World of Banished

I want to start this blog with my first impression of this mod:

IMPRESSIVE! Thank you @Discrepancy for sharing it with us. I very much looking forward to testing it.

There are some ideas to give this game some new challenges, there are good menus and explanations, lovely buildings and sites, many I recognise from earlier versions but there are also new creations, as always @Discrepancy, they seem to look great (I can´t build so much of it yet because I spend most of the evening yesterday just looking around in the menus) and I hope (and believe) that I will stay this impressed after I´ve played a bit longer.

Now again my old dilemma testing mods; should I tell my opinion, make my suggestions and ask my questions (yes, sorry @Discrepancy there will be a load of questions) here in my blog or at the thread about the mod itself? I´m usually straight forward and personal in my comments. I never claim to say the absolute truth or making requests that I expect being fulfilled. I´m just communicating my point of view that I hope you as modder @Discrepancy will read and think about, not more, not less. That´s why I feel more comfortable in a blog I start myself. But I know, I also have questions of common interest that I think would reach more people at the original thread. So, maybe I will try to make some combination.

Since this is a challenging mod I decided not to make it more complicated than necessary to start with. It´s a medium valley map, medium start, fair climate. I thought a bit if I should play with or without disasters but I chose disasters on. Since DS has played with health, happiness, diseases (the long row of diseases is simply terrifying) he might as well have played with disasters, and I don´t want to miss that. Maybe it´s a mistake. We will see.

I loaded some additional DS mods and followed the recommendations of load order from http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=2147.msg48149#msg48149. No problems. Why these mods? A few of them; Wagon Vendor and Townhouses are old favourites, the other are mods I haven´t tested, at least not these versions. One of the new challenging things of this mod is that iron production is more difficult. The vanilla town hall needs a load of it and since health and happiness also are tweaked, statistics is crucial, especially by testing it for the first time. That´s why I have decided to take a short cut or "cheat" if you want to call it that and add a mod with a townhall easier to build. My favourite is Kid´s tiny. Maybe DS, it would be a good idea to add/recommend a Town Hall with no/less iron. To me, the absence of statistics and inventories early is a not very appealing kind of challenge.

Now some initial questions to what I´ve read in the menus and seen right at the start of the game.
Happiness: Is your happiness system different from the North? It seems so because you are mentioning safety, goods, spirit and entertainment but not health in the info menu. You are also mentioning graveyards as a spiritual location for happiness. They have no happiness circle in the North.

Health: When I read your information it looks like it´s impossible to get 5 stars only with a good diet, that you always need herbalists and doctors to achieve this. I´ve been looking at the health the few years I played. Everyone lost all their hearts very fast but as soon as they had all food categories, hearts are regained, like in vanilla. But it´s very different at each individual. Some still have no hearts, some have full, some something in between. So it looks like it´s possible to reach 5 stars with only a good diet but I guess you´ll lose hearts very fast if the house only for a short time doesn´t contain one category. Distribution of goods will be even more important than usual but it looks like you can manage without the "herbalist loop".

Menus I tried these new statistic menus with a built-in map and event log. A very good idea. But it doesn´t really work by me. Maybe I have some wrong graphic settings. The ingame options menu says a resolution of 1920*1200 so it should be alright. I wanted to look at the game not play around with settings so I went back to my usual vanilla way of menus. What´s wrong? The text of the event log is shown on the map and not easy to see. Only one event is shown at the same time and if you want to scroll back and see an earlier event, I always land at the edge of the map, annoying. Is it meant to be that way or can I change something to make it work better?

I have more questions, some of them will wait, some I will ask to the pictures.

First picture
Start position, map, settings and mods.

I also made this screenshot because of the fields. You have your own versions of a food field and a textile field following different limits but why no orchards (and pastures)?

Second picture
I like these in-game info menus. There´s even some useful information right at the start where you chose a game. Very good. As I said, the list of diseases is terrifying, but also a little amusing, Now we can finally find out who´s idling a little too much at the trading port when a tradesman/woman is visiting. ;)

Third picture
I guess this is the first building you need for tools. The detraction area is reasonable. I suppose the "rules" are the same as in the North. The important part of the house that ought to be outside the circle is in the middle in front of the house, where the citizen goes to eat.

Here we can see this long menu with the built-in event log. As I said I don´t know if it´s supposed to look this way. I find it hard to read the text on the map.

Fourth picture
I like houses that are possible to put a bit "out of order". These are very nice. Two small flaws: If you put them as I did here, people use to take shortcuts through the walls at the corner. It´s great that the menu holds essential information about the property but that makes the menu about the inhabitants smaller. I find the important information is left on that menu; the profession, not the names you always get when you open the menu are most interesting. Is it possible, that change it that you instead see the profession first and can scroll to the names?

Fifth picture
The idea that charcoal piles and bloomeries are only to use once and need to be rebuilt is interesting. It will for sure be a motivation to build the bigger more complicated sites later in the game.

It needs some time to get used to the symbols for resources needed to construct a building. But here I don´t understand; "anvil" to construct an anvil? Do I need to buy one to construct it or can it be produced somewhere else?

Sixth picture
A question to the timber/lumber mills. Is there a difference between lumber and timber? I don´t think so but I´ll better ask. There are different building costs for these two mills, so I guess the Timber mill is better than the Lumber yard but for the beginning, it will have to be the easiest, we are short on iron and will probably be for quite some time. I guess that was your intention, @Discrepancy.

Happiness:
The happiness is perhaps similar to the North because really we don't have many variables to influence the citizens happiness apart from the addition of the positives on certain buildings and negatives on others. I have made a similar change to the citizen code file to the North so as to reflect a more noticeable change within a citizens happiness display. Though this might be a little different, and I do not think this mod requires as many foods.
But essentially we are still both using the same variables that were made available to us: the positives Goods (Market), Safety (Well), Spirit (Cemetery) and Entertainment (Tavern), and the negative Detraction (Quarry).
The cemetery does provide a spiritual 'boost' to a citizens happiness, from banished standard, not even a change from myself it has an invisible radius of 30. It essentially gives the citizens the same as a chapel, yet a chapel requires the worker to be active. There is of course the unknown (possible) connection a citizen has to a tombstone... yet so much code is not available to us modders about the true functioning of a cemetery or other variables within the game.
Mostly the happiness functions come directly from the buildings themselves. Within this mod I have utilised them, but not all of my other mods are updated or altered to be the same.

Health:
The thing with health and happiness is I think they are somehow interrelated with another section of code we cannot interact with, for the variable of a minimum amount of food and maximum amount is a variable to happiness and not health. Yet i'm convinced by my own observations it also does alter the health display. I'm not convinced that citizens themselves have a health variable - i.e. I don't think they actually get sick or have any kind of health deterioration or increase from eating more than 1 food group/category, from what I can tell it seems more like labels assigned to different foods to only alter the display, which is a standalone system purely based upon the criteria it fulfills. So like your example of how much variance of food a citizen has available at that time in their home, i think the health flag attachment to herbs is just another label, and whether it acts as a completion to fulfill the health hearts or as a complimentary item, I think you are right that it does only compliment, for a person with a varied balanced diet should be healthy.

The Info panels I was thinking of disabling... as they are very much unfinished, and just as much track my ideas I had before I actually tried to implement them ;)

further to health & happiness,
We have the variables of unhealthy level, unhappy level, and depressed level, these are all themselves seemingly influenced by the star and heart system variable of the given time, it simply produces a known effect to a citizen... which mostly is idling. Early on I think I made it too hard and there was too much idling... but now I believe I have made a mistake in the released version and they are probably not influenced as much to idle.

Menu:
Well actually what you describe is the function of that event log.... sorry, I never included any documentation so all you players are a bit in the dark going into the mod. All I did was overlay the event log... a single event at a time to display over the map, yes the buttons all work fine, but an inadvertent issue is that when you click on them, it registers also on the map so you move the view to that location. I could try to work out how to make the button a different layer over the map though.

So no need to worry about your display as that is fine.
Also, the small inclusion of the 3 professions (Laborer, Builder, Farmer) within that statistic menu on your third picture - if you hover the cursor of your mouse over them, and use the the scroll wheel on your mouse it will scroll through all the professions.

First picture
Yes no orchards and pastures, sorry. I guess because I had always wanted to update DSSV: Production at the same time, it just hasn't eventuated, though they still both work together fine I think.

Second picture
You have highlighted another embarrassing event in my sudden release of the mod yesterday. I had also missed that I had skipped the loading of the new diseases and change to some of the others. I started working on an update and spotted that this afternoon. But yes, the diseases are a scary list, you will get them more often, the likelihood is increased and to randomly within a smaller population than standard banished... but the severity is not as bad and likelihood of debilitating the town is lessened with the changes that I have made to the diseases themselves. I included minor ailments, illness and broken bones to place more of a need into a hospital/doctor function. Though I must make some small alternative models to the big standard hospital.
Yes the interaction and likelihood with traders is also increased.

Third picture
Yes the Smith's Hearth is the ideal for the first things a village will need made by a blacksmith. They are not very fast as they have no anvil and a limited workspace apart from a big hot fire.
But they are resourceful and can make many things.... including an Anvil...

Fourth picture
As I now know how to add the elusive third tab to the residence I will update the mod and move all that text and image into an 'i' info tab.

Fifth picture
Yes many of the blacksmiths will make you an anvil. Purpose built for a blacksmith by a blacksmith. They are heavy, one is all you need for an anvil workshop, but they are also used in the construction cost of the larger blacksmiths now. But you can simply make them at the Smith's Hearth to begin.

Sixth picture
Yes Lumber is the same as Timber, I just prefer the name.

Iron is indeed hard to obtain, there is a very small percentage of Iron Ore upon the surface compared to Copper Ore. A beginning town should only ever make copper tools until they are already mining Iron Ore, as all the small surface deposits will be needed to make iron for iron fittings and other uses in building and construction.

:)

Thanks for the long explaining answer.

I will keep an eye on the citizens how much they are idling, especially a little later if I can make some of them happy. In the North it´s a big difference, you can´t really miss it. The unhappy farmer is always late, the unhappy fisher catches much less than his neighbour who´s happy and if you're making many people happy at the same time (what´s normal) you can notice an increased production in each production site.

Health and happiness are connected (unless you´ve changed that aspect ). Living inside the circle of a hospital helps to make someone happy, not healthy. If someone is sick without a doctor, I have seen that he stays unhappy for the rest of his life, no matter what. A long time with no or only a few hearts may also influence happiness, these Bannis are harder/impossible to get happy.

But these are my experience from @Tom Sawyer´s version. We will see how yours work @Discrepancy and if there are any differences.

I believe you are right that health isn´t influenced if you have one or more different food of the same category, but many different kinds of food may have a small influence on happiness.

I like the info panels. Unless there are totally wrong information, I would like them to stay, even if some things that stand there doesn´t exist (yet).

So you mean that the new diseases aren´t loaded, yet. Maybe a relief not to have everything at the same time. Are the higher probability of disease also missing? There´s a small nice hospital in the Bryggen theme. It´s not that expensive to build. I guess that will be my first hospital. It shows no radius but if I remember it right, there is one. I think I´ve used it in a Nordic game.

I`m embarrassed. I only looked at the first 6 products of Smith´s Hearth. Didn´t notice that you can scroll it to get a lot more products. sorr

Great you are back with an update and new ideas @Discrepancy ! Also great you make the bannies now unhappy too. It was about time or how was it.. ;D

At the moment I will just follow Nillas test flight and then take a look myself.

At least bronze at the Football WC. The luck that our girls didn´t have against the Netherlands they had against England. :)

Despite football, I had time to play some more years. Yesterday I studied health and happiness a little more. I´ll tell more to the pictures.

First picture
I want these graphs, some statistics and the inventory, and didn´t want to wait until I have all material for the vanilla town hall, so I built the tiny townhall from @kid1293. You can see that the health rose fast as I got all the food categories but it´s hard to get everyone healthy, it drops very quickly if one person doesn't get them all.

I like the charcoal pile, and all the steps when building it; very nice to look at. Even the terrifying black smoke; no wonder that it has a large happiness detraction radius. As I said, the idea that it needs to be rebuilt after each "batch" is interesting and I guess that it would give some motivation for more continues production ways later in the game. But I also think that it will be a perfect way, to help out temporarily if the continuos production, for some reason is too small.

Second picture
I studied happiness and health. Here we can see one family. Only the youngest is full happy. I´ve seen that in Nordic games as well. It´s easier to get young people happy, elder citizens who have experienced times of bad diet, no house, no coat and other bad things they can´t forget, are harder to please.

These 4 people are one family; they are supposed to eat the same food, from the same house food store but still the health variates from 0 to 5 hearts. You don´t see it this extreme so often but it´s common that people in the same house have a different number of hearts. I have a theory but I don´t know if it´s correct.

As far as I know, people get home to eat once each month. They take a small amount of each different kind of food in the house store (I have forgotten how much). When the food level has dropped under a certain amount, they go to refill it and take a little of each kind the market (or barn) has to offer. My guess is that sometimes the house store has run out of one (or several) categories when a person eats but the total amount is not yet so low that it needs to be refilled. With this "health detraction system," it´s enough to lose a heart (or two) if that happens once. In vanilla detraction, it has to be several times and they only lose ½ heart. It looks like the father always was late to the meals and the other family members (most the children) had eaten all the fruit/meat/vegetables/grain before he got there.

I don´t know if the size of the hous food store has an influence. I have two types of houses with a slightly different size of a food store, maybe I can compare and see if there´s a difference in health.

I just counted; the health is slightly better in the bigger houses; average 4,79 to 4,58 in the smaller. I guess the deviation it´s not statistically significant. Maybe I´ll count it again to some other point to see if I get a similar result.

Third picture
I think you are right @Discrepancy when you say that the effect of happiness is low. I followed this farmer couple during one winter. There was plenty of labourer´s work to be done. The happy man stopped the work to idle once, the not so happy woman three times. It looks like a person with 3 stars goes idle about once each month. I think it´s more often in the North.

Fourth picture
Here you can see the graph during my happiness testing.

A. I had a Wagon Vendor (with a vendor), a well, a graveyard and a small Bryggen doctor. You can´t see a radius but I think there is one. How big is it @Discrepancy? As I assigned a doctor, happiness rose a tiny bit. I only saw two happy children so I unassigned the doctor again and started some alcohol production.
B. With the same buildings, doctor working and local brew at the brewery happiness rose quite a bit. Now also some adults became happy, but you can see; far from everyone. As we ran out of ale, happiness dropped.
C. After we had some new ale, I sent the doctor away and the happiness dropped. Now there´s also a priest and many people are happy. The two houses on the picture are outside the happiness building radii, so of course, they aren´t happy. But also some of the older citizens inside are still unaffected. They have had a too hard life to get happy, at least for now. I have seen this in the North as well but sometimes after years, the stars can increase also by them.

This picture also shows my "trick" to bring these people at the fishing dock some health. There is one farmer, one small field and one small orchard. One year there's wheat on that field, one year potatoes. After the field is harvested, the farmer is sent to the orchard to harvest peaches. The small stores now have all categories of food and people in these houses are healthy. Before the farmer moved here there were only fisher with 0 hearts. Does this mini farming pay off? I have no idea. (at least not yet)

Quote from: Nilla on July 06, 2019, 07:25:33 AM
So you mean that the new diseases aren´t loaded, yet. Maybe a relief not to have everything at the same time. Are the higher probability of disease also missing?

Correct, none of those changes are active in BETAv.01

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on July 06, 2019, 08:57:33 AM
Great you are back with an update and new ideas @Discrepancy ! Also great you make the bannies now unhappy too. It was about time or how was it.. ;D

Thanks, yes it has been hard to implement though, I'm still struggling to get a good balance. It would be nice to see/add a variable about how long & how much a citizens health/happiness is influenced by the different happiness radius'.

Quote from: Nilla on July 07, 2019, 04:33:54 AM
I don´t know if the size of the house food store has an influence. I have two types of houses with a slightly different size of a food store, maybe I can compare and see if there´s a difference in health.
I just counted; the health is slightly better in the bigger houses; average 4,79 to 4,58 in the smaller. I guess the deviation it´s not statistically significant. Maybe I´ll count it again to some other point to see if I get a similar result.

I believe you are correct in this. I have observed the same thing, and is easily noticeable that the citizens will not have any happiness when living in the small tents I have from DSSV as they can only ever fit 5-6 different goods including fuel, even though there is 10+ different foods in the barn next door.
The citizens don't seem to be programmed to care what they eat, and really have no desire to increase or balance their diet by having a mixture of the different food groups, or even a variety of food, they will fill their house with a purely edible and non-nutritious Water instead.

Quote... small Bryggen doctor. You can´t see a radius but I think there is one. How big is it @Discrepancy?

The Bryggen doctor has a radius of 21. Which is a comparable size radius to the Industrial fire-fighting Well in DS Industry Mining.

You are doing well in the game. Thanks for your testing and feedback :)


A new update will be coming out hopefully by end of week.
I've been testing and still have adjustments to make to the diseases now I've introduced them back in. It is proving too difficult to last long in the game if a doctor is not built soon enough to treat the constant cases of illness and disease, as well as hampering the timely harvesting of crops. though they aren't serious illness and they won't die, the citizens will not work, or do much at all, even collect the things they need to survive. More testing.

QuoteThe citizens don't seem to be programmed to care what they eat, and really have no desire to increase or balance their diet by having a mixture of the different food groups, or even a variety of food, they will fill their house with a purely edible and non-nutritious Water instead.

Actually; I think they are programmed to take a little something from everything available. But they will only go to the nearest market or barn and don't take one step extra to get everything. When they eat they also take a little from everything there is in the store, but if the store is small, there might very well only be a couple of a different kind of food and in your version health drop fast and much each time everything isn't perfect.

I kind of like this. You need to "work" with the distribution of goods even more than usual. It pays off to build larger more expensive houses in a way that normally doesn't have any other use than your own satisfaction to see something nice. And as long as you don't have a herbalist the not working time is not all too long, but I don't think I would like to have a herbalist. That would take the production down a lot; even in this settlement where people are relatively healthy.

I counted the hearts one more time as the health was a bit lower, the result was similar; average 3,9 in the small houses and 4,3 in the larger. I've built a few Bryggen houses with larger stores, and I intend to build some more as soon as I have iron to spare. My guess is that health is even better in them.

Yesterday I started to look at some numbers by the smaller metal worker. There are a few things I'm not so fond of. It's a considerable loss of value by the production of some things. Principally, that's one thing I don't like. It's acceptable in one of these early production sites, so I hope that the production of iron fittings and anvils will be more profitable in better sites, similar to wagon parts and tools that have different recipes; primitive input products you lose value, more advanced input products you gain. That's fine with me.

I haven't run the products long enough to present some numbers but at least I can say: you can produce enough metals to have enough tools, make some iron and iron products to develop your settlement at the beginning. I can also say for sure; it needs many workers. I'm seldom so short on labourers as in this game. And you are so right @Discrepancy when you say that mining doesn't pay off. The iron production at the small mine is terrible! Maybe 30 iron ore for one miner worth 2 each and you need an input of lumber/logs. Maybe it is a lot of work to change the numbers, but I think it's worth it. If you want to develop a settlement that lives from processing iron, I find, it should make some sense to produce the "basic product"; ore. @Tom Sawyer and @RedKetchup have changed the vanilla numbers in their mines. None of these mines is super profitable but both make a decent production; a miner can at least "support himself". I will now see if I can "trick the system" and buy ore. (And maybe that might not be totally wrong historically, as far as I know, the Brittish iron/steel industry imported a lot of iron ore from Sweden in the 19 and early 20th century.)

First picture
Impressive black smoke from the charcoal pile. There will soon be a new deer species in these forests; "black deer".

You can also see the production numbers.

Second picture
The happiness suddenly went down. First, I didn't understand what was wrong. But soon I saw there was no ale in my large brewery. I had a lot of "local brew" but it had all been carried to the small meed brewery (it has a tiny happiness area). Why did this happen? I started the production of export-strong-ale in the brewery and it seems like it can't hold two different kind of alcohol at the same time. The traders were too diligent carrying it into the trading port so there were nothing left for the population. It looks like I will need to build another ale brewery for the export brew.

Third picture
Isn't this trading area nice? I also like that you can upgrade the port for animals to a big store when you don't need anymore animals. Great idea.

Fourth picture
Here we can see the recipes for iron and iron fittings in one of the cheaper production sites. Iron smelting is alright, but every variation of iron fittings make a loss of value. I hope the large production sites makes it "better". If not, I would change some trade prices; increase value of the iron fittings will probably be the easiest way.

Fifth picture
That . at the arrow is no good sign. I don't understand what is wrong, I think I've followed your advice by load order @Discrepancy. But there must be some incompatibility. I will check it again.

Quote from: Nilla on July 08, 2019, 07:54:39 AM

QuoteThe citizens don't seem to be programmed to care what they eat, and really have no desire to increase or balance their diet by having a mixture of the different food groups, or even a variety of food, they will fill their house with a purely edible and non-nutritious Water instead.

Actually; I think they are programmed to take a little something from everything available. But they will only go to the nearest market or barn and don't take one step extra to get everything. When they eat they also take a little from everything there is in the store, but if the store is small, there might very well only be a couple of a different kind of food and in your version health drop fast and much each time everything isn't perfect.

This is exactly what I observed a couple of years ago when I was studying how our bannies feed themselves. They visit their homes 6x/year, and each time they will nibble on a little bit of everything that is edible in their larders, until they have consumed 14-18 items. If there is a complete diet available, they will get it. It all depends on where they do their shopping. If they shop at a market, they probably will select a wide variety of things.

That missing menu icon for the Assayer building is correct as I hadn't made one.


A lot to think about.

There is a big loss in the Iron Fittings (-2.33/-1.25). I'm looking at it now and don't know why I did that sorry.
I cannot remember, but it doesn't make sense anyway so I will change it...

If I change the output of the Iron Fittings to: unEd=5 / Ed=8 from what it is now of 3/4 there will be a small profit for educated 0.38 per iron fitting made, uneducated will still make a loss (see pic below).

If I increased the value to 3  with 5/8 out, it would generate a profit of 0.4/1.38. Maybe the better option than what I have pictured below.


The ores are another thing. I will have to reshuffle all the numbers I think.... I also don't want it too profitable to sell just the ore without smelting for the value add.

Hopefully you won't be able to buy too large amounts of ore each visit ;) though the Thompson Ore & mineral trader may make it easy as they will come every 6 months with a population over 150.


(edit 1) ...ahhh :( and I apologize to everyone as I seem to have left the high work values within the mines from when I was testing with a different age/game speed. They will be a lot quicker next update.

(edit 2) I must have another spreadsheet as this one isn't matching up with the mod files at all! ahhh

First @Discrepancy, no apologies! This is what beta testing is supposed to be. You make the huge job in creating your mods. Noone can expect, that everything is perfect right from the beginning. The least I (and others) can do is to test as thorough as I can and report things I like, dislike, find weird.......

To iron fittings; I don´t find that it should be a big profit to produce them so that it might be an export business. That doesn´t make very much sense to me. But I always compare with fisher; if it´s better to send the worker to a fishing dock than let him produce something, say iron fittings, I would try to buy them, even if it´s a small profit to produce them. But this is my way of seeing things other people have other opinions.

I also agree with you, that it shouldn´t be so profitable to mine that you can consider selling the ore, but as I´ve said; I don´t like it to be too bad either. And you are right; at least now at the beginning, I don´t get much iron ore to the port that imports minerals. Now with a small population, the merchants don´t arrive often, there are a lot of different merchants, so it takes time to "take the orders" and they don´t bring much each time. I will go on and try to buy as much as I can and tell how it works.

I have studied the eating behaviour of the Bannis; the reason was partly what @irrelevant said;

QuoteThis is exactly what I observed a couple of years ago when I was studying how our bannies feed themselves. They visit their homes 6x/year, and each time they will nibble on a little bit of everything that is edible in their larders, until they have consumed 14-18 items. If there is a complete diet available, they will get it. It all depends on where they do their shopping. If they shop at a market, they probably will select a wide variety of things.

I had it a bit different in mind but wasn't sure. But it also "itches" when I see that family members have so different health. I can´t really understand that. I think, I´ve come a bit further.

I followed what happened to the food store of one house from the time it was filled in late spring until it was refilled in late autumn. The 3 people in that house ate from that store 11 times, a different amount between 10 and 14 food each time. They usually took 1 or 2 from more or less all different food, always getting all categories; totally it was 126 food. It looks like we both were wrong, @irrelevant, they eat more often than 6 times each year but not every month as I thought. It looks like something in-between. But the most important finding was that they don´t always eat at home. The man in this house is a vendor. He walks around a lot on the map. When he´s far away to eating time, he grabs something in the closest barn. That´s why he´s less healthy than the wife and their child.

Both of the adults had 0 heart as I started to look, the child was a healthy new-born. Each time they grab some food, they gain 2 hearts if it´s "good food" from all categories, and they lose 2 hearts if it´s not good. The female farmer and the child always stayed close to home and always ate at home. The vendor man also gained and lost stars without beeing at home; taking food where he could find some. I also looked around in the houses and found a second vendor with 0 hearts.

The conclusion is, that you will never be able to get a totally healthy population unless you have all food categories in every store (and that seems quite impossible to me). There will always be people (especially vendors and traders) who work on a larger area, who will grab some not so healthy fast-food-to-go. This leads to the question; what will happen if the chance of getting diseases increases more if you have poor health? These Bannis who walk around a lot will get ill more often and since they will also meet a lot of other people, they will pass the disease on to them. I don´t know if this is so good. I like "obstacles"; challenges that make this game harder; like giving health and happiness a higher impact but I also like that you have a chance to do something against these obstacles, like making everyone live in "good areas" with no "bad" influence or providing a good diet everywhere. These are things where you have influence, but these vendors and traders; you can´t do much about their health.

But @Discrepancy, I´m willing to test whatever changes you make.

First picture
Here are the menus from the Bannis I followed. Left from that time; late spring 18. Right I´ve cut in the content of the stores before they filled it in spring (red) and after the next time, they´ve filled it in late autumn (blue).

There are things I don´t understand; this is a big house with a big store; why is there so little food in it in spring? Why did they filled it with about 200 food the first time and more than 600 food the second time?

Second picture

Here you can see the vendors with 0 hearts (I have a 3. vendor who had 3 stars at this moment but I didn´t make a screenshot) and the farming wife and child from the first vendor both with 5 stars. "My vendor" had 4 stars once, the wife gained all stars fast and never lost any, like the child.

Yes, I´m sure that vendors and traders have health problems; eating too much fast food.

First picture
Average health population; 4,5
Average health vendors and traders; 2,0

It was similar other times I looked.

I have turned the iron mine off and wasn´t forced to open it again. Even if the merchants don´t bring that much iron ore at the time; it´s pretty reliable and enough to develop the settlement and build some houses that need iron. I still produce copper tools for the population. There´s still some copper ore on the ground around the settlement and I don´t think there´s much other use of copper so I will use it as long as I have ore.

Second picture
It looks like the people in the larger houses with a larger store aren´t healthier than those with a medium store. House stores like the one on the picture aren´t seldom at the big houses. They´ve run out of food from one or two categories but there´s still so much food left that they don´t find it necessary to refill the store. So it almost looks like the "optimum" house storage is 1200. Those with 1000 doesn´t seem to work quite as well; same as those with 1400. There are no big differences, people´s profession seems much more important.

Third picture
It doesn´t look like the fires are worse than vanilla. I had a fire only one house and the small town hall burned down.

Here we can see 2 constructions I don´t like: the clay and sand pit. Principally I try to avoid constructions that deplete, like vanilla quarries and mines. The clay and sand pits deplete quite fast only holding 800 of each sand or clay. The sand pit also needs valuable shore. It might be alright if you ´re only planning to make some glass or roof tiles to use yourself in construction sites. But if you want to produce it in a more industrial scale; to sell or build a lot of houses that need glass, roof tiles and brick as construction material, you´ll need to spam the shores with soon useless sand mine ruins and the land with clay pit holes; not nice.

Other sand pits on the shore (North, RKED) are unlimited; sand is transported with the river, same with the clay on the shore from RKED. The North land-based clay pit depletes but can at least be flooded and used as a fishing pond. I like all these alternatives better than these useless holes on the map.

Quote from: NillaIt looks like the people in the larger houses with a larger store aren´t healthier than those with a medium store. House stores like the one on the picture aren´t seldom at the big houses. They´ve run out of food from one or two categories but there´s still so much food left that they don´t find it necessary to refill the store. So it almost looks like the "optimum" house storage is 1200. Those with 1000 doesn´t seem to work quite as well; same as those with 1400. There are no big differences, people´s profession seems much more important.

I think we figured that out already some time ago about the house storage capacity. People go for food if it's low and gather as much they can carry from a market or barn but they don't go twice to fill up free storage. More than the usual 1k capacity will be just not used. Defining less than 1k capacity was also useless because if they reach the limit, they go crazy between market and home unable to store their stuff. So this storage capacity of homes is not a property we can work with. Or anything new is figured out. That would be interesting then.

Now I´m a bit more at peace with myself and my family and will continue this blog.

I´m not done with this mod yet. I like a lot of it. It might need some minor adjustments here and there but all in all, it´s a typical DS mod; beautiful, challenging, makes a lot of fun.

Since I had a lot of crashes in my last game, I started a new game yesterday. @Discrepancy has found the bug, so maybe I will go back to that old game, we will see. But the new game has more or less the same mods and the same settings; only this time I make a hard start. And here hard is really hard. What makes it harder than vanilla? Mainly three things: iron, stone, health.

iron: only a small amount of iron ore is available on the map, schools, tailors, doctors, trading ports........needs it (or iron fittings), it has to be processed with charcoal which needs a lot of logs (and work) to be produced. LIKE IT!
stones there is less stone on the map if you´re using this mod. I´ve already used all close findings and need to get it quite a bit away from the start-up village; it takes time and work; it is a challenge and I managed to develop the village in my last game so I guess, it will work here too, even if it looks like it´s even fewer stones on this map than on my last.
health without grain everyone loses all hearts very fast and stop working to go to the (not existing) herbalist often. I followed one person one year to see what she was doing, she switched jobs between builder and gatherer, had 0 hearts and 3 stars, and fair coat:
stopped to idle: 4 times,
stopped to visit the herbalist: 11 times,
went home to eat: 8 times,
went home because she was cold: 3 times.
I might have missed a few occasions but the tendency is clear; poor health costs work; more work than everything else.

In my last game, I had a lot of traders and vendors who I discovered, use to grab some not healthy "fast food" on the way as they work on remote places and often having only a few or no hearts. I made some experiments with and without herbalists. The average health was slightly better with a herbalist but not much by these professions. I also noticed that they worked really bad when they actually walked away to the herbalist. The same number of traders didn´t manage to fill the port with tools like they had done when there were no herbalists working.

I´m not so fond of this health system. I like obstacles; things that make the game harder but I also like when you have some means to work with it. And I don´t think, you can do anything about the behaviour of vendors, traders and labourers (who I also saw often work (or idle) and eat away from home). I´ve tried to use a lot of vendors, more than I normally would have assigned, I thought that if there isn´t so much to do for each of them, they will often eat at home but the average health went down instead of up. And as I said; using herbalists is no solution, it only increases the problem. I think, the normal health system but a harder penalty (diseases) would be better and make more fun to work with.

It also looks like the happiness system doesn´t have such a large impact, I have a feeling that unhappy people idle less than in the North. I tried to get everyone happy in my last town but also made some houses outside these "happiness circles" just to compare. It almost looks like it´s better to have unhappy people living close to their workplace, than happy people living a bit further away, outside the "black circle". I would increase the importance of getting people happy. As it is now, it doesn´t pay off to bother about happiness, not more than that it looks nice to have an average of 5 stars.

Now to my latest game. You can manage a hard start with DS Industry Mining. In year 5 we have everyone in school, we´ve produced some clothes and tools and soon when students start to graduate we will go on and develop the town further.

There are not so much to show from this town yet so I´ll also show some impressions from my last game.

First picture
New game, not much more to show than that it´s possible to manage the first difficult years with a hard start.

Second picture
I talked about "animated" waterwheels. The picture doesn´t fully show the effect but it looks good. You can also see some of the other industrial buildings in the background.

Third picture
I like the new brick houses. The small storages you can put in the yard is also a very nice idea. I know, I haven´t placed them in the right way but maybe it would be nice to make some wall pieces (maybe even ghosted) that people who care about the look could place if they make the same mistake, as I did. An end house would also be nice if you choose to build a row and not a block.

That's a great third picture. Really looks like Gründerzeit with the brick houses and narrow backyards as you combined them. I don't really like that kind of atmosphere of a town and don't know how to call it in English but it hits it pretty well.

Yeah, those brickhouses and backyards are incredible!:)

Hi @Nilla

I too am trying DS Industry and Mining out, I started it earlier this afternoon.

A question for you please: I have a four occupancy home that was built a couple years ago and no one has even moved into it yet. I have ten other homes so far. In them are nine students ages 12-16 years old and one Laborer that is 16 years old. I read in a couple places I think how this mod changes the citizen file a bit. Was the ages that the villagers move out changed? For the life of me I cannot figure out why no one will move into this home. The entrance is not blocked and it's right next to an identical home.

Any ideas?  I was wondering if maybe you saw this in your game at all? That's why I'm posting my question here.

Thanks.

EDIT TO ADD: All the while I was sitting here waiting for that one home to fill up; it never did so I didn't think I was in need of more homes. All this time I thought I was okay but now after I checked it seems I am a bit behind in my homes vs. families ratio.   :(

EDIT AGAIN: Never mind!  *sighs*  In the window for the home, the Occupancy tab was scrolled down so that I couldn't see the people living there.  :-[ Now I gotta play catch up! I was wondering why my population was growing so slow for the last couple/few years.

I could have deleted that reply of mine; I checked the top of the page here and no one had read it since I put it up and then made my discovery. But though I am embarrassed, it's a teachable moment in case another new player experiences this issue.
               

Don´t be embarrassed @MarkAnthony, I think this is a mistake we all have done/still do from time to time.  :-\

I have been a bit quiet on this forum for some days. My husband was again at the hospital but now at home.

I started a new game with the latest update. The changes you´ve done @Discrepancy look good. We will see how they work. I haven´t come very far yet but I have at least one question:

Lumber; the smaller lumber mill makes 5 lumber from 1 log, the Worker´s construction yard makes 5 lumber from 2 logs. Intentional or bug? Lumber is very profitable, it was in the last version and I think you´ve even increased the production, the menu from the small Timber mill says 2-3 timber from 1 log and if I remember it right it worked like that in the last version. You´ll need a lot of lumber to build and develop your town and also to run the mines, so a high production is necessary. The lumber mills need shore in competition with trading ports, sand mines and some other buildings, so the number of mills you can build is limited. Maybe it would be good to set the price to 3 instead of 4. Or do you want it to be a big bussines to export timber? It wouldn´t be historically incorrect, so why not. But it will be easier than to build up a metal industry.

Ore; I´ve run the small cheap mine for a year. The production is a little over 100 for 1 miner. It´s a reasonable production and also a small profit; not so high that you want to export ore but at least a miner can support himself. I think you´ve found the right balance here.

First picture
It´s a hard start. it takes some years to get enough iron to build a school. It's good possible to get all children that are born in the settlement educated. The children who came to this place with their parents from the start, will however have to stay uneducated.

Map and settings are also shown.

Second picture
Slow but steady development.

I've also made the same mistake before @MarkAnthony ;)

Quote from: Nilla on July 27, 2019, 12:21:08 AMLumber; the smaller lumber mill makes 5 lumber from 1 log

I think you mean the Timber Mill from the DS Timber Mill mod? sorry yes I have not altered that, I should have included a change with this mod. sorry.
I agree a change to the value might be needed also.

Are you getting many diseases still? are you getting many deaths from them?

Thanks.

There were only 2 "diseases" before I could build the doctor. One broken bone (no one dead, no one infected) and Yellow Fever with several infected people and one dead. Now, after the doctor was built I also had Scarlet Fever, no one infected no one dead.

And yes, I mean that Timber Mill. I didn´t realize that it didn´t belong to "Industrial Mining", but now I can see that I had that mod loaded. It fits very well and it´s very good to have something in size between the large mill and the "Worker´s construction Yard", maybe you should consider to include it.

It´s hot here, too hot to be outside for a long time. I´m lucky to live 150 m from a lake. The water is warm and I like to swim. We live very remotely, so in "our" bay I´m always alone. Just one problem at the moment; mosquitoes, gnats, mosquitoes, horse flies, mosquitoes! Terrible. Even in the sun at the lake. We´ve lived here for 15 years and it was never as bad as this. You certainly jump fast into the water!

So, chased from mosquitoes and heat into the house, I spent a few hours playing Banished. There´s not so much to tell. The new production values work so far. Except for the small initial workplaces where the production is and should be low, I´ve seen no unprofitable site. The most profitable site so far is the vanilla woodcutter. It still produces a lot, it could be set down a bit without causing big problems. Or maybe the value of firewood could be set down to 2, especially if you consider to set lumber down as well.

I will not farm for anything except flax. There´s one thing that disturbs me; the Thomson Trade Seed Trading Port. I made one business; flaxseed, then I demolished it. The upgrade is quite useless because you can´t order anything. It could be useful with a smaller port now early in the game but only if you can order grain. I see no reason to take this option away. It needs a small footprint so of course, it should be less useful than a larger port late game, but this could be solved with a lower capacity; just hold enough goods for sale to buy 1 seed. Or maybe take the special seed port away and add seeds to the Livestock Port. Here I also made only one business; buying some sheep but the upgrade to the big general store is great.

First picture
I find the menu from the Miner´s overseers office too big. I like to have it open when I play but it takes too much space away from the screen to my taste. But I like the small desk.

@Discrepancy, it looks like you haven´t changed anything/much when it comes to idling/herbalist behaviour. I followed the lady on the picture; Murieller one year. She idled twice, went to the herbalist 6 times, home to eat 9 times and home to get warm 3 times. About the same as in the last version. With these sometimes huge black circles; I don´t think it pays off to make everyone happy.

Second picture
Just a small view. The Timber Mill looks great. Since I will not farm, I will need some food ports. So far, I sell timber, some lamp oil, tallow and linen. I´ve also put some venison in the ports but just for "emergency". I will try not to use it, just to see if it's possible to live from the "industrial products". The Livestock port will be upgraded as soon as I need more storage space in the harbour area.

Love the stone riverside and mill, looking lovely.:)

I've played a little more and will tell a little about it to the pictures.

First picture.
At this moment, the population doesn't grow at all. I didn't make anything wrong; I had enough houses for young couples, only houses for 5 person families. The explanation is simply; I had 10 (!) bachelors or young widowers (yes, I counted) and not one single girl. 28 years old teachers or miners marries 10-year-old students, some 39 years old move out from home alone, never finding anyone to marry.  :-\ There were at least 5 childbirth deaths in 20 years. Have you changed anything here @Discrepancy or was it only bad luck?

You can see my little flax, linen, lamp oil industry. It's quite profitable. The production variates a lot but now the weaver doesn't walk back and forth with the flax. 2 farmers, 1 weaver and 1 worker are involved in the production. I looked 3 years, together they produced linen and lamp oil to a value of 4032, 3432, 3144. There are probably some linseed eaten as well, but also a small input of firewood. So the profit is quite high. I find that the production of lamp oil could be reduced a bit. The production is now 600-700 and occasionally it stands still when there are not enough linseed, so I guess if I import a surplus of nuts, always good available, it will be even higher and too profitable for my taste.

Second picture
I've started to replace vanilla houses with the brick townhouses. Bug or wrong text? The text says that the smallest brick townhouses can hold a family of 3 but actually it's 4.

Third picture
Even if I don't think that it pays off, I've started to make some of my Bannis happy. I'm experimenting with happiness maker in the yard of the brick houses. The little mead stand would have been much nicer but the radius is tiny. Not even in the smallest yard, it will make the people in that block happy. If you one day are thinking of expanding the townhouses, a small brewer would be nice, maybe also a doctor, even if the Bryggen doctor looks better than the brewery in the yard.

A store for consumer's good would also be nice. You can see that I've built a vanilla market. I had some issues in that other game with the Wagon Vendors and Bryggen Markets I used at first. They load an awfully lot of "industrial stuff" so there was sometimes too little food to supply the people with all food categories. The vanilla market also loads at least as many different materials but it's so big that there's always room for enough food. Can you consider to make the smaller markets for consumers products (food, fuel, herbs, clothes, tools) only?

I haven't changed the variables that I think is directly related to that occurrence,
float _childBirthHealthy = 0.00625;
float _childBirthUnhealthy = 0.025;
though the changes in the disease chance might make this happen more often, as I have noticed it happen a bit more often also.
I will leave it as is for now. If it really starts getting too bad and too often in maps I might play around with adjusting them a little.

Thanks for the feedback regarding the lamp oil, I had a feeling it was a little too profitable right now, but have been too busy looking at all the other numbers in metal production and didn't realize it was that much! :)

A mistake in the texts, it does allow 4, I increased all the homes by 1 occupant, but must have forgot to update the string texts. thanks.

Ok, same change to the markets :) I agree. I am also going to remove the ores from the industrial barns.

These numbers look interesting and maybe the explanation of my many childbirth deaths. Since I don't farm and the trade for grain took quite some time, people weren't very healthy at the beginning. Now later when I can buy grain, I have hardly lost anyone at all in childbirth death. I even had more single girls than single boys for some time.

It looks like it's a probability of 2,5% to die for an unhealthy mother but only 0,62% if she's healthy; a big difference. I like it; another penalty if you don´t care about the health of your people. Does anyone know where the "breakpoint" is? Does it need all 5 stars to be counted as healthy or is 1 heart enough or is it something in between?

Talking about health; it looks like you've made some changes that make herbalists work better and more reliable. Now I can get 4½ stars when I use herbalists. I didn't manage to get there in my last game. I still don't know if it's worth the loss of work but at least, it's a significant difference in health with and without herbalists.

I have started this game not with mining but mainly with a lumber economy. The big lumber mills are very profitable. As they are located here; sometimes with the workers living a bit away, and as always, when you do mass production; some logistic issues, the mills make between 2300 and 3000 lumber with 5 woodcutters. When I only used one cutter, I saw an annual production of over 800.

I also sell a little coke. It's also a very profitable chain, not quite as good as lumber but about as good as linen/lamp oil. 5 miners in the upgraded small coal pit and 1 worker in the Battery Coke Oven produced 2200 coke, with an input of about 200 lumber. It also makes a trading profit of almost 1000 for each involved worker.

So you see; you can use this mod in many different ways to support your settlement in an "industrial way". It doesn't need to be mining, even if I'll come to that too, later. But first, I will develop the "lumber economy" a little bit further.

First picture
Again I didn't pay attention; it was something like 25 students as I last looked. Suddenly I saw the sign "overfull school". Luckily only one child missed school. I laughed as I saw what became of him. Now it's down to 30 students again, just a short time with that many. You see, @MarkAnthony we all make beginner's mistakes; all the time. (Well, at least I do and if anyone says he/she doesn't make any mistakes, I guess they are liars or too stupid to notice ;) )

Second picture
Here you can see at the graph, where I used herbalists. I've just assigned them again and the health continues to improve.

Third picture
Just a tiny little wrong text at the sand quarry. The limit follows raw materials (custom4) but the text says; stone.

At least, being a teacher, your uneducated Bannie can do no harm  :D

I always suspected that poor health made it more likely that bad things would happen to your guys (specifically death in childbirth), but when I said so I got pooh-poohed.

glad to see a modder look into affecting health and diseases more. i think these are some of the areas that LUKE had good ideas but never finished. can really enhance the game. i do wish he had split the citizen file out so we could do more with it.

if i had a magic wand, i'd take KIDs age,DS's health,TOMs education and happiness and then we could let JINX change their clothes. LOL sadly we can't YET alter the bannies with multiple mods.

Quote from: Nilla on July 30, 2019, 11:36:36 AM
Does anyone know where the "breakpoint" is? Does it need all 5 stars to be counted as healthy or is 1 heart enough or is it something in between?

It is something in between. In the version you are using it would be 3 stars and below is seen as unhealthy.

Thanks for all the comments and insight :) it is very helpful. I'm working on the next update which will have a bigger change in all resource values and create counts again.

I´ve reported possible bugs and some production calculation on the DS Industrial Mining thread so I´ll only show a few impressions.

First picture
Now we know who is idling a bit too much down at the trading docks!!  ::) ??? Should we be shocked? In any case, I can report no one else in the settlement was infected. It would have been too good if some male student became ill as well. ;)

Second picture
Overview of my latest development. I try to make as many as possible happy and healthy. But I´ve said it before; I don´t know if it pays off. It´s hard to say if the working time that is lost when someone grabs a herb and goes to the herbalist is worth the fewer diseases and childbirth deaths. And I don´t think that the long distance between work and home that´s needed to get everyone happy pays off. Anyhow, it´s nice to try.

Third picture
Good looking industrial buildings

Still testing DS Industrial Mining. Now a new version; beta 04 and a new town.

This time I wanted it challenging. Industrial mining pure! It´s a small harsh mountain map from DS Terrains and Climates, harsh climate, disasters on, hard start. I have a few DS mods loaded (from which I now see that I will not use all):
Industrial Mining (beta 04)
Townhouses
Timber Mill
Thomson Trade
Mead and Ale (will not be used)
Terrains and Climates
Fuel Market
Wagon Vendor
Chapel of ST Ernest (will not be used)

First picture
The start was indeed difficult. Very little space, very little resources on the ground; (not even enough iron ore to build a school). Just barely enough stones for the initial buildings. The start was made harder with childbirth deaths and illnesses. And not to forget this..................

Second picture
...... a tornado in year 4! Not one single building was damaged but what on earth were 5 of my 20 Bannis doing out there in the most remote part of the forest? You can see its path. Gatherers and forester were, of course, doing their business but why all in that part of the forest? And what were the tailor and a small child doing out there? Looking at the tornado? Stupid Bannis! Interesting enough; I had 4 uneducated workers; 3 of them were killed by the tornado.  :-\ ???

Third picture
The tough start is managed. Here everything does work alright. On this map every log is precious, so I´ve started to replace the initial wooden houses with the far more fuel-saving brick Townhouses.

Fourth picture
Industrial impression. I don´t bother to make anyone happy. The houses are located close to the workplaces, also those with black circles. There´s simply not space enough to try. That´s the reason I will not use alcohol and chapels.

It hasn´t been easy to provide enough food; there´s only room for one of each gatherer and hunter´s hut, there´s too much mountain along the river to locate many fisher huts and the two I could put down aren´t very good. I have a lot of possible trading goods but the merchants only bring a little food. I´ve solved the problem with the only thing left; bees. These Bannis are spoiled with sweets, probably all have very bad teeth. One good side effect is that the beehives also produce wax, to produce a surplus of candles.

I can´t say so much about the new production numbers and trade values. I still need to micromanage a lot to get the settlement running and have rarely run a site continuously with the same product a whole year. But as far as I can see, most things are quite reasonable. At the moment I sell; iron, iron tools, coke, comb honey, venison and candles.

It´s the same profit for each tool, no matter if you produce the simple iron tool or the more complex steel or hardened tools. I would have prefered that the profit increases when the tool is more complex. Since you need less raw material for iron tools my guess is that they are the most profitable tools because of a higher annual production; the blacksmith doesn´t need to walk away to get any coke: My estimation is that it´s better to sell iron tools and coke instead of hardened tools.

Fifth picture
Overview

Considering the amount of micro-managing there is during the first few years and the constraints you have on that map, you have built your town up fairly rapidly.. haha a lot more than I can in those same years.
:) well done.

There are no changes to the tornado in this mod, and you are using the standard Harsh climate which has a chance of tornado every 100yrs from 1 population. It must have been just bad luck to get it that early. But I myself am not a fan of the tornado anyway, and I have been trying to adjust it to be something different... I was going to release something in last update but it isn't working well, my first attempt was to make some kind of forest fire using a flame particle instead of tornado, though the actual moving flame looks okay the destruction of trees does not. A long time ago I tried doing a similar thing while on a project with Yandersen - adding a destruction and fire chance to resources and spawned map trees. Either the modkit is not allowing me, or I am still doing something wrong. I have a few other ideas of what to use the tornado function for... one is perhaps a severe storm, though with less chance of destruction than the tornado (possible to do) and the others I'm not sure if they will work as I intend as they won't be a disaster at all but more just a timed event...

You are indeed correct about the value of tools, I overlooked this and the more durable tools will have better profit margins next update.

Coke I am still not sure of, but looking at your inventory it is too overpowered. In this update it has a value of 8, it is now more costly than Charcoal (value 7), yet charcoal is more heavily used when produced as it will be taken into homes as well as used in smelting. With a Log having a value of 5 and 21 are use to produce 34-55 Charcoal there is total profit of 133-280 or 3.91-5.09 per piece of charcoal. To produce Coke, 21 Coal at 3 value to make 34-55 Coke there is a total profit of 209-377 or 6.15-6.85 per piece of Coke. Both are profitable, yet charcoal requires constant micro-managing, and the use of it as a household fuel ensures it currently isn't likely to be an option for a trade good. Coke though does not have enough uses, so a closer to even parity of input-output is likely to be in the next update.

Thanks.

These disaster ideas sound interesting. Disasters in Banished are pretty dull. Of course, not the tornado but it is rare and might also hit you in a way that makes it impossible to go on. Fire is no big deal anymore and the infestations are more annoying than disastrous. Some new ideas would brighten up the game. ;)

Yes, I agree coke is too powerful. I just looked; I ran it almost a year, 2000 coke was produced with 1 worker. For 2000 coke you need 763 coal. To mine that in the Coal Bell Pit you need almost 7 miners with no input. (I guess you´ll need less miner but an input of timber and lamp oil in a mine) Anyhow; as average these 8 people make a trade profit of 2000 each and that´s a lot. I don´t think it´s the price of 8 for a coke that´s the main problem. It´s the high production. Many sites in my settlement use coke and I also sell some but I still don´t need to run my only Battery Coke Oven the whole year.

On this map charcoal isn´t an option. There´s simply too little logs and I need what´s there for fuel and timber. I like that it´s an ordering fee on logs. I will need to import logs all the same but it´s good that there is a cost to play on a difficult map like this.

This is too easy! The iron-tool-chain is much too profitable. I didn´t buy all that food because I need it; I did it because I can and because I wanted to see how much food I can buy for the tools I produce. After I built the small industrial area south, I only sell iron tools for food.

Where is the problem? I will make some calculations later, based on the numbers of this town at the moment but spontaneously, I would say the price for iron and iron tools are too high. The mod is called "industrial mining" so I like to have some "industrial feeling"; a high production with a lot of people at the big sites. It wouldn´t feel right to set the production down here. But I can tell; a blacksmith at the small Smith´s Hearth makes a lot more iron (108 last year) than a blacksmith working at the large "Water Powered Blast Furnace (668/8/=83,5). Maybe the small site is a bit better located but this big furnace can´t be built everywhere and this one is well supplied with ore and a wagon vendor brings coke. It´s no good feeling that it would have been better and cheaper to have built 8 small hearths closer to the houses instead of this one big site. The production at the smaller sites ought to be set down in a similar way that mines work; larger more expensive mines->higher productivity for each worker.

Lamp oil is still very profitable and easy to produce. I buy flax, it´s cheap and easy. The merchant brings a lot. I will also make some calculations later on this chain. The text at the Oil Kiln says that you need 7 seeds to make 8 lamp oil but in fact, you´ll need 8 to make 7 together with some firewood.

First picture
Old industrial area with a small scale production.

Second picture
New industrial, large scale production area. I also show a full profession list.

I´ve made some calculations. I haven´t double-checked it, so there might be some miscalculation here and there. It´s a list for some interesting products containing; product, trade price, trade profit for 1 unit, annual production for 1 worker in this town last year, annual profit for 1 worker. If there´s a ?, I´m not quite sure how many workers I employed the year before. When I have more sites, I use an average value.

log; 5 - 5- 110 - 550
stone; 12 - 8 - 130 -1040 (?)
iron, small site; 34 - 16 - 110 - 1700
iron, big site; 34 -16 - 84 - 1340
iron tool; 28 - 8,5 - 150 - 1275
firewood; 2 - 1,2 - 550 - 660
iron ore, small mine; 4 - 1,3 - 130 - 170
iron ore; big mine; 4 - 3,1 - 220 - 680
sand; 2 - 2 - 300 - 600
timber (large mill and improved small mill); 4 -2 - 550 - 1100 (?)
coal (upgraded coal bell pit) 3 - 1,8 - 110 - 200
coke; 8 - 6,8 - 2000 - 13 600
bricks; 5 - 1,5 - 200 - 300
lime: 5 - 2,5 - 500 - 1250
candle; 5 - 3,4 - 180 - 600
linen; 10 - 8,75 - 160 -1400
glass; 15 - 8,75 - 90 - 800
lamp oil ; 3 - 1,6 - 630 - 1000
fish; 1 - 1 - 500 - 500
pasture, sheep; 3/5/2 - 1800/96/36 -6000
small beehives; 1/2/3 - 370/30/20 - 480
gatherer; 1 - 1 - 740 -740
hunter; 3/10/2 - 600/18/24 - 2000

I told you in some thread that I´m in stress at the moment and haven´t played Banished for some time. I´m not ill or at least not more than usual. But my husband is and at the moment; "Winter´s coming", so it´s too tough to live here in our house out in the middle of nowhere. So we´ve decided to rent an apartment in town. Not so easy to find fast but now we´ve got one at 1 October and until then, things have calmed down. So a little Banished isn´t bad.

Up to the new beta 5! The changes look interesting.:)

I left the settings as they were from my last game; "Harsh Mountains" and I looked at the new starting conditions. I wanted to test the hardest of them; " Industry Charcoal Burners" but I soon realized that these harder starts are; if not impossible, at least very hard on smaller maps. There are not enough iron ore on the ground to make even the smaller bloomer smelter, maybe unless you build several bridges. If you want to mine, you need timber. To make timber you need a timber mill or worker construction yard; both need iron. Maybe @Discrepancy you could consider to take away iron as a building material from the worker´s construction yard or at least make it possible to use a small woodcutter to cut some lumber "by hand". The amount of iron ore on the ground is indeed very small, especially on a smaller map. Edit: Forget about it! I just saw that you can use logs in the mine. Stupid not to pay attention.

So I decided to use the next starting condition; "Industry: Ore Smelters"; here we have a small bloomer smelter from each iron and copper. So we can build a school and a Worker´s construction yard.

I´ve played 11 years. The start is indeed tough but manageable. I have the same problems as @MarkAnthony; not much goods to sell, but in a slightly different way; I have no ambitions to farm. I want to start an industry to buy food, but before the industry runs, it´s not so easy to produce something you can sell. I like it very much! At the moment I sell venison and candles. We need food. There´s no room for any more gatherers and hunters, there are no good fishing spots left. So I make so many small beehives, I have people to manage and use the beeswax to make candles. It´s not a very profitable chain but at least it works so far.

But this small mountain map has too many limitations. There´s no room at the river to build any smelter. I want to test the "coin trade". No room for the larger ports, so I´ve decided to leave this map and start over on a more normal map.

I have made some screenshots.

First picture
Dream or nightmare start? Anyhow, I got everyone except the eldest in school. No chance there! But I settled her close to the fishing dock and as I looked; she was fisher or trader. I never saw her messing with iron production or stone collecting.

I´m certainly no big "planner in advance" but when I play "Industrial Mining", I always set the footprints for the stone quarry and the small iron mine. They aren´t easy to set and I don´t want to mess up the good spots with other buildings.

Second picture
5 years, the settlement´s developing just fine.

Third picture
11 years, still developing good enough. I think it´s a good idea to go for more continuous production of iron and industrial fuel as soon as possible. It´s slowly getting annoying to micromanage these early sites. There is always something to demolish, always some blacksmith or coal burner without a job.

Edit2: Forget one small thing about the new log houses; the text says that they are for 4 people but actually they can hold 5. I find it good that way; they are rather large. Maybe it could be a bit higher win in heat efficiency to upgrade, rather than to increase the family size.

Edit3: I should make notes because I forget a lot I wanted to say: I didn´t want to build any vanilla barn instead get along with the smaller storages until I could afford to build the nice looking TS&f barn but I found no small storage for glass. Just wanted a few for the food port and a doctor but they couldn´t be stored anywhere.

I admit I haven't tested on a small mountain map. So thank you for pointing that out, I will look into a slightly different resource spawning for the mountain maps I think (more ores available).

I also find the micromanaging can get annoying with the early sites of charcoal-piles and bloomeries. I did start a model for a building with constant production of charcoal, but put it on hold as I wanted to limit the start with the piles, but as I'm now incorporating this into the future Celtic village mod I will return to this building for next update.

Thank you for spotting that fault with the log homes. And I will update it with the changes you suggest.

I must have missed the exclusion of glass from the storage, I had originally envisioned it to be on the storage yard piles, but this would not be compatible with other mods. I will add another storage option for the glass also in the next update.

:) thanks

I decided to give this town a few more years, just to "feel" the small map. It´s hard but possible to survive and develop. And yes, it is indeed very little ore on the ground, but on the other hand; if you chose a small mountain map, you want a real challenge and after I discovered the log-options of the small mine, it is possible to manage the start. So I don´t find it necessary to increase the amount of ore on the ground on small maps especially. However; it´s good to start the iron ore mining soon and change to steel tools as soon as possible. I made bronze tools (like you suggest @Discrepancy) too long and got some other problems. Some buildings need copper or bronze for construction and since I´ve used the little copper ore on the ground for tools, I must wait. Again; use the few resources in the wisest way! What´s best on a larger map mustn´t be best on a small map!

Since I need copper for a blast furnace I had to make do with the small bloomer and it is indeed a bit annoying; even if I have a "strategy" for dealing with it. Only using the largest bloomer, demolish it as soon as it´s depleted and start the construction of the next pile as soon as the demolition is done. It works but I would rather have something without all this micromanagement and something where you can use coke as fuel. Since I have very little forest, I try to use coke everywhere it´s possible but I still need a lot of charcoal and if the surplus of firewood isn´t high enough, people will steal the valuable charcoal and heat their houses. Of course, I need to import logs but they don´t always arrive as I want. It´s an interesting and difficult challenge. I will certainly try a small map sometime again.

I´ve discovered one text that needs to be updated to the new production numbers; the smaller lumber mill.

First picture
Here´s most of the settlement. I usually build dense but here it´s even more dense than usual.

Second picture
Good health and happiness aren´t easy. You can also see that there´s a problem to produce enough clothes. It will soon improve since I managed to buy some sheep.

You can also see all these bloomeries and charcoal piles in different construction modes. And if you look carefully, you may also see another "evil trick" to prevent your population from starving when the conditions are bad.  ;)

i dislike that trick,but do think soe trickery is needed to work the DSIM.much depends on how easy or hard players want to make the game.

For those of us (me) who seem to be trick-impaired can you enlighten us? I don't see anything. I see you have a lot of honey so you use the beehives, I don't see how that is a trick so what am I missing? Thanks.

You're good at this game Nilla, I didn't think I was that bad a player but for some darn reason I am just having a hard time in DSIM Beta v.05. This last game I started last night I chose a medium start so I had crops and orchards and I'm still getting starvation deaths. I don't know what my problem is yet you somehow manage to get to 18 years on a small mountain map which I have never even tried before. I once looked at a small mountain map and geesh, there's hardly no room anywhere to do anything so again - you're pretty darn good at this. /hat tip

MARK check her water count in the intventory. bannies can'tin RL,live on water alone.

10x10 fields,1 food worker per 5 bannies< that is a rough guideline> and send workers to gather food and herbs in mid to late fall and winter. remember to check them before spring planting.

    for " tricks" you can use TOM's quick hunters and fishermen. these are handy at game starts to build food reserves without building workplaces. the quick hunter is easy to move around the map and trurn on and off.be careful to not overhunt.

How does the water count help her? Isn't water non-nutritional? We can't send them to gather food in DSIM, there is no gather wild foods option; I wish there was because in other games that has occasionally saved my butt. I'm using 11x11 fields so 868 per field.

I'm trying to stick as close to DSIM as possible, by this I mean no other mods to help "cheat" with food or resource production, storage, school, specialized trading posts and so on; basically it's just DSIM and Vanilla builds that I am doing. Even though I showed a screenshot of my ModMan profile for this game that showed me having "food preservation" mods loaded... they may as well not be there because I haven't even had a chance to try and build them - I have other "issues (crap)" to deal with - never found the time, besides some of them were for use with Vanilla so they want iron to build them. Hell NO!  You can't have my iron!  >:(

Here's my ModMan profile again that I have been "trying" to use with my last 3 (soon to be 4) DSIM games. The mods in the blue boxes are what I am using in game, the mods in the orange boxes are the food preservation mods I loaded but as I said they want iron to build and nay, nay -- I refuse to give them that - so I am not even using those. Well, except for Tom's Campfire but I don't even have a Hunter going this last gamer or Kid's MarketFood because I don't have a Gatherer in the last game either. This last game I have been trying to just start off with Pepper and Pumpkin farms. Anyhow.. I'm rambling due to frustration.   :( I'm not using any food preservation mods.
               

so you made the game very hard on purpose.with just the DSIM trading would be hard too.you should still have the basic gathering hut. do you have a clear all tool? i would have used that in year 1 to clear a huge patch of land. that would allow food to grow. and then the next year, you could use the clear tool to clear the food since there wouldn't be many trees. could do the same thing with the crop field if you didn't have a clear land tool. set a large field then delete it.next fall replow the field.

    NILLA accidently found out that the bannies can survuve on water. then she tested the theory back a ways.i do think her health will suffer but they won't starve.

Yes, Brad knows my tricks. Water counts as food but belongs to no category, so theoretically you are right Brad; health would suffer but not when you play DSIM and are at the beginning. When just one food category is missing, health will drop to 0 hearts anyway. So here water makes no further harm.

And Mark; don´t feel bad. This is a difficult mod. I survived these 18 years because I bought all the food I could get, together with the honey. Water didn´t contribute much, I just saw that there was a water well that you need if you want to produce alcohol.

Your trick Brad doesn´t help here either. Like in a vanilla game; wild food cleared with "clear all tool" will simply disappear without any use. The only thing is to produce as much food as you can. 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´ve just started a new game. I will tell you a bit more in detail, how I manage the start tomorrow. This time I can use no tricks, no water, not even my beloved honey because I took away the ale/mead mods.

i see, so NECORA's smart laborers have me spoiled.

Quote from: Nilla on September 06, 2019, 11:35:59 AM
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. :)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.


               

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.

Quote from: Nilla on September 07, 2019, 10:55:12 AM
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.  ;D

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

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.

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.

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

Never mind, got it.

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

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!   :o

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!  :P   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.

Quote from: Nilla on September 07, 2019, 02:33:14 PM
A lot of "out of the box" thinking. :)

So, tough for me! ;)

Quote from: MarkAnthony on September 07, 2019, 02:52:19 PM
  Be warned.   ???                

Thanks for the advice!  :)

Sorry @irrelevant , I updated my comment to be more clear. You didn't get that version of it. Please re-read.

NP, I've got so much catching up to do, I'll be lucky even to get a town started this evening.

Wow! Health evaporates so fast! :o Brutal.

Doesn't seem to matter much for day-to-day operations, though.

Took most of two years to figure out how to make iron. Fun! ;D ::)

Year 5: rough stuff on a medium start, but I think I've got the basics down; timber mill, charcoal piles, iron mine, bloomeries. Maybe try something harder tomorrow.

You´ve done well, @irrelevant. Health does matter, at least to some point; you were probably lucky, but the chances of childbirth deaths and diseases increase a lot with an unhealthy population. But it´s difficult to get them healthy. I like that! :)

I find your advice very good @MarkAnthony. Something similar but without such bad consequences happened to me as well in an earlier game where the small Smith´s hearth also could produce iron and copper. I was tired of switching between iron, copper, tools, iron fittings.... so I wanted a second site but since I saved my iron for other things and only produced copper tools, I couldn´t build the second hearth. It was no big deal to produce a few iron tools, I still had my first Smith´s hearth but I think I learned to build the first site fast, as long as some of the initial iron tools are left.

But now we are back at Atgelendover. I realize I haven´t told you which mods I´m using. I find Marks efforts with a more "pure" industrial mining interesting so I stole his idea and are only using a couple of house mods and the Thomson trader but only to be able to buy some sheep. I will not use any of the other ports. I was a bit hesitating about the Wagon Vendors. Yes, you may see them as a cheat. You get a working market very cheap but I simply love them. They are too nice to take away.

I made a few screenshots when I played yesterday but none of them is good or interesting so I´ll make a few new at the point I´m at now, 100 inhabitants and tell you how I continued to develop the settlement.

First picture
Mods in this game. No need for any Mod Manager here.

Second picture
I could buy some sheep and flax seeds. This corner of the map will be reserved for the production of clothing, linen, lamp oil. Since I want to use the linen together with wool for warm coats, I needed the Bryggen Tailor. The vanilla tailor can´t produce any, maybe that is something to change @Discrepancy. It would also be nice to be able to use only linen to produce clothes. If the merchants bring flax seed but no sheep, you will have a lot of textiles (linen) but your population may still walk around in rags.

I can now produce enough advanced building materials to be able to build more fuel-saving houses from the Townhouse mod. There will be a row of Bryggen houses here along the small river. In the industrial areas, I will build Brick houses. By the way; I´ve also upgraded all (?) log houses to the more fuel-saving log homes.

Third picture
Here you can see the main reason for the linen-lamp oil production on the last picture. I´m about to build a larger mine that needs lamp oil (or candles, hard to produce without bees). This first mine will mainly produce coal. It´s obvious; you now need more coal than in earlier versions, my first little coal pit is already depleted. I will upgrade it and compare it to the mine but if there are no changes, it´s faster and cheaper to produce coal in the large mine, but I want to check it out again myself. The coke chain is much better now. It was ridiculously easy to produce a lot of coke earlier. Now it´s more balanced.

The metals are very heavy and need a lot of space on the stockpile. Make sure you have large stockpiles somewhere between blast furnace and blacksmiths. Mine look large but I think they are too small. I now produce only hardened tools.

You can also see that health has improved fast to 3½ hearts after I can buy food (wheat).

Fourth picture
This little Thadd Surrel Trading centre looks great! But I´m afraid that´s the only really nice thing I can say about it. OK, I can also say, that it seems to work. I can buy enough food, mainly wheat and apples to increase my food store in the way I want. I can also buy a few of the more inefficient raw materials, like ores and coal and if a merchant brings logs, I will buy them too. That are also good things. But I don´t really get the sense of the coins/metal/gem trade.

I need the big port to "buy" gold, silver, gems and silver ingots if I want to buy anything from the other merchants. They may barter with some goods but pay terribly. But what´s the advantage compared to a vanilla port (except the look)? There are disadvantages; you need to deal with 2 merchants to buy something. The value of these precious things is weird. If you trade manually, you need a calculator, if you aren´t very good at counting "in your head". I belong to the older generation who learned this in school so it´s manageable but what about all younger folks who can´t add 7 and 9 and far less can estimate how many hardened tools worth 36 you need to buy 12 gold worth 252, 4 gems worth 199 and 25 silver worth 11?

And what is the use of the other coins? I tried to make it easy and "buy" some of the coins with the lower value as change but the merchant only pays 1 for the halfpence I bought for 2 and he doesn´t take the farthing worth 1 at all.

Anyhow, I auto trade for the gold etc and the merchant very consequently take the most valuable goods in my ports; only the hardened tools. It works because that´s what I produce for export. I also keep some other goods in the port that I want to get rid of; like mushrooms and leather that are overfilling my barns but he consequently refuses to take it. No big deal at the moment but it would be hard to use this port if you want to produce more than 1 thing for export.

I would be very interested to hear your ideas about this trade @Discrepancy.

i wondered if you had brought some mods with you.i know you do at times if you need the TH or school earlier in games. since you added DS mods,it is still pure enough to count.

       i think coins is an idea taken from RED's railroad mod. the RR mod or train mod uses them but it trades automatically.you ony have to telll it what to sell and what to buy. the hardest part with the train od is balance. it is easy to sell and have a stockpile of coins. otherwise the mod does work quite well. you can get a decent flow out of excess goods and input of food or other itesm.

      your trade post looks to be more complex but i wonder if DS had similar ideas in mnd. or is it set more to be like TOM's North trading?

@Nilla  in reply#32 of this thread you mentioned iron production at the Smith's Hearth. What am I missing, I don't see iron on mine (Yes, I scrolled thru all outputs several times) ;)

You aren´t missing anything. That was an earlier version of the mod. You can´t look all too much on earlier towns made in earlier versions. This is beta5. Lots of things have changed.

Thought that might be the case, thank you.

How I utilise trade and the coins is still a work in progress, so the comments are valued and needed and I myself are open to ideas.
My idea with it was to be of a similar fashion as brads3 said, and similar to RK's Choo Choo, but still utilising the existing trader mechanic and having it manually undertaken. But I do not want a trader paying less for the coin than it is worth (or more), so I will look into this trader mechanic more.
It is of course profitable to go into the manufacturing of your own coins if you can produce the required resources.

The value of Silver is likely to be increased slightly which will also result in a change of value to Gold. The reason for the current values is that I based the value of gold on a historical ratio of 12:1
If it will prove difficult to multiply or divide, I will round it up or down to a suitable number.

Enhancements to the tailor and clothing industry is on the roadmap for this mod and elements have been completed, so yes I will include the changes in the production to the vanilla tailor.

Thanks :)

I will go on and use these ports and also think about how they could be changed to make more fun to use.

I can understand your historical point of view @Discrepancy , when it comes to set the value of metals and coins, but as far as I've read (at the time @Tom Sawyer struggled with the same issue) the value of coins and ratio between copper/silver/gold were not always the same; different times, different counties (or even regions) had different numbers, so your *12 may be as right or wrong as any other. I would seriously consider the decimal system with 10 as the base, what most of us are used to.

What I also can add after some more years; there are too few merchants that bring food. And most of them only bring 4000, the big boats are rare. My population is now a bit over 200 and I didn't get enough food from one Purchase Office. First, I thought about just adding a second office to the existing Goods Buyer, since I (more or less) buy nothing but food, I think it can support 2 Purchase offices. But it looks like the metal/tool production also in this version is very profitable and I have more tools than one office can sell, so I decided to build another complex. I find 4 trading ports to support 200 inhabitants with less than 50% of their needed food is too much. To an industrial mod efficient trading ports are needed; to get rid of industrial products and to buy food. I find it should be possible to support a population in an industrial settlement 100% with imported food from a limited number of ports, like these Thomson Traders. They work very well at least for a population of some 100 inhabitants.

In this mod, it's good and logical to replace barter trade with the use of coins. It's good to have different ports for export and import. But the capacity of these specialized ports need to be larger. That could also be an incitement to use such a port instead of the vanilla (or Thomson) ports: You will need to build fewer ports.

First picture
I actually built an Assayer's Office. I don't have a silver mine, at least not yet. The production was very low, if I remember right only something like 25 silver ore the last time I tried it but I buy the little gold and silver ore that the merchants bring and make gold and silver ingots. I don't make any other coins, I can't use them to buy food anyway and some of them are even a loss of value. I haven't checked all recipes but by the smaller coins the value of the input is higher than the output.

Why are there three types of gold ore?

Second picture
Interesting @Discrepancy that you'll look into the health. It's not bad the way it is now. But I see two major issues; the effect of the herbalists and the fast-food-grabbing vendors and traders that you have no chance to get healthy (unless you have all food categories in every storage, and I don't think that is realistic).

You can't lose so much production by using a herbalist as you may do now. The production of the sick tailor went down to 16 when the goods was bad distributed in that corner of the map. All houses were in the circle of a Wagon vendor but the barn with almost only mutton was closer. So it can easily happen. Now a few years later the Bryggen row has their own Wagon Vendor, the tailor is healthy and last year the production went back to 120.

I may live with this. I'm aware of the danger of herbalists and don't build any unless I want to experiment and think I'm safe enough. But many people think; "health drops, we need a herbalist" and that may kill your settlement. That's a major issue. Now I don't know if this was the reason for @MarkAnthony´s failure (He makes other odd things, sorry Mark don't want to offend you :-[ ) but I'm pretty sure that it at least contributed to his problems.

I'll explain the health graph at the citizen menu.
Red; I could buy wheat. Fast increase of health. The following years I improved the distribution and health rose slowly.
Blue; the merchants aren't very reliable, sometimes there's a lack of wheat of fruit and health starts to drop.
Yellow; I staffed my herbalists. (But I didn't want people run all over the map to get the few herbs they can pick so I've bought a load of herbs in advance)

Third picture
The development of my industrial area.

You can see the drop of food in my stores before I build the second trade complex. Now it drops again. It's been some time since a merchant brought any food. It happens all the time when you trade for food, that's why you need a higher average store if you rely on trade.

I will now look into some production numbers and give some feedback here tomorrow.

Quote from: Nilla on September 09, 2019, 02:56:48 AMI'm aware of the danger of herbalists and don't build any unless I want to experiment and think I'm safe enough. But many people think; "health drops, we need a herbalist" and that may kill your settlement. That's a major issue. Now I don't know if this was the reason for @MarkAnthony´s failure (He makes other odd things, sorry Mark don't want to offend you :-[ ) but I'm pretty sure that it at least contributed to his problems.

Not offended, don't easily get offended but I also have no clue what you are referring to; what do you mean I make other odd things?

as mods add more and more items,the chance of getting a food merchant boat goes down. since there is less food items compared to the overall total of items, the ratio of food boats has changed also. this leads to food trading posts being modded as well as a farm trader to being seeds and livestock. as you add more variety to your food being processed, the chance of a food merchant shoud start to go back up.

     a market near the trader's house would supply hi with the 4 food types. getting him and everyone else a variety of the foods under each food type will take some work.you should have protein at each market but that might be al fish and not a ix of deer,mutton,etc.  would take experienting and different planning.

         your herbalist issues seem to be game mechanic related.not sure how much control modders have over that. from what you have said,the biggest issue is the bannies walking to the herbalist everytime they need herbs. my thinking is they shouldn't need to do that the herbalist collects the herbs, and the bannies should be able to get the at markets or storage and use the herbs themself like they do food.  since we have doctors available in the game, the herbalist shouldn't act like a medicine man. the bannies should be able to use the herbs without all that walking.

         because of your explanations with these herbalists, i seldom use an herbalist but the bannies gather herbs when they search for foods.plus there are some growers that grow herbs but are not tagged as herbalists.

         excuse my logic, but your idea to drop the health to 0 and not worry about it to me is wrong. in RL if you did that, this town would have issues from day 1. production woud fall steadily. workers would be tied up helping the sick and not available to do work. your bith rates would suffer. the bannies would abandoned the town.
   
         to me it makes more sence to drop the health down as slowly as possable.wheeras you and MARK drop it instantly to 0, it should take a couple years to fall that far. thus giving you time to buid supplies and attempt to overcome the health issues.if health goes down say 25% then production drops but not to badly. at 50% drop to health,it becomes much harder to keep the town supplied. under 50%, you should run into serious problems.   

Quote from: brads3 on September 09, 2019, 07:06:58 AM
        to me it makes more sence to drop the health down as slowly as possable.wheeras you and MARK drop it instantly to 0, it should take a couple years to fall that far. thus giving you time to buid supplies and attempt to overcome the health issues.if health goes down say 25% then production drops but not to badly. at 50% drop to health,it becomes much harder to keep the town supplied. under 50%, you should run into serious problems.   

LOL, I'm not waving a wand at them saying... "Hey... you there!  ZAP!  No health for you!"  (Tv series "Friends" reference, "No soup for you!")

The super-low/zero drop is as Discrepancy once said somewhere... "the # of Hearts changes after the game recalculates what makes a citizen happy"; Discrepancy changes those variables; when the game catches up and says, "Okay, Discrepancy said to make them unhealthy if this...this..this; so unhealthy they shall be!"  ZAP  zero hearts in 3 months.

I'm just minding my own business trying to get a town running same as everyone, the hearts drop all on their own with no input from me. Discrepancy even said, some of these high-society type Banies want 15 different food varieties... you don't have that anywhere near close to the start of a game.

Sorry, @MarkAnthony  for just throwing something out like that about the "odd things" I accuse you of doing. I ought to be ashamed.  :-[  I don't mean anything special, just small things, I observe you do and that we also sometimes discuss, like start to build roads before anything else, like clearing all resources in an area if you need them or not, like collecting a lot of logs to make a huge stock of charcoal, just in case your Bannis will burn some in their houses instead of using those logs to make a large pile of firewood, so that they don't need to fire away the valuable charcoal and such small things.

And @brads3, Mark is right; we don't choose to give our Bannis a poor diet. We got that as "gift" from @Discrepancy. As soon as one food category is missing health drops to 0. Fast! As long as you don't have enough of each, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. That's why it seems that we don't worry about it at the beginning. And of course you need markets, you need them close to all houses, not only those from vendors and traders I talk about. You know, Brad, normally a Banni eats at home. As long as they have a close market with all food categories the house will contain what they need to get 5 hearts. The problem with vendors and traders is that they work all over the map. If they are too far away from home as they get hungry, they grab something in the closest barn and don't care one bit if it's healthy or not. With this mod; one wrong meal and 2 hearts are instantly gone. Herbalists do improve health with 2 hearts as well but they are fast gone if the Banni doesn't have a very good next meal. And since he's away from home; "visiting the herbalist", the chance is big that he grabs something on the way, lose the just regain hearts and must go to the herbalist again. A never-ending loop where there's very little time to work.

And I think @MarkAnthony the 15 different kinds of food are needed to easier get full happiness, not for health.

Quote from: Nilla on September 09, 2019, 09:51:13 AM
... just small things ... (1) like start to build roads before anything else, (2) like clearing all resources in an area if you need them or not, (3) like collecting a lot of logs to make a huge stock of charcoal...

And I think @MarkAnthony (4) the 15 different kinds of food are needed to easier get full happiness, not for health.

(1) Maybe half the time. When I first start playing Banished, yeah I laid roads all over the place; after I learned to do otherwise it's only small sections here and there only since I mostly remove the main throughways and keep the T-sections until I'm ready to move into that area.

(2) Never do that! Correction: Again when I first started I did but that changed quickly from watching videos. I haven't done that in the last 2.5 months (out of 3) that I have played.

(3) Guilty as charged!  ;D Like I said, I just wanted to get one done so as I wouldn't have to worry about it again for a long while, if ever again. I also had it paused up until the last time I played, I unpaused it at the end of year 4 where I stopped last time to go to work (in real life) so it wasn't like I was stealing logs from the Banies the whole game, just from the point of where I logged off for the night.

(4) Thanks for the clarification - either way... snobby Banies regardless!   :P

Now I´ve played 40 years. The town is small, almost everything can be shown on one screenshot. If you look at the first picture, you can see that I´ve (temporarily) have closed all tool/iron/ore production. I simply "swim" in tools. Sorry to say @Discrepancy; as hard as the more difficult starting options are at the beginning, as easy it becomes to support a settlement with industrial products. Here mainly hardened tools. I like that you can produce a lot; after all, it´s industry. It should be able to produce a lot, much more than a few small craftsmen can but the profit is still too high.

I´ll see if I can decipher my notes and tell some numbers from this settlement. I haven´t worked all too much to get extremely high production, but I think it´s pretty good. Everything is close, there are industrial markets and charts to gather material to the sites, I´ve closed the herbalists, I haven´t bothered to settle the workers outside the black circles, so they have short ways home. The workers in the industrial area have a good supply of all the goods they need and are reasonably healthy. There are a lot of labourers to do the carrying around. So I think conditions are pretty much as good as they can get, maybe except the supply of timber. I didn´t load the smaller timber mill, and there was no place close the industry to locate the large mill. The industrial markets hold a lot of different goods and I also have several small charts from the Wagon Vendor mod to move timber from the mill area at the river, but when I look, there is seldom timber at these locations.

Anyhow, last year we produced 1354 hardened tools worth 36 each. That´s a trade value of 48 744! How many workers were directly involved? When I exclude traders and vendors I come to a little less than 50; so about 1000 trade value for each.

To make 1354 tools you need 677 iron, 677 timber, 1354 coke and 8 blacksmiths
To make 677 iron you need 1016 iron ore, 339 lime, 667 coke and 4,5 blacksmiths (I prefer the option with lime unless I have too much iron ore or a lack of lime)
To make 1016 iron ore you need 203 timber, 203 lamp oil and 7,4 miner
To make 339 lime you need 42 stone, 42 coke and 1,1 worker and another 0,7 worker for stone cutting and production of the stonemason tools
To make 1354+667+42=2073 coke you need 1280 coal and 2,5 workers
To make 1280 coal you need 256 lamp oil and 256 timber and 9,1 miner
To produce 677+203+256=1136 timber you need 568 logs and 3,3 workers
To produce 568 logs you need 5,6 workers
To produce 203+256= 459 you need 612 linseeds, 77 pottery and 77 firewood and 1,5 worker and we can estimate that another 2 workers are needed to produce the raw materials.

I hope I haven´t forgotten anything. I dived the workforce in blacksmiths, miners and workers who produce other needed raw material than ore. If we round up we get about; 13 blacksmiths, 17 miners, 18 workers; a workforce of 48 Bannis.

I have also looked a bit more into each step in the production, to see where it would be reasonable to cut the profit.
Again; my production numbers in this dense settlement from my messy notes, I can only hope that they are correct.

The numbers after each product/profession/site are: profit for 1 product/ production for 1 worker/annual trade profit for 1 worker

Hardened Tools/TS Blacksmith; 9/150/1350
Iron (lime version)/Blast furnace; 17,5/150/2625
Iron ore/TS Industry Mine; 3,6/140/502
Coal/TS Industry Mine; 2,6/140/364
Coke: 5,5/800/4400
Lime/Battery Lime oven; 2,5/300/750
Lamp Oil; 0,3/300/90
Timber/TS Timber mill; 1,5/350/525

Summary;; The metal/tool production is still very profitable. It would make sense to set the value down of iron (and iron products). The coke oven is still extremely profitable, even if the production is now down to a more reasonable value. It could be cut a little further, but mainly the price of 8 is too high. Even if coal mining isn´t that profitable I guess it would be even better than tools to export coke. But with the lamp oil, you were a bit too eager to reduce the profit; if I had made these calculations earlier, I might have considered buying the lamp oil instead of producing it. ;)
First picture
Almost the whole settlement

Second picture
I couldn´t buy enough food, so I needed two more Purchaser's Office.  ::)

The problem with trade in Banished always is that prices need to be set high enough that the really important items can't just easily be purchased in the early game, but then in the later going, those same high prices mean that as a producer you can buy pretty much anything you want to buy, subject to the limits of TP space. 

What does the Purchaser's Office do?

I´m aware of that dilemma about the prices @irrelevant, I´m sure @Discrepancy is, too. And that´s one reason for us to test it; give help to find something in the middle; not too low to be too easy to buy at the beginning, not so high that it doesn´t make any fun to go on with the settlement when you´ve made the full development. Certainly not easy!

At the Purchaser´s office, you buy everything you need, I buy almost only food but you should pay with gold, silver and gems that you get in that other part of the trade complex. You can barter with some goods but the merchant only pays about half of the normal value.

Thanks @Nilla , I was aware that it gets very easy in the game after a certain point, but your production numbers are great and will help me :)

Tools will be getting a durability and value change next update along with adjustments to the iron/metal values. Hardened tools will not be as durable as they are now.

I agree I was a little too heavy handed in my reduction of the lamp oil production and profits. Thanks I will increase this slightly also.