Have been playing the game a bit again after coming back to it, after playing through Pillars of Eternity (almost twice) and Witcher 2 (twice), and untold Mahjong solving. I'm playing
without any mods, because I like the gameplay essentially the way it was designed, and since there were stability issues last time I tried the game on Linux, I figured it was best to go with as little risk as possible. But I had to turn off the ambience to get rid of that damn howling wind.
Quote from: The Big Chihuahua on June 05, 2014, 10:36:45 AM
Start of [sic] with your seed and your settings and game version so we can try the same map if it looks like something we want to do too!
Verily I say unto you, the era of the sword and the axe is nigh, the era of the wolf's blizzard. The Time of the White Chill and the White Light is nigh, the Time of End. The world will die amidst frost and be reborn with the new sun. It will be reborn of the Elder Blood, of Hen Ichaer, of the seed that has been sown. A seed which will not sprout but will burst into flame.
No, that isn't politically correct talk about global warming; it is a prophecy from The Witcher books by Andrej Sapkowski ;D
What? That's not the seed you had in mind? Okay then... :-*
(http://i.imgur.com/cGHEW19.jpg)
The map looked fine enough for a fresh go with the game. No big or special goals, apart from the usual self-hamstringing of not building trade ports or cropfields for many a year. This time I waited between 15 and 20.
One thing I decided to do differently, however, was to not build any chapels or graveyards. Means happiness could become an issue, but these structures cost a lot of stone, and since I'm not relying on (early) trade ports but building stone houses from the get-go, stone is bound to be in very limited supply, because I also prefer to collect it as we expand, and not fly all over the map to get it. This map also happened to be limited by rivers and streams, so we need bridges once the initial area has been settled.
The starting area looked fine, though, and not as evil as the randomly generated mapname would have me believe. There is plenty of stone and iron, and more trees than you can shake a stick at. The initial area also appears to be fairly flat, but unlike many others in here (I think), I don't pause the game and lay down a zillion paused structures from the get go. Within the first few years I do put down a market and plan around that, but otherwise I like to develop villages organically and ad-hoc.
We start by grabbing some resources from the surrounding area, put up a gatherer's hut, hunter's hut and herbalist, and soon after a house or two. A school is also erected, but unfortunately one kid missed the cut and maybe became the village idiot.
Looking at some screenshots, we've got two trade ports by
year 16, and I see a few cropfields as well. Celestie is an old lady here, and sadly she passed away shortly after, aged 89 or 90. Kamare is the "village idiot", so it looks like they did allright, and supported each other through thick and thin.
By
year 23, the village has expanded a little more. We had cut down a few of the trees surrounding the village. Then two traders dropped by, offered iron, stone and food, and our stores depleted a little bit... :o
Don't think I've seen such a high output from a woodcutter before, a little over 1200, but it must have been a particularly good year, because otherwise all of them are usually well short of 1000 (more like 400-700).
As you can see from the year 23 overview shot, I've set up a bit more "traditionally" for ale and woodlogs exporting in this village. I wanted to try it out for once, and does seem to work decently enough. At least when we get some logs from traders, since logistics in this game is a pain in the neck, with most logs and such stores in the outer reaches of the town, usually in places where vendors/traders don't bother to travel. Not unusual to have the vast majority of logs stores waaaaaay out of bounds.
By year 23 we were slowly approaching pop 200. A bit less than some others, who may have 2-3000 by now ;D
In
year 26 I accepted 28 immigrants, of which 10 were children who could attend school. Unfortunately this caused an outbreak of Yellow Fever, our first illness. But fortunately we already had a hospital in town. Bannies being the curious type, however, they stormed to the hospital in droves to check out news about the gravely ill patients. Many caught the illness, but only one person ended up in the morgue.
The year after,
year 27, we had a particularly good hunting season, when 5 of 7 lone hunters caught ~1000 venison each.
In
year 29 we cross the 300 pop threshold, which I'm sure you'll all agree has never happened before, and will never be bettered again :-X
Finally the area across the river has been amended. The forester-hunter-herbalist-gatherer quadruple has been torn down and replaced with a market and infrastructure support for the trade port. I've even built a third trade port, because I quite frankly got fed up of 3 years running with only seed and livestock merchants and wanted to improve my odds.
Year 30, and this is the overview picture of essentially the whole settlement, though there are of course some forester and hunting/gathering outposts farther away. We've got a very ample storage of stone and iron hogging up all the space, so thankfully the seed and livestock merchants sailed by us and visited some other outcasts instead.
I'm a little surprised happiness hasn't dropped beneath 4.5 stars. Naturally people become deeply unhappy when their spouse or parent dies and there isn't a grave to visit, but overall these people aren't numerous enough to significantly drag down the average.
The game has crashed a few times, but thankfully it appears to be more stable than when I tried it last on Linux maybe a year ago. Whether this is down to no mods or not I don't know, but I'm glad I can play it without too much hassle -- although I'm always anxious when saving, because that's when the game typically crashes.
Nice that I'm not the only blogger!
It looks like you're a real collector: Iron and stones! There's a lot of of it! ;)
I use to build like you; not planning too much in advance. I like too when it grows as it comes. That's the way enjoy playing the most.
1200 from one woodchopper is very good. I've seen it, too but not often. Your location is perfect, as long as there are enough logs at the big stockpile just in front of him and he probably lives in one of the houses just beside.
As long as you build enough new houses, you don't have to worry much about the happiness of your people. Churches doesn't have a large influence. It's a idling location with a happines circle but as long as they have others (like the very popular hospital ;) ) it doesn't matter much. The graveyards are important for people who loses familymembers, yes, but I seldom build any and that normally costs ½ star, not more.
Thank you for the comment, it's nice to see some feedback and comments :) Makes it look less like I'm just talking to myself ;)
Some years later, and we still have tons of iron and stone sitting around, though I've used some stone to build stone roads and many more stone houses. Up to around 150 now, in year 35, with pop ~450. I may have bought a little too much iron and stone after lacking stone for such a long time in the early game ;D
I'm a little concerned about the food situation. 50k is much less than I am used to, barely a year worth of food for such a relatively small village. Therefore more farms have been built. It always pains me to tear down those nice forest nodes with springy animals jumping about and cut down so many trees that haven't matured yet. I kinda just want to leave it the way it is. But in the name of destruction progress, trees were chopped down, animals chased off, and farms planted :-\
Quite a few mountains and streams around us, so it's a little awkward to expand, but we've gone west for now, where at least there was some land to easily connect with. I'll need to figure out where to put roads and bridges for further expansion -- and go through the heartache of burning down forests and forest nodes again...
Despite not building any churches or graveyards, I got the achievement about good health and happiness, and so far it's only taken happiness down to 4.5 stars. On the other hand, I see many very unhappy people around, so it certainly has an impact, though I'm not sure how much that really affect these individuals in terms of extra idling and suchlike. Good point about the chapels. With so many other happiness spreaders, the chapel isn't likely to contribute much, if anything. It has simply been a habit of building them when expanding before, to make sure everybody were covered. Naturally that is tricky to impossible with huuuuge cities, but this time I've ignored it altogether.
Much of the spike in food has come from a huge batch of plums for alemaking, and although much more than I would have liked went into people's homes, most of it will still go to the many alehouses. I've also ordered some coal to make steel tools, but as usual it feels pretty darn futile, due to people hoarding coal for heating their homes. Currently 275 coal "stolen" away, and in truth it's even more due to previous heating, and I "only" bought around 1000 combined. Probably just as well to forget about coal and just pay out the nose for steel tools from traders instead. Less frustration that way. In the past I've tried to gradually release coal in the spring, but such micromanagement is just a pain in the neck. Those 275 coals could have been 550 steel tools. ARGH! >:(
Pathing and decision making in this game sadly leaves a lot to be desired :( At times I see barns that the bannies outright REFUSE to use, and I've no idea why they chose to deliver the coal all the way down that way instead of to the stockpiles just around the corner from the trade port on the east side of the river (where the coal was bought).
Man, you build dense towns.
I always make space to seed some trees and get some air.
But then I always stop before there to many bannies wanting
to expand. It feels like a race when you pass 200-300 and
it's just more of everything...
Yes, the settlement is very densely built and plastered with materials. Also not my play style. But that's Banished and not called as Forest Village.^^
To me, it looks like you were not challenged. That goes all too quickly and easily. ;)
I'm challenged to feel good. :)
What is there to the late game speed-rush?
All you want is more of the same.
I like to build - friendly (happy) communities.
And the visual aspect is important. If you can recognize
yourself in an enviroment you like, it is easier to feel happy.
I have to agree with kid1293 on this one. There are always plenty of decorative trees and flowers in my towns plus orchards. I'll cut the forest down viciously when expanding but my townsfolk always enjoy good air.
;D Hehe, that's where I started - The Garden Shed.
To make the town more green.
I meant Pangaea. His vanilla game seems to be too easy for his skill and he urgently needs a tougher environment. ;) ;)
That's what I like about the game. You can play a bit in the forest, hunting and gathering and conserve the landscape. Or you make intensive farming or manufacturing and trade or build a large dense city or a particularly beautiful town. But however you play, if you get it all too quickly and easily, it gets boring.
In a vanilla game, I never make steel tools. Too much coal is "spoiled" as heating. As you have noticed, too, it's also hard to control the distribution of the coal. So producing steeltools makes no sense, I use to buy them, and only keep the original blacksmith(s) as emergency.
Yes,
@Tom Sawyer, I can see you're advertising your Nordic mod! ;) A vanilla game might be too easy for a good player like
@Pangaea (I always thought you are a girl, but it doesn't matter) I recommend it, too. Maybe the houses are a bit too Swedish for your liking, but you can find houses like that in Norway, too.
Banished is an interesting game, that you can enjoy in different ways. Here
@Pangaea shows us a very efficient settlement; very tight, short paths between everything, big stockpiles, many barns, high productivity in each plant, nothing unuseful. It has its beauty. Others like you
@kid1293 and
@Gatherer puts more efforts in aesthetics and decorations, also fine. (We want your blogs here, too!)
Quote from: kid1293 on September 06, 2016, 12:19:52 PM
Man, you build dense towns.
I always make space to seed some trees and get some air.
But then I always stop before there to many bannies wanting
to expand. It feels like a race when you pass 200-300 and
it's just more of everything...
It's definitely very densely populated, so I probably wouldn't like to live there myself, but it's how I've always built my towns in Banished. One of the things I like to do is to try to cram in houses or barns or farms in the corners of the map (like close to mountains), to get the most out of the available space. A bit ironic given I am yet to truly fill a map before starting anew.
Definitely agree with your line about 200-300 pop. Before that stage, growth goes slowly and you can casually expand. Then you hit 200-300 pop, and everything kind of spirals out of control. Babies are popping out from every floorboard, you need more houses, then more babies, you need more food, more farms, more babies, more schools, more houses, more... you get the picture. It can actually get a little stressful -- and I play on 1x speed! ??? ;D
Quote from: Nilla on September 07, 2016, 04:37:09 AM
In a vanilla game, I never make steel tools. Too much coal is "spoiled" as heating. As you have noticed, too, it's also hard to control the distribution of the coal. So producing steeltools makes no sense, I use to buy them, and only keep the original blacksmith(s) as emergency.
Yes, @Tom Sawyer, I can see you're advertising your Nordic mod! ;) A vanilla game might be too easy for a good player like @Pangaea (I always thought you are a girl, but it doesn't matter) I recommend it, too. Maybe the houses are a bit too Swedish for your liking, but you can find houses like that in Norway, too.
Banished is an interesting game, that you can enjoy in different ways. Here @Pangaea shows us a very efficient settlement; very tight, short paths between everything, big stockpiles, many barns, high productivity in each plant, nothing unuseful. It has its beauty. Others like you @kid1293 and @Gatherer puts more efforts in aesthetics and decorations, also fine. (We want your blogs here, too!)
Unfortunately I'm not very good with aesthetics. I can draw stickmen and that's about it :'( I like to build efficient villages and constantly check buildings just to see their output for the current year. But I also don't like to tear down the forest nodes, like I wrote about above. If it was easier to get a stable population going in this game, without these up and down curves, it would be more interesting to build small villages with large plots of land per house and such. But of course, particularly in the vanilla game, there isn't much room for artistic design, so it was good that
@RedKetchup and surely many others by now have offered us mods with many new buildings and "eye candy".
I do like these compact and efficient villages, though. And one of the downsides to having put many, many hours into the game (and reading various forums) is that I know my way around it, roughly know what is efficient and what isn't, which means the game becomes a bit "easy". The toughest part is getting started, but once you have some basic infrastructure and resource chains going, the rest of the gameplay is expansion and building more of the same. It can become a bit boring, but also challenging in its own way. For instance, I prefer to have few trade ports, because otherwise the game becomes ridiculously easy. But I do want a few, because I can't stand the sight (and workings) of the quarries and mines.
I'd like to continue this town a bit further, maybe get a few more achievements when I'm first diddling around with the vanilla game, but later it would be interesting to try some mods -- though I've always preferred a "light" footprint modwise. Love the Better Fields mod, though, because we are then less constrained in where to place farms and orchards, and it's even more fun to try to cram in farms up the mountain sides and such ;D Maybe I'm weird as hell, but I find it fun to try to "waste" as few squares as possible, by putting farms, houses and barns and such into corners here and there, and filling out small gaps with tiny stockpiles. Not very pretty, but it is what it is.
Maybe I'll learn to build pretty towns at some point too. Maybe some of you ought to post a blog of your own, and teach me ;) :P
@Nilla, I'm a guy btw, and am not sure if it is a good thing or not that you have confused me for a girl, heh :D
Speaking about problems with logistics, here is a typical example, especially after buying stuff in the trading ports. Instead of walking a little farther, to where enormous amounts of firewood is stored, the vendors will go to the nearest stockpile and pick up pitiful amounts of firewood, and repeat this pattern a thousand times until the quota is full again. And as a consequence of that behaviour, the stockpiles are bursting at the seams further inland from the village's core. I think the only reasonable way to deal with this is to fake-demolish it, and nearby stockpiles, so the stores of firewood is hopefully moved closer to the trading ports, from where they can be exported or taken for home heating.
May as well throw in a small update. I've expanded further west, and since I'm way behind on homes now (damn race, eh?), I've put down a pile of new stone houses, a few schools, yet more cropfields and barns, connected to a market. I like to make a new 'hub' near markets, so there will also be a couple of alehouses and woodcutters, plus a blacksmith and tailor. I know it's kind of hopeless, but I'm still making steel tools and warm coats. Probably easier to just order them, but I do prefer to be somewhat self-reliant and not order almost everything. Now when I have focused more on getting a solid supply of firewood and ale, I can see how easy it can be to exploit this via exporting. Just look at all those logs and firewood... :o
You can see how compact my villages tend to be, and that I like exploiting as much space as possible. Close to the river I've crammed in some houses and barns. It may look silly, but I like this kind of stuff :-[
Also turned down a boatload of immigrants (which perhaps hits a little too close to home these days...). Would like to get education rate up to 100%, and the population boom is too high for taking in more people anyhow.
edit: Well, blimey. It looks like the lone chicken I bought (purely to tick off an achievement down the road) has fucked himself and managed to reproduce. Nature will find a way? ;D
I hope you see it as a big compliment, being taken for a girl! So I will not apologize! ;)
Yes, this game is simple. But it still has many possibilities to change the gameplay. I use to set myself some limits; ...no schools..... no trading ports..... no farming....... small mountain map...... as fast as possible....... you name it. Each little limit forces you to think; make things different as standard. That's the reason, I still play this game (together with all the new mods). I make a brake for some month regularly, but I always return. Other games doesn't "get me" like Banished.
I like your hospitals at the mountain on the "wrong" river side. There are still some idlers but it seems like there are not many people, who have other reasons, than their curiosity to visit this spot or just pass by.
OMG.... Small Pox!! :o :( :-[
This could be bad. I've not had that before. I think. Looking at this excellent thread (http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=357.0), it could have been worse, but not much. Quite a test for the hospitals across the river -- though I'm sure it will spread horribly at the other location (close-ish to a market place). Hopefully 3 hospitals will be enough, and the disease won't spread to virtually everybody. Didn't even take in any immigrants.
Apart from this terrible disease, not a lot to report. Have expanded with a few more farms and a pile of houses, but despite building many more houses, I'm getting further and further behind compared with families. This "race" isn't a fun part of the game. The early stage is more fun, if a little slow at times.
Must have been exceedingly lucky. The person who contracted small pox died in hospital, but despite walking quite the distance to get to the spot across the river, nobody else got it. Disaster averted :)
Have played 50 years. Not a lot has happened the last 10 in all honesty. Much time spent just watching people go about their business, building a few farms and yet more houses. The main thing has been expanding the western side with a new marketplace surrounded by some infrastructure and a residential area.
The Merchants' Guild have sent an impressive amount of livestock and seed merchants our way, and I'm not interested in those (animals are WAY too loud without a quieting mod). Even so, the food situation has been okay. Clearly in decline given the population has kept going up without much farm expansion, but not by a huge amount.
I've collected a lot of stone and iron, hoping it would be possible to get the achievements without mines and quarries. The stone one may be possible, but doubt iron. We're up to around 8000 stone now, but only 4000 iron. We have so much firewood to spare, so I bought a pile of coal, and eventually just released it all, hence the high count. Naturally loads is wasted on heating now, but I couldn't be bothered to micro it in spring every year.
The game is a little boring now to be honest. Think the main goal now is just to tick off a few achievements since I'm playing without mods, then either start a game with mods or one to go for some of the other achievements, like isolation, uneducated and so forth.
1st picture: The western side of the encampment, with the new marketplace and houses.
2nd picture: The eastern side. Finally built some farms beyond the alehouses.
3rd picture: This looks like a nice spot to live. Close to the river for a skinnydip. The roadless bridge had to be built to save some idiot from starving to death. Should tear it down, but of course then some moron will be stuck on the 'wrong' side again, so...
4th picture: Some graphs at the 50-year anniversary. The population increase is fairly steady, with a few plateaus when I didn't build houses. The food trend is in decline. A lot is taken for alemaking, but at times I've also ordered abundant supplies of plums, particularly at that big spike when a chap with 40k arrived. Exactly 1000 people 8)
A challenge in this game is that you need to stay ahead of the curve at all times. Know what challenge may come up, and make sure the resource chains are working. Don't do that, and the game has a really nasty habit of slapping you in the face -- hard.
I didn't bother to expand the farms much because the food situation appeared under control. Then it wasn't. And the game can go south rapidly then. It certainly didn't help that 3-4 out of 5 merchants every god damn year bring useless seeds or livestock.
I am building a new farms area further east, hoping to arrest the development. We need more food, and fast. This year the weather lords decided to join in face-kicking too, and it almost turned Spring before the frost started to abate. Naturally this meant lots of dead crops. The situation isn't good, and given the size of the population and the relative lack of food, I worry for a cascading starvation sequence if some areas start lacking food in the barns or markets.
The map had enough topland stone to get 10,000, but there was less iron. Therefore we built two mines and filled it with dwarves. Got iron in every crevice now ;D
Besides trying to keep starvation at bay, the only point with this game is to tick off a few achievements, so I've built the odd church and a load of graveyards. And dear me do people kick the bucket at an alarming rate.
Unless we all die, I'll eventually put up some more buildings and find a spot for animals in the corner of the map somewhere, so I'm less annoyed by their constant moo-ing and so on.
I wish you (or rather your poor people) the best. I hope you can conquer possible starvation.
I already saw in your last thread, that the food situation was a bit critical. If I want to be safe,I want a food graph in the same shape as the population graph; increasing all the time, at least as fast as the population. It doesn't have to be like in my last town, I admit it was a bit "overkill". But I don't think you have to be too worried. Unless you have more bad harvests and the seed and animal merchants all have planned a unified attack on you, you will manage!
See anything unusual?
(http://i.imgur.com/Z8UCn2p.jpg)
I see a late winter at 9 °C with beans in the field. :o
The food situation gave me a scare, and it was obvious we had to build more farms. Wish I had more luck with arriving merchants, but even so, the few that did bring food saved our butts. At one point we were down to 70k food, and 50-60k of that was plums.... Without trading ports, a lot of people would have died to starvation, and probably much sooner. Consider it punishment for watching the game instead of playing. Sometimes do the same in Settlers 2. I just love watching those little guys walk around and do their thing, and Banished is similar in a way, so... *blush*
Thankfully my bannies didn't all die. More farms, more imported food, and few houses built. The population has kept increasing, but more slowly, and it appears fairly stable for the time being. Way behind on houses, around 400 for 600+ families, but I'm not motivated to fill the map anyhow, and this 'race' to build everything all over the place to try to keep in control of the ever-increasing population is something I'm not too keen on in this lovely little game.
With starvation turned away, it was time to hunt down some silly achievements.
Picture 1: Any idea how many wells you need? I'm counting 26, and may have missed a few (they're not that easy to spot). I've dotted them around the village. 20 is supposed to be enough.
Picture 2: Coupled with the image above, this is the following early spring. That winter the temperature never fell below +3C, which I reckon must be darn rare. When late winter changed to early spring, the temperature was +11C. Then it insta-changed to 0C at early spring. No idea why, but maybe hard coded? Haven't really paid much attention to it before, but don't think I've seen a winter like that.
Picture 3: Think quarries are butt-ugly, which is why I never build them. Did here, however, to chase down vanilla achievements. I'll be honest, this game is boring me, so I'm just going to tick off a few more.
Picture 4: Mines. I've started to extract coal from one of them. Not exactly low on iron ;D
Picture 5: I find it a little amusing that people have to go through a dark tunnel to visit the graveyard. Average happiness has gone up after I built the graveyard, but not enough to crawl up to a full 5 stars.
Picture 6: One of the farming areas. These were built during the great food scare, so I mostly focused on easy to fetch produce like corn, wheat and beans. Other areas are much more versatile, because I like the look of diverse plants.
Picture 7: Some orchards were needed as well. Unfortunately the vanilla ones die off pretty soon, making them a bit pointless for food, because farms beat them hands down. They look nice though.
Picture 8: Animals HAD to be tucked away in a corner of the map, so I can reduce their non-stop bickering. Getting enough animals is pretty much the only point with this game. Need to move on to something else, or try another Banished map with mods.
Picture 9: Some graphs that shows some of the issues in the past. Food dropped for a long period (I ought to have cared earlier). Then firewood (and to a lesser extent logs) went into freefall due to a higher population, and heavy trading with firewood and ale when the right merchants graced us with their presence. Then tools started to dwindle. Supply was plenty, though, so no big issue, and it was more due to lack of coal. More seriously was the steep decline in clothes. I ordered some warm coats (darn expensive at 25 a piece) and bought 250. And built 3-4 more tailors. With animals, we will have more leather and wool, so might cope without needing to order.
The population has flattened out a bit, though still increasing. If I manage to play this map much longer, without expanding with big residential areas, it could be interesting to see if there is a mass death at some point, causing a kidsplotion when younger people move into the vacant houses, possibly turning the game into one of those somewhat frustrating up and down population curves over time. Does this still happen when the population is fairly high? With a high population I'd think there will always be some "circulation" so the up-and-down curves shouldn't be as marked. I remember doing a test with 50-100 population in the past, and the ups and down were very severe, almost killing off the entire town due to lack of kids.
Also: 3 Internets to
@Tom Sawyer for spotting the weird weather :)
Small thing I noticed, that may be obvious to the rest of you, since you have played the game a lot more than me. When building animal pens, I tend to do so in new areas, which naturally are heavily forested. It took 3-4 years just to clear the darn things, because they can only have 2 builders, there are maybe 70-80 items to clear, and for some reason labourers can't do it. So it's better to clear the area first, then put down the animals pens. That way labourers will clear the area, which is much faster.
Being so far away, 2 builders will take an absolute aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaage to do this themselves. Get there, cut down a tree or two, get food, clothes, tools, whatever -- repeat.
When making those last two pens, furthest north, I had clued onto this odd game behaviour, and let labourers clear most of the land beforehand.
This area in your graveyard picture with these "barracks" and the large "burial grounds" looks really creepy! And I found this ominous doctor house next to the chapel and the huge graveyard, OMG. Better not to think about what's going on there. I do not want to have to live in this part of your map. ;)
The jump of the temperature was from the old unusually warm year to the normal year at early spring. Each year has its own deviation from the normal temperature range. I've never seen such a warm vanilla winter.
Haha ;D I wondered about writing something about the doctor house there, zombies or something. It looks creepy.
Thanks for the explanation on the sudden temperature change. It looked very odd. May have happened before too, but haven't noticed. This time the change was huge. Only noticed the lack of a real winter because each year I tend to go over the farms to see how much was lost, and this time winter simply didn't come. Very weird, but kind of nice to know it is possible with such extreme outliers. Wasn't fun that year when it dropped to -3C in spring, and I lost half the crops because farmers are a little... simple ;)
About merchants though.... is there something in the code that says the chance to get a livestock or seed merchants jumps to 90% when you don't need them at all? I have 5 TP's, and the amount of times I get 4 of these buggers each year is astounding. Not been quite as big an annoyance the last few years because I've built up some animal pens, but just look at this. 3 guys happened to come at the same time.
Frustrating :(
(edit: merchant #4 came with 1000 logs and then #5 with more sheep and chickens. Yay!)
This is odd. A food merchant came!? :o
#1 Livestock
#2 Livestock
#3 Livestock
#4 Resources (logs) \o/
#5 Livestock
#6 Seeds
#7 Livestock
#8 Livestock
#9 Livestock
#10 Food!! :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
Hope this nasty trend doesn't continue. All the livestock I mean, not the lucky 'streak' with the food merchant ;D I'm sure he just got lost upriver somewhere, or lost his instructions.
Strange. But I'm sure the game has no knowledge about the merchants. They are just items listed in the tradingpost.rsc and will be chosen by random if the boat is docking at the post. In vanilla the livestock merchant is 1 of 5.
I like your blog; making a little boring game funny. More of that!
Maybe I should have come with this advise earlier; make ALL achievements on one map! That's fun! I made it, as I got a new computer (or rather inherited it from my son). The tricky thing is, that you have to make everything on a small mountain map. This makes even the silliest achievements a challenge: I remember how I struggled to put in as much stone roads as necessary. This was one of my best games ever. I blogged it if you want to take a look.
By the way, you need much more wells than it's said: I think 40 instead of 20.
I have seen such a wheather; but not often. If I remember right; the fields where the beans are left, will not be worked the next year (or did they freeze away in the cold spring?) I think I left my old beans until they froze the next winter. Of cause, you could demolish the fields and build new, but I remember that I wanted to see what would happen.
Yes it's always better to use laborers to clear the ground than builders. I do it with pastures but also fields and orchards; much more efficient.
And once again; I was right: The lifestock merchants have planned an attack! Beware! ;)
Quote from: Pangaea on September 10, 2016, 08:38:37 PM
This is odd. A food merchant came!? :o
#1 Livestock
#2 Livestock
#3 Livestock
#4 Resources (logs) \o/
#5 Livestock
#6 Seeds
#7 Livestock
#8 Livestock
#9 Livestock
#10 Food!! :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
Hope this nasty trend doesn't continue. All the livestock I mean, not the lucky 'streak' with the food merchant ;D I'm sure he just got lost upriver somewhere, or lost his instructions.
I've had a similar problem a while ago. I even tried selecting all livestock and crops whenever such a merchant came and set the order to never, hoping they would get the message and stop coming. I was naive.
Maybe it's like Animal Farm. The animals are in charge, have taken over the Merchants' Guild, and are now trying to spread their dominance to the rest of the world, holding frightened merchants as hostages ;D
Shame the game doesn't have pigs :(
Started to note down what merchants arrived, because it was quite frankly stunning how much bad luck I had. Assumed it was pure randomness, but still I tried to keep Livestock and Seed merchants at port without dismissing them, hoping it would somehow lower the chance of another of the same type appearing. Didn't work. The trend continued yet further, but finally the luck changed. Continuing the list from above:
#11 Seeds
#12 Livestock
#13 Food
#14 General
#15 General
#16 General
#17 Food
#18 Resources
Clearly 13 is my lucky number ;D
Have got all achievements I can get now, apart from 200 nomads. I'm waiting for the next batch, and hope it will be enough. Have accepted maybe 50 nomads in the early part of the game (28 one time, plus a few minor ones).
Isn't it extremely difficult to get ALL achievements in one map? 900 people on a small mountainous map with harsh climate must be tricky. Particularly when you can't build schools or or farms or TPs either (early on).
Think I've read that blog before, but should re-read it. Thanks for the reminder :)
On the strange weather and crops, thankfully there wasn't much left when late winter turned to early spring, and the farmers managed to remove what little was left and then start sowing new seeds. Probably akin to how you can still get something from late finished cropfields even if the farmers start sowing it in late spring (or maybe even summer?).
edit: I remember now that Food Variety hadn't got ticked off yet. Despite having all 8 crop types and 8 orchard types (and having harvested them for a few years). There isn't much orchards though, just 1 field for some of them. Do you need a certain amount of produce from each type for it to tick off or something? I found it a bit weird.
Cc does have pigs thou i think u ment the non-modded cut.
Yes, I meant the non-modded version. Good that pigs have been introduced via mods, though, as so many other great things.
Forget about the question about Food Variety above btw. I had simply messed up. Put down the orchards, and put Pecans to one of the plots. Then changed things around a little so all nuts were in the same area, but by then a naughty farmer had already planted some trees, so despite the plot saying "Pears", the products are still "Pecans". Will simply have to wait a little for the trees to start dying and the Pears to get planted (don't want to cut it all down now).
Running a little experiment. Last five years I've only built one house. Population has gone down around 100 (from almost 1500 to under 1400), and still declining. But families have gone up, by about 70. This can only mean one thing: there are too few houses, and adults are living with their parents, not able to have kids of their own. As a result of that, amount of students and children are declining as well. Children count is under 10% of total population. Think both were over 200 at peak level, so they have almost been slashed in half.
Will the village crash? I've no idea. Hope not, but there is the sign of the up-and-down curve starting, and the underlying population structure doesn't sound good.
Of course I could have mass-built a pile of houses to fix the problem. But it would only be a temporary fix (and I'd need yet more farms again), and then resurface at pop 3000 or whatever. As there is another achievement for running a town for 100 and 200 years, I figured this could be an interesting experiment -- if I manage to keep my interest for that long on a map that is basically "done". Certainly not filled to the brink with infrastructure, but there aren't many areas without a purpose either (hunting, gatherer, forester, or infrastructure).
The food situation is more or less balanced now. Running a deficit after ale making, but not by a lot. Horrible harvest last year, we got 25000 food less than normal, or 20% percent less. Mines and quarries are almost empty, but that aside we are self-sufficient on tools and clothes.
This is from
@Nilla's all achievements in one map game.
Quote from: Nilla on November 03, 2015, 03:45:00 AM
One funny thing; There's one achievement where you have to build all constructions. I was pretty sure i had everything; roads, tunnels, all production buildings. I couldn't understand why the star didn't appear. Than I realized; there was no wooden house left. :o
Excellent thread, and very well done on getting them all. Amazing how you managed to squeeze over 900 people into such a small map, and also the mass death for 400 graves. They came naturally in my game, but then I had a population of 1300-ish at the time.
The quote made me laugh, though ;D Same deal for me. I went through all the clickable menus. "Hmm, I have built everything, boarding houses, doctor houses, even churches, and those fugly mines and quarries. Why no achievement?!?"
Then it dawned on me.... ;D
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one forgetting the wooden house. ;D
And thanks for the compliment! As I said, it was one of my nicest games. The 900 people wasn't that hard, you need a suitable map with room for enough trading ports. The hard thing was the beginning: No tradingports, no farms/orchards/pastures on a small map with uneducated people. That was hard. And I think you have these in front of you! ;D
I am sure your settlement is big enough to survive. Maybe the population will drop to the half or something like that if you build no more houses. It also looks very much like you could make it a "self runner"; leave the computer on and do something else. You seem to bu self sufficient on most things. Maybe autotrade for a few things. It's the easiest way to get the 200 years.
Putting it on autorun is actually what I wanted to do. Then the game crashed when saving. Thankfully the autosave worked, otherwise I would have lost two hours of 'work' at 10x, which is a fair bit.
Not tried autotrading before, believe it or not, but it seems to work okay. After running for a while, the food was down from 450,000 to 250,000, and all the plums were gone, so clearly something didn't work great there. Also looks like if there are more than one resource in a trading port, only one will be used (if there is enough?) for trading purposes. So it looks like firewood was used all the time, and never ale. Everybody are alcoholics instead. Oooops!
Population kept going down. Then some nomads dropped by and I took them in. Wasn't quite enough for the achievement, so I took in another 200 later. They brought some diseases, but nothing too serious, and the food wasn't as good anymore. Population declining something fierce again, and barely kids and students around, so the future may be.. interesting. We'll see. Running it for another 130 years while paying attention would be less than exhilerating, so this will have to do. Doubt everybody will die anyhow, and 500 people isn't that much for the 200 year achievement.
Famous last words? ;D
10x auto is still fairly slow. Thought the years would fly by, but after doing the dishes, making dinner, watching some TV, for the better part of two hours, not very many years had gone by.
Ooof. Game ran in the background for only 4 years, and 300 people died, give or take :o When I came back to it, all labourers were gone, and there were some 300 earlier. Thankfully no teacher had died, as that is always the fear with low labour count. I've changed some numbers around in the screenshot, but before that there were lacking workers in a handful of professions.
Fewer families than homes now, and the graph is bottoming out, so the piggyback ride should be on for the next years. I had really hoped that with such a big city it would possible to have a more stable population, but I guess it's simply impossible unless you keep building houses or managing inhabitants with 'tricks' :(
What you tells about coming back as the population has dropped seems very familiar to me. ;)
Autotrading for food is always a problem. 9999 fruit isn't much, if you make ale for export. On the other hand, with firewood, it might happen that everything is taken to the port and there's nothing left to the people. Who said it was easy! Not me ;)
Yes, it is certainly tricky. Would be much better if we could set a global limit, so if we for instance had less than 1000 steel tools, the autorading would bring it back up to 1000, no matter what trading port was used to do so.
Could still run into the problem you mention about lack of firewood (for instance) for the people, but it would be easier to manage I would think.
Not a lot to update with, as the game has mostly been run while away from keyboard, without too many snags. Up to year 140 now, so the 100 year achievement has been ticked off. Population and happiness form the usual sine waves. At the bottom of the curves, I'm lacking workers in some professions, so when I came back to the game there were missing teachers, physicians, vendors, traders, woodcutters, foresters and many others. Another time we were fairly low on tools, so I upped the auto purchase from 200 per TP to 500, and bought what I saw for a few seasons. Back up to 4500 now, so should be fine for a decade or more.
With my eyes on the game, I also took in some nomads, because the population was crashing anyway. Not many illnesses have been dangerous, either from nomads or otherwise. Have had small pox at least twice, but it was fine as few people caught it. But just recently tuberculosis hit critical mass, and spread like wildfire. Given the amount of time ~100 people had it, I estimate that at least half the town's 1200 residents must have been infected. Not sure how many died, but quite many. The illness persisted for a year or more. That's the worst we've been hit, at least that I know of.
Still 60 years to go, but I've closed down the game now. I want to have another crack at Settlers 2. Downloaded a map of Westeros yesterday, and it was quite fun to play something new, as I know the campaign maps, both of the original game and the Vikings expansion, pretty much by heart. Maybe I'll manage to finish the town by the weekend. Then I may try a harsh mountain map to get the last achievements, though that may be tricky as I lack isolationist and uneducated, and a few more.
Attaching some graphs from year 100, as they get cut off from then on.
Went to a coffee house to meet some friends, so thought it was a good excuse to leave the game running for a few hours. As you can see from the graph below, two big batches of immigrants had been accepted, so population was boosted to almost 1800. Therefore I half-expected a crash, possibly catastrophic crash with mass starvation. While keeping tabs on food, and buying some, it still declined to under 200,000.
Things certainly crashed, but not in a disastrous way. Have re-added teachers, but it was down to 7 of 13, and lacking workers in practically every profession. There were over 500 free labourers when I went for coffee :-X But we're not exactly lacking in products, rather the opposite in fact, and I've now removed auto purchase of steel tools, as we are swimming in the stuff. Haven't bought any leather or wool, because hunters and herdsmen are more than enough. Have now ordered several thousand textiles and warm coats to be hoarded in the trading ports, because I was getting messages about lack of storage space.
Particularly in the eastern part of the map, where relatively few people live, this has been an issue for a very long time in harvesting season. Barns are full, so lots of food is rotting in the fields when winter sets in. I actually built some more houses in that region, but much more would be needed to keep barns from overflowing.
34 more years to go. Getting there. Slowly.
Also, despite only 289 families for 469 homes, I saw very few empty houses, and I checked almost every single one. Came across 5 empty, and loads and loads of houses with one person. Maybe they don't like each other? :(
as long as they keep the neighbor girls preggo,its all good.lol
Quote from: brads3 on September 16, 2016, 12:21:10 PM
as long as they keep the neighbor girls preggo,its all good.lol
.... and they do, a lot of children are born to "single" women! ;)
I see that you are drowning in goods! 12 000 herbs! How many did they use last year. 5 harts; I guess; not many.
But soon you will be there 200 years is really an achievement!
I'm looking at your population graph. It seems that it spirals up and down a bit fast. A decade up and a decade down.
Quote from: Nilla on September 16, 2016, 12:52:00 PM
Quote from: brads3 on September 16, 2016, 12:21:10 PM
as long as they keep the neighbor girls preggo,its all good.lol
.... and they do, a lot of children are born to "single" women! ;)
I see that you are drowning in goods! 12 000 herbs! How many did they use last year. 5 harts; I guess; not many.
But soon you will be there 200 years is really an achievement!
Hah, yes, they're still running about getting pregnant, so it's still good.
12000 herbs is a crazy amount. I don't have many herbalists either, and never have (though a few more). As long as people have access to different foods, health is usually good. It's been at 5 hearts all the time I think, or at least not much less than that. Our guys and gals have used 1028 herbs the last 10 years, so about 100 a year. It was almost 200 last year, so it varies a bit by population. It's back up to around 1400 now.
Quote from: Gatherer on September 16, 2016, 01:04:01 PM
I'm looking at your population graph. It seems that it spirals up and down a bit fast. A decade up and a decade down.
True, it goes up and down fairly quickly. Maybe it would be dragged out more if I had more houses. Then again, maybe it would still be fast, but at a slightly higher population level. At "worst" there are over twice as many families than houses, which leads to very few children and students. It's hard to see in the graph, but you can probably see that the relevant graphs are pretty darn close to 0. I remember having around 70 children after the immigration boost with 1700-1800 population. Not much... ;)
Look forward to getting the 200 year achievement, so I can draw a line across this map. It was "done" a very long time ago, by about year 60-70. Far from sure I'm good enough to get 300 pop on a small harsh mountain map, without schools, farms or trading ports, so it will be a challenge, that's for sure. Have never played with a map like that either. Think I've always used 'normal' settings.
Interesting. Went into the game to check out how the guys were doing, and stumbled upon another hot winter. Noticed it was +15C in Autumn, so kept an eye on things. The temperature very briefly dropped to +2C in Winter, and then gradually increased. By the end of Late Winter it was +11C. The turn to Early Spring wasn't as extreme as in the other game, but the temperature quickly dropped to +6C. This time there weren't crop left throughout the winter, but it was still interesting to see such a warm winter time.
Woo-hooooo! It is done 8)
(http://i.imgur.com/OMllTya.jpg)
Something interesting happened in the last couple of decades. The population didn't fluctuate as wildly and as quickly as earlier. I'm not entirely sure why. I did build 30 more houses at some point, but I doubt this has such an influence. I suspect it may have more to do with *not* taking in big waves of immigrants, and therefore not having a very large pension force hogging homes, and not getting a big death wave, and the ensuing kidsplosion. Looking at the amount of children and students, it appears to be more stable throughout, without getting dangerously close to 0 at the precipice of the boom and bust cycle.
At a guess, peoples' age is more neatly spread across the spectrum. Looking at the year 100 picture too, I've taken in immigrants in every "wave" -- except the last one.
Of course, if I were to leave the game running for another century, the next top and bottom may be more extreme again. Hard to know a great deal about age spread when all we have is child, student and adult. At worst, that means a 10 year old and 90+ year old is lumped together in the same category.
The 2nd picture shows production over the last century, and the decline in steel tools. Pretty obvious where I stopped auto trading ;)
The import-export pattern is probably similar to many other peoples' games.
Import: food, logs and eventually steel tools
Export: firewood and ale
Without ale production we'd be self-sufficient on food, so I could have cut out that chain entirely. But we gotta build something, right? ;D
As you can see from the heavy consumption of stone and iron, there has been a rather wild building spree the last century...
(edit: For some reason the picture look much more grainy after upload than on my computer, despite being of the same size, so I'm not sure what this site does with them - but it can't be good.
edit again: Actually, the size listed underneath the picture is the upload size, not the size on the site, so they are compressed a great deal more upon upload. No wonder they look more grainy then.)
Congratulations, 200 years is something!
I have notice these ups and downs in the fluctuation as well. It might also have something to do with the separated couples; if mam and dad live apart, there's less houses for the young, that means less babies in time for the next baby boom. But I'm sure that your theory; no nomads also matters.
So, on to the next achievements. They are hard to make together, those you have left; but it's possible. If you want some advice; tell me.
Thank you
@Nilla, this has been a tiring game. But after owning the game since release, I suppose it was about time I started to hunt down some achievements :D
Have kept the game running in the background some more today and yesterday, and progressed almost another 20 years. A very near catastrophe when we were sooooooo close to running out of tools (60-ish left when I by chance checked out the game, so had to start mass-producing iron tools). Food was almost gone too, and I noticed a few people had died to starvation. But nothing a pair of human eyes couldn't fix in a couple of seasons.
The pattern of the fluctuation is back to similar shape as before. At the top there were almost twice as many families as homes, with very few kids and students. At the bottom, which shouldn't be too far off, there are (much) fewer families than homes, many houses already have a single occupant, and the amount of children and students are going back up.
I do think the big batches of immigrants played a role, but there is clearly more at play too, and it still looks darn hard, if not impossible, to get a stable population in Banished.
Some general advice for the small map and the last achievements would come in handy, I'm sure :) Will probably need to find a good map too, so I have some room for both infrastructure and forest nodes. Without any farming or trading, nor education, I can't imagine it will be easy to get 300 residents.
No it's not easy but very interesting. As you say, a good map is the first thing. Unfortunately map numbers are changed with the latest patch, the one I had was good. But you don't have to look for the possibility to build many trading ports. That's what made me choose the map I used.
Make a little planning from the start. It's not my usual game and I think not yous either, but it might be necessary: Everey possible spot of water must be used by a fisher, every grassing spot of deer included in a hunters circle and of cause, every possible piece of forest for foresters and gatherers. Only the spot's that doesn't fit into these circles should be used for houses and other buildings.
Use the educated original population as good as possible. Let the blacksmith produce tools all the time, to get as big store as possible with educated workers. Same with clothes: Don't let an uneducated come near these buildings, as long as any educated still lives. Keep a look at blacksmiths and tailors and let them change houses if necessary.
Stones are critical; use them vise.
Store as much food, firewood and tools as possible.
Quite obvious things.
Wish you luck!
Thanks for that. You are right, meticulous planning from the start isn't my preferred play style either, but like you say, it may be needed here.
I've looked at some maps, and I gotta be honest: it looks difficult. Not even map 42 was the answer... :-X
The first here is seed 77, which doesn't look too bad. Sure has a lot of mountains, but I'm not sure how little is realistic to expect. No lake, which I guess is a must here?
The second image has some very nice fishing spots, but the starting area has few trees, which I don't like. Looks like a decent area NW. 8394665.
The third map has a lake, but the river is all in the south. Shame about all those mountains smack in the middle of the map, but there may still be some okay areas in the north. 422346033.
Probably like the first, seed 77 best, but would it be possible to get pop 300-400 here? Hunters and gatherers don't get a ton of food, and fishing is very hit and miss, so 30,000+ food a year sounds like a stretch. But I want to try.
Oh, and the stone will be important, so don't think I can go with any stone houses. And probably put off town hall and such for a long time. On bigger maps it's possible to get by with surface stone for quite a while, but here that may be tricky.
Tried a few more. This one looks allright. I like to scout the area with the Quarry, and this has few of those annoying small ridges here and there that can't be built upon, and really messes up otherwise flat areas. Appears a little lacking in surface stone, but otherwise I like it. Of course the game crashed when trying to save it, but I know the seed, 248163264. Yes, I was trying out some crude math seeds. Prime numbers sucked.
From those, I would think the last one is the best, even if every mountain map has its disadvantages. Mine might have been better, but unfortunately, as I try map seed 7, something completely different shows up. :(
And you can't aim for a food production of 30k. I don't think that is possible. You have to store as much as you can, and than develop fast towards 300.
After looking over the map more thoroughly and trying to plan a little, I'm less pleased with it than I was. Yours looked better, but it's gone now, and I would like to play with a 'new' one anyhow. It may be impossible (for me) to get to pop 3-400, but looking for maps is a boring process, so think I'll just go with one and see how it pans out.
Btw, in the beginning of an attempt like this, how would you go about it? I would think that collecting as much stone as possible early on is important, because getting 2 stone instead of 1 with educated workers is a huge deal. Then clearcut some forest. Getting tool production going early is a good tip, so thanks for that. Usually I postpone that until it's needed, as early on you need every worker you can into useful things, but here it's different since I can't get new educated workers. And as with surface stone, 50% less tools per batch is a huge deal.
You're absolutely right; stones, iron and tools. But remember, that you get uneducated workers pretty soon, as the children grow up. I always try to place the first on spots, where they do as little harm as possible; a bit away, near a fishing dock as example. And always keep an eye on the critical things. Builders seem to have high priority, so building projects might mess things up.