Crisis might be over..... for this time.....
I was wrong, crisis was far from over!
My God, they need a lot of tools! And now I have iron tools.

OK my blacksmiths do produce now, but of cause everyone need a lot more iron tools than steel tools, so there are still not enough. I doubled the blacksmiths but it is still not enough. As I didnīt plan for this high demand on tools, I have no real good positions for new ones.The only real good thing to do, would be to go back to an earlier save, before I built so many coalmines, but......
....I HATE THAT!

When I make such mistakes, I let the disaster come: Let half of the population starve to death and then I can go on; replan and rebuild. (I know Iīm a mean person

)
But they do not even want to do that!
I let the game run, with not much care for almost 10 years. They froze in the winter and starved in spring and early summer, but only few starved or froze to death. The lack of tools became bigger for each year, but it seems that the farmers are not so much less productive without tools. Somehow they manage to survive. I show you my last screenshot. I let run for some more years after that, same result. The population didnīt reduce much, I think it was 1580 something as I turned off, in year 74 or 75.
So for now I will finish this experiment. It made a lot of fun! It is such a big difference, not having the nice tradesmen, "bringing all the goodies"! You have to go back to the basics of the game. The trading ports are so "powerful" and make the game so much easier.
I will sure try this again soon (but perhaps first something else in between) Probably on a new map, but maybe I will go back to an earlier save. We will see. If I do I will continue this blog.
I recommend all of you good players;
Try one with no tradesmen, try to "beat" this:
Population: 1663
medium map, fair climate
NO TRADESMEN
(that was my biggest save, maybe I had some more later, didnīt notice, I was busy doing other things)
I am sure some of you good planners can do better, because here youīll need a lot of planning.