Nilla-filling small maps

[moonbelf]

I´m "afraid" that it´s not more but less happiness and health in that mod but I am just about to download and arrange my new modlist. We will see.

Yes I just read through Discrepancy's description of his new mod and I see that health and happiness are going to be hard to achieve. I've downloaded it and will try it out soon.

[Nilla]

I didn´t blog that last game I played. It wasn´t really meant to be a real town. I just wanted to try the new Mexican mod from @kid1293. I played a few years and got some impressions. Since I find it a decent way to act, I told at Kid´s thread what I liked, not liked, and about a possible bug. I also wanted to show a picture of the town. It is kind of extreme and maybe I thought Kid wanted to see such a weird town as well. That was all I wanted to do.

Now, Kid fixed the bug but also changed some production numbers; set the production of the patches down about 30%. Of course, that was a challenge I needed to take. There were also some comments about different things; my building style with only yellow houses. They were supposed to look like some slum. And maybe you´re right @MarkAnthony; it is some kind of slum. When I built the first house, I looked at the colours and choose the one most like the "natural ground", that these poor people could afford. Although I´m not sure it looks like "the blocks". I find it´s more like a large holiday resort with all these corners built like that, just to give as many rooms as possible see-view, so they could charge you a bit more.

The game worked also with 30% less food production. It wasn´t that hard, since I ran many of the patches with only one worker, anyway. Add a second isn´t very complicated. First, I wanted to play 20 years, a nice round number. But it is a nice mod. It´s fun to play with it, so I decided to do one more crazy thing. I rebuilt the nomad hitching post. As you must have understood, I´ve used it frequently in the past, no one can get that large population in such a short time without it. But since it was hard to get enough building materials for houses for every nomad of the last big group (and the young adults from the town), I decided to demolish it.

So I spent a year of preparing; mainly expanding production and import of building materials and make sure that there were not too many adults living at home. A group of 944 nomads arrived. It took more than a year to get houses to all of them and in that time, no no new young couples. So now I´m behind building houses.

I made 2 general big mistakes that increased the lack of houses; I built too few schools and no wells. I wanted this "slum look" of the settlement without any schools in between, so the schools are located in one big mission school centre and a few odd places at the corners. That means that the students need to walk longer to school and graduate later than usual.

I decided to use this old blog; It has the right headline; I do want to fill this small map. But there will be no more nomads! (at least I think so)

First picture
This is the most popular spot on the map.

Second picture
I talked about the cactus fruit in Kid´s thread. The smaller gatherers I´ve tried don´t pick them. The only way I see is to make it manually. I send everyone out every spring to pick fruit. This is how much has grown since last year. Every red spot gives 65 food. It´s still enough to support this large settlement with fruit but as the maps fill more and more, I will need to buy some fruit.

Third picture
From where do all these immigrants come? Are they all Americans who had fled to Mexico because of some environmental disaster?

Fourth picture
Sorry, @MarkAnthony. Your house burned down.  This should be a warning to everyone who plays disasters on and forgets to build/can´t spare stone for enough wells. There were at least 150 homeless and a large number of houses to rebuild instead of building new houses for the youngsters.

[MarkAnthony]

Second picture
I send everyone out every spring to pick fruit.

Third picture
From where do all these immigrants come? Are they all Americans who had fled to Mexico because of some environmental disaster?

Fourth picture
Sorry, @MarkAnthony. Your house burned down. 

(2) LOL,with 567 Laborers how long does it take to clear that whole area, what maybe four minutes?   
(3) More likely due to our current Commander Rebel in Chief.   
(4) I kind of felt like you were trying to evict me all along anyhow.  As you saw in the previous image I was in, I was outside trying my darnedest to catch a refreshing breeze; you wouldn't fix my A/C no matter how many times I sent a request for repair. And now? My home *mysteriously* burns down? Hmmm... Guess the States weren't so bad afterall; I'm heading back! Think I may go slosh around in the swamps or something, 'git me sum gators! 

[Nilla]

Go and get you some ´gators, Mark. But beware, you might lose a leg or two.
And it doesn´t take very long to pick some 1000 cactus fruit. And now some 5 years later I have 1477 labourers, so I guess it´s even faster done, but mainly because the total "wild" area is smaller. But it still gives a good harvest every spring. In fact, there´s no wild area at all left, it´s all forest. I´ve used a little trick in the forest, that I think, work quite good if you want to get a maximum output of logs as well as fruit; I have one normal forester working but also a cactus forester at the same spot. As far as I have seen, the cactus forester only plants his cactuses but also helps to cuts trees. Since the fruit grows where there are cactuses, the forest is full of them this way. Maybe here @kid1293 is a thing to look at; if you cut a cactus manually, you get some water, but the cactus forester doesn´t produce water, same as a gatherer (at least the one from the " Tiny" mod) doesn´t pick cactus fruit. To me, that would be a natural thing to add. (It wouldn´t even make the game harder, rather a little bit easier )

What about the game? The population grows fast, also without new nomads. I´m still behind building houses, but not that much anymore. I still have no wells, just as an experiment and there was another larger fire, not more than about 10 houses this time, but still a small setback. I usually build wells when I play disasters on and I think they pay off. With close wells, there are seldom more than 1-2-3 buildings lost.

The map is now as full as I wanted to build it; still, my 3 forest areas left. But since we don´t need many logs, I think we can buy enough in our 2 big and 2 small trading ports. I will increase the production of pottery and try also to buy some fruit. Now, I´m buying proteins, some tools, coal for tool production, stones and a few logs. So I have decided to go on and really fill the map with as many houses as possible, but still try to have a sustainable settlement, that can survive a population growth. This town is already bigger than my rowhouse game, the first one in this blog series. 

First picture
It´s not much new to show, everything looks pretty much the same but I think I haven´t shown my forest/cactus area. I don´t think I´ve shown the population graph either.

Second picture
This area also looks different than the rest of the map. The school centre, also with a hospital, a very popular mission kitchen serving tortillas and some tool production. You can also see the production numbers. We are self-sufficient on food, fuel and clothing but need to buy tools.

[kid1293]

-reply about cactus-

I have tried and can not see where the game loads the definition of what to cut.
I have tested and, sure, no cactus cut down.

I cleaned an area and set cactus forester to plant only.
Waited a year and cleaned all other things from the area.
I switched to cut and the forester went idle immediately.

Any modder knowing what this is about? Is it in the game mechanics?
Does forester cut only predefined things? Where are they defined?

[Nilla]

This game has come to its end.  It was a very nice game; big but not stressful in any way. There are lags but they are not very disturbing. I´ve been playing a lot 1x speed and here you rarely notice anything, also on 2x speed, it´s not very annoying. It´s certainly a big difference to a town with the same population on a big map. I think the town is "sustainable"; that it could reach the population high and still live this way but we will never know for sure. When the map was full, I tried to set the speed to 10x, just to watch how it goes but now I do notice the lags and 10x isn´t really faster than 2x. The town is at the moment no "self runner". I do all trade manually. It´s only 4 ports, 2 of them small where you can´t trade a lot anyway. But also here, it takes years to get auto trade working: I want to buy enough tools but not fill my (too few) stores with tools, I want to sell some firewood and clay, but not all of it............. I don´t like to fine-tune that now.

I said, that I had too few barns, I never planned to build this big and store so much food. I didn´t want to demolish anything to build more stores, so instead, I spammed the map with small food markets; more or less every spot where one could be built, there is one. It looks odd and I don´t really know how it works in the end. Maybe these odd remote markets, where no one normally gets their food, will hold all fish and apples and nothing will be left for the "normal" markets. I don´t know but again, it takes too long to find out. I can only say; it worked in the way that there´s again some free space in many barns.

I was also a bit careless building water production sites. I didn´t really count like; "5 patches need 1 well", something I normally do. I just put them where there was some small free space. To get a good production at the patches, that has an input of water, you need some overproduction but not this much. I sell water but there´s still too much, so I´ve closed a lot of production sites.

There were two major diseases where more or less everyone was ill but they were both not very lethal; dysentery and influenza.

Not much new to show. Everything looks pretty much the same.

First picture
I don´t think I have shown maps and mods, they are cut into this picture.

This was the first year the production was considerably lower than the consumption. You can see the reason here. 

Second picture
I know, we are not so many "geeks" here on WOB who really want to understand the dynamics of the game but maybe someone is a bit interested. I find the population graph of this game is much more linear than in other big games where the growth is "steeper"; increases more and more the bigger the town gets. I wasn´t that far behind building houses, so I don´t think that is an explanation. Is it because the nomads are average older than young couples who move out? Normally couples get 3 and sometimes a 4 child after the first has moved out, but nomad families already have some kids and don´t get so many more? Or have anyone some other theory.

Third picture
Goodbye Berle. It´s been a pleasure! 5517 inhabitants on a small map, weird! 

Thanks @kid1293 for making this possible.

[kid1293]

You're welcome. Nice pictures. Gave me a laugh or two

[Nilla]

You know Kid, everything is possible and I´m pleased that this town could amuse you, too. I was amused!

After that big town, I needed a little break but not too long. Yesterday I started a new game. I kind of like this series on small maps.  It shows the variety of Banished quite well. I like variation so I choose to go from the fast game at "the land of plenty" to the right opposit. And what in Banished is the toughest, slowest surviving challenge? North IRONMAN is my suggestion. Not only does it have @Tom Sawyers system of happiness, where the "3-star people" idle a lot, they also need the double amount of food and it´s "real-time ageing" slow. I didn´t choose the hardest starting conditions. I have played on "harsh" with a "survivors" start. It works but it makes more fun to play on "mild". Until you have the luck and a merchant bring sheep you need to hunt extremely hard to get enough clothing (I think, the "ironman" Bannis also need more clothes than usual). That´s also not so fun, so I choose the shepherd start.

Obviously, I was getting a bit too comfortable after playing an easy game, so I must confess, that I would have lost two of my start Bannis of starvation if I hadn´t gone back to the autosave. I had forgotten how greedy the people of the first house is and also how stupid some hunters are: The couple who occupied the first house took all potatoes left from the beginning and 100 venison and put it in their house store. Instead of putting the meat from the deer they´ve just killed in the newly built storage barn, the hunters put it on the ground OUTSIDE the bags that are there from the start. I guess, there wasn´t room enough for 100 venison in one bag. The little venison left in the bags wasn´t enough for all homeless Bannis so two of them starved to death just beside two big venison roasts. 

The second time, I fake demolished the bags, so the hunters put the venison in the store and everyone could eat and survive.

Now, I´m struggling with my second mistake; too many children to support. From my earlier "Ironman" games I know, that slow growth, few children, small houses are the key to a comfortable game. And what have I done? Big houses for every couple! Stupid! Stupid! Now there are as many children as adults, so the next nomad couples that are attracted from the small chapel will need to live in small goathis for 3 people (unless the woman is older than 37).

First picture
First, there seemed to be only boys born in this place. At this point, I should have stopped building big houses, if not earlier.

Second picture
But no, also the nomad couple from last year got a nice big house. And now, there are two more children; at least they are both girls, so there´s hope for a next generation..... if we get that far...... but......... I have good hopes; small houses from now on, the spot is nice; several big herds of deer walking through and on that other side of the river, there´s a large gold deposit, so we will be able to buy some seeds and start to farm.

[Nilla]

A few more years, still a struggle with a lot of micromanagement but the settlement prospers. I´ve started to make as many as possible happy. It is a big difference in productivity, so I need to decide; small goathis with not so happy people but only one child or happy, highly productive workers in big houses with a lot of children to support. Nice! My strategy at the moment is to settle younger nomads in goathis outside the village, close to some more remote workplaces and elder women and her husband in a big house in the village centre, covered by all happiness buildings. I want to reduce the number of children. Fewer children to support means less micromanagement.

At this picture it´s September. There are busy farmers (easy to see which farmer lives in the goathi, I have to send one farmer that´s done with her field to help). There are also a lot of labourers, picking wild food in the forest. In winter some farmers go in their workplaces to grind wheat, or make clothing, some bake bread or smoke meat and fish, we have herdsmen, hunter and fisher, produce firewood and tools, we build houses and clear land.

[irrelevant]

@Nilla what mods do you use with the North?

Also, the version I have is from 2016. Where can I find the latest version? never mind, found it

[Nilla]

Sorry, forgot to tell which mods, map ...
Here they are.

[irrelevant]

It's been 3 years since I've played The North, I'd forgotten how hard it was, and how much micromanagement it requires. Everything is hard, food, firewood, tools, coats (and this, with a fair climate). You can't really get going until you import some glass, bricks, and rooftiles. Fun!!

[Nilla]

Yes, the North is very much different; a bit like another game. But you can play very well without entering "modern times" where you need bricks and roof tiles.  (A few pieces of glass might be good early but that´s all). For what do you want bricks this early? Don´t forget; there´s a very small/no penalty for uneducation for many professions. There´s not much need of a school this early. I suppose you want a Town Hall, that´s still missing for an early game. That´s the reason I use Kid´s Tiny. In other games, I´ve also used its hospital, but here I want to test, how the sick people without hospital recover happiness. So I have built no hospital. (You can see, that it works pretty well earlier in this thread http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=3039.msg61526#msg61526 ) But it´s also fun to play "modern times" with all the beautiful red buildings.

Your cows make your life more complicated; with only deer, you can make the coats at the campfire and with sheep you can make your wool coats at the very useful farmer´s workplaces without processing. Maybe it´s a good idea to start the North after such a long time with vanilla game speed but if you want to play with the happiness system you´ll need the real-time ageing Norseman. It´s really fun and you can use the small chapel to attract nomads and grow with immigration, so the speed will not get all too boring. And with that slow-growing speed, you also have more time to develop these more complicated chains. (or Ironman but unless you´re as bald as @MarkAnthony, I would wait with that mod).

Yesterday I played a lot, partly watching sport on my other screen. It looks like I was too busy watching TV to make any screenshots, so I´ll just make some from my town as it is now.

First picture
It was a struggle but finally, I´ve got food production under control. The number of children compared to adults has gone down and I don´t need to micromanage that much anymore; I only let the orchard farmers do other things in winter and of course; still only clearing land and building in winter; using my farmer-labourers. I think I´ve taken every nomad and I "work" with the population: If the woman is young, I settle them a bit outside the centre in a goathi. If she´s a bit older, they get a big house in the village. If there´s a woman in her late 30s living in a goathi. I build a big house for her family in the village and let some youngsters move into that goathi. (Often it´s a single 12 years old, but that´s another matter)

You can see @irrelevant; no brick buildings. I´ve used some glass for the alehouse and I´ve also built my first modern barn that needs a little glass. If you look at the food graph you can see that there was absolutely no need for larger stores until recently. (I now understand why you need your bricks @irrelevant ; of course, you want bigger barns but I can assure you; it works very well with small stores; try it and you will see.)

Second picture
I´ve built one new orchard every year. My plan is to export a surplus of apples and buy other cheap food. I don´t know yet if it works, so far I don´t trade much; You can see the content in my port. I have bought some cheap food when I had the possibility but now I mostly buy some iron and steel tools, if I can afford to buy them.

[MarkAnthony]

I think I´ve taken every nomad and I "work" with the population: (1)If the woman is young, I settle them a bit outside the centre in a goathi. (2)If she´s a bit older, they get a big house in the village. (3)If there´s a woman in her late 30s living in a goathi. I build a big house for her family in the village and let some youngsters move into that goathi. (Often it´s a single 12 years old, but that´s another matter)

Good morning Nilla.

I've read so many posts here in the forums that it isn't too long before I've forgotten all I've read; only certain things stick. Why is it again,  that you use Goathi's the way you do? Thanks.
               

[Nilla]

Why is it again,  that you use Goathi's the way you do?

Only because I play "Ironman".

I don´t want so many children to support. Ironman works quite well if the ratio is not lower than 2 adults-1 child/student. The goathi is for a 3 person family. Young women in a big house mean first 3 children and probably 1-2-3 more after the oldest have moved out. That´s hard to support. But the disadvantage is that the goathi detracts happiness. It´s hard to get people living in it happy. That´s why I prefer to build bigger houses for elder women; there will not be many more children and I have a happy, not much idling family.