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Nilla- Going North ; or how to start an easy Nordic game

Started by Nilla, December 14, 2019, 06:20:02 AM

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Nilla

The North 7 is out of beta and I'm back here, after a short "visit" over on @Tom Sawyer's site.

The new version is really nice and beautiful. The new buildings are great, you can get a real "Viking feeling". If you play "mild";  it's nice and easy, if you want a challenge; play "harsh" and if you want a new, different and challenging gameplay; try the new starting option "seafarer", where you are stranded on a new land without deer and with only very slow-growing and slow-spreading birches.

I will show you a game "seafarer" on "harsh". I find, it's as hard as it can get unless you are using an additional "hardmaking mod" like "Ironman" or "Speed Aging". You need a lot of micromanagement at the beginning. I will stay in the Viking period for quite some time and then slowly advance to "modern times". We will see if my plans change along the way.

Especially for my friend @brads3, I will try to show how I work with making people happy. The North and DS happiness-system are principally the same; although the buildings to make people happy/unhappy are a bit different.

I'll tell a bit about this game to the pictures. Of course, it's a spoiler if you want to discover this gameplay by yourself.

First picture
Here we are; 9 people stranded on a harsh island. Very little food left, but fortunately some seed so we can plant some turnips and barley. We also have rye but don't try to farm rye on "harsh". It doesn't work well. You will hardly harvest 100% barley or turnips either but unless the weather is very bad; you'll get some crop - if you don't forget to start the harvest manually. When I play "harsh" my goal is always to get rid of the farming after some time.

Now, these turnips and barley don't help until autumn. In the North, we can't find any wild food until late summer either, on this island there are only a few black grouse that don't give much meat to hunt and a fishing dock needs tar to be built. So, how do we survive until the harvest? Luckily the North have some "tricks"; we have trout and crayfisher.

If you look at the surroundings, you can see some birches. This is a good starting spot with comparably a lot of birches. The ground is full of smaller and bigger stones and ores. With a few exceptions; it's the smaller stones we will need.

Second picture
We have been busy. It's less than 2 years but the settlement takes shape.

You may find the big claypit odd this early in a game. In fact, it was the first thing we made. To take care of the harvest we'll need storage; a lot of storage. Our friend @Tom Sawyer has introduced another obstacle for hardworking settlers; he has increased the weight of vegetables and fruit. Each store needs logs and logs are rare. The small pit houses are the stores that need the least logs but they need clay. You can use small clay spots but they need to be refilled and if we find a nice clean spot, it doesn't take longer to build a large pit that we will need anyway.

We've built: Stockpile, claypit, 2 small pithouse stores, gouahti (just in time for the winter), tar kiln (also for charcoal), woodcutter (not used yet, we've managed to get along with deadwood), small sheep pasture, turf house, fishing dock, blacksmith (we have a few iron bars from start, you can see what we've produced) a turf house and as next we will build a trading port.

Brad, you can see a yellow circle. It's the footprint from the Mead Hall. I've already started to plan for happiness. It will take long until I really start to make anyone happy but I have started to plan how I build at least some of the houses. There will be some houses outside the happiness circles close to working places; among others the goahti. It's for a 3 person family but I want many children in this game so I let the family that already has 3 children move there.

Third picture
Year 5. It doesn't look so much more. You can see that we're out of coats. In the North, you can make simple coats from deer hides at the campfire but here; there are no deer so we must go for the complicated wool coats. First, we need to wait until some sheep can be slaughtered. But in the meantime, we have built a tailor that has produced some wadmal from wool. As next we will build a tannery and make leather from sheepskin, then we can make clothing.

You can see that we've used the big boulder stones to build a crossing over the stream; very handy when you need to save logs. The area was so clean that I've decided to move the sheep down there to a bigger pasture.

Fourth picture
This is luck! This merchant brings a bible, that's rare. These "exotic" merchants don't arrive often and I've never got a bible before without ordering. In test games, it has taken 20 years or more! What's the fuzz about bibles? You need it to build a chapel. Why do I want a chapel this early? This is real-time ageing, I need nomads. In other North games, the Thingstead brings nomads but not on "seafarer".

I talked about the Thingstead. It's the Nordic early Townhall. You can also see that we've managed to make some clothes. Since the first child has reached the age of 12 where she becomes an adult, I'm about to build another turf house. It's not for the lonely child, they will not pair up until they are 15. I will move the family in the goahti to the new house and the child gets the goahti.

brads3

glad to have you back so we can debate this happiness system more.

twilightbreeze

I am finding 7 a bit more difficult than 6. I've tried every option, and they all seem harder. Getting frustrated. Might go back to 6. No offense to Tom, 7 just might be out of my league. Wish there was a way to adjust the difficulty level a bit.
Got my first computer 1984 when it was all dos. Been playing computer games and internet surfing since. SOOO much has changed!! lol.

Nilla

That´s a pity @twilightbreeze, I like most of the new things. But I can agree with you; North 7 is principally a little harder than North 6. I don´t know where your problems are but I mainly see 3 things that are making it tougher:
- Demand for more complex building material, also for some primitive buildings that you need to build more or less from the start; like you need tar to make a fisher, iron fittings to make a tailor, iron fittings and pottery for the frame houses.
- Heavier vegetables and fruit. It takes much longer to harvest vegetables and fruit and you will need a lot of barns.
- Except for the hide coat at the campfire, it´s harder to produce clothes.

But I don´t think this makes the game so much harder that if you´ve enjoyed North 6, you´ll have so much trouble that it makes no fun to play. After I read your entry @twilightbreeze, I decided to change the game I´m playing in this blog. First, I choose it as hard as I could; "Seafarer on Harsh". Now, instead, I will choose as easy start conditions as I can; "Villager on Mild". I will also try to tell a bit about how I think at the beginning.

Today is again a lot of sport. I like watching sport on TV and play Banished. So I will play a year or two and then write a bit here on WOB and show some pictures; so to say make a how to start a Nordic game. I hope it will be a small "How to start a Nordic game".

twilightbreeze

On the settings with no seeds or livestock, it is harder to harvest wild foods cos they don't show up in enough quantity to keep a group fed thru the winter until late summer, and then you can't collect enough in time before they fade tn the colder weather. And the hunting and fishing are to slow. Just so much harder, and that makes it harder for me to enjoy.
Got my first computer 1984 when it was all dos. Been playing computer games and internet surfing since. SOOO much has changed!! lol.

Nilla

Unless you play "seafarer" and that´s a real challenge, I don´t think there are any changes between North 6 and 7 when it comes to picking wild food and fishing. However, the herds of deer are a little bit smaller but that doesn´t hurt much, there´s still enough to survive a start. And I think, these options without seeds are meant to have a tough start. There are other starting options, that gives you a nice relaxed game. I´ll show one here. So why not try one of these options; you´ll get all the new lovely buildings and gaming tweaks but not the surviving struggle.

I´ll start to write even before I start to play.

First, I will speak about how I choose a map. Normally I  more or less "take what I get" but if it´s a difficult game or if you want something special, it may be good to think a bit more. I would reject the map on the first picture; the starting spot is too far away from the river and totally flat. I would also reject maps where you start on an "island"; squeezed in between water or between mountains. The map on picture two is good enough; close to the river, space around it, there´s a close stream and even a couple of small mountains in the area. You can see the map seed and settings.

First, I put two fields on free spots, as close to the existing stores as possible, each about 100 tiles large. No big effort to place them, use free spots. They can be moved after the first harvest. If they have different size, use the smaller for the heavier turnips the other for barley. We also have rye and flax that we may use later but barley has a higher output than rye and as long as we can´t process rye to flour and bread, barley is better.

Then I use a trick from @smurphys7; put a small hunter at the edge of the map, if possible behind some mountain. He will walk back and forth and if he sees a deer or grouse on his way, it will be killed. It gives good output and I find it´s a natural way to hunt; take your equipment and take a walk out in the forest. If you see some wild animal; kill! (Third picture)

I said it was good that there was a stream close. We have 1000 food for 15 people and the hunter will provide us with meat, so it will not be absolutely necessary to produce more food at once but we can put a few cray fishing spots at the stream, anyway, just to be sure. 1 gatherer will go from one spot to next.

It´s good to think about happiness right from the start. I like to put the footprint of the mead hall in a suitable place early. When I´m trying to make people happy, I build homes in a dense village and place fields, orchards, pastures and most production buildings right outside it. (Fourth picture)

There are two small stores from start but that will not be enough to store the harvest. There are stores you can build with only logs and stones but I will keep this pit house style and start with more small pit house stores. So we´ll need clay. I prefer the big clay pit. Claypits deplete and the largest can be flooded to a fishpond opposite to the other.

It´s also wise to start to think about tools production from the beginning. In North 7 we have some iron bars from the start at many starting options. This makes the initial tool production easier. But we´ll still need charcoal. I prefer to use the tar kiln. It makes as much charcoal from each firewood as the "normal" charcoal pit and you got pit, that you need to for some buildings, so to say as a bonus. Fifth picture

Now it´s time to start the game.

Nilla

There was slalom, ski cross country, biathlon and now ski slalom again; some time to play a few years and watch. We are not very successful but at least just made our second second place for today.

First picture
Autumn 1 ( @Tom Sawyer, why don´t I have the months at the menu in this game?)
We´ve produced some clay and charcoal, built a couple of more small stores, cleared ground for a pasture in the south of the village. Now everyone is out in the woods picking blueberries but the pasture will be built as next, together with a blacksmith. You can see, we have 4 hides; the hunter in the outback has killed 4 deer. Maybe the spot isn´t perfect. I will leave it there for a while and then maybe move it and try another spot.

You can see that the crayfish spots are depleted. We have no lack of food and I want to avoid micromanagement in this game, so I will delete them but they can be reused if we need food.

Second picture
Late summer 2
Almost a year later; the sheep have got a home, we have produced some tools and iron fittings, we also have a fisher and an apple orchard.

Third picture
Autumn 3
We have prepared for clothes production. The tailor has produced some wadmal and as soon as the berries out in the woods are picked, we will make some leather from the deer hides and finally; some clothes. We´ve also made pottery; it´s needed to build more frame houses for the youngsters who just became adults. It´s still time, they will not move in together until they are 15. To make room for the new houses I have moved the fields.

You can also see that we now have a town hall menu.

Fourth picture
We have built a Thingstead and in front of it a graveyard, just in case. It will take long until anyone dies of old age but there might be accidents, illnesses or childbirth deaths and we want a happy population.

Nilla

There´s still sport not very successful at the moment.

First picture
April 5
We now have a trading port. I will not support this settlement with trade. I want some cows, maybe some other seeds, later some glass and maybe a bible (I don´t think the vikings could produce glass) but I want to stay in the pagan times a bit longer and don´t build any medieval or more modern buildings yet, so it can wait. I don´t produce special trading goods so I have looked for gold. Don´t forget the streams, wenn you search for gold, it will probably pay off to build a bridge just to get it.

I´ve moved the small hunter to another spot; almost too much venison now. I´ve closed the fisher; we don´t need that much protein and I will also take the hunter away for some time. The main "problem" is full barns. I can´t build enough of them. I should probably build a couple of bigger barns but I will persist in this style a bit longer.

I´ve also built a small woodcutter cabin out in the woods. It only cut trees, doesn´t plant anything. Here is a thing I usually micromanage all the time; I build the hut and a normal chopper close to each other. First I let the woodcutter cut trees until there´s a big pile of logs on the stockpile, something like a year. Then I just switch to cut firewood. This way the forest can "rest". If you let the woodcutter cut trees all the time, the trees will get sparer.

Second picture
September 6
This is luck. The second merchant brings cattle, without ordering. We have started to harvest apples, so we don´t need to send anyone out in the woods to pick berries. Since it takes some time to get some fruit, I've aslo built a second orchard. The population has grown, we´ve taken 2 couples of nomads. The Thingstead attracts nomads, I want to take all of them.

Third picture
March 6 (It´s after September 6)
I don´t think, I´ve shown one winter picture and I do like the winter light. I have started to work with happiness. Now we have a sauna. We also have a couple of new fields.

Tom Sawyer

That's a nice idea to make a game under easy conditions with some introduction. Otherwise one could get an impression the mod would be difficult. ;D

I think there is already a good range from easy farming in mild climate up to survivor stuff in harsh. But might be good to have some more options to play easy. I think A&E is what many people choose just for the nice setup and not for the difficulty it naturally has. Maybe to help them out a bit more. I would like to get some more specific feedback what feels too difficult.

In your overview window it shows seasons, in second window for "Viking Villages" it shows an old nordic calendar and in third for modern times it has the Christian calendar.

Nilla

Oh, I should have used the Viking Calander. I will not need glass and bricks for a long time.

This entry is for @brads3 (and anyone else who´s interested in happiness).

First picture
I only want to show the nice longhouse Mead Hall without a lot of menus. If you look at the last picture, there was a sauna and a well and most houses are in the influence of the trading port with happiness circle. There´s no effect on happiness. Of course not now either, we haven´t produced any ale.

Second picture
Now we have a well, a market (Wagon Vendor), a sauna (must be replaced by a doctor in a DS game), a Mead Hall (still without alcohol) and a pagan idol (can be replaced by a chapel or a cemetery with happiness function (not the Nordic cemetery)); still no effect on happiness.

Third picture
Now the Mead House has produced some ale and happiness is "skyrocketing": It´s simply all or nothing.

There are still a few houses outside all these circles. That´s why it´s "only" 4½ stars. All people living inside have 5 stars. If this would have been turf houses, my guess is that hardly anyone would be happy. They take away the effect of one "happiness maker". We would have needed a priest as well.

If this would have been a game with a harder start; where people had a period of no homes, no coats, illness without a doctor, bad diet or some other bad conditions my guess is that only some people inside the circles would have been happy. Also here a priest would have worked in most cases.

Fourth picture
Two more wells and another sauna didn´t have any effect. But after I also built 2 more pagan idols, everyone is happy.

If you look at the fields, you can see the effect of the heavy turnips. The other fields are empty but there are still turnips left on the fields. The farmers only harvest a few until they must go to the store. It takes a long time, even when the turnip fields are smaller than the others.

brads3

adding more building materials has changed the game play.it has not made the game overly difficult but does change the flow of the game. it will take some adusting for the players. we have to plan ahead more and do more micro-managing.

      i am using RKEC and DS IND in my current map. thou i have many options,i still have to color between the lines in order to build the nice DS buildings. knowing i would need all kinds of materials and not sure what for each building, i started making a few of each early on. 50-100 bricks,tiles, iron fittings,etc. a few of these and a few of those made  over a couple years. this way when i wanted to build, i already had most of the required supplies. i think the same idea would work in the NORTH.

brads3

when i say all or nothing, the bannies show 3 stars no matter what i build. i have found a bannie or 2 that has full happiness. i never see a small gain to their stars or the main info menu. whereas it looks like you do see the happiness improve whie building. i think you mean we have to give the bannie all the required buildings to make them fully happy.

      i did some testing with CC radius mods yesterday. what i see is not every mod has happiness added to it. or do all backsmiths have a negative effect.  this makes it ore challenging to uderstand the gains while building the parts.not all are helping. some mods do see to give happiness even without the circle added with the mod.

        i overcame the work strike of the crowded church. based on production outputs,i have minimized the effects from having only 3 stars.the laborers and builders do show to work slower at times.  so the map is playable and not doomed to fail with a depression.

     this concept is something i need to sit down and look at more. i am not sure with mixing and different mods,a village can be built to have full happiness. for now my map and mod order functions and is playable.

Nilla

Of course @brads3, a map is fully functional when everyone has only 3 stars. In DS game I mostly didn´t bother about the happiness because his black circles are huge and locating everyone outside them makes no sense; they will live too far away from their workplaces. I will only show that it is possible to make everyone happy. You may not need all 6 happiness aspects but at least 5 of them. For me this means a different way to build my houses, more planning, settling as many Bannis as possible in a village.

First picture
Here´s another "happiness maker"; a real beauty! It brings spirit happiness to the whole map. If I dare to upset the gods, I can demolish the idols.

Second picture
Sorry, the "Old Snow" month brings bad weather but it´s the graph I want to show. The Mead Hall has a minor flaw; alcohol is carried out of it and if you forget to let the worker carry it back again, it may happen that none of it is left in the mead hall. The reaction is clear to see: a huge happiness drop. A little while after the alcohol was back, I also assigned a priest to the temple. Now happiness is really 100%. I thought that everyone had 5 stars, also before the priest worked but maybe I missed someone or maybe the happiness from everyone rose from 95 to 100%. 95% shows 5 stars so you can´t see any difference unless you look at the graph.

Third picture
Here you can see the whole settlement and the content in the stores. We need some more tools but otherwise, it´s as good as it can get.

Fourth picture
I haven´t said much about micromanagement lately. I make nothing by food production anymore but still need to micromanage tools, clothing and building materials. You can see that some sites are closed, and I switch products and sites from time to time. It works well. I don´t find this is tedious or difficult.

Did you make any more research about the meaning of  Einmánaðr @Tom Sawyer? I´m still not pleased with the translation One Last Month. As far as I know, the year changed in Autumn in the old calendar so it makes no sense to have that name in late winter. Maybe we have someone here on WOB who has some more knowledge.

Tom Sawyer

That's now a free interpretation of the author.^^ Because indeed the last month of a Banished year. It exactly fits with the Norse calendar that also began in spring. About the meaning I did not find anything. It's always translated as One Month or Ein Monat without explanation. I'm still interested in making a Norse translation and I will play it so. Would also solve guessing words. 8)

Nilla

My daughter is home from Australia over Christmas, so it wasn´t so much time to play Banished and write here on WOB. But now she´s away visiting friends for the weekend and I will write a little again (and watch sports on TV)

First picture
Here´s another beauty from the North 7; the export port. I have a big surplus of many things and I don´t really need to buy anything so I have decided to hoard daler; just for fun.

Second picture

My Viking Village. I planned to keep it in Viking style until we reach 200 inhabitants. You can see @theonlywanderer; it doesn´t take more than 33 years, also with real-time ageing. Not boringly slow. But I have taken every nomad from two nomad attractors: the Thingstead and the Temple.

Third picture
Overview with menus. We still have 5 stars and 5 hearts.

Fourth picture
Stores are good. I even have a healer, even if not many people need to visit it. Now we are advancing to medieval times to the other side of the river.