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Intervale

Started by Necora, May 25, 2017, 08:05:29 PM

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Necora

Welcome to the region of Intervale. A small valley with flowing brooks, a meandering river, a couple of lakes, and proximity to the (imaginary) ocean, Intervale seems like the ideal place to settle. Indeed, our intrepid bannies believe this very thing, and after landing decided to make the most of the dense forests that line the valley. The first hamlet was established in the forest, with a flax gatherer, food gatherer, and some basic production buildings for tools and lumber. Surrounding the hamlet is three forestry towers (vanilla trees) making a triangle shape, where gatherers, hunters, and trappers have begun to harvest the rich forest fauna and flora. A small, close knit community is starting to grow around these resources, which have the potential to be very lucrative if they play their cards right.

Mod List.
* I'm using this to have a good run through of my mods, so they are the main ones loaded right now. As I get a feel for them/make changes and get comfortable, I'll start to add others in to see what we can come up with.

1 - Play Conditions - a custom mod of my own that changes a few things about the game and vanilla buildings to suit my style. For example, the cemetery and pasture have no walls, the orchard has a transparent texture, and the cemetery, pasture, orchard, and crop field are build-able right up the hill slopes to the max height that Bannies can walk. I hate it when the cemetery and pasture flatten all of the terrain!
2 - Flax Patch
3 - New Pine Flora
4 - New Flora
5 - Maritimes Pine Set
6 - Natural Diversity
7 - Maritimes Sherbrooke
8 - Maritimes Crystal Cliffs
9 - Maritimes NS Inshore Fishery
10 - Maritimes PEI Shore Fishery
11 - Maritimes Dock Set
12 - Maritimes Decorations
13 - Maritimes Riffle
14 - Maritimes Storage (WIP)
15 - Maritimes Port Royal (WIP)
16 - Gridlines

At the moment, things are ticking along just fine. I have a population of 19 and am hovering around 2000 units of food, with a good variety. This is with 3 forest towers, 2 gatherers, and a wild foods gatherer. Am about to expand some farming and hunting/trapping. Fuel is a mixture of thatch that has been cleared and a small amount of wood chopping, I found in the first 4 years so far I've been able to satisfy the demand of 6 or so cabins with mostly thatch cleared from the map to make way for forests. This will be good as I expand the lumber as I don't have to balance so much between wood for fuel and wood for building, although I'm not sure if it has made it a tad too easy.











brads3

word of advice to the "NEW" player: the bannies tend to perfer to brun firewood. they will burn thatch if low and you keep the FW limit low.FW moves via markets more than thatch.
   how much food are the vanilla foresters producing themselves? types? can you give us an approximate ratio of maples  in the forests by their red color?

Nilla

Nice to see, that you've got time to use your own mods! @Necora and that you're showing us the progress of this settlement. I would suggest, that you publish your "Play condition mod". These are things, that most players would want, including me. :)

Abandoned

@Necora very nice, glad to see all your mods working here together and with tany's New Flora.  Love those trees.  :)  Question regarding mod order, I know the first 3 are in order as they should be but can the others after them be put in alphabetical order?  Also I have Natural Diversity Light higher in my mod list. I pick and choose on small maps so will probably not use all your great mods at the same time.

I agree with nilla, I would like to try your play condition mod also. There are some separate mods that do some of those things already thought, but combined would be nice.  You realize of course you will probably get huge lists of how you can change it.  LOL

Necora

Thanks all. I don't really blog much about villages but thought it would be worth sharing my thoughts on how things have developed.

@Nilla I thought about it, not sure the best way to put it together though. I might do it as a collection of mods in a zip file so people can load which things they want, rather than as one mod because you might not want everything and I have overwritten the vanilla versions so perhaps some things might not work with other mods.

@brads3 it does seem that way, although I'm not sure if there is any reason why. There is no difference to a bannie between fuels apart from what ever is closest, so that might be why more firewood is chosen over thatch. Maybe they can carry more of it at one time. I still can't decide if trade value has any impact on bannie choice of goods, it will have to be investigated (unless someone already knows).

@Abandoned I think the Maritimes mods can go in what ever order you want them to now they are all up to date. They only reason they couldn't previously is because some had new things (textures, raw material files) that others didn't but now they all have the same new stuff in them. And I wouldn't blame you for not using the all, I'm 11 years in and have not built anything outside of the pine set apart from the decorations and a trading post. It is going to be quite a while before I get into the bigger town stuff.

To the town...

We are 11 (or 12? I already forgot) years into the settlement at Intervale. The small forest hamlet was starting to get a little cramped, so the woodland folk decided to expand into some more open land in hope of supplementing their food with farming and also developing more industry to make use of the forest products. A furrier set up, and started to produce high quality fur and pelt coats, and a spinner was built to start spinning flax into twine. This allowed the new blacksmith to start making some hardy tools with twine handles, maximizing the efficiency of the lumber cutters. So far, so good in Intervale. Indeed, not long after expanding out the forest folk found they had more space for homes and established the first church and school in the area, officially naming the new settlement Colwyn's Pond after one of the founding fathers who passed away from old age. Although, with the bordering forests, hills and a developing meadow, the town has already filled its borders and there are eager eyes looking towards the neighboring stream valley as a possible trade route.

Some vital stats are all in the last two pics. I have a healthy supply of food, and can add a couple of things to trade posts. So far I've not traded for anything apart from a box of oysters for fun, am waiting for some good crop seeds (some grain would be fantastic) and some domesticated animals (would also need corn for that). I have to say, I do like the corn requirement for domesticated animals. I was worried about powerful buildings being build early and kinda ruining the game, but it is really not very easy to build these in the start of the game, 11 years in and no sign of corn or animals so it will be a while before my farming ramps up. Same with the fisheries buildings, it is going to be a long time before we get to the lakes to start building boats and fishing offshore.

Not much as changed deep in the forest, apart from the forest maturing and getting very dense.







The town of Colwyn's Pond, named for the small pond that the founding father loved to sit and dream of town plans. The town is nestled between the forest and vast meadows, at the bottom of a small sloping hill separating it from the neighboring stream valley.





The houses in Colwyn's Pond had more space, and so were able to plant apple trees around them.





To supplement the fuel requirements of the expanding town, a thatch harvester was set up in the meadow and the area fenced off from development. This doesn't replace firewood, but eases the burden allowing for more lumber to be produced.



A question for @Bartender re. the thatchers hut. This has been running for several years now and I assume it has reached is maturity as production of thatch has leveled off at around 120/year with 1 worker. I am wondering, do the grasses get any denser than this? I like the density of the wild meadows, but for a maintained one I feel that this is a little sparse. I don't necessarily want production to increase, but visually I think it would be great if the radius could be filled a lot more with the grasses, like forest radius are. I know the trees visually take up a lot more space, so they look a lot more dense than they are, but I wonder if this can be achieved even by making the grass mesh overlap a few tiles or something? Then also the herbs and roots in the meadow would be right in among the grass, at least visually. Just my two cents.




Nilla

QuoteThere is no difference to a bannie between fuels apart from what ever is closest, so that might be why more firewood is chosen over thatch. Maybe they can carry more of it at one time. I still can't decide if trade value has any impact on bannie choice of goods, it will have to be investigated

They don't care one bit about trade value and I'm sure, you've found the right reason; they grab the fuel that's closest. I haven't looked at thatch, but coal and firewood. If both are available, they might/might not grab some of each. The mechanisms behind this, I don't really understand.

Necora

Quote from: Nilla on May 27, 2017, 05:02:24 AM
They don't care one bit about trade value and I'm sure, you've found the right reason; they grab the fuel that's closest. I haven't looked at thatch, but coal and firewood. If both are available, they might/might not grab some of each. The mechanisms behind this, I don't really understand.

Which is, in my view, an under sight of the vanilla game. The only resources we can produce that is implemented in a really good way as far as I can see are tools. Tools have a line in the code, "int _useValue" which lets you assign the tool a number that represents its durability. Vanilla iron tools are 100, steel tools are 200. I've added bough tools at 50. So you can add any number of tools with a range of durability and this number can be used to represent the raw materials that are used to make the tool and also influence it's trade value, and is a great way if determining the over all value and usefulness of a tool from its production, use, and trade. The funny thing is, despite this flexibility, I don't think we need more than three levels of tool really.

I don't see why this could have been done for clothing (warmth value), fuels (potency value), food (nutrition value) etc. Clothing in vanilla has two categories, regular or warm. Food has nothing apart from different food groups, Fuel has nothing, there is no difference between firewood and coal apart from flag, so it makes me wonder what was the point of having them both as a fuel?

If the use value had been incorporated into more types of goods, it would be a boon for modders because it would solve pretty much all of our issues with trade value vs consumption items etc.


To the town... I won't post any pics today because things have not developed too much. I have hit the dreaded plateau that all developing countries hit (although in banished it happens very early)... I have an aging population! Oh dear. My oldies but goldies are dying off, and the children coming through to adulthood pretty much number them 1 to 1 right now. It is a pleasing balance, but it doesn't do much for town progression. The region has been hovering around 38 peeps for a number of years, and food keeps building up in the stores. So any thoughts on expansion have been put to rest for the time being, and the towns folk are working on upgrading houses to make room for larger families.

Some notes - all houses in the sets I've made have a minimum of 4 people per house (2 aduts - 2 children). I have a few larger ones that allow 5 or 6. But one thing I am curious about, has anyone actually seen a house with 3 or more children in it at a time? I can't remember ever seeing this. I wonder what is the time between births for the couple to have more children? This is the main reason I used to play with the 1 year is 1 year mod, that allowed me to get to 150 ish peeps before population growth flattened off. But in this game, I'm going to have to keep going and hope that it starts to grow again soon. It is not such a problem because at the moment I can decorate and start to plan my next area, but I would like to start building sooner rather than later.

Another thing, my town hall doesn't seem to attract nomads. I think I am missing something, perhaps an interact point? What point attracts nomads?

Food production to begin with was steady, but was never a problem. I think if I did have an issue, clearing some land would give me plenty. Now my population has started to plateau, we have food coming out of the where ever. I'm going to have to shut down some production buildings and perhaps get the bannies working on stocking up resources for future use, like rope and lumber.

Still waiting for some grain seeds to come, I really want to test the new mill and bakery from the Port Royal set.

I have no problem with producing pelts or fur. This, however, might be a problem! My trade post is full of fur, as I am using pelts for clothing. I ramped the clothing limit up to 500 which is over kill for this size town, and only just started to run out of pelt when it reached about 400. I've been hoarding the fur in the trade post, and have about 500 units of it. This, however, is immense value (at 20 a piece, that is 10,000 value) which pretty much means I can trade for anything with out taking a hit on resources. This is bad for 2 reasons, first it makes trading super easy - I'm only at year 15 now and can trade for what ever I want at will, when things eventually start arriving. Secondly it also means that I don't trade away any other produce, and would rather be trimming off the top of my food production. I guess I could switch my furrier to make fur coats rather than pelt coats, but even 500 pelt coats is still 5000 units for trade. I wonder if I should make fur and pelts harder to get? The excess production is from removing the harvest profession, so that if it is cleared by any other profession than a trapper it is still produced. Maybe I need to go back to having it produced by trappers only.


kid1293

Quote from: Necora on May 27, 2017, 06:02:37 AM
Another thing, my town hall doesn't seem to attract nomads. I think I am missing something, perhaps an interact point? What point attracts nomads?

You must have BOTH create_001 AND create_002

Necora

Thanks @kid1293 I had absolutely no idea. I'll add them in.

brads3

Quote from: Nilla on May 27, 2017, 05:02:24 AM
QuoteThere is no difference to a bannie between fuels apart from what ever is closest, so that might be why more firewood is chosen over thatch. Maybe they can carry more of it at one time. I still can't decide if trade value has any impact on bannie choice of goods, it will have to be investigated

They don't care one bit about trade value and I'm sure, you've found the right reason; they grab the fuel that's closest. I haven't looked at thatch, but coal and firewood. If both are available, they might/might not grab some of each. The mechanisms behind this, I don't really understand.

NILLA said a mouth full with that last line.that is why you see me say things at times that sound crazy or off-the-wall.therre are things in the game that LUKE designed that way.every now and then i read other people comment that seem to echo that point.modders and other players will argue the game doesn't work that way. i still think there is a variable or something that LUKE did that is hardcoded and affects different things.it seems to have been added randomly. it doesn't change every map or game. every now and then though there is a "ghost glitch" that will affect a game causing something to happen that can not be explained by the games normal rules.
   now i probably sound crazier by trying to explain it even. bannnies travel all over the map and get lost in the woods. we all have seen it happen. anyone really explain it? if you don't clear across rivers, it  won't happen. that is not 100% accurate. if you do everything right,every now and then a child or banni will get lost for no reason. nomads is suppoose to be randomly set. if you do not have any after a few years,do something different or up your food reserves. all of a sudden the very next year will cause nomads to show up. in my last town, it should have been hard for nomads to walk into town,since most of the map was blocked. the opposite happened. i got huge groups every time. that is just 2 examples.
  i do think there is something deeper in the program than we can see, that causes the game to do smoething strange.since it is set to happen rarelt,most might not  realize it.

brads3

NILLA,i disagree on the firewood usage. based on my experience,the bannies prefer firewood even if they have access to both.if a bannie is far from firewood storage then yes they will take the closer of the 2. if they go to a shed with both,they take firewood.i don't think it is due to the weight factor cause thatch should weigh less.
  if you have food value 2 and food value 1,they tend to eat the higher food more than the lower valued. again ,it does depend on how close they are to  the food.
    NECORA,i think i have 8 levels of tools by now.i don't make that many but have them. i usually use 3 stone,rough,and iron.the higher grade tools can be useful in a heavey mining town.i thought clothing was changed and REd set a 3rd mid-grade level.
  as to nomads,some require 3 buildings and some mods require only 1. the vanilla i believe requires a TH,TP,and a market.my mini mod requires just the TH.

   yield #'s: this might be a puzzle. how much conrtrol do you have o tthe game start layer?  the map sets trees all over at start. how thick are the maples and apples? i doubt we can set it to plant 10 apples near the starting point or map center? can it be controlled by %? say high % of other trees,5 of apples,5 maples,10 % pines ,etc?? the more we understand how the game lays the start map the more control to change it. i don't think forcing it back to a gatherer or trapper is the answere. BT says there are numbers in the code that control an item to appear more often on start. if that number is a range of 1-10,then we could change it by %. set aspens,oaks,birches,etc to appear more than other trees.set apples and maples low, and pines or evergreens in the middle. but how does the other ground plants affect that.how does the rocks and iron,etc affect that? to get a balanced map would take both you and BT's nat div mod together. and then all us players will throw more ideas than you 2 want to hear about this way or that way. LOL.

hmm it is too early to think this far. 75% forest,25 meadows. forest=-% open to give spaces between the trees so they can grow.70 trees total,10 gatherable items sap,apples,mushrooms,trapping,etc.
if thatch can propagate and expand itself across the map i would set the meadow opposite the forest 20% thatch and 70 open. would make the game start harder since the thatch isn't overpowered.to make the meadows thicker i would opt to add RED's fodder and flowers. it would make for an interesting starting map. i think we are a  ways from getting that serious though. 1 thing at a time.

Nilla

I can agree with many of your "philosophical" opinions, @Necora; about more levels for clothing, food, etc. Some kind of "use value" would have been great.

I had an idea a long time ago, that I discussed with Red to a time, as he was more or less the only modder here on WOB. What is, if a part of the unprocessed food would disappear from the stores on a regular basis. It would simulate that things get old, rotten, damaged by mold, rats........ I don't think he knew a way to make it to that time, besides we both thought, that people generally would hate it. I would have liked it, realistic and an incentive to process food.

To the houses; it's rare in "vanilla speed" to see families with more than 3 children living at home at the same time, even if you build a lot of large houses. If you see any, it's mostly nomad families, who had some children as they arrive. It may also happen now and then, if you're playing with uneducated and doesn't build so many new houses, but normally a family is seldom larger than 5. I think a child is born in average every 6th year, it may take almost 10 but can also be 4.

If you don't micromanage a lot, the growth in a town with only houses for 4 person is slow. Whit 2 children in each family you will have a 0 population growth. A couple must wait to get their third child; the one who tribute to the growth, until their eldest gets a family of its own. In some families it takes too long and the woman gets too old to have her 3.  If you remember @Necora, I wanted the upgraded versions of your houses to be buildable from the start. This is the reason. I like things to go fast. But that's me, not everybody´s opinion. And it is possible to micromange with a few larger houses.

I think it's good to keep the production of furs low. It's tricky. Red set the price to 20. It's a reasonable price, more valuable than a hide worth 10. But his hunting towers produces very little fur, not more than a few each year. If you introduce a trapper with main product fur or even make it possible to get furs from laborers, who clears a nest (not illogical but difficult when it comes to balancing), I can see that it easily might be too powerful.

As I said @brads3 , I haven't looked at thatch. It might be different, maybe because it's something new. But i really don't think so. Have you looked, how much of each, they have in their houses? I just did. I don't have thatch in this game but charcoal, together with firewood; also a modded product. My Bannis have more charcoal than firewood in their homes, so I guess they accept both, in same terms. (By the way charcoal might be a crumble, if you want to have fuel, by using little wood; you get 11 charcoal out of each log, instead of 4 firewood if they are educated. An uneducated woodchopper makes only 3. I don't know the value for an uneducated coaler, but it`s definitely much  more than 3)

I'm also pretty sure, that they don't prefere the more expensive food. I looked a lot at it as modding was new, but didn't see anything of that kind.

Necora

@brads3 and @Nilla I'm not sure, I've not looked closely enough so I'm mostly going on gut instincts, I'll check the ratio of firewood to thatch in the houses and see what is going on. With regards to the food, I'm had a similar idea about higher value foods as you @brads3 however, I then realized it is not a global effect, so I think it was just that I noticed it more knowing that there is a trade value difference. I would love to know if there is anything in the game that tells them to prefer higher value food over lower, perhaps someone like @Tom Sawyer would know?

One thing I have noticed about food, but again this might be just a consequence of being aware of where new food goes, but it seems to be that they might prefer newer foods over older ones. By new I mean I plant potato, they eat it fine, then I trade for beans and plant 2 fields of each, all next to each other, yet the potato piles up in the stores and the beans are eaten instantly. Same with animals, venison goes quick at first, but as soon as I trade for cows or sheep or something, the beef is eaten asap and venison now piles up. I have about 3000 of it in the current game. So it does make me wonder if there is a preference for newly acquired food (diversity?) or if it is a coincidence and I am just noticing it more because it is a new food.

As for houses, @Nilla I personally like the upgrade. I like to build small then upgrade, but I do understand if you want the building ASAP then it is a pain to upgrade it. I might add it to the menu. The reason I ask about the number of children is because I wonder if it is really worth having houses that allow 3, 4 or more children, will they ever do it? I've yet to see more than two children in any upgraded pine cabin, we'll see what happens, hopefully they do or it will be a slow game.

As for the fur, I think I will make half of the traps/animals trapper only - the ones that produce fur and pelts, and the others for everyone - the ones that produce game and eggs. It is the only way I can see that I can really control the amount produced, because most of the over shot at the moment comes from clearing areas for building rather than the trappers themselves.

Tom Sawyer

@Necora I'm sure they don't prefer a certain food by trade value or something else. What I noticed is that they take maximum diversity. So if 10 kinds of food are in a barn or market then they carry 10 from each kind in their house. I think it's coded to make sure that they always try to get a good diet. With fuel it's different. They only take one kind of fuel per run and at least in the North they prefer firewood. Coal they take only if no firewood is on the pile and it is not connected to trade values. Maybe it's hard coded to prefer firewood.

I find it great that you play your own mods. I do it too and always find most bugs and ideas for new stuff or balancing changes by serious playing a map instead of technical testing. Maybe I should make a blog too but I don't know If I'm good in that.^^

brads3

i did put pics up for you,NILLA. and i still think thatch is not preferred the same as firewood. i do not use charcoal or coal to heat houses.my "no coal" mod should stop that. i am surprised you haven't tried the nat div mod. if not for the thatch but for the other graphic changes.
  as for the housing,are you both figuring based on vanilla speed? i do have houses full at 5 bannies. at proper time mod speed, they breed about every 2 years and graduate school at 16.that equals 8 possable children. the amish do have that many if not more in real life. not saying all houses should be set that high. small houses like the F.O. mod should be much less. in early games it could matter to have the option of more though. there are ways to force a family to have more kids if you really wanted. split them into 2 houses
  i do hope you checked those start ideas,NECORA. there are times where it would make sence to be able to clear beaver lodges and get pelts or for the thatch or fodder workers to trap and get rabbits or foxes. i am not a modder so i haven't cracked the egg to tell you how to put it back together to make sence though.i don't have the knowledge of how the game sets up the maps or spawns all the items. i do understand how it can be overpowered though.