This game really invites to plan ahead, with all building available from the start and the ability to pause the building process. In a new town I started yesterday a overdid it a tiny bit, maybe. The first two screenshots are all from before unpausing the game, with the town center in #1 and the southern industrial area in #2. The third shot is from year 2 or 3 when the town is building up.
Before unpausing, I had to remove all the roads and stockpiles (why can't I pause those!) on the area's beyond the river and stream, to prevent my poor citizens from trying to build them. I also removed all the stone roads in the town center, but left all the dirt roads in place and assigned one builder to slowly built them.
The start was a bit rough on this one. I only had 2 kids next to the 8 adults. I was trapped between the river in the south and the stream west and north, and could only move east for gathering materials until I built a bridge. In the east I built my (temporary) forest circle, so I had to send my citizens further away to cut down trees.
And what I underestimated, was how hard it is to gather materials when you fill the whole area with buildings. So a year of careful unpausing building after building and re-pausing them just in time, so they would be cleared but not loaded with wood and stone yet. The town is doing okay now though, with the trade port set up and a second market working.
So, do you plan your town like this too, or do you go with the flow?
Holy Pre-Planning, Batman! I don't think I've ever done that much (except on the town I'm doing for
@solarscreen's every-house-in-the-market-circle challenge). My obsessiveness shows itself by not liking all the little pause symbols all around. I'll plan a bit and then erase whatever I'm not going to build soon. Then I'll try to remember where it all goes.
I even held back. Well, a bit. I didn't plan the farming east (mostly because I needed a forest circle there) and neither the pastures in the north, and did nothing (not even in my head) with the west. :D
Edit: I don't mind the pause icons much. Which is good since more than half my town still consist of paused buildings.
I can't wait to see this a few years down the road. It is going to be gorgeous!
Thanks. Although I think it will take quite some years before gorgeous visits this in town. For now I'm taking down every tree I can find to get enough materials. It's turning into a barren place right now.
I might pre-plan small areas, especially if the space is cramped and I want to make sure everything fits. But at most, that might involve half a dozen buildings -- nothing on this scale.
Thinking about even trying to do it makes my head hurt. :o
Sorry to make your head hurt,
@salamander.
It's now the start of year 14 and the town start to show a bit like a town, although still quite some yellow pause icons. The roads look okay even without the stone roads in between. I stuck to the plan mostly, although I changed to stone houses sooner than planned. An extra, temporary, fishing dock was placed between the planned trade posts because I needed some extra food. I also started planning some development in the west, including three houses just south of the cemetery. 61 citizens now, 21 families in 21 homes. The north (not really shown in the screenshots) is getting stripped from trees, stones and iron.
I'm with
@Bobbi, that's going to look really nice when it's finished. I'm still in the build it and tear it down later stage of planning. I really like the looks of these types of towns -- boulevards, parks, maybe a freeway or two -- but haven't tried it myself yet. Mostly because I'm pretty sure I couldn't pull it off. I think trying what you've done would put me in the Analysis Paralysis ward.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it comes out.
Freeways are nice,
@salamander, but watching the citizens walking around the cloverleaf gets a bit weird.
That is some impressive planning! I tend to plan out in advance too, but not that much. :D
I really like the avenues you are making. I look forward to seeing how your town develops!
Thanks. It might take a while before I have some updates, because I am a real slow player. The planning alone took a few hours :D
Edit:Quote from: salamander on May 31, 2014, 03:59:06 PM
I might pre-plan small areas, especially if the space is cramped and I want to make sure everything fits.
I had an issue with cramped space as well. I started planning with the town square around the original cart with two wells and two open spaces for trees. Then the chapel west, town hall east, two schools north and a market south. Then I built most of the roads for the north-south and east-west avenues. When I was searching for a nice looking place for the hospital, I wanted it in the corner between chapel, schools and stream, but one little corner of it didn't fit. I really liked how it would look there (or at least, I hoped), so I moved everything I already placed one square to the east. I was glad that bug with unremovable roads was fixed in 1.0.2 :D
I had to redo part of the north-south avenue. I made the orchards 5x15 but that doesn't look balanced with the trees. Changed it to 5x13 now. Before the change this was what Potato Avenue looked like:
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/8_03_06_14_8_37_04.bmp) (http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/8_03_06_14_8_37_04.bmp)
It was the only seed available at the time. It looks much better with Chestnut though:
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/8_03_06_14_8_48_31.bmp) (http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/8_03_06_14_8_48_31.bmp)
Again I changed some small things. A little square, swapped my (unbuild) second tailor and blacksmith, an extra house near the chapel, etc. Maybe I should think more carefully about this next time. ;D
I might have change too much though. This merchant lost her boat somehow:
(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/8_03_06_14_8_34_20.bmp) (http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/8_03_06_14_8_34_20.bmp)
I love your boulevards and avenues,
@Kaldir. Just to show you what you have inspired, here is a picture of my latest town centre. I was feeling very streesed out by trying to cram as many people as possible in a market circle, so I started a town on the same map and built it my own way. You can compare this with the pictures I posted in the challenge section. It's not very far along yet, but it is much more relaxing. The houses along the extended square are planned to be stone, for the better class of citizens to live in.
That's looking good. I also got inspiration for building wider and greener from others, here and on SRS forum, so it's good to spread that a bit more.
I often find the houses a bit too crowded next to each othe, so I often space them one apart as you did here. It looks promissing,
@rkelly17.
@Kaldir I also set up as much as I can but I break it up to be a lot less than yours initially. My main or first settlement is fairly well planned out as far as primary buildings, Market, School, Blacksmith, Tailor, Church, Log Cutter, Storage Barns, Stockpiles and paths etc. I almost always setup as a Gather/Hunter/Fishing society until around turn 45-50. I have only begun to branch out into farms, orchards and pastures in the last few seeds I have done. Also I minimize the usage of Traders to maybe 2 at max. So I have played maybe 22-24 seeds as strictly Gather/Fish/Hunter and the last 2 as the other fancier stuff. Am always curious how high a stable population I can achieve, around 170-190 as a Gather/Fish/Hunting base seems to be comfortable on small to medium maps. I only play on random seeds anyway, they are more fun. I did play the one challenge map though about build sequence. Nice map. 6934 I think?
As far as outlying or expansion areas, I only set up a Forester hub as my expansion point and make a path leading to the areas set up to allow for alignment of the buildings. Then I delete the path(s). Since getting into farming, orchards and pastures have begun to set aside areas for them and do fill in the area on pause. I experiment too much to actually hope to use them though until I get to them. Paths are about the most important structure to me in the beginning of a game though.
You I have to admit setup some really awesome layouts. Eventually I will too but that is a future date yet to be determined, :) I tend to be a bit more less scenery oriented in a way although I do not enjoy cluttered or crowded areas much. I tend to appreciate a nice suburban sprawl.
I do seem to have a problem though with taking pictures of my maps. I took 1 every 5 years for one of the challenges, And when I got to like year 55 went to view them out of curiosity and cannot find them :'( If they exist they are somewhere I have never been. I use the Prt Scr key. Oh well. Will get that part going eventually.
1 last item of curiosity, At year 100 I have maybe 300 to 400 population, Adults, Students, Kids. I do tend to build my houses when needed though. food is never a problem, nor is health and happiness. I build Herbalist, I like them in my settlements. In fact each settlement has a hunter, forester, gatherer also. I just kinda incorporate them when I annex the hub. Hospitals and graveyards are cool with me, But I tend to stifle my population. Oh well. It just seemed most of you have oodles more Pops than I do at the same year.
Oh well.. Thanks for sharing your layouts. In fact thank you to everyone for sharing. I get to learn more that way.
Ertira.
Print Screen doesn't seem to work with Banished, at least on my keyboard, and there is no Scroll Lock on it either. The image from Print Screen goes instead to the clipboard. I had to remap the two Banished screen capture keys to two of the function keys.
@ertira, some of us build mega metropolises based on trade and some of us build smaller, slower growing agricultural communities. Whatever turns your crank is fine with us.
Quote from: ertira on June 03, 2014, 05:48:12 PM
I almost always setup as a Gather/Hunter/Fishing society until around turn 45-50. I have only begun to branch out into farms, orchards and pastures in the last few seeds I have done. Also I minimize the usage of Traders to maybe 2 at max. So I have played maybe 22-24 seeds as strictly Gather/Fish/Hunter and the last 2 as the other fancier stuff.
[..]
Oh well. It just seemed most of you have oodles more Pops than I do at the same year.
That's what I like about Banished. There is many different ways to build. Some go for big trading empires, while others like you and me only build a few. Some people expand fast and constantly, and others build more slowly. I build my town around visuals a lot, while others get way more people in the same area and time. Each to their own. As long as we have fun with it.
Quote from: ertira on June 03, 2014, 05:48:12 PMYou I have to admit setup some really awesome layouts.
Thanks :D
Small update: I had a custom ordered shipment of stone in today, so I could build a lot of buildings at once. I built 6 wells, 3 bridges, 8 storage barns and a few stone houses within a few seasons (logs are a bit low now), and started builing 2 markets for expansion north and east and a second tailor and blacksmith. I've also laid a few stone roads, but not much yet as it costs too much stone yet.
The industrial area is almost done now, apart from the stone roads.
I will update this little town here (http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=144.msg1119#msg1119). Posted a year 35 update there now.
Wow, that is some serious planning lol! Before I found the forums and watched a few videos, I figured out on my own the benefits of starting and pausing a few buildings, especially to get the resources ready, but man I have never had a screen with that many little pauses and windows;)
I've found that if I try to plan too much, I get paralyzed by attempts to maximize placement and then I never really get started. Too much control is a bad thing for me I think, I have to temper it with a bit more spontaneity and organic meandering.
I've just started to do more systematic expansion. After I have decided where I am going to build out, I will first locate the market using the circles of any nearby markets. Then I'll figure out where the roads will go.
Next come the farms. I've standardized on two sizes, 15x8 and 11x11, with one farmer each. Then locate the housing and the storage. I put everything on hold, then go back and delete the roads (otherwise they get built first, which is counterproductive).
Come construction time, I build a storage pile and 3-4 houses first, then the market, then 3-4 farms, then a barn or two. Then 3-4 more houses, then more farms and storage, etc, until that year's project is complete. I try to time things so at least some of the farms are finished just in time for planting.
In the first screenie, just released the first four houses.
The second screenie has a completed two-year expansion on the right, and on the left is a planned expansion to a trading post/firewood/ale complex.
Too bad it's snowing, hard to see ;)
Added summertime shots of the same areas.
@gatinho65: You're not the only one with the paralysis (http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=113.0) trouble. Seems I'm one of the few that are immune ;D . I just love it that I can do my planning on the map instead of keeping it all in my head. Now if only some signs and textboxes were added. 8)
@irrelevant: Nice screenies. Market is always first for me too, wanting to know where it's influence will end. In the bigger towns (300+) when I have plenty of laborers, I often let a few builders build a connection road first, before anything else. That way all the laborers and builders get around faster when the real building starts. Farms are also a great way to gather some logs and stone first, since they cost nothing to build.
Btw: as someone else on this forum pointed out to me once: you can disable the weather effects, even if it's just for the screenshots.
@Kaldir Thanks, what I'm doing isn't pretty stuff like some of you guys are doing (which I really admire, but have no such creativity for). But it is functional, and I think efficient (my main goal is to have short walks to work for everyone. Oh, and to stockpile tons of food).
But mainly I think I am building like this (vast swathes of farmland) because that is the kind of terrain I grew up in. Feels homey :)
I decided to take a break from my pinwheels and do a little decorative planning. It isn't up the the same standard as some of the work I have seen, but it's a little better than my normal utilitarian geometrical layouts. Here is Wolcomb at year five and at year nine. I'm not sure where the overall colony planning is going from this point.
Edit: The map seed is 288799414, large valleys. On medium difficulty, you get wheat, cabbage, and pears. Combined with venison, and the gatherer's berries for the first few years, you have every food group that you need.
@slink, it looks like it will be pretty. Love your crop fields. I just cram mine in wherever they will fit sometimes.
Very nice,
@slink. Which of the barns in the Winter photo is the original?
Neither barn is the original. The one farthest from the viewer is the one I built to replace the original, which was about halfway between the forester and the stockpile.
Looking good,
@slink. The stockpile as a central 'plaza' for the industry stands out nicely. The cemetery looks good too there. And the farms will look great with crops. Nice amount of flat land you got there. :D
Wow - I'm really impressed by how some of you lay out the towns! What a great idea, to erase the roads after laying it all down! I'm definitely gonna try that, because I can't plan w/o roads and I hate that they go through and build them first! And I've saved a couple images to inspire me!