Testing Necora´s Canadian mods

[Tom Sawyer]

The pasture is not involved in wool production. The output is only defined in the sheep resource "float _additionalCreateInMonths = 3.0;" means 1 wool per 3 month and animal. These 4 wool per year and animal drop in a pasture in stacks of the create value of the wool resource = 6 when the animals in this pasture reach this amount. If you decrease the create value to 3 it drops in stacks of 3 but more often because the stack is full earlier. People have to walk more often to empty the pasture but the amount of wool per year will be the same. The balance comes by "int _requiredArea = 16;" per animal and that's why I said 1 wool per 4 game tiles in a year as reference. Or 4 wool from your pen if you simulate a single goat there. You could do it by a very high worktime of about one year. Then your goat will be sheared once a year or so. It's difficult with these small pens. I don't like them in general because they create a second livestock system using the boring production mechanic. The original system simulates livestock breeding much better.

And cashmere is right, yes. I thought about it when talking about goat hair with low amount but high trade value. I would not expect cashmere in Canada but it can offer more flexibility for your balance. Anyway the problem is the pen, not the goat or the wool and you would easily just create an overpowered cashmere pen.

[Nilla]

First, some comments to the comments of my comments!  

Animal pens: I don't mind, having a second way of breeding lifestock. Like @Tom Sawyer, I prefere the traditional vanilla way, especially for sheep and beef cows, but these small (or larger) pens are fine as well. I think they are good suitable for egg- and milkproduction. It's also good, if there would be an option to breed animals to sell. (Theoretically there is in your mod @Necora but as I said, the farmer would be working for nothing, so it's no real option).

Maybe you could change the pens to produce milk and eggs. It's not defined, which kind of animal a building holds. There could be several kind of animals in the same pen. Let the big ground floor of the barn, hold cows and chicken, to produce milk and eggs. Let a small pen, hold a goat and a few chicken and also produce milk and eggs, but less. We will get rid of the overpowered wool and the annoying, cruel feathers. (To my knowledge chicken feathers are too hard to be used for pillows and down clothings, anyway. They are from see birds like duck and geese). If you like to have an input, it could be some grain as fodder, in that case, of cause, you have to increase the output to keep it balanced. (If you're not stealing @RedKetchup´s hay  )

Markets: These small markets: Kid´s market puzzle, the beautiful CC market stalls and other specialized markets are really nice to look at, but they have a big disadvantage in Banished. Bannis are not like people; strolling along a market, buying a little something here and a little more there. They go to the closest market, grab all they can carry and as they need more food; they go there again. That means, that people in houses close to such market stalls, more or less only get one category of food and their health gets down.

Forest circles: The output of one forester is about the same as in a vanilla game, also with the small circles. But somehow, it takes a long time for the pine- and maple foresters to get to that production. Finally, they do, but it takes something like 10 years. I've seen it in all games so far and can't explain it. As far as I can see, the trees grow faster and there are no/not much vanilla trees, stone and iron left. It doesn't seem to change much between this version with the small circles and your last version with the large. As long as we know, I think we can live with it.

Have you increased the output of the maple gatherer? They gather a lot of fruit. It seems to be a bit more food than a gatherer in a vanilla forest. I still think, it's in an acceptable range. If you would plant the active area with orchard trees, you would get a lot more. (But you would need more workers, to pick the fruit) It's also good to have an early reliable fruit producer. You can start to "harvest" long before the trees are grown. The small circle works fine. There's enough space for two gatherers to work in.

The smaller area of a hunter works as well. Maybe a hunter kills one deer less, than he would in a big circle each year,  but it's still enough. I don't even know, if it's possible, but I wouldn't think, that a second hunter in a cabin, would give more.

The only workers, I've seen so far, that gets a significantly lower production in the small circles, are herbalists. The first year, they pick a lot of herbs, but the next years hardly none. The herbs grow too slow. (You can see the same in a vanilla game: 2 herbalists in the same location do pick more the first year, but after that, not more than 1.) I don't think, you should change anything here. A much bigger circle, than the forest circle would be weird, unless there are several foresters close. They also have the purpose of healing people, so a location close to where people live, is as important, as getting enough herbs.  If you really need a lot of herbs, you could always have herbalist buildings in several forests and let one herbalist change between the locations.

Now to my game.

I started a new game. Why? I don't want to play real time aging after all. It's too slow. I like the normal aging better.

So, ironwoman it is. No changes in aging, just +100% more food and clothing. (Tom also says, that there are some changes in probability of getting ill, if the health is bad, that I haven't noticed)

I just see, that I didn't make many screenshots of my settlement. Anyway it's not much new to show. Here is one, where I compare the production of the vanilla and the maple gatherer. I have also seen, that the output changes a lot. This year it's quite high.

I have a question to this picture: Why is the radius from the gatherer smaller than from the forester? I didn't realize, until I looked at this picture now. But I have noticed, that there are always a lot of bowls close to the outher border of the forest. I thought that the gatherers were too lazy, walking that far, but now I see, it's not inside their circle.

[Necora]

@Nilla so I was stewing on farming last night while I couldn't sleep and with your comments here I think we've come up with a really nice solution to make it a) well functioning and b) realistic. So here it is...

1 - We start with a feed supplier. This takes your choice of one of the 4 grains (Barley, Oats, Corn, Wheat) and makes a generic feed. Let's call it 'Fodder' to be compatible with @RedKetchup 's cool new stuff (Red, I hope you don't feel like I'm stealing your idea here, please shout at me otherwise).

2 - This feed is used to feed the animals in the pens.

3 - Small pens and hutches - I purposely left these basic huts empty inside, I like using ghost decorations to decorate my game, and although I don't have many decos at the moment, it is the plan that using things I come up with later or other decorations, the player can design the fencing/decorations to fit the situation to the players liking. What I can do, is remove the multi item dynamic from the buildings, and instead put in a drop down menu to choose what it produces. In the hutches, you can have a drop down of 'Eggs' for chickens, 'fur' for rabbits etc. (rabbits were mentioned some time back as a request somewhere). In the pens, you can have a drop down of 'goats milk' from goats, or 'wool' from sheep. Again, it would act like there are 1 or two animals per pen, so if you want more, you build more pens (they can be build side by side or arranged in a compound and look good). The pens need feed to produce the item (easier to balance 1 item at a time rather than multiple ones simultaneously) and will need 'domesticated animal' to build.

4 - Cow Milker - I will keep this as is, but introduce feed as a requirement. Pastures do not need feed, the point of them is to let the animals graze. But in these buildings, you really do need feed to be realistic, and to prevent the overpowering something from nothing.

5 - Stable - I will change the input to feed and make the animals have a profit so they are useful for trade. I will also have to balance the value/amount of feed for the domesticated animals some. I want them to be expensive, but they still need to be worth while.

6 - A new idea to add some difficulty/realism/use of DA resource - Put a limit on how much the small pens and hutches can produce, like what the iron mine has. So for example, 1 domesticated animal will last 2-3 years (well, the resource output equivalent of 2-3 years depending on the building). When that runs out, you need to re-build it. Unfortunately, we cannot use the upgrade because you can't upgrade to the same building, the mod kit gets stuck in an endless loop. Also, there is no 'build 0' option so even if you upgrade the building is visually completely dismantled first, so we may as well just destroy it and re-build. See it as cleaning out the pens and introducing new animals. After all, animals don't live forever, and the pens are too small to have a breeding stock like the pastures (which won't work if you only have 2 or 3 animals unless you are very lucky).

1 to 5 is the main idea, 6 is an option I was thinking of to make the domesticated animals have more use rather than just to build a pen once and that is it.

What do you think?

Re. Foresters - I found the same thing, I had nothing produced for the years while the forest was growing, then it seemed the forest was fully grown and still nothing, then suddenly a very good output, and the expense of clearing most of the forest. Then it settled a bit.

I think the foresters have a kind of circular production output between years, a least until the resource limit is reached and the forest becomes in a stable cycle of growth and cutting. When you start off fresh, like you have to with this, you see this dynamic much more clearer because the majority of trees in the radius will come to maturity at the same time. When you use vanilla, if you place it right, there is already a standing crop of trees to be used. Unfortunately, with the dynamic of the foresters in game, they only cut a certain tree combination, and ignore the rest. To make them work as well as vanilla, I need to change the starting tree seed to have only maritimes (or a good proportion of maritimes) trees.

Re. Radius - yup that is because I don't like overlapping radius. Gatherer, hunter, trapper, and herbalist have a radius 2 tiles less than forester. This is so that if you place all 4 in a tight square around the tower, all 4 should fit into the radius with nothing going over the edge. The reason I did this is because it allows you to place forestry areas right next to each other, and not worry about the production buildings having overlapping radius.

[RedKetchup]

no problem @Necora ! if you want my files i can send you ( to stay compatible )

btw, in case you tried this... foresters seems not working with things flagged as "health" or "Edible" but everything else works fine.

[grammycat]

I'm not Nilla, but have been testing your mods also.  The realism idea is good but seems off at 2-3 years.  Farm raised chickens can live between 5-15 years and cows live to their 20's.  If you're going for bannies age of 5 yrs in 1, then it's still a little low;  maybe up it to 4-5?  I like your radius, it works perfectly.

[Necora]

@grammycat you're not Nilla? Darn, you'd have thought your name would give it away

That is a good idea, I had not thought about comparing years for realism. 2 years was just something I came up, but I like the idea of making them roughly realistic.

[grammycat]

   I wish I was Nilla-my little bannies would live in a much prettier town.

[Tom Sawyer]

I don't think so @grammycat. Probably your bannies would struggle without tools as poor survivors, freeze in harsh climate and finally die to starvation in a Nilla-test-game.

The idea of feeding animals in pens and stables sounds very good @Necora. It's reasonable in comparison to free range breeding where animals get their food from the pasture as you said. It connects the production of your livestock to required area (cropfield). Maybe you can find a good amount of food input by area or so. But what for this step to create fodder from food and not just feed the animals in pens with grains as options or only with oat? It could be a special reason to use oat in game.

[Necora]

@Tom Sawyer I originally thought of using corn, as that is grown in abundance around here mainly as a feed crop. So perhaps that is an option to skip out the fodder step. The other grains, well, you can only really choose 1 or you have a load of drop down options, the idea of a generic feed was to avoid this and be more flexible in the production. But then, if I use just corn, it will mean I can reduce the trade value of the feed (corn is worth 1, you'd have to make fodder worth more to make it worth while producing it, then you'd have to make sure the food production represents the increase in trade value) and more easily balance the food output.

@RedKetchup so the foresters don't like edibles? That is a shame, because changing the forester to a farm and growing corn, or wheat, or other grains in such a radius rather than a crop field would look awesome - it would allow us to break away from the square fields and have odd shaped farms. Maybe the foresters could plant 'invisible' trees that spawned the fodder or hay? So all you can see is large areas of hay and not the invisible tree. Then you can have the foresters just set to plant, and a new gatherer set to pick up the hay. It would mean 2 bannies for the chain, but you could increase output to represent this.

[brads3]

if the forest produces oats so it is in-edible and then you send it to a mill and make flour, will it change it to edible flour? in NECORA'S case the bani in-edible grain would still be usable to the stables. using the mini building mod sized circles,will a "forester" produce enough feed? it would be useful to have a different size fields.

[RedKetchup]

@RedKetchup so the foresters don't like edibles? That is a shame, because changing the forester to a farm and growing corn, or wheat, or other grains in such a radius rather than a crop field would look awesome - it would allow us to break away from the square fields and have odd shaped farms. Maybe the foresters could plant 'invisible' trees that spawned the fodder or hay? So all you can see is large areas of hay and not the invisible tree. Then you can have the foresters just set to plant, and a new gatherer set to pick up the hay. It would mean 2 bannies for the chain, but you could increase output to represent this.

they seem to plant without problem, it is when they need to harvest, there seem to have something hardcodded somewhere that rule the game : if edible = only farmer, herb = only herbalists. of course, if you tag it for remove, then the game bypass that rule and get harvested.
it seems there are some hidden rules that bride the process.

[Necora]

@RedKetchup yeah I think I remember reading someone say that somewhere. These forums are so full of information I have no idea where!


So @Nilla I feel bad as we have kind of taken over your thread, so I'm moving the development discussion over to my work in progress thread

[Nilla]

  I wish I was Nilla-my little bannies would live in a much prettier town.

Thanks for that! Sometimes, I find my towns really nice looking, too but it's not because of my talent. It's the talent of the modders, who make such beautiful things. My towns are based on efficiency, not beauty. We have a proverb in Sweden "Sometimes even a blind hen finds a grain" or..... sometimes even Nilla builds a beautiful town.   

I don't think so @grammycat. Probably your bannies would struggle without tools as poor survivors, freeze in harsh climate and finally die to starvation in a Nilla-test-game.

That's not my fault either! Like the beauty, it's only because a certain modder makes such impossible options!  

It's good to move the discussion to your "Work in progress" where it belongs better. I don't mind having it here, but it's always annoying to have the same discussion on several places.

To my game.

It's really a nice game. As I played ironwoman in the North, I had some mixed feelings about it. It was possible to run but I had to micromanage a lot and also keep the population growth down. It was a challenge, but a tedious challenge. In a game with a vanilla gameplay with a few other mods, it's different. It's still a challenge. You can't relax one moment. If you're not expanding food production continuously, the stores are getting smaller. But you can develop a settlement in a normal speed. You don't have to micromanage more than usual (switching between blacksmiths, tailors and woodchoppers, as long as you don't need them run continuously and such things). This, additional to testing to me new (and beautiful) buildings makes a lot of fun.

First picture

I've noticed, that you've changed the menus for the production buildings, to see the stored raw material. That's good. But sometimes it's too small, to see all, like the maple syrup at the cider press. The production buildings on the docks (rope, dories, lumber) still have the smaller menu.

Second to fourth pictures

Some impressions from my settlement. You can see I'm using a mixture of your small houses, Necora and Kid´s colonial houses for a family of 5. I try to adapt the look of the houses to eachother; white or blue colonial houses with the small color houses, dark brown together and houses built of new wood to the new wood on the docks. I think it works that way. I micromanage the houses a little bit, to get more children: From time to time, I look into the big houses. If a family, where no more children could be born lives there, I let them swap with a young family, who lives in a small house. From time to time, when my builders have little other work, I let them upgrade the small houses. This gives a reasonable growth.

The nice bigger blue shore building on the third picture catches lobster. I'm a bit disappointed. It's complicated and expensive to build, but the fisher catches less, than the small shore fisher. You can put two fisher in it, but they don't catch more than one. (And I don't think the other options of catch give more). I can agree, that lobster is no mass product, but if you keep the low production, I would suggest, that you increased the trade price (4?). I think it would be realistic, if they would be a real good export product.

[Nilla]

I played a little again yesterday.

I relaxed a bit; the food graph started to turn down (first picture), so I have put some effort, in increasing the farming. It didn't take long, until everything was back on track! Farming is indeed, a very powerful food producer. I make fields of 100-120 tiles and use one farmer, that's 700-800 food each. As long as there's land enough; farming is most efficient. But other food producers make more fun, so I will make a mixture. When I feel, that I'm a bit short on food; I will increase farming. If there's a lot, like now, I will make other things. I also buy a little food.  At the moment, the production is normally a few 1000 less than the consumption. I buy maple syrup for my alcohol production. The maple press doesn't work, so I sell the maple sap instead. Probably I would have done it, even if it had worked. If my notes are correct, the profit was very low.

As I said, I also play with the colonial buildings from @kid1293. I must ask you Kid; why does your windmill destroy food value; the value of the input is higher than the output. Why would anyone let such a building run? Not me! I will let my windmill stay there, as a decorative item, but I will buy flour, if I want to make bread. 

I like the watchtowers from @RedKetchup. I can confess, I'm not very fond of the idea of "war elements" in Banished. But the watchtowers (and the cool butcher- and hospital tents) have to me no military function. It's a good alternative hunting tower. It's good balanced; it looks like, the average is a little less than a vanilla hunter, and that's good, because I think, they have no active area; so in theory, you can put them close to each other without losing production. What's fun, is that the production varies a lot; some years it's only pheasants and hares (each 20 meat), other years a lot of large bears and bison.

I will now write a little bit about your storage's @Necora. Don't get me wrong; I do like your mods! Maybe it doesn't seem that way; I always find something to complain about.  You've made some changes in what material could be stored in your barns in your upgrade. That means we have:

"on land"
1. food: cellar 5000
2. stockpile materials: storage 10 000
3. food+other "barn stuff" : small barn 8000
4. food+other "barn stuff": large barn 11 000

"on shore"
5. food: store 1000
6. other "barn stuff" 2000
7. food+other "barn stuff" 9000

1. I've talked about the cellars before. I like them very much. The idea of these small (but deep) cellars is great! I wouldn't mind, if they would take longer to build and if they would need some more stone but, it's still OK, the way they are.
2. This building is great! Nothing to complain about at all! It contains more than a stockpile of the same size but is not so huge, that it doest get full, if you produce a lot of material. Perfect! I have no stockpiles in this game!
3. This barn was for "other barn stuff" only, before the upgrade. The things you can store in such a barn is often heavy, so the size wasn't that bad  The way it is now, also storing food, I find it contains much too much. Look at the first picture; it shows this tiny barn close to a large. The difference in how much these two buildings can store, isn't big. I would change it back to "other barn stuff" only.
4. Compared to other storage, this huge building doesn't contain much.
5. This is a very nice storage. The problem is, that it contains very little. Mine are full most of the time, so I don't build them anymore. They are useful only at the beginning of a game. It's a pity, because I like the look very much. I would increase the storage capacity, to make them more useful in a longer game.
6. This barn was, as far as I remember also for food before the upgrade. You don't produce anything that needs such a specialized storage on the docks. But maybe it could be useful close to a trading port, if you buy (and maybe sell) such materials. I don't think we need another food storage on the docks, but I would increase the storage capacity a little bit.
7. Among all your beautiful buildings, this is one of the nicest. I do like it! It's expensive to build (you need rope and lumber) and is rather big. But it doesn't contain much more than the tiny land barn (If I remember it right it's the same as a vanilla barn). It could be more.

[kid1293]

So sorry Nilla!
I don't remember this error. Must have been when comparing CC files
and writing the numbers for the mill. Now it should be better. With a small profit.

I don't know if it will be recognized in game if you just load the new version.
You maybe have to demolish the mill and rebuild.

(Hoppas det funkar nu, annars får du skälla på mig.)