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Nilla- back North

Started by Nilla, February 28, 2019, 01:58:56 AM

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Nilla

After playing these two nice and easy games with RKEd, (not without challenges, if you want to play well but no problems to survive) I want it a bit harsher: I decided to go back to the North and play an "Ironman" game. If I remember it right, I have only played "Ironman" with the new happiness system once and it was on "mild", and I had a lot of farms. This time I will try it on "harsh".

I started this game the day before yesterday and played more yesterday and I must confess: I failed! :( I think I played too "aggressive"; I wanted the settlement to grow and took too many nomads. I will make another attempt tonight, this time slower, maybe even on the same map.

I´ll show you some screenshots of my failure.

First picture
Mods, map and settings. I thought of playing "Survivors" but I think "Harsh" is hard enough, so I chose the "Shepherd" start.

Second picture
Everyone is settled. You can see the poor health. They eat mostly meat and some wild blueberries and mushrooms. Here I´m about to build a herbalist. I´m not sure if it´s the right thing to do. It takes a long time, to walk back and forth to the herbalist. If there isn´t one, the working brake is much shorter.

Third picture
The start went well. I don´t think I had this much food in my stores to any time later in the game. I guess it made me a bit over-optimistic; too many nomads, too early.

Fourth picture

I stopped the game here. There is some food in my store but only because I had some in my trading port, that I put back. I see no chances to produce enough food next year. The area is over-hunted, the herds are getting smaller and smaller. The people idle too much to pick enough wild food in the forest in summer and I don´t have enough goods to sell, to buy much food.

I tried to farm. First I bought some rye seeds. I tried it for 4 years; maybe totally 100 rye (2 times 0). I remember that turnips grow a bit better when it´s cold, so I ordered some seeds but this idle farmer is hopeless. It wasn´t a very cold year but he needed to idle and go to the herbalist so often, that when I wanted to start the harvest in August, the field wasn´t even fully planted! And when he finally started to harvest, he harvested 1 (!) plant, then went away to the trading port to idle. When he was back, the temperature has reached the freezing point and very little turnips were harvested. So, I guess farming can be forgotten on harsh, at least as long as you can´t get your farmers happy.

Fifth picture
Production numbers.

These turf houses are really lovely. But I´m not sure I like the happiness detraction. I can understand your arguments for this @Tom Sawyer; that an old fashioned house without windows and furnace isn´t very comfortable but this also makes them quite useless. And that´s a pity. I can´t think of any scenario where it really would make sense to build them.

RedKetchup

Quote from: Nilla on February 28, 2019, 01:58:56 AM
After playing these two nice and easy games with RKEd, (not without challenges, if you want to play well but no problems to survive)

i am so sorry >< if i make it harder... people dont like :P
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Tom Sawyer

Nice to see you back with blogs and also fighting through the harsher conditions @Nilla. Maybe it can give me some fuel to go further with version 7.

The scenario for turf houses is actually a new "Seafarer" start where you settle far west in a rough land with small birch grooves and struggling with wood as a rare resource. Also in North 7, log cabins will need some window glass. That will make turf houses to the best choice there in early game with good warmth and low building costs. The happiness penalty hits you in this Ironman game but normally it's not so relevant at the very beginning where you don't have chapels and taverns. It will be the reason to upgrade your first housing to log cabins and then to chic cottages. This idea is of course not yet obvious with North 6 and the preview turf house. :)

Nilla

Quote from: RedKetchup on February 28, 2019, 08:55:48 AM
i am so sorry >< if i make it harder... people dont like :P

Don´t be sorry, Red. Not every mod need to be survival extreme and as you know, there are challenges when you play RKED as well but in a different way. And I wouldn´t like to play "Ironman" all the time.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on February 28, 2019, 01:36:27 PM
Nice to see you back with blogs and also fighting through the harsher conditions @Nilla. Maybe it can give me some fuel to go further with version 7.

The scenario for turf houses is actually a new "Seafarer" start where you settle far west in a rough land with small birch grooves and struggling with wood as a rare resource. Also in North 7, log cabins will need some window glass. That will make turf houses to the best choice there in early game with good warmth and low building costs. The happiness penalty hits you in this Ironman game but normally it's not so relevant at the very beginning where you don't have chapels and taverns. It will be the reason to upgrade your first housing to log cabins and then to chic cottages. This idea is of course not yet obvious with North 6 and the preview turf house. :)

We´ll see, how long this game will last and if it can give any output. I don´t even know if it´s possible to develop a settlement on "harsh". Have you tried it? Or do you know of anyone who has? And I´m pleased, that you have thoughts about scenarios, where the turf houses make sense. They are too nice to be neglected. But you are wrong about detraction having no importance at the beginning. If the workers produce average 20% more with 5 stars than with 3, it makes sense to assign a priest for 5 adults. With the turf houses, you´ll need alcohol as well. Harder at the beginning but probably relevant, if we settle in the Viking period. ;)

Tom Sawyer

Yes, let's see how it works in the new version but with your Vikings in overseas, you will probably not have another choice than turf houses at the beginning. Just like the real guys also did not have. Ironman on Nordic harsh is brutal for sure. I played it for testing but did not try how big a settlement can grow there. Also, I don't remember if it was before or after we changed the happiness, which made it even harder. Maybe I should do such a test too but actually, watching your attempts is more fun. ;D

Nilla

More fun watching? :-\  Probably!  :P But it's also pretty fun to try this.

I just realized, that I only made one screenshot yesterday and no save at all to go back and show something. Busy surviving! And yes, I think I now have a better strategy to survive this a bit longer. This game has very little to do with my usual games, where I like to grow as fast as I can. 13 years; 11 inhabitants!  :P ??? ::) :-\  I'll tell you a bit about my strategies with the pictures. The map and settings are the same as in my first attempt. I just changed the name.

First picture
This game only had 1 child from the start. As she got adult, she became a much finer house than the rest of the population. In Ironman children get adults/students with 12 and move together with 16 (or maybe 15?). It will take long until she gets a mate.

My first strategy: never more than 50% children/students. But of course, I want the settlement to grow, so as Elleen became a labourer, I let her move out to give room for a sibling in the small goahti. Later I plan to make some of the inhabitants happy. That's the reason that I built the cottage without happiness detraction. It has room for 3 children. That may be a hazard later but I will let people move around between the houses in order to have the number of children I want.

Second strategy: no nomads until we have sustainable support of produced food and export goods.

Second picture
Year 13. Still no more houses. Elleen changed homes for a short time with one of the couples: The consequence; little Montgomer. So now one family of 4 are squeezed together in that small hut while Elleen again lives alone in the big house. Life isn't fair in this settlement!

Another major difference between my first attempt and this is, that I now hunt more sustainable. As I stopped that game, there were often no deer to be seen, here you can see some smaller flocks close and there's also one big flock just outside the picture; there's now deer somewhere close, every time I want to send a hunter.

We are staffed for the summer on this picture. More or less everyone is out in the woods, picking berries and mushroom. (It was a bad, cold year).

Third picture
Here we are staffed for the winter. From time to time I change some occupations and productions.

You can see here, that I build a wagon vendor. It's very early for that and it's seldom occupied. I built it because I had problems to distribute the food I bought. It looks like the trader prefers the barn behind the sheep pasture. It was full of bread and cabbage but in the houses, there were mostly meat and fish. Maybe it was a mistake to build it so far away but I want it there to shorten the ways, the people who picked wild food need to walk.

I've built a herbalist but I'm not using it all the time. I want to find out if it makes sense. My feeling so far, is that it doesn't pay off but I don't like people without stars, so I will continue my experiments.

The food graph looks good. The big drop a few years ago came as I put some food (mostly smoked meat) into the trading post.

Tom Sawyer

It looks good and way more stable so far. Maybe the problem in your first attempt was just caused by the effort in crop farming, buying seeds and all the work without yield on harsh. To not rush with the chapel can also be a good idea. I think in general under extreme conditions, it's risky to spend resources where the effect is not yet worth it. With the herbalist it's probably the same or worse. Will be interesting how you judge herbalism here. I doubt it pays off but difficult to estimate. Also, could be interesting to somehow note or compare Ironman games on Nordic harsh to see how far towns can grow under the hardest conditions and with what strategies. :)

Nilla

I feel much more comfortable in this game. I guess you are right @Tom Sawyer; in such extreme games, you can't afford to spoil resources or working time on anything that gives too little back. But in that game, my main mistake was the growth. I tell a bit more about how it has worked this time to the pictures.

First picture
Oh, no! Dysentery! I have no doctor. You can build a vanilla hospital but I don't find it fitting in these surroundings. The bad thing is, that a person who is sick without a doctor, can never be happy. (At least as far as I saw in my earlier games.) But luckily only this one fisher got sick. Besides, I guess it will take some time until I can work with the happiness.

The main strategy for food is pastures. I process the mutton to smoked meat. It doesn't give much more food but you increase the trade value from 2 to 3. I also process wool and tallow for export. I let one herdsman "manage" two pastures. We'll see later; maybe it can even be 3.

The hunter out in the woods is very successful. I estimate that I hunted about 10 deer each year manually in that other game and the deer got very rare. As far as I remember the hunting lodge is sustainable. But I can't really understand the difference.

Second picture
On your homepage @Tom Sawyer it says that in Ironman and Norseman women can have children until 45. I don't think it's correct. It looks more like 40 is the limit.

Now the village has a chapel and I have taken 1 nomad couple so far.

I have found a strategy for using the herbalist in a way that might make sense; I use it to support a fast recovery of health when I have a full diet. If I don't have all the food categories, I let the health drop but as soon as I get grain and more vegetables, I also let the herbalist work until I have 4-4½ star.  I don't know if it pays off but at least it looks better without costing too much. I'm pretty sure, that it doesn't pay off, to use the herbalist to raise the health, if you don't have a balanced diet.

Third picture
The food graph looks good.

You can see the content in my trading port (There's a lot of different "stuff", so I cut in the rest right in the menu). I order bread and cabbage from some merchants but I don't always order and buy other vegetables, grain, salt, sugar, gold, silver, iron, tools when I can afford it. If someone brings cattle I will also buy it (if it takes too long I will even order some) I only sell to the higher price. My estimation is that I can't afford to sell anything to the lower price in this game.

Fourth picture
The output from my hunter went down. I don't think it's overhunting. I followed the hunter, it seems to be a religious guy because he was constantly on his way to the chapel (idling). It looks like he spent more time on the road than by hunting. After I built this well out in the woods the output has improved. And there might be a fire out there far away from the river, so I guess this well pays off.

You can see at the inventory, that there's a lot of meat. But as I said; that's the strategy. The amount of blueberries and mushrooms will soon increase. A lot of people are out in the woods.

Nilla

I've played with the same strategy for some more years. It works; not too much to report. The first death of old age was an initial settler in his early 50s. Times are hard but that's much earlier than in a vanilla game.

First picture
Overview of the whole settlement. The pastures are good. Sheep and cows don't idle! ;) I´ve said it before; I find the output of milk is low compared to meat. These are more beef cattle. I would prefer milk cows.

It has been a while since there was a merchant with a boatload of grain and vegetables. The health has dropped to 3 stars. I don't use a herbalist here but I will again when I have all kind of food.

Second picture
Food graph: things under control. The drop some years ago came after I built the second trading port.

Third picture
The output of the hunter has gone down a little bit but it looks sustainable and still very good; mostly 700, 800, 900 venison and a few birds.

Tom Sawyer

Yes, these animals are much better workers... never idling, freezing or starving. Only need some hugs from a herder to breed. ;D

I checked my citizen mods and you are right. For some reason the value of max age for childbearing is set to 40 years. I was sure we talked about it and I changed it to 45. But obviously I did not.

The max age of people is set to 70 years with a tolerance of 20, so from 50 - 90 as your have seen in your game. I changed it for a smaller range from 60 - 90 which also means an increased average age of natural death of 75. I want to update both mods but will wait for your suggestions. Maybe you find some more things or others have suggestions how to tweak the people.

Your herbalist strategy sounds reasonable and while I'm looking at the citizen code... There are 2 values defining health state, maxHealth = 10.0 (5 hearts in half steps) and unhealthyLevel = 8.0. Means a citizen counts already as unhealthy with 4 or below 4 hearts and I guess a lower health or even 0 hearts does not have any other effect than the fixed higher risk to get hit by a disease. So, if your herbs are not enough to close the gap up to almost full health together with a good diet, then they are actually useless or even lead to addicted people always on the road to a herbalist.

Nilla

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on March 03, 2019, 04:05:25 PM
Yes, these animals are much better workers... never idling, freezing or starving. Only need some hugs from a herder to breed. ;D
I´ve tried to check out how big difference in growing it is, to employ a herdsman for 1, 2 or 3 fields. It´s hard to say for sure in this game (because of all idling, eating....) but it looks like the difference between 1 and 2 fields is less than between 2 and 3 fields. So I normally, I employ 1 herdsman for 2 pastures. If I have an uneven number, say 5; I use 3 herdsmen. If it´s a warm summer I might take them all away to pick blueberries in July and August.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on March 03, 2019, 04:05:25 PM
I checked my citizen mods and you are right. For some reason the value of max age for childbearing is set to 40 years. I was sure we talked about it and I changed it to 45. But obviously I did not.

The max age of people is set to 70 years with a tolerance of 20, so from 50 - 90 as your have seen in your game. I changed it for a smaller range from 60 - 90 which also means an increased average age of natural death of 75. I want to update both mods but will wait for your suggestions. Maybe you find some more things or others have suggestions how to tweak the people.
In this Ironman game I was quite relieved when no children were born after the women were 40 but in a Norseman game, I want fast growth and would like it, when it was longer. Maybe it could make sense to keep it 40 in Ironman, increase it to 45 in Norseman. I can live with it in any of these ways but it´s good when the description tells the right number.

I don´t really mind a large interval in which people can die of old age. But I find one thing important; the age difference of a couple ought to be adapted to this. I´ve played some ageing mods that reduce this to 15 years. With young couples, it hardly matters but there was a lot of single widows/widowers occupying houses. I´m not sure, how it is here but if people can die of old age between 60 and 90, the max age difference of a couple should also be set to 30 years.

Quote from: Tom Sawyer on March 03, 2019, 04:05:25 PM
Your herbalist strategy sounds reasonable and while I'm looking at the citizen code... There are 2 values defining health state, maxHealth = 10.0 (5 hearts in half steps) and unhealthyLevel = 8.0. Means a citizen counts already as unhealthy with 4 or below 4 hearts and I guess a lower health or even 0 hearts does not have any other effect than the fixed higher risk to get hit by a disease. So, if your herbs are not enough to close the gap up to almost full health together with a good diet, then they are actually useless or even lead to addicted people always on the road to a herbalist.
I think too, that a herbalist has in fact very little importance; it´s more "cosmetics". I´ve looked a bit more careful; with herbs, the recovery is faster when they have a full diet, they will get there without herbs as well but it takes about the double of time. I can also tell when I have 4 harts average, most people have 4½-5 and a few people (often the fisher) less.

One question @Tom Sawyer; if I remember it right you have increased to probability to get a disease if you have bad health; maybe this could be played with a little more to make the gameplay more interesting.

I´ll write about the game later.

Nilla

Why does this always happens in my games! Again I had a bug! People get stuck in the mountain far away on the other side of the lake, where they starve or freeze to death! In our Nordic mythology, we do have the word "Bergtagen" (taken by the mountain), I'm no expert on mythology but if I remember it right, it can happen, that trolls steal people; mainly young women and keep them in their homes in the mountain. Maybe the cunning @Tom Sawyer has added a "Bergtagen" effect to Banished. But in that case, I guess we should at least from time to time see a troll.

It started after a big fire. The 15-year-old daughter from one of the homeless families was the first to be taken. (Yes, a young maiden! ::) ) I didn't look at the other two who went missing; maybe young women as well.

In that other game, I stopped this weird behaviour by building bridges across the rivers and streams. But that was not this far and fully happy people with a normal appetite. I don't think it's possible to build anything that far away with Ironman. The people will turn around to idle or starve to death before they get home again.

So I decided to stop this game. What can I say more about it?

It's very tough to play Ironman on harsh. One of the problems is, that the trade doesn't really work. I had 3 small trading ports but that's not enough for maybe 40 people. To get along, you absolutely need the high price for everything you sell. That means that many merchants are useless, unless you have managed to "buy" some coins from the merchants who want your goods. But that isn't easy, because you also need to order bread and vegetables to get enough of it. I should have built a large trading port. I don't know if it would have helped. But at least worth a try.

I tried to make at least some of the inhabitants happy. I have 6 nice houses all in the area of all happiness buildings except an inn, but when I assigned a priest only 3 adults were happy. All of the children who lived in the area were happy but none of the original settlers. Normally most of the adults should have been happy but I guess the conditions have been too hard for too long: No house at the beginning, bad diet, a long time in a house with happiness detraction........

Yesterday I wasn't sure if I wanted to start a new ironman game or not but I've been thinking and have a few ideas, so I will start a game after I've posted this. I've cleaned the registry and downloaded the game fresh; ON we go!

First picture

Fire!
It's quite annoying but I kind of like that fire is a bad thing, that not only one or two houses are destroyed. I remember how it was in the very first version of Banished where more or less a whole town could be destroyed. I was quite disappointed when it was changed in the patch to this lame version we have now. I could never understand why people complained so much about it, that Luke felt he needed to change it. You mustn't play "disasters on", but when you do you want disasters not minor nuisances.

Now in this location, the well doesn't help. Everything except it was burned down. I guess it's because there aren't enough people close to extinguish the fire. Good to know!

Second picture
Young Symond disappeared into the mountain.

Third picture
There are trolls in more than one mountain on this map. The other two persons disappeared in a different place.

galensgranny

Oh my!  Trolls taking people!  ???   

RedKetchup

oh all the fire thing.... you can have a seperate addon that will make it harder :D
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Nilla

Quote from: galensgranny on March 05, 2019, 02:39:48 PM
Oh my!  Trolls taking people!  ???   
Trolls! Yes, @galensgranny it seems so. I would gladly pass them on to you or @Abandoned. You two would have made much more out of it in your stories!

Quote from: RedKetchup on March 05, 2019, 02:55:54 PM
oh all the fire thing.... you can have a seperate addon that will make it harder :D
I think I have! :) Tom has "improved" the fire effect. And I do like it better this way! You know me, I´m a bit weird!  :-[

Now to my game. I thought I had such brilliant ideas but none of them really fell out the way I thought.

Changed strategy: No effort at all to give the people a healthy diet. Give them the cheapest; meat and fish. Don´t process anything for just a small profit. (This strategy might work but the means didn´t)

Use the mods I have loaded full: Use the Food Merchant from Kid´s Tiny mod, that I have loaded because of the town hall. Use the Tiny Fisher, where you can put two fishers in the same site and so on. Now, the tiny food merchant brings 125 food once a year at the most (population 13). That´s not even enough for 1 Ironman Banni! Each Banni his own port? That doesn´t work! You can put two fishers in the tiny fishing dock but one catches less than the Nordic fisher. You can only use one in the Nordic dock but he also needs less space. I remember that Kid´s tiny mod is good balanced. That´s one of the reason, I´ve always liked it. So no real complaints about this.

Buy only the cheapest food; fish and meat. Sell expensive blueberries and mushrooms, together with the not eatable surplus and export goods, Buy only the cheapest food; fish and meat. But no merchant from the trading dock offers any! Normally that´s good. I would never want to buy it anyway. But here it was part of my survival strategy.

After I´ve realized that it didn´t work the way I thought, I stopped the game. The strategy might work anyway with a slight modification. I will try it but maybe not as my next game.