Mark -vs- DS Industry Mining Beta.05 - Round 4!

[MarkAnthony]

I needed to get out of Nilla's thread so I don't clutter it up any more than I already have. So here's mine... again.

I had to stop this fourth game early because I got to go to work in a couple hours and I need to do some things beforehand but I managed to get Phase 1 completed in 10.5 months (March to mid-January).

Before the start of the game I made sure there were plenty of mini-Stock Piles (instant) located anywhere clearing would need to be done; six other strategically placed Stock Piles have 1-3 items to be cleared in each.

YEAR 1 - FIRST SIX MONTHS:

   
• March: Two Apple orchards got cleared first since they were the easiest to do. 1 Farmer each

   
• March/April: Small Iron Ore Mine, two Miners. Pumpkin field, one Farmer

   
• April: School, 1 Teacher - missed first kid, they aged up about 2-3 minutes after the start of the game.

   
• May: Pepper field, one Farmer. Vanilla Storage Barn, in time for harvest

   
• June: Log House has materials, waiting for 3 Builders to show up.

YEAR 1 - LAST SIX MONTHS:

   
• July: Log House got built. Worker's Construction Yard will get worked on next. Grindstone is queued up. Wood Chopper will get unpaused after the Worker's Construction Yard is built. 3 storage yards remain to be cleared, no rush on them. 2nd oldest kid went to school.

   
• August: One more Stock Pile cleared.

   
• September: Worker's Construction Yard completed, 1 Worker set to making one round of Iron Fittings for Grindstone. Wood Chopper completed, 1 Woodcutter

   
• October: Last Stock Pile cleared. Both crop fields and both orchards are still in the process of being harvested. First child born to the one and only Log House. Both Apple Orchards are harvested 342+354

   
• November: Before first snow, Pepper field got harvested 849; during first snow Pumpkin field got harvested 784. Grindstone is now only waiting for Timber to be made and the rest of the materials to be delivered. I forgot to turn off Iron Fittings because I was messing with the fields and orchards so I got two rounds of Iron Fittings made. Grindstone unpaused; Kid's Small Town Hall unpaused. Worker's Construction Yard (finally) set to Timber for Grindstone. 1 Laborer delivering materials to the Grindstone, one Builder doing his thing with the roads.

   
• December: Grindstone completed, no employee; Kid's Small Town Hall completed. Everything for "Phase One" is finished

END OF YEAR COUNTS: (10 1/2 months actually: March to mid-January)

   
• Homeless 16
• Laborers 1
• Builders 1
• Logs 51
• Stone 32
• Iron 13
• Firewood 198
• Ores 131
• Tools 20
• Food 1984
• Herbs 0
• Clothes 9
• Educated 91% - 1 child left behind
• Clothed 100%
• Health zero Hearts
• Happiness 3 Stars (or 2.5 I forget, 3 I think...)

No clear/gather orders were given in the first year, everything came from the initial Stock Pile and Storage Barns and the rest from clearing the land where structures were placed down.

DSIM Beta.05 games 1 & 2 were played on Industry: Ore-Smelters - (Hard) start, I failed both times due to starvation. DSIM Beta.05 games 3 & 4 used Industry: Thadd Surrel Storage - (Medium) start, I failed game 3 (starvation was happening again), this is game 4.

Images 1-3 show the pre-planning I did this time.
Image 4 shows Phase 1 completed .
               
EDIT: In the first 3 screenshots of the pre-planning that middle North/South road is the town divider. The roads were built around the radius circles so I would know not to build on the inside of them (homes more specifically). The right side of the Divider Line is for resource and food production; the left side is for industry.

[brads3]

am i reading correctly that you have 3 builders and only 1 cabin built? would this not bring your health down farther than if you had built the houses before winter?  if the objective is to slow the population growth, wouldnt a boardinghouse be better?

without construction projects stocked,builders are slow laborers. since you have had food problems,i would have planted a 2nd pepper field. even if i had to only get this years crop and then use the worker somewhere else.

[MarkAnthony]

The reason I had three builders just for the one Log House is not only did the Log House allow three builders (normally it's two Builders for homes as you know) but also because it was about mid to late June when I unpaused the Log House.

In two of the previous games before this one, one game the Builders took their sweet ass time getting it built, prior to it getting finished Banies already had the "I'm Cold" snowflake above their heads... it became a race. In the other game, they didn't get the Log House finished in time and I had some deaths. So this time, I didn't want to take any chances so I set the maximum allowed to make sure it was done on time, and it was.

As far as the Hearts go, you'll have to ask @Nilla she pays more attention to that. After my first few games with DSIM Beta v.03 I saw how things were gonna be. I no longer give-a-hoot about Hearts and Stars (I know I should, but I don't) because it's futile at least for me it seems to be. It seems almost near-impossible to please anyone in this dystopian environment (lack of metal) and a prison sentence (hard labor) with these extended build-chains. ROFL Sorry @Discrepancy. Love ya Bro!      But yeah, DSIM > my skills at Banished.

My Hearts and Stars for DSIM are always zero Hearts after a couple of months and it fluctuates between 2.5-3 Stars happiness and the furthest I have ever gotten in DSIM Beta v.05 was 9 years, unlike Nilla's 18 on a small mountains map no less! Again, /hat tip to her skills. I want to do better by my Banies and make them all comfy and cozy but I just don't see how that will ever happen not unless I somehow magically improve my game over-night.                 

[brads3]

i think you are right, lack of experience and playing a difficult situation mod. i would work at getting the food up and survive farther before working on production chains. have you tried with disasters off? check your food production at 6month intervals. add another farmer at the start and swap them to a hunter or gatherer later. you can increase laborer help by using the low or decreasing limits in early game thus freeing a worker to farm.
     NILLA is very experienced so do not try to keep up with her. she is used to growing food in harsh north climates. she is also better at micro managing when needed.

      even if trying to keep a "pure" map,i would look at adding other DS mods that coud help, especially a trading post. i would also attempt a map and delay the education. extra workers would still produce whereas students cost supplies. with a vanilla speed,they grow up fast enough to move them away from workplaces. this could free the educated adults for workplaces.

[MarkAnthony]

After publishing my last reply I realized I never actually answered your questions. I was about to write a follow-up comment but I am a "Who's Online <members only>" lurker and I saw you were writing another post so I waited for you to finish that to see what else you had to say.

Would my Banies Hearts have been better if they had homes before Winter? Again, ask Nilla or Discrepancy. It was my first game, on Hard with no crops and orchard seeds, that I managed to get them all a home and I think they were completed in late Autumn, possibly early Winter. Their Hearts were still low. I don't recall now but maybe even zero Hearts then as well. This game lasted to 9 years.

My second DSIM Beta v.05 game was also a Hard start but this time they only had one home each and I think two extra houses so 4-5 homes total. I still couldn't keep up with food (used exact same setup as first game) and everyone died two years earlier than the first game, at year 7.

My third DSIM Beta v.05 game was a Medium start. Before starting this game I read Discrepancy's comments about doing a slow-grow approach. I also thought I suffered enough with struggle and would go with a Medium start to get crops and orchards. I even had the forethought of knowing that since I am having food issues I will also go ahead and add some food preservation mods to help me out. So with the two new crutches to help me limp along in DSIM Beta v.05 I got a little cocky I guess and thought I would win?! Wrong again, I had four crops and 2 orchards and I still managed to get people dying due to starvation. They died at the end of year 4. How was that possible?!  I felt bad and got frustrated and even for a tiny moment said F-this and considered walking away from Banished. 

But in all these games, even this fourth one - all Hearts are at zero and 2.5 to 3 Stars in happiness. Homes or not. Hell, in the last game, game 3 - I went with an even slower start and made 6 to 11 Banies wait until 4+ years before they ever got a home of their own.  They still died off on me for having no food and I had crops and orchards in this game! WTH!  I don't know...

This fourth game is starting out all good, all relaxed but that doesn't say much because I thought that way about the other games too. So who knows what's lurking ahead for me but I'm trying things a tad different this time in terms of build order and mapping things out, pre-planning a bit more than normal.

As far as your point about low Limits goes, I already do that but mostly it was with the Wood Chopper. His workplace idles on and off all the time and I am fine with that even though that means hes only a temporary Laborer. Once in a while one of my "blacksmithing" buildings will idle on and off when making tools. I hit the Logs Limit a couple of times but I thought it better to increase that Limit since I will eventually be getting the Vanilla Woodcutter up and running and hopefully in the not too far off future get that DSIM Thadd Surrel & Family Timber Mill going but that requires so many building materials to make. Anyways, I thought the best thing to do was to keep upping the Limit on Logs because at the very least I will need them for more Charcoal.

I thought about holding back on education in my third game and I actually intended to, but as soon as that game clock starting ticking my old habits got the best of me and I plopped down a School. It just rubs me the wrong way not having a School when I know how much of a difference educated vs uneducated make in this game, especially with RKEC and Discrepancy's mods and maybe Norths too? I forget.  But yeah... whoopsie there. I was actually willing to let the first few kids turn punk but instinct kicked in and I made a School.   

You made the comment about Builders being slow or bad Laborers when they have no project to work on and build. Maybe that's true I don't know, I'm sure you're right but it's such a minute thing I don't think I would be able to notice one way or the other or even know how to look and see if that was the case. That's a Nilla-thing. I just play the game, she's the Lab Tech.                 

[Nilla]

Oh dear, you plan a lot. My question; does it always come out the way you plan or do you change your plans along the way? And don´t get me wrong; planning is OK, I suppose it´s even good in some ways, just not my style. If I try, I change most of it, anyhow. I´m not sure, you know me; an evil old lady but my next question or assumption; you name it: Can it be that this "following your plan" is a part of your starvation problem? To me; playing Banished in these "survival modes" is to watch and react; look at basic needs; primarily food, secondary tools and firewood and leave the rest; like building fancy roads, loads of stockpiles or "development buildings until you feel safe.

To happiness and health; happiness is very complicated. I wrote a thread about my findings in the North. http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=2445.0 As far as I have seen; it´s pretty much the same here in DSIM with one important difference; people with only 3 stars doesn´t idle as much as they do in the North, so the loss in production is less. I don´t think it pays off to work with all these "happiness things". You would have to locate people outside all (or at least all except one) black circle. The loss of production when they walk between home and work is larger than the loss because of idling. My experience is that good health pays off better; fewer diseases, fewer childbirth deaths. The only way to get it is to have all food categories accessible everywhere. Not even if you manage this you will get full health, especially with a lot of traders, vendors and other "walk-around" professions. These people just grab some unhealthy fast food in a barn along the way. Herbalists may help a little but ONLY if you have all food categories, well distributed. But the loss in production when people actually go to the herbalist is large and I wouldn´t use any in an early part of the game.

Summary; don´t pay any attention to health and happiness, at least not until you have a well functioning stable economy. It´s a luxury we can´t afford to look at at the beginning.

I don´t think that builders without a project are bad labourers but builders have high priority when it comes to living close to the worksite and if you have many unemployed builders, it may mess things up and people live on odd places, far away from their workplaces.

ANYWAY: LET´S HOPE THAT MARK IS THE WINNER OF THIS ROUND AND THE MATCH AGAINST DSIM.

[MarkAnthony]

i think you are right, lack of experience and playing a difficult situation mod. i would work at getting the food up and survive farther before working on production chains. have you tried with disasters off?

I forgot to comment about this. I briefly considered this, but...

In real life I am one of those workers who can't stand still and just bullshit and chit chat or walk around and do nothing, I always gotta keep myself busy with something. It just seems wrong to just stand around and do nothing. And those few times where I did stand around just for a few minutes for a little chit-chat, I felt guilty about it afterwards.

So to your point about just sitting around and banking food, I kind of feels wrong to do nothing else. I mean it makes sense, it does to a point; and even though I am not doing this... I kind of am... I'm kind of thinking "Nilla wouldn't do that (bank food and nothing else), Nilla would be all over the place perhaps already on her third production chain when I haven't even gotten the first one up and running completely".  I don't know. 

Why did you mention having disasters off? I actually haven't had any disasters in DSIM, but I have had a shit-ton of diseases and maladies!  (language, sorry) I've had at least 9 or 10 per game so far and one game even gave me three in a row, one month a part!  They're really an annoyance for sure, hell.. more annoying than being pestered by constant Traders arriving, and that's saying something!  ROFL   

[MarkAnthony]

Oh dear, you plan a lot. My question; does it always come out the way you plan or do you change your plans along the way? And don´t get me wrong; planning is OK, I suppose it´s even good in some ways, just not my style. If I try, I change most of it, anyhow. I´m not sure, you know me; an evil old lady but my next question or assumption; you name it: Can it be that this "following your plan" is a part of your starvation problem? To me; playing Banished in these "survival modes" is to watch and react; look at basic needs; primarily food, secondary tools and firewood and leave the rest; like building fancy roads, loads of stockpiles or "development buildings until you feel safe.

Games 1-3 were as you said, played from a reactionary stance - play and build as I go based on what feels right to do next. This 4th game is the only one I planned out. Correction: Well, game 3 also started to get planned (my post about how all the roads changes color with only one click). But in game 3 it was only the one sub-section that I planned out... and that was the initial starting point - the outside areas were not "zoned-out".

This game 4 is the one where I zoned the majority of the first node; assuming I can even live long enough to expand to another land mass area. So to your question, "will this planning ahead of time be the death of me? Who knows?! I haven't planned my games out before, not to this extent anyhow. 

[MarkAnthony]

To me; playing Banished in these "survival modes" is to watch and react; look at basic needs; primarily food, secondary tools and firewood and leave the rest; like building fancy roads, loads of stockpiles or "development buildings until you feel safe.

But this is what I want to know, I want to know how your game starts? I don't see you holding off on production chains, I imagine you trying to get them started at the very beginning like I try to do. You said you were going to write about your new game tomorrow so I guess I will have to wait to find out.
               

[brads3]

disasters off might not help you with the start, but it will avoid another obstacle later. it woud be sad to finally have food under control and finally be getting somewhere and a fire or tornado destroys all the hard work.   

[MarkAnthony]

Good morning, it's 10:55 AM here and already 100° F inside (I got no A/C) 


YEAR 1 - LAST TWO MONTHS: (Continuing from last time)

   
• January: Turned off the Wood Chopper and set him on the Grindstone to turn my remaining 20 Iron Tool into 20 Iron Tool*. Selected the next crop field up to be cleared of all materials so that it'll be ready when needed.

   
• February: Another kid off to school. That crop field got cleared and it's about late February now, almost time for Spring's planting. I think I will go ahead and activate this new Pumpkin field and let it get worked for as long as I can. Any additional food will help. I'm down to one person now switching between Laborer/Builder. It'll have to do. If I start to feel crunched I will steal the Farmer from the new Pumpkin field but I will at least try to hold off on doing that until Summer after it's been planted.

END OF YEAR SUMMARY:
It just turned to March and the first year is over. In that remaining 1.5 months of the first year I went from 51 Logs to 127 from clearing that new crop field. I'll probably come close to getting all the Logs I'd like (see below) and I got 7 out of 20 of those Iron Tools sharpened, Iron Tool*

END OF YEAR COUNTS:

   
• Homeless: 16
• Homes: 1
• Families: 6

   
• Laborers: 1
• Builders: 0

   
• Logs: 127
• Stone: 38
• Iron: 13
• Firewood: 216
• Ore: 181
• Tools: 20-ish
• Food: 1,829
• Clothes: 9

   
• Clothed: 100%
• Educated: 91%
• Health: 0 Hearts
• Happiness: 3 Stars

               

[Nilla]

Just a few questions;
1. Why do you not follow @Discrepancys advice and make bronze tools for the start? Save the rare iron for other things.
2. Why do you have a farmer assigned to the orchard when it grows? I would plant the orchard, take the farmer away until autumn the first year it gives fruit.
3. How long does it take to use 825 charcoal and what else can you make from these logs in the meantime?

[MarkAnthony]

Just a few questions;
1. Why do you not follow @Discrepancys advice and make bronze tools for the start? Save the rare iron for other things.
2. Why do you have a farmer assigned to the orchard when it grows? I would plant the orchard, take the farmer away until autumn the first year it gives fruit.
3. How long does it take to use 825 charcoal and what else can you make from these logs in the meantime?

(1) I don't know how much Tin Ore I will find in the immediate vicinity and I also don't know how soon I will be able to get that advanced mine up to get any that way. For me, finding Tin Ore on the ground was about as equally scarce as finding Iron Ore. In my mind, "If it's hard to get, save it!" So that's why I don't make Bronze Tools much - I did in my first two games though. That first and cheap starter mine really helps in getting the Iron Ore so I don't mind using some of that to make tools with especially since Iron Tool* > Bronze Tool*.

(2)Because I still have that new car smell, ermm... novice player "glow"!      Though admittedly I am almost three months into Banished now maybe I should have moved on from that habit by this point but that's just the way I was "taught" or learned from Luke's tutorials (I think) and also from videos online - basically every production structure needs an employee. I think @brads3 tried to smack me upside the head the other day touching on that very point.    I guess the same would go for pastures too eh?

I just can't help thinking that if I stole a farmer from a crop field, orchard or pasture then my outputs for those would be extremely low. So how soon can I yank them out of the crop fields, orchards and pastures? I play with the real calendar mod, you don't so when do you suggest? Early Spring they start planting, so how soon after do you remove them? When it changes to Early Summer? And you put them back in when it changes to Early Autumn? They already turn to temporary Laborers in the Winter if you don't yank them away so only the one season of extra help, Summer? Please advise, also about Pastures too if you don't mind.

(3)It lasts me a while, all that Charcoal but not forever; Banies steal some from time to time if I am low on Firewood for whatever reason. With the starvation struggles I had in my last three games I found that I didn't get much time trying to get the advanced materials needed for the advanced buildings so it takes me a long time, if ever, to get those made. So until I do I have to keep burning up my Charcoal in those Bloomerys which I know were only meant to be a temporary segway into the big boy buildings. Also the whole "set it and forget it" type thing --> build it once and hopefully not have to worry about it again anytime soon; it's just one extra thing to get out of the way so I can try to concentrate on other things.
               

[Nilla]

You don´t need much tin ore to make bronze. There isn´t much on the ground but why not use the little what is given before you start to mine for anything. I would never consider making bronze tools with ore that I mine for. I wouldn´t consider making iron tools either; only steel or hardened tools.

Field farmers are a bit difficult to take away from their fields, especially during the summer, not because they produce less if they are taken away when they don´t plant or harvest, but because it´s easy to forget to put them back in time for harvest, at least that´s what happens to me. In winter they work as labourers anyway so I seldom bother to re-employ field farmers. Orchard farmers, however, can be taken away for years; all the time from the last tree is planted until you see in spring that the orchard carries fruit. Some cunning modders ( @Tom Sawyer) has found a way to make the orchard give less fruit if it isn´t staffed during the summer but I haven´t seen a mod that gives you less fruit if the farmer is taken away the years it takes for the trees to grow.

Pastures are different depending on the mod; in some mods, all animals die if there is no herdsman, in some it doesn´t matter at all if you have one or not. Mostly it´s something in between; the herd grows faster if you have a herdsman. I usually employ 1 herdsman at each pasture. If I´m really short on workers, I might take them away for some time.

[MarkAnthony]

So how soon can I yank them out of the crop fields, orchards and pastures? ... Early Spring they start planting, so how soon after do you remove them? When it changes to Early Summer? And you put them back in when it changes to Early Autumn?               

@Nilla So when do I pull them away from their fields and orchards exactly? At those precise time-points I stated above? Or is it -- They start planting in Early Spring and you yank them out in Spring? or Late Spring? or do you wait until the next season of Early Summer?  Thanks for the clarification.