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How can I prevent procreation?

Started by realm174, January 19, 2015, 10:01:15 AM

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irrelevant

Sounds like you have things back under control; congratulations! Recovering from a big pop die-off is a true test of Banished persistence and skill.

realm174

So I'm still keeping an eye on things... I am producing 80% of my food consumption, the rest coming from Traders. I am back up to 800 citizens, 2/3 of which are adults. I am finding it a bit difficult to keep up with the food production to be honest.. I have fields/orchards with barns next to them, but those particular barns seem to fill up to 100% rather quickly while other barns are almost empty. As a result, farmers need to walk a much longer distance to unload their goods. From what I can visually see, most of the fields seem to get fully harvested come Autumn or early winter. 

For food production, I also have hunters(9/3), gatherers(24/6), herdsmen(5/5), fishermen(20/5)..
Numbers above are workers/sites.

I don't like to rely on trading so much for food.. it's too inconsistent and random. (I'll get a bunch of ships coming by with all sorts of things except for food, then I'll get 1 or 2 ships with food.. so the food graph jumps up and down a lot.. )

So what do you guys suggest? More fields? Most of my fields are 15x8, and employ 2-3 farmers per field depending on distance to food storage...


Nilla

Here are some suggestions, maybe some could help;

I don't know if you are playing with any mods. If you don't use any mod that improves the orchards, I recommend to change the orchards to fields (much more productive).

Try to be self sufficient on grain and vegetables. Build new fields as the population grows.

Buy fruit and later in the game maybe also some proteins (nuts). Order one fruit from all food- and general goods merchants. Try to fill your ports with so much goods, that you can buy all fruit the merchant brings.

Increase the number of fishers and hunters. Sell the venison. Build more pastures with sheep, sell the mutton and use the wool.

If you are short of workers, you don't have to have so many workers at each place. 20 fisher in 10 fishing huts produce much more fish than 20 fishers in 5 huts. Hunters and gatherers the same.

If some barns are full all the time, you might need to build some more in that area, or maybe you must increase the number of markets/vendors, so the barns in the farming areas are emptied faster. A trick if you want to empty barns is to "fake demolish" them after the harvest. I don't recommend that all the time, but sometimes it helps. Another trick is to use the trading ports to collect and stock food.

Good luck.

maybe you can show some pictures the next time.


A Nonny Moose

Also, consider converting your fruit into alcohol.  Stick to one type, and use the alky for trade goods (snatch it all into the TPs).  Do not convert grain to alcohol unless you have a huge surplus. 

You can  sort of act like Canada during the duration of the Volsted Act in the U.S. and make all the booze you can sell.
Go not to the oracle, for it will say both yea and nay.

[Gone, but not forgotten. Rest easy, you are no longer banished.]
https://www.haskettfh.com/winterton-john-hensall/

realm174

@A Nonny Moose: Thanks for the suggestions.  I am converting quite a bit of orchard products into alcohol. Looking at my inventory however, I can see that I am not producing nearly as much as I could, so I built a few more taverns to try and fix that. But at the rate my fruits are piling up, I could probably build another 10 taverns and I'd still have left over fruits. Then again, I import a fair amount of them too, but still...

@Nilla: The only mod I play that would affect food production is the fishing dock mod which increase prod by 25%.  Following your suggestion, I have built a few more fields. (And barns to store the goods, but I'm having the same issue with the new barns, they fill up quickly, and farmers end up having to walk further to unload).  I have also increased the venison inventory in ports, since I was stacking up on those as well.. So now I get more buying power :)  All my workers are maxed out. (I still have 150 laborer kicking around). In some fields, I have increased the farmers to 5 as they were not able to keep up and harvest all the food.

Rather than pictures, here's a 2-3 minutes YouTube video of my town.. 

http://youtu.be/lWJyqRgGprI

The video starts at the lake, in the northeast corner of the developed area. Then we go down along the river. This was my original landing spot, so that's where everything started. Although the video might not be super clear, on the east side (right side of the screen), in the wooded area, there's a few bundles of forester-gatherer. Typically, 2 foresters and one gatherer. Why 2 foresters? I found that if I set one to cut&plant and one to plant only, I get more logs. Probably because trees get planted faster than they get cut.. Just my theory, but tested it and it seems accurate.

Moving down along the river, is the ports area. The top one is the newest one. The one with all the storage by it is the oldest one. I also have another one further south.  You can probably see the market on the west side of the northern ports. That was supposed to become a residential area, but I didn't get around to it yet, and I'm still unsure, the main reason being that I thought it might be a good idea to have all the barns and stockpiles near the port so the traders can grab the stuff quickly.

Moving along south, you can see the 2 quarries. They're not being used anymore, and I don't have any more of them since I import iron and stone from the traders anyway. You can also see some of the fields, houses, etc.. Why do I have fields within the market circle? Well, that was my starting area and I didn't have a market yet.. and didn't know better.. LOL! Some day, I might take down those fields and relocate them. But I don't need more houses at this time, so that's not necessary.

Further south, more forester-gatherers on the east side of the river, some orchards and barns on the western side.

Moving to the west, my newest agriculture area and second town hub.  This is the area where I'm trying to grow enough food for all. You'll notice that I alternate the food between fields. That was my original setup. Then, to the west, there's 2 sections, one with beans only and one with corn only. This is an experiment, as I read somewhere that those are the 2 that will give the most food. When I made the switch to what was growing, I had a horrible first year, less than 1/2 of what would normally grow. But this is the 3rd year now, and production seem to increase in those fields. If I find that it gives more food than the other stuff (potatoes, peppers, cabbage, squash and wheat that I am growing in the other areas), I might convert all my fields to grow only beans and corn, and import whatever else my minions need.

Moving along in the video, there's a left-to-right and right-to left panning of the whole place. Then I show some barns fully packed. The empty ones are the ones I built right before making the video, that's why they're empty. Then all the full ones, and finally a few that are not quite full. This is after I experimented with the idea of fake-demolish. Yes, that idea works, but it's too much maintenance to do that manually at each harvest.

And lastly, the stats windows.

If there's anything else you'd like to see, I can certainly make another quick video. Or depending in which time zones you guys are, I could even stream on twitch.tv or something so we can comment as we go.. :)


irrelevant

#20
Quote from: realm174 on January 28, 2015, 07:52:49 AM
@A Nonny Moose: Thanks for the suggestions.  I am converting quite a bit of orchard products into alcohol. Looking at my inventory however, I can see that I am not producing nearly as much as I could, so I built a few more taverns to try and fix that. But at the rate my fruits are piling up, I could probably build another 10 taverns and I'd still have left over fruits. Then again, I import a fair amount of them too, but still...

Your ale output is extremely low for the number of taverns you have. I normally average around 440-480 ale per tavern per year. Since you say fruit supply is ample, I'd say you have a distribution problem. Your brewers are spending most of their time walking around, picking up fruit, and taking it back to the brewery. The way I handle fruit distribution is to locate my taverns directly on markets; that way the vendors do most of the fruit-gathering and the brewers can concentrate on brewing.

Quote from: realm174 on January 28, 2015, 07:52:49 AMIn some fields, I have increased the farmers to 5 as they were not able to keep up and harvest all the food.
This is because your houses are too far away from your fields. Farmers who have to do lots of walking do less planting and even less harvesting. Houses, barns, and fields all belong together.

Quote from: realm174 on January 28, 2015, 07:52:49 AM
Why do I have fields within the market circle? Well, that was my starting area and I didn't have a market yet.. and didn't know better.
I always have fields in my market circles. Have a look at my towns in the Village Blog area.

Quote from: realm174 on January 28, 2015, 07:52:49 AM
Then, to the west, there's 2 sections, one with beans only and one with corn only. This is an experiment, as I read somewhere that those are the 2 that will give the most food. When I made the switch to what was growing, I had a horrible first year, less than 1/2 of what would normally grow. But this is the 3rd year now, and production seem to increase in those fields.

It isn't the case that beans and corn give more food, all crops produce 7 food per square, assuming that the entire crop matures. Beans and corn seem to do better because they grow to maturity more quickly than most of the other crops do.

Quote from: realm174 on January 28, 2015, 07:52:49 AM
Moving along in the video, there's a left-to-right and right-to left panning of the whole place. Then I show some barns fully packed. The empty ones are the ones I built right before making the video, that's why they're empty. Then all the full ones, and finally a few that are not quite full. This is after I experimented with the idea of fake-demolish. Yes, that idea works, but it's too much maintenance to do that manually at each harvest.

I believe that most of your distribution problems are caused by having too few markets, and the ones that you do have are located too far away from your crop storage barns. Vendors do the best job at keeping stuff from piling up in barns. I used to have to resort to the fake-demolish trick, until I started building more markets and putting my fields (and the attendant barns) inside market circles. In my towns, pretty much everything (except for mines, quarries, and most forest nodes) go inside market circles.

Markets are tools, just like everything else in the game. You should exploit their strengths and put them to work for you. What they excel at is gathering resources and centralizing them so your producers and homemakers spend less time walking around shopping, and more time working. They are the hearts of your town's distribution system, and IMO it is nearly impossible to have too many of them.

Not saying mine is the only way, but good results do speak for themselves.

Please do have a look at Sink Mill, Gnaw Bone, Rickettsville, and/or Gopher Prairie to see how I use markets as distribution centers.

Nilla

I agree very much with what @irrelevant says.

-More houses near the fields

-More markets. The markets you have with that many houses, will  also probably need more vendors. You can increase the number to 25 if needed.

-Better access to some fields. The farmers always start to work at the southwest corner of a field. If this corner is blocked or the path to get there complicated, there will be problems.

Look at @irrelevant´s settlements. They are very nice. You can also look at some of mine, a bit more chaotic but quite efficient. I do not build so many barns and markets as he does, but still much more than you do.

A Nonny Moose

Proximity seems to be the answer to nearly everything.  The more distance the bannies have to walk the slower the whole shebang.  As an experiment today, I tried a settlement far from the cart (hard mode) and in the end everyone froze to death because the housing didn't complete in time due to all the breaks going back to the cart for food and tools.

I restarted from an initial save and laid things out much closer and things went relatively well.

I have only one real problem and that is the placement of the cart of arrival.  The random choice often seems rather strange and even silly at times.  Perhaps it should always be skewed to be relatively near the water source.
Go not to the oracle, for it will say both yea and nay.

[Gone, but not forgotten. Rest easy, you are no longer banished.]
https://www.haskettfh.com/winterton-john-hensall/

rkelly17

Quote from: A Nonny Moose on January 28, 2015, 10:30:04 AM
I have only one real problem and that is the placement of the cart of arrival.  The random choice often seems rather strange and even silly at times.  Perhaps it should always be skewed to be relatively near the water source.

My observation is that the cart is always at the centre of the map--unless, of course, said point is in an unbuildable location. I could be wrong, but this is what I have seen. If the river is significantly off-centre that will make things difficult.

I like to make my cart a monument to the pioneers in the middle of a park or square, which often didn't work until the buildable cart mod.

AzemOcram

#24
I recently had to try several ways to keep population growth under control. I had a settlement of over 600 lose 100 population because they wanted to stay inside and have more babies than work the orchards (they worked the 16 fields OK). I rage quit today when they decided to set fire to a neighbourhood and then I had homeless people, starving people, and unharvested crops. I allocated 140 workers as farmers, had all 15x15 farms and dense orchards, and had 50 labourers before everything went to Hell in a hand-basket. I might make a let's play from last night's save file to see if I can turn things around or if starvation is inevitable. I just need a good microphone first.

I think I should just tell them to upgrade all my townhouses (I already upgraded all my town abodes) and keep the glass factory off. That way, there will be fewer houses than families and anyone living in those townhouses will move to one of my bunk houses.

--Ocram

realm174

#25
Once again, thank you very much. I've made some changes, now I'll just wait a few b-years to see how that goes... For one thing, I've added a few marketplaces. At this point, there's no area that is not covered by at least one marketplace. I've also cranked up the number of vendors. The very first effect I noticed is that my barns are not all full (some are, but most of them aren't, which is a nice thing!)

As for the bit about which crop to put in fields, I have to agree. I can't remember where I had read that, but in any case, after watching those fields for a few seasons, i'm seeing no significant change in the amount of food coming out of those. So I'll keep my variety as I originally had it, only because I like it. :)

The fruit situation has changed quite a bit. Looks like some of my fruits ended up being eaten I guess, because checking the inventory, looks like I have not a whole lot. (I also had 2 taverns set to make wheat ale, but that's apparently not a good idea, so I switched those to different orchard fruits). With the addition of those markets, my taverns are all within one or the other circle so that should help that part.  I'll build more houses near the fields and see if that helps.

With all those changes, it might have been a better idea to just restart from scratch, but I like a nice challenge... so I'll just make those little guys suffer for a couple of years while i pull my head out of my butt.. LOL!



Nilla

Quote from: AzemOcram on January 29, 2015, 03:51:21 PM
I recently had to try several ways to keep population growth under control. I had a settlement of over 600 lose 100 population because they wanted to stay inside and have more babies than work the orchards (they worked the 16 fields OK). I rage quit today when they decided to set fire to a neighbourhood and then I had homeless people, starving people, and unharvested crops. I allocated 140 workers as farmers, had all 15x15 farms and dense orchards, and had 50 labourers before everything went to Hell in a hand-basket. I might make a let's play from last night's save file to see if I can turn things around or if starvation is inevitable. I just need a good microphone first.

I think I should just tell them to upgrade all my townhouses (I already upgraded all my town abodes) and keep the glass factory off That way, there will be fewer houses than families and anyone living in those townhouses will move to one of my bunk houses.

--Ocram

Can't say much to this. I haven't played the CC mod since I tried one of the very first versions a little bit, but as far as I know; the only way to control the growth of the population, is to build less houses/close houses.

I can also give you another advice if you have problems to harvest all the crops/fruit. (Of cause you also must have houses, barns and markets close enough) ; Don't make the fields that big. If you split those 15*15 fields/orchard and let 2 farmers work on each, they will harvest better, than 4 farmers on that bigger field/orchard. The time for harvest at the orchards is very short, and it generally starts later than at the fields, so it is always a good idea to micromanage the orchards. Start the harvest earlier manually or/and increase the number of farmers to harvest. If I have orchards (don't really like them, so I often buy the fruit instead) I grow beans close. Often the beans are all harvested, before the orchard harvest start. I close the bean fields and send the farmers to the orchards,. That works generally quite well.

But if you once got to the point, where your stores are almost empty, it is hard to avoid the bad circle of starvation. If there is no food at the closest market/barn, the people will walk around until they find some, instead of working. This means that the productivity goes down and that means; there will be even less food and that means; the people have to walk around even more looking for it...................

A Nonny Moose

@AzemOcram   Marco, I use 10 x 10 fields and generally one farmer can handle it, but two would be better.  I dropped down from 15 x 15 when I noticed performance was poor.  A 10 x 10 will give you 700 food units.  So, my lad, also lay off the orchards as food units.  I use them strictly for booze, and export every drop.

John.
Go not to the oracle, for it will say both yea and nay.

[Gone, but not forgotten. Rest easy, you are no longer banished.]
https://www.haskettfh.com/winterton-john-hensall/

Paeng

Quote from: A Nonny Moose on January 30, 2015, 08:32:25 AM10 x 10 fields and generally one farmer can handle it

Yep... recently I even switched to 120s fields (e.g. 15x8) for fast crops and 90s (e.g. 15x6) for slow crops - I figure it's better to occasionally lose a few units than having the farmers constantly under-achieve (like finishing harvests by late summer/early autumn)...

Quotealso lay off the orchards as food units.

Except in your early towns - always have some early orchards to support the diet (health) with fruit.
Once you can import enough fruit, cut or convert them (e.g. for booze production)...

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irrelevant

Berries are fruit too. I let my guys have the berries, and brew ale with the orchard fruit. Seems to work fine, health-wise.