Pangaea: Hulmevil

[Pangaea]

Running a little experiment. Last five years I've only built one house. Population has gone down around 100 (from almost 1500 to under 1400), and still declining. But families have gone up, by about 70. This can only mean one thing: there are too few houses, and adults are living with their parents, not able to have kids of their own. As a result of that, amount of students and children are declining as well. Children count is under 10% of total population. Think both were over 200 at peak level, so they have almost been slashed in half.

Will the village crash? I've no idea. Hope not, but there is the sign of the up-and-down curve starting, and the underlying population structure doesn't sound good.

Of course I could have mass-built a pile of houses to fix the problem. But it would only be a temporary fix (and I'd need yet more farms again), and then resurface at pop 3000 or whatever. As there is another achievement for running a town for 100 and 200 years, I figured this could be an interesting experiment -- if I manage to keep my interest for that long on a map that is basically "done". Certainly not filled to the brink with infrastructure, but there aren't many areas without a purpose either (hunting, gatherer, forester, or infrastructure).

The food situation is more or less balanced now. Running a deficit after ale making, but not by a lot. Horrible harvest last year, we got 25000 food less than normal, or 20% percent less. Mines and quarries are almost empty, but that aside we are self-sufficient on tools and clothes.

[Pangaea]

This is from @Nilla's all achievements in one map game.

One funny thing; There's one achievement where you have to build all constructions. I was pretty sure i had everything; roads, tunnels, all production buildings. I couldn't understand why the star didn't appear. Than I realized; there was no wooden house left.   

Excellent thread, and very well done on getting them all. Amazing how you managed to squeeze over 900 people into such a small map, and also the mass death for 400 graves. They came naturally in my game, but then I had a population of 1300-ish at the time.

The quote made me laugh, though  Same deal for me. I went through all the clickable menus. "Hmm, I have built everything, boarding houses, doctor houses, even churches, and those fugly mines and quarries. Why no achievement?!?"

Then it dawned on me.... 

[Nilla]

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one forgetting the wooden house. 

And thanks for the compliment! As I said, it was one of my nicest games. The 900 people wasn't that hard, you need a suitable map with room for enough trading ports. The hard thing was the beginning: No tradingports, no farms/orchards/pastures on a small map with uneducated people. That was hard. And I think you have these in front of you! 

I am sure your settlement is big enough to survive. Maybe the population will drop to the half or something like that if you build no more houses. It also looks very much like you could make it a "self runner"; leave the computer on and do something else. You seem to bu self sufficient on most things. Maybe autotrade for a few things. It's the easiest way to get the 200 years.

[Pangaea]

Putting it on autorun is actually what I wanted to do. Then the game crashed when saving. Thankfully the autosave worked, otherwise I would have lost two hours of 'work' at 10x, which is a fair bit.

Not tried autotrading before, believe it or not, but it seems to work okay. After running for a while, the food was down from 450,000 to 250,000, and all the plums were gone, so clearly something didn't work great there. Also looks like if there are more than one resource in a trading port, only one will be used (if there is enough?) for trading purposes. So it looks like firewood was used all the time, and never ale. Everybody are alcoholics instead. Oooops!

Population kept going down. Then some nomads dropped by and I took them in. Wasn't quite enough for the achievement, so I took in another 200 later. They brought some diseases, but nothing too serious, and the food wasn't as good anymore. Population declining something fierce again, and barely kids and students around, so the future may be.. interesting. We'll see. Running it for another 130 years while paying attention would be less than exhilerating, so this will have to do. Doubt everybody will die anyhow, and 500 people isn't that much for the 200 year achievement.

Famous last words? 

10x auto is still fairly slow. Thought the years would fly by, but after doing the dishes, making dinner, watching some TV, for the better part of two hours, not very many years had gone by.

[Pangaea]

Ooof. Game ran in the background for only 4 years, and 300 people died, give or take  When I came back to it, all labourers were gone, and there were some 300 earlier. Thankfully no teacher had died, as that is always the fear with low labour count. I've changed some numbers around in the screenshot, but before that there were lacking workers in a handful of professions.

Fewer families than homes now, and the graph is bottoming out, so the piggyback ride should be on for the next years. I had really hoped that with such a big city it would possible to have a more stable population, but I guess it's simply impossible unless you keep building houses or managing inhabitants with 'tricks'

[Nilla]

What you tells about coming back as the population has dropped seems very familiar to me.

Autotrading for food is always a problem. 9999 fruit isn't much, if you make ale for export. On the other hand, with firewood, it might happen that everything is taken to the port and there's nothing left to the people. Who said it was easy! Not me

[Pangaea]

Yes, it is certainly tricky. Would be much better if we could set a global limit, so if we for instance had less than 1000 steel tools, the autorading would bring it back up to 1000, no matter what trading port was used to do so.

Could still run into the problem you mention about lack of firewood (for instance) for the people, but it would be easier to manage I would think.

[Pangaea]

Not a lot to update with, as the game has mostly been run while away from keyboard, without too many snags. Up to year 140 now, so the 100 year achievement has been ticked off. Population and happiness form the usual sine waves. At the bottom of the curves, I'm lacking workers in some professions, so when I came back to the game there were missing teachers, physicians, vendors, traders, woodcutters, foresters and many others. Another time we were fairly low on tools, so I upped the auto purchase from 200 per TP to 500, and bought what I saw for a few seasons. Back up to 4500 now, so should be fine for a decade or more.

With my eyes on the game, I also took in some nomads, because the population was crashing anyway. Not many illnesses have been dangerous, either from nomads or otherwise. Have had small pox at least twice, but it was fine as few people caught it. But just recently tuberculosis hit critical mass, and spread like wildfire. Given the amount of time ~100 people had it, I estimate that at least half the town's 1200 residents must have been infected. Not sure how many died, but quite many. The illness persisted for a year or more. That's the worst we've been hit, at least that I know of.

Still 60 years to go, but I've closed down the game now. I want to have another crack at Settlers 2. Downloaded a map of Westeros yesterday, and it was quite fun to play something new, as I know the campaign maps, both of the original game and the Vikings expansion, pretty much by heart. Maybe I'll manage to finish the town by the weekend. Then I may try a harsh mountain map to get the last achievements, though that may be tricky as I lack isolationist and uneducated, and a few more.

Attaching some graphs from year 100, as they get cut off from then on.

[Pangaea]

Went to a coffee house to meet some friends, so thought it was a good excuse to leave the game running for a few hours. As you can see from the graph below, two big batches of immigrants had been accepted, so population was boosted to almost 1800. Therefore I half-expected a crash, possibly catastrophic crash with mass starvation. While keeping tabs on food, and buying some, it still declined to under 200,000.

Things certainly crashed, but not in a disastrous way. Have re-added teachers, but it was down to 7 of 13, and lacking workers in practically every profession. There were over 500 free labourers when I went for coffee  But we're not exactly lacking in products, rather the opposite in fact, and I've now removed auto purchase of steel tools, as we are swimming in the stuff. Haven't bought any leather or wool, because hunters and herdsmen are more than enough. Have now ordered several thousand textiles and warm coats to be hoarded in the trading ports, because I was getting messages about lack of storage space.

Particularly in the eastern part of the map, where relatively few people live, this has been an issue for a very long time in harvesting season. Barns are full, so lots of food is rotting in the fields when winter sets in. I actually built some more houses in that region, but much more would be needed to keep barns from overflowing.

34 more years to go. Getting there. Slowly.

[Pangaea]

Also, despite only 289 families for 469 homes, I saw very few empty houses, and I checked almost every single one. Came across 5 empty, and loads and loads of houses with one person. Maybe they don't like each other?

[brads3]

as long as they keep the neighbor girls preggo,its all good.lol

[Nilla]

as long as they keep the neighbor girls preggo,its all good.lol

.... and they do, a lot of children are born to "single" women! 

I see that you are drowning in goods! 12 000 herbs! How many did they use last year. 5 harts; I guess; not many.

But soon you will be there 200 years is really an achievement!

[Gatherer]

I'm looking at your population graph. It seems that it spirals up and down a bit fast. A decade up and a decade down.

[Pangaea]

as long as they keep the neighbor girls preggo,its all good.lol

.... and they do, a lot of children are born to "single" women! 

I see that you are drowning in goods! 12 000 herbs! How many did they use last year. 5 harts; I guess; not many.

But soon you will be there 200 years is really an achievement!

Hah, yes, they're still running about getting pregnant, so it's still good.

12000 herbs is a crazy amount. I don't have many herbalists either, and never have (though a few more). As long as people have access to different foods, health is usually good. It's been at 5 hearts all the time I think, or at least not much less than that. Our guys and gals have used 1028 herbs the last 10 years, so about 100 a year. It was almost 200 last year, so it varies a bit by population. It's back up to around 1400 now.

I'm looking at your population graph. It seems that it spirals up and down a bit fast. A decade up and a decade down.

True, it goes up and down fairly quickly. Maybe it would be dragged out more if I had more houses. Then again, maybe it would still be fast, but at a slightly higher population level. At "worst" there are over twice as many families than houses, which leads to very few children and students. It's hard to see in the graph, but you can probably see that the relevant graphs are pretty darn close to 0. I remember having around 70 children after the immigration boost with 1700-1800 population. Not much...


Look forward to getting the 200 year achievement, so I can draw a line across this map. It was "done" a very long time ago, by about year 60-70. Far from sure I'm good enough to get 300 pop on a small harsh mountain map, without schools, farms or trading ports, so it will be a challenge, that's for sure. Have never played with a map like that either. Think I've always used 'normal' settings.

[Pangaea]

Interesting. Went into the game to check out how the guys were doing, and stumbled upon another hot winter. Noticed it was +15C in Autumn, so kept an eye on things. The temperature very briefly dropped to +2C in Winter, and then gradually increased. By the end of Late Winter it was +11C. The turn to Early Spring wasn't as extreme as in the other game, but the temperature quickly dropped to +6C. This time there weren't crop left throughout the winter, but it was still interesting to see such a warm winter time.