Testing Necora´s Canadian mods

[Nilla]

Det finns ingen orsak att skälla, Kid; bara att säga tack!  I didn´t even had to tear down the mill. It works perfect, as you said, a small profit.

I was a bit hesitant, wheather I wanted to try the new upgrades or not. My last game crashed, as I loaded the upgrade before this. That didn´t matter much but this game is nice, rather a keeper, I want to play a little bit longer. But yesterday I felt brave and upgraded. I´m happy to say, everything works fine. No crashes. I haven't demolished and rebuilt anything, except my full food storage on the shore. Maybe the new merchants don't arrive to my old trading port, but the old kind of merchants now bring material with the new flags, so it doesn't matter much.

There's not much new to tell. The game goes on like it has. I´m in year 36. The population has just passed 250. I was too busy doing other things, so I forgot to build enough schools. Now I have 2 uneducated. I guess they will chose professions, where they really do a lot of harm with their clumsy craft!    

Since I´m used to write loooong texts, I will write a little about how hard balancing is.

The maple boiler didn´t work in the last version. It does now; 20 maple sap and 2 charcoal make 8 maple syrup. If we look at it this way: With an input worth 28 you make 8 units food. If you sell the ingredients, you could buy 28 apples. A Banni doesn't care, if he eats maple syrup or apples. Why should we run such a boiler, "destroying" food?

Maybe, if we look at it in this way; maple syrup cost 4 in trade; so if you sell the maple syrup, it's actually a small win of (4*8-28=4/8=) 0,5 trade units for one maple syrup. I´m not 100 % sure of the annual production, because I was a bit short on charcoal, but I think it would be about 300. That means a maple boiler makes a profit of 150 each year, if you sell the syrup. Not much, he would do a lot better, if he was sent to an orchard or in the woods to collect apples, but at least not a loss. But this is also not the full truth.

I produce maple whiskey,(a decent profit of around 800 each year) and need maple syrup as a raw material. If I order it, it cost 5 to buy. So if we recalculate the maple press again as an alternative to ordered maple syrup it's (5*8-28=12/8=) 1,5 trade unit for each syrup, we can say, the boiler is a decent alternative, making a profit of 450 each year.

But it's not that simple (who would have thought that?)  Even if the whiskey need maple syrup, the people still use it as food, carrying it into their houses!   

Could this be done in a to me better way? I mean yes. Look at @RedKetchup´s butcher tent. I produce roast from venison (you can process all other meat too). 1 venison makes 2 roast, the trade value of venison is 3, of roast is 4, the average annual production around 600. Same calculation again. The butcher produces a surplus of 300 food each year. If you chose to sell it, it's a profit of (4*2-3=5/2)=2,5 for each or 1500 each year. It's a lot, but still far less than a wood cutter.

Now you might say; it's unrealistic. How can a butcher make two from one and increase the amount of food? I´m not familiar with boiling maple sap, but I guess, that the amount decreases a lot, in the process and that's why, your 20 sap gives only 8 syrup, @Necora. But I say, think out of the box. A Banni doesn't count in kilos or liters, not even in pounds and gallons, like you "crazy people" from the other side of the big pond do! A butcher makes 2 pieces of roast out of 1 piece of meat like a maple boiler could make 2 jars of syrup out of 1 bucket of sap.

I´ll show you 2 pictures.

The first is an over all picture of most of my settlement. The second just a small impression. It makes fun to build the shore buildings on the small stream!

[QueryEverything]

@Nilla I do always enjoy your posts   Also, re the trader, I do think (it's been a couple of days, so forgive the memory), you need to demolish existing traders and then build new ones, I think I read that on @Necora download page.    Can't find where I read it, I must've dreamt it ...  carry on

[Nilla]

I've played my nice little game some more years the same way, as I did the years before. I'll show you some screenshots and tell a little about my strategies in this game. Year 43, just passed 350 inhabitants.

First picture

This poor lady actually starved to death! 

I've seen it before on jetty parts, not only on yours, @Necora: As long as the parts are not ready built, the Bannis have no problems at all, jumping up and down on the construction, swimming/walking in the water. But as soon as the part is done, they don't even dare to take the short jump to the shore. They wait until they are rescued from the other builders, finishing the neighbor part or, like this woman, they die!

Second picture

This is how the part of the settlement from my last picture, looks now. If you look at the profession menu, you may see, that I have a lot of these small shore fisher. I ususally place them in groups. I do like this "cluster", at the lake; a mixture of different sizes in different directions, not in a straight row. (A row along a small stream looks good, too). But this picture reminds me on real fishing huts on the west coast of Sweden. I spent one summer there as I was young; a summer job at  restaurant. Good memories!

The picture also shows the production menu. You can see, that I need to buy some food, mostly apples and maple syrup. This is iron woman, so my 350 people need a lot of food. If I think, I will be a bit short, I expand farming, otherwise I build these lovely shore fisher. A farmer produces double compared to a shore fisher. But of cause, farming needs space. The many shore fisher make, that the settlement stays small and compact, that's big advantage. First I produced a lot of seeweed (it gives the most food) but I've changed the most to scallops (the best protein). I realized, that I was short on proteins. The butchers had no raw material, because the people carried all venison into their homes, I even bought some nuts. I hope, I soon produce enough proteins.

The production menu also shows, that I sell firewood to buy logs, stones, iron and coal to build and make tools. You may see, that last year I needed more tools, than I produced, so I just built my second blacksmith. The small blacksmith from @Necora is nice and cheap but produces less than vanilla. It's perfect for the start but I have replaced it with the colonial blacksmith from Kid (It looks like it has vanilla values) and as I said, now a second.

Third picture

Another impression of the same area.

Fourth picture

Here I've built the shore fisher in rows. I'm a bit cautious, not blocking any rivers or streams. It might cause trouble by the merchants. You can see on the food graph, that I've built a lot of new fields. It also shows the "out of the row" purchase of nuts. As I said, I didn't buy the nuts, because I needed food, just because I was short on proteins. The store of food might be big, but really not that huge. It's not much more than one year's consumption. But I will not need any new fields for a while.

I see I wrote nothing about balancing this time. Hmm.......... I might get some withdrawal problems..... Perhaps I should write a little more later this afternoon.

[Nilla]

I have no new pictures to show, so I will write a bit more about balancing.  There's another aspect of balancing, to which I haven't said anything, yet. To my opinion, modders who make a product chain, not only have to think about a reasonable production/profit from each building. (I've written a lot about that) but also think about the balancing between the buildings. I'll explain what I mean taking @Necoras buildings as an example.

Let's start with something easy:

A trapper catches around 100 wild animal each year. These wild animals are useless as they are. (Not good to sell, because they are only worth 1 and that´s OK, who wants to buy dead animals). A skinner has to process them to something useful. He makes 4 different products, which one seems to be random. From each wild animal, he can produce 6 game, 6 feather, 6 eggs or 3 furs. My skinner processes about 30 wild animals each year. That means; for each trapper, you'll need at least 3 skinner to process the wild animals. Is this reasonable? 

I would prefere, that 1 skinner could take care of all wild animals a trapper catches or maybe even one skinner for 2 trappers.

(I'm not even sure that you'll need 2 profession. A vanilla hunter can process the deer to venison and leather. It's really strange, that you need a skinner to produce eggs. But maybe, it make sense to have a separate profession for the expensive and complicated furs. I would find it better, if the trapper collected the eggs himself. It would also give the trapper a well needed higher productivity. A skinner could then make furs and maybe some meat (much of the meat from fur animals is, as far as I know, not eaten, but I guess there might be some). I'm not sure about the feather. If feather at all, maybe some valuable down from sea birds, that could be used by a tailor for warm clothes or be sold for a profit, not cheap common feathers. This has nothing to do with the balancing I wanted to talk about, just some other thoughts.)

If we go to the maple prodcuts it's getting more complicated.

The special gatherer in the maple forest collects maple sap. In one forest 2 gatherers gets an average of about 300 maple sap each year.

You can make maple syrup from maple sap using carcoal. A maple boiler makes 8 maple syrup from 20 maple sap. It can produce 300 maple syrup each year (maybe more?). That means one maple boiler needs 300/8*20=750 maple sap each year. To run it continuously, you'll need the sap from 5 gatherers in 3 maple foresters.

To make maple syrup as food is very bad business, but you can process it further to cider or whiskey with a reasonable profit. You can't prevent, that some maple syrup is carried into the houses, so one maple boiler doesn't produce enough, to support one cider press (1 syrup for 1 cider) the whole year.But if you have enough grain (1300=2 farmers), it can be enough, to make whiskey (½ syrup for 1 whiskey) For whiskey we will also need charcoal and that's another production chain.

Charcoal is made from pine bough (logs is also possible, but bad business). 2 gatherers in a pine forest collects enough bough to support 2½ charcoaler. 2 charcoaler make enough, to run one maple press and one whiskey boiler, but it will not be enough, if you also want to process the pine resin from the same forest to turpentine.

Conclusion:

If you want to run these nice new forests and use its raw material in a way, that makes sense, you'll need:

3 maple forests with 2 gatherers in each
2 pine forests with 2 gatherers in each
1 maple boiler
1 whiskey still
5 charcoaler
5 turpentine stills
5 trapper (one in each forest)
15 skinner

As you can see, it´s possible but I would like it to be easier. Maybe something like this:

1 maple forests with 2 gatherers in each
1 pine forests with 2 gatherers in each
1 maple boiler
1 whiskey still
1 charcoaler
1 turpentine still
2 trapper (one in each forest)
1 skinner

[Necora]

@Nilla I like the little dock areas you made, they look cool.

Regarding Trapper - The hunter kills a deer, and animals in game are allowed to drop/produce many resources (same as pasture animals) so you can get your venison and leather from one kill. I don't know how to animate, so I cannot add more wild animals even if I would want to. So the other option is to have them spawn in the forest as they do currently. So the wild animals are not hunted like deer, they are harvested like berries. The downside is you can only have 1 resource produced from each thing this way, not multiple ones like the animals. So I could have either 1 mesh/resource for each type of thing the trapper will produce, which is how I originally had it, or have the trapper collect a generic resource which is processed by the skinner into different wild foods/products. It adds an annoying extra step, but it is probably best, other wise it is hard to balance what the forest produces if there are loads of other things being spawned along with your usual fruits etc.

I purposely made them useless for trade, to encourage people to process them. I can play around with the production of the skinner, to make furs rare and others more common, so you can increase the output of it and not get overpowered with lots of high value fur.

Maple is a hard one because I initially wanted to keep production low, but as you say it is a food. Banished does not handle food very well, maple sap is currently a fruit. I don't like it as a food at all, I would love an extra category like 'luxury food' or something, 'sugars' which does not count as one of the 5 a day that the bannies need, but gives a happiness boost or something. I could make it a luxury item, but then it is only consumed in taverns. Either that, or I make it inedible and only useful for making other products, which might not be a bad thing. Either way, I really don't like it as a food, same with sugar and things.

[kid1293]

@Necora
Correct me if I'm wrong -  Maple sap is not really food. It's a middle-product on it's way
to become food? In that case you should definitely make it inedible.

The furs are, as far as we have come with animating animals, only of imaginary origin.
You could have a lot of static animals be that would be boring. So a generic product
taken to the skinner is probably best. Why not put some time in the thought of making
traps as visible items? The trapper 'plants' traps and then 'harvest' furs... 

[brads3]

gm NILLA. the balancing of these new mini-mods seems to be debatable. some of the mods over-produce in relation to their size. and as you have found the other side of the debate is when they produce in relation to their size then its low per worker. i like to use some of these mods to add variety to the diets. more like i think people would do  realistically. if you was stranded living in an area without  stores, you would not want to eat all of one type food either. but i don't approve of it becoming a cheat to where you just fill barns constantly either. i do try to get my food workers to average out about 3-500 food each.
   i will argue with your numbers a bit though. the maple gatherer also finds apples and cranberry. did you add that in? when you say 2 gatherers,do you mean 2 caches or 2 at 1 location? normally 2 at one location doesn't double the output. very seldom will i put 2 workers at 1 location. i do on crops if i double the field size to 20x10 or so. the other time i will add the 2nd worker is if my food is dropping too fast.
    i don't leave the maple forester planting and cutting constantly. i let him cut old trees and plant the maple and apples for a few years usually 3-5. just enough to get a good growth. then i disable the forester. so that may affect my numbers. i am using the forget about orchard mod.my immortal tree mod is not active. my maple cache is pulling about 250 maple but also 300-400 aples +blueberry and cranberry. overall total near 1000. true that doesn't keep the boiler busy all year. when banis aren't busy they become laborers to help with clearing land for expansion. plus when the banis have down-time they can restock their homes. the trapper in that forest is only getting 15-20 animlas. there are some buildings on the edge of the circle but 75% is trees.together with the skinner the production is lousey but i have furs and feathers.
    the furs i use to make coats but i don't need many feathers.i can't just dig a hole and throw the feathers away so later i will have to make survival coats.without Cc the only thing you can do is dump the feathers thru the trader for 0. one problem i noticed with NECORA'S set is none of the tailors seem to use the furs. i built RED's training camp tailor.
     the boiler has a firewood option which you already have. why would you use charcoal? i didn't build a cider press yet. the banis eat the apples so i don't have enough extras.
    the overall total on the forest with 1 maple cache,1 boiler,1 trapper,and 1 skinner is about 1000 fgood plus some textiles. considering the boiler and skinner only work half a year i am getting roughly 300 food per worker. i also have 2 of RED's tower hunters on the outer edges of the forest. my food per worker is about right. my textiles might be low even including the leather. however,the banis have enough clothes stored so they aren't running low.
     i just started to plant a pine forest and plan to add more buildings then.by playing this way i do use the mini foresters to supply logs for firewood.
    i agree that finding a balance with these mini type mods is tough. its a fineline between overproducing based on their size and not producing enough. personally i try not to trade items the banis need. i will do even swaps of vegetables the banis have farmed for grains and variety. i try to use clothing,ale or cider,and candles or furniture. i mainly try to trade for seeds and then livestock.

[Necora]

@kid1293 yup maple sap is already an inedible food (fruit in fact) but it is the maple syrup which is the one I'm not so sure about. Edible or no?

Re. furs, I am currently doing an over haul of the natural resources in the Pine Set to improve the visuals, so yes traps would be an interesting one to add there for the wild animals. I also want to make a start condition with just maritimes trees and resources, so will add some more interesting things there as well.

[QueryEverything]

... A trapper catches around 100 wild animal each year. These wild animals are useless as they are. (Not good to sell, because they are only worth 1 and that´s OK, who wants to buy dead animals). A skinner has to process them to something useful. He makes 4 different products, which one seems to be random. From each wild animal, he can produce 6 game, 6 feather, 6 eggs or 3 furs. My skinner processes about 30 wild animals each year. That means; for each trapper, you'll need at least 3 skinner to process the wild animals. Is this reasonable? 

I had thought about the eggs (I got a pleasant surprise when I was able to build a chicken pen from the dock set because I had eggs. Completely forgot about them in this mod @Necora   Ooops.), that rather than from the skinner, they are dropped directly from the forester source, for the gatherer to find?  X berries; x apples; x ABC; x eggs
It would seem reasonable to me that gatherers would find abandoned nests, disturbed nests etc, and be able to gather the eggs from low lying nests  

Which of course, may be one of the issues you already mentioned, about the resource drops.  I'd be happy to have my eggs handled differently than the other animal by-products that the skinner produces.

I must be hungry, my focus is on the eggs ...  haha

[Tom Sawyer]

Why not put some time in the thought of making traps as visible items? The trapper 'plants' traps and then 'harvest' furs... 

This idea is good and I played around with the forester function for my trapper some time ago but they did strange things and I could not solve it. One thing was that they also harvest trees and gather stones and so on. Not so cool as trapper. Another thing were far too much planted "traps" and I found no way to balance it. They also use a weird hoe ...

[kid1293]

Yes, they keep their profession but clear out trees and stones where they want to plant.
Why no make 'camouflaged' traps in form of several different bushes and trees? Should look natural.
You can make them with billboards (flowers in summer and moving) and not dependent on temperature.
Then your trapper can work all year and the forest looks like a forest, not an alien landscape.

[brads3]

what controls how many wild animals are added to the circle per year? if you build a trapper on the map by itself will the animals appear so he can collect them?? if so why does my trapper only find about 20 each year?some years closer to 10.also am i wrong in how the forests work? the forester plants the trees and then the trees produce the pine boughs and resin.and this forest would continue to produce as long as the trees aren't cut down. reason i ask is my pine numbers seem to be low and 1 year i didn't get any pine,just flax and fungus.my maple cache seems to be working though its production is down to 4-500 each year.

[Nilla]

@Necora! The dock areas look cool, because you made cool buildings! My contribution is very small.

I know, that there are a lot of limitations in what's possible by modding. I'm apologizing, if I suggest something that can't be done. I know nothing about, how it is to work with this, as it seems, limited modkit. And I do admire you all, who succeed in making such good things. As, always; take my comments for what they are: The thoughts of an old lady with some experience but limited knowledge. 

And yes, @Necora, your way to adapt to these difficulties, when it comes to the trapper, do work. A second profession, to make mainly furs is alright. I think we can live with the side effect; that the trapper needs a second person to check, if the eggs are alright. We use to buy eggs from a neighbor, who has some hens as hobby. She always look at the eggs under a special light, to see if they are alright and not "fertilized". We can say; that's what the skinner does with the eggs the trapper brings.  But the suggestion from @QueryEverything; that gatherers collect eggs, could work as well.

@brads3 , I haven't seen you writing comments in my blogs for a while. I thought you might have bin angry, after I called you a politician some time ago.    Even if it's not always easy for an elder person to read your modern language, it's worth the effort. I'm glad to see you back!

But I think you're making a mistake by closing your forester after planting. To my experience; that gives less food from the gatherer. I'm not 100% sure when it comes to the maple forest but I guess, it's about the same as in a vanilla. I've studied these forests a lot. To my experience, you get the most from a vanilla gatherer in a forest with 3 foresters cutting and planting, 2 isn't much different. With 4 foresters you get a bit less, as well with 1. But you get the considerably less from the gatherer if, you have a thick forest, witout any foresters (or even worse with foresters planting only). I don't know why, but I've always thought, that if the forest is too thick, there's not enough room for fruit to grow, and the gatherer have to walk around all these trees, that it takes longer to find something useful. I know, there is one "Banished myth" that says, that food only spawn on mature trees. But that's not true. You can see it very good at a freshly planted maple or pine forest. (There's a lot of these "truths" out there, since the earliest Banished days, that often proves to be wrong, if you look carefully)

To a second worker (or 3 or 4) in the same building; yes, I have noticed, too, that sometimes it doesn't bring much more to put more workers in the same building, but often it actually does.  And these 2 gatherers in a maple forest, certainly bring much more than 1. I have 2 maple forests, in each 2 gatherers are busy collecting different fruit. It varies a lot between different years, how much is collected. Last years production was:

Apples           1105  1625
Blueberries     374    352
Cranberries     532   420
Maple sap       288    374

And Brads you are so right; i do realize, that it's very hard to balance new production sites; to make them produce enough but not too much, to make chains fit in a way I wrote in my last thread. I do feel a bit bad about criticising as much as I do. Necora´s mods are great, they do work, the way they are balanced. But to me, there are a few things, that could be improved to make it even more enjoyable for a player like me.


Maple syrup inedible:

I dislike the principle of inedible food ! Why on earth should people starve, when the barns are full of food, that some dictator has decided; this is not for you! I think, I understand why someone came on this, to me weird idea in the first place; it's easier to run production chains, without the disturbance of people carrying the rawmaterial into their homes. But beside the weird thought, I find it's some kind of cheat.

Maple sap is OK. I don't think it's a food in real life. Maple syrup can maybe be compared to honey. In real, both are rather spices, than basic nourishment, but I wouldn't take any of it away from the citizens, even if it would make the production of cider and whiskey easier.

A luxury? It would have bin a good idea, if luxury products had an influence on the people, that they actually would have bin happier, healthier, more productive, more reproductive............ if they had access to some luxury goods. But as it is now? Please not.

[Nilla]

I just saw what you wrote @brads3. I guess that the output of your gatherers would increase on long term, if you started your foresters again. At least I would try that.

The pine forest give much less than the maple forest. I just made a screenshot. It shows my second pine forest. It's not fully grown, so it's the one with less resources harvested. 1 forester has worked there for some years alone, starting the maple forest up. He just got a college. There has been 2 gatherers for some time.

My trapper had 84 animals last year. That, too varies a lot, I have seen more than 120 but also something like 60.

[brads3]

NILLA,i am sorry you thought i was upset. i wasn't at all. i was harrassing you at the time even. didn't think either of us was intending to be mean. for a while i had the older versions of NECORA's mods. up til recently i was behind like 2 versions. since the 1.07 and the community button,there seemed to be problems with mods. i tried to wait for bugs to be worked out also.
   i agree with you on the inedible foods. i think NECORA ment just the sap though. he does take ideas and criticism well too. plus you are critical of numbers not his mods or him. NILLA ,these posts are confusing me. i don't think it is you i must be tired.i am going to grab dinner and a shower and try to argue with those ideas and numbers later.
  what do i write that you don't understand? i have tried to not short type and use full words and sentences. i even take time to think and reword thoughts so they should make sence. should i use smaller words??? hmmm
  ohhhh be careful using the word "dictator". TOM about threw me out of the north and told me to swim to florida after he tarred and feathered me for that.i was only joking at the time too. i don't think he is still mad at me though.