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Nilla-Movil the forest village in the North

Started by Nilla, October 28, 2016, 05:30:03 AM

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Nilla

OK @Tom Sawyer this blog is for you.

First I will tell that I've found two small bugs: The production menu of the townhall is mixed up. You have changed the order of the goods, not the numbers, that's a bit confusing. The icon for some grain (barley, rye..?) is missing at the market and in the houses, (just cosmetics, no real importance).

I'll just show you some pictures and say a little something to each of them.

First picture

Map and settings, I only use the latest version of the North, no other mods. I will build a forest settlement; no farming at all. I've chosen a small vast forest map. There's plenty of flat space for forests and plenty of mountains around it for mines. I like a small map, because I want to test the limits. Impossible start is cool. Now, I know how it has to be done, but never the less, you can't afford any mistakes.

Second picture

Everyone survived the first troublesome year. We need tools, that's most important. Nordic tools are complicated, so it will take some time. Now it's summer; everyone is out in the forests picking wild food. Usually I don't build anything in this period, but the blacksmith is too important. It has to be built. The stores of food are enough to afford two builders.

This map had one advantage for an impossible start: only 3 children. There will not be more than 3 uneducated. That's good. It could be a problem with the future growth, but I use a little trick; I let every family live in the house, until one child is born.

Third picture

Now everyone have a home. Felian will get one next winter, too. She, and the young couple Kioshio and Mistyn are my uneducated. I will have to keep an eye on what professions they choose. I like the look of the boxes with charcoal and ironore (and later clay). Very neat and also practical. Had these settlers of the North maybe German ancestors?  ;)

I have more pictures, there will soon be more.


Nilla

More pictures

First picture

Life goes on in Movil. It's quite prosperous. We can trade for barley, potatoes and cabbage. We wanted some peas for our traditional pie soup, but the merchant told us, that he's never seen any pies here up in the North. Instead he offered us something new and as he said, similar thing; beans. Everyone had to test, so they were all gone fast, but no, it's not like our beloved yellow pies. Will we ever eat some again? We considered to buy some rye as well, but the merchants charge so much more for rye or rye flour than barley, that we have to reject their offer. Barley porridge will have to do.

From May to the first frost in September we all go out in the forest to collect wild food. No construction of buildings, no tool- or clothes production, no collecting of fuel or resources; that's winter work. Only the foresters can go on as usual. They produce important export goods.

Inspired by @Abandoned .  :)

Second picture

What is this? Yellow fever? Who brought this tropical decease into this remote settlement? The latest trader must have been a freshly returned sailor or maybe an ex- missionary. Luckily, no one died.

Third picture

In my last town the reindeer ate the onions, here they prefere blueberries. The crazy people even put baskets out for them.  :o :P

Fourth picture

Finally, enough roof tiles to build a brickmaker. It is a bit weird, if you want to produce bricks; first you need;......bricks.  :o

But I don't mind. In fact, it has to be that way. It's obvious to see; you need a lot of brick for this special, very nice, well adapted building. (As I said, I know the original) The productivity and profit seem to be good. It could have been something to export, but I will not! The claypit empties fast; real fast, and I will not spam this small map with a lot of useless empty clay pits. (At least I guess, that they are useless, once they are empty). I will buy as much clay as I can and only produce bricks for domestic use.

A question @Tom Sawyer: I see that some merchants bring salt. Is there any use of it?

It takes too long to upload so many pictures, so I will make one more entry.

Nilla

#2
First picture

The last years were busy; changing all vanilla houses to Nordic houses. It's obvious, that they need much less fuel. With the old houses, I had to let the woodcutter work regularly, (not all the time, but about every second winter). Since most of the houses were replaced, enough fuel is gathered from the ground. How much less do they use?

Finally, finally, I got some coins and I hope the animal/seed merchant will return soon. Three times some sheep were offered, but always for coins and I didn't have any, because all the export merchants were busy molesting @Paeng. Now, they visited three times in a row. I just noticed; they pay different prices for the goods. So beware, sell the right stuff to the right merchant.

The open menu; Kiyoshio, do you remember that name? It's my last surviving original settler: my last uneducated worker. What stories could he tell the younger generation?!

Second picture

Finally sheep! In the meantime, the export merchants have noticed, that they could get a lot of interesting goods in Movil. So now, I have a lot of coins. You can see, what I sell. I only sell salmon to the export merchant who pays 2 for it. I make it simple; mainly logs and venison. The production is large enough, to buy everything the merchants bring.

Third picture

A pretty little view over my brick yard and the close houses.

You can see at the inventory, that there are very little imported food; no vegetable at all and only little grain. I buy all food the merchants bring. I have enough goods to sell, to buy more. I really don't want to build a second trading port, because, if I remember right, the amount will increase quite a lot, as the population grows. But in this part of the game, the merchants bring too little food, to full support the population with all food categories, if you have no farming. Is it necessary? Of cause not. There's more than enough food for the population; they can eat fish and berries! But I see no disadvantage, if the merchants bring more.


That´s all for now but maybe there will be more tomorrow!

Tom Sawyer

What a nice new blog with nice story and a lot of pics. Thank you. And I'm sure it's not just interesting to me. :)

Great as you master the difficult conditions. I think, your seasonal micromanagement is a key. Of course, not everyones playstyle. And good to see that it works without farming. At least with this small settlement. But what a pityful brickyard with this one tiny clay pit.^^ It's an interesting strategy but I'm not sure if it is really better to buy the clay. I know, people do not like quarries and clay pits, because of the limited useage. It does not feel good. But on the other hand, they spend much more land on decorative roads and items. I think it is more of a psychological thing. There is enough land for a couple of clay pits, even on a small map. And you will never use all this land. I thought about recultivated claypits or something like that, but actually I like it this way (maybe with a changed balance). It's a part of the game to think about land use and if to mine or to buy clay for example.

To your questions:

Quote
I see some merchants bring salt. Is there any use of it?

Salt is used to bake bread. You don't need much of it but it is needed and I hope it makes this new (optional) part more exciting. And of course for NMT salted food. I have included salt for the better integration of NMT (trade value and productivity). You can ignore it in this puristic game.

Quote
Since most of the houses were replaced, enough fuel is gathered from the ground. How much less do they use?

In theory 50% of a simple wooden house

Abandoned

Nilla, will enjoy following the development of your new settlement in the North and will learn much, I have no doubt.  The red Nordic house sure look nice there in the snow.

brads3

Nilla how do you store the fish and venison?? or do your banis eat it too fast? thats where we use salt.course i guess way up there you can freeze all the food.

Turis

Well, further up north, the eskimos use refrigerators so their food won't freeze.

Nilla

Quote from: Turis on October 28, 2016, 03:17:21 PM
Well, further up north, the eskimos use refrigerators so their food won't freeze.

Of cause they do. In fact; we use a refrigerator to heat our house in winter (and if necessary, cool it in summer). :) ;)

(If you are not familiar with the technique, a heat pump is a reversed variation of a refrigerator ;) )

Back to the game. I only played a few years, but everything works fine, almost too smooth. So I took some nomads to make things a little more interesting.  :-\

First picture

I'm not sure, I like the look of the empty clay pit in winter. In summer it looks OK, but now it looks weird. I have built a second small claypit and I will leave some more space close in reserve, but mainly; clay will be imported.

My guess is, that there's not much to do about the claypits. I fully agree, that some unlimited or "rechargeable" pit would be bad. It's a natural resource; taking it should cost. Maybe it could last a little bit longer, but as you say; for domestic use, you don't need that awfully much. I think, it should be possible to buy clay (let someone else take the damage on the environment  :-\, very modern thoughts  :( ) but it's a bit too cheap. I find, that it still should be some profit to make the bricks yourself using imported clay, but not quite so much as now.

Second picture

The settlement has reached 100 inhabitants. You can see most of it on this picture. I've built a mine and started to plan a small metal center in the southwest corner of the picture. I don't need it yet. And I don't have workers enough for it either. It's for the next future.

@Paeng, you can see, that there are no huge stockpiles needed. I confess, there are many of them and I have a strategy, that I use with some consequence: If something placed on stockpiles is produced, I build one and I locate producers, that use materials from stockpiles close. From time to time, I look over them. If one is getting full/empty, I estimate why. If necessary, I take actions, seldom just making it bigger, rather building another one somewhere else or if it's empty; moving the location.

Third picture

This one is just for statistic geeks. It's the same picture as 2, I just cut in some graphs and menus. You can see the confusing production menu: Material is food. As expected in this forest community, I have to import some to survive. The merchants were on my side lately. They brought a lot of food. So again, we have a good mixture in our growing stores.

Tom Sawyer

Quote from: Nilla on October 29, 2016, 03:33:15 AM
... let someone else take the damage on the environment  :-\, very modern thoughts  :(

And this from an environmental engineer... tz tz  ;)

I made a few changes: +20% maximum production (30 clay/tile from a pit = 2400, 25 clay/tile from a small pit = 900). About 75 clay per worker and year instead of 100, means 4 worker in pits for 1 brickmaker. Same changes for mines and quarries. The trade value of clay is increased to 6-8 (same as stone). These are my first ideas to slow down the progress of emptying the clay pits and to make your decision to import this material more difficult.

What exactly looks weird?

Nilla

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on October 30, 2016, 04:28:08 AM

And this from an environmental engineer... tz tz  ;)

Of cause, first step to solution is to identify the problem!  ;D

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on October 30, 2016, 04:28:08 AM
Of cause, first step to solution is to identify the problems!  ;D
I made a few changes: +20% maximum production (30 clay/tile from a pit = 2400, 25 clay/tile from a small pit = 900). About 75 clay per worker and year instead of 100, means 4 worker in pits for 1 brickmaker. Same changes for mines and quarries. The trade value of clay is increased to 6-8 (same as stone). These are my first ideas to slow down the progress of emptying the clay pits and to make your decision to import this material more difficult.

What exactly looks weird?

The changes sound good to me. The cost of clay is now "right". If you don't want the claypit, it still makes sense to build a brickmaker. (It would be a shame if someone choose not to build this beautiful building, just because they don't want to "spoil" the land for clay pits.)

I don't like the colors of the slopes, the corners and the water(?) on the bottom in winter. Just my taste. Maybe it will look better to me, if I build a road around it. I will test that. Why couldn't the closed one look like the one used in winter? I like that one much better.

One small historical thing, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't have to be a copy of Horns tegelbruk. I thought of it yesterday as I played and I just googled to confirm, that I was right. I remember big piles of firewood at Horn. And actually; the big round oven is fired with normal wood, not with coal of any kind. I just read that they need 40 cubic meter for one batch. http://www.hornstegelbruk.com/historik/byggnaderna-pa-tegelbruket

When I'm about to complain, I can go on, at once, sorry!  :-[  :-\ Don't forget, I'm your biggest fan!  :) I think you made a small mistake, setting the prizes of alcohol; making beer from barley, is extremely profitable. You have a production cost of just above 3 for one beer and you can sell it for 6-8 and the productivity is high. I guess the prize for beer is calculated with wheat (prize 5 if you order it). That's a reasonable profit. Schnapps on the other hand is more or less a loss to sell. If you buy potatoes, you have the same cost (3,1) and the trade value is only 3-4. The calculation might look a bit different, if you grow the potatoes yourself, so I suppose it's not easy set good values.

Now a few pictures from my adventures yesterday.

First picture

It seems to be a bad day! Again sorry! More complains: A small thing, I have noticed before and forgot to tell about. The menu of the charcoaler is a bit weird. If you plan to build one in the forest, it first looks normal, but when the ground is clear, or if you put it there in the first place, there's no building menu. The menu of the charcoaler appears before it's built. If you pause it and want to build it later (I will now at this picture) you can't unpause, you have to demolish and build a new. (It's no big thing, if it's hard to fix)

Anyhow the picture shows my industrial center, not quite finished yet. You can see, everything is built outside the forest circles. That's the reason, these forest menus are open all the time. I admit, the stockpiles are big, but there are many users, so they need to.

Second picture


This is not good. The food graph shows the problem, when you have to rely on trade for food. Sometimes the food trader let you down. Or did I poker too much?  :P ;D In any case the solution; a second trading port. (This is an exception; no complain! ;D) The merchants now bring enough food each time, the mixture of the different kind of merchants work well, the balance between buying and selling is also good, the export merchant brings just so little daler, that the game gets a new interesting aspect. As I said, I might have pokered a bit too much, choosing not to sell my goods to the barter trader for a lower price, instead wait for the export merchant, who might pay more. It could pay off, but it could also lead to trouble! Love it!

Third picture

The second trading port solved the problems. I've cut in some graphs and menus to show, how things are working at the moment. I've realized that flour isn't eatable. I suppose, it's made that way, to make the bread production more efficient. I know, it's not your invention @Tom Sawyer, but I was never a fan of such ways of making production easier in a (to me) artificial way. If the people cook their fish and potatoes at home, why not bake their bread from flour? A relief! back to complains!  :o :-[

Tom Sawyer

Your food graph looks interesting.^^ I was hoping it would be tempting to gamble in the trading post. This can go wrong. ;D

Quote from: Nilla
Why couldn't the closed one look like the one used in winter? I like that one much better.

This is the vanilla shade of blue in a deep terrain or something like that. Same in the quarry. I have disabled this overlay and if you destroy the pit it will still show the normal clay texture. And yes, I would build roads around the pits. Looks good and makes sense.

Quote from: Nilla
One small historical thing, ... is fired with normal wood, not with coal of any kind.

Interesting that he reaches the high temperature to make bricks with simple firewood. I have read that it was usually done with coal. But you up there in the north do everything with wood.^^ I think, we have this historical Tegelbruk and should use its historical fuel. And it looks good with only one option. Just bricks and tiles from clay and firewood.

Quote from: Nilla
... setting the prizes of alcohol; making beer from barley, is extremely profitable.

Maybe simply Barley also to 3-4. And I think, if we have barley to make beer, we don't need wheat for this chain. Nordic beer from wheat is not common, or?

Quote from: Nilla
The menu of the charcoaler is a bit weird ...

This is because of the initial 16 firewood. I can solve it by removing this building material.

And I thought the same about flour. It should be edible. Stupid, if your people starve with a barn full of flour.

A couple of small but nice improvements for 4.1. :)

Nilla

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on October 30, 2016, 04:34:18 PM
Your food graph looks interesting.^^ I was hoping it would be tempting to gamble in the trading post. This can go wrong.

Yes, very tempting. I love it. As I said @Tom Sawyer ; you have really found a balance between coins and other goods, to make it interesting. It's perfect. More coins (what you sometimes wish, when you have 3 times as much goods to sell to the high prize, than the poor merchant brings) would have made it too easy; You could have bought, more or less all you need with coins. Less coins (or at least much less) would have taken away the importance. The gambling odds would have been too bad, to give it a try.

You have managed to make the trade to something interesting. In a vanilla game, I often find a merchant arriving a disturbance. You know what to buy and what to sell, always more or less the same thing, not much consideration needed. If possible; I autotrade, so I don't have to bother. Here each merchant brings interesting decisions. Normally I use to switch between 2X and 5X speed, depending on the ongoing "projects". Now, if I play 5X, I use to pause the game, when a merchant arrive to make my decision. A good sign. :)

Just a little thought about this perfect amount of coins: In this game it's perfect. But I buy very much food. If you farm, you will need to buy less. I don't know, but maybe the merchants bring a little bit too much coins to make it really interesting in such a game. It's hard to say without testing.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on October 30, 2016, 04:34:18 PM
Interesting that he reaches the high temperature to make bricks with simple firewood. I have read that it was usually done with coal. But you up there in the north do everything with wood.^^ I think, we have this historical Tegelbruk and should use its historical fuel. And it looks good with only one option. Just bricks and tiles from clay and firewood.

I have no idea, how common this was. Horn is the only brick maker I know. As I said, we used to live in the neighborhood and sometimes they had "Day of the Open Doors" with guided tours, where we participated once or twice. But I don't remember any details. I can also remember, that I had an artistic friend in high school, who later worked with ceramics half professional. Her father built a wood heated ceramics oven in their garden. If I remember it right, it was supposed to bring better looking pottery. I don't know how.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on October 30, 2016, 04:34:18 PM
Maybe simply Barley also to 3-4. And I think, if we have barley to make beer, we don't need wheat for this chain. Nordic beer from wheat is not common, or?

3-4 would be too low, same as I find schnapps too low. If you barter trade, it would be a loss. That's not good. I wouldn't brew any beer in such a case. I think, it would make sense, if the annual profit of a brewery, would be in the same range as a tailor.  An alternative could be to keep the higher prize and lower the production or two brewers in each brewery for that high amount of beer. I haven't brewed beer for very long, so I haven't made any calculations of the annual profit (not for any other plant either). I suppose, I will play a little more tonight and will make a similar chart, as in that other thread.


Quote from: Tom Sawyer on October 30, 2016, 04:34:18 PM
This is because of the initial 16 firewood. I can solve it by removing this building material.

It's not a big thing.

A few new pictures

First picture

Not to believe! Three times there was a disease. Three times, here up in the north; tropical Yellow Fever!!!  ???

If you are in the mood of new creations @Tom Sawyer ; we do need a better fitting hospital. I googled a bit to find some typical buildings, but they are mostly huge. This was the best I could find. The old military hospital in Karlsborg, also not so far away from where I live. It would also be nice, to use a lot of bricks for something like this (second picture)

Third picture

Same area in winter. Again some graphs and menus. The "gambling" is obvious, if you look at the food graph, also the effect of trading port 2 and 3. Otherwise, it's not much to say; everything works well. The map is slowly getting full, only a little space left in the south east corner. Forests, forests, forest.

Fourth picture

Just another nice view of my trade center in the middle of my settlement, just to show the well filled stores.



Nilla

I just got the idea to use another word to search for smaller hospitals;"sjukstuga". I found a couple of other old pictures, that might be an inspiration. They are all old in black and white. I suppose those buildings are not "alive" anymore.

Tom Sawyer

Quote from: Nilla
I don't know, but maybe the merchants bring a little bit too much coins to make it really interesting in such a game. It's hard to say without testing.

We can simply reduce it slightly by 10% or so.

Quote from: Nilla
3-4 would be too low, same as I find schnapps too low. If you barter trade, it would be a loss.

I meant barley 3-4, not beer. Schnapps from imported potatoes makes no sense and that's ok. It is more a cheap stuff for self-drinking. The commercial product is rather the further processed blueberry liqueur. For this you neeed the new tavern. :)

Thanks for the pictures. The brick building looks good. Maybe a bit too modern. The wooden house with this arched roof from your second post would also fit well.

Nilla

I just googled a bit more. The hospital was built 1881. Modern? It depends. You must concider, that every small house, all barns and industrial buildings would hardly had been red painted before that. The color is older, but earlier only rich people could afford it.

I forgot to tell the origin of the old pictures: 1. Hofors, Hälsingland (middle Sweden) 2. Söderåkra, Småland (south Sweden) 3. Somewhere in Västerbotten, I couldn't find out where (north Sweden).

Now to the trade. This is complicated! I mean, to calculate the profit of a specific production site. Let's take barley/beer as an example.

1 barley and 1/24 firewood gives 1 beer. That's not so complicated. If we forgot the firewood; worth about 0,1, it's even easier.

In your suggestion: barley would be worth 3, if you sell it to the lower price (barter trade/"wrong" export merchant), 4 if you buy it or if you sell it to the "right" export merchant and 5 if you order it. Similar the trade value of beer is 6 or 8 depending on the merchant.

This means the profit of each beer could be all between 1 and 5. That's a big difference. And I can't say, that any of these prizes are pure theory. It also shows how interesting the trade has become.

If we want to make it as simple as we can, to get values that are possible to compare, the best thing is to use the prices from the tradingport. They are correct, if you can sell the product to the "right" export merchant and if you produce the rawmaterial yourself and could as alternative export it to the higher prize or if you buy it without "order fee".

I will use the same categories as i used in that other thread:
A. Less than he need himself;< 400
B. A small profit; 400-800
C. A decent profit; 800-1600
D. A good profit; 1600-2500
E. A very good profit 2500-4000
F. An overpovered profit  >4000

A - smelter
B - herbalist,, miner, woodcutter, fisher
C - forester, gatherer, herdsman (smaller pasture), blacksmith (all except steel tools), tailor* (woolcoats, Nordic coats), charcoaler
D - herdsman (larger pasture), blacksmith (steeltools)
E - herdsman (reindeer, 1 in the hut), brewer (barley beer)

* I used 2 tailors in each hut and I don't think that's good, if you don't have big stores of wool. With one tailor or more wool, I guess that the profit of Nordic wool coats would rise to D. Other sites have enough close raw material and a decent location. I didn't recalculate the italicized from that other game, if anything is changed, it might look different.


I did try the blueberry liqueur but even if the profit is high for 1 liqueur, I don't think it will be a big export good. I didn't have enough blueberries to run it for a long time. And produced with imported (ordered ?) blueberries and  potatoes to make schnapps, I don't think there's much profit left.

My comments to the values: The brewery makes too much profit. I think the profit of each beer might be alright, but the productivity too high. My average was 850, I even saw more than 1000. With half as much, the profit would be in the same range as the tailor.

Now some pictures

First picture

This is so annoying! : :) ;D :o I also have 200 Nordic coats and 2000 beer, that I could sell to a higher prize, and the poor merchant bring 60 daler! Trade makes a lot of fun with this mod!

You see I sell a lot of things, if I can to the high prize. My instincts; not to sell high value products to the lover price, were right. My calculations show, that it's really bad business. If I have to sell something to the lover prize (and I have to buy a lot of food so I do) I use logs, venison, mushrooms or alcohol.


Second time


The game feels a bit safe, so I took these nomads. I also wanted to show my second metal center.

Third picture

As usual; some statistics.

This is my 4. and last trading port. I built it more from a geographical point of view, than because I really need it. The map is now full but I will run the game a little bit longer, to see what happens when the population grows.