Forum Challenge #1: Most People Inside a Market Radius

[solarscreen]

Here are some screen caps from my market challenge village:

[slink]

I had to drop back a few years and take a different approach, but this one seems to be working so far.  I gave up on a purely manufacturing colony.  I'm just not cut out for that kind of building.  I actually ran out of iron at one point on this timeline, but I had a bunch of surface iron that I had not collected so it was okay.

[mariesalias]

@solarscreen  The river does cut down on your available houses, but it makes a more pleasant-looking town, I think. Especially if there were trees planted along the river and around the town.

@slink I am sorry you had to go back a bit. I made a separate save myself last night in case I can't continue my current model and push them to a starvation spiral. If that happens, I have an alternate strategy that may work out better. Good luck! 

[RedKetchup]

i agree with @mariesalias , Solar, your town, look nice

to @slink , when you ll fill those hole, and replace the crops by houses... you ll get more population i ve got, for 1 you dont have a little hill in the midle of the town^^ and for 2, i ve really tried to not put any corner house the other side of the orange line. i ve been very strict. and also you ll see, that part need to 'eat' alot, really alot ^^

nice jobs guys, dont give up !

[slink]

@RedKetchup: Yes, that hill in your market circle did not do you any favors.  Without that hill, and the small stockpiles, you would only have four fewer houses than I will have if I fill all of my area.  My layout is completely symmetrical, but the houses which fit in completely on one side sit on the yellow line on the other.  From this I conclude that the market circle is very slightly asymmetrical with respect to the market itself, since the position of the roads are defined by the market itself.

It is a lot of food that they eat, isn't it.   

[slink]

Since, as @RedKetchup pointed out, some of my houses are on the yellow line on one side of the circle, I am dropping out.  Congratulations in advance to the eventual winner.    

I did enjoy seeing how everyone approached what was essentially a space-filling problem.

[solarscreen]

Since, as @RedKetchup pointed out, some of my houses are on the yellow line on one side of the circle, I am dropping out.  Congratulations in advance to the eventual winner.    

I did enjoy seeing how everyone approached what was essentially a space-filling problem.

Ah, no you cannot quit so easily!  If you have houses over the line, demolish them and bring your city in line! We will accept your offer.

[RedKetchup]

bah ya ! dont quit cause that, just fix it !

[salamander]

@slink -- I want to see your final town, so you can't quit.  Well ... you can, but you can't.  Make sense? 

[slink]

Fixing it required throwing away thousands of stone and hundreds of iron.  While I was doing that I ended up with dozens of homeless.  I started the map over again, but I got a bugged square from dirt road removal (from a forested square?) after a save and load.  I take that as a sign.  I concede.   

However, here is the save from before I started over ... again.  It has four trading boats awaiting firewood, not enough farms, not enough woodcutters, not enough herbalists, and, of course, not enough houses.  The latter one is the reason for the former four.

What, compressed files are not allowed?  Okay, here comes 10 MB of save.

[RedKetchup]

i thought you only had like 3-4 maybe 5-6 houses to delete top .... not 94 homeless

oh i see 767 citizens !!
hehe i warned you that last part is hard, they eat like ogres. you need alot , and alot of outside circle crops and gatherers... and fishermen too. you need alot of space all around.


usually, 700-1000 citizens are spreadout on all the map, here they all at same place like if they were living inside sky screapers towers of 350 floors ^^ like in the big apple, Manhattan ^^

dont give up man !

[slink]

I had to rebuild in order not to lose too many houses.  Following the exact rule, none of the living area can be even on the line.  I could have tried to dice the language and claimed that the big porch of the one stone house was not part of the living area, but I decided that the only proper thing to do was to make sure no part of the house was on the line.  For the narrower "half" of the circle that was not possible with my normal pattern, so a new pattern had to be laid out.

That map is supporting between 1,000 and 1,100 in Shoshong, but as you say it is spread out over the entire map.  There are about 130 9 x 9 farms in Shoshong, and about a dozen 15 x 4 orchards.

Here is a picture of the same area, in Shoshong.  At 996 citizens, only about 96 of the farms are in use, but there are also about a dozen orchards, eight pastures, six gathering huts, eight fishing docks, and six hunting cabins, all providing food to Shoshong.  There are, in addition, five herbalist huts, and one hospital in Shoshong.  There were two herbalist huts in The Big Circle, but one was demolished to make way for farms.  Shoshong has twice as many woodcutters as The Big Circle, and half again as many forester cabins.

I would have had more farms in The Big Circle but I had to stop building farms and concentrate on making new houses before things got worse with even more people.  I confess that the large number of homeless did make me think of New York City.   

[Demonocracy]

Phew!

I had a late start and some delays along the way, but this was a lot of fun trying to make the best slum circle possible!

I got up to about 500 people, but I've certainly been bested by some extremely skilled and clever hands.  Well done, guys!  I've been watching the progress, and I'm impressed.

[RedKetchup]

@Demonocracy good job, dont give up ! continue.

but ya, it s already hard to place the market, you need a big place, the market circle is so huge, and when you find a spot to place it, without mountain inside... bah, you can be sure they arent that far from the city, and they hurt you anyways cause ... you still need alot of place for all your food production.

in fact, to feed the first half of the circle is easy, the problem is to feed the 2nd half ^^ you cant put your farms at the other side of the map unless you are micromanaging all the time (using trading post to go grab a certain kind of unique food - the one very very far - and as soon they gathered everything you ask them to release it in the city, hehe ^^)

[solarscreen]

@slink I would have liked to see you just reclaim the few that overlapped the radius and then keep building. It does get tough though.  I think these challenges can benefit us though in learning how to make less than perfect conditions work and succeed.