Reforestation mostly, a few other questions and comments

[Kaldir]

I have seen trees in single width patches of land as well, but not often. I like to space my houses one square apart, and sometimes trees will grow between those houses if a forester is near (which is often enough in my towns).

[gatinho65]

Ha, that's great news about the trees in tight spaces. The only ones I saw growing in 1 square were those I thought were already there, I'll have to pay closer attention. I wasn't going for a tree lined look, I kinda like the randomness of where they get planted or survive, but its good to know I can get away with tighter spacing if I want to.

Has anybody actually placed gatherers or hunters right in town as well, especially if you've left in big green/wild park spaces? Man, I need to just keep loading until I get a map with that kind of space and enough resources to try those things! I have yet to break 100 population on my maps before I run out of available stone, so I usually have tried to just get to a steady state economy by then, not really enough left over to trade for more stone. I've seen some pics of pretty incredible plazas with creative paving and all kinds of stuff I'd expect from SimCity but didn't even think were possible in Banished. I guess it really is picking the right map.

On my mac, I have yet to figure out how to do a screenshot, my mouse and keyboard controls are already a bit wacky. Anybody playing a wine version who has figured out how to get good grabs, without UI, and where they are to be found if you do take some? Then I could post some pics, if I create something worth looking at.

[slink]

You have to trade for enough stone to do some of those things that are in player's screenshots.

[Kaldir]

@gatinho65: like @slink said, you need to trade quite some to get enough stone for paved roads and plazas. You'll have to build up a decent dwelling first and get your economy going, so you actually have something to trade with. That will usually require a bigger town than 100 citizens. In my experience the map seed only has limited influence on your survivabilty and building options once you get beyond the first 50 to 100 citizens.

As for hunters in town: I found they do okay as long as there is enough open space without buildings. Once the town gets larger around the hunter, the productivity drops. Others have reported better results though from a crowded hunter in town. Gatherers really need that forest, I think.

As for screenshots: try assigning different buttons to both screenshot functions. The default buttons are poorly chosen and don't work for many people (including me). I've assigned them to F10 and F11, and that works perfect for me.

I still don't understand your trouble with the maps. Either you have very bad luck, I had very good luck or you are a bit too pessimistic about the opportunities of a random map. Could you post a screenshot of your next map (when you get that screenshot function working) and tell us where you would build your gatherer/forester. It would either allow us to express our sympathy for your bad luck, or allow us to give you some hints on where to build.

[Bobbi]

Also, gatinho65, unless you are opposed to using seeds others have found, there are a number of threads suggesting some great map seeds. One good one is on the Shining Rocks website.
http://shiningrocksoftware.com/forum/discussion/331/best-map-seeds-

[mariesalias]

I have to admit, I find the idea of 'trading' for children in any sense in the game, distasteful. Whether you are paying for them with cash, or with  trade goods doesn't matter...you are still buying them.    

That said, I do not think anyone meant it in that way, so I am not offended or angry. The thought of it in the game though does make me very sad.

[Bobbi]

I think it is very unlikely to ever occur through Luke, but who knows what kind of mad mods people will come up with. One can always choose which mods one wants, and which are legal in contests I guess

[slink]

Some American colonists "bought" their brides.  They paid the ships for the cost of the transport plus some profit so that someone would bring them clean but poor, and usually orphaned, women to choose from.  They did not own their new brides in any sense more than any man back then owned his wife.  The women probably benefited from the transaction because their lives were less hopeless than they had been, if harder in some ways.

So think of the trader bringing children "for sale" as that sort of transaction, and you will understand that it is not slavery.  It is recompense for expenses, plus some profit, for transporting orphans to a new life.

However, from my observations on downloaded saves, a child without parents dies instantly.  Therefore the trader cannot bring children for adoption.  We'll have to make do with nomads.

[Bobbi]

Really? A child with neither parent alive dies? I always wondered what would happen, would they move in to another house with an open spot, could be considered a relative? But I have never had it happen in any of my games. Had a student left alone in a house, he just married up quick as he could.

[Kaldir]

Interesting indeed (sorry, sounds a bit morbid). Does the eventlog state anything when a child or student dies? I know most of the weird deaths for adults, but never seen or heard about a child's or student's death.

[mariesalias]

@slink  I do realize that paying for costs is not the same as buying a child (or bride). That is how adoption mostly works today. I've wanted to adopt for years but it is too expensive for us. :\

As I said, I do realize that nobody meant it really as buying children as chattel or anything.  I am perhaps (or definitely) too sensitive on subjects pertaining to children and their care and welfare. I was a nanny for over a decade and have been taking care of other people's children since I was about seven-years-old. It is sometimes difficult to distance myself.  I did not mean to imply that I was upset or angry or anything. I guess mostly I wanted to share with @salamander that they weren't the only one who felt that way on originally reading this.


P.S. I have to go pick up my son from his art camp so I will be gone for awhile. I didn't want it to seem as if i were leaving because of this.

[rkelly17]

The early "populating" of both France's and Britain's colonies in North America has some incidents that might not make all us Americans and Canadians proud. Women brought to New France, where there was a severe "shortage" of marriageable women, were often women who had been arrested as prostitutes in Paris--Jail or New France were the options. The women had a fairly short time in which to get married once they arrived in Quebec or face jail anyway. Between 1869 and the 1930s something over 100,000 orphans were sent from institutions in the UK and Ireland to Canada, often called "Home Children" or "Bernardo Orphans," they were sent to orphanages across Canada for potential adoption. Some of them were abused badly and some ended up with a better life. There is some question whether all were actually orphans. So, trade in women and children is part of the history of many of us. And that's without even mentioning the slave trade.

One of my proudest moments was when my Grandson figured out in studying the history of the Underground railroad that he was descended from people on one side who helped conduct the UR and on the other side from people who might well have been passengers. At one level that is the best we can hope for from our past efforts at trading humans.

Sorry for waxing serious. Sometimes a game can open doors beyond games.

[Bobbi]

I find it kind of funny that this thread has been hijacked by an adoption debate.

If anyone saw this story in the news, there was an article about Catholic nuns in Ireland taking in "fallen" women who had babies out of wedlock, and how many of the children died of starvation or disease. I forget when. In to the 20th century. I bet those children would have loved to be a banished child.

[Bobbi]

Here is the article I found re the children.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/irish-church-fire-childrens-mass-grave-23979097

[gatinho65]

Yikes, I feel embarrassed that my first posts to the forum as a noobie made me sound like an idiot, I really should have thought about how my suggestion might be taken. Not a great start...

I still think it would be a great addition to the game and could be done in a very appropriate way, but definitely as a mod that could be chosen or ignored.

I'm sad to learn that the kids die if the parents starve to death. I hadn't thought to check, I've only had death by starvation in one game, which I ended up stopping, it was too disturbing already lol! I wonder if it couldn't be modded that kids are adopted right away into another family if the parents die. That is actually much closer to real life. My own spouse's father was adopted by a neighbor village family when his own parents died during a drought. Very common, even if no relatives are around; these adoptive people have always been considered 'the family'. Within my own history, my grandmother's father was orphaned when his game warden parents were murdered by poachers, he was also taken in by neighbors and became their 'son'.

Since the game already has dark elements, you can't get much darker than starvation and death, I don't think we need to be squeamish about other issues, like family arrangements, adoptions (let's call it that and not trading children), things that are true to the setting of the game and add elements that can promote the sense of solidarity and group survival and flourishing that are already there.