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The perpetual flowerchild commune challenge

Started by kee, March 02, 2015, 02:24:28 AM

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salamander

Quote from: kee on March 03, 2015, 10:08:31 PM
I bloody well marked the school for demolishing, didn't I. Even if retracted immediately all students are kicked into adulthood without education. Big productivity hit.
Ah ... I get it now.  I was focused on why having the school near the boarding houses would be basically bad, not on the nearness making the demolition tricky.  Thanks.

Chon Waen

Interested in doing this challenge, and I have a list of mods that i generally use on a day-to-day basis that aren't in your list of specific restrictions, but can be unbalancing.

I will list em, please let me know if any of these are on a general "don't use in challenges" catagory.
NewMaps v4
Mushroom Fix
Busy laborers
Small well
Better schools (50 pop)
Chapel enhancement (250 pop)
Fishing Dock +25%
Jamie's Monastery
Slink's small markets
Specialized trading posts
Sawmill
Storage mod
More Iron per Ore Lump
More Stone Per Rock
More Wood Per Tree
Fast Road Mod Test
Tree Growth and Life
Stop Burning Coal

Thanks in advance!

kee

@Chon Waen Any mod that isn't purely decorative will also change the balance of the game. What's important in this challenge is how the population reacts to only using boarding houses and, since tot. pop. and % educated is among the targets, how the mods affect productivity and fecundity for educated, stoopid and nomads. I'm not familiar with all your mods, so you'll have to assess them yourself if you think they affect these parts of the game. (eg any mod that gives more nomads or educated nomads would ne a nono, a mod that lets new families form in boarding houses without micromanaging is nono, a mod that lets people live til 100 and have children all the time nono etc). Pick mods at your discretion.
Kim Erik

Nilla

I have finished this challenge. What can I say?

It's a brilliant idea. Some new intriguing problems to handle. But for me, it was also a boring and frustrating game. I like problems, to find solutions, to test and develop, but I get frustrated, if I find no real solution.

I decided to make it the suggested "hard core way"; one with nature. Just for fun; to really test the "one with nature" way, I built no trading port. That was not the problem; that part of the challenge worked well.

What was the frustrating problem? I've wrote it before: I don't like that it's not enough to "fake demolish" the boarding house once, to get all possible young couples. You have to do it several times. There were always singles, that were really unwilling to move out. I found that quite annoying, and for me; too boring to try, as the number of boarding houses grew. At the beginning, I made a lot of experiments; how to demolish, how long to wait before undo the demolishing and other things. I saw no difference, so I developed a strategy; every summer I made a big demolishing than I left it. Not perfect, but perfect for me; I got a nice, slow, steady growth.

The second new problem connected to the boarding houses and a full educated population, is the location of the schools. I am pretty sure; if a student once start attending one school, he or she will go to that special school all the time. Not like the adults who change professions and mostly work close to their homes. It seems like the people move around a lot, when you fake demolish their homes. I followed some individuals, but found no way to control where people lived. To minimize the average way to the school, I decided to build all schools quite at the center of the map. But also this way, the students often stayed very long at school, I saw 25-years old, still at school! Of cause, this also contributed to the slow population growth.

Numbers:
Population after 50 years: 620
Number of boarding houses: 44
Educated: 100% from the first child
Happiness: 4½ star (very close to 5, the full stars were shown briefly from time to time. I think the reason is the old children living at their parents. There were enough graveyards and other "happy-making-buildings")
Health: 4½ harts (very close to 5 harts, like the stars, sometimes all harts were shown briefly, I suppose it is hard to keep 5 harts steady with no grain)
Food and other supply: Enough of everything all the time.
Disasters: One tornado in a not developed corner of the map, nothing else.
Mods: none

First picture
Main and starting area with schools, mines and quarries

Second picture
The second, very typical town center. The school was located before I found my school strategy.

Third picture
A later, more distant town center with no hunters. I didn't want to flood the place with too much leather, so fish was the main protein.

kee

#19
Well, @Nilla , your boredom has set up a benchmark for the rest of the takers for this challenge.
The first village I tried to have only boarding houses in I also went for a once per year fertility feast called "the Yellow House" and left it at that. Enough new pairings to make for a steadily increasing population ensued from that.
Keeping health at five stars is difficult with a increasing population and not enough variation in the diet. Back when I tried to increase my mountain men settlement to meet isolationist and one with nature I had five hearts most of the time though. Perhaps the mountain air agreed with the bannies, or else they grew some very potent herbs. That village died around pop 200 because I hadn't paid attention to the tool situation.
Kim Erik

rkelly17

Quote from: Nilla on March 08, 2015, 04:30:04 AM
The second new problem connected to the boarding houses and a full educated population, is the location of the schools. I am pretty sure; if a student once start attending one school, he or she will go to that special school all the time. Not like the adults who change professions and mostly work close to their homes. It seems like the people move around a lot, when you fake demolish their homes. I followed some individuals, but found no way to control where people lived. To minimize the average way to the school, I decided to build all schools quite at the center of the map. But also this way, the students often stayed very long at school, I saw 25-years old, still at school! Of cause, this also contributed to the slow population growth.

Yes, once someone starts at a school they will stick with it until they graduate unless that school is closed or loses its teacher. In that case the students will either fill in available space at other schools (if there are available spaces) or go into the workforce as uneducated. I noticed that when a new couple includes a student, the student will continue on at the original school even if s/he has to pass multiple other schools on the way. I noticed as well that when I build @RedKetchup's college it sucks teachers and students out of nearby schools even if I have already added extra teachers to the pool--this is what says to me that students will change schools if the school they attend loses its teacher. By the way, the behavior of the college is not unique to it. Any new workplace with multiple empty slots will take workers from established workplaces even it that leaves the established workplaces with no workers.

Theoretically you could move students from one school to another by momentarily removing the teacher from the school you want vacated--but this is risky: You would need to make sure that there are enough slots in other schools and you would probably end up with some students studying a distance from home.

Nilla

Quote from: rkelly17 on March 09, 2015, 08:18:07 AM

Theoretically you could move students from one school to another by momentarily removing the teacher from the school you want vacated--but this is risky: You would need to make sure that there are enough slots in other schools and you would probably end up with some students studying a distance from home.

Maybe this would have been worth a try, with a lot of spare schools. After the big "scuffle" of the living space, the schools could be closed one by one. I assume that the students, whose school was shut, would enter the closest available. As you said; maybe a bit risky, but I think possible. @irrelevant (and the rest of you trying this challenge) this would be something for you to try.

@kee, hm........ benchmark....... With a bit patience and more work with the population, it wouldn't be all too hard, to get a higher population. About the harts; if you look at the graph, I had 5 harts in the middle of the game. I think I lost that last ½ hart, as I started to build some boardinghouses not directly close to the market. Sometimes the people got their food directly from the barns and I must confess, there are mostly venison and fish (and some onions, mushrooms and roots). Most of the berries are at the markets. I don't think people could visit the herbalist oft enough to compensate for 2 missing food types. This could also be something for you guys playing this challenge to concider.

Demonocracy

Hi guys!

Unfortunately, I had the same idea as @Nilla , so I kind of feel like I've repeated the same.  What was even more  unfortunate is that @Nilla rocked my socks off!  He had 600+, and I was able to eke out a mere 400 after like 3 tries at this.  (Great job, @Nilla --you are the boss!)

@kee , you were right when you talked about micromanagement.  It never took just one pretend-demolish.  Every other season I was pretend-demolishing just to get the population up.  Even then, sometimes it took two or three or even four tries at it.  Goodness!  Thank you for the challenge.  It's funny--I've never actually won one, but trying for them keeps me engaged in the game.  So really... thank you!  I've noticed you've come up with several so far.  Please keep them coming!

I'll not win this one since @Nilla has totally set the bar, but I  appreciate the fun and opportunity.

Thanks guys!  Happy Banishing!  =)

kee

Okay, we now have @irrelevant @Chon Waen @Bracken @salamander trying to beat @Nilla and @Demonocracy at a very decent second place. Any more takers? Anyone not going for a hardcore win?
Kim Erik

Chon Waen

Sorry guys, I am going to take a pass on the challenge for now.  I have been concentrating on my own side projects for my games, and haven't even started this yet!

My apologies.

irrelevant

#25
Year 50 - pop 484

I really enjoyed this challenge; again, out of the comfort zone makes things interesting. I talk about my mistakes in my blog, but here I'll just list the achievements:

pop 484 in 36 BHs
100% educated
99% clothed
Four and a half each of hearts and stars
Just one tailor, one smith, one tavern, one quarry, and one iron mine for the whole game
Never a farm, orchard, or pasture
Never a TP (although I did have the footprint for one for a few years, to get some nomads)

salamander

I hope you're patient, @kee ... I'm only at year 28.  :-[

Brugle

#27
Quote from: Nilla on March 09, 2015, 09:02:01 AM
Quote from: rkelly17 on March 09, 2015, 08:18:07 AM

Theoretically you could move students from one school to another by momentarily removing the teacher from the school you want vacated--but this is risky: You would need to make sure that there are enough slots in other schools and you would probably end up with some students studying a distance from home.

Maybe this would have been worth a try, with a lot of spare schools. After the big "scuffle" of the living space, the schools could be closed one by one. I assume that the students, whose school was shut, would enter the closest available. As you said; maybe a bit risky, but I think possible. @irrelevant (and the rest of you trying this challenge) this would be something for you to try.
One way would be to build enough extra schools to hold all of the students--their locations don't matter.  (For example, with 106 students in 8 villages each with a school, you'd need 6 more schools.)   After each "scuffle" (while paused), open the extra schools, add the extra teachers, close the original schools, open the original schools, reduce the teachers so that only the extra schools are staffed, restore the teachers so that all the schools are staffed, close the extra schools, and remove the extra teachers.  (This assumes that students are each assigned to the school closest to home when their school closes.)

irrelevant

@Brugle that sounds like a winner. I'm going to test this tonight.

Brugle

@irrelevant I just ran some simple tests.  A school is not immediately staffed if a teacher is added then the school is set to work, but is immediately staffed if the school is set to work then a teacher is added.  I modified reply #28 so its procedure should work.