Nilla- testing DS Industrial mining beta

[MarkAnthony]

I know it´s tempting in a mod like this, where it´s so hard to get the resources you need (especially iron and other metals) to use a little too few food workers. You want to get forwards fast. But as you see, Mark; it doesn´t bring you forward, it only brings starvation. Focus on the basic, essential things and it will work.

I'm not skimping on food. I start with 10 adults and 10 children. One child will age up within the first few minutes of the game start so that's 11 adults I get to work with; four of which are on food duty at four 11x11 farms of 868 each.

Anyways, I'm starting anew again. Same map, same mods - just a fresh start. I took the Save0 file from the previous game and I am using that to start the next. I save the game upon first entering a map so I always have a clean-start to refer back to - Save0. Gonna try a different approach, and no it's not with water.

[Nilla]

It looks enough for 20 peeps but........

........the population will grow. Do you continue to increase food production? And don´t forget farming is seasonal and some families will fill their houses to the top without thinking that their neighbours might need something as well before the next harvest and you must also prepare for bad weather. You have 20% of your population producing food. That´s not much but can be enough at the start. I haven´t got very far yet but from my 25 people, 7 are food producers. There´s no overproduction but fisher, gatherers and hunters are not as efficient as farmers, so they are needed, just to keep up.

[MarkAnthony]

That last game where I was beginning to fail again (was at the start of a starvation die off with no way to rectify it), I took Discrepancy's suggestion and held back on building homes, so I didn't have an increased population really. In fact, 6-11 Banies had to wait at least 4+ years before they even received a home.

[Nilla]

It´s hard to say what went wrong. I hope you´ll find out and that it will work now.

[Nilla]

I will tell you about how I started my new DSIM game. As I said in @MarkAnthony´s thread; focusing on the basic needs. I´ve made a few (maybe too few) screenshots but I will tell a little * to each of them. * as usual; not so little 

First picture
Start

You see, I don´t plan much in advance; just a quarry and a small iron mine that are hard to find a place for and a forest circle as close to the starting position as possible (or sometimes even inside, it depends on the location.

This game starts with 8 adults and 8 children. Fortunately, the eldest of the children are 7 so there is a chance to get everyone in school. I like to educate everyone. It does pay off and makes everything easier. If there are a few uneducated, I don´t want them where they destroy valuable material, like working as blacksmiths or clearing the rare stone or ore from the ground.

This game I started with sending everyone out in the forests to pick the 13 closest iron ore. (actually, I must have miscounted, it was 14) I need 24 iron for a school and a construction yard, so 65 iron ore. When they started to return I started a charcoal pile, marked a few pieces of close clay and set the iron bloomery.

Second picture
Early Autumn 1

Then I built the gatherer´s hut and a small woodchopper and assigned 3 gatherers and a woodcutter. Before I started to build the gatherer I made a small (3*5) stockpile in the forest.
Even if the bloomer wasn´t quite finished, I started to build the school. Iron will come as last material. And you can see, I got my first child into school. No punks here, like Mark says. I always try to locate the first school somewhere in the middle of the initial developing area.
Here we can see that I also built a hunter´s lodge and assigned a hunter and since it´s already early autumn, it´s time to build the first house.
I´ve also sent the labourers out to pick copper and a few tin ore.

Third picture
I didn´t plan to make this thorough description of the start until I´ve played a few years, so next time we visit our Atglendover it´s late winter 4.

The first winter only 1 family had a home. Unless I really want fast population growth, I never haste the housebuilding. Instead, I made some bronze, a Smith´s Hearth and some bronze tools. Since I only have 8 adults (3 gatherers, 1 hunter, 1 woodcutter (who works as a labourer when the limit of initial 400 is reached), 1 teacher, 1 blacksmith, 1 labourer) there´s not much to do except wait for the first student to be educated. When the blacksmith is done with his tool production, he can work as a builder and build houses for the rest of the families during these years.

I always want to have some ores and metals for tool production in my stores, here copper tin and bronze. I don´t clear a large amount in advance, just enough to be able to react fast, if I need more tools.

When the first students start to graduate we built a fisher dock, a few small protein barrels and a house close to it. After that the number of logs in the store was low and a forester was built. Maybe we needed to clear a few stones or some trees along the way but again, not much in advance (unless the worker has nothing else to do and that´s rarely the case at the beginning of a game)

You can also see that I´ve demolished the first piles. I only did it this early because I needed the space close to the stockpiles for a Worker´s construction yard. I let it start producing timber. There´s not enough iron ore left on the ground so I need to mine iron ore and I´m too stingy to use valuable logs in the mine, so before it´s constructed, we need some timber.

The speed of building new workplaces is ruled by the number of available new workers. First, when a student graduates, I look if the amount of food has stopped growing (or worse has started to drop). If it has, I assign him/her as another food producer. Only if food and other basic needs are OK, I think of development. The same with houses; if I feel safe new couples can move out early if I don´t, they need to stay longer at home.

You can also see, we haven´t got any roads yet. It would be good to have some but it takes time to build some and I put my priority on other things. Here I even have time to build a small statistic office so I think some roads will come soon, but only along main pathways.

Fourth picture
Early summer 9

I´ve used the same strategy. The population has grown, so we need more food producers. We have produced enough iron to make a tailor and some clothes. There are roads. I´ve just changed from bronze to steel tools. Logs are needed for so many things; firewood, timber, construction, so I don´t want to use more charcoal than necessary. That´s why I´ve started coal/coke production.

I´ve produced some iron fittings, wagon parts, lime and glass so now we can go on with more advanced buildings, starting with the stone quarry. I think this is the first building I make "in advance". There is still stone on the ground but we will soon need a lot for construction and lime production. This must mean I feel safe enough to not only think at the needs for the moment.

I think I often talk about feeling safe. What do I mean? Generally, you can feel safe with 100* food, 10*fuel, 1* tool for each Banni. Here I have less food and tools but more firewood. The reason for much firewood is to prevent people to heat the valuable charcoal. I produce tools at the moment and I only have food producers that produce food continuously, all around the year. If I relied on farming or trade, I wouldn´t have felt safe with 3100 food for 45 Bannis. It would probably have worked but I wouldn´t have felt safe.

[MarkAnthony]

So you do actually start out slower than I imagined you would.

I'm the opposite of you in terms of what's more valuable logs vs timber; you say logs, I say timber. Not because the trade value of timber is more, but it's because timber is used more often on the advanced buildings than logs are so whereas you use timber for your mines, I use logs. Maybe I am thinking about it wrong?

I've never built a coal/coke/lime producer yet in a live game, I tried it out in a Debug game before to practice how to build one with all the different parts. Would you please show me a close-up of yours and would you tell me if you bother with all the other parts like the ramps and ladders and whatnot? Thanks.


               

[Nilla]

I don't care about the trade price for logs/timber. I would have done the same with the original price of 2 for logs. Maybe I'm damaged from playing much on small maps with very limited resources but I can get 2 timber from each log. That makes the logs more valuable to me. OK, it costs some work to make the timber but if it doubles a limited resource, I chose the work, if I can. You need the logs for so many things, that's why I'm a bit "stingy".

To the coke and lime producer; I seldom use the side parts. They are decorations. I can admit; an industry made from some city builder expert using these parts and all the rail tracks, charts and other available stuff look absolutely great. (I think @Gatherer showed us one very nice town some time ago) Only, not so nice when I try.   I don't have that talent. I also get bored too soon when I try to decorate. So, no (or almost no) extras in my games. I simply set the production part of these batteries like any other building.

Yes, I start slow, that's the only way to manage the difficult start. But now when I feel safe, things may go fast. I played a few years this afternoon and as you can see; a lot of new buildings that need advanced materials now are in use; stone quarry, timber mill, doctor, overseer's office and blast furnace.

You can see the coke oven at the bottom right corner, alone with no side pieces, closed for the moment. Coal production isn't very fast and I don't need that much coke, yet so it have to rest. I have no lime oven, yet. I let the worker's construction yard make lime. But I will soon build one. I now need charcoal to make lime and you know how stingy I am with my trees. I want to switch to coke as fuel soon.

[MarkAnthony]

To the coke and lime producer; I seldom use the side parts. They are decorations...

I don't have that talent. I also get bored too soon when I try to decorate. So, no (or almost no) extras in my games. I simply set the production part of these batteries like any other building...

You can see the coke oven at the bottom right corner, alone with no side pieces.

The reason I asked to see your coal/coke/lime setup is to see if you used those extra pieces or not. Are you sure those side pieces are just for decoration? I haven't looked recently in Beta v.05 but I recall that from Beta v.03 the tooltip info for those side pieces said they "helped" increase production or something like that. So they don't actually boost your production then?

Me too... no talent whatsoever for eye-candy decorating! Me too with getting bored even trying. 

[Nilla]

No, I´m not sure but as far as I´ve seen in earlier versions they are decorations. Let´s ask @Discrepancy.

[MarkAnthony]

If you go by that tooltip in v.03 it says it helps. If it does actually help boost production outputs then that's probably why your coke production was as slow as you had said, because you didn't use those extra pieces.

[Nilla]

No, I don´t think so, it wasn´t the coke production that was slow, it was the COAL production. The coke is alright, not as overpowered as it was but still alright.

[irrelevant]

Okay, you guys are over here having fun; I want in.  Where do I get this beta?

[irrelevant]

Never mind, got it.

[Nilla]

Easy to find! I´m sure you will like it. But pay attention! A lot of "out of the box" thinking.

[MarkAnthony]

Oh and @irrelevant , though there may be many words of advice about Discrepancy's creation here there is one I just now found out about the hard way! Don't upgrade ALL your tools!, especially the ones that are needed as part of a materials list to build a building.

I needed an Iron Tool as a building requirement; I didn't have any Iron Tool, I had only Iron Tool* because I went and upgraded them all and that building I wanted to build wont use Iron Tool* as a substitute!     You can add an alternate Blacksmith from another mod to remake that Iron Tool (I don't have another mod to do so myself) but if you wanted to play only DSIM + Vanilla (which is fun and challenging) at least be forewarned!   

EDIT: Sorry, this begs a little more clarification on my part.  In last nights year 1 game I had only built a Grindstone for the smithy's to work at. I went and upgraded all of my current Iron Tool to Iron Tool*  The problem is I never unpaused that Smith's Hearth which needs an Iron Tool to build it so now I can't make it. I also cant make the backup Blacksmith building either because that needs an Anvil to build it which you get... you guessed it, from a Smith's Hearth!     I locked myself out of the game and lost about an hour+ of time this morning on my continuation of last night's year one.