World of Banished

You read that correctly - 500 farmers!

You pick the seed and the conditions and take as many years as needed to build your farming empire.  The challenge will end on June 30th at midnight GMT/UTC.

I have decided to sweeten the contest with a copy of Galactic Civilizations I and II on Steam for the one who has the most farmers at the end of the challenge. You have to have at least 500 but if we have multiple entries over 500, the most will win the prize and become a forum Champion! 

Yeah, I know, our first champion @Bobbi didn't get a prize but managed to get nearly 1,000 people inside a market square.  I will be glad to correct that oversight!  @Bobbi PM me and we will take care of that!

Quote from: solarscreen on June 10, 2014, 06:31:56 PMThe challenge will end on June 30th at midnight GMT/UTC.

This sounds like a fun challenge!  Thank you for the extra time on it too.  I'm sure I'm a minority when it comes to time constraints, but I do appreciate it immensely.  Thank you!

Here's my entry, made without working up much of a sweat.  I don't want any Steam games, so I'm hoping someone will beat my score of 522 farmers.

What are the parameters here for farming? Only the normally assigned farmers by the game, as in four for 15 x 15, etc? Because I discovered (had not previously noticed) when I was playing the market circle challenge that you could assign more than four, I think it was up to six, for a 15 x 15, and it was great news because the farms were so far away from the circle. But that seems like it would be cheating for a challenge like this.

thats exactly what i was thinking, Bobbi.

in the other hand... can someone being able to check all farms and count all the squares every field has ? of all participants ? i dont think so.

If it's not allowed, we need to be on our honor. And I think it should not be allowed. What say all?

I'm watching with amusement.  It won't take me more than an hour to replace each of my 9x9 plots with four smaller plots at one farmer each.  The number of farmers will be the same, or slightly higher since I don't have four farmers on every 9x9 plot.

Slink, we werent talking about you or anyone in particular. nobody downloaded your save (Save6.sav (10022.35 kB - downloaded 0 times.))  we were just wondering before we start doing something. and trying to know the rules, if anything setup'ed. we all know we can have a crop minimum sized and we can add some workers on it (up to 6)

personnally, myself, i m taking a new seed i didnt got before and start from begining, and i ll paint my map with just 8x8 crop (at 1 farmer each). and i ll make sure it really look like a farmer town (no downtown with hundreds of houses around a market ^^) but will try really.... rustic :)

(500x 8x8 minus the orchards)

@RedKetchup: The good news is that an 8x8 defaults to two farmers, so you don't need to make 500 of them.  Which is good, because I seriously doubt 500 8x8 farms would fit into one map, especially a medium map.

My point was that anyone who is using 15x15 farms with six farmers can easily replace those with enough farms of the correct sizes to use the default number of farmers and still have the same amount of food and possibly more farmers.

Quote from: Bobbi on June 11, 2014, 02:55:02 PM
If it's not allowed, we need to be on our honor. And I think it should not be allowed. What say all?

Unless @solarscreen decides to be more specific for this challenge, and I'm not sure he needs to be, assigning more than 4 farmers to a farm sounds like fair game.  You can choose to go that route, or some other that works for you.

Why don't I think having more than 4 farmers on a field is unfair?  First, anyone can do it so the playing field's level.  And, second, keep in mind that having 6 farmers on a max size field doesn't increase the yield, but does give you more mouths to feed, so you're decreasing the efficiency of your farms.  It may not the be the easy solution it seems to be.

It doesn't matter if you want to assign 16 farmers to one field or 2 farmers to 8 fields, you still have to support more than 500 farmers on your map. 

@slink has thrown down the gauntlet early with 522 farmers but there's plenty of time to get up to 600, 800, even 1,000 farmers!

Oh and if you don't like Steam, I have GOG and GMG games as well. 

In fact I have a 4 game gift pack with Simcity 4 Deluxe Edition, Myst Masterpiece Edition, Sid Meier's Colonization, and Capitalism 2 from GOG but I need a really good challenge for that prize.

Oh, this will be a challenge! I've only recently really started using farming regularly.

@slink  Hats off to you for playing so many game years!  :o

50 years is a struggle for me as it takes about 3 "real" hours to get that far and by then I'm bored with the map.

50 years in 3 real hours? It takes me about 2 weeks (well, not continuously. I idle a lot   :P ). Sometimes it takes me more than an hour before I unpause the game at start.

I have had to start bumping up to 5x for most of the challenges, otherwise I would never get them in on time.

I am off to a stellar start though! Took me over an hour last night to find a map I was okay with. Even with the one I finally chose, in the end, I just accepted it because I was tired of starting new games and it had sheep, beans, and a grain at start (not the best seed for a farming challenge though perhaps). I started on easy since people have been saying it is harder and I wanted to try it out again. The first start I completely forgot I had seeds for years! So I restarted and started farming right away. Although easy start is annoying because I eventually have to tear down the barn and houses, I found with farming right away that it made the extra people and babies to feed mostly a non-issue.

@ivorymalinov, I stand in awe if you can complete 50 years in three hours. Even running at 10 speed, which I only do for these challenges, I would say it probably takes me about 15-20. I have a very hard time finding enough time to complete these challenges. In the Valley of Death challenge I am at year 45 and praying I will have enough time to complete and submit before 8PM my time when the challenge ends. Cross fingers for me.  :P

a couple of days i m on it ... i am at Year 36

470 Citizen but i only have 102 farmers so far. it s all crops: 8x8 with 1 farmer in it , or 9x7 orchard with also 1 farmer on it. i still have alot of place. it will be crazy at the end hehe
i am pretty sure i ll have to take all the space in this Large Valley to do my challenge :)

starting area :
http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot19.jpg (http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot19.jpg)

i expanded towards South :
http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot20.jpg (http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot20.jpg)

and then gone to the other side of the river, to the east:
http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot21.jpg (http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot21.jpg)

and once this project done, i ll go north of last zone and will follow the valleys between mountains till i cant go further:
http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot22.jpg (http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot22.jpg)

and then i ll comeback the other side of river and expand toward the other side

i m trying to do it ... really rustic, really farmer country. no downtown with market at all. will have 0 market on the map

Quote from: Bobbi on June 13, 2014, 09:10:56 AM
@ivorymalinov, I stand in awe if you can complete 50 years in three hours. Even running at 10 speed, which I only do for these challenges, I would say it probably takes me about 15-20. I have a very hard time finding enough time to complete these challenges. In the Valley of Death challenge I am at year 45 and praying I will have enough time to complete and submit before 8PM my time when the challenge ends. Cross fingers for me.  :P

@Bobbi According to my husband I cannot tell time correctly. The 50 year "Valley of Death" challenge took me close to 5-6 hours to complete. It seems to me time must really fly when immersed in a game of Banished. It honestly didn't feel that long, especially when the map seed was given out and I didn't have to go hunting for one that I liked.  :)

I'm at year 57 and just a couple of game years ago broke 100. I could go back and switch my 9X9s from 1 to 2, which would give me 15 or 20 more. I'm switching trade from firewood-based to ale-based and that is providing a reason for more farmers. Today and tomorrow I won't get much playing time in (Real life can be such a distraction!), but I'll attack it again Monday.

we still have 2 weeks :)

here comes my update :) 3 screenshots (+1)

i finally finished my other side of the river:
http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot26.jpg (http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot26.jpg)

even thesouth part of it ... is finished:
http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot24.jpg (http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot24.jpg)

and i also finished the north part where i said i was going to do next:
http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot28.jpg (http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot28.jpg)

i am at 825 citizens :) soon i ll get my 900 achievement :) i never never made that far yet.
i have 210 farmers (so 210 8x8crops or 9x7orchards)

oh i also did that part :)
http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot29.jpg (http://dwraith.webs.com/photos/undefined//Screenshot29.jpg)

@RedKetchup, I am blind as a bat. I can't see the numbers on your screen shots that show what year you are in, how may peeps, etc.

Sorry, maybe cause i resize 50% and specially , i transform as .JPG. Jpeg take alot less space but we are losing so much quality :(

will do right now a screenshot of just my town hall stats

i did a .BMP with some copypaste of 3-4 screenshot with different town hall tabs. i hope it satisfy you :)

here's annother one with the 2 last (without nomadtab which btw i never got asked to accept nomad:P) , 2 last townhall tab

I will not be looking at pictures of people's towns until I have submitted mine. Unfortunately, I really am quite suggestible with things like this, and I never realize until later.  I'd really rather not chance inadvertently borrowing ideas from other people's submissions.

That said, I did look at your stat pictures @RedKetchup and I am impressed with your numbers. And surprised that you have no Marketplaces yet! Looks like you are off to a good start!


@solarscreen I wanted to ask when you said we needed to support our 500 farmers, does that mean with only food we grow (i.e. not trading for food) ourselves? I am not very far into this challenge yet so I need to figure out my strategies.

And, if you could add this into @mariesalias' question, are we allowed to use a game that was in progress before this challenge was announced?

When I say you must support 500 farmers it just means that your village will be large enough to have so many citizens that it consists of at least 500 farmers plus everyone else to support that. Traders, vendors, cleric, doctors, teachers, anyone else you need for a successful village.  If you can do everything with just farmers, now is the time to prove it!

As for pre-existing villages, they must be YOURS and not some file you downloaded from a forum or got from another player.  You built it from the ground up!

@mariesalias and @salamander , does this help?  :)

Sir, yes sir.  Thank you, sir.  ;)

@solarscreen It does, thanks! I had already set up to do some trading so I wanted to be sure it was okay. :)

Quote from: ivorymalinov on June 13, 2014, 05:16:29 PM

Quote from: Bobbi on June 13, 2014, 09:10:56 AM
@ivorymalinov, I stand in awe if you can complete 50 years in three hours. Even running at 10 speed, which I only do for these challenges, I would say it probably takes me about 15-20. I have a very hard time finding enough time to complete these challenges. In the Valley of Death challenge I am at year 45 and praying I will have enough time to complete and submit before 8PM my time when the challenge ends. Cross fingers for me.  :P

@Bobbi According to my husband I cannot tell time correctly. The 50 year "Valley of Death" challenge took me close to 5-6 hours to complete. It seems to me time must really fly when immersed in a game of Banished. It honestly didn't feel that long, especially when the map seed was given out and I didn't have to go hunting for one that I liked.  :)

At x10, it takes one hour to play ten years, so five to six hours would be about right for playing to year 50, if one assumes pauses to build, and bathroom breaks.

Wow, have I been out of touch.... when did a 15x15 plot get 6 farmers, or has it always been the case?

15x15 it s 4 by default, but every crop even a 4x4 (or minimum) you can make it go up to 6

Halfway there, and plenty of potential farmland at the edge of my new expansion  :D

These are nearly all 15x8 farms with 2 farmers each. I was farming them with a single farmer, but the yields were too erratic because of weather. Two farmers are more consistent. Besides, I didn't really need 500 laborers  ;)

Industrial farming.

haha yeah 500 farmers... thats alot of farm :)

OK ... I don't mean to whine, but this harder than it first appeared to be.  @solarscreen -- you may just have an evil streak buried somewhere deep in your personality.  :)

bah it s more easy to try to put 100X 15x15 at 4 each (=400) then try to put 400x 8x8 at 1 each (=400) ^^

(i say 400 cause the 100 farmer left are easily orchard farmers)

but definitly .... it s really not an easy challenge... it asks you to be pro with 1200-2000 pop cities :)

Quote from: RedKetchup on June 19, 2014, 03:01:10 PM
but definitly .... it s really not an easy challenge... it asks you to be pro with 1200-2000 pop cities :)

I agree, and there's my problem.  I've never had a town above ~600 total population that was anywhere near stable.  I'm only recently realizing that the total population to have 500+ farmers is likely to be way above what I have experience with.

It's fun, though, and it gives me an incentive to move out of what I've experienced before.  Maybe @solarscreen is not evil after all, but just a good teacher who's not obvious about it?  Nah ... I still think he has an evil streak in him.  :D

Hey don't blame me!  The Big Chihuahua told me to go for 500 farmers. I said 300 farmers would be hard enough but we already have somebody with 300 farmers out there! 

Wait until I launch the Nomads challenge!  MWaaahaaaahaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Hmm, a little too evil.  ;)

go go go  :D

btw guys....

i finished :)

but...
i wait a bit before posting it  ;D
(i ll have to make 20-40 screenshot ROFL. wondering if i should not do a video instead lol, thats alot)

Here is a link to a video of Shoshong, made some time before the colony was complete.  The video was made by DashJenkins, on Shining Rock Software's Banished forum.  By the way, I am a she, and not a he as the video states.   ;D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqIJNHtqAss

thanks you Lady Slink :))

   I have created a colony named Sanctuary. Image files are uploaded into the Layout Design Gallery area.
   Map is 999999999 (discovered by my lady's cat). I played it as Valleys, Large, medium difficulty, Fair conditions, Disasters off (still had 1 Tornado  :o )

   This was for me a double challenge. I 1st wanted 500 population plus with only Gathering, Fishing and Hunting. Succeeded quite easily. 630 population.
    My second challenge was without infringing into any prior made hubs to meet the 500 Farmers challenge. This posed a problem.  ;)

    Year is 206.
    Population is 2115 and climbing. I honestly feel I am very close to exceeding the limits of the map however.
    Have had a problem with Log and Firewood generation for about 15 years. Spent a lot of firewood for items needed. Had over 43k firewood and 18k Logs at that time. Allowed 2 large groups of nomads to join, 187 and 231. Seems the hit on wood and logs was never recovered from. This resource has been my only problem. I have lately taken to putting 4 foresters on Plant only in their hubs and when trees are mature then sending the Laborers to strip farm. This has worked out well. Should of started it earlier.

   Clothes, Tools, Herbs and of course Food were never an issue.

   Created over time 16 Boarding Houses to assist in absorbing the Nomads. This worked out very well actually.

    Have had numerous diseases but tend to shrug them off. Had only 1 death due to disease. All other deaths were to old age or accidents. No deaths at all due to freezing or starvation.

    Experimented with Tailor and Blacksmith specific settings. I want to expand on these ideas in future maps.

   The Map itself is intriguing. Many areas of wide open flat lands with a nice river system. A troubling large lake especially in the northern area of he lake. The island itself was a mess. :) Decided to try to alleviate hampered movement with the bridges and tunnel. Worked fairly well. Had to work around numerous and troublesome bumps in the land. Needing to limit my farming to the border areas severely hampered my normal farm build layouts.
   
    Overall impression was the map was both challenging concerning farming and quite easy concerning the Gather, Fish and Hunt approach. I could exceed 1500 population on this map using no trading, crops, pastures and orchards.

  I am not trading oriented yet. Limited my traders to the basics although was never hesitant to trade high volume items for more needed commodities. Trading was limited to Coal, Stone, Iron, Logs and Fruits. As usual for me committed a lot of valuable space for mines and quarries, Will probably continue to do so though.  ::)

  Set churches to handle 2200 population and schools to 400. Had 5 hospitals. I infringed upon some of the hospital areas a little to much while growing.
What few spaces still available are meant for future demands. Hopefully very few in number.  :P

  Concerning Brewers, upped my ideas with them to the next step and began specializing their locations with specific fruit orchards. Will work on this more in the future.

  In closing, as always every map I make is an experiment. Just evolving is all.  ::)
  Hope viewing the screenshots is enjoyable as they are now all deleted from my game system. :)
               Patrick "Ertira"

I agree, this challenge is harder then it first appeared. :D 

I'm only up to about 50 years and 500 population. I am taking it slow though as last time I got close to 1k population I accidentally killed most of them, so making sure this town is as stable as I can possibly make it. Hopefully. I am very nervous about the populations other people are reaching and thinking I have to try for them too. I may just stop reading this thread altogether as it becoming stressful trying to keep up with you all. ;P

Seriously though, I think I am going to have to just focus on achieving the best I can and not read about what anyone else is doing.   :o

i dont want to stress you out !!! but ........








i am joking :) ^^

So, I've been plugging away trying to get 500 farmers. Still haven't managed, though I have some open flat land left on the map, so we'll see. In the process I have built the largest and most long-lived settlement I've ever done and done more trading than I thought possible, so that's something. Here's a bit of a progress report. I selected a town I'd already started for another purpose, Ashforkville, because it looked to have the most flat land. Here's the year 103 summary. You can see from the mini-map that there is still some are left for expansion and more farming, so we'll see whether or not I can get past @slink's massive number of farmers. I'm having my doubts, but maybe this will be the town where I make it to 200 years.

(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/14_23_06_14_8_24_46.jpeg)

Here's the oldest part of town. The wagon memorial is just right of and just above the center of the picture and the original forest village is on the left of the picture.

(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/14_23_06_14_8_26_34.jpeg)

Here is the long East-West boulevard and current center of population. Since this was a farmer challenge I planted pecans in the middle of the boulevard. In the upper right is one of my two main export areas with cherry orchards and taverns pumping out ale in order to trade for logs, stone, iron and coal (to supplement firewood production). All ale goes for trade and I'm trading nothing else at the moment. For the last couple of years I'm just behind consumption in food production, so every Spring I buy enough food manually to make up the deficit (c. 4000 in the past year) and I buy leather occasionally to keep up with wool production for warm coats.

(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/14_23_06_14_8_30_47.jpeg)

Here is the South-end trading area. It is near the exit point so, following @salamander's research I am not putting as much emphasis on these trading posts. I've got space for one more, but I need to bring ale production up a bit before I build it.

(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/14_23_06_14_8_38_18.jpeg)

The pictures are also posted in the galleries under Village Collection.

Nice, good job @rkelly17 dont give up !!! plenty of space left :)

ps. i ll post an update tomorrow or next day on mine.

Wow ... I'm way behind everyone else.  I seem to have hit some sort of a wall around 500 total population that's lasted several years.  I've been building houses, but the birth rate just doesn't wanted to rise.  Hopefully it's a bunch of elderly folks occupying houses, and it will eventually work itself out as they pass on.  I've got one 88 year old who just refuses to call it a day.  ;)

I'm only up to about 800 population so I'm behind, as well. I keep forgetting it is a farming challenge and have to keep replanning areas.  ::)

As usual I am super behind as well. Around 600 pop, but lots of room to grow. Just need time to play. Alas, if only we could ignore the world and play, play, play!  >:(

Yes, those pesky jobs. Will someone please toggle the "work" button off?

Mrs. Irrelevant is staying in the city this week for work starting tonight, so I should make good progress the next few evenings. Me and the cats. They are good help.

@mariesalias, even laying down as many fields as I can (without over-building and pushing my population beyond where I can feed them) I find that I end up having to have people do other things as well.  >:(  Why can't everybody just be happy to be farmers and not insist on having tools and coats and warmth?

@irrelevant, I'm glad your cats are helpful. Mine just wants to sleep on the keyboard and shed. That is, when he's not outside killing rodents. Or waking me up at 2 AM for no particular reason other than he can. Why is it again I think it's a good idea to have cats?

I'm finding as I expand the building is going slower and slower on the edges where all the empty land is. Awhile back I found a way to fit a couple more farms in toward the middle of the map and the gang got right to work and had them built in no time. Meanwhile out on the West end it took over a year to build two farms.  :(

@rkelly17:  Here is why we have cats:

(http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=167.0;attach=784)

Yes, indeed. Funny, the cat on the poster looks a lot like ours. Storm is his name. He rules his kingdom with the usual cat assumptions.

Quote from: rkelly17 on June 24, 2014, 09:04:39 AM

I'm finding as I expand the building is going slower and slower on the edges where all the empty land is. Awhile back I found a way to fit a couple more farms in toward the middle of the map and the gang got right to work and had them built in no time. Meanwhile out on the West end it took over a year to build two farms.  :(

This is happening to me as well on the expanding edges of town. What I see is that the construction crew are not being chosen very well. Even though I may have several laborers living within a few doors of the construction site, the engine will assign builders and laborers who are quite far away. And the laborers will bring resources from wherever they happen to be when they get the assignment, even though I have large stockpiles on hand right at the site.

Quote from: rkelly17 on June 24, 2014, 09:04:39 AM
@irrelevant Why is it again I think it's a good idea to have cats?

Oh, you have cats? That's a coincidence, my cats have people. ;)

@rkelly17: You mean these assumptions?  *grin*

(http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=167.0;attach=786)

"Dogs have masters; cats have staff."

Allow your cat to choose your next map seed. Reaaaally fun.

An idea for the next challenge? j/k

Picture of cat choosing seed required  :D

I love cats and have since I was a little girl! They tend to seek me out too, if I enter a building with a cat i it. Unfortunately I am so allergic to them, they could kill me if I were not careful. :(

We can't have dogs either, because my older son is allergic to them.


So we have fish....  Not the same, at all.

alright, i m gonna push people ^^ with an update soon in couple of hours :)

Alright Guys. I'm introducing you my City for this 500 farmers challenge :)
this is not my final word and i m not classifying it as final :)

i introduce you : Farm City :)


Farm City is placed in a nice Large Valley (with a seed of 487411)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_1_01_51.jpeg)



The valley is filled with 3 nice lakes , a big river from north to South, many little rivers, and tons of nice grassy plains.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_1_17_18.jpeg)



Every thing has a beginning, so Farm City started right here by the lake :)
The barn which is the northest and closest of the lake is my starting barn and the stockpile next to it is the stockpile i started with :)
so i started to put some crops... and some buildings... and i expanded it a bit toward the South and made a 2nd row of crops and houses.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_1_20_59.jpeg)



My population was starting grow fast and got access to more different crops and livestocks, i made my first big expansion toward the South, up down to the river
i took that opportunity to start also some orchards seeds i bought :)
it was a huge piece of grassy plain and i filled it. unfortunatly, i wished to add more crop in that valley, livestocks took a good part of it.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_1_32_19.jpeg)



This next part which is just west of the last one was in fact, at the begining, part of my big forest zone. I m calling that forest : The living Forest but i ll retalk of it later.
This little South part of the forest has been reconverted lately to farming. It was a good addition cause it was just next on my little downtown i had there.
you can see also some barns recently added and in construction.
And it was also just next of all the South corner of the map which i used all inches of it :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_1_39_54.jpeg)



There was an island South of it and between some little rivers, that zone finally became a good part of my farming progress.
it was a little island but i ve been able to get the most of it. i seeded many crops and also alot of orchards. it was a good fertile soil :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_1_49_53.jpeg)



Since there were all good foods nearby, and the zone in the very corner was very narrow, i still used it all.
i needed some stones too so it was a very good place, far from the city to put it there, i needed also alot of population in that spot to fill the jobs.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_1_56_10.jpeg)



I really used all the South, every inch of it. everywhere i could put an house or a fishing dock , i was doing it :)
the next 5 pictures will show you that. i managed to put some orchards and another little downtown :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_02_31.jpeg)



we will follow the South border and going to the east. up to the southeast corner. Again some more crops and orchards :)
and some houses filling the narrow South hehe
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_08_07.jpeg)



Here we have a little nice valley between mountains where i successfully added another 15 crops :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_10_52.jpeg)



There was a good valley there where i ve put like 18 crops and 16 orchards. i was seeing my farmers numbers not going up fast enough so i started to push it.
And that little zone in the corner was nice for it.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_13_36.jpeg)



I used all the South east corner for every orchards i could. i added another 13 orchards :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_21_00.jpeg)




Next incomming : We are going north. in 30-60mins ^^

Farm City - Part 2 : We are going north my son !

to filled the southeast corner i decided to make a copy of all my pastures and added many mines cause my population was going up fast and got alot of unemployment ^^
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_38_22.jpeg)



Since this challenge is about farming ... i added another 35 crops hehe and some other orchards seeds :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_40_37.jpeg)



This part in fact was my 2nd expansion (after have gone South and took the big zone up to the river). i landed here , the other side of the river.
As you can see, at the begining i was really too soft to add alot of crops: only 8.
But before i gone to the southeast corner... i added a tons , a big tons of orchards with some new seeds i bought. ive put too many houses there, really too many ^^.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_44_00.jpeg)



i did that little narrow spot between mountains right after. a couple of crops and a mine (long time depleted ^^).
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_49_58.jpeg)



And then we are going east, and northeast. following the little path between mountains till i met a big lake.
i used it mostly for orchards at first (as you can see, there were way less houses - i ve done that after the South part of the map^^)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_54_01.jpeg)



Going north, we are still strucked between mountains. added some crops :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_57_20.jpeg)



There i met the big northeast lake. but i was still seeing a path going east of it, so i continued to throw seeds everywhere :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_2_59_41.jpeg)



I finally kinda met a dead-end in there :) i finished the path with some orchards :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_02_15.jpeg)



Comming soon : Part 3 : The Long Run. in 30-60mins again ^^

Farm City - Part 3 : The Long Run.

Since i had to start farming a new zone... and i didnt want to touch my Living Forest to the West ... i decided to go directly North, center north of the map.
But it was tricky. The center zone was kinda difficult cause it was a very long narrow path between the Big Lake and the Big River.
and also, i was starting to get some lag and some ... freezing issues. and also some .... disallowed laborer bug.
So i started to make some roads going there with couple of houses to push people going to work there.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_14_45.jpeg)



i founded a little 'rich people' isle. The most rich people of Farm City have a summertime house in here :)
the view on the Big Lake and the River is beautiful from here :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_22_47.jpeg)



I m calling this north part : The Costly North. it was so hard to make it build. nobody wanted to work in there and took like 3-4 years for starting to see something being built. i tried to bring alot of people living there so i can get some workers. i needed alot. so i did a downtown, many barns and crops for food.
And once it was starting to seed, the farmers were always going back to town cause ... need to find a new tool :P so i ve got to try to push some tools in there.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_26_59.jpeg)



Here i did a row of every single seeds in the game hehe. To try to resolve a bit the problems of rarity in this area, i started a trading post. but for the moment , i cant get nothing to sell. the traders refuse to go to town to pickup things to sell :(, so it s closed for the moment.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_33_36.jpeg)



I used all that side of the river beach to try to get some foods to eventually sell one day. and i lay down some bridges for the last zone in the northeast corner (which will be incomming in the next days and it s there where i will be working next.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_38_02.jpeg)





Farm City - part 4 : The Living forest.


Now i ll be talking about my Living Forest. To the west lies a big forest zone. It is there comes all my forest Industries, gatherers, hunters, foresters, and ... herbalists.
I want to try to not touch it. This forest are the lungs of my city.
This is the very South part where were the barns in progress (if you remember them^^)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_45_32.jpeg)



It is a big thick forest. you can see alot of forest building and still very healthy.
and you can also see many woodcutters, you need alot of firewood for a such big population.
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_47_56.jpeg)



You can see it s a very big forest :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_51_47.jpeg)



And i dont even use all of it. Alot of little zone all north and all west of it i didnt even explored :) i ll use them at the end to add some more farms and crops.
Cause probably people will try to beat the number of them, so i need to continue to get more ^^
This map isnt finished yet! :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_53_41.jpeg)





Farm City - part 5 : The numbers.


Like I said, these numbers arent set. more to come :)

I have 680 farmers so far :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_3_58_29.jpeg)



Townhall Tab 1 and 2 , and 2 over 100 years stats :
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_4_00_38.jpeg)
my numbers are still good - still healthy town
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_4_02_14.jpeg)
I produce 7.3 M food so far ^^
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_4_04_40.jpeg)

i wish those numbers are biggers, but meh, the important is pass the summer till the harvests :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_4_06_31.jpeg)

As you can see on the 100 years pop graph... never got any nomads requests in this city :S
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_4_08_29.jpeg)

And of course, i have all the patterns :)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_4_10_41.jpeg)

It is there i am.
New update soon, near the end of the challenge :)

@RedKetchup  This is really beautiful and amazing. I think I'll get to 500, but no way I can match this work of art. :)

Quote from: slink on June 24, 2014, 09:55:19 AM
@rkelly17: You mean these assumptions?  *grin*

Yes, those would be the assumptions. I have to admit, most of my close human friends are more like cats than like dogs. I like people who have good reason to be arrogant. That will probably get me in trouble with someone.

@RedKetchup, 680 farmers? Seriously? Man, I was feeling good because I finally cracked 400 last night. Can't imagine I'll ever get 680. And, as @irrelevant says, the city is beautiful, too. I especially like your huge forest area and the lake side cottages for the more prosperous folk.

yeah it is really beautiful :) i tried to put alot of time on the design. all farms, all crops and all orchards have the 'default' number of farmer allowed. nowhere i tried to secretly add 1 or 2 farmer, no. it s all by default. when i ll put the .sav people will be able to verify. at begining i even planned to do it with all 1 farmer only on each, but with time, and with lag.... the farmers were finding all the excuse to not do their jobs and not even get 25% of potential food. i ve got to put the default number allowed by the game.

it is 680 farmers in 457 locations. (457 crops/orchards)
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/37_24_06_14_4_00_38.jpeg)


but i still feel so insecure. there is only 150k food in stock. even if i produced 217k last season... they still eat 205k food per year. thats scary. i had 3-4 very bad temperature years in a row, i had 350k reserve before. if i get another 1 or 2 bad year again ... everything will drop and fall into a cursed spiral down. last expansion costed alot. took 2-3 years to build, bad frosts in same time ....
starting to get alot of empty barns. i dunno if you noticed it. i have NO market at all. 0 market. i ll need to fix some things here and there.

@RedKetchup: Nobody cares whether or not you "secretly added" more farmers to your farms than the default number.  As I pointed out, it is easy enough to redefine your farms so that the default number of farmers per plot consumes all of your laborers with the same output of food.  ;)

anyways it gives nothing to add more than the default, they go afk and they dont work (only if someone else gone afk) and this is why i kinda hate 15x15 a bit. always 1 never never work, if they go work it s cause 1 left. they play the musical AFK chair.

i said it just cause i wanted it stated.
like my 0 market :)

Oh, yeah ... "I'm using only the default number of farmers and I have 680 farmers total."  You really don't care about everyone else's feelings do you?  You really don't care about those who have loaded up farmers in farms and still only have 1/3 of what you have, do you?  I'm guessing you have some secret 'pipeline' to your citizens ... they do exactly what you want.

BTW: everything above is:  :)  :)  :).  Nice town, and good luck in the challenge!

Quote from: salamander on June 25, 2014, 12:54:37 PM
You really don't care about everyone else's feelings do you?  You really don't care about those who have loaded up farmers in farms and still only have 1/3 of what you have, do you?

euh ... why are you insulting me ? what i did to you ?

you want me to stop participating to the challenges ? or even posting ?
alright i m out of the challenge. good luck

and i ll be silent.

@RedKetchup -- OMG, I'm sorry.  I thought you would see the last line of my post and know I was kidding you.  In no way, shape or form do I want to see you stop posting, or participating in the challenges.  You seem to be ruling this challenge, and I'm happy to see that you are.

Again, I apologize.

@RedKetchup what a beautiful layout!  Just magnificent!

Don't go away though, they were having some fun with you!  I could tell right away but sometimes it can be hard to tell!

We would never go after you!  Great job!

@RedKetchup yes, he was pretty clearly just joking around with you. Sometimes stuff like that doesn't translate so well.

edit: non-funny joke removed by author.

ok, thanks you for the good compliments about my city.

i dunno cause i am french (only talking English since 7-8 years) but the last sentence didnt clearly sound like you were joking. it was only saying 'everything above is' (which was my presentation) was :) :) :) Nice town. thats all. nothing says he was joking.

if i m kidding or joking i always let a : i am kidding. or a j/k (joking) or a ^^

Holy.... I knew I should not have peeked in here.  :o   You all are doing great! Especially @RedKetchup!

I'm only up to 200 farmers. If I make it to 500 farmers I will consider my town a success. I am also only placing default number of farmers. We may be away from the computer this weekend, so I may not even be able to get to 500 before it ends. I am looking forward to looking ever everyone's towns after it ends. I think I could learn a lot more about farming.

i am finding it pretty easy. i just make 2-3 steps, throwing an handfull of seeds to the right ... i do 2-3 more steps and i throw another handfull of seeds the other side, left of the road ... and i continue to walk :P and 1-2 years laters there are food and trees everywhere ^^

i am kidding ^^

Right, that's exactly how I do it....except each of those handsful of seeds takes me an hour of real time to sow :P

Finally made it out to the spot I've been wanting to get at for the past 30 years, some really juicy farming country. Going to make a late push to the finish  :D

edit: Am I actually going to build those outlying foresters? Naaahhhh.

Really lovely terrain for building.

This one too. I have no life  ;)

And this little one.

exactly like your last screenshot  ! go go go ! seeds to the left ... seeds to the right :)

with the number of unemployment ... you can easily get to 800 farmers :)
just to lay down those crops and orchards :) and some barns ^^

Yeah, learned my lesson on the barns. Barns everywhere!

What blows me away is that now that I have placed automatic purchases at the TPs, this town is running itself. I can do monitor construction and release projects as old ones finish without pausing the game all the time.

edit: Hah! That was 30 minutes before I got 6 seed merchants in a row and ran out of fruit; the food inventory nose-dived to 80k for the first time in 20 years, and all the breweries shut down. :o

One thing that would be nice would be a feature where we could scroll back through the last few construction projects to complete, so we would be able to see exactly where there would be unemployed builders. That's the only time I really need to pause now, when I notice that I have unemployed builders and want to figure out what project just completed.

but the number of laborers... oh god ! i would love to have those !! hehe
in my book they are also unemployed people :)

Yeah, well, half of those laborers are going to be farmers here in a few days. ;D

@salamander Looking back, the joke I made at your expense the other evening wasn't really very funny. My apologies to you sir. I guess I was feeling a bit too comfortable here.

@irrelevant -- I probably deserved it  ;), and honestly, no offense was taken.  I seem to have a well-developed ability to stick my foot in my mouth.  I do feel bad about the misunderstanding with @RedKetchup, and I hope there are no hard feelings.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out exactly what happened over on the SRS forum.  It seemed like a simple misunderstanding, but the person in question seemed to get stuck in skipping-needle-on-a-record mode.  I was just trying to nudge the needle back on track.  I may have inadvertently scratched the record, and if so, I feel sort of bad about that, too.

That person clearly was an especially special snowflake. Someone corrects your spelling? Oh noes! Welcome to the internet, young man.

You apologized, he should have accepted that and let it go. Kinda like what you just did. Thanks.

Actually, that whole affair had gone on for some time before I posted my attempt at a 'nudge', so I don't think I can take credit for it.  It just seemed to me that one side of the disagreement progressed normally, but the other was fixated for some reason.  It's the level of fixation I can't figure out.

Sort of back on topic, I have to say I'm just in awe of @RedKetchup's ability to bang out 1500+ populations.  I don't see any way I can compete with that with the time remaining, but that doesn't mean I can't have fun trying.

Quote from: salamander on June 27, 2014, 06:25:40 AM
I have to say I'm just in awe of @RedKetchup's ability to bang out 1500+ populations.

Yes, it's uncanny how easy he's made it look. I'm really struggling to get the final 80 or so farmers. When you get really spread out geographically, building seems to take forever (in 1.0.0 anyway). Builders and laborers make ungodly treks from their homes, and starvation takes its toll. Makes me feel like I'm a cruel pharaoh driving slaves to their deaths building a pyramid, instead of just trying to lay down a few stupid farms.

@irrelevant

Building can take a long time in 1.0.3. I think it took my laborers and builders 5 years to clear, stock, and then build a cemetery last night. Maybe longer, I'm estimating, but it took a looong time! Course they did have to walk over a long bridge to get there, well some of them anyway, but still. Speaking of bridges, I have an even longer one that it is taking my builders years and years to build. I did place some houses about midway around the lake where the builders could live though so they don't have to walk super far to work on either end. Currently, they are 260 builds out of 477.

I am up to about 1300 population and only 266 farmers. I am going slow though, and trying to keep their food supply on-hand between 300k-400k at least. Trying to keep health/happiness 5/5, a stockpile of tools and logs. I have three interior lake trading posts filled will food, in case of an emergency (i.e carelessness on my part). I am trying very hard to avoid a death spiral!

@salamander : i am so sorry Salamander. i maybe overreacted, i didnt catched any indications that you were joking. it is possible that i am a bit cocky, proud when i succeed to be good at something but please dont hate me. i am not a bad guy (i think).
and no worries, i dont have any hard feelings.

i dunno. i find that easy to get a +1500 pop but struggling to get it pass the 1700+ the game always take me out as many peeps as i succeed to get some births. i guess i dont put enough houses.
and maybe cause i only build stone houses. once after i started with my original 5-6 wooden houses... i dont use them anymore. too much stressful on firewood. i tried one day to build 1 wooden every 1 stone and i found it a very bad idea, i had really too many wooden. but i am always in wait to get tons of stone from merchants.

@mariesalias  : wow a very very nice new zone ! the spot seems huge ! it will be a huge add to your population. the only thing i would have made different... i would have lay down stones houses instead. you are amazing me how many wooden you use :) (if you dont use them(stone) at all ^^)

Quote from: RedKetchup on June 27, 2014, 01:25:52 PM
@mariesalias  : wow a very very nice new zone ! the spot seems huge ! it will be a huge add to your population. the only thing i would have made different... i would have lay down stones houses instead. you are amazing me how many wooden you use :) (if you dont use them(stone) at all ^^)

Thanks! I actually took extra time out to lay out that section completely in advance and it turned out more-or-less how I wanted it. I do have some stone houses but only a smaller percentage of the total. Currently, I am building stone houses only for the "wealthy" politicians and merchants, and for areas not within a marketplace's radius or near a woodcutter.

Currently, I am working on stockpiling food, tools, and firewood/woodcutters so I can make a bigger push for population With only two days to go, I will have to take risks if I want to even come close to competing with you, @slink, and the others! I really do not want to take in Nomads unless I have to since their production is so much lower/slower so I have been trying to increase the ramp-up for children. I think I waited too long though trying to be more careful, plus I lost focus at one point after an increase period, which lost me some momentum. I had planned to be closer to 1500 population by now. Thankfully, I periodically check my population graph so I caught it before too long, but you can see on my graph the hit I took.

ETA: Meant to add, before I got distracted, that the wood houses do cost so much more in firewood, but logs are pretty cheap at this point in the town's development. Once I have the food and tools where I want them, I switch focus to changing all major roads to stone and start converting/building more stone houses. I don't like to build all stone if I can help it though as I don't like how they look as much. Once I have to start converting some of my cutting forests to farms, logs, and firewood, will become a more dear commodity.

@mariesalias  I think I also have been trying to be too careful. All along I have been so wary of fluctuations in population that I probably haven't expanded as quickly as I should have. I could have been more aggressive with pushing out faster from the marketplaces with houses but above all else I didn't want the pop curve to get out of control. In fact mine is very similar to yours.

Your layout is beautiful. So orderly. I think the best thing you can say about mine is that it's organic. Which I suppose is another word for chaotic.

Quote from: irrelevant on June 27, 2014, 07:39:52 PM
@mariesalias  I think I also have been trying to be too careful. All along I have been so wary of fluctuations in population that I probably haven't expanded as quickly as I should have. I could have been more aggressive with pushing out faster from the marketplaces with houses but above all else I didn't want the pop curve to get out of control. In fact mine is very similar to yours.

Your layout is beautiful. So orderly. I think the best thing you can say about mine is that it's organic. Which I suppose is another word for chaotic.

I don't think I will be able to double my population in the next twenty years though! ;D

The next few posts are a tour of Donton, my 500 farmer challenge town.

Starting at the north edge of the map and moving down the river (so in the images in this post and those that follow, north will always be at the bottom).

Screen 1 - First you come to Northgate, a trading and manufacturing community.
Screen 2 - In the hinterlands on the right bank is a fair-sized farming center.
Screen 3 - On the left bank is a bit of this and that.

Next on the river is Newport, which was my second industrial center after Oldtown. Northgate (shown in the previous post) was simply an expansion of Newport.

Screen 1 - Newport, the industrial heart of northern Donton.
Screen 2 - The near left bank hinterland. This was the first large-scale farming area I made on this map.
Screen 3 - More farms to the south of the previous screen.
Screen  4&5 - This was one of my two big farming expansions that was built oh-so-painfully at the cost of many starvation deaths over the last 10-15 years. The area on the far left was all laid out before any construction began.
Screen 6 - Newport's southern suburb, Laketown. I built that long bridge cause there was a steady stream of folks walking up and down between the lake and the mountain to the right.

In addition to all the farms, Newport and its hinterlands support 8 Brewers, 5 Tailors, 3 Blacksmiths, 13 Woodcutters, a hospital, 2 chapels, and 5 schools.

Further south on the river is Oldtown.

Screen 1 - Oldtown on the left bank where the Town Hall is.
Screen 2 - Newmarket (center), the second marketplace built on this map. I recall feeling very accomplished when I built it.

Oldtown and Newmarket have 3 Breweries, 2 Tailors, 4 Blacksmiths, 6 Woodcutters, a Hospital, 5 Chapels, and 3 Schools.

I never really gave this area a name. It was simply the port/industrial area that developed as an extension of Oldtown. So I suppose this is part of Oldtown too.

Screen 1 - Port/Industrial
Screen 2 - Right bank farming hinterland. Oh, and Boot Hill way down in the corner.

This area has 7 Brewers, 2 Tailors, 1 Blacksmith, 7 Woodcutters, a Hospital, 3 Chapels, and 3 Schools.

The southern expansion. This part was lots of fun. Well, until the whole starvation thing kicked in.

Screen 1 - Southport. This was tough to get established, as the available land is so narrow.
Screen 2 - Southfield was the market that allowed me to push out into the fertile areas south and west of the river and bordering highlands.
Screen 3 - This was the first area where I laid the whole thing out first before building anything.
Screen 4 - ....and this was the ultimate expression of that idea.

This area contains 2 Breweries, a Tailor, 5 Woodcutters, 3 Hospitals, 2 Chapels, 4 Schools, and a boatload of farms.

Here are some town hall panels pasted down over farm porn  ;)

Screen 1 - Pop 2337 with 527 Farmers, mostly on 15x8s with 2 Farmers each.
Screen 2 - Production and Consumption totals for 100 years. I guess if you do the math between Food Production, and Consumption + Inventory, that means I bought almost 3 million food over that time, mostly Fruit purchased for Ale but half consumed by Citizens.
Screen 3 - Population graph. I think what allowed me to be able to keep this pretty well under control was that the number of Houses was very consistently about 20% behind the number of Families reported in the Town Hall.
Screen 4 - Food Inventory
Screen 5 - Log woes. I was doing okay there for a few years in the 50s or so. I think what caused the crash was that I had to vastly expand firewood production.
Screen 6 - Firewood was my biggest problem the whole last 50 years. Yes, @RedKetchup, I know I should have built only stone Houses  ;)
Screen 7 - shows the Overview panel after I went through and bumped all the 15x8 farms to the default 3 Farmers up from the 2 Farmers I used the whole game. Is this how many farmers I really have, 694? No, cause if I were to continue with this town, the first thing I would do would be to go through and change them all back to 2 Farmers each  ;)

Oh, and I counted: there are 28 cemeteries with 2351 total gravesites, of which 239 are currently available.

I've been at a convention since Thursday morning and I'm blown away by what you have all been doing. Amazing work, people! Wednesday night I was pushing hard to break 500 farmers before I left, but I started getting epidemics every second or third year.  >:(  Every time I thought the epidemic was beat some idiot would be idling behind a hospital (usually in a place where they'd climbed a mountain and threaded through 3 storage yards to get there) and start the whole thing raging again. So I didn't break the barrier.  :'( But I have today and tomorrow, so who knows. Still room to expand and I like the town so maybe I'll finally get the 200 year achievement (I've already made three population achievements with this town).

Wow Awesome job @irrelevant , your town need to be placed on the Banished UNESCO World Heritage list :)

YOU WIN ! Bro, you win !

:D :D :D :D :D


i was trying to fix the total mess in Farm City. i deleted like 3 dozens of barns, 2 dozens of houses(in too much populate zones versus food available), which converted in additional crops(or making bigger the ones side of them). and then i started to try another fix, too many wood house (like i said earlier, i was trying to do a 50% 50% wood stone, and it s just bad. tons of houses snowflaked :( even with my 28 woodcutter, they dont provide.
then mumps disease shown up.

i rather give up. (Geronimo is way well better built)

so i wont provide the new .sav (with fix attemps) and will provide the old one with only 680 farmers :)

so CONGRATULATIONS @irrelevant :)

ps.Unless a silent dark horse show up with something godly.... you win :)
Grats !  ;D

This is my old save of Farm City - 680 farmers :)

I knew someone could beat 522 farmers.  Several someones, as it happens.  *chuckle*

No need to worry about this girl dark horsing. I haven't even broken 500. Have over 1200 pop, however. Most I've ever had before was 922 (Market Circle challenge) PC has slowed to a complete crawl with over 1000. Not much fun at all. Congrats @irrelevant, if you are the winner. Great job, all!

I will have to see what I can accomplish tomorrow. So far I am only at 1686 population and 329 farmers, with default farmers. Here's hoping I can break 600 before it ends. :D   I have too many barns though, starting to lag a little.

Last night I finally broke 500 farmers. Nowhere near 680, of course, but at least over 500. Here are some shots. The first few are of the info windows. The Winter scene is what I finally figured out to do with played out quarries: Back a hospital up to them so the little so-and-sos can't idle behind the hospital! The last 10 years or so have been one epidemic after another, so I was getting desperate. Wouldn't want to do this when the quarry was still working as all the workers would then get sick, but once it's closed no one goes there. The final picture is one of my farm areas. This one was fairly large so it lent itself to a pattern of 9X9 square farms, but you'll see a few others to fit into smaller spaces.

@rkelly17  Congratulations on 500+!

I really like the way you have the farms laid out. Looks great! Very attractive town.

How much do those barns fill up? I always agonize over barn placement, seems they don't fit with any scheme I try.

@rkelly17   I love your solution for the hospital and used-up quarry!

Congrats @rkelly17 very nice city :) 520 is not bad at all

I was not able to get to 500 farmers before time ran out. I got up to 460 though so not too far below. On the other hand, got my town's population up to 2100, so I am happy about that! :)

Good job to everyone who participated!

Okay, went back and finished it out! 501 farmers and 2300 population, with default farmers on every field/orchard. 

It is not completely stable though; food stockpile is decreasing every year. I only have 6 tradeports, I think I would need more to maintain this population. I pushed the population growth faster then I normally would have to try to finish by today just so I could say I finished, even if it was a few hours late.  ;D

Thanks for hosting the challenge @solarscreen, it was a lot of fun!

Quote from: irrelevant on June 30, 2014, 09:47:28 AM
@rkelly17  Congratulations on 500+!

I really like the way you have the farms laid out. Looks great! Very attractive town.

How much do those barns fill up? I always agonize over barn placement, seems they don't fit with any scheme I try.

I can't take credit for the farm layout. I learned it from @slink, especially the four 4 times 9X9 with houses and barns at the center. I did add the 9X4 plus 9X5 orchards in the one 9X9 space to maximize trees. In this challenge I left the fields at their default 2 farmers, but the layout actually works better with 1 farmer per field, since then you can house all 4 farmers in the two houses.

As to barns, well, I'm never completely sure either. In the 4 times 9X9 farms the barns are as much aesthetic as practical. They are almost never full--usually only 5% or so. On the other hand, you never run out of storage space.

Quote from: mariesalias on June 30, 2014, 10:25:11 AM
@rkelly17   I love your solution for the hospital and used-up quarry!

Yes, isn't that clever. I wish I'd thought of it a long time ago. I really needed another hospital in an influenza epidemic that got way out of control right at the spot where the quarry was. I was trading for stone and had way more than I needed so the stone cutters weren't working anyway. Then they idea hit me: Shut it down and use the empty quarry to limit idling! Am I brilliant or what?  ;D  Seriously, the citizens make me quite upset with them because of their insistence that they absolutely MUST idle around the hospital no matter how many really nice idling areas I provide or how ugly and inaccessible I make my hospitals. Toward the end of this town I was getting outbreaks just about every other year at the end. Many would involve just 1-5 people, but there were more than a few where 20-30 people would be sick at a time. About half of the contagion came because fuel was distributed badly and people who get sick while acquiring fuel keep at it until they get the fuel home and the other half was because of idling around the hospital. As soon as we can mod I'm going to try to figure out a way to keep the little #&*%$ from idling around the hospital (not to mention INSIDE the hospital!).

hahaha good one :) making a mod to keep away people from hospitals :) yeah they 'enrage' us all ^^

@mariesalias : woot awesome ! 500! good job !
and big congratulations with your 2300 Citizens !!

you are all very good Banished Players :) (only me who didnt got his 500 farmer city to over 2k even 2.3k ??  :-\
My 2nd attempt ( Geronimo ) was really like your towns, but i kept it for Nomad and live challenge.

@rkelly17   It is pretty brilliant!  ;D

I would definitely be interested in a mod that makes them stop idling there! This challenge, I tried placing orchards around it as much as I could around the hospitals. It helped some, but not enough.

@RedKetchup  Thanks!  My first town over 1k! And i was determined to get to 500 farmers legit, even if my town could not survive that way long-term.

I disagree, I think it takes some skills to get the 500 farmers without the larger population! I think everyone who participated did a good job. :)

yeah we did. i hope to get more participants in future challenges

if i got 680 farmers with only 1800-1900 pop it s only cause i didnt got any market. you need a ton of people working for market vendors

@mariesalias  Nice work getting to 500 at the end. Awesome town; 2300 is a real achievement.

We all are winners  :)

Quote from: irrelevant on July 01, 2014, 04:15:47 PMWe all are winners  :)

Nah ... I'm definitely a loser.  But, thanks anyway.  ;)

Quote from: RedKetchup on July 01, 2014, 02:44:20 PM
you need a ton of people working for market vendors

Lately I've been limiting my market staff to 2-6 citizens depending on the distance from resources. So far no big issues except when shortages of crucial materials limit distribution. I'm not sure whether or not a full staff would help fix that.

I've also been limiting my trading posts to 3 traders and that seems to work as well, though most of my trade goods manufacturing (taverns making ale) is fairly close to trading posts.

Quote from: rkelly17 on July 02, 2014, 06:18:37 AM

Quote from: RedKetchup on July 01, 2014, 02:44:20 PM
you need a ton of people working for market vendors

Lately I've been limiting my market staff to 2-6 citizens depending on the distance from resources. So far no big issues except when shortages of crucial materials limit distribution. I'm not sure whether or not a full staff would help fix that.

I've also been limiting my trading posts to 3 traders and that seems to work as well, though most of my trade goods manufacturing (taverns making ale) is fairly close to trading posts.

I have never had more than 4 vendors or 3 traders at any one location...

In my Farming Challenge town most of my 9 TPs had 20 Traders most of the time, to insure that imports and exports were flowing freely. I also used the Traders to move large chunks of things like stone, iron, and logs from regions of plenty to regions of scarcity.

The Markets had anywhere from 6 to 15 Vendors. I was trying to keep the Markets as close to 100% full of resources as I could, to reduce pressure on my barns, which were not optimally located. I spent a good deal of time micromanaging the number of vendors at each market. Because of their 500 carrying capacity they are especially useful in helping clear out those 98% full barns.

so you ve got like 100 vendors ?

270 at 20 markets, all between 60% and 100% full.

woah. that s what i meant by ...... alot haha

:) nice

Quote from: irrelevant on July 02, 2014, 11:05:20 PM
270 at 20 markets, all between 60% and 100% full.

Holy shopping frenzy, Batman!

Quote from: irrelevant on July 02, 2014, 11:05:20 PM
270 at 20 markets, all between 60% and 100% full.

Wow! And I thought i had a lot with 10-12 each. :D

I only went that high in the last few years. Prior to that I had been running with 6-12 vendors per market, but I finally noticed that it was the areas near markets where I was using fewer vendors that I was having so much trouble with my barns being full all the time. Also, I happened to have nearly 500 laborers so it was no big deal to assign another 100 of them to markets instead.

Ok, I don't know why I thought this challenge ended on the 15th...

I went back through and I thought redketchup had won another contest but in fact @irrelevant has this one and becomes our next champion!

Congratulations to @irrelevant - he has been added to the Champions group!

694 Farmers!  Fantastic effort!

congrats @irrelevant   ;D ;D ;D

Congratulations @irrelevant.  Enjoy the rarified atmosphere in your new haunt.  ;)

Wow! Thank you.

I'm speechless. My wife will tell you that never happens  ;)

Congrats to @irrelevant! 694 farmers! And congrats to everyone else. I learned a lot from seeing your towns.