As much fun as I've been having with Malloy Flats, I wanted to start a town where I cut back on mods a bit. So I whittled my mod list from that one (yes, that list below is about 40% shorter than Malloy Flats, believe it or not), got rid of most of the cheatier mods, and started a new town.
Burleysbury
The name came out of the random generator. I liked it because it felt very much like a town name you might find here in Tennessee, and I imagine it would be pronounced by locals, including me, as "Burrs-burr" or maybe "Burls-burr-eh" because we tend to do that. It would never, ever be pronounced as "Bur-lees-ber-ee".
So yes, Burleysbury.
I will come back and post screens of the map info, but for now, here is my mod list. Most of them are pretty easy to find in the usual places, but if anyone wants a link to a particular mod, let me know. I'm too lazy to add them at the moment. :D
- Neckcen's Map Generator
-Bakers & Millers
- Balanced Apiary
-Better Fields
- Better Harvesting - An efficiency tweak - farmers only harvest, not transport to the barn (unless they are done and go into laborer mode). Laborers do all the carrying. While it has the benefit of making it easier to get the max harvest on time, it's balanced by the fact that you need sufficient free laborers to make it work. Otherwise you end up with a bit of a mess with everyone trying to play catch-up.
- Better Schools - increases school capacity to 50 and raises number of teachers to 2 per school. I always build schools in every town area anyway so that they don't have to walk far, so I rarely have more than 20 in a school even with the mod, but this keeps "that one kid" from not getting an education because of a tiny oversight. I really hate when that happens - education is too important to let anyone slip through the cracks! ;D
- Color Tile Road Mod
- Holsteins
- Dairy Mill and Creamery
- Decorative Items Pack
- Immortal Orchard Trees
- Irrelevant Crop Tweak
- Llama Pasture
- Resize Professions Box
- White Chickens
- Sawmill
- Specialized Stockpiles
Once I have all seeds and animals, I'll add Slink's trader mod, too.
I haven't decided yet whether I will take all, some or no nomads. I'm willing to do whatever the first person to posts suggests in that regard. So go ahead, tell me what to do about nomads.
Quote from: Mahnogard on October 09, 2014, 02:12:08 PM
- Neckcen's Map Generator
-Bakers & Millers
- Balanced Apiary
-Better Fields
- Better Harvesting - An efficiency tweak - farmers only harvest, not transport to the barn (unless they are done and go into laborer mode). Laborers do all the carrying. While it has the benefit of making it easier to get the max harvest on time, it's balanced by the fact that you need sufficient free laborers to make it work. Otherwise you end up with a bit of a mess with everyone trying to play catch-up.
- Better Schools - increases school capacity to 50 and raises number of teachers to 2 per school. I always build schools in every town area anyway so that they don't have to walk far, so I rarely have more than 20 in a school even with the mod, but this keeps "that one kid" from not getting an education because of a tiny oversight. I really hate when that happens - education is too important to let anyone slip through the cracks! ;D
- Color Tile Road Mod
- Holsteins
- Dairy Mill and Creamery
- Decorative Items Pack
- Immortal Orchard Trees
- Irrelevant Crop Tweak
- Llama Pasture
- Resize Professions Box
- White Chickens
- Sawmill
- Specialized Stockpiles
Once I have all seeds and animals, I'll add Slink's trader mod, too.
This is AFTER you cut back on mods??? :o
Quote from: rkelly17 on October 09, 2014, 02:45:56 PM
This is AFTER you cut back on mods??? :o
LOL! Yes, it is. I cut out several that were further into cheat territory (increased production, road speeds, and unlimited mines / quarries), and I also left Fountain Mod and Town & Textiles out of this town. I'm just used to modding games, so long mod lists don't scare me. I love to experiment. Malloy Flats is stable, not a single problem once I installed a fix for the trader crash. I have all production chain items active for everything installed (except cotton crops - SP needs to make a new model for it, rendering the cotton fields causes slowdowns, but I'm growing flax), and it works great. Of course, at the moment that particular town is only up to around 500 people or so, things could change.
I scaled down on this one because now that I've had my fun with some of the new production chains, I decided to stick with the ones I like best, like the Dairy mod.
That's still a massive list of mods! :D Hopefully no crashes though, and all will go well. I'm particularly interested in how the crop tweak works out in practice. I want to include it in the next village.
No grain storage or root cellar, though? Those are definitely going into my next one! :)
Do what you feel is best at the time with nomads. Need more people? Accept with open arms. Got plenty and don't want uneducated dorks? Send 'em packing.
I'm using both the silo and the root cellars on Malloy Flats, but they hardly ever put stuff in them. I think it's just because I'm not used to using them, so I'm not placing them in ideal locations to get more use. Also, playing on a Plains map means usually few nearby mountains for the root cellars. I really like both of them, though. They look great in-game. RedKetchup does such great work.
As for nomads, I've gone either way in the past - taking all comers to get the pop boost, or denying everyone to keep an educated workforce. I guess I'll decide when they show up.
Interesting thing regarding nomads, as I have been schooled on them by
@Nilla, is that although they give you a temporary boost in pop, they also slow down your growth curve. This happens as a result of them occupying your available housing that would otherwise be taken sooner by your breeding pairs as they come of age. Your breeding pairs (isn't that a lovely term?) will now have to wait longer to start their families, and as a result may have only two children instead of three. The nomad families OTOH mainly already have two or three children, so they aren't going to give you any further bump. Unless you already have a surplus in housing, and you have space both for nomads and your own breeders (I crack myself up).
After a few years (maybe 4-5) your pop curve will slope down to where it would have been had you not taken the nomads at all.
Here is the relevant post from
@Nilla: http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=327.120
So, if you are desperately short of workers (and in early years, we so often are) take the nomads. If you are just trying to build pop, you probably are better off without them, particularly so after you factor in the chance of disease (says the guy who recently lost 1100 bannies to nomad-induced smallpox ;) ).
Haha! I always crack myself up when talking Banished growth mechanics. The worst is when I'm peeking in houses and grumbling, "Why haven't you had a kid yet? Get with it!"
Yeah, I always adjust my building pattern if I take nomads - basically # of nomad families + whatever I'd build for my new couples anyway. Usually by the time they show up, I've got several houses ready to be built, even so far as having the foundations laid, just unpause and build. How's that for a welcome?"Sure, you can stay. Now, go build houses for yourselves, then build five more." I don't even build a boarding house unless I'm getting groups of 30+ because I'll have to build houses regardless.
The thing about nomads is that they can pose a challenge either way. Getting by without them can be a challenge, and taking them in can be a challenge. I generally prefer to tough it out and say no, and keep an educated workforce.
Malloy Flats hasn't taken in any nomads at all and they've gotten three diseases so far. Most recent was the mumps. Haven't lost any people, but it put a dent in my workforce till everyone got better. Sometimes the RNG hates me.
------
Anyway, Burleysbury is now in year 5, going slow and steady. Wood has been an issue because I started in a fairly open area, and the nearest woods (just across the river from the start location) are taken up by a hunter / gatherer cluster. So there's a bit of a hike for cutting down trees. Food was doing so well that I built my market earlier than I anticipated - partly for distribution, but partly so I don't have to start spamming barns this soon. So when I hit 7000 food and 500 firewood, I built it. I want to build the first trading post soon but I need to gather more logs first, otherwise I won't have enough firewood to trade with.
I only missed one kid growing up before I got the school built, so I've got one random uneducated person running around out there. They'll probably have some horrible accident and then I'll be at 100% educated.
I waited a bit on the hunters, so we had no coats for a bit. We've caught up on those now, but there just isn't enough leather so we'll probably run out again. Makes me miss the Extra Leather mod that adds 50% leather yields. Would be awesome if one of the first few trading boats has sheep or llamas.
I was going to post some screenshots but I'll probably wait until tomorrow because I'd rather play than sort out screenshots right now. :D
Quote from: irrelevant on October 09, 2014, 07:40:25 PM
Interesting thing regarding nomads, as I have been schooled on them by @Nilla, is that although they give you a temporary boost in pop, they also slow down your growth curve. This happens as a result of them occupying your available housing that would otherwise be taken sooner by your breeding pairs as they come of age. Your breeding pairs (isn't that a lovely term?) will now have to wait longer to start their families, and as a result may have only two children instead of three. The nomad families OTOH mainly already have two or three children, so they aren't going to give you any further bump. Unless you already have a surplus in housing, and you have space both for nomads and your own breeders (I crack myself up).
After a few years (maybe 4-5) your pop curve will slope down to where it would have been had you not taken the nomads at all.
The other thing that happens with large groups of nomads is that after about 7-10 game years they all die of old age at once and you can go into a serious crisis of available workers. As
@irrelevant says, I take them early when they come in groups of two or three families and I am desperate for workers, but become very cautious as time goes on (and my educated quotient gets toward 100%).
Screenshots!
1) Map view
2) Map Info
3) Start location
4) First year - started with Fishermen, then bridge and Gatherers, and one house near each.
5) Year 2 - Built a woodcutter and the school, only one person missed out on an education. Also, one more house.
6) Year 4 - Blacksmith, and we now have four more houses. Health getting low, need Hunter and Herbalist.
7) Year 7 - Built Tailor, but not much leather due to late start on Hunters. Built Herbalist, just opened. Built market due to barns filling up. Food stocks dipped for a moment and stabilized around 7000. In the next year, added Forester across the river because nearly all close resources have been gathered.
8) Year 10 - built Town Hall - TH first screen is visible, indicating that my one uneducated person is living a long life. Food stocks no longer keeping up, building Apiary and preparing to farm soon.
9) Year 12 - Started Farming (wheat, squash, apples), built Trading Post and already got some chickens.
I like to be mostly self-sufficient - I don't really care to trade for anything but animals and seeds unless I absolutely have to - but I don't think that's going to work here. Having trouble keeping up supply of logs. In a year or two, the Forester should be producing about 300 a year, but that's a drop in the bucket for a growing town. Long walk to nearest resource gathering is taking a toll, especially working around the harvest schedule. Catch-22, have to expand to get closer to resources and improve efficiency, but need resources to expand. So, I'm probably going to have to use up some of my precious logs to build a second trading post to increase the boat traffic. Depending on which direction I choose to expand in, I may put another Forester just to my South, let it plant, then shut it down and send in the laborers to clear it in a few years.
Oh dear. It never fails. All I have to do is start blogging a game - any game - and everything will fall apart. That's why I don't write Skyrim stories anymore.
Burleysbury is a mess. I've screwed up horribly and I don't feel like fixing it. I'm setting the saves aside and moving on. One day I may look at it and sort it out, but at the moment I just want to make pretty towns and play with mods. :D
Sorry to hear that. Banished can be a brutal master at times. What happened?
Distribution failure. All homes, 80& of workplaces (ie, everything that wasn't in the woods) and storage were inside the market radii, but my two markets couldn't stay stocked. I tried fully staffing them, and they still couldn't break 60%. So my Bannies had to run around to get "that one thing", whatever they just had to have that wasn't in the market, and things just got worse and worse. I was still trying not to run out of logs on top of that, and my woodcutters were running all over for what there was, because I couldn't get the Bannies who were gathering resources to move the stuff back to the in-town stockpiles fast enough. I would have ordered some from traders, but I didn't yet have much of value to trade with.
The first market was fine for the first several years. It got off a bit eventually, so I added vendors. Waited for the housing to adjust, everything improved and then it started sliding down again. Was up to 12 vendors (like 10% of my adult pop at that time) to keep it stocked. When I started expanding I had to build the second market so I could add more farms. In a few years, I was going through the same thing with that market. Eventually, they were both at 12 vendors each, and barely keeping 60% stocked.
Like an idiot, I thought maybe a third market was in order so I could get my mining operation going, and naturally that one had the exact same issue as the first two markets. I was hoping I could redistribute the demand by expanding toward the mines, but that didn't help. Three markets, 12 vendors each, all sitting at 50% and not making progress.
It looked good. Pathing was pretty decent, I wasn't too spread out, and the main part of town had direct access across the river via three bridges, to get to the hunter / gatherer / herbalist / forester. Had plenty of food - ran a surplus for all but a few years, and never got low. The only thing I was ever low on was leather, which I ended up buying a bunch from traders, and logs, and I never ran out of those. It was like opening a giant department store with tons of stuff, and hiring trained monkeys to stock it. Just never got going properly, no one knew where anything was supposed to go...
Eh, you win some, you lose some.
That doesn't really sound so bad. But if it wasn't pleasing to you, that is finally the only test that matters.
Sorry it didn´t work out as you planned. Always like to read these blogs.
But I do not really understand what the problems are. The markets do not always have to be stocked. The people get the stuff they need from the barns and the stockpiles as well. In fact I seldom build many of those (OK in my last game I got a bit inspired from
@irrelevant`s SinkMill and built too(?) many ;) ).
It doesn't sound disastrous from my reading either, but you will know the situation better from playing the save. Markets don't have to be full, and rarely are if you have many of them with relatively few people and little food.
If you have decided to retire this game, however, I look forward to the next one.
It was working, just not the way I wanted it to. :D I'm sure most of the problem was more in my head than in Burleysbury, but once it started bugging me... I got fixated on the market stock levels, checking them constantly.
It probably has a lot to do with me not being fully recovered from the head cold I was fighting all week, and lost sleep due to loud thunderstorms three nights in a row, right at my bedtime to keep me awake. My brain is challenged by pretty much anything at the moment. I've been playing Disciples 3: Reincarnation (or Rebirth, because apparently it has two names, and it's the third Disciples 3 - which I guess makes it the 5th Disciples? I still haven't figured that out) and I keep doing hilariously stupid things like starting fights I can't possibly win. Fortunately there's an autosave before each battle. RETREAT! RETREAT! :D
I gotta say, I love that we can change thread titles here. Most forums require enlisting the help of a moderator for that.
I decided to start a town, Winfields, using the same map as Malloy Flats. If one is using Neckcen's Map Generator, the settings are:
10743744 (which is Pete Malloy's serial # and badge # - I'm an Adam-12 fan)
Plains
Large
Mild / Off / Medium
I really like that map. (I tried the same seed with Valleys and it wasn't good - plops you in between a mountain and a river. I don't like building bridges right off the bat.)
So I'm having fun again. My new town is about to start farming soon. The first town square is almost totally laid out but not fully built yet - lots of buildings on pause. Will probably construct the market in one more year, once the first harvest is in. Have one trading post, but considering a second to speed up seed acquisition. This map starts with potato, pumpkin, and plum. Managed to trade for peach seeds just before going to bed last night so all my initial crops will start with "p".
Will post a screenie when I have something nice to look at. :)
Quote from: Mahnogard on October 12, 2014, 09:41:38 AM
So I'm having fun again.
Will post a screenie when I have something nice to look at. :)
I am happy to heat that and I am looking forward to see these screens and hear more about your thoughts as your settlement grows :)
Quote from: Mahnogard on October 12, 2014, 09:41:38 AM
I decided to start a town, Winfields
That's the spirit! ;D
Best of luck.
Screenies! I'm not going to write descriptions, as it's mostly sightseeing. :) The first one shows my year 21 data, and the shots were taken within the following year. I had 13 builders at that time because I'd just finished planting a bunch of trees from RedKetchup's Decorative Items Mod. Other mods seen include Sawmill, Library, Creamery, Apiary, and Llama Pastures, among others. Also have RedKetchup's little chapels but I don't think I had any built at that time.
I've been rejecting nomads so far. Some of them can be seen leaving town in the last screenshot.
After playing more than 200 hours, I just figured out that I can change the camera angle. My next batch of screenies should be slightly improved. :D
Here, on we go with more questions :-[
These stones you use for squares? Which mod is that?
I like the colour, but not the texture so much, looks a bit like concrete.
Questions are good! I like questions. Especially when I have answers. :) The mod is Color Tile Road Mod: http://banishedinfo.com/mods/view/71-Color-Tile-Road-Mod
The color I'm using is the only one I really like, though there's also a shade of blue that's kind of nice if used in small amounts. All the others in it are too bright for me. I agree about the texture, but I still like it better than the default stone roads. I always thought they looked too... institutional? Like the stone houses.
You can see some of the other colors in use in my Malloy Flats screenshots in this post: http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=538.msg8035#msg8035
I think I'll have to start a new blog just to get more questions from
@Nilla :D
@Yes, please do. I promise i will keep on asking annoying questions! ;)
Updated screenshots! Yes, some of them are just new shots of the same things as last time, but if you recall, I finally learned how to change the camera angle so I couldn't help myself. :D
These were taken last night, so I'm a bit past that stage of development now. I've been clearing the area around the third market, and I had to hold food production down for a bit to allow my storage to equalize. With the expansion and the food surplus, the poor vendors were working over time. Got past that, and started some new farms, build a couple more pastures (I do love my pastures) and added a second mine.
I also hit what I refer to as the "Year 40 Panic" a few years early. Right around year 40 is when I usually have a burst where the number of families suddenly outnumbers houses by way more than it did the year before. Managed properly, there's no problem, but it's sooooo hard to resist the temptation to build a bunch of houses. This time it hit around year 34. I'm trying to handle it just by keeping an eye on the children & student numbers, and building enough houses to keep a very gradual upward trend for consistent growth and replacement rather than a baby boom. It seems to be working so far.
And it's really nice to finally be at the point where you have enough laborers that clearing land is fun to watch and gets done fast.
Beautiful shots, especially the first one! A very nice-looking town.
It would be helpful if you would include some UI panels, particularly the jump map in each screenie, and the Town Hall plus the General stats at least once per post.
How's the Irrelevant Tweak Crop working out for you? I've never known anyone else to use it.
Thanks!
Oh, I thought I had the panels up for one of the overview shots, because I usually do but I guess I got ahead of myself. Oops! :D I'll get one during the next round, along with the pop graph so we can see if I'm failing at population management.
The crop tweak is nice. For someone who does a lot of farming (I do, always, farms and pastures everywhere) the effects are noticeable, though subtle. Makes harvest time less chaotic and I spend a lot less time nervously looking at the dropping temperatures.
I have another town I'm occasionally working on, called Hell. See, I got this idea that they decided to name their new settlement after one who died on the journey, and that name has always cracked me up when it shows up in game. And it fits - I'm playing a Tiny map from the map mod I use. We're talking postage-stamp size, especially for someone who's used to playing on big maps like I usually do. It's just barely gotten started, only a few years old. I probably won't post any for it until I fill up the map, which won't take long once I get going. Oh, I have disasters turned on for that one. I never do that. Trying new things, I guess. :D
Thanks for the feedback, noticeable but subtle was exactly what I was aiming at. Thanks,
@RedKetchup, for this mod!
Hell sounds really interesting ;); look forward to seeing it. ;D
it is interesting with that tiny map. I tried one mod with tiny maps a while ago (I have a special love for the small maps ;) ) but it crashed several times and as long as I had the mod installed, other maps crashed, too.
I really hope it is improved! (or maybe it is another mod). I will try it when my single-worker-game is over. (game over ----- he he, I suppose that will be exactly what will happen in that game)
I've had Neckcen's Map Generator (https://github.com/neckcen/banished-map) installed for two weeks now and haven't had any issues. (Clicking the "Download" link down in the Readme section of that page will take you to the most recent .pkm file for download.)
I haven't tried out all the map types, but I've loaded some different sizes / types with no crashes, and all the towns I've actually played for a while have been fine. Of course, with mods, you never know - some people may have issues when others don't, etc.
Just wanted to post an update to say that I haven't quite playing Winfields, but I'm currently working on an umodded game because I realized I still have achievements to get! So I'm working on a surprisingly boring Mountain Man town. Right now there isn't much going on there except waiting for some kids to grow up and gradually expanding my food operations. I'll post a pic if I don't fail. :D
In Winfields, I'm toying with the idea of causing a small boom just for the sake of expanding out a bit without having to do it over a longish period. I've got loads of couples that would love to have houses, but we all know the problems that can cause down the road.
I haven't done anything else with Hell for now, I was waiting for Slink to release the Snug Houses update (which she now has) so I will probably start that map over with those houses, since I was only a few years in anyway. I'll probably do that after I get my MM map done.
Oddly, the Mountain Man map was going well enough that it was downright boring. The save is there, waiting for me to get back to it, but I passed 50 pop about 6 years ago, and I have a yearly food surplus that should get me through another 20-25 pop in growth. I'm just maintaining pop as much as possible, only building a house when the number of families exceeds "single elders" by two or three, so growth is nice and slow. The two foresters are giving me enough logs for firewood for the time being, I've got one mine with just enough people to keep the smith making tools, and my two hunting lodges keep me in meat and leather for coats. I've even got a few people working in a quarry for my minimal stone needs. Everything is fairly compact so no one gets cold or hungry, they don't have that far to go.
I'll admit - I got lucky and ended up with beans and corn as my crops. You can't ask for better than beans in a harsh climate. Also have peaches. Since my few farms are over a bridge, every second or third winter, I mark the barns over there for destruction to get more of the stuff moved into the main part of town, then reclaim them when most of the stuff has been moved out. That's working even better than I anticipated.
But it got me thinking - though it wouldn't be of use in an achievement game, obviously - I would love a mod that gave a vendor profession without an associated building, just to have the barns get diversified the way vendors do. I'm about to start a modded map (because I can't wait any longer to use RedKetchup's new houses!!!!!!) and I'm trying out Elfectutioner's Smaller Vendor Buildings so for me, that's a compromise. Planning around markets has started to feel stale for me, so I'm trying something different, but the barns still get some inventory love.
I pretty much quit playing Winfields because I sort of got tired of the market-based expansion pattern. So let's see how it goes with General Stores and Farm Stalls.
So I've noticed a few things in my current town I hadn't noticed before.
1) Ale production doesn't get counted properly. Others probably already know this, but I've been making ale to use for trade later on (trying to wean myself off of seedlings, as I got far too attached to them in my recent towns :D) and the numbers make no sense. Screenshot attached shows I have more in the TP than the Town Hall thinks I've ever produced.
2) You don't have to build a market to get Nomads. You just need the building footprint laid down. I have the TP and TH, but I only placed a market because I'm not sure I'm going to build one yet. (I'm using Elfectutioner's smaller vendor buildings, which do not meet the market requirement for Nomands.)
?
I have noticed before, that the young generation cannot count. ;)
270 ale the last 10 years, 100 this year = 370
335 in the tradingport
335<370
Somewhere 35 is carrying around or still in the brewery
???
Ha! I just looked at the calculations I wrote down. For some reason I was seeing this year's production as "10" (the number for clothes) instead of 100. So I was looking at 280 instead of 370. :D Oops! Thank you for the correction.
Spots on the cows and white feathers on chickens,
Bannies in coats so warm, they don't need mittens,
Slink's skating hogs that the trader boat brings,
These are a few of my favorite things!
Orchards packed tightly for bounties at harvest,
Pastures so expansive, now they're the largest,
Llamas bob heads as though they're on springs,
These are a few of my favorite things!
RedKetchup's houses all lined up so neatly,
Colorful rooftops make Bannies smile sweetly,
Fields are now tilled and I can't help but sing,
These are a few of my favorite things!
When the bees give honey to me,
Best Bannies ever had...
I look around at my favorite things,
And being Banished don't feel so bad!
(I'm in a silly mood tonight.)
That's great; thanks for a smile before bed. :)
You are very welcome. Always happy to make someone smile! :) Sleep well.
And as I am in Europe, I am happy for a smile in the morning. :)