Small Questions

[irrelevant]

So do the herds regenerate in the same places? Cabins are only good where you see herds, no matter how open and lacking of human presence an area may be? I've got a damn herd right in my settlement where I'm planning to expand. It just seems asinine to put a hunter's cabin there.

Herds are eternal. You can cull them but they keep reproducing. Yes, exactly what you said about cabins. I wouldn't necessarily build a new one in the middle of my town; look around, the damn deer are everywhere. I put cabins out a bit, in the suburbs, or on the fringe, or out in the sticks, wherever I see deer. The cabins are cheap to build, so I have no qualms about tearing one down later (you recover 50% of what went into any structure when you demolish it) and rebuilding someplace else.

You got a forester with your herbalist and gatherers? I thought those trees were supposed to be old.

Foresters don't just cut trees, they also can plant new trees. They can plant trees only, they can cut trees only, or they can do both, and with 1-4 workers. Therefore a forester has 12 different possible settings. If you set a forester to plant only with 4 foresters, in 3-4 years you will have an extremely dense forest, many herbs, and much stuff to gather. But the real trick is finding a sustainable equilibrium. I am still playing around with them.

I thought those trees were supposed to be old. This is a common religious discussion among Banished players. It is mythic that herbs grow only in "old growth" forest. Herbs grow where they are growing now, you can see them, they look a bit like hosta plants. At the start of every game they are growing in existing forests only. If you cut all the trees down, new ones will keep popping up for awhile, then they will stop. If you manage a forest by moderately cutting and planting (one forester), you can sustain herb growth in the understory. If you cut trees too hard and at the same time harvest herbs continuously, gradually the herbs will peter out. Just keep an eye on herb production, if it starts to decline, you can turn it off for a year or two, then start it back up again.

Got 5 herbs visible in this screenie. There was original forest there until a couple of years ago. The herb plants remain after I cut down the trees with laborers. They'll stay there for a long time, if I want to build something there in the next 5 years I'll probably have to tear them out first. But more will never grow there, not without new trees being planted.

[snapster]

Herds are eternal.

Why don't I just build a hunting cabin there? How far can the deer run? I could even house them in eventually.

As for the foresters, I'm looking for a reliable source of wood and herbs, not to experiment like that and perhaps end up without one. Do tell what you determine though.

[irrelevant]

Herds are eternal.

Why don't I just build a hunting cabin there? How far can the deer run? I could even house them in eventually.

As for the foresters, I'm looking for a reliable source of wood, not to experiment like that and perhaps end up without it. Do tell what you determine though.

Herds of deer migrate pretty far, then they return, always (unless you cover every tile with structures and roads). You can't trap them. But there are many many herds of deer.

If you have an existing forest, put in a forester cabin with two foresters set to cut and plant. You'll get 100-150 logs/year. If you want lots of logs fast, build a forester, then clearcut the entire circle of trees using the resource removal tool harvest trees tool (laborers cut the trees down). Then set the forester to plant only with 3-4 foresters, and in four years the forest will be back. Ruins gathering and herbs for that forest until the trees are back, but if you need logs, you need logs.

[snapster]

Say I have a gatherer's place some distance from my settlement. If I build a barn there, without having a marketplace, would the people walk all the way to that barn to get food produced by the gatherer's place? Which would be better, having the gatherers walk to a central barn to deposit their food or people walk to their place to retrieve it?

[slink]

Say I have a gatherer's place some distance from my settlement. If I build a barn there, without having a marketplace, would the people walk all the way to that barn to get food produced by the gatherer's place?

If they have no choice.

Which would be better, having the gatherers walk to a central barn to deposit their food or people walk to their place to retrieve it?

Considering that the people who are all walking out to the barn to collect their food are neglecting their work, I'd say it is better to put the barn closer to the consumers.  Best would be to build a market.  That way people whose job it is to carry food from faraway barns to the consumers will spend their time doing just that.  The consumers can then spend their time doing their own jobs.

[rkelly17]

Say I have a gatherer's place some distance from my settlement. If I build a barn there, without having a marketplace, would the people walk all the way to that barn to get food produced by the gatherer's place? Which would be better, having the gatherers walk to a central barn to deposit their food or people walk to their place to retrieve it?

Citizens will usually go to the nearest location which has what they need. The reason to put the barn nearer to the gatherer is so that the gatherer can be more efficient since it is often the gatherer who deposits his or her produce in the barn. When you build a market the vendors get the product from the barn and carry it to the market where the citizens go to get it--thus the vendor does the work of transportation and the citizens can get what they need and get back to work faster.

This is when the locations are stocked. Citizens will walk long distances to get what they need if the supply is not local.

[snapster]

Why are my builders and even fishermen clearing resources instead of doing their jobs? It isn't even winter.

And where resources should be cleared so that buildings can go up, who clears them?

[slink]

Why are my builders and even fishermen clearing resources instead of doing their jobs? It isn't even winter.

And where resources should be cleared so that buildings can go up, who clears them?

Laborers clear building sites.

Anyone can act as a laborer, if they do not have any task scheduled at the moment.  True laborers will travel further from their homes to clear and carry resources than will everyone else, but anyone can do that.

[snapster]

...That's dumb. So do I have to cancel all other clearing? And since apparently the builders didn't have any task at the moment why did it take them so long? Because of other clearing?

Does increasing priority also apply to clearing? It doesn't seem so? Does not having the building paused even though builders can't build help?

Is the maximum number of fishermen and hunters you can have 4?

And there went the first settlement. Might as well restart. Kind of strange how they drop of hunger like that, but anyway.

[irrelevant]

When you create a laborer task, it goes into the "task queue." The task queue contains items like "pick up the pile of logs in square 53113 and take it to the stockpile at 46321." When you initiate construction of a building, it goes into the queue as well. When you initiate gathering stone, iron, or logs, that goes into the queue as well.

Some of these jobs can be very large, if you use the "remove resource" tool over a large area. This can occupy your laborer force for a very long time.

Laborers are the ones who clear the construction sites. They also are the ones who bring construction mats to the sites once they are clear. If they have a large number of tasks in the queue (many of which tasks undoubtedly have been created by you) it may take some time for the construction project to reach the top of the queue. The tasks in the queue that have not been created by you are things like picking up the baskets of food left lying around by gatherers, deer carcases and leather left by hunters, piles of wool around sheep pastures, etc.

There are two tools at hand to change the queue (well, three, actually). The first is the "cancel removal" function. You can use this to undo a "remove resource" command. That is a very blunt tool, and also very effective. The second is the "priority" tool. With this you can move a single laborer task to the top of the queue. Very handy when used sparingly. If you go around banging everything on the map with the priority tool, you just make a bigger mess than you had before. Think of it as being like the "move to top of queue" function in Netflix. If you use it 10 times in a row, the movie you originally wanted to be first isn't going to come until two months from now. In your case, if you hit your construction project one time with the priority tool, the laborers should start moving to clear the site and bring construction mats. It will take a bit for them to complete the tasks they currently are carrying out, but the next thing they do will be to start working on the prioritized building.

The third tool isn't really a tool, it is a tactic. That tactic is to think twice before you use "remove resources/harvest trees/collect stone/collect iron." These are powerful commands that can tie up your laborer force literally for months if you do not exercise some restraint in their use. Select a number of small areas in succession rather than one big one. We've all been there.

[salamander]

The third tool isn't really a tool, it is a tactic. That tactic is to think twice before you use "remove resources/harvest trees/collect stone/collect iron." These are powerful commands that can tie up your laborer force literally for months if you do not exercise some restraint in their use. Select a number of small areas in succession rather than one big one.

Good advice, and something I've learned to be very careful about.  My approach these days not to harvest all resources, but to do them one at a time as needed.  If I'm clearing resources just to have space to build, I generally let the laborers clear just the building footprint, rather than clearing a larger area.  It seems like this keeps laborers moving around to different jobs more quickly, and I like to keep some trees even in housing developments (ie slums).

[solarscreen]

Exactly right @salamander !

I used to spend a lot of time and labor harvesting as many resources as possible in my earlier villages.

Now, I only gather what I need to build until trading can provide everything I need.  I don't even have mines or quarries.

[snapster]

What's a construction mat? And I thought the carcasses, baskets, and all that stuff was supposed to be taken care of by the producers themselves?

Is 4 the maximum number of hunters and fishermen per building? Why can one of the numbers be taken to around 8?

[irrelevant]

Actually if what you are wanting to do is clear-cut, a better idea is to lay down a farm. It is precise, in that you can define an exact, measured area. Then when it is done you can leave the farm there without activating it, assign no workers, and it will serve as "mulch" that will prevent anything from growing back up in the cleared area, as will happen if you do not promptly fill it up with something else. Also, the laborers seem to act more efficiently in clearing out for a farm than they do for anything else. This may be a false impression, but on the other hand I have watched a fair number of farms being built. I always lay down a farm when I want a clear-cut.

[solarscreen]

The professionals will "produce" and then laborers take care of the transport to final destinations.  If you see Professionals transporting, they weren't busy and took a labor assignment to stay busy.