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Rud - Testing the new Nordic Landscape

Started by Nilla, July 16, 2016, 09:57:31 AM

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Nilla

First I wanted to write my first impressions of the new version at the mod discussion thread, but than I thought, that this headline has been a bit empty lately; @irrelevant not playing at all and I very little. ;)

Before I could start the test I had to download the latest version of Banished. I don't use Steam and as I said, I haven't played much lately so there has been no need for the latest update before. After some trouble (the download stopped a couple of times) I was finally ready to start.

I see there is a new start condition "impossible". I like challenges and the word "impossible" is much too tempting to ignore; of cause I had to try that! ;)  ::) :-\  At "impossible" you start with 3 families, they all have no tools, the clothes are in rags, there's no food.... simply nothing to start with.

Luckily there are some special "speed collecting" buttons  for food and firewood. I will have to use them. There are also a very small and cheap storage. So first action; cut some trees and build the smallest storage. Send a hunter to the nearest flock of reindeer.  So far, it worked wonderful; the store was finished fast, the hunter killed 3 animals (each 100 meat). That would work for the beginning. To get more food continuously, I sent one person to "instant fishing". She caught trout. Next step; collect more building materials and build a blacksmith. The tool-less people are dreadful, even worse than uneducated. This was a mistake: The climate is unforgiving. All of my citizens froze to death!!  :( :'(

OK, now I know that the spring is too cold to survive in ragged clothes without a house (in a vanilla game I sometimes wait to build the first house until autumn, no one has frozen to death in such a game yet).

Second attempt; cut logs, build small barn, hunt some deer, cut more logs and some stones and build a small house. Unfortunately everyone froze to death as the house was half finished.  :'( :(

Not give up. I cut a little bit too much logs and stones, so it took some time to start to build the house. And I may say that the tool-less people build slow.

Third attempt: same thing but now just cut so much logs and stones as necessary and don't forget to collect some firewood. And YES!!!The house was built but I'm sorry to say, not fast enough. All froze to death before the inhabitants got enough firewood to heat the house.  :'( :(

Maybe heat is more important than food. Maybe they will freeze to death faster than they starve. This must be tested.

Fourth attempt; cut enough stones and logs, build a house, than build the small store and send the hunter to hunt. YES, YES, YES, no one froze to death. But this time; unfortunately most of the people starved to death.  :( :'(  The selfish family in the house hoarded 300 venison and let the others starve to death. Not nice! The game isn't dead. This one family will probably survive. It would be a slightly extended "Anders and Ella" start. But I want all to live.

Fifth attempt; same as four. Only fake demolish the house as soon as everyone was warm enough. Now there was enough food for all and everyone survived. They still live 7 years later.

So @Tom Sawyer, the "impossible" start is not quite impossible, just very difficult. Very, very nice. Thank you!!!!

This is long enough, so I will not say more now, just show some pictures.




tomnobles

QuoteLuckily there are some special "speed collecting" buttons  for food and firewood.
What kind of seeds? Just thinking of trying it.

Nilla

Seeds? I'm not sure, that I understand what you mean. But if it is the things you can harvest fast; look at the second picture. There you can see the menu. From left:
Nr 4 Firewood (works like logs/stones/iron)
Nr 5 Food (onions, mushrooms, roots, berries works the same as firewood)
Nr 6 Herbs (Haven't used it, because as far as I know, you need a herbalist to heal people)
Nr 7 Small Woodchopper (have to be built, but doesn't cost much and is quite efficient, no need for the vanilla chopper, yet in this game)
Nr 8 Hunter (place it in the middle of the herd, assign a hunter and the hunter will catch some deer, but be aware; it seems like the animals learns, that the hunter is dangerous and disappears as soon as he/she comes close. Happend some times to me, maybe I was unlucky or it's really so @Tom Sawyer is a sophisticated kind of person. I wouldn't be surprised if he invented some obstacles)
Nr 9 Fish (works like a mini fishing dock but cost (almost ?) nothing. The fisher catches trout but not very much, at least not the tool- less fisher I started with. Anyhow it must be hard to catch fish without any equipment, so maybe it's better now when everyone have tools. I will try it again some time, but I have also noticed that salmon (caught in the "vanilla" fishing dock) is worth 2 in trade, trout only 1 so I suppose this small fisher is only interesting right at the beginning)

tomnobles

Ah, OK. I was thinking farming seeds.
Thanks for your quick reply.

Tom Sawyer

#4
Congratulations! MISSION IMPOSSIBLE completed. :)

Nice, like you've outsmarted the grabby family. I had not this idea with the faked demolition. I've simply flooded the shed with meat and then quickly build up the second and thirt house. Thanks for your amusing report.

Lol ok maybe i'm a bit of it.^^ But I don't hacked a AI in the deer. They just move on if the time is over to graze at this location. The small chopper needs 50% more work time. So it makes sense to build the yard. And yes, fishing without a tool is nearly useless.

I look forward to the progress of your settlement.


irrelevant

@Nilla this sounds like fun, looking forward to giving it a try. I can't resist "impossible." ;) You did great, of course. Pop Queen  :D

Nilla

#6
Quote from: tomnobles on July 16, 2016, 12:03:30 PM
Ah, OK. I was thinking farming seeds.

They have absolutely nothing from the start if you play "impossible", so no seeds. And farming is no "speedy" thing. Even if you had some seeds, you have to survive the time to the harvest with some other food. I started with meat from the reindeer and as the first summer arrived, I sent as many people I could spare to collect wild fruit/vegetables. I like that there is almost no wild  vegan food in winter. That's realistic. After some years I built a gatherer. I thought it might be a bit troublesome, that I have to micromanage and take away the gatherers in winter to do something else but it works very good. In winter the gatherer collects firewood.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on July 16, 2016, 02:11:14 PM
Congratulations! MISSION IMPOSSIBLE completed. :)

Nice, like you've outsmarted the grabby family. I had not this idea with the faked demolition. I've simply flooded the shed with meat and then quickly build up the second and third house.

Thanks! Yes, the picture is quite to the point of what I felt as I have to restart the game so many times. And congratulations to you, too! First to this excellent mod and second that you seems to survive the "mission impossible" too.

And to be honest, I flood the place with meat, too. As soon as the building materials was collected, I sent 2 hunters to the nearby flock of animals, so maybe the "fake demolishion" wouldn't have been necessary. Anyhow the option to fake demolish made it possible for me to build a school as third building, just in time to get everyone educated. I didn't have to bother about more new houses fast.

Quote from: irrelevant on July 16, 2016, 07:17:41 PM
@Nilla this sounds like fun, looking forward to giving it a try. I can't resist "impossible." ;) You did great, of course. Pop Queen  :D

Thank you, nice to see something from you again! Yes this mod is really good. I think you would appreciate it, too. But this blog might be a spoiler. You don't have to make the mistakes I did. I'm sorry if I take away some of the fun.

Can I spoil more fun for other players and tell about more mistakes? No not really. I played some more years, it works well. I started to trade. I even have some money. You can't see it at menu, it stays in the port, no need for it anywhere else, as I can see. I can't see a better way to introduce money, than the way you do here. Some merchants only bring coins, they don't sell anything, they are pure buyers. Others bring a lot of stuff, but they only take coins as payment. So if you want to buy some sheep, seeds or buildingmaterials, you can't do without cash. There are also some oldfashioned barter traders, who primary sell food, so you don't need coins for everything.

Do I like it? Does it increase the fun of playing? I can't say, yet. It works well, I see no problem, the trade gets a little bit more complicated, but it's good manageable. You get a quite a realistic feeling, a combination of money and barter trading. We'll see how it works as the settlemet grows.

I have started to look a little bit into the changed trading values. In this early stage of the game salmon is the hit. I think it's not really good that salmon is worth 2. It's too easy to get a lot of coins with salmon as primary export product. The fishing docks are very productive. It's also not historically correct. It was easy to catch, but it was not a valuable fish in the past, at least not in the north.

Anyhow I've sold enough salmon (and some venison and logs) to get enough coins to buy some bricks and rooftitles. I have started to build these wonderful new Nordic houses and barns. Great design, I really love them. I also like to watch how they get built, the different stages, very nice! I miss one thing: A Nordic school. Our schools don´t look like the vanilla at all.

I have one question to you @Tom Sawyer : No merchant offering iron, coal, or textiles have arrived yet. Is this intentional, a mistake or just coincidence (such a merchant hasn't arrived yet)? I'm running out of iron close and I don´t have enough population to run a mine properly, so I would like to buy some iron. It also troubles me a bit that iron and coal is counted as the same resource. It's inconvenient. You need both to make tools and you need iron to build as well. I would like to see fast on the small menu how much of each I have. There is one spare place on the menu. Could it be used ? If not, I would prefere coins to be replaced. You will seldom have any stored outside the ports anyhow. Maybe transfer them from one port to another but no sense to store in your barns.

There hasn't been many farm supply merchants yet, so I haven't bought any seeds yet but I will as soon as I can.

Tom Sawyer

Ey, your settlement is working as if it were an easy mode. You are swimming in bricks and food.^^

Ok, salmon will be reduced to 1 and the different between fishing spot and dock will be the amount instead of the trade value. Fishing is a bit difficult to understand. In my tests I could not notice an effect of the reduced radius or of a defined work time. Thats why I needed the new specie.

A school we can make. Not easy to find a photo that you can easily recognize as a school. And it should be a small village school in old style. Maybe one of this...?

At the moment there is no merchant who sells iron and other raw materials. Ok, you need it at the moment and most of all you'd just buy it. But I'm not sure if we should have it. It helps to break a single strategy by producing one thing and buy all for it.

Nice that the money gives a realistic feeling for the trade. We need the specialized trading docks for it. And maybe you will need money for storage and transport later.

Maybe it's too easy to simply exchange food by the food merchants?

This statusbar is difficult. There is only a certain amount of flags and counters. I found no way to make it better. There is no number to fill this empty cell. And I needed a standalone flag for the money. The best option was the combining of iron and coal to get it. We really need more options to use flags. To define our own or a handful of blank flags to use for new stuff.

Imho iron is not really a building material for old houses like in banished. Nails ok, that would be more a part of the tools. And a door lock made by a blacksmith maybe but what else? I've already removed the iron from the stone house. A little iron to build a blacksmith is correct. So it should be only an additional material for special buildings.

The merchant of farm supplies is 1 of 10. Just like the building supplies. Probably you had some bad luck with and actually... trading docks.

What is your map? Valley, medium, harsh? And what should I change to get you in trouble except of the start? :)

RedKetchup

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on July 18, 2016, 03:07:42 AM

Ok, salmon will be reduced to 1 and the different between fishing spot and dock will be the amount instead of the trade value. Fishing is a bit difficult to understand. In my tests I could not notice an effect of the reduced radius or of a defined work time. Thats why I needed the new specie.

yeah fishing does work like that , reduce the radius and get less fish ^^
it is always %water versus %total of tiles in the circle.

if you reduce and get more water %, then you get more fish
if you reduce and get less water %, then yes you get less fish ^^
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Nilla

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on July 18, 2016, 03:07:42 AM
Ey, your settlement is working as if it were an easy mode. You are swimming in bricks and food.^^

Yes, after the first few years it wasn't very difficult, much thanks to the salmon. Even if there are not many merchants selling building materials, I have cash enough to buy all they bring, so I kind of swim in bricks. I have also no real feeling how much I need, so better too much than too little.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on July 18, 2016, 03:07:42 AM

A school we can make. Not easy to find a photo that you can easily recognize as a school. And it should be a small village school in old style. Maybe one of this...?

School number 2 I wouldn't recognize as a school. That one must be very special for that place. The other two are very typical for larger village schools (I went 1 class in one looking just like the first) The "problem" is, there were much more than 20 children in such a school. But there were also smaller schools, not looking much different from a normal house. One typical thing; they have larger and more windows than a normal house. I attach a picture. One of the old schools in my village looks pretty much the same. (No school for the last 100 years or so, but it´s still called "gamla småskolan")

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on July 18, 2016, 03:07:42 AM
At the moment there is no merchant who sells iron and other raw materials. OK, you need it at the moment and most of all you'd just buy it. But I'm not sure if we should have it. It helps to break a single strategy by producing one thing and buy all for it.

I don't mind. In fact, I find it a good idea. I was a bit short on iron for a while, but now I've built a mine so it's no problem anymore. I've also noticed that you can't sell everything. There are some things no merchant want to buy. These things might even make the trade more interesting.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on July 18, 2016, 03:07:42 AM
Nice that the money gives a realistic feeling for the trade. We need the specialized trading docks for it. And maybe you will need money for storage and transport later.

Maybe it's too easy to simply exchange food by the food merchants?

I'm not sure you need any specialized trading ports. It works fine with different merchants arriving to the same port. I don't see how it could improve the trade, at least not in this early stage of the game. Maybe I think different, when the settlement grows. I will keep it in mind.

I think it's good to keep some trade "food against food", that you have the possibility to improve the food diversity without paying with coins. If you want to make it harder, I think it's better to change the trading values.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on July 18, 2016, 03:07:42 AM
This statusbar is difficult. There is only a certain amount of flags and counters. I found no way to make it better. There is no number to fill this empty cell. And I needed a standalone flag for the money. The best option was the combining of iron and coal to get it. We really need more options to use flags. To define our own or a handful of blank flags to use for new stuff.

I thought it might be something like that. It's inconvenient, but no real problem as soon as you have a city hall. But somehow the limit of coins and iron are connected. I once transferred coins from one port to another and the mine stopped to work, because the limit of iron (really coins) was reached. I also had warning that I was running out of iron as the coins disappeared into the port again.


Quote from: Tom Sawyer on July 18, 2016, 03:07:42 AM
What is your map? Valley, medium, harsh? And what should I change to get you in trouble except of the start? :)
In this game it's medium map, valley, medium climate.

The very first years were hard, as you know, so there's no need of making it even harder (I could choose harsh climate myself). What could be done to make the next steps harder? First as you suggest; salmon worth 1 and lower production of trout. Then I think it would be interesting to make it harder to earn money. I can "buy" every daler the merchant for Nordic products" brings (from that other merchant not). I primary sell salmon and venison. If he doesn't want these things, it would be much harder.

There's also one other thing I really want to be changed: the farming. The way the harvest is done (farmer only harvest, not carrying the crops away) makes it way too easy, much easier than in a vanilla game in a normal climate. You don't have to bother about barns and short distances. I don't like the rich immortal orchards either. I know, it's annoying when half of your trees are small and don't bring any fruit, but this fact also makes the game interesting. You have to make new decisions all the time:(Should I build any orchards at all or buy the fruit/nuts, if I decide to have orchards; should I cut all trees down before any one of them dies, use the logs and wait 3 years until next harvest or endure low harvest) decisions all the time. This makes Banished interesting, also after playing it a lot.

Please, change it to the way it was in your last version. It was possible to farm, if you choose the right crops and worked active with the farming. You never got 100% (as you do now most the time) but still most years a decent harvest.

I can understand that some people who likes to concentrate on other things than survival, like it the way it is. But aren't there mods that makes farming easier, that could be combined with your Nordic theme, if you want it that way? As I understand it, you want your mod to be a challenge and I don't think this easy farming fit into that.

I haven't said much about the ongoing game, but it still works very well, population grows, everyone gets a beautiful red house, all are happy and healthy. I have some "annoying" fields and orchards. I have also started to look at production numbers and possible export goods (except salmon and venison) and I must say; @Tom Sawyer you are the master of balancing . I like very much that it's no obvious best trading good. I think it changes during the game what's best. Your principle; raw material - some profit to sell, simple processing - a bit more profit, complex processing - more profit, is very good. You have to decide: should I sell iron (12), make iron tools (22, profit 2 each tool), make steel (26, profit 4 each steel) or make steel tools (32 profit 10 each tool) There´s no obvious answer to that. At least not one, that's valid for the whole game. Well done @Tom Sawyer !

Rud18
Not nice, farmers just harvest.

Rud 26
Nice. The mining company makes its "standard" homes for its emplyees.

Tom Sawyer

#10
Aha... easy mode. ;)

But good to test it on fair first, to check the farming and so on. Your next game please on harsh/impossible. The new harsh is colder than the old version. It's about the temperatur profile of Lapland. I want your opinion.

Your skola looks like a cottage. I make a smaller version of this gamla skola of the fors station.^^

The mine is fixed and will use the right limit. It's now just one limit for both materials. A nice side effect.

The event is now labeled with "The reserve of money is low." Maybe you will store money out of your trading posts when you are swimming in cash and not in bricks. So it could make sense.

With the auto-pickup I will follow your advice. But keep in mind that you are on fair. On harsh maybe you will hate your farmers that they not quickly harvest the stuff. But I agree with you. The player should have to think about short ways and placing barns next to the fields or hire more workers. So there are some options to manage it.

Do you mean, the fruit trees do not die soon enough? I made some changes to the orchards. I reduced the planting density to 3x3 and increased the time of growth to 3 years instead of 2 because the cold climate. They should die after 15 years. If you cut them down you will get firewood and no building material. I think it's realistic but if you want it in another way, we do it.

Then I will make an update.

@RedKetchup thanks. Yes that is what I found out too. You need just an exposed spot with maximum area ratio and no overlapping of another fishing radius.

irrelevant

#11
Quote from: Nilla on July 17, 2016, 05:56:37 AM


Quote from: irrelevant on July 16, 2016, 07:17:41 PM
@Nilla this sounds like fun, looking forward to giving it a try. I can't resist "impossible." ;) You did great, of course. Pop Queen  :D

Thank you, nice to see something from you again! Yes this mod is really good. I think you would appreciate it, too. But this blog might be a spoiler. You don't have to make the mistakes I did. I'm sorry if I take away some of the fun.

@Nilla Well, I only read your OP the one time, and in the course of my struggle to get the game running again, I forgot everything you wrote.

My first town, all my guys froze. I built the barn first so I could start storing food. Stupid, folks can live two months without food, but only one month in the cold with no coats.

My second town, all my guys starved, cause although I got the house built and the barn, I didn't collect enough food. Fishing is an attractive waste of effort, and hunting those damn wily reindeer is very hard. My deer whispering skills count for naught here!

Third time, after losing 3 adults and 2 children to starvation in the first year, we've made it to year five. Got the blacksmith built in early four, only to discover that iron tools require coal! That slowed me down a bit while I built a charcoal burner. Fortunately I had figured out that the guys you have gathering food in the warm times, you set to collecting firewood in the snow, so I had a good supply of fuel. There are three houses and three tiny barns, and I just got a gatherers hut and a forester built. Wondering about the gatherer though, we'll see if it is worth it, only collecting food half the year. I'm thinking a hunter's cabin won't be much good either, as slippery as those reindeer are. Maybe with a full staff they can work. I'm thinking a big fishing dock might be good also. And a school would really help a lot.

Can't get screenshots to work, so no pics.

@Tom Sawyer A fun mod! Thanks very much! Playing on Harsh weather, it's brutal. Looking forward to seeing what further pain awaits me. ;D


Nilla

He, he! I see you made the same mistakes as I did, @irrelevant but you're better; only needing 3 attempts. I needed 5, but than no one had to starve.  ;)

And you are really daring! Playing at harsh climate. I was more careful, but I will play my next game on harsh. I'm sure you made the right decision, fair climate will be too easy for you.

To the school @Tom Sawyer ; I think your decision to make a smaller version of your first picture is right. My picture is too similar to the normal red cottages, but the older schools looked just like that, you can see them everywhere, used as normal houses (or summer houses) today. Some time, I think around 1850, they increased the years the children went to school from 4 to 6 years. It was also in a time of large population growth, so the old schools became too small. These new bigger schools were than used until the 1960s, where many modern schools, still used, were built. The teacher lived upstairs. My old school also had a room for handicraft there. One funny little thing, that you might use to separate the look of the school from the other buildings. Outside there was a privy (1960s, no warm water toilet inside  :-\  don't say we're not a tough generation). It was a small, long, narrow building with 3 doors (one for boys, one for girls and one slightly bigger for the teachers)

And I do apologize about the orchards. I was too quick to judge them as immortal, now some trees die. The changed times make sense, also that you make firewood, if you chop them down (although every decent cabinet maker want to cut my throat, as I say making firewood from cherrywood makes sense  ;) ). And thanks, I would like to have the normal harvesting behaviour back. Look at the picture: 1 farmer working a very short time, makes almost 1000 food (even worth 2 if any merchant want to buy it).  In a normal game I would have to send 4 farmers to pick them all, and they will have to work longer. OK, sometimes the summer is cold and the cherries doesn't grow full and I suppose it will happen most the time in harsh climate. But this behaviour also gave me new trouble. This year there will be no cherries in this fruit farm. The cherries stayed all winter outside on the fields (maybe a good way to preserve the food  :-\  But what about the reindeer? I wonder how much cherries they eat. Probably all.  ;) ) If one box is left in spring, no cherry will grow that year. I know it's not your fault. I suppose, it's the same, as if there is one pot left on the field, it will not be planted.

I have started to test the moneytrading system without trading any salmon or venison for coins. In fact I only sell a little venison to get some wheat (I grew some a few years but it doesn´t work very well, not even in medim climate). I sold no salmon at all lately. My treasury still gets bigger, the stores of food and bricks still increase, but not at all as fast as it did before. As I said in my last entry, I'm not sure at all what's best to sell. I'm doing a bit of testing. I can probably say more after playing again tonight.

Tom Sawyer

@irrelevant Nice that your game is running now. And welcome to the hell of snow. ;D

@Nilla This funny little thing I have on my list as a decorative or with a tiny happiness radius to be placed next to the cottages.

Cherrywood burns very well, i'm sure.^^ In this case, I do not care. Log or firewood. But when I imagine to cut down a fruit plant, it will not be a house. Of course some fine furnitures. If we run out of ideas we make cherrywood, nutwood etc. and build a big IKEA factory to flood the whole banished world with furnitures.

So what about log as your main export? That was my intention but maybe it's to weak. In theory a good forester can produce 100 log = 800 trade value or now we can say 8 daler. With 4 guys 32 in the radius. Not much per area but profitable per worker.


irrelevant

#14
Wow, hunters are great! I don't mean the herder's cabin, I mean the small opportunity hunters you can just plop down next to a herd. If you place them carefully, and there is a barn nearby, you can almost always bag two reindeer before the herd spooks away. I think the key there is to place the marker off to the side, so it is not adjacent to any of the reindeer. If you put it too close, the herd will freak out and relocate right away.

Also, you don't need to get deer sprites inside the circle. Your hunter will move to the icon, and if any reindeer are grazing nearby (within a couple of squares of the circle) he will bag one.