Seeking Methods On How to Manage My Population Better

[Nilla]

As you might have noticed I have a habit of writing long posts but I think I´ve found my superior!  And don´t feel shy to ask things again. I´m happy to practice English. I need to practice English! My Australian son-in-law will come to visit in two weeks (together with my daughter who also lives in Australia but of course, speak Swedish and German our other two family languages). 

I rarely look at YouTube Banished videos. I did look at a few (very nerving guys) before I bought the game, to see if it´s something for me to buy. I rather like to explore things myself and make my own mistakes. Rather spend ½hour playing than watching videos. But that's me. I´m glad you´ve found a series that you like. and that helps you.

I must ask you what was your purpose as you tried and failed your "fake demolishing"? I don´t think the time was crucial. A couple will always stay together, no matter what. As I said they may live in different houses but are still a couple. No way you can "mingle and mix "them. And what would you achieve if you would have siúcceded?

So if I want to try to do some pairings and play match-maker I should look for an 11+ year old male student still living at home in one house and find a single older female living alone somewhere else, and then build a new home to accommodate them? Same for a 20yr+ single male living alone and either a single adult female with or without kids? How about a single middle-aged male and a single middle-aged woman, them too?

You can try to play matchmaker but the bannis will not always do what you want. Again look at the girls. Build a house for each girl who finishes school. She will find herself a mate. If she´s 17 it may be a 10-year-old student or a 37-year-old widower with 3 children. It´s her choice that you can´t influence anyway. Single middle aged people seldom live alone. It may look that way but if you find one, you will probably find his/her mate also living alone in another house. You can easily force these two together again with fake demolishing one of their houses but never force them to move in with someone else. If they really do live alone there will be no suitable mate to pair with.

But principally the same rules for everyone called "adult"; a 10-year-old uneducated or 80-year-old widows; as soon as there´s a free house and some single of the opposite gender with less than 20 years age difference; they will hook up!

A question about boarding houses: In my previous game when I got my first Nomads, I forgot to build a boarding house for them though I did have a pre-built home waiting for them so I guess it didn't matter much in that case. In my current game after building the Town Hall I built a boarding house too (I remembered this time!). My question is: While I have been waiting for Nomads to arrive (they still haven't come yet) I have had several students become adults; how come they are not moving into the boarding house temporarily? I know it's not ideal, but they still can have children in a boarding house just at a slower rate is what I hear. I was expecting to see citizens who were ready to move out, make use of the boarding house since it sits empty.

No one that isn´t homeless will move into the boarding house spontaneously. You can use it to establish new couples but it´s tedious and will seldom work the way you think. If you have many young adults living at home (Young adults not students!)  and not yet enough houses for all of them you can give it a try. "Demolish" the houses where families with young adults live. The homeless families will move into the boardinghouse. When you undo the demolishing, some of the young adults may stay in the boarding house/move into the "undemolished" house while the parents stay. But it may also happen that the whole families will move back as it was. A rather annoying insecure way to make new pars.

Once there was a challenge; to use no other houses than boardinghouses. It works but I will never make it again. It´s not true they have fewer children or at a slower rate. It´s exactly the same as in a normal house. But very tedious. I will see if I find the challenge and a link to it. Here it is. Not so easy to find: http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=792.45

[theonlywanderer]

Just a suggestion....   the whole point of a game like banished is solving the puzzle.    Instead of asking how to manage your population, you should be downloading the charts and other information out there that gives you information about the pieces in the game.    That is the kind information I found to be lacking in the vanilla banished.   How long does it take to age, how much food does a child/student/adult eat, how many tools are made from how many resources, how much fuel does a house use per year, on and on.   Although this could be considered part of the puzzle, it's actually relevant information the game should have provided.   Maybe it does provide this information and I just never found it.

What I did find was Colonial Charter and all it's charts and some websites that detailed out all the production numbers and storage numbers and everything else needed to fully understand the pieces in the game, even for vanilla version.   Using that information, it then becomes your task to solve the rest.  How do you want to build and mange your town?  That's the entire object of the game, to figure that part out.

You likely will fail miserably for quite a few attempts, it's fully expected.   You start to learn what to do and what no to do through trial and error.    So, don't give up your experience by having others solve the puzzle for you.   Once you learn the solution that works every time, you will start to try other things.   IE... try to only trade for seeds and animals and nothing else.  Those are the two things you can't get any other way but trade.     Do the opposite and try to become a trade only society where you don't grow food or raise any animals.   Become a mining only town.  Etc, Etc.

Lots of ways to enjoy the game, so don't spoil the fun by letting everyone else solve the puzzle for you.   Besides, everyone is so different, you'll just be overwhelmed with the suggestions.   Be overwhelmed by the charts and information instead.   Start your own spreadsheets and enjoy the mystery.

[Nilla]

Wise words @theonlywanderer. But it also brings you a lot to discuss different matters with other players along the way.

[theonlywanderer]

Absolutely, I understand fully how people enjoy discussing all aspects of the game.   I'm merely speaking to somebody that is new to the game.   Don't deprive themselves of the main point and accomplishment of the game, solving the puzzle.   Once you solve the puzzle and can pretty much make it through even the hardest of starts, well, it's fun then to discuss other game strategies with people to spark some new ideas.

[brads3]

i'm still trying to figure out this RUBIX cube and you want me to do what....?

[theonlywanderer]

@MarkAnthony

Having said what I said, I will go against it for this one other suggestion since it seems to be the main focus of your thread here.    I've seen other people obsessed with trying to micro manage the bannies on a personal level and I've yet to understand the purpose.   The truth is, you really cannot control them individually despite how hard you try with all the hacks like fake demolishing and reclaiming homes or anything else.   It's more an illusion of control and waste of time that you could be spending on better management elsewhere.   During the countless towns I've played through, I have yet to find a single reason to pay much attention to who is where or how many is in each house.   You won't force anyone to move out and you won't force anyone to move to the correct house next to their job, or anything else.  It will all just kind of happen at some point as you build new houses.    One trick everyone said to use occasionally was to clear all jobs and make everyone laborers.  Wait some unknown time period and put all the jobs back and they will sort out their homes a lot better.  I got roped in to trying that trick, but don't recall it ever working that great.  My best advice here is to not be so obsessed about trying to micro manage the bannies.

There is no set level of how you grow the population of your town.   You can grow slowly, but you risk die off of workers if you have a school since students take awhile to educate.  You can grow fast, but risk food shortages if you don't prepare for that.  You simply have to solve the puzzle your own way.   It can be solved so many different ways which is why people continue to play this game.

I like to grow fast so I'm always on the edge of needing more food, more tools, more fuel...more more more.  I also like complex product chains, the more the better.   They provide jobs and buildings to fill a town and make the game a little less repetitive for me.   I also like to occasioanlly play in what I call sandbox mode, which I use debug to set free build, no starvation, etc..  and just design a town for the sake of it without worrying about the game play.

Hopefully I've given you some reasonable advice without actually guiding you as to how to solve the puzzle.   It's kind of tricky to do.   

[CathyM]

Thank you, Marc Anthony, for asking all these questions, and Brad and Nilla for your detailed answers! I'm also a newbie, and this discussion really helped me understand better how some of these processes work!  Now I'll have to start a new game and see how the dynamics you describe play out.

And Marc, I've done the fake demolition a lot because it seems I get a lot of single male residents (now I understand a bit more why) - sometimes it goes bad as you describe (I don't wait for all the goods to be gone, just one percent less), but when I'm being stubborn, I kick them out again and again, and often on the 3rd try, I get a new pair... not sure why, but when i have what seems like 50 or more couples waiting for housing, I just can't stand when the singles show up! I also have tried "demolishing" a house w/a single male and one single female... sometimes they pair up; sometimes one of them goes somewhere (at 10 years on, town is too big for me to see where)...

[Artfactial]

I've seen other people obsessed with trying to micro manage the bannies on a personal level and I've yet to understand the purpose.   The truth is, you really cannot control them individually despite how hard you try with all the hacks like fake demolishing and reclaiming homes or anything else.   It's more an illusion of control and waste of time that you could be spending on better management elsewhere.   During the countless towns I've played through, I have yet to find a single reason to pay much attention to who is where or how many is in each house.

Let me try to explain that from someone who comes into the game from the other side. I could care less about charts and perfecting the puzzle. The reason for keeping track of your Bannies and micro-managing some control over them (which is indeed hard, but not entirely impossible), is one core  force: The narrative.
I want to care about this town and its people I painstakingly planned and built, I wan't to have reasons and characters.
If you take that out of the game, or ignore it, indeed it becomes more about the numbers and charts. Which is not why I play a city builder, especially not Banished.

I do enjoy the puzzling and growing, but it takes second priority. I can well understand these are no viable reasons to you though.

[Abandoned]

My game play is story based and is the reason at the beginning I pay closer attention to the characters. Later in the story it is only main character I keep tract of.  My main characters who are educated usually are in the same houses they start in and thus are usually still working at those jobs that are best with skilled workers - the first blacksmith and tailor that are built.   I very rarely spend time and effort fake demolishing trying to get them where I want them.  I pay closer attention to production numbers when testing new mods or again for storytelling comparisons.  Time spent to get 10 more of this or 10 more of that to have sit in storage barns and warehouses is not my idea of fun, unless it is the set goal of the story.

Story telling is also the reason I use the 1:1 aging mod, for story telling and linking events between different stories. I have an overall timeline.  I do not use an aging mod when playing a non-story map, but I don't do that very often anymore, and it is most definitely easier without the aging mod.

My puzzle solving, if you want to call it that, and challenge starts before the map does - finding a map that fits the location I choose for the story and then selecting the combination of mods that look well together and that will help me reach the goal I have set for the story while building an attractive looking town.  I have few if any problems or conflicts or annoyance with mod list order - certainly no fun at all there.  My style of play is definitely not the usual style of gameplay, but it works for me. And I hope people enjoy reading my blog stories.

[theonlywanderer]

@Artfactial

That's all fine and dandy, there are lots of different ways to use Banished.  However, if you explain your style of playing to somebody actually trying to the play the game the way it was designed and intended, your reasons for keeping track of bannies has no actual purpose in the game, just as I stated.    MarkAnthony is clearly interested in just trying to play the game.   Again, this is why I suggested he focus more on learning the pieces in the game and not getting strategy information from other people.  Too many people have changed the entire focus of the game to some completely different personal way of playing and can confuse people who are just trying to play the basic game.    Again, that's fine, many of us have bent and twisted Banished in to what we want, but we can't forget there was still a design and intention for the basic game.  Within the actual game, no matter what you try and do, no matter how you play, change it up, whatever, you will not and cannot control every aspect of bannies, it serves no purpose in the game itself.    And I would have to question that "Not entirely impossible" part.   Using all the tricks over and over again until you finally get some results isn't control, it's just chance.  Ie... the illusion of control I mentioned.   You may indeed have success in getting Seth and Abigal in the same house after using a hack trick 25 times.   Again, that's not control, it's just chance.   It's certainly not how anyone should explain the game to somebody new.... to start off using hacks in order to beat the game when in reality it has no real affect on the game itself whether Seth and Abigal hook up or Seth and Betty.