News:

Welcome to World of Banished!

Main Menu

Mahnogard - Burleysbury (and whatever comes next)

Started by Mahnogard, October 09, 2014, 02:12:08 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Mahnogard

As much fun as I've been having with Malloy Flats, I wanted to start a town where I cut back on mods a bit. So I whittled my mod list from that one (yes, that list below is about 40% shorter than Malloy Flats, believe it or not), got rid of most of the cheatier mods, and started a new town.

Burleysbury

The name came out of the random generator. I liked it because it felt very much like a town name you might find here in Tennessee, and I imagine it would be pronounced by locals, including me, as "Burrs-burr" or maybe "Burls-burr-eh" because we tend to do that. It would never, ever be pronounced as "Bur-lees-ber-ee".

So yes, Burleysbury.

I will come back and post screens of the map info, but for now, here is my mod list. Most of them are pretty easy to find in the usual places, but if anyone wants a link to a particular mod, let me know. I'm too lazy to add them at the moment. :D

- Neckcen's Map Generator
-Bakers & Millers
- Balanced Apiary
-Better Fields
- Better Harvesting - An efficiency tweak - farmers only harvest, not transport to the barn (unless they are done and go into laborer mode). Laborers do all the carrying. While it has the benefit of making it easier to get the max harvest on time, it's balanced by the fact that you need sufficient free laborers to make it work. Otherwise you end up with a bit of a mess with everyone trying to play catch-up.
- Better Schools - increases school capacity to 50 and raises number of teachers to 2 per school. I always build schools in every town area anyway so that they don't have to walk far, so I rarely have more than 20 in a school even with the mod, but this keeps "that one kid" from not getting an education because of a tiny oversight. I really hate when that happens - education is too important to let anyone slip through the cracks! ;D
- Color Tile Road Mod
- Holsteins
- Dairy Mill and Creamery
- Decorative Items Pack
- Immortal Orchard Trees
- Irrelevant Crop Tweak
- Llama Pasture
- Resize Professions Box
- White Chickens
- Sawmill
- Specialized Stockpiles

Once I have all seeds and animals, I'll add Slink's trader mod, too.

I haven't decided yet whether I will take all, some or no nomads. I'm willing to do whatever the first person to posts suggests in that regard. So go ahead, tell me what to do about nomads.

rkelly17

Quote from: Mahnogard on October 09, 2014, 02:12:08 PM
- Neckcen's Map Generator
-Bakers & Millers
- Balanced Apiary
-Better Fields
- Better Harvesting - An efficiency tweak - farmers only harvest, not transport to the barn (unless they are done and go into laborer mode). Laborers do all the carrying. While it has the benefit of making it easier to get the max harvest on time, it's balanced by the fact that you need sufficient free laborers to make it work. Otherwise you end up with a bit of a mess with everyone trying to play catch-up.
- Better Schools - increases school capacity to 50 and raises number of teachers to 2 per school. I always build schools in every town area anyway so that they don't have to walk far, so I rarely have more than 20 in a school even with the mod, but this keeps "that one kid" from not getting an education because of a tiny oversight. I really hate when that happens - education is too important to let anyone slip through the cracks! ;D
- Color Tile Road Mod
- Holsteins
- Dairy Mill and Creamery
- Decorative Items Pack
- Immortal Orchard Trees
- Irrelevant Crop Tweak
- Llama Pasture
- Resize Professions Box
- White Chickens
- Sawmill
- Specialized Stockpiles

Once I have all seeds and animals, I'll add Slink's trader mod, too.

This is AFTER you cut back on mods???  :o

Mahnogard

Quote from: rkelly17 on October 09, 2014, 02:45:56 PM
This is AFTER you cut back on mods???  :o

LOL! Yes, it is. I cut out several that were further into cheat territory (increased production, road speeds, and unlimited mines / quarries), and I also left Fountain Mod and Town & Textiles out of this town. I'm just used to modding games, so long mod lists don't scare me. I love to experiment. Malloy Flats is stable, not a single problem once I installed a fix for the trader crash. I have all production chain items active for everything installed (except cotton crops - SP needs to make a new model for it, rendering the cotton fields causes slowdowns, but I'm growing flax), and it works great. Of course, at the moment that particular town is only up to around 500 people or so, things could change.

I scaled down on this one because now that I've had my fun with some of the new production chains, I decided to stick with the ones I like best, like the Dairy mod.

Pangaea

That's still a massive list of mods! :D Hopefully no crashes though, and all will go well. I'm particularly interested in how the crop tweak works out in practice. I want to include it in the next village.

No grain storage or root cellar, though? Those are definitely going into my next one! :)

Do what you feel is best at the time with nomads. Need more people? Accept with open arms. Got plenty and don't want uneducated dorks? Send 'em packing.

Mahnogard

I'm using both the silo and the root cellars on Malloy Flats, but they hardly ever put stuff in them. I think it's just because I'm not used to using them, so I'm not placing them in ideal locations to get more use. Also, playing on a Plains map means usually few nearby mountains for the root cellars. I really like both of them, though. They look great in-game. RedKetchup does such great work.

As for nomads, I've gone either way in the past - taking all comers to get the pop boost, or denying everyone to keep an educated workforce. I guess I'll decide when they show up.

irrelevant

#5
Interesting thing regarding nomads, as I have been schooled on them by @Nilla, is that although they give you a temporary boost in pop, they also slow down your growth curve. This happens as a result of them occupying your available housing that would otherwise be taken sooner by your breeding pairs as they come of age. Your breeding pairs (isn't that a lovely term?) will now have to wait longer to start their families, and as a result may have only two children instead of three. The nomad families OTOH mainly already have two or three children, so they aren't going to give you any further bump. Unless you already have a surplus in housing, and you have space both for nomads and your own breeders (I crack myself up).

After a few years (maybe 4-5) your pop curve will slope down to where it would have been had you not taken the nomads at all.

Here is the relevant post from @Nilla: http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=327.120

So, if you are desperately short of workers (and in early years, we so often are) take the nomads. If you are just trying to build pop, you probably are better off without them, particularly so after you factor in the chance of disease (says the guy who recently lost 1100 bannies to nomad-induced smallpox  ;) ).

Mahnogard

Haha! I always crack myself up when talking Banished growth mechanics. The worst is when I'm peeking in houses and grumbling, "Why haven't you had a kid yet? Get with it!"

Yeah, I always adjust my building pattern if I take nomads - basically # of nomad families + whatever I'd build for my new couples anyway. Usually by the time they show up, I've got several houses ready to be built, even so far as having the foundations laid, just unpause and build. How's that for a welcome?"Sure, you can stay. Now, go build houses for yourselves, then build five more." I don't even build a boarding house unless I'm getting groups of 30+ because I'll have to build houses regardless.

The thing about nomads is that they can pose a challenge either way. Getting by without them can be a challenge, and taking them in can be a challenge. I generally prefer to tough it out and say no, and keep an educated workforce.

Malloy Flats hasn't taken in any nomads at all and they've gotten three diseases so far. Most recent was the mumps. Haven't lost any people, but it put a dent in my workforce till everyone got better. Sometimes the RNG hates me.

------

Anyway, Burleysbury is now in year 5, going slow and steady. Wood has been an issue because I started in a fairly open area, and the nearest woods (just across the river from the start location) are taken up by a hunter / gatherer cluster. So there's a bit of a hike for cutting down trees. Food was doing so well that I built my market earlier than I anticipated - partly for distribution, but partly so I don't have to start spamming barns this soon. So when I hit 7000 food and 500 firewood, I built it. I want to build the first trading post soon but I need to gather more logs first, otherwise I won't have enough firewood to trade with.

I only missed one kid growing up before I got the school built, so I've got one random uneducated person running around out there. They'll probably have some horrible accident and then I'll be at 100% educated.

I waited a bit on the hunters, so we had no coats for a bit. We've caught up on those now, but there just isn't enough leather so we'll probably run out again. Makes me miss the Extra Leather mod that adds 50% leather yields. Would be awesome if one of the first few trading boats has sheep or llamas.

I was going to post some screenshots but I'll probably wait until tomorrow because I'd rather play than sort out screenshots right now. :D

rkelly17

#7
Quote from: irrelevant on October 09, 2014, 07:40:25 PM
Interesting thing regarding nomads, as I have been schooled on them by @Nilla, is that although they give you a temporary boost in pop, they also slow down your growth curve. This happens as a result of them occupying your available housing that would otherwise be taken sooner by your breeding pairs as they come of age. Your breeding pairs (isn't that a lovely term?) will now have to wait longer to start their families, and as a result may have only two children instead of three. The nomad families OTOH mainly already have two or three children, so they aren't going to give you any further bump. Unless you already have a surplus in housing, and you have space both for nomads and your own breeders (I crack myself up).

After a few years (maybe 4-5) your pop curve will slope down to where it would have been had you not taken the nomads at all.

The other thing that happens with large groups of nomads is that after about 7-10 game years they all die of old age at once and you can go into a serious crisis of available workers. As @irrelevant says, I take them early when they come in groups of two or three families and I am desperate for workers, but become very cautious as time goes on (and my educated quotient gets toward 100%).

Mahnogard

Screenshots!

1) Map view
2) Map Info
3) Start location
4) First year - started with Fishermen, then bridge and Gatherers, and one house near each.
5) Year 2 - Built a woodcutter and the school, only one person missed out on an education. Also, one more house.
6) Year 4 - Blacksmith, and we now have four more houses. Health getting low, need Hunter and Herbalist.
7) Year 7 - Built Tailor, but not much leather due to late start on Hunters. Built Herbalist, just opened. Built market due to barns filling up. Food stocks dipped for a moment and stabilized around 7000. In the next year, added Forester across the river because nearly all close resources have been gathered.
8) Year 10 - built Town Hall - TH first screen is visible, indicating that my one uneducated person is living a long life. Food stocks no longer keeping up, building Apiary and preparing to farm soon.
9) Year 12 - Started Farming (wheat, squash, apples), built Trading Post and already got some chickens.

I like to be mostly self-sufficient - I don't really care to trade for anything but animals and seeds unless I absolutely have to - but I don't think that's going to work here. Having trouble keeping up supply of logs. In a year or two, the Forester should be producing about 300 a year, but that's a drop in the bucket for a growing town. Long walk to nearest resource gathering is taking a toll, especially working around the harvest schedule. Catch-22, have to expand to get closer to resources and improve efficiency, but need resources to expand. So, I'm probably going to have to use up some of my precious logs to build a second trading post to increase the boat traffic. Depending on which direction I choose to expand in, I may put another Forester just to my South, let it plant, then shut it down and send in the laborers to clear it in a few years.

Mahnogard

Oh dear. It never fails. All I have to do is start blogging a game - any game - and everything will fall apart. That's why I don't write Skyrim stories anymore.

Burleysbury is a mess. I've screwed up horribly and I don't feel like fixing it. I'm setting the saves aside and moving on. One day I may look at it and sort it out, but at the moment I just want to make pretty towns and play with mods. :D

Pangaea

Sorry to hear that. Banished can be a brutal master at times. What happened?

Mahnogard

Distribution failure. All homes, 80& of workplaces (ie, everything that wasn't in the woods) and storage were inside the market radii, but my two markets couldn't stay stocked. I tried fully staffing them, and they still couldn't break 60%. So my Bannies had to run around to get "that one thing", whatever they just had to have that wasn't in the market, and things just got worse and worse. I was still trying not to run out of logs on top of that, and my woodcutters were running all over for what there was, because I couldn't get the Bannies who were gathering resources to move the stuff back to the in-town stockpiles fast enough. I would have ordered some from traders, but I didn't yet have much of value to trade with.

The first market was fine for the first several years. It got off a bit eventually, so I added vendors. Waited for the housing to adjust, everything improved and then it started sliding down again. Was up to 12 vendors (like 10% of my adult pop at that time) to keep it stocked. When I started expanding I had to build the second market so I could add more farms. In a few years, I was going through the same thing with that market. Eventually, they were both at 12 vendors each, and barely keeping 60% stocked.

Like an idiot, I thought maybe a third market was in order so I could get my mining operation going, and naturally that one had the exact same issue as the first two markets. I was hoping I could redistribute the demand by expanding toward the mines, but that didn't help. Three markets, 12 vendors each, all sitting at 50% and not making progress.

It looked good. Pathing was pretty decent, I wasn't too spread out, and the main part of town had direct access across the river via three bridges, to get to the hunter / gatherer / herbalist / forester. Had plenty of food - ran a surplus for all but a few years, and never got low. The only thing I was ever low on was leather, which I ended up buying a bunch from traders, and logs, and I never ran out of those. It was like opening a giant department store with tons of stuff, and hiring trained monkeys to stock it. Just never got going properly, no one knew where anything was supposed to go...

Eh, you win some, you lose some.

irrelevant

That doesn't really sound so bad. But if it wasn't pleasing to you, that is finally the only test that matters.

Nilla

Sorry it didn´t work out as you planned. Always like to read these blogs.

But I do not really understand what the problems are. The markets do not always have to be stocked. The people get the stuff they need from the barns and the stockpiles as well. In fact I seldom build many of those (OK in my last game I got a bit inspired from @irrelevant`s SinkMill and built too(?) many ;) ).

Pangaea

It doesn't sound disastrous from my reading either, but you will know the situation better from playing the save. Markets don't have to be full, and rarely are if you have many of them with relatively few people and little food.

If you have decided to retire this game, however, I look forward to the next one.