Forum Challenge #2: 500 Farmers

[irrelevant]

That person clearly was an especially special snowflake. Someone corrects your spelling? Oh noes! Welcome to the internet, young man.

You apologized, he should have accepted that and let it go. Kinda like what you just did. Thanks.

[salamander]

Actually, that whole affair had gone on for some time before I posted my attempt at a 'nudge', so I don't think I can take credit for it.  It just seemed to me that one side of the disagreement progressed normally, but the other was fixated for some reason.  It's the level of fixation I can't figure out.

Sort of back on topic, I have to say I'm just in awe of @RedKetchup's ability to bang out 1500+ populations.  I don't see any way I can compete with that with the time remaining, but that doesn't mean I can't have fun trying.

[irrelevant]

I have to say I'm just in awe of @RedKetchup's ability to bang out 1500+ populations.

Yes, it's uncanny how easy he's made it look. I'm really struggling to get the final 80 or so farmers. When you get really spread out geographically, building seems to take forever (in 1.0.0 anyway). Builders and laborers make ungodly treks from their homes, and starvation takes its toll. Makes me feel like I'm a cruel pharaoh driving slaves to their deaths building a pyramid, instead of just trying to lay down a few stupid farms.

[mariesalias]

@irrelevant

Building can take a long time in 1.0.3. I think it took my laborers and builders 5 years to clear, stock, and then build a cemetery last night. Maybe longer, I'm estimating, but it took a looong time! Course they did have to walk over a long bridge to get there, well some of them anyway, but still. Speaking of bridges, I have an even longer one that it is taking my builders years and years to build. I did place some houses about midway around the lake where the builders could live though so they don't have to walk super far to work on either end. Currently, they are 260 builds out of 477.

I am up to about 1300 population and only 266 farmers. I am going slow though, and trying to keep their food supply on-hand between 300k-400k at least. Trying to keep health/happiness 5/5, a stockpile of tools and logs. I have three interior lake trading posts filled will food, in case of an emergency (i.e carelessness on my part). I am trying very hard to avoid a death spiral!

[RedKetchup]

@salamander : i am so sorry Salamander. i maybe overreacted, i didnt catched any indications that you were joking. it is possible that i am a bit cocky, proud when i succeed to be good at something but please dont hate me. i am not a bad guy (i think).
and no worries, i dont have any hard feelings.

i dunno. i find that easy to get a +1500 pop but struggling to get it pass the 1700+ the game always take me out as many peeps as i succeed to get some births. i guess i dont put enough houses.
and maybe cause i only build stone houses. once after i started with my original 5-6 wooden houses... i dont use them anymore. too much stressful on firewood. i tried one day to build 1 wooden every 1 stone and i found it a very bad idea, i had really too many wooden. but i am always in wait to get tons of stone from merchants.

[RedKetchup]

@mariesalias  : wow a very very nice new zone ! the spot seems huge ! it will be a huge add to your population. the only thing i would have made different... i would have lay down stones houses instead. you are amazing me how many wooden you use (if you dont use them(stone) at all ^^)

[mariesalias]

@mariesalias  : wow a very very nice new zone ! the spot seems huge ! it will be a huge add to your population. the only thing i would have made different... i would have lay down stones houses instead. you are amazing me how many wooden you use (if you dont use them(stone) at all ^^)

Thanks! I actually took extra time out to lay out that section completely in advance and it turned out more-or-less how I wanted it. I do have some stone houses but only a smaller percentage of the total. Currently, I am building stone houses only for the "wealthy" politicians and merchants, and for areas not within a marketplace's radius or near a woodcutter.

Currently, I am working on stockpiling food, tools, and firewood/woodcutters so I can make a bigger push for population With only two days to go, I will have to take risks if I want to even come close to competing with you, @slink, and the others! I really do not want to take in Nomads unless I have to since their production is so much lower/slower so I have been trying to increase the ramp-up for children. I think I waited too long though trying to be more careful, plus I lost focus at one point after an increase period, which lost me some momentum. I had planned to be closer to 1500 population by now. Thankfully, I periodically check my population graph so I caught it before too long, but you can see on my graph the hit I took.

ETA: Meant to add, before I got distracted, that the wood houses do cost so much more in firewood, but logs are pretty cheap at this point in the town's development. Once I have the food and tools where I want them, I switch focus to changing all major roads to stone and start converting/building more stone houses. I don't like to build all stone if I can help it though as I don't like how they look as much. Once I have to start converting some of my cutting forests to farms, logs, and firewood, will become a more dear commodity.

[irrelevant]

@mariesalias  I think I also have been trying to be too careful. All along I have been so wary of fluctuations in population that I probably haven't expanded as quickly as I should have. I could have been more aggressive with pushing out faster from the marketplaces with houses but above all else I didn't want the pop curve to get out of control. In fact mine is very similar to yours.

Your layout is beautiful. So orderly. I think the best thing you can say about mine is that it's organic. Which I suppose is another word for chaotic.

[mariesalias]

@mariesalias  I think I also have been trying to be too careful. All along I have been so wary of fluctuations in population that I probably haven't expanded as quickly as I should have. I could have been more aggressive with pushing out faster from the marketplaces with houses but above all else I didn't want the pop curve to get out of control. In fact mine is very similar to yours.

Your layout is beautiful. So orderly. I think the best thing you can say about mine is that it's organic. Which I suppose is another word for chaotic.

I don't think I will be able to double my population in the next twenty years though!

[irrelevant]

The next few posts are a tour of Donton, my 500 farmer challenge town.

Starting at the north edge of the map and moving down the river (so in the images in this post and those that follow, north will always be at the bottom).

Screen 1 - First you come to Northgate, a trading and manufacturing community.
Screen 2 - In the hinterlands on the right bank is a fair-sized farming center.
Screen 3 - On the left bank is a bit of this and that.

[irrelevant]

Next on the river is Newport, which was my second industrial center after Oldtown. Northgate (shown in the previous post) was simply an expansion of Newport.

Screen 1 - Newport, the industrial heart of northern Donton.
Screen 2 - The near left bank hinterland. This was the first large-scale farming area I made on this map.
Screen 3 - More farms to the south of the previous screen.
Screen  4&5 - This was one of my two big farming expansions that was built oh-so-painfully at the cost of many starvation deaths over the last 10-15 years. The area on the far left was all laid out before any construction began.
Screen 6 - Newport's southern suburb, Laketown. I built that long bridge cause there was a steady stream of folks walking up and down between the lake and the mountain to the right.

In addition to all the farms, Newport and its hinterlands support 8 Brewers, 5 Tailors, 3 Blacksmiths, 13 Woodcutters, a hospital, 2 chapels, and 5 schools.

[irrelevant]

Further south on the river is Oldtown.

Screen 1 - Oldtown on the left bank where the Town Hall is.
Screen 2 - Newmarket (center), the second marketplace built on this map. I recall feeling very accomplished when I built it.

Oldtown and Newmarket have 3 Breweries, 2 Tailors, 4 Blacksmiths, 6 Woodcutters, a Hospital, 5 Chapels, and 3 Schools.

[irrelevant]

I never really gave this area a name. It was simply the port/industrial area that developed as an extension of Oldtown. So I suppose this is part of Oldtown too.

Screen 1 - Port/Industrial
Screen 2 - Right bank farming hinterland. Oh, and Boot Hill way down in the corner.

This area has 7 Brewers, 2 Tailors, 1 Blacksmith, 7 Woodcutters, a Hospital, 3 Chapels, and 3 Schools.

[irrelevant]

The southern expansion. This part was lots of fun. Well, until the whole starvation thing kicked in.

Screen 1 - Southport. This was tough to get established, as the available land is so narrow.
Screen 2 - Southfield was the market that allowed me to push out into the fertile areas south and west of the river and bordering highlands.
Screen 3 - This was the first area where I laid the whole thing out first before building anything.
Screen 4 - ....and this was the ultimate expression of that idea.

This area contains 2 Breweries, a Tailor, 5 Woodcutters, 3 Hospitals, 2 Chapels, 4 Schools, and a boatload of farms.

[irrelevant]

Here are some town hall panels pasted down over farm porn 

Screen 1 - Pop 2337 with 527 Farmers, mostly on 15x8s with 2 Farmers each.
Screen 2 - Production and Consumption totals for 100 years. I guess if you do the math between Food Production, and Consumption + Inventory, that means I bought almost 3 million food over that time, mostly Fruit purchased for Ale but half consumed by Citizens.
Screen 3 - Population graph. I think what allowed me to be able to keep this pretty well under control was that the number of Houses was very consistently about 20% behind the number of Families reported in the Town Hall.
Screen 4 - Food Inventory
Screen 5 - Log woes. I was doing okay there for a few years in the 50s or so. I think what caused the crash was that I had to vastly expand firewood production.
Screen 6 - Firewood was my biggest problem the whole last 50 years. Yes, @RedKetchup, I know I should have built only stone Houses 
Screen 7 - shows the Overview panel after I went through and bumped all the 15x8 farms to the default 3 Farmers up from the 2 Farmers I used the whole game. Is this how many farmers I really have, 694? No, cause if I were to continue with this town, the first thing I would do would be to go through and change them all back to 2 Farmers each