lot of trade. I like the principle of trade in the North; the different merchants, the different prices, coins but I'm not totally happy with the whole concept; how it works when you really need to buy a lot of food.

First picture
"Harsh" is really harsh. It's June and it's snowing. No use to try farming. You can see, that it's much more land on this starting spot. The bridge to the other side had to be built fast.

Second picture
A big leap. I have 3 goals.
1. 5 harts.
2. 5 stars.
3. Full education.

1 and 2 are done and 3 on the way. I've started to enter modern times; replacing the old houses with the nice red cottages. The new doctor in the middle looks perfect in these surroundings. It doesn't look like it has something to do with happiness. I never see idlers close.

Since I can't farm, I order bread, cabbage and sometimes pepper (but the merchants don't bring much). In this game, I want to process food, so I also buy salt and sugar when I can. I sell smoked meat and fish, cheese, furs and when I have a surplus also herbs, logs, charcoal and iron ore. I have 2 small and 1 big port. It's barely enough, so I will soon build a second large port. I find that too much for 70 people.

How could this be changed to work better in a case like this? I like the different merchants, the different goods and the different prices. I like the "gambling" part; sell now to a lower price or wait until the right merchant arrive. (at the moment I sell some herbs or fur to the lower price when I'm almost out of bread or vegetables, I have much more smoked meat but I lose 33% instead of 25% here and you all know how stingy I am). In a normal settlement, where you can farm and only need to buy some seeds, animals, salt, sugar, occasional diversity goods or goods you may produce too little of at the moment, the small ports work very well.

One solution could be to let the merchants arrive more often, but I wouldn't like that. It would be annoying, especially if you don't need to trade much. What is, if they bring more goods/coins each time? It could work, but only if the ports can hold more goods. In this game (and remember I don't sell much heavy goods like logs and ore) if I want to buy the maximum 2600 food for coins, I can't buy everything at the same time. I need to wait until some is carried away, before I can buy the rest. Another option could be to keep the small ports the way they are and make two different large ports; one for selling, that could be filled with export goods; you need no space left to buy anything and one for buying from merchants that only take coins with a lot of free space to buy a lot. Maybe you could manage with 1 small and one of each sell and buy large port for some 100 inhabitants.

(Just one small thing to fix in the next update; I wanted to build a second living area. To get everyone happy I need a chapel. I planned it and paused it but the pause sign isn´t shown footprint. No big thing, just something I happened to notice)
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Tom Sawyer on March 15, 2019, 02:35:23 AM
The mountain maps in the North are tweaked but only in terms of streams and lakes. They are not more mountainous than in base game. I think you were just lucky with the main river somehow cutting your starting area.

The quantity of imports I reworked in last version to have it more consistent. Of course, it will never be reasonable for the tiny rowboats but I wanted it in a right ratio comparing stacks of different resources by weight. One result was that a boatload became smaller in general which limits this strategy of supporting a settlement just by trading and I did not mind this effect. But I want to adjust it in new version with new resources. I agree that more food import should be possible. What I don't want is (as you also say) increasing the frequency of boats. I'm satisfied with this and more would become annoying.

I finished the mead hall last days and now want to work at the new trading post. The sketch was made in October, you might have seen it here (https://www.banishedventures.com/diary-october-2018/). It fits exactly the vanilla size to replace it in starting scenery but in general it's still possible to create it with your idea of specialized export and import parts. The high timber-framed storage building to the left could be an export dock with high capacity for stocks and the other one for imports with room for livestock in this kind of barn. I'm not yet really convinced of this splitting idea but will keep it in mind. Or maybe to create them as white dummies to test the trading system with them.
Title: Re: Nilla- back North
Post by: Nilla on March 15, 2019, 06:58:46 AM
I´ll be happy to test whatever you have in mind.

I´ve played some more years. ~100 inhabitants! Now 5 trading ports; 2 small, 3 big.