World of Banished

Sightseeing => Village Blogs => Topic started by: smurphys7 on December 23, 2017, 11:28:02 AM

Title: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on December 23, 2017, 11:28:02 AM
The goal is to design a town that can last forever with no human interaction.  No correcting mistakes.  No solving crisis.  No manually changing jobs.  Truly a set and forget town.

My first version was pretty darn close. (https://i.imgur.com/tXpI7Gr.png)  After several adjustments the town lasted 300 game years without human input.  The danger is fluke years (https://i.imgur.com/c4rm6GP.png).  I did correct some things to survive future fluke years but the danger still existed.  Even with disasters off diseases can still occur.  If a disease hits during a fluke year with super low population I could lose an actual employed worker, rather than a Laborer.  Once one important worker is lost losing more becomes inevitable.  I did not see a way to ensure I could survive a fluke year and a disease simultaneously.  In the ultra-long-term that is inevitable.

I believe my issues with this first attempt were town being too small and too inefficient.  I made this town quickly on the map I randomed.  I guesstimated three Gatherers Huts and made them pretty good.  I think the town was successful in showing proof of concept. 

For this attempt I have found a map seed with four near-perfect Gathering Huts are extremely close together.  I need to be careful not to fill up storage with non-essential goods.  I need to keep Hunting and Tailoring low.  At times my people will be naked.  I will also be running without tools.  Iron is not infinite and trading is another employed worker.  Trading can be inconsistent.  I would also need to ensure I don't fill up the barns with tools in the ultra-long-term. 

I am making a save-game file right before I run out of tools.  This point is my "end of human interaction".  From this save file I can make adjustments and attempt again.  Link to Album of Setup. (https://imgur.com/a/DQEnM)  These pictures are also attached.  Attempt #1 is without trimming down to absolute necessities.  The attempt will have 32 jobs: 16 Gatherers, 2 Hunters, 2 Woodcutters, 4 Foresters, 1 Herbalist, 1 Tailor, 2 Vendors, 2 Teachers, 1 Physician and 1 Cleric.  Some of these are clearly non-necessary but the hopes is that my population is sufficiently high enough that I can support these workers even at the lowest points in population.

Pre-attempt #1 the town produces 12,000 food per year.  That number is with tools, with nearby barns full, and at near max population.  The town can likely reach 130 or 140 citizens.  The food limit is currently at 150,000 and there are many barns nearby.  Hopefully the town can survive higher populations by storing sufficient food at lower populations. 

Google Drive Saved Game File (https://drive.google.com/file/d/19WKB_CLEkFW2DoZT3xJkU5-lMyST7Tn-/view?usp=sharing).  Mega saved game file (https://mega.nz/#!tI9hgR7I!GsZY1CDsWphUXwbrq-U_oChyPVm4SlwrUvOdqnkZ9P4).  Feel free to adjust and try yourself. 

I am using Cheat Engine (http://www.cheatengine.org/) to crank the speed beyond 10x.  I am using no mods.

Now, time to crank the speed and see how things go.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Nilla on December 23, 2017, 12:07:27 PM
Interesting experiment! A selfrunning settlement this small. I'm not so sure that it can work the way you want it, but I'm eager to see.

Did you look at @irrelevant´s very old settlement? He has a somehow different approach.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on December 23, 2017, 01:08:33 PM
Attempt #1 was not successful.  I stopped at year 100.  Failure was inevitable in the long-term.  My save point is at year 44.  Two pictures of Town Hall windows show results.

The hunting lodges I placed were too effective.  I have maxed out on coats and now leather will build up.  In the long-term my barns will fill with leather.  My options are to remove a hunter, move hunting lodges, or increase population.  I believe I want about 60-80% of the hunting I get now.  I will keep two hunters and move the hunting lodges to less effective positions. 

My food production looks very solid.  I believe I can support a larger population.  Remember, as food goes down the barns empty and my food production rises.  The Barns next to my Gathering Huts are perpetually full and drastically reduce production.  I will also add five additional houses. 

Reloading the save, moving Hunting Lodges.  Adding five homes.  Trying again.  On to attempt #2!  Picture of town shows changes to layout.  Also adding six additional barns that are not pictured.  CHANGE:  Still made too much leather.  Moved Hunting lodges further.  Added more Barns.

I am familiar with irrelevant's 2600+ year old town.  In my view, that town seems like it is big enough to survive 10-24 hours with no human intervention at 10x game speed.  Balancing a town that big is very difficult.  There are so many factors.  The concept of my town is that it is small enough to make all the factors more manageable.  Also, by going to 200x speed I go through iterations much more quickly. 

The nadir of my adult count was about 50 through two cycles.  That leaves a reasonable buffer to my 32 employed citizens.  Hopefully these five additional houses make the gap larger.  There will be "fluke" years where the adult count falls substantially lower than 50.  Those years are what matters.

Now we find out if I can balance all the factors for the ultra-long-term.  My previous town survived 300 years with no intervention.  However, failure was inevitable in the ultra-long-term.  My goal for this one is 5,000 years simulated successfully.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Gatherer on December 23, 2017, 02:33:32 PM
As Nilla said, an interesting experiment. It's nice how we all play the same game differently. I'll keep my fingers crossed for your town to succeed on its own.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: brads3 on December 23, 2017, 06:55:46 PM
define "fluke year"? do you mean disease disasters? or is it that your population ages and dies on its own and slowly recovers? attempting this in a vanila game with no mods does bring its own issues. i recommend the renewable resource mod. that will save fix the issue of running out of iron for tools. it brings a forester that harvests stone or iron the same as a forester does trees.
      to be sure you have enough laborers to replace older workers who get sick and die,you will need about 20% of adult workers still being laborers. also remember though the game shows you adults and children there is 4 brackets of population or 5 but 1 is a split. children including students,breeding age adults,non-breeding age adults,adults in the end stage or old. you need the same # of children as the # that is in the old age bracket.equlibrium is not easy to find.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on December 24, 2017, 03:40:37 AM
Attempt #2 was unsuccessful.  I had the same issue of too much leather.  My original estimation of how much leather I wanted generated per year was wrong.  I dropped down to 1 Hunter in the best location which is inside the one Gathering Hut area.  That single hunter gets an average of 4 kills per year.  Clothing will fluctuate between 40-80% which is just fine.

I added a 2nd Herbalist at the second market.  I noticed in the long-term that one Herbalist cannot keep up with a population of about ~150 with the diet I provide. 

In the long-term my woodcutters cannot fully stock all homes with firewood.  The markets allow distribution of firewood to about 70%+ of homes.  Thanks to the markets, the homes are spread out and fairly random.  Everyone stays warm no problem.  I will not add a 3rd woodcutter.

I paved a variety of paths.  Seeing the paths citizens regularly take is easy when the speed is at 200x and everyone has an icon above their heads.  Wherever people regularly go -- there I put stone roads.

For Attempt #3: Numbers compared to original attempt: -1 Hunting Lodge/Hunter.  +1 Herbalist/Herbalist.  +7 Homes.  +15 Barns.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Maldrick on December 24, 2017, 10:51:01 AM
Very interested to see where you go with this.  Not every game, but generally I'm going for towns that will run on their own.  Generally doable but, as you noted, running unattended forever is a different thing.  Something always piles up or is lacking over extended periods.

Have gotten some towns nicely tweaked to run for a hundred years or more but beyond that I'm usually ready to move on to a new one so never tried to tune it to go beyond that.  So, interested to see what you do with this.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on December 24, 2017, 01:25:36 PM
Side note: I get about 45-50 years per hour.  I can crank the speed to any number but 45-50 per hour seems to be what my computer is capable of actually doing.  I turn the graphics down to minimum and turn on one mod (no smoke) for the simulation.  The best part is, of course, I don't actually have to pay attention.  I don't think the no smoke mod has any game-play affects.  I can turn off that mod and make saves that function.  So anyone can still load and play my town from any point with no mods.  I have a save point at the start of the simulation where you could load the game, hit play, and hopefully walk away for thousands of game years.... or hopefully thousands of real years.

Attempt #3 was unsuccessful - I think.  I had concerns.  Less than a dozen starvation deaths occur at every population peak.  I am not sure if this would actually be a problem.  At the population peak I had about 80 Laborers.  Perhaps if children died of starvation something strange would happen.  Again, two woodcutters could not quite keep up with demand but I don't think this would be a problem.

Attempt #4: -1 Hunting Lodge/Hunter.  +1 Herbalist/Herbalist.  +3 Homes (41 total).  +7 Barns.  I don't think the Barn count really matters.

Attempt #4 Results: Cautiously Optimistic!  Check out these sweet sweet numbers and graphs:
Population Graph (https://i.imgur.com/8kzXD14.png). 
(https://i.imgur.com/8kzXD14.png)
The lowest nadir of Adults seems to be 50.  That green line is the most important.  As long as the green line stays at or above 32 I should be good.  The number 32 is important because that is how many employed adults I have in town.  Other factors are important to watch and indicators that the green line may go below 32 in the far distant future.  However, this green line is "the game".  My goal for this town is to keep the green line at or above 32.  To me, it looks like the green line "normally" stops at around 55-60 adults.  A "fluke" year would be a year where it drops drastically lower.  Those "fluke" years are what matters.  Is 50 a "fluke"?  How much lower will a "fluke" be?  We will find out.
Overview (https://i.imgur.com/iEJfaEW.png).  Nothing too interesting here.  I am at year 168 which is a little over 100 years of tool-less simulation.  Since game year 46 I have done nothing but click on Town Hall and other non-obtrusive investigating.

Production Tab (https://i.imgur.com/gaSQ6xJ.png).  Some great numbers here!
(https://i.imgur.com/gaSQ6xJ.png)
Firewood: I make JUST enough firewood.  I don't have pictures of the Firewood graph but it barely hits the 1500 Firewood limit.  It hits that limit maybe one in 10-20 years.  I don't think I could perfectly support 1 additional house.  I think I'd survive just fine with slight Firewood shortages but not having any is nice.
Food: I make JUST enough Food as well.  I likely can support one more house with Food.  I make almost 600 extra food each year which supports a house at peak population.  Again, having extra is probably for the best.  I don't think I want to restart the simulation with 1 more house.
Logs, Herbs, Clothing and Textiles are all mostly consumed or produced as needed. 

Citizens Graph (https://i.imgur.com/qfwvz5U.png).  Happiness, Health and Education are very steady.  I am unsure how I got a few uneducated at some point.  I have two Teachers at all times and it doesn't look like Students crossed 40 at any point.  That is strange.  I have no explanation.

Clothing is an ever so slight concern.  Is the red graph slowly trending upwards?  Will a balance point be found?  Will I max out on clothes and fill my barns with leather in the ultra-long-term?  I am unsure.  Going back to the Production Tab I produce about ~20 Leather per year which is just over 3 kills.  Do I need to lower this number slightly by using a slightly worse hunting location?  I am not sure.

We will find out! 

Time to let it run another few hundred years!
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Nilla on December 25, 2017, 04:21:54 PM
I guess, the slightly increasing clothes graphs comes from the slightly decreasing population graph. It looks like the average population of one cycle gets down. Will this continue? Will it balance? Will it turn back to a slightly higher population? No idea!

Have you considered to play without producing any clothes? No hunter, maybe instead a fisher or two. No clothes has much less influence than no tools.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Maldrick on December 29, 2017, 11:47:45 AM
Loaded up a couple of mods to try them out last night and wound up getting sucked into actually playing. Which was pretty fun because it was pretty much a vanilla game on a really bad seed I normally wouldn't have played. Got it to a point where it basically runs by itself...was at about 100 years unattended when I looked at it earlier.

But it reminded me of the gotchas I've always run into with this...

Tools are largely tenable. Made a lot easier by sticking with Iron Tools and removing coal as a variable.  If you get your auto trading tweaked, have a limit on iron below what's stocked, some staffed mines as a fall back should it dip below, and lots of extra stockpiles you can pretty much stay in tools with no problems for incredibly extended periods.  But I still think, eventually it's going to skew one way or another if truly infinite is what you are going for.  Running out of iron and having some bannies tool-less in one extreme, which could potentially crash the town, and glutting the stockpiles in the other extreme, which could do the same because it could choke out firewood and wood production.  I wonder if using specialized stockpiles and going for the latter would work?  Although I suspect it might not considering maxed storage can send them into that loading/unloading frenzy.  Have only seen that with barns but assuming it would be the same?  That could crash the town, too.

Coats was generally tenable, also.  I set it where 2 tailors made Warm Coats, 1 made Hide Coats, and 1 Wool, with traders pulling the hide and wool, and that generally worked although it works a lot better with a larger town and more "main" tailors so the bleed off of the ones pulling the excess isn't as pronounced (this one is at around 300 pop).  Also tried it without traders and both leather and wool piled up.  Eventually you're going to pile something up somewhere either in storage or in tradeposts, though, so I'm thinking Nilla's suggestion of slightly under-supplying your pop with clothes is probably the way to go for an infinite situation.  Gives you an extra sliding scale to work with doesn't necessarily impact overall performance significantly enough to cause problems.  Didn't try it but also got me wondering about using auto trading to bleed off excess.  I've done it before to an extent with needed goods like iron, but what about dedicating traders just for that?  To balance it, trade for Ale because it's expensive and it gets consumed rapidly if your pop is high enough, maybe?  I want to say I tried something like that once but couldn't really get it to work.  I'm fuzzy, though.

The main gotcha, I was reminded, is food.  We only have one limit for food, but bannies need 4 food groups.  I didn't have time to try to balance population with food production that never hits limit, but with it hitting limit eventually one chokes out the others.  When I last looked this morning, grain was winning and fruit was losing. Lol.  And overall health was dropping as a result. It's more tenable if you can balance your pop wave with food stored/production where food never hits limit, but that takes lots of tweaking and isn't always stable ultimately, in my experience.  I guess you could go for a less than max health situation and it not be a problem, maybe keeping herbalists accessible everywhere to take the edge off of it, but I think that might be inviting problems like diseases...Although that might be workable since most diseases aren't dangerous and you can nip them in the bud with enough hospitals...Still seems like asking for disaster.

I still think this is mostly doable, but to what extent is purely a matter of personal preference because ultimately some management is going to be needed in places.  And ultimately, this sheds light on the limited limits of this game being a glaring design flaw for this particular playstyle.  For most other playstyles it ranges from zero impact to a slight inconvenience, but it's a serious damper on building self sustaining towns.  I've dreamed about having this game with individual limits on everything so it could all be managed for this, but not something we are going to see with Banished, alas.  Even another 10 or 20 limits with the existing system would be a boon for this, but we won't be seeing those, either, and it's kind of a shame.  Still fun to explore, of course. :)

Good stuff. You really got the old juices flowing with this.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on December 31, 2017, 07:24:22 AM
Quote from: Nilla on December 25, 2017, 04:21:54 PM
Have you considered to play without producing any clothes? No hunter, maybe instead a fisher or two. No clothes has much less influence than no tools.

In this first attempt I am trying to be a magnanimous ruler who provides almost everything.  I figure it will be fun to start more difficult and trim down to only the necessities.  The Fishing Docks would be very ineffective without tools and Hunting is barely affected by tools.  I threw in the Tailor to get rid of the Leather.

Attempt #4: Failure.  I hit a "fluke" around year 300.  Check out this precipitous drop.

(https://i.imgur.com/XtAyL4Q.png)

I had 32 employed citizens.  I believe this dropped me to 25 employed citizens.  In a normal game one would simply turn them back on.  The entire idea of this town is I wouldn't do that.  This fluke year will lead to inevitable failure.  Now my town is knocked out of balance and will eventually topple and fall. 

This fluke year looked very similar to other fluke years I have had in other towns with other populations.  Compare to this graph (https://i.imgur.com/c4rm6GP.png).  This town is smaller but has an extremely similar graph.  These fluke years are this entire challenge.  I need to survive crazy years like these.  The other years are easy.

Attempt #5: Making a lean-mean-grinding machine.  Magnanimity is out.  Cruel and harsh is in.  I am redesigning the town to be close to maximally efficient.  Here is a new picture of town. (https://i.imgur.com/0rfqraB.png)  I have cut down to a lucky number of 13 jobs.  The population generally flows between 45 and 90.  I have had fluke years where the adult population has fallen to 22.  That gives me a wide berth to my 13 employed workers.

I have cut out providing any Health.  I do have a Hospital to treat the diseases that frequently pop up.  I am currently at year 200 and things are looking good so far.  Well... good for the longevity of the town.  Health and Happiness are at all time lows.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: irrelevant on January 02, 2018, 08:30:39 AM
Quote from: Maldrick on December 29, 2017, 11:47:45 AM
To balance it, trade for Ale because it's expensive and it gets consumed rapidly if your pop is high enough, maybe?  I want to say I tried something like that once but couldn't really get it to work.  I'm fuzzy, though.
Buying ale isn't really viable in vanilla, as the only storage that will accept it from the TP is a brewery. The problem here seems to be that the brewery storage capacity (300?) is too small to accept a full wheelbarrow full of ale (500) from the TP. So the traders never seem to move it out. I once had a TP that I marked for demolition which had maybe 1000 ale in it, and it took literally years for it all to get moved out.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Maldrick on January 02, 2018, 03:56:29 PM
Aye, I think that's what I ran into when I tried it.

May have to give it another look with a modded tavern sometime.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on January 03, 2018, 02:33:13 PM
Attempt #5 Failure.  At year 685 I had an insane Fluke year.  I dropped down to 12 Adults.  I employed 13 Adults in that town.  I was one short of surviving it.  I actually was at my computer and saw it happen.  Normally the game is playing on its own without me even in the room.

I'm not sure the size of the town matters.  I think a town, regardless of size, has the potential to drop to an incredibly small number in the ultra-long term.

My next attempt will be far crueler.  I will have mandatory starvation.  I can see my average population on these towns.  If the town survived for 100 years on its own the Food Consumed over 100 years will show me the average population over 100 years.  For example, my one town had 654,192 Food consumed over 100 years.  That means the average population of the town was 65.4.  Judging by the population graphs, that number looks accurate.  If I produce less than 6,500 food per year I will inevitably kill some folks at the top of the population curves.  One of my town that failed had this occurring.  The town survived some 100+ years like that and there seemed to be no "fluke" years due to the mandatory culling.  I will intentionally enact the mandatory culling.

My other option is to try to make my lean-mean town slightly more efficient.  Can I drop a job or two?  Physician, Forester, a few Gatherers and maybe a House?  I don't know.  I was very close.  Another option is save-scumming it.  I don't want to do that.

Could there be any alternative styles that might work?  A larger town.  Firewood trading.  etc.  I am not sure.  The smaller the town the higher I can crank the speed.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on January 20, 2018, 02:51:27 PM
Attempt #6 Optimistic.  I am more cruel and more harsh.  I have enforced mandatory starvation to cull citizens.  After 500 years of simulation check out this suffering and misery:

(https://i.imgur.com/CQqTP5o.png)

I have accomplished this by dropping 2 Gatherers and turning off one Gathering Hut.  My 6 Gatherers produce ~5300 food per year.  My population regularly rises above 60.  My food production cannot support the population.  The regular culls seems to prevent "fluke" years where I have a drastic reduction in adults. 
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Nilla on January 21, 2018, 02:11:34 AM
I think you"cracked" it. But I'm not sure that I like the result. Starvation as a mean of success. I don't know.  :-\ Mean!

But somehow, I understand why it works. When Thar's not enough food, often whole families die; old and young, not random. It's those who aren't fast enough, to grab the little food there is who dies. This means houses are free for more adult children from other houses but the "age distribution" is still quite similar each time.

Do you have any intentions to go on with this experiment; see if it's possible to make this without starvation. I wonder how it would work with smaller houses, for 4 person families. if the "peaks" aren't that high, maybe the "flukes" are less likely.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on January 21, 2018, 04:13:18 AM
I, too, don't like the starvation method.  I will be trying other tweaks as well.  I was only 1 person off succeeding on the previous attempt.  I haven't opened up trading yet.

I strongly want to avoid mods.  How would I decide which mods to use?  Some are like cheating.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on February 22, 2018, 06:12:05 PM
I have not given up.  I simply hadn't had much to update for a while.  The tl;dr is I am using trading and have done 500+  years successfully.  Outlook optimistic

I tried a bazillion more slight tweaks to the original Gathering Hut, no tool, no trading method.  None were successful.  They were all very very close.  I may go back to the idea of traderless infinity, but for now I am working on being successful wtih trading.  I did learn many important things from all my attempts. 

The average population per home is 2.5 over the super-long-term.  That may have been roughly expected but it is good to see empirical results.  I can calculate my needed food production.  If I have 25 Homes I will have an average population of 62.5 and need to produce 6250 per year.  If I have 65 homes, my average population is 162.5 and I need to produce 16250 food per year.

The minimum adult count seems to be around 35%-40% of the total house count.  If I have 25 houses the lowest number of adults seems to be ~8 or 9.  If I have 65 houses the lowest number of adults seems to be about 22 or 23.  This number is critical.  This number is my assignable jobs.  If I assign more jobs than this then in a "fluke year" one person may die without a replacement.  Once that happens once my town's downfall is inevitable.  Eventually more and more problems will occur.

Using these numbers I looked into trading options.  I want to maximize Trade Value produced per worker.  I'm assuming Educated for now.  The classic "almost optimal calculator" farm-size is 11x11.  That's 847 Food per worker.  All of that food has a Trade Value of 1.  One Trader and one farmer mean I am getting about 425 TV (Trade Value) per worker.  I can use several farms and put all their goods through one trading post.  If I have 6 Farmers on 11x11 fields and one Trader I am producing 6x847 = 5,082 food/TV per year.  Adding in the Trader, I have 5,082 / 7 = 726 TV per worker.

If a Woodcutter produces 800 Firewood per year that means they turn 400 TV (200 logs) into 3200 TV.  That's one worker producing 2800 TV.  Four woodcutters and one trader mean 2,240 TV per worker, or 1,600 TV per year if spent on Food Merchants.  The "Firewood economy" is something I'd like to avoid.

I decided to go with 3 Herdsman, 3 Tailors and 3 Traders.  Sheep Pastures make about 1200 Mutton and 90 Wool per year.  The tailors turn 2 Wool into 2 Wool Coats.  If I assumed all of the goods produced got to the Trader that means I would produce a total of (3600 Mutton and 270 Wool Coats) = 14,850 TV  / 9 Workers = 1,650 TV per worker.  Some will be eaten.  Some will be worn.   Even accounting for those losses I still produce significant TV. 

My total work force = 21 Adults. 
3 Herdsman
3 Tailors
3 Trader
6 Gatherers
2 Foresters
2 Woodcutters
1 Physician
1 Teacher

I have 65 Homes.  Assuming a minimum adult count that is Total Homes x .35 then my minimum adult count is 22-23.  That leaves me a teeny bit of wiggle room.  Food required is 16,250 per year.  My Gatherers produce over 5400 Food per year.  That means over 10,000 of the ~15,000 TV of Mutton/Wool must be converted into food.  In practice, this is successful.

My population is not always entirely educated.  At times I run out of Tools.  At times not all homes have Firewood.  However, over the long term and with high reserves I have so far survived these lean times.  I tweaked the auto-purchasing numbers many many times.  If I purchase too many tools they fill up all my barns and there is no room for food.  If I purchase too few tools I don't produce enough goods.  I don't produce enough logs for my 2 Woodcutters.  I need to purchase some at the Trading Post.  Purchase too many and won't have enough food.  Purchase too few and not enough Firewood.

Last night I ran the simulation at x100 speed while I slept. Here's a screenshot of town (https://i.imgur.com/Bs3i4NI.png).

Population Graph
(https://i.imgur.com/CssBIhF.png)
The key is the Green Line can never reach the Blue Line.
I have 21 Assigned Jobs.  If I reach 20 Adults I lose one without a replacement.  I max at 20 Students.  As long as the lowest point of the Green Line never gets to the highest point of the Blue Line I'm good.

Here's the Overview at year 710.  I started the simulation at around year 175. 
Overview (https://i.imgur.com/VJvfVeZ.png)
Production Tab (https://i.imgur.com/e8MOcql.png)
Citizens Graph (https://i.imgur.com/15Kzhkp.png)
Tool Graph (https://i.imgur.com/dcACFIL.png)
Firewood Graph (https://i.imgur.com/IBlWZ86.png)
Food Graph (https://i.imgur.com/KYoFzIV.png)

I don't know what happened in years 200-600.  At some point in the last 100 years I survived a tool shortage that caused a firewood shortage and significant reductions in my food stores.  I still had over 100,000 food and the Food reserves seem to have recovered.

Things look good.  Only 4500 more years to go!

EDIT I tried to attach the pics as well but it seemed to fail.  If you need me to attach the pics rather than have links let me know.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Nilla on February 23, 2018, 06:51:32 AM
I think the combination wool coats and mutton is the best export good in this case. Good choice. Ale would be a possible alternative but I don't believe firewood would work.

You have 3 traders. I guess you need 3 trading ports to get enough goods. The population is quite small, so the merchants wouldn't bring much. I also guess, that you've tried less. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts about this.

Anyhow, I wish that it will work the following 4500 years! :)

Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on February 23, 2018, 12:57:44 PM
Balancing the number of traders was mostly dumb luck.  Another consideration is this strange disappearing goods bug (http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=2202.msg43874).  I am not sure precisely how the bug works.  But, I know not mixing Food/Non-Food goods helps.  After hitting the bug once in testing for the Infinity town I decided that Mutton and Wool Coats shall be kept apart.  Then I learned one trader could not hold sufficient Mutton.  Sometimes there are quite a few years between getting a Food or General Goods Merchant.  I have 2 traders on Mutton and 1 on Wool Coats.  It seemed to work nigh perfectly.  Virtually all of the Mutton is traded at 1 Mutton for 3 other food.

I intended to include Ale production in this Town.  However, when I balanced the Herdsman, Traders and Tailors to be 3-3-3 and everything worked really well I figured that was a sign not to touch anything.

I'm mostly curious about how stable the population fluctuates.  Is this luck?  Is the bigger size more stable?  Is the lack of 100% education and longer education times causing this increased stability?  I haven't seen the population go near 40 adults.  If this population/education setup is more stable I may go back and do a no-trading one again. 
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Tom Sawyer on February 23, 2018, 01:48:54 PM
@smurphys7 This disappearing trade goods bug is known. We figured it out in a test game by @Nilla some time ago. Maybe she remembers our funny talk about her remote village where strange things are going on.^^ She had this issue in the North mod when auto purchasing and lost stored items randomly when merchants made a trade. I solved it in the next version but the same cause is in vanilla trading port code. The vanilla resource merchant has no edible flag in "want" or "buy" section and if a food item is selected by the purchase function then it just takes it away for nothing. It removes every food item until the trading loop comes to an end. I can fix that for vanilla based games with a patch but then you don't have an unmodded game for achievements anymore.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on February 23, 2018, 01:56:16 PM
Awesome!  I am very glad you have already solved the issue.  I e-mailed the Developer and he said he would "take a look at it".  Perhaps if you provided him with the solution he would make a small patch.  At least he would have the option of releasing a patch.

I would love a fix/patch.  I probably wouldn't use it for this town since I've played around it.  I would certainly love to use it in some other towns.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Tom Sawyer on February 23, 2018, 03:39:54 PM
PurchasePatch.pkm (http://www.banishedventures.com/download/purchasepatch/)

It can be loaded to a running game to fix the disappearing items bug in existing trading posts. All resource merchants will except food as payment then. That's the way to fix it. It only affects vanilla ports and it should be green in your mod list. If red then it will not have any effect below the conflicting mod. So it's for vanilla based games.

While testing this patch right now I figured out that the bug doesn't occur with only food stored (the resource merchant will not make a trade) but if there is something else like firewood in your video together with food then the function deletes the food item without calculating it as payment. So it's tricky to reproduce this bug. Anyway, the patch solves it. :)
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on February 26, 2018, 02:12:25 PM
2500 Years successfully simulated.  Halfway there.

I believe I had some starvation.  Population Graph (https://i.imgur.com/lK8pNGG.png).  Zoomed in (https://i.imgur.com/B0oiSp1.png).  Food Graph (https://i.imgur.com/aNe6qrb.png).  I believe I had some bad luck with boats that brought food, a tool crisis, the population hitting two back-to-back highs, and possibly education as well.  The population did NOT fall to a point where I lost any adult laborers. 

Food, and everything else, recovered just fine.  It seemed to be a fluke.  I likely could do some rebalancing to prevent this from happening in the future.  I could add more barns, raise the food limit, employ a few farmers, or buy 1 or 2 more tools per boat.  I know buying 3 more tools per boat is too many.

I didn't touch any buttons.  I think it was a fluke.  I'm ok with this minor fluke of starvation.  I don't consider this a failure.

I don't know if anything else interesting has happened.  I only check on the game once every 300-500 year.  I can only see the last 100 years in the graph.  I do know that once I hit 3,000 wool.  This was due to a tool shortage and education issues.  However, everything recovered just fine.  I got back to 0 stored textiles and I store 300 tools at times.

Looks very promising.  I am feeling confident.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Nilla on February 26, 2018, 04:19:41 PM
The population graph and the food graph; are they from the same time? In that case, that fast population drop couldn't be starvation. It's also hard to believe, that it's just a "natural" population drop. I would rather say one of the really bad diseases.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on February 26, 2018, 04:28:38 PM
The food graph and the shorter timed population graph are both the same time and set for 50 years.  I assumed it was starvation because that's the first time my food graph ever hit 0.  It very well could have been something else.  I only produce about 1/3 of the food needed myself.  The other 2/3 comes from trading so I could see a precipitous drop like that being starvation but I am not 100% certain on that.

Whatever it was it seems like the town is robust enough to survive a significant problem like that with no interaction so that is a good sign.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Nilla on February 26, 2018, 04:44:55 PM
OK, now I see. I compared the 100 years population with the food graph. When I look at the both 50 years, I think, you´re right. It was probably starvation. But since the town recovered once I think it will do it again.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on March 10, 2018, 05:49:19 AM
I am back to no trading, no starving with lots of Gathering Huts and no tools.  1000 Years successfully simulated.  I have stopped simulating my version with starvation and my version with trading.  Neither had any issues but I would prefer to work on a different version of town.

Some town facts: 70 Homes, 50 employed citizens, no tools, some clothes, mostly educated, and I even included some unnecessary perks.  The town has a Cleric, 2 Herbalists, and two Vendors.  I believe these are unnecessary but I wanted to take some risks.  There are 8 Gathering Hut stations with 3 Gatherers and 1 Forester each.

Pictures of Layout: Overview (https://i.imgur.com/5mWk58W.png).  Downtown (https://i.imgur.com/M9odEhG.png).  Northside Gathering (https://i.imgur.com/3tFRvmv.png).  Southside Gathering (https://i.imgur.com/jvlKUOM.png).

Interestingly, I expected 2.5 citizens per home on average.  That number was based on all my saved games of smaller sized towns.  This town has about 2.9 citizens per home on average.  Whether that is due to the larger size or imperfect education system, or both, I don't know. 

These factors also cause much greater stability than my previous smaller towns.  Again, I am unsure if that is due to the increased size, imperfect education or both.  The education system is imperfect because the schools fill up at times and occasionally some citizens become adults at 10 years old.  Also, due to the size of town some citizens have long walks to school and become adults much later than other students.  Somehow, all of this works together to prevent the sharp, steep and large population drop offs. 

Statistics Panels: Overview. (https://imgur.com/KmMqO0O)  Production (https://imgur.com/yw1IZOA).  Population (https://imgur.com/ax2wNq0).  Citizens (https://imgur.com/R3MSTIm).  Food (https://imgur.com/j0qNFiX). 
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on March 14, 2018, 12:33:26 PM
First greedy attempt failed.  Second more lean attempt underway.

At around year 1500 my town survived a big drop.  Shown Here (https://i.imgur.com/S3qPy6S.png).  A few hundred years later I had a larger drop off.  I didn't take a picture of the population graph.  At this point I thought "Hey this could be bad". (https://i.imgur.com/S1pZ2RN.png)  Then about 10 years later I eventually fell to 48 adults.  That's 2 below my employed 50 citizens.  Here's a pic at 50 Adults. (https://i.imgur.com/wq6ai4W.png)

That town was 50 Jobs and 70 Homes.  That's a .71 ratio.  Smaller the ratio the more efficient.  Five of those jobs aren't really needed.  So I could have had 45 and 70 which means a ratio of .64.  I believe my town would have survived if I cut the unnecessary Vendors, Herbalists and Cleric.

Instead I have remade the town slightly larger AND more efficient.  I believe larger towns allow larger ratios.  I have cut the inefficiency and not strictly necessary out.  The new larger town has 54 jobs and 90 Homes.  That's a ratio of 0.6.

The new town is larger and more efficient than the slightly smaller town ever could be.  I have simulated 400 years and the lowest number of adults I have had is about 90.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on March 16, 2018, 03:05:24 PM
"Outbreaks of Tuberculosis, Typhus and Influenza have occurred."

(https://i.imgur.com/eho08hl.png)

The joys of running at x100 speed with 1 Heart health.  Here's an edited picture (https://i.imgur.com/fW4DKyn.png) with the disease names.

1500 Years simulated.  I know of one close call.  I survived.  I don't know how close it was.  The following picture is the only evidence I have.  Don't look at the dip in the middle.  That dip is nothing.  Look at the far left.

(https://i.imgur.com/Au5RkK5.png)

All I know is I had 54 employed citizens before that bump and I have 54 citizens now.  I'm 1/2 way to catching up to irrelevant and almost 1/3 of the way to my personal challenge of 5,000 years.  I get about 35 years per hour.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: irrelevant on March 17, 2018, 04:16:29 PM
Quote from: smurphys7 on March 16, 2018, 03:05:24 PM
I'm 1/2 way to catching up to irrelevant and almost 1/3 of the way to my personal challenge of 5,000 years.  I get about 35 years per hour.

Good luck!

What is the speed mod you are using?
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on March 17, 2018, 04:23:48 PM
I'm using a 3rd party program, not an in-game mod.  Cheat Engine, explained in this reddit post. (https://www.reddit.com/r/Banished/comments/1zkamm/10x_too_slow_try_this/)
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: irrelevant on March 17, 2018, 04:55:26 PM
Those instructions made my head hurt. ;D
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: irrelevant on March 17, 2018, 05:16:14 PM
Okay, it is running faster. Not 200x, which is what I typed in, but maybe 15x. And you're right, at this speed, it does do better with the UI panels closed.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on March 17, 2018, 05:46:42 PM
I am curious to see if you get any actual increased speed.  You can type in any high ludicrous number you want.  You will still be limited by CPU power.  My tiny towns could legitimately do 100-200x.  My town with 90 homes doesn't even get close to that.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: irrelevant on March 17, 2018, 05:49:26 PM
It seems somewhat faster. I'll see how it does overnight.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on March 18, 2018, 08:27:06 AM
I have simulated over 2500 with no human interaction.  I'm at the year 2600+ and I stopped pressing any buttons around year 50.  I stitched together some population graphs from yesterday:

(https://i.imgur.com/xVpN2Zl.png)

As mentioned before, the entire simulation is about keeping the total number of adults at or above the total number of employed workers.  Translation: keep the green line above 54.  From the graph above, it seems like the green line rare crosses under 100.  It also seems like 90 might be a safe estimate at the lowest number of adults.

In the 2500 years I have simulated I know of 2 occurences of my adult population dropping drastically lower than 100.

(https://i.imgur.com/weL38If.png)

I hit 56 adultsthis morning! Screenshot of having only 2 Laborers. (https://i.imgur.com/HZa6G14.png)  That is what I call a fluke year.  My town barely survived.  Had I failed I would drop the 2 Tailors and 3 Hunters.  I believe I would still have enough food to sustain 90 houses but I am not 100% sure.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: irrelevant on March 18, 2018, 05:13:11 PM
Quote from: irrelevant on March 17, 2018, 05:49:26 PM
It seems somewhat faster. I'll see how it does overnight.
It froze up overnight, and of course no auto-save, so I won't be doing this. ;)
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: irrelevant on March 18, 2018, 05:29:33 PM
Quote from: smurphys7 on March 18, 2018, 08:27:06 AM
I have simulated over 2500 with no human interaction.  I'm at the year 2600+ and I stopped pressing any buttons around year 50.  I stitched together some population graphs from yesterday:
Really well done! I'm sure I never would have figured this out, I'm not nearly this clever. I just overpowered my willful town with trial and error and stubbornness.  ;D
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on March 18, 2018, 05:33:15 PM
You have a real town with personality, uniqueness, flavor and life.  I have, on average, 100 useless mouths walking in circles in cemeteries.

It also helps that I get to go at x50 to x100 speed and you only get x2 speed.  I get to fail 20 times more and learn from mistakes much faster.

Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: irrelevant on March 18, 2018, 05:44:00 PM
Quote from: smurphys7 on March 18, 2018, 05:33:15 PM
You have a real town with personality, uniqueness, flavor and life.  I have, on average, 100 useless mouths walking in circles in cemeteries.
LOL!

Quote from: smurphys7 on March 18, 2018, 05:33:15 PM
It also helps that I get to go at x50 to x100 speed and you only get x2 speed.  I get to fail 20 times more and learn from mistakes much faster.
I wish I had known about that speed cheat 3 years ago!
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Nilla on March 19, 2018, 02:39:30 AM
I find both of you great, doing this! Different approach, but both trial and error in its own way. It's very nice to follow your different methods, success and failures. :)
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on March 21, 2018, 01:15:27 PM
I have reached the year 3800.  That means I am 3/4 of the way towards my goal of 5,000 years.  I intended to have another long stitched-together graph of the population but I messed up.  I changed the install location and it reset my keybinds.  For the last 1000 years I have been taking screenshots with no UI.  I have a long series of pictures of just my Town Hall in various seasons.

Nothing noteworthy has occurred in the last 1,000 years.

Picture of the simulation running at low quality and low resolution. (https://i.imgur.com/dS4kTiK.png)
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Nilla on March 21, 2018, 01:28:22 PM
I like that picture. I would call it. "Gathering of the tool-less on the cemetery" ;)
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on March 23, 2018, 05:02:56 PM
This will likely be my final test.

Screenshot #1 (https://i.imgur.com/v2IzPdo.png).  Year 4956. 9 Children and 226 Adults.

Population Graph (https://i.imgur.com/gKYMRvy.png) at the same point in time.

I consider year 5050 being done.  I stopped pressing buttons at about year 40.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: Nilla on March 23, 2018, 06:08:15 PM
Unbelievable! Cogratualions! I´m impressed!
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: smurphys7 on March 23, 2018, 09:31:48 PM
Personal Challenge of 5000 years successful. 

LINK to imgur album. (https://imgur.com/a/D5IMu)

Saved game file at year 5050 (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tmHrWbseIDDKsJxbwk4UuxpL06dUK34b)  Saved game file at year 41 (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RZn-twzzUPr-aq9HlWXwkrUzIsxDVJ8G).

Link to reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/Banished/comments/86qui1/permanence_a_banished_town_that_lasted_5000_years/) with long-winded stuff you probably all already heard or know.

I still am not sure Permanence could truly last forever.  I think some flukes could happen and knock it out.  I don't think those flukes are likely in any 5000 year period.  I don't intend on further testing.

I'd like to make some pretty towns again.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: irrelevant on March 24, 2018, 01:49:35 AM
@smurphys7 Well done! Congratulations.
Title: Re: Infinite: Designing a Town for no human interaction.
Post by: RedKetchup on March 24, 2018, 03:32:07 AM
Congrats !!!