Nilla-testing the North6

[Nilla]

No, @Tom Sawyer don't be sorry, that you released the first version early for testing. You invest a lot of time in making these nice things, the least thing I can do is to test, find possible bugs and maybe some things that could be improved. I only wish, I had more time to test more mods. Other modders make nice things, too. But now I hope I can make a bit more long time testing of the North6, then we'll see.

A few more years played.

First picture

I play Norseman. This settlement will grow with immigration. So a church was built as soon as the "basics" were under control.

Second picture

I know, it looks weird in these surroundings, but I need my statistics. Let's say a foreign merchant wanted to stay in this settlement, when he's "off duty", and he built a house in the style of his home country; much to the joy and astonishment of the other settlers. That's the reason I built it down by the dock.

You can see, that there's a lot of meat in the stores.

I've also built a hunter out in the "big wood". It solves the "clothes issue". I will try to run this settlement without foresters; at least for a while. So far it works fine, just to cut some large trees every winter. It's a bit of micromanagement, so I'm not sure how long I will continue this way, but so far it's OK.

Third picture

The turnips look good, really like turnips. To me it was alright the way it was, with the Banished potatoes (I've never seen any potatoes looking like that, so it might as well have been turnips;) ) but these are nicer and necessary, if you want to grow potatoes as well. And finally; we got some sheep.

I've also built a mine. I have the idea, that I might export iron ore. Does the mine still need logs to produce? How much?

[Tom Sawyer]

Yes, the mine still needs logs to be expanded. It's 1 log to get 12 ore and 1 tree for 72 ore.

[Nilla]

Yes, the mine still needs logs to be expanded. It's 1 log to get 12 ore and 1 tree for 72 ore.

OK, thanks, that's reasonable and still profitable to export iron ore to buy tools, as long as the people are uneducated. The value of the materials to make a tool is higher than the price. So, that's a strategy; as long as we are in medieval times with uneducated people, tools will only be produced, if we can't buy enough.

Your thoughts of early forest management; the same people who produce food in summer, cut trees in winter (by the way; totally historically correct, Banished foresters=people who only cut and plant trees, is a modern "invention") still works. It is some micromanagement, that's not so fun, but I can endure it. The forest looks much nicer this way. I have a question about this. In one earlier version, some food (I think onions) only grew with birches. I haven't noticed anything like this here, but is it still that way?

I've developed some seasonal routines to make it less tedious:
-when the summer comes, food and herbs are marked for harvest, (maybe if the temperature allows it, a second time late summer/early autumn)
-when the frost comes first firewood then 10-20 trees, dependant on building plans are marked
-sometimes late winter more firewood and food (I guess only roots) marked

I try to have as many "steady" professions as possible, but there is still some micromanagement needed, because the settlement is small and doesn't need a "full time" clothes maker, blacksmith, woodcutter, miner...... but since many profession do laborers work when they are "free", I just let them stay builders, traders, farmers, herbalists..... even if there's no actual work for these professions.

First picture

I take every nomad, so the settlement grows nicely. But the period between nomads is very different; sometimes it takes two months, sometimes two years. They arrive in spring or summer, it's always a couple, often in their 30ies. I find twice a year, like here too often. It would also be fun/annoying, if sometimes singles or children would arrive.

Second picture

A question to the very nice ovenhouse.

I have no seeds from rye or wheat (at least not yet, I'm not sure, if I will grow any on harsh, they are very unreliable) but I buy as much as I can. I let a farmer grind it in the workplace next door to the baking house, but the baker is always faster. Since I know a little about how you balance your mods @Tom Sawyer, I guess, that they are made to work together at the same speed. Somehow it doesn't seem to work in this settlement. It's all close here, so logistics is hardly the problem. Maybe it's because people "steal" away some of the flour before it reaches the bakery. Maybe this should be considered by balancing the "speed" of work. I want to let them work at the same time. If first all grain is made to flour and then flour to bread, I guess more flour would go directly into the houses. How are your thoughts on this matter?

Third and fourth picture

This part is especially for my pal @brads3. (and also for others who might have a food issue)

Look at the food graph! This is the way it should look like to be safe. I know @brads3, you had other difficulties, like a lot of nomads arriving at the same time, but the principle is always the same. Population grows -> foodstore should grow at the same rate. You see where the arrow is; it was a very cold summer, almost no harvest (you may have something similar after your many nomads). If it looks like that, no matter why, it's important to increase the food production the following years by all means. Expand fields, more fisher, more gatherer, more hunter....... everyone (more or less) had to produce food. A look at the production menu helps.

Advice if you play the North on harsh; don't grow cabbage. It needs a warm summer. The couple of years I grew it, the outcome was about the half of turnips.

[Tom Sawyer]

Interesting strategy to sell the raw materials and to buy finished tools with uneducated people. I also think it pays off but probably only if you sell to best prices and if you get tools to the right time without order. Sounds risky with rare merchants in a small settlement and only 1 or 2 docks. I want to calculate this but too tired right now.

To let people stay in their profession was my intention. I never liked this seasonal switching of professions to be efficient. I want a farmer be a farmer also if seasonal work has to be done. That's why they now have various seasonal tasks in winter when the fields are covered by snow.. grinding grain, brewing ale or making clothes. Processing their in summer harvested resources. It still needs micromanagement to be fully efficient but no switching of professions. You only have to enable/disable seasonal workplaces. At least that's the idea.

The oven house is also a temporary workplace of farmers. It's thought as a common oven of a village, not for one family. The flour from many farmers can used to bake bread there. Or later the flour from a mill somewhere at a creek. So the baking speed is balanced for this, not for the slowly grinded flour from one farmer only.

And onions are now crops. They don't grow in the forest anymore. Only berries, mushrooms, roots and herbs. And maybe nuts some day or Tanys rose hips soon.

[RedKetchup]

maybe ... crosses de violon ?   

[Nilla]

maybe ... crosses de violon ?   

[Tom Sawyer]

That made me a puzzle.. but I found "Fiddleheads have been part of traditional diets in much of Northern France since the beginning of the Middle Ages..." Right? Frenchies really eat just everything.

[Nilla]

I've never heard of eating any kind of fern here in my neighborhood. Bark and spruces from trees though. 

Tools: First, I don't fully rely on tool import and second, I don't order any tools. I have produced some and I will produce more, if the store gets down too much. I have some iron and charcoal for emergency use.

I calculate like this, hope it's right: From 40 iron ore and 40 charcoal you get 30 iron bloom. From 28 iron bloom and 28 charcoal you get 21 iron and from 20 iron, 20 charcoal and 5 logs you get 15 tools. So 15 iron tools (and 2 iron bloom and 1 iron extra) cost you 40 iron ore, 88 charcoal (made from 15 logs) and 5 wood. 15 tools cost 600. 40 ore and 20 logs give you 720 if you can sell it to the higher price and 540 to the lower. (if you choose to produce charcoal for sale you get a bit more) And you save all the work to produce these tools. I have sold very little to the low price (just things I really wanted to get rid of), so most of my bought tools were a good business, no matter how you calculate. 

I guess most of you will find this very "geeky" but I like to calculate things like these when I play.   

First picture

But @Tom Sawyer I don't really understand how you've been thinking, when it comes to the different merchant. To me it's quite confusing. One merchant who sells a mixture off goods like Fores,  pays the high price for everything. Others like Johanne (cut in) the low price for everything. And the merchant who brings only coins, pays the high price only for blueberries (at least from all of the things I sell). I don't mind it this way. I like the "gambling" part, but it would be nice to understand your motives to make it this way.

Second picture

Unusual for me I've played a little with decorations and built some fences to "tidy up". The foreign merchant in the strange round red house even put up a flag. 

Third picture

I'm playing Norseman (real time aging) but due to the many nomads, the growth isn't extremely slow. Since the viking/medieval people haven't discovered schools yet, I have the problem with a lot of young adults. Here you can see; I wanted to build a house for Dall, 17 and Briel, 16 but who moved in? Tiannemari, 11! I don't know how to manage this. People are considered adults with 10 but don't move in together until 16. If I build a lot of houses, they will be occupied with a lot of young singles, who eventually will move together, leaving empty houses. If I only build a few new houses, some children will stay at home until they are 20 and more and the population growth will be slow. Any suggestions what to do? Anyway, I will make some experimenting.

You can see these open tree menus. I've built a lot of single apple trees. I like the look of them. The harvest isn't bad. I use 2 farmers who goes from one tree to another. A lot of micromanagement, but it's fun, at least for a while.

I wish you all a very good 2018!

[brads3]

hi,NILLA. what i do is build houses once the females get to be 15 years old or so.it isn't fool proof as you have found.as they do pair up those other houses won't stay empty long since younger bannies will move in.the bannies do seem pickier about the distance from work when trying to build and move them as singles.generally young males seem to move out from parents sooner than a single female. the females rather stay until they are paired with a male of similar age.so childbearing age does play into things.other day i had a family split and move between 3 houses,all trying to move 1 17 year old female.think she is still living with 1 parent after it all.

        those apple trees are interesting. i take it you have to manualy send a farmer to harvest each 1?can a gatherer be sent to pick up the apples if the trees were within his circle?so a forester plants a tree whereever you tell him and moves to plant another,but  all can be gathered automatically by 1 gatherer.CC has an orchard forester that a gatherer will harvest.however,you can't specify where to plant the trees.TOM gave you some neat tools to play with. some are similar to ideas i have had the last year or so.

[Tom Sawyer]

Your calculation is almost right @Nilla. You don't need that much charcoal to forge iron and tools but it doesn't make a big difference below the line. Tools can be a bit more expensive then. On the other hand it's interesting to have such an option. I find it not geeky to calculate it, just the normal way of balancing.

About your merchants I can say that Johanne comes from another Nordic village because he or is it a she has furs, hides and mead on board. He would pobably pay a good price for bricks and glass or charcoal and for exotic food but with your Nordic stuff you cannot make him happy. The other merchant is more interesting. Fores comes from far away, lets say from Francia or how it was. He brings food from this warmer region like wheat and even figs. Also advanced steel tools which might be a good trade for your people. The more important thing is that he wants to buy Nordic resources. I can give every merchant a special name, where he comes from. Could be funny and easier to recollect them.

And now I know, who is that guy from the mystic round house making your statistics every year.. It's an ambassador from the famous Alaska Empire.^^ I really have to make some historical flags or banners. Twilight already suggested this.

For the uneducated youngsters occupying new houses I don't have a good idea yet. The only way to avoid this would probably be to somehow syncronize it with marriage age.

[Nilla]

You're right.    I looked again at my not very tidy notes, and these 15 tools need less charcoal but on the other hand more logs than I wrote, so the conclusion is the same: Profitable to buy with uneducated blacksmiths, at least unless you order and get the lower price for your goods. Higher price for tools? I don't know. In that case, it would maybe be too profitable to produce with educated people. It's an interesting balance. I can live with it the way it is. It's not a huge profit to buy the tools and you take the risk, that no merchant bring any in a long time, so you have to check and be prepared to produce.

To the young singles, I'm sure there's no good way to solve it in the mod. As you say; you can set the marrage age down, but I don't like these real age mods with 10 years old couples. You simple have to find a strategy to deal with it. At the moment I build a few homes for single young adults. If I'm really lucky it will be a young couple, or a single 15 year old, that soon will find a sprouse, who moves in. If I'm unlucky, it's a 10 year old. It is possible to make a save and restart the game until the "right" people move in, but it's too boring, so I will not. @brads3, I haven't seen, that young boys are keener to move out than young girls. I think it's completely random.

And yes, these single apple trees are interesting, and yes, you need to assign a farmer, but only the very short time it takes to harvest. I play around a bit with, how to make this. If it's a cold summer, I don't bother to harvest the 10 apples on each tree, or what it may be, but on good years it can be 50 or more. The nicest and easiest way to harvest, is to let the ordinary field farmers go to the apple trees, after they're done with the turnips/barely. Of cause this is only good manageable as long as the settlement is quite small, but it still works.

First picture

An overview of the settlement in year 37. You can see the menu on the next picture.

Second picture

This part of the settlement has become a bit too tidy. I try to avoid to set the houses in rows to get a more "medieval touch" but didn't succeed well here; too tidy. But I like the mixture of houses, other buildings, fields, pastures and forest. Here's the first of my two wagon vendors; located where people gather; by the well.

Third picture

Here's the other vendor, by the church. You can see, why I built them and the result. Health has improved. They also look nice and fit well in such a settlement.

You can see, I've built an apiary. I don't really like, that it needs sugar to produce. It's not easy to get enough. You can't produce it yourself. Even if you buy a lot, the apiary doesn't get more than 100, the rest goes into the houses. Unless you use some tiresome "tricks", like storing it in the trading port. I also think, it's not historically correct. Of cause the bees need some fodder during the winter and today they get cheap sugar, but in the "old days" sugar wasn't cheap. If people could get some, they wouldn't have given it to the bees. I guess, insted they didn't "steal" more honey, than the bees could survive the winter. If you want to keep the sugar, I suggest @Tom Sawyer, that you make two production variations; one with sugar and one without with a lower production.

[Nilla]

I have been playing a little the last days but I didn't write anything. Not much is happening. I expand slowly. It's nice and good to play. I take every nomad and now in year 49 the population is getting close to 200. I will play these "old times" a little longer. It's still interesting. The stores are full. There haven't been any tools offered for a long time, so I now produce some from iron, I've bought.

First picture.

We had Scarlet Fever. More or less everyone was ill. Two times; first in year 40 then again in year 46. I thought you were immune, if you had it once, but it doesn't look like it here. 5-10 people died each time.

There's a lot of meat in the stores. It's too much, even if I sell as much as I can, also to the lower price.

Second picture

You can see the small effect of the Scarlet Fever on the population graph. You can see @brads3 in this village more young girls than young boys want to move out early! I like to have the menus open with single youngsters. Usually I have a handful of these houses. It could be more, if most 10 years old would have moved out, there would be more children. Not from them but from their parents. But I have no hurry to expand.

Third picture

Overview. As I've said before; I'm no fan of the apiary with the sugar. Here it was out again. I buy all sugar I can get, but people seem to love it. Not much left for the bees.

[brads3]

good morning.NILLA. i take it you checked for males living with parents that were 10-12 yrs old?if so then maybe TOM tweaked the coding somehow.

[Tom Sawyer]

I like the structure of this settlement. It looks very grown, if that works in English. Also, the ratio of land for buildings and farming looks realistic somehow. Or it's just my impression.

With the bee yard I have to change something then. I included sugar not only because of realism. Actually to avoid it to become a spammed food generator. Every small object which produces food has this problem and a limited input material solves it without making it useless for the worker. In this case it seems to not work well with sugar grabbed by citizens. Just like with this old 'coal in houses' issue. I'm not sure yet how to solve it in the best way. Sugar can be inedible and counted together with salt to get better control of its use. Or I reduce it as input or even completely remove it with bee hives as only spam protection.

[Nilla]

Thank you @Tom Sawyer. I like this settlement, too. Mostly because the buildings are so lovely. It's easy to make it look pleasant. I would have liked to have the houses more "out of the rows", more medieval, more "kreuz und quer".  I try to put the direction of the houses different, try to leave different large space in between, but somehow it still turned out to be too neat.

To make sugar inedible? Maybe. You know what I think a but inedible food. But on the other hand, sugar is special and not really a nutrition, so it would not be as bad as uneatable grain. I would prefere two options of the apiary; one with sugar as input with the numbers today (around 400 honey I think) one without input but with less output, say around the half. Such a low output would make it less interesting to "spam" the map with easy to make food/export goods. It would also encourage us to try to get sugar to improve the productivity.

Am I right, when I think it's OK to load that fantastic, crazy looking new mill from @kid1293 to this map? I think that it would fit visually. In any case I will try it.