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irrelevant: Gopher Prairie: extreme tenure, 10,000 years

Started by irrelevant, December 23, 2014, 06:52:58 PM

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irrelevant

Quote from: RedKetchup on March 08, 2018, 08:23:50 PM
haha 3000 years lol
only you who can do this !!
Bonjour, mon ami!

Not true, though; I see @smurphys7 has his sights set on Y5K. Although he seems to be taking a break (hope nothing bad happened to his town), if anyone can get to 5000, it's him. GP's never going to do it  ;)

irrelevant

#346
In case anyone's wondering what I did to recover from running out of logs, firewood, ale, iron, and tools:

First, I FREAKED OUT!

Then I decided what I needed to do was concentrate on building up my inventories of logs, iron, tools, and peaches. Stopped buying anything but these. Maxxed out foresters, even if it meant stripping the forests bare. Put two hunters in every hunting cabin (to get venison and leather for trade). Built a few more woodcutters. It was not easy to find decent spots for them.

The biggest problem (with no firewood and very little ale) was what to put into the TPs to use for trade. Fortunately, I had built four landlocked TPs where I had some goodies stashed away. What I did have was herbs, wool, wool coats, and mushrooms. This (plus mutton, venison, and leather) was basically what I traded on for the 3-4 years that it took to get ale stocks built back up to a decent level. It took maybe ten more years before I could start putting firewood back into the TPs.

Now I'm basically out of wool, and coat inventories are way down, but that's not really a problem.

RedKetchup

ah i thought because the resources merchants didnt show up for a century ^^
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irrelevant

Quote from: RedKetchup on March 09, 2018, 07:55:38 PM
ah i thought because the resources merchants didnt show up for a century ^^
Yah, resource merchants are the only ones I buy iron, tools, and coats from, but even I'm not that unlucky  ;D

smurphys7

You are at the top of your population graph which is when you are consuming the most possible goods.  You have built up good stockpiles at this point.  That's a very good sign.  As your population goes down you should still produce about the same but have less consumption.

My game seems to play itself much more effectively when all the UI windows are closed.  The General Statistics Panel, the Town Hall panel, the Event Log and the Jobs window all have noticeable affects on play speed. 

irrelevant

Year 3009

Despite what I said, I'm not going to stop ;) About 15 years ago I finally built the 47 additional houses that I laid the foundations for about 150 years ago. I'm trying to fix the pop curve so it no longer dips low enough that all the laborers die off and professions become unstaffed. This is the one remaining issue that prevents GP from being capable of running unattended for infinite periods. I would like to get there.

brads3

to do that,my theory is you need to bring the children count up. that way there is a better ratio between adult workers and children.in a perfect world, you want enough students to replace die offs and no more. do you get diseases frequently that kills a lot of workers? this would make it very difficult.
      running the game so many years,i am suprised you haven't found a better balance. i notice you have trade posts set to maintain supplies well.then seems you have a whoops or die offs that lead to problems. are all the schools becoming full and sending the children to laborers earlier?

irrelevant

#352
Quote from: brads3 on March 11, 2018, 11:02:07 AM
to do that,my theory is you need to bring the children count up. that way there is a better ratio between adult workers and children.in a perfect world, you want enough students to replace die offs and no more. do you get diseases frequently that kills a lot of workers? this would make it very difficult.
I don't think so, but I don't really know. Most of the time the town is running, I'm either at work or asleep. But hardly anyone has ever died of a disease while I've been watching. Of course I act very aggressively to minimize the impact of any outbreak. Who knows what happens when I'm not around.

Quote from: brads3 on March 11, 2018, 11:02:07 AM
      running the game so many years,i am suprised you haven't found a better balance.
Found a better balance of what?

Quote from: brads3 on March 11, 2018, 11:02:07 AMi notice you have trade posts set to maintain supplies well.then seems you have a whoops or die offs that lead to problems. are all the schools becoming full and sending the children to laborers earlier?
There are 30 schools, space for 600 students. I don't believe I ever have more than 450 or so.

irrelevant

Year 3044

Well, building those extra houses did not help at all, in fact it may have made things worse.

I've thought of something else to try. Next trough, I'm going to shut down a significant portion of available houses. I will recover them gradually over the next 20(?) years until they all are open again. This is intended to simulate the slow, steady construction of homes that I didn't do 3000 years ago. This certainly would do something to the sine wave! I'd appreciate any comments and advice from anyone and everyone regarding this plan.

How many do I shut down? At what rate should I recover them?

smurphys7

Here's my understanding:

Goal: Run town indefinitely with no interaction.
Remaining problem: rare sharp population drop offs.

My suggestions: 
1) Pick a housing number and go with it. 

My approach is normally "build as many houses as food production supports".  You may want a different approach due to size.  Changing things "resets" the experiment.  There's no "slow steady construction" of homes if your intent is to not touch anything for 1,000 years.  There's a total number of houses and that's it.

2) Remove inefficiency.

Cutting down inefficiency has two important benefits: 1) better ratio of total population to employed workers and 2) smaller town size allows for faster simulation.

Remove less effective farms, hunters, orchards, pastures, etc.

3) Reduce the total number of jobs.

The less employed workers the better.  I don't think you've encountered the biggest possible drop-off.  I think your total employed worker count should be close to your house count. 

I'd look at reducing Vendors and Traders.  School system doesn't need to be perfect: consider dropping some teachers.  Herbalists, Clerics, Physicians, etc. 

4) Expectations: this stuff is hard.

I think a good analogy is think of your town like a car or a house.  A town with minor occasional human input is like a car with regular maintenance.  A town with no input is like the rover on mars.  You need to design it to survive on its own.  Fortunately, creating the town is nothing like actually sending a rover to Mars.

This isn't rocket science, but it isn't putting air in your tires and changing your oil either.

Nilla

If I understand it right, you will "play active" =be at the computer for a while.

First I think this is somehow a "mission impossible". If you remember, I made several attempts to get a constant population. It also went very well as long as I payed attention. I only looked at the number of children; held them around 15 %, closed and opened houses to keep it that way, also used some boarding houses from time to time.

I held the population constant for many years but as soon as I left the settlement, the sine wave was there again. Even if the population was very well mixed in age, as I left the settlement, the "random factor" struck; distribution of gender, age of the woman as she moves out, accidental deaths..... all these things made the attempts in vane.

I think the only way to succeed is to occupy as few people as possible; to have many free laborers, so that you never run out of professionals. Produce as much of the "necessary stuff" as possible with as few people as needed. Overthink each professional. Maybe even accept some starvation at "peak times".

Edit, I just see, that the real expert has answered, it looks like he´s thoughts are in this direction as well. (I speak of @smurphys7)

irrelevant

#356
Quote from: smurphys7 on March 12, 2018, 08:34:04 AM
Here's my understanding:

Goal: Run town indefinitely with no interaction.
Remaining problem: rare sharp population drop offs.
I'd say the sharp drop-offs aren't rare, they happen every 40 years, every second sine wave cycle.

Quote from: smurphys7 on March 12, 2018, 08:34:04 AMMy suggestions: 
1) Pick a housing number and go with it. 

My approach is normally "build as many houses as food production supports".  You may want a different approach due to size.  Changing things "resets" the experiment.  There's no "slow steady construction" of homes if your intent is to not touch anything for 1,000 years.  There's a total number of houses and that's it.
Pop size and food production are pretty well balanced and have been for many years.

Quote from: smurphys7 on March 12, 2018, 08:34:04 AM2) Remove inefficiency.

Cutting down inefficiency has two important benefits: 1) better ratio of total population to employed workers and 2) smaller town size allows for faster simulation.

Remove less effective farms, hunters, orchards, pastures, etc.
I don't really have any inefficient producers any longer. Sometimes I don't get full harvests, but that's because my farms mainly have just one farmer.

Quote from: smurphys7 on March 12, 2018, 08:34:04 AM3) Reduce the total number of jobs.

The less employed workers the better.  I don't think you've encountered the biggest possible drop-off.  I think your total employed worker count should be close to your house count. 

I'd look at reducing Vendors and Traders.  School system doesn't need to be perfect: consider dropping some teachers.  Herbalists, Clerics, Physicians, etc. 
I might be able to cut some traders. I think the vendors are as low as they can go. They are necessary for efficient ale production, which is centered on markets (currently averaging ~440 ale/brewer/year, which is pretty good). 13 herbalists, 11 physicians, not much pickup possible there. No churches.

Before I do much more cutting, I want to try to flatten out the pop curve. I know I can't make it go away, but I think it can be less severe than it is.

Thanks for replying!


irrelevant

#357
Quote from: Nilla on March 12, 2018, 08:45:06 AM
If I understand it right, you will "play active" =be at the computer for a while.

First I think this is somehow a "mission impossible". If you remember, I made several attempts to get a constant population. It also went very well as long as I payed attention. I only looked at the number of children; held them around 15 %, closed and opened houses to keep it that way, also used some boarding houses from time to time.
I'm not thinking of getting a constant population, I know this is not possible. All I want to do is flatten out the sine wave so the peaks and troughs are less extreme.

Quote from: Nilla on March 12, 2018, 08:45:06 AMI held the population constant for many years but as soon as I left the settlement, the sine wave was there again. Even if the population was very well mixed in age, as I left the settlement, the "random factor" struck; distribution of gender, age of the woman as she moves out, accidental deaths..... all these things made the attempts in vane.

I think the only way to succeed is to occupy as few people as possible; to have many free laborers, so that you never run out of professionals. Produce as much of the "necessary stuff" as possible with as few people as needed. Overthink each professional. Maybe even accept some starvation at "peak times".
Yeah, I've already been experimenting with the number of professionals for centuries. I've tried it with fewer gathers, with no gatherers, with fewer fishers, with no fishers, with one farmer per orchard, with only two foresters per lodge, with fewer vendors, with fewer traders. Everything brings its own problem. I'm not against tinkering with the number of jobs, but I've already been doing it all along.

I really believe this sine wave is very extreme and can be flattened, and that is what I want to try to do. My population currently ages together and dies together. If I can spread out the ageing and the dying so it takes place more evenly, that should flatten out the curves. For that to happen, the births need to be spread out more evenly. That's what I hope to accomplish by closing a large portion of my housing (right as the births are starting to rise?), and re-opening it over a period of several years. I might need to do this more than one time.

Thanks for your reply, @Nilla!

Nilla

I understand, that you don't want to flatten the curve, I just wanted to say; even if you manage to flatten it a generation or two, these random factors will strike and you will have the same sine wave again. I'll be glad to be proved wrong. But I'm sorry to say, I think it's the way Banished works.

I also meant to really overthink the professions: More "out of the box" and not only something like; a population of x normally needs y herbalists, I have y-2 and can't cut it more. That's not enough. You must ask yourself; do I need any herbalists at all? Do I need any doctors at all? What happens if they all get sick? Do I need any unproductive orchards? Can I relocate my brewers? That kind of thinking.

irrelevant

#359
@Nilla Good point on the herbalists, I don't really need them. As for doctors, I've had towns with not enough doctors and don't really want to cut here. There are only 11 of them in any case.

I know what happens when they all get sick, everyone goes and stands in the doorway of their home until eventually everyone in the town is sick and no work gets done for a couple of months. ;)

I'll try cutting a gatherer and a fisher from each site. Maybe cut one forester per lodge. Maybe one or two traders per TP. Maybe one vendor per market. This might add up to 100. Overnight I lost ~250 professionals in the most recent trough.