Nilla- testing DS Industrial mining beta

[Nilla]

I want to start this blog with my first impression of this mod:

IMPRESSIVE! Thank you @Discrepancy for sharing it with us. I very much looking forward to testing it.

There are some ideas to give this game some new challenges, there are good menus and explanations, lovely buildings and sites, many I recognise from earlier versions but there are also new creations, as always @Discrepancy, they seem to look great (I canīt build so much of it yet because I spend most of the evening yesterday just looking around in the menus) and I hope (and believe) that I will stay this impressed after Iīve played a bit longer.

Now again my old dilemma testing mods; should I tell my opinion, make my suggestions and ask my questions (yes, sorry @Discrepancy there will be a load of questions) here in my blog or at the thread about the mod itself? Iīm usually straight forward and personal in my comments. I never claim to say the absolute truth or making requests that I expect being fulfilled. Iīm just communicating my point of view that I hope you as modder @Discrepancy will read and think about, not more, not less. Thatīs why I feel more comfortable in a blog I start myself. But I know, I also have questions of common interest that I think would reach more people at the original thread. So, maybe I will try to make some combination.

Since this is a challenging mod I decided not to make it more complicated than necessary to start with. Itīs a medium valley map, medium start, fair climate. I thought a bit if I should play with or without disasters but I chose disasters on. Since DS has played with health, happiness, diseases (the long row of diseases is simply terrifying) he might as well have played with disasters, and I donīt want to miss that. Maybe itīs a mistake. We will see.

I loaded some additional DS mods and followed the recommendations of load order from http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=2147.msg48149#msg48149. No problems. Why these mods? A few of them; Wagon Vendor and Townhouses are old favourites, the other are mods I havenīt tested, at least not these versions. One of the new challenging things of this mod is that iron production is more difficult. The vanilla town hall needs a load of it and since health and happiness also are tweaked, statistics is crucial, especially by testing it for the first time. Thatīs why I have decided to take a short cut or "cheat" if you want to call it that and add a mod with a townhall easier to build. My favourite is Kidīs tiny. Maybe DS, it would be a good idea to add/recommend a Town Hall with no/less iron. To me, the absence of statistics and inventories early is a not very appealing kind of challenge.

Now some initial questions to what Iīve read in the menus and seen right at the start of the game.
Happiness: Is your happiness system different from the North? It seems so because you are mentioning safety, goods, spirit and entertainment but not health in the info menu. You are also mentioning graveyards as a spiritual location for happiness. They have no happiness circle in the North.

Health: When I read your information it looks like itīs impossible to get 5 stars only with a good diet, that you always need herbalists and doctors to achieve this. Iīve been looking at the health the few years I played. Everyone lost all their hearts very fast but as soon as they had all food categories, hearts are regained, like in vanilla. But itīs very different at each individual. Some still have no hearts, some have full, some something in between. So it looks like itīs possible to reach 5 stars with only a good diet but I guess youīll lose hearts very fast if the house only for a short time doesnīt contain one category. Distribution of goods will be even more important than usual but it looks like you can manage without the "herbalist loop".

Menus I tried these new statistic menus with a built-in map and event log. A very good idea. But it doesnīt really work by me. Maybe I have some wrong graphic settings. The ingame options menu says a resolution of 1920*1200 so it should be alright. I wanted to look at the game not play around with settings so I went back to my usual vanilla way of menus. Whatīs wrong? The text of the event log is shown on the map and not easy to see. Only one event is shown at the same time and if you want to scroll back and see an earlier event, I always land at the edge of the map, annoying. Is it meant to be that way or can I change something to make it work better?

I have more questions, some of them will wait, some I will ask to the pictures.

First picture
Start position, map, settings and mods.

I also made this screenshot because of the fields. You have your own versions of a food field and a textile field following different limits but why no orchards (and pastures)?

Second picture
I like these in-game info menus. Thereīs even some useful information right at the start where you chose a game. Very good. As I said, the list of diseases is terrifying, but also a little amusing, Now we can finally find out whoīs idling a little too much at the trading port when a tradesman/woman is visiting.

Third picture
I guess this is the first building you need for tools. The detraction area is reasonable. I suppose the "rules" are the same as in the North. The important part of the house that ought to be outside the circle is in the middle in front of the house, where the citizen goes to eat.

Here we can see this long menu with the built-in event log. As I said I donīt know if itīs supposed to look this way. I find it hard to read the text on the map.

Fourth picture
I like houses that are possible to put a bit "out of order". These are very nice. Two small flaws: If you put them as I did here, people use to take shortcuts through the walls at the corner. Itīs great that the menu holds essential information about the property but that makes the menu about the inhabitants smaller. I find the important information is left on that menu; the profession, not the names you always get when you open the menu are most interesting. Is it possible, that change it that you instead see the profession first and can scroll to the names?

Fifth picture
The idea that charcoal piles and bloomeries are only to use once and need to be rebuilt is interesting. It will for sure be a motivation to build the bigger more complicated sites later in the game.

It needs some time to get used to the symbols for resources needed to construct a building. But here I donīt understand; "anvil" to construct an anvil? Do I need to buy one to construct it or can it be produced somewhere else?

Sixth picture
A question to the timber/lumber mills. Is there a difference between lumber and timber? I donīt think so but Iīll better ask. There are different building costs for these two mills, so I guess the Timber mill is better than the Lumber yard but for the beginning, it will have to be the easiest, we are short on iron and will probably be for quite some time. I guess that was your intention, @Discrepancy.

[Discrepancy]

Happiness:
The happiness is perhaps similar to the North because really we don't have many variables to influence the citizens happiness apart from the addition of the positives on certain buildings and negatives on others. I have made a similar change to the citizen code file to the North so as to reflect a more noticeable change within a citizens happiness display. Though this might be a little different, and I do not think this mod requires as many foods.
But essentially we are still both using the same variables that were made available to us: the positives Goods (Market), Safety (Well), Spirit (Cemetery) and Entertainment (Tavern), and the negative Detraction (Quarry).
The cemetery does provide a spiritual 'boost' to a citizens happiness, from banished standard, not even a change from myself it has an invisible radius of 30. It essentially gives the citizens the same as a chapel, yet a chapel requires the worker to be active. There is of course the unknown (possible) connection a citizen has to a tombstone... yet so much code is not available to us modders about the true functioning of a cemetery or other variables within the game.
Mostly the happiness functions come directly from the buildings themselves. Within this mod I have utilised them, but not all of my other mods are updated or altered to be the same.

Health:
The thing with health and happiness is I think they are somehow interrelated with another section of code we cannot interact with, for the variable of a minimum amount of food and maximum amount is a variable to happiness and not health. Yet i'm convinced by my own observations it also does alter the health display. I'm not convinced that citizens themselves have a health variable - i.e. I don't think they actually get sick or have any kind of health deterioration or increase from eating more than 1 food group/category, from what I can tell it seems more like labels assigned to different foods to only alter the display, which is a standalone system purely based upon the criteria it fulfills. So like your example of how much variance of food a citizen has available at that time in their home, i think the health flag attachment to herbs is just another label, and whether it acts as a completion to fulfill the health hearts or as a complimentary item, I think you are right that it does only compliment, for a person with a varied balanced diet should be healthy.

The Info panels I was thinking of disabling... as they are very much unfinished, and just as much track my ideas I had before I actually tried to implement them

further to health & happiness,
We have the variables of unhealthy level, unhappy level, and depressed level, these are all themselves seemingly influenced by the star and heart system variable of the given time, it simply produces a known effect to a citizen... which mostly is idling. Early on I think I made it too hard and there was too much idling... but now I believe I have made a mistake in the released version and they are probably not influenced as much to idle.

Menu:
Well actually what you describe is the function of that event log.... sorry, I never included any documentation so all you players are a bit in the dark going into the mod. All I did was overlay the event log... a single event at a time to display over the map, yes the buttons all work fine, but an inadvertent issue is that when you click on them, it registers also on the map so you move the view to that location. I could try to work out how to make the button a different layer over the map though.

So no need to worry about your display as that is fine.
Also, the small inclusion of the 3 professions (Laborer, Builder, Farmer) within that statistic menu on your third picture - if you hover the cursor of your mouse over them, and use the the scroll wheel on your mouse it will scroll through all the professions.

First picture
Yes no orchards and pastures, sorry. I guess because I had always wanted to update DSSV: Production at the same time, it just hasn't eventuated, though they still both work together fine I think.

Second picture
You have highlighted another embarrassing event in my sudden release of the mod yesterday. I had also missed that I had skipped the loading of the new diseases and change to some of the others. I started working on an update and spotted that this afternoon. But yes, the diseases are a scary list, you will get them more often, the likelihood is increased and to randomly within a smaller population than standard banished... but the severity is not as bad and likelihood of debilitating the town is lessened with the changes that I have made to the diseases themselves. I included minor ailments, illness and broken bones to place more of a need into a hospital/doctor function. Though I must make some small alternative models to the big standard hospital.
Yes the interaction and likelihood with traders is also increased.

Third picture
Yes the Smith's Hearth is the ideal for the first things a village will need made by a blacksmith. They are not very fast as they have no anvil and a limited workspace apart from a big hot fire.
But they are resourceful and can make many things.... including an Anvil...

Fourth picture
As I now know how to add the elusive third tab to the residence I will update the mod and move all that text and image into an 'i' info tab.

Fifth picture
Yes many of the blacksmiths will make you an anvil. Purpose built for a blacksmith by a blacksmith. They are heavy, one is all you need for an anvil workshop, but they are also used in the construction cost of the larger blacksmiths now. But you can simply make them at the Smith's Hearth to begin.

Sixth picture
Yes Lumber is the same as Timber, I just prefer the name.

Iron is indeed hard to obtain, there is a very small percentage of Iron Ore upon the surface compared to Copper Ore. A beginning town should only ever make copper tools until they are already mining Iron Ore, as all the small surface deposits will be needed to make iron for iron fittings and other uses in building and construction.

[Nilla]

Thanks for the long explaining answer.

I will keep an eye on the citizens how much they are idling, especially a little later if I can make some of them happy. In the North itīs a big difference, you canīt really miss it. The unhappy farmer is always late, the unhappy fisher catches much less than his neighbour whoīs happy and if you're making many people happy at the same time (whatīs normal) you can notice an increased production in each production site.

Health and happiness are connected (unless youīve changed that aspect ). Living inside the circle of a hospital helps to make someone happy, not healthy. If someone is sick without a doctor, I have seen that he stays unhappy for the rest of his life, no matter what. A long time with no or only a few hearts may also influence happiness, these Bannis are harder/impossible to get happy.

But these are my experience from @Tom Sawyerīs version. We will see how yours work @Discrepancy and if there are any differences.

I believe you are right that health isnīt influenced if you have one or more different food of the same category, but many different kinds of food may have a small influence on happiness.

I like the info panels. Unless there are totally wrong information, I would like them to stay, even if some things that stand there doesnīt exist (yet).

So you mean that the new diseases arenīt loaded, yet. Maybe a relief not to have everything at the same time. Are the higher probability of disease also missing? Thereīs a small nice hospital in the Bryggen theme. Itīs not that expensive to build. I guess that will be my first hospital. It shows no radius but if I remember it right, there is one. I think Iīve used it in a Nordic game.

I`m embarrassed. I only looked at the first 6 products of Smithīs Hearth. Didnīt notice that you can scroll it to get a lot more products. sorr

[Tom Sawyer]

Great you are back with an update and new ideas @Discrepancy ! Also great you make the bannies now unhappy too. It was about time or how was it..

At the moment I will just follow Nillas test flight and then take a look myself.

[Nilla]

At least bronze at the Football WC. The luck that our girls didnīt have against the Netherlands they had against England.

Despite football, I had time to play some more years. Yesterday I studied health and happiness a little more. Iīll tell more to the pictures.

First picture
I want these graphs, some statistics and the inventory, and didnīt want to wait until I have all material for the vanilla town hall, so I built the tiny townhall from @kid1293. You can see that the health rose fast as I got all the food categories but itīs hard to get everyone healthy, it drops very quickly if one person doesn't get them all.

I like the charcoal pile, and all the steps when building it; very nice to look at. Even the terrifying black smoke; no wonder that it has a large happiness detraction radius. As I said, the idea that it needs to be rebuilt after each "batch" is interesting and I guess that it would give some motivation for more continues production ways later in the game. But I also think that it will be a perfect way, to help out temporarily if the continuos production, for some reason is too small.

Second picture
I studied happiness and health. Here we can see one family. Only the youngest is full happy. Iīve seen that in Nordic games as well. Itīs easier to get young people happy, elder citizens who have experienced times of bad diet, no house, no coat and other bad things they canīt forget, are harder to please.

These 4 people are one family; they are supposed to eat the same food, from the same house food store but still the health variates from 0 to 5 hearts. You donīt see it this extreme so often but itīs common that people in the same house have a different number of hearts. I have a theory but I donīt know if itīs correct.

As far as I know, people get home to eat once each month. They take a small amount of each different kind of food in the house store (I have forgotten how much). When the food level has dropped under a certain amount, they go to refill it and take a little of each kind the market (or barn) has to offer. My guess is that sometimes the house store has run out of one (or several) categories when a person eats but the total amount is not yet so low that it needs to be refilled. With this "health detraction system," itīs enough to lose a heart (or two) if that happens once. In vanilla detraction, it has to be several times and they only lose ― heart. It looks like the father always was late to the meals and the other family members (most the children) had eaten all the fruit/meat/vegetables/grain before he got there.

I donīt know if the size of the hous food store has an influence. I have two types of houses with a slightly different size of a food store, maybe I can compare and see if thereīs a difference in health.

I just counted; the health is slightly better in the bigger houses; average 4,79 to 4,58 in the smaller. I guess the deviation itīs not statistically significant. Maybe Iīll count it again to some other point to see if I get a similar result.

Third picture
I think you are right @Discrepancy when you say that the effect of happiness is low. I followed this farmer couple during one winter. There was plenty of labourerīs work to be done. The happy man stopped the work to idle once, the not so happy woman three times. It looks like a person with 3 stars goes idle about once each month. I think itīs more often in the North.

Fourth picture
Here you can see the graph during my happiness testing.

A. I had a Wagon Vendor (with a vendor), a well, a graveyard and a small Bryggen doctor. You canīt see a radius but I think there is one. How big is it @Discrepancy? As I assigned a doctor, happiness rose a tiny bit. I only saw two happy children so I unassigned the doctor again and started some alcohol production.
B. With the same buildings, doctor working and local brew at the brewery happiness rose quite a bit. Now also some adults became happy, but you can see; far from everyone. As we ran out of ale, happiness dropped.
C. After we had some new ale, I sent the doctor away and the happiness dropped. Now thereīs also a priest and many people are happy. The two houses on the picture are outside the happiness building radii, so of course, they arenīt happy. But also some of the older citizens inside are still unaffected. They have had a too hard life to get happy, at least for now. I have seen this in the North as well but sometimes after years, the stars can increase also by them.

This picture also shows my "trick" to bring these people at the fishing dock some health. There is one farmer, one small field and one small orchard. One year there's wheat on that field, one year potatoes. After the field is harvested, the farmer is sent to the orchard to harvest peaches. The small stores now have all categories of food and people in these houses are healthy. Before the farmer moved here there were only fisher with 0 hearts. Does this mini farming pay off? I have no idea. (at least not yet)

[Discrepancy]

So you mean that the new diseases arenīt loaded, yet. Maybe a relief not to have everything at the same time. Are the higher probability of disease also missing?

Correct, none of those changes are active in BETAv.01

Great you are back with an update and new ideas @Discrepancy ! Also great you make the bannies now unhappy too. It was about time or how was it..

Thanks, yes it has been hard to implement though, I'm still struggling to get a good balance. It would be nice to see/add a variable about how long & how much a citizens health/happiness is influenced by the different happiness radius'.

I donīt know if the size of the house food store has an influence. I have two types of houses with a slightly different size of a food store, maybe I can compare and see if thereīs a difference in health.
I just counted; the health is slightly better in the bigger houses; average 4,79 to 4,58 in the smaller. I guess the deviation itīs not statistically significant. Maybe Iīll count it again to some other point to see if I get a similar result.

I believe you are correct in this. I have observed the same thing, and is easily noticeable that the citizens will not have any happiness when living in the small tents I have from DSSV as they can only ever fit 5-6 different goods including fuel, even though there is 10+ different foods in the barn next door.
The citizens don't seem to be programmed to care what they eat, and really have no desire to increase or balance their diet by having a mixture of the different food groups, or even a variety of food, they will fill their house with a purely edible and non-nutritious Water instead.

... small Bryggen doctor. You canīt see a radius but I think there is one. How big is it @Discrepancy?

The Bryggen doctor has a radius of 21. Which is a comparable size radius to the Industrial fire-fighting Well in DS Industry Mining.

You are doing well in the game. Thanks for your testing and feedback


A new update will be coming out hopefully by end of week.
I've been testing and still have adjustments to make to the diseases now I've introduced them back in. It is proving too difficult to last long in the game if a doctor is not built soon enough to treat the constant cases of illness and disease, as well as hampering the timely harvesting of crops. though they aren't serious illness and they won't die, the citizens will not work, or do much at all, even collect the things they need to survive. More testing.

[Nilla]

The citizens don't seem to be programmed to care what they eat, and really have no desire to increase or balance their diet by having a mixture of the different food groups, or even a variety of food, they will fill their house with a purely edible and non-nutritious Water instead.

Actually; I think they are programmed to take a little something from everything available. But they will only go to the nearest market or barn and don't take one step extra to get everything. When they eat they also take a little from everything there is in the store, but if the store is small, there might very well only be a couple of a different kind of food and in your version health drop fast and much each time everything isn't perfect.

I kind of like this. You need to "work" with the distribution of goods even more than usual. It pays off to build larger more expensive houses in a way that normally doesn't have any other use than your own satisfaction to see something nice. And as long as you don't have a herbalist the not working time is not all too long, but I don't think I would like to have a herbalist. That would take the production down a lot; even in this settlement where people are relatively healthy.

I counted the hearts one more time as the health was a bit lower, the result was similar; average 3,9 in the small houses and 4,3 in the larger. I've built a few Bryggen houses with larger stores, and I intend to build some more as soon as I have iron to spare. My guess is that health is even better in them.

Yesterday I started to look at some numbers by the smaller metal worker. There are a few things I'm not so fond of. It's a considerable loss of value by the production of some things. Principally, that's one thing I don't like. It's acceptable in one of these early production sites, so I hope that the production of iron fittings and anvils will be more profitable in better sites, similar to wagon parts and tools that have different recipes; primitive input products you lose value, more advanced input products you gain. That's fine with me.

I haven't run the products long enough to present some numbers but at least I can say: you can produce enough metals to have enough tools, make some iron and iron products to develop your settlement at the beginning. I can also say for sure; it needs many workers. I'm seldom so short on labourers as in this game. And you are so right @Discrepancy when you say that mining doesn't pay off. The iron production at the small mine is terrible! Maybe 30 iron ore for one miner worth 2 each and you need an input of lumber/logs. Maybe it is a lot of work to change the numbers, but I think it's worth it. If you want to develop a settlement that lives from processing iron, I find, it should make some sense to produce the "basic product"; ore. @Tom Sawyer and @RedKetchup have changed the vanilla numbers in their mines. None of these mines is super profitable but both make a decent production; a miner can at least "support himself". I will now see if I can "trick the system" and buy ore. (And maybe that might not be totally wrong historically, as far as I know, the Brittish iron/steel industry imported a lot of iron ore from Sweden in the 19 and early 20th century.)
 
First picture
Impressive black smoke from the charcoal pile. There will soon be a new deer species in these forests; "black deer".

You can also see the production numbers.

Second picture
The happiness suddenly went down. First, I didn't understand what was wrong. But soon I saw there was no ale in my large brewery. I had a lot of "local brew" but it had all been carried to the small meed brewery (it has a tiny happiness area). Why did this happen? I started the production of export-strong-ale in the brewery and it seems like it can't hold two different kind of alcohol at the same time. The traders were too diligent carrying it into the trading port so there were nothing left for the population. It looks like I will need to build another ale brewery for the export brew.

Third picture
Isn't this trading area nice? I also like that you can upgrade the port for animals to a big store when you don't need anymore animals. Great idea.

Fourth picture
Here we can see the recipes for iron and iron fittings in one of the cheaper production sites. Iron smelting is alright, but every variation of iron fittings make a loss of value. I hope the large production sites makes it "better". If not, I would change some trade prices; increase value of the iron fittings will probably be the easiest way.

Fifth picture
That . at the arrow is no good sign. I don't understand what is wrong, I think I've followed your advice by load order @Discrepancy. But there must be some incompatibility. I will check it again.

[irrelevant]

The citizens don't seem to be programmed to care what they eat, and really have no desire to increase or balance their diet by having a mixture of the different food groups, or even a variety of food, they will fill their house with a purely edible and non-nutritious Water instead.

Actually; I think they are programmed to take a little something from everything available. But they will only go to the nearest market or barn and don't take one step extra to get everything. When they eat they also take a little from everything there is in the store, but if the store is small, there might very well only be a couple of a different kind of food and in your version health drop fast and much each time everything isn't perfect.

This is exactly what I observed a couple of years ago when I was studying how our bannies feed themselves. They visit their homes 6x/year, and each time they will nibble on a little bit of everything that is edible in their larders, until they have consumed 14-18 items. If there is a complete diet available, they will get it. It all depends on where they do their shopping. If they shop at a market, they probably will select a wide variety of things.

[Discrepancy]

That missing menu icon for the Assayer building is correct as I hadn't made one.


A lot to think about.

There is a big loss in the Iron Fittings (-2.33/-1.25). I'm looking at it now and don't know why I did that sorry.
I cannot remember, but it doesn't make sense anyway so I will change it...

If I change the output of the Iron Fittings to: unEd=5 / Ed=8 from what it is now of 3/4 there will be a small profit for educated 0.38 per iron fitting made, uneducated will still make a loss (see pic below).

If I increased the value to 3  with 5/8 out, it would generate a profit of 0.4/1.38. Maybe the better option than what I have pictured below.


The ores are another thing. I will have to reshuffle all the numbers I think.... I also don't want it too profitable to sell just the ore without smelting for the value add.

Hopefully you won't be able to buy too large amounts of ore each visit though the Thompson Ore & mineral trader may make it easy as they will come every 6 months with a population over 150.


(edit 1) ...ahhh and I apologize to everyone as I seem to have left the high work values within the mines from when I was testing with a different age/game speed. They will be a lot quicker next update.

(edit 2) I must have another spreadsheet as this one isn't matching up with the mod files at all! ahhh

[Nilla]

First @Discrepancy, no apologies! This is what beta testing is supposed to be. You make the huge job in creating your mods. Noone can expect, that everything is perfect right from the beginning. The least I (and others) can do is to test as thorough as I can and report things I like, dislike, find weird.......

To iron fittings; I donīt find that it should be a big profit to produce them so that it might be an export business. That doesnīt make very much sense to me. But I always compare with fisher; if itīs better to send the worker to a fishing dock than let him produce something, say iron fittings, I would try to buy them, even if itīs a small profit to produce them. But this is my way of seeing things other people have other opinions.

I also agree with you, that it shouldnīt be so profitable to mine that you can consider selling the ore, but as Iīve said; I donīt like it to be too bad either. And you are right; at least now at the beginning, I donīt get much iron ore to the port that imports minerals. Now with a small population, the merchants donīt arrive often, there are a lot of different merchants, so it takes time to "take the orders" and they donīt bring much each time. I will go on and try to buy as much as I can and tell how it works.

I have studied the eating behaviour of the Bannis; the reason was partly what @irrelevant said;

This is exactly what I observed a couple of years ago when I was studying how our bannies feed themselves. They visit their homes 6x/year, and each time they will nibble on a little bit of everything that is edible in their larders, until they have consumed 14-18 items. If there is a complete diet available, they will get it. It all depends on where they do their shopping. If they shop at a market, they probably will select a wide variety of things.

I had it a bit different in mind but wasn't sure. But it also "itches" when I see that family members have so different health. I canīt really understand that. I think, Iīve come a bit further.

I followed what happened to the food store of one house from the time it was filled in late spring until it was refilled in late autumn. The 3 people in that house ate from that store 11 times, a different amount between 10 and 14 food each time. They usually took 1 or 2 from more or less all different food, always getting all categories; totally it was 126 food. It looks like we both were wrong, @irrelevant, they eat more often than 6 times each year but not every month as I thought. It looks like something in-between. But the most important finding was that they donīt always eat at home. The man in this house is a vendor. He walks around a lot on the map. When heīs far away to eating time, he grabs something in the closest barn. Thatīs why heīs less healthy than the wife and their child.

Both of the adults had 0 heart as I started to look, the child was a healthy new-born. Each time they grab some food, they gain 2 hearts if itīs "good food" from all categories, and they lose 2 hearts if itīs not good. The female farmer and the child always stayed close to home and always ate at home. The vendor man also gained and lost stars without beeing at home; taking food where he could find some. I also looked around in the houses and found a second vendor with 0 hearts.

The conclusion is, that you will never be able to get a totally healthy population unless you have all food categories in every store (and that seems quite impossible to me). There will always be people (especially vendors and traders) who work on a larger area, who will grab some not so healthy fast-food-to-go. This leads to the question; what will happen if the chance of getting diseases increases more if you have poor health? These Bannis who walk around a lot will get ill more often and since they will also meet a lot of other people, they will pass the disease on to them. I donīt know if this is so good. I like "obstacles"; challenges that make this game harder; like giving health and happiness a higher impact but I also like that you have a chance to do something against these obstacles, like making everyone live in "good areas" with no "bad" influence or providing a good diet everywhere. These are things where you have influence, but these vendors and traders; you canīt do much about their health.

But @Discrepancy, Iīm willing to test whatever changes you make.

First picture
Here are the menus from the Bannis I followed. Left from that time; late spring 18. Right Iīve cut in the content of the stores before they filled it in spring (red) and after the next time, theyīve filled it in late autumn (blue).

There are things I donīt understand; this is a big house with a big store; why is there so little food in it in spring? Why did they filled it with about 200 food the first time and more than 600 food the second time?

Second picture

Here you can see the vendors with 0 hearts (I have a 3. vendor who had 3 stars at this moment but I didnīt make a screenshot) and the farming wife and child from the first vendor both with 5 stars. "My vendor" had 4 stars once, the wife gained all stars fast and never lost any, like the child.

[Nilla]

Yes, Iīm sure that vendors and traders have health problems; eating too much fast food.

First picture
Average health population; 4,5
Average health vendors and traders; 2,0

It was similar other times I looked.

I have turned the iron mine off and wasnīt forced to open it again. Even if the merchants donīt bring that much iron ore at the time; itīs pretty reliable and enough to develop the settlement and build some houses that need iron. I still produce copper tools for the population. Thereīs still some copper ore on the ground around the settlement and I donīt think thereīs much other use of copper so I will use it as long as I have ore.

Second picture
It looks like the people in the larger houses with a larger store arenīt healthier than those with a medium store. House stores like the one on the picture arenīt seldom at the big houses. Theyīve run out of food from one or two categories but thereīs still so much food left that they donīt find it necessary to refill the store. So it almost looks like the "optimum" house storage is 1200. Those with 1000 doesnīt seem to work quite as well; same as those with 1400. There are no big differences, peopleīs profession seems much more important.

Third picture
It doesnīt look like the fires are worse than vanilla. I had a fire only one house and the small town hall burned down.

Here we can see 2 constructions I donīt like: the clay and sand pit. Principally I try to avoid constructions that deplete, like vanilla quarries and mines. The clay and sand pits deplete quite fast only holding 800 of each sand or clay. The sand pit also needs valuable shore. It might be alright if you īre only planning to make some glass or roof tiles to use yourself in construction sites. But if you want to produce it in a more industrial scale; to sell or build a lot of houses that need glass, roof tiles and brick as construction material, youīll need to spam the shores with soon useless sand mine ruins and the land with clay pit holes; not nice.

Other sand pits on the shore (North, RKED) are unlimited; sand is transported with the river, same with the clay on the shore from RKED. The North land-based clay pit depletes but can at least be flooded and used as a fishing pond. I like all these alternatives better than these useless holes on the map.

[Tom Sawyer]

It looks like the people in the larger houses with a larger store arenīt healthier than those with a medium store. House stores like the one on the picture arenīt seldom at the big houses. Theyīve run out of food from one or two categories but thereīs still so much food left that they donīt find it necessary to refill the store. So it almost looks like the "optimum" house storage is 1200. Those with 1000 doesnīt seem to work quite as well; same as those with 1400. There are no big differences, peopleīs profession seems much more important.

I think we figured that out already some time ago about the house storage capacity. People go for food if it's low and gather as much they can carry from a market or barn but they don't go twice to fill up free storage. More than the usual 1k capacity will be just not used. Defining less than 1k capacity was also useless because if they reach the limit, they go crazy between market and home unable to store their stuff. So this storage capacity of homes is not a property we can work with. Or anything new is figured out. That would be interesting then.

[Nilla]

Now Iīm a bit more at peace with myself and my family and will continue this blog.

Iīm not done with this mod yet. I like a lot of it. It might need some minor adjustments here and there but all in all, itīs a typical DS mod; beautiful, challenging, makes a lot of fun.

Since I had a lot of crashes in my last game, I started a new game yesterday. @Discrepancy has found the bug, so maybe I will go back to that old game, we will see. But the new game has more or less the same mods and the same settings; only this time I make a hard start. And here hard is really hard. What makes it harder than vanilla? Mainly three things: iron, stone, health.

iron: only a small amount of iron ore is available on the map, schools, tailors, doctors, trading ports........needs it (or iron fittings), it has to be processed with charcoal which needs a lot of logs (and work) to be produced. LIKE IT!
stones there is less stone on the map if youīre using this mod. Iīve already used all close findings and need to get it quite a bit away from the start-up village; it takes time and work; it is a challenge and I managed to develop the village in my last game so I guess, it will work here too, even if it looks like itīs even fewer stones on this map than on my last.
health without grain everyone loses all hearts very fast and stop working to go to the (not existing) herbalist often. I followed one person one year to see what she was doing, she switched jobs between builder and gatherer, had 0 hearts and 3 stars, and fair coat:
stopped to idle: 4 times,
stopped to visit the herbalist: 11 times,
went home to eat: 8 times,
went home because she was cold: 3 times.
I might have missed a few occasions but the tendency is clear; poor health costs work; more work than everything else.

In my last game, I had a lot of traders and vendors who I discovered, use to grab some not healthy "fast food" on the way as they work on remote places and often having only a few or no hearts. I made some experiments with and without herbalists. The average health was slightly better with a herbalist but not much by these professions. I also noticed that they worked really bad when they actually walked away to the herbalist. The same number of traders didnīt manage to fill the port with tools like they had done when there were no herbalists working.

Iīm not so fond of this health system. I like obstacles; things that make the game harder but I also like when you have some means to work with it. And I donīt think, you can do anything about the behaviour of vendors, traders and labourers (who I also saw often work (or idle) and eat away from home). Iīve tried to use a lot of vendors, more than I normally would have assigned, I thought that if there isnīt so much to do for each of them, they will often eat at home but the average health went down instead of up. And as I said; using herbalists is no solution, it only increases the problem. I think, the normal health system but a harder penalty (diseases) would be better and make more fun to work with.

It also looks like the happiness system doesnīt have such a large impact, I have a feeling that unhappy people idle less than in the North. I tried to get everyone happy in my last town but also made some houses outside these "happiness circles" just to compare. It almost looks like itīs better to have unhappy people living close to their workplace, than happy people living a bit further away, outside the "black circle". I would increase the importance of getting people happy. As it is now, it doesnīt pay off to bother about happiness, not more than that it looks nice to have an average of 5 stars.

Now to my latest game. You can manage a hard start with DS Industry Mining. In year 5 we have everyone in school, weīve produced some clothes and tools and soon when students start to graduate we will go on and develop the town further.

There are not so much to show from this town yet so Iīll also show some impressions from my last game.

First picture
New game, not much more to show than that itīs possible to manage the first difficult years with a hard start.

Second picture
I talked about "animated" waterwheels. The picture doesnīt fully show the effect but it looks good. You can also see some of the other industrial buildings in the background.

Third picture
I like the new brick houses. The small storages you can put in the yard is also a very nice idea. I know, I havenīt placed them in the right way but maybe it would be nice to make some wall pieces (maybe even ghosted) that people who care about the look could place if they make the same mistake, as I did. An end house would also be nice if you choose to build a row and not a block.

[Tom Sawyer]

That's a great third picture. Really looks like Gründerzeit with the brick houses and narrow backyards as you combined them. I don't really like that kind of atmosphere of a town and don't know how to call it in English but it hits it pretty well.

[Artfactial]

Yeah, those brickhouses and backyards are incredible!:)