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rkelly17: Establishing Viningtown

Started by rkelly17, March 09, 2015, 01:03:44 PM

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rkelly17

I thought it might be interesting to record how I start a settlement on Medium. First of all I should give you a list of the mods I now use. Most of you who frequent World of Banished will recognize these from the first four photos. The only ones where I don't use the latest version are New Maps and @RedKetchup's Decorative Items (I think--I can't remember exactly why I stuck with an older version of that).

Next the map. 5th picture is seed and conditions. The next is the minimap and summary window. Then comes a survey of the start position. You can see that the start is on a bot of a peninsula which provides space for a forest village to the West and two farms at the start. This particular seed gives corn, wheat and peaches. I am pretty picky when it comes to choosing maps. I want room for at least two 18X18 block farms (four is better), one grain and one fruit and room for a fairly close forest village. I define the space for a forest village as the circle of a hunting lodge. If I don't get that I restart until I do. I know: Picky, picky, picky.  ::)

The first thing I do is pause to check the conditions, then I plot out the initial farm and forest villages. My forest village is designed using ideas from the "Crossroads" series on YouTube by pinstar. You an see the results in picture 8. I've laid out two fields and assigned two farmers. Then I've sketched in the central boulevard and a second farm across the boulevard from the original. The road from the bottom of the farms leads to the forest village. The school is at the intersection of the road to the forest village and the boulevard so that everyone has access. On the North side of the two farms are the market buildings (from @slink's specialized markets), the blacksmith and the tailor. At the top you can see the double bridges that will be the link to what will become the main section of the settlement. Also just at the edge to the left of the bridges is a fishing dock on the inside of a bend in the river with a stream mouth across from it. I put in two paused bridges to mark the outside edges of the dock's circle.

Most of that gets erased before I actually start, since I will want to harvest the timber and I want my builders to focus on the task at hand and not be running off to build roads. The next picture shows what I start with after the erasing. It also shows marking timber for cutting. I start by setting 1 builder to make some roads and 7 laborers to build a new storage yard and cut timber. When to mark the timber is a judgement call. I don't want to cut any in the circle of my forest village, but I want it to be convenient to storage and food so that laborers maximize time cutting.

The next picture shows the situation when building begins. When the citizens have stored 250-300 logs I stop the cutting and start building on the barn in the forest village. You can never have too many barns, in my opinion, but I also do this so that the citizens who live and work in the forest village have easy access to storage from the beginning. I leave only 1 builder until the barn foundation is complete, especially since the citizens have stashed most of the logs in the original storage yard.

Once the barn foundations are finished I start construction on the gatherers' hut and make 6 more builders. That is the 11th picture. I build the gatherers' hut early because they produce the most variety of food. On this map grain is no problem. Eventually fruit will be abundant. For now, though, we need a source of vegetables and fruit and the gatherers produce that and lots of it.

When the barn finishes I start the wood cutter and reduce the builders to 6 (picture 12). I do this because, though the wood cutter will be inactive for a while, I want him or her to be ready when houses start being completed. Some of you may be asking, "Why no houses yet?" Note that it is still Early Summer and nobody is cold. The citizens seem happy to sleep under the stars for now, so we'll focus on buildings that will help them have plenty of food and fuel for the Winter.

In the next picture the gatherers' hut is finished and the hunting lodge is begun. I assign 1 gatherer to begin with. During this period I also have laborers collecting some stone and iron from within the foresters' circle. This creates space for tree planting and provides needed building materials.

In the next picture the woodcutter is finished and we start on building houses. I build four at this point, two at the farm and two in the forest, alternating farm and forest. The goal is to get at least 1 finished before people start getting cold so that everyone has a place to warm up. This also moves toward the goal of having everyone live near work. When the hunter if finished I'll assign 1 hunter. On this map I seem to have gotten lucky and built near a deer spawning point. Venison and leather for the masses!

Once the four houses are complete/under way I move on to the foresters' lodge. You'll note from the picture that the farm houses complete faster than the forest houses. That is because almost all the logs are in the original storage yard and it takes laborers longer to get them to the job site in the forest. Also, on this map no one has aged up yet, so we have only the original adults working.

When the foresters' lodge is finished I assign one citizen to plant only. This means that for now all logs must come from laborers clear-cutting, but they can cut timber in areas that will eventually be buildings and fields anyway. Meanwhile the forester is planting and creating a nice thick forest which will give the gatherers plenty to collect for the whole life of the settlement, even after cutting starts. Since this map only has 14 citizens and at this point only 2 are homeless, we'll stop building houses when the next one finished. If there were more citizens and more were aging up we might have to keep building houses for awhile.

The last picture shows the situation when everyone is housed and is ready for Winter. There is enough food (with only 14 starting citizens the farmers can handle much of what is needed, which is good because we can't really spare more than 1 gatherer and 1 hunter at this point) and firewood. We have a decent number of logs, though laborers will have to start cutting soon. Two babies have been born and we'll track them to make sure they get to school. I'm hoping some boys will show up soon. We are also watching the ages of the children who were among the original settlers so that we can build them houses as soon as they are ready. Since the four of them are balanced, 2 boys and 2 girls, we'll plan for two more houses in the forest village. After that school, blacksmith and tailor, but that is for the next installment.


RedKetchup

about new medieval town red conflicts, can you give me the list (or screenshot of the list) of conflicting lines ? press the " _ " side of the big " X " will show you what exactly has conflict and with which other mods.
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Nilla

Nice entry. I make a lot of things alike but also a lot of things different.

I have some questions but first I would like to look at your pictures a bit better. When I open them they are quite small and I can't really see what's there very good. I don't know how to make them bigger on my screen. I suppose you want to make them smaller (talking of memory space) but it also make them smaller (for me too small) to look at.

rkelly17

@RedKetchup, here is the screen. I haven't noticed that the conflicts are causing any problems, just the usual resources from different mods with the same names (because, I assume, they are the same). The only oddity I see for your Medieval mod is that the resources aren't listing--just that column of dots. All the rest of your mods have the usual list, so I'm not sure what's up here. Without the list I can't say for sure but I am also assuming that this mods resources are overriding the others since it is first up in order of loading. I could check the other mods' lists, but I haven't yet.

rkelly17

OK, next installment.

In the first picture it is still the very end of year 1. I added 1 hunter so that the supply of leather can build up in preparation for the tailor. I have placed the school and am letting the laborers gather materials. Since logs have gone below 100, I have also marked some more timber for cutting.

Second picture: Year 2 has begun. The foundation for school is laid so I put builders to work. The supply of food is still good. Finally a baby boy has been born, so we add him to the tracking. Lately I have started tracking the first three girls and three boys born. That helps determine when to open the school and when to build houses for the first graduates.

Third picture: The school is built, but I'm not going to staff it quite yet. In my opinion--and I'm well aware that we have some disagreement on this point--I want those four workers so that I can ramp up clearing stone and iron from the forest circle and add another hunter and gatherer. Plus I will soon need a blacksmith/tailor, so 4 more workers won't hurt at all. That means I keep tracking each house for children turning 10 and for new babies. After the school finished I had the laborers lay the foundations for two more houses (eventually I will build 6 houses in the forest village which will house the workers needed for full employment). Both of the males turn 10 before the females, so I pause the houses. When the first of the 2 females turns 10 I release one house and assign two builders. IN the meatime I've also placed the blacksmith with an adjoining storage yard.

Fourth picture: Winter is now upon us again. the 4th house of the forest village is finished and a couple has moved in. The blacksmith has a foundation, but the second female has turned 10, so I release the 5th forest house. If the number of tools were lower I would finish the blacksmith first, but in this case tools are OK--only 14 adults are not using a lot of supplies.

Fifth picture: Late Spring of Year 3. I've closed all of the house windows because all of the original 14 are paired up and housed and there have been 3 girls and 3 boys born--which are being tracked. The tailor is placed and laborers are gathering materials. I've also continued cutting timber and clearing stones and iron from the forest circle, though there is still much to do in the latter task. At this point you can see the work of the planting forester as young trees emerge. 3 hunters are providing meat and adding to the leather stockpile. In this picture you can begin to see one of the problems with this approach to beginning a settlement. Note that the two oldest children being tracked are beginning to lose health, the female having dropped to 4 hearts and the male (who is younger) to 4 1/2. That is because they live in the two farm houses. The two farm families are drawing all their food from the original barn and eat almost entirely grains. If the original crops had been one grain and one vegetable the decline would be slower, but it would still happen. Meanwhile the forest families are maintaining their health. They draw from both barns, which means that they have a complete balanced diet. I cannot figure out why the forest families use both barns and the farm families only use one. For that reason I have laid out a "farm market" (from @slink's specialized market mod) which will be built as soon as there is a graduate of he school to staff it. So far I haven't assigned a teacher because no one is at the age to go to school, but that will happen soon.

Sixth picture: Late Spring 3. The tailor is finished just as the blacksmith completes 50 tools, so I move the blacksmith to tailor. As I mentioned above, on this map I got very lucky and the hunters are killing pretty much the maximum possible deer each year, so there is plenty of leather. At this point on some maps there is only enough leather for a dozen or so coats, so the tailor is out of work fairly quickly and I have to watch the number of coats in stock.

At this point the basics are covered. The settlement can feed, warm, and clothe itself. Education is ready to start. In the next installments we'll be waiting for the first generation born here to finish school while preparing for the extension of the settlement. Then we'll move toward the ability to trade.

RedKetchup

Quote from: rkelly17 on March 10, 2015, 09:55:15 AM
@RedKetchup, here is the screen. I haven't noticed that the conflicts are causing any problems, just the usual resources from different mods with the same names (because, I assume, they are the same). The only oddity I see for your Medieval mod is that the resources aren't listing--just that column of dots. All the rest of your mods have the usual list, so I'm not sure what's up here. Without the list I can't say for sure but I am also assuming that this mods resources are overriding the others since it is first up in order of loading. I could check the other mods' lists, but I haven't yet.


that is really not normal. and personally i would worry about it.
did you made your screenshot 'in a game' ? or before you load your save game ?
can you check the other option of the previous line ?
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rkelly17

Quote from: RedKetchup on March 11, 2015, 11:05:44 AM
that is really not normal. and personally i would worry about it.
did you made your screenshot 'in a game' ? or before you load your save game ?
can you check the other option of the previous line ?

I made the shot after I had been playing for awhile--forgot to do it before I started--but it does the same thing before I start a game as well. I'm now using version 5, but version 4 produced same results. So far no odd behavior in game, though I've only built the houses (Not yet in this game, but in previous games with both version 4 and 5). If you say I should worry, I will, but I'm not exactly sure what I am worrying about.

I've attached two screenshots from the Balanced Apiary list of conflicts, which behaves normally and shows the files conflicting with Medieval Towns. I don't know whether that helps or not. It looks like the usual sort of non-crucial material instance conflicts.

rkelly17

We'll be on a brief vacation here; Cities Skylines is out, so . . . .  ;D