Oolitic is on a small mountain map, harsh climate, hard start. I'm going for Mountain Men, Isolationist, and One with Nature, with no schools, smiths, tailors, or markets. I have no idea if this even is possible, but we'll see. ;)
At least I'll have plenty of iron to build a quarry. :)
Going to need extra choppers, foresters, gatherers, and fishers, Normally I would double up on hunters, but the leather would clog up the barns.
Now that was interesting. You can see there was a deer kill down in the lower left center (circled in red). But the only hunter cabin is in the lower right center. I guess Ollis switched over from laborer to hunter after he delivered stone to the cemetery under construction there just below the deer kill.
WOW, this one will be tough! Interesting! Looking forward to see how it will work.
As you know from my last game, without schools, trading ports and farming; that part works quite well. I don't think the lack of markets will hurt much in this game. The lack of clothing isn't very bad in a normal game. With a harsh climate hurts a bit more, but I think it's still manageable. Short distances between houses and working places are more important than usual, because they will go home more often in winter to get warm. What I don't know is the influence of no tools. As I remember you tried this in one of your games and the productivity wasn't as bad as you might think.
So yes, I think it will work, if you go on slow and careful.
@Nilla Slow and careful is the plan. None of the conditions by itself is really that hard, but all of them together....
Already regretting the hunter somewhat. Summer 5 and I have 58 leather in storage. It's just going to keep accumulating. But a hunter is such a good food producer. Not sure whether I'll build more.
If I don't I'm going to need some well-sited fishers to compensate.
Uneducated, tool-less fishers are really awful.
Year 10 - pop 46
Got the quarry up, at least there now will be a trickle of stone.
Takes 18 whacks to fell a tree or turn a rock into stone/iron. Twelve whacks to turn a log to firewood, 15 to advance a construction project one notch. I think about 200 whacks in the quarry to get one stone.
Anyone know how many it takes if the worker has a tool?
You know, Ive watched several times, but never counted. Seems like 5 or six.
Edit: six - four to fell it and two to make logs. :)
It's always nice to ask you questions,
@irrelevant. Every time I see something, that I probably had done in a slightly different way, you have an answer that makes perfect sense. Here we go again:
The homes you build at the quarry; why don't you build them as close to the entrance of the quarry as possible? I mean, with no clothing, the people will have to get home to get warm several times during the winter and the productivity is miserable with uneducated anyway.
I thought about what you would do with the leather, too. Extra leather barns? I suppose it's the only thing to do, if you want to keep your hunter(s) and not changing your mind about tailor/trading port.
@Nilla in general I like to build small structures like houses and small stockpiles along rivers and streams, and backed up against hills, and save the spaces closer to the center for larger structures like hunters, foresters, herbalists, and gatherers. I was thinking of putting a hunting cabin and/or another forester next to that cemetery. Also, if I start with housing along the streams and hills, if I later wish to add more housing, it is easier to place it than if I had already used the prime spots and had to fit new houses into the odd leftover shapes.
There have been times when I have placed houses in prime spots that I later wished were vacant. So I no longer worry so much about min/maxing the work-home distance, and just try to use the available space efficiently. As long as I have housing nearby, I'm good with that.
Hopefully I won't come to regret this casual choice. Maybe with conditions as hard as I have chosen, I should be min/maxing, but my bet has been that I don't need to.
The production at the fishing dock is so bad, I hesitate to build more of them. The fishers are just barely feeding themselves. I'll just build hunters, maybe fewer than I normally would, and build the storage necessary for the leather. As soon as I get to 300 (Isolationist), I'll build a TP and sell leather and iron.
Early Autumn 13 - pop 60
Mountain Man clock started running in early spring 12
Spreading out with a house first, then a forester, then another house, then a gatherer, then a barn and another house. Rinse and repeat, with bridges as needed. Producing just enough stone.
Going to cross the river before long, to reach the promised land in the fourth image.
It looks very good to me.
I can see you couldn't resist to build (at least) one more hunter's hut. I hope the leather doesn't fill all the barns.
Those 8 toolless, uneducated stonecutters; how much stones do they produce in one year?
@Nilla probably won't make another one. Getting about 40-60 leather/year total. That's around 7-10% of one barn full/year. I can handle that....for now anyway. ;)
When I get to the point where I have lots of laborers, I'll make fishers instead, despite their miserable production rate.
If I remember correctly, I got 25 stone from the quarry last year.
Edit: 24 stone last year. Currently have 264 leather, less than 10% of my total barn storage.
Edit: well, now it's up to 32-36/year, still with 8 cutters. The 24 must have been the first year with 8.
Late Summer 16 - pop 74
Replacing the original hunter with a gatherer. Need the food, don't want the leather. I have enough guys now to stick eight of them on fishing docks to produce 900 food/yr. :-\
The big problem now is mushrooms >:(!! 2827 of the damn things, taking up ~30% of my storage. Normally I trade them away.
For the next few years, I plan to concentrate on building up as large a reserve of food and firewood as I can manage. Before I reach pop 300 (the threshold at which I can build TPs), I expect that my food production will begin to fall short of requirements, and I will begin to rely heavily on stored food.
How much food do you plan to store? In my last town I had about 40 000 before it started to get down. As you know; that worked fine, but with your toolless Bannies, I would recommend more.
It's certainly also good to store a lot of firewood and/or logs. I had some problems as the population got close to 300. There were some problems to get enough logs.
I would also store enough stones and logs to be able to build enough houses in order to expand fast, as you start to live from what you have stored.
I'm looking forward to see how you will make it.
@Nilla I would love to have 40k, but I don't really see how that is possible. I'm trying to see if I can get 20. I'm going to have to try to plateau my pop close to where it is now, 85. I'm not sure this is even possible, but food production is only around 10k now. It will be difficult to expand much without adding pop. Maybe I can induce a pop die-off, and recover at a lower level, without impacting food production. If I simply quit building houses, that might do the trick. Currently have 24 houses, with two more fake demolished and another 72% complete.
Course, if I can do all that and get 20k, there's probly no reason I can't keep doing it and get 40k ;D
Logs and firewood don't seem to be a problem for now, producing ~500 logs, using ~270 logs to produce ~800 firewood. Producing ~35-40 stone at the quarry with 10 stonecutters.
I'm growing doubtful that I will actually be able to get the isolationist achievement.
Year 20 - pop 88
The big problem I'm having now is a local one, a byproduct of having no markets. There is not enough food on the west end of town. Most of the food production is on the east side, and consumption is skewed to the west. I have resorted to fake-demos near the quarry. I have to have them someplace, but this is making it harder to accumulate stone.
The barns are filling up, from east to west. I figure I'll let them fill up, and as new ones are required, I'll build them on the west end. It's so inefficient having the laborers pick up the food produced by the gatherers on the east side and carry it to the west, but it seems to be what is called for here.
Turns out, that was not such a good spot for the quarry. :-\
Year 25 - pop 83
Very intense micro of new construction, fake-demos, and family creation.
Food on its way up to 25k, maybe I can push it to 40k after all.
This may be the most interesting and significant thing I have learned in some time.
I have been using the fake-demo houses near the quarry to create couples, and then to relocate the ones capable of child-bearing to the new village across the river. I un-demo'd a house and a new couple was created. I then re-demo'd the house, knowing that this couple would get the next house that opened up. In no hurry to build another house, I unpaused and let the game run.
In a couple of months, I noticed that I now had three homeless bannies rather than just two. I looked at them and saw that the third one was age 0.
The couple with no home had a child. Before this I had assumed that this was not possible, that having a house was a necessary condition.
Quote from: irrelevant on November 15, 2015, 08:50:52 AM
The couple with no home had a child. Before this I had assumed that this was not possible, that having a house was a necessary condition.
I have seen this, too. As far as I understand it; they need a house to "produce" the child (probably to shy to do it outdoors). If they only have a house one brief moment, the child will be born some month later. If they have a house or not to that time doesn't matter.
But what is your reason to found couples this way anyhow? I can understand that you want to relocate them to the new area. But why this complicated way?
I've been thinking a bit about the 40k food. I have checked it again and I had more than 20 000 food left in my stores as I reached the 300, so it might work with less. My people had tools, so I suppose they produced a bit more than yours, but if you let the population grow as fast as possible from the time they must "eat from the stores", I'm sure you can make it.
@Nilla I want to check out the couple's demographics before I give them a house in the new development. If they will have children, I will put them in the new area (by finishing a nearly-completed house there), which I expect will have plenty of food. If they will not have children, I leave them over by the quarry, which has had problems with food for the past 10 years.
Here's the problem now. I have 31 houses. I will need maybe 80-85 to get pop 300. That's another 50-55 houses, 400-440 stone. Plus stone for barns, foresters, gatherers, and choppers. Plus 80(!) more for at least one TP.
I now have 222 stone, with a trickle coming from the quarry. As the pop grows, I can put more workers into the quarry, but it will never make more than ~80/yr or so. There is some surface stone left still, around 210 in easily-accessible areas. In that same area I will need to build two each additional hunters, gatherers, and foresters, that's 72 stone. Plus six more barns to give storage space for 50k food, and four more choppers, that's another 128 stone, 200 total. That would bring annual firewood production up to ~2400, enough to support maybe 40 houses. Ugh (3000 firewood currently in storage).
I could reduce the stone (and firewood!) requirement by building boarding houses instead, but that would add a whole new level of micro. But it would cut the stone requirement by ~150, and the firewood requirement by a huge amount. This could be the way out.
Year 28
35k food. That part is going well, anyway.
Yes, clever! Some boardinghouses may be a good idea. You are right; the micromanagement is painful. But in this case you mustn't forget, that you don't have only boarding houses like we had in that challenge. That will probably make it a bit easier.
I agree; the food situation seems to be under control, but I would be worried about the firewood situation, too. Not only that you have to build more choppers. My problem, as I got close to the 300 was logs. I had to manually mark more or less every mature tree I could see, to get enough logs for houses and firewood.
@Nilla yes, more choppers, working on that now.
The boarding house idea is problematic, such big chunks of real estate that they require! Plus, a BH actually costs more logs and stone than 5 houses. BH is 100 logs, 45 stone; 5 houses are 80 logs, 40 stone.
Between my wife quitting her job and moving back home full time :) :D, and my job getting more active with year-end approaching, I have far less time for Banished >:( :(
Year 37 - pop 146
Halfway to Isolationist. Essentially, all I need is 6 BHs full of guys. I think I can do that.
9500 fuel and 52,000 food.
Year 43 - pop 303
Isolationist!
But food is critical at 6334. We'll see what I can do here. Build TPs, trade firewood, leather, and iron for food, but will it be enough, and fast enough?
Nice :)
year 45 - pop 275
Have had considerable starvation, which really isn't such a bad thing. If the pop drops far enough, I can get some trading going and build food back up. Build a town hall so I can see WTF is going on! Then do a pop blitz to 400.
If food (or fuel) gets really ugly I can always fake-demo houses, that would help some.
@Trizeropz thanks! This is rough!
Great! I knew you would make it! Congratulations!
What was the reason for starvation? I know, not enough food, but I mean; Didn't you have enough to sell? Were there not enough boats selling food?
You say you would sell leather, iron and firewood. Why not venison?
Quote from: Nilla on November 21, 2015, 03:23:28 AM
Great! I knew you would make it! Congratulations!
What was the reason for starvation? I know, not enough food, but I mean; Didn't you have enough to sell? Were there not enough boats selling food?
You say you would sell leather, iron and firewood. Why not venison?
Thanks
@Nilla , but I still have not reached the final goal of One With Nature, which requires pop 400, and I'm unsure whether I can make it now.
I didn't take seriously enough your advice about firewood, I'm producing only about 2000/year, and this is not nearly enough (I should have done some more calculating before I exploded pop to 300), it doesn't even cover heating the houses I have.
Producing ~15,000 food, so I'm in a hole there now as well, and I've traded away much of my iron (probably have gone too far there already) and leather. I had been so focused on getting to 300 and building TPs, I didn't adequately consider what would happen after that. Looking back, I should have built 4 more BHs instead and pushed on to 400. I probably would have made it.
But now, I need to triple my firewood production in order to have enough to trade. I'm getting ~80 leather, but that is just a drop in the bucket. I'm also getting ~3600 venison, which would trade up to 10,800 food.
I didn't trade venison at first because by the time the TPs were up, the venison was already mostly eaten, and what remained was scattered around the map. I didn't want my traders to be wasting their time picking up 30 venison here and there, but now that's exactly what about half of them are doing.
Still considering what I am going to do now. One option is reverting to an earlier save and trying to push straight through to 400. I'd rather not do that though. The only other option is to close down a bunch of housing and collect all the food into the TPs, induce some starvation, and drop back down to ~150 pop. Trade for enough food to create another large surplus, and then boom again. Sounds like something
@Nilla would do. ;)
The earlier starvation I think was due to local food shortages on the western side of the map where the quarry is. Total available food was under 1000 for many months at a time, and even with buying food, now it never gets above more than 3500 or so, even if I manage buy 10,000 food from a single merchant. And now there isn't enough firewood to do that very many more times.
Year 46 - pop 141
Induced starvation. Back down to a manageable pop. Going to build up food and firewood, then push for 400.
Did manage to buy a bit of stone while that was going on, so I won't have to work the quarry for awhile. The big challenge will be making more choppers while preserving 47 fake-demo'd houses :o :( >:( ;D
Now I see the way forward. It's time to forget about gathering food, and concentrate on producing firewood. Need a couple more TPs and lots of choppers. Over my past few towns I've developed a dislike of trading, but that is what is necessary here.
I've also figured out how to build new structures when you have a lot of houses fake-demo'd. You simply recover all the houses, build all your projects at once, then re-demolish the houses. It's inefficient, but far better than watching all the houses to make sure none of them get actual-demo'd. ;D
Year 54 - pop 256
Last year 8 BHs burned a total 224 firewood, 28 each. That's much less than I had thought.
Year 61 - pop 401
One with Nature done. Food and fuel were a rollercoaster the last 7 years. Never really did get close, but it always looked like it was going to.