World of Banished

After my request to other players to blog their towns, I feel, that I have to do a little something myself. You have probably seen, that I've tested "the North", mostly under the toughest conditions. And it sure is harder than in a vanilla game. I like it that way. But I'm well aware, that not everyone does. I think, that @Tom Sawyer has made a mod that suits everyone, that you can choose options, that surely makes it different from a vanilla game, but not harder. So, I have decided to see if it's really that way.

Alright, a nice, easy game would probably bore me after some time, so I have put a few small obstacles in my way; I will build no schools and no trading ports. I know; @Tom Sawyer, trade is a pretty essential part in your mod, but I think I have played enough with trade, to be able estimate, how it could work in an easy game.

Unfortunately, no trade means no (or rather very few) special Nordic buildings. Most of them need bricks (hm...... I could maybe have used the NMT-brickmaker, didn't think of that). But on the other hand; I wanted to test the nice looking row houses from @kid1293 for some time now. I've seen them on pictures but never tried them; it's time.

I choose a medium map, plain, mild climate, easy start, OK, I choose disasters on. That's not easy, but I really want to test the effect of fires and they don't come often. (My last town I played 50 years - not one fire! :(  ) I really don't like an easy start; with the "stupidly" located houses, but I have no choice; I need sheep, one vegetable and one fruit, that grows in the Nordic climate. I was extremely lucky! The first map I opened had sheep, potatoes and apples. The best growing seeds of all. But maybe, there wasn't as much luck as moddler cleverness. My experience says, that @Tom Sawyer doesn't let anyone start an easy game with peppar and peaches! Am I right?

This map; plain is really plain; flat land without end. I had to check, that it really was a medium map, not a large; so much land to build on. There's one small difficulty; the mountains are far away. The Nordic map have a lot of stone but doesn't have so much iron (I really don't know if it's different from a vanilla map or just a feeling). Anyhow you will need a mine pretty fast. So I have to expand my settlement in the direction to the closest mountain.

First picture

Start. I've cut the map conditions into the picture.

Second picture

Rowhouses small. Nice, isn't it?

You may see the medium Nordic barns. The look of the vanilla barns doesn't fit the neat houses, I couldn't build any of those. And since I have no bricks for the large one, these will do. They are not that small. The content is good balanced to their size. So there's no disadvantage at all.

Third picture

Row house a little bit bigger. Nice, too!

There are two principally different designs of the house; different roof, different colors. Each in a large number of variations. A great job @kid129! The opportunities of variety are huge, even if you only use these houses! I suppose, you could mix the different design, but if you want to have a unified style, you must pay attention, to get it right. I also find the corners of the diagonal parts a little bit tricky. But I have managed to find the right piece, so far.

I have started a real big row house as well. Not quite finished yet. I will show it the next time.

@Nilla - I know you saw this:
http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=1260.msg24193#msg24193
I'm running with this now and sort of like it.

We had a discussion about time.
I think I have made it 'my way' but the taste is divided, no?
If you PM me any changes, I can compile them for your testrun.

u are right that the start crops are modded in. and there is les iron.could try the tiny quarry near the river for stone. there is a renewable resource mod that has iron to help u since u wasnt close to the mountains. did u like the climate??? i think of mild as florida or cali.yet have found the mild is more like mid-atlantic US as to length of growing season. i played with the north a few different ways for a wk. my biggest problem was i would lose certain resource labels from the CC, ropes to make the tobacco curer,etc.they would just show blank.also,i'm used to the CC lake map with the appalachian trees. its more balanced of flat spaces to build yet has mountains mixed in here n there.the valley map seems to have too many mts. the row houses work great for small mining or processing areas. it was a challenge  the fields didnt seem to produce steady from yr to yr.i took it to b designed to the climate. seemed to range within 100-150 or so up n down each yr. i use 10X10 fields and yields were 400-700. but in real life u have good n bad yrs.

Very interesting setup. I think it's good to show the mild climate and I hope you will try all crops and fruits to see how it works. It represents the climatic conditions of southern Sweden, Denmark etc.. Very pleasant. :)

I give you no peppers and peaches to survive in the North. That would be mean.

There are only less pieces of iron but you get 4/3 from each instead of 2/1. The result is the same as on a vanilla map. And the deposits in the mountains are +100%.

I agree. The smalltown rowhouses look really nice in the nordic environment. Highly recommended in this combination. Of course, even without the north. I noticed improved textures in the current version. And the 10% more height was a good decision imho. This mod also fits in the nordic economy as I said in the description. The row house tailors are able to produce reindeer coats and nordic wool coats. The blacksmith makes steel and of course the fishing dock is going for salmon. So let's build a nordic row house town...

@kid1293, I saw your mod. But I felt a little fed up from real time mods after playing two games with two different kinds of such mods. They are really not mine; too slow. This game is something completely different! Year 15; 300 citizens! That's my kind of game ;) But I promise, just because its you and I like all of your mods, that I've tested, I will try it. After I've finished this game. (It would probably not take too long, I am afraid I have chosen a little bit too hard terms, without schools and trading ports).


@brads3; I don't play the CC mod, so I have no such problems, and I really don't think you should combine the Nordic mod and the CC. When I think of colonies, it's rather warmer countries. But if you could ask a 17th century Englishman, I suppose he would see Canada as a colony and there's cold enough, so .......  But there would be no tobacco curler in that climate....... ;)

And there was enough iron and stone on the ground to reach the mountains and build a mine and also a quarry. The Nordic quarry has to be built in the mountains. That makes sense to me. So no real problem. 4/3 out of each iron also explains, that i could manage so long with my uneducated workers. Getting enough stone end iron with uneducated is always a pain in a vanilla game, until you can trade for it.


Sorry, @Tom Sawyer I can't test no other crops than apples and potatoes, no trading ports, you know! My experience is that these are the best growing crops in the cold climate. So my advice to everyone who wants to play it easy; start with potatoes and apples to produce enough food. Later in the game, if you have enough and want some diversity; test cabbage, beans, cherries, plums, pears; such crops that normally grow in the north. Leave the exotic like peppar and peaches.

Anyhow, potatoes and apples grow very well in the mild clamate. The harvest is more or less almost 100%. (Except occasional single potato fields here and there, where the farmer for some reason starts the work late). You know me; I never build fields in "standard size". I always adept them to the location, but I try to keep them in about the same size; here they are about 90-100 tiles, occupied by one farmer. I started to make orchards in the same size but they are getting bigger and bigger, now. The autoharvesting works very well. The apple orchard is fully harvested long before the field. That's the reason I let them be bigger and bigger; to see how big orchard could be full harvested by one farmer.

I see a couple of problems with the orchards:

The harvest starts automatically at 100%. That's good and works all the time. But the fruit doesn't stop to grow. When the harvest is done, it still shows that around 25% of the fruit is left. This could not be harvested, because the orchard is already harvested to 100%. It's a bit inconvenient. I sometimes want to send farmers to help out on other locations, when they are finished at their original workplace, but it's hard to know, if all fruit are harvested or not. (I have seen this in other mods as well).

As the orchard gets old and the trees starts to die, they never reach 100%, and there's no automatic start of the harvest. That's very inconvenient. I think other similar mods, where the orchards are harvested automatically, have immortal trees. This might be the reason.

To fully support your settlement with fruit, you need to spam the map with orchards. The combination of slow growth and low amount of fruit, have this effect. I know, it's hard to balance: A possibility to support your settlement with enough fruit, but not that much, that you easily could export a big surplus.

First picture

Large row house.
Here is a small bug. It shows February 10, but it's really February 11. It doesn't have any impact on the game. You just notice it from time to time. Here because my last screenshot was from June 10 and I'm sure, it was earlier in the game.

Second picture

Just as I made the last screenshot and admired the nice big rowhouse, this happened: NOOO! My whole big rowhouse, gone in the new evil fire??

No, Just a small market, a herbalist and a blacksmith. So the fires are not that devastating, after all. At least not all the time.

Third picture

Orchard spam.

I somehow get the feeling of a communist kolkhoz; workers living close together with farmland around. But a really nice looking one.

In fact, banished is communism. Everyone works for free and takes what he needs. And after half a century it crashes.^^

Looks like your street was a good fire break. Such a big rowhouse could give a nice fire. These game mechanics of the orchard we can not change (as far as I know). And February 10 is not a bug, it's the same year/season. The game counts from March.

I look forward to more news from your stubborn kolkhoz, who want nothing to do with the evil capitalists from outside. I would like to see more village blogs and stories. :)

Yes, @Tom Sawyer ; it seems like this is a really evil communist settlement; no contact with the world outside, and keep your people away from knowledge, so they never hear from anything else and get no wish to get out. Kim Jong Un has something to learn!  :( And of cause it´s no bug, this dictator has commanded the year to start in early spring = March. Didn´t think of that, sorry!

You might be right about the street as a fire protection. A single street doesn't really help, not even in the vanilla version. But if you look at the picture, you might see, that the house is not built directly at the street: There's one tile free. I wanted to test, how it looks that way, compared to directly at the street (the other part of the building). Before the patches as Banished was new, and the fires were worse than here, I used that "trick". I built 3 tiles broad fireroads (rather free - road - free) here and there. That prevented the fire from spreading outside the block where it started. 

I only played a few years yesterday but the settlement grows fast! Very fast! Closing in on 500 inhabitants in year 19. I'll show you some pictures. Seems like the wheather was bad all the time as I played. I haven't made a single screenshot in sunshine. But this is the North! No good wheather guarantee!

First picture

The charcoalburner has the same limit as logs. That's not really good. If it's possible to make, I would prefere that it was connected to coal and iron from the mines.

It´s hard to increase the food stores the way I want to.

Second picture

Here you can see my first (and so far only) mistake by the rowhouses.

If you look at the inventory, you can see, that there isn't enough/just barely enough fruit. That's the problem I have at the present. The harvest is good. One farmer can most of the time harvest an orchard as big as 200 tiles. But I have to expand to new areas fast. The population grows fast and you have to be far ahead in building new orchards. 

You may say; don't build so many houses, than the population will not grow so fast. That's easy to say, but the farmers have to live close, or you can forget about a good harvest, mild climate or not. I have started to only build the small row houses for a 4 person family. That might help a bit, but if there had been houses for a 3 person family, I would have built a lot of those at present.

I know this is an unusual game, but I think in many games, you come to a point, when you don't want your population to grow as much as they do. So, talented moddlers; Why not make a small house for 3 persons only. (Maybe there are some that I haven't seen. I only know of of a small tent for 3 persons) @kid1293; couldn't it be nice to make a complement to these rowhouses in the size of the herbalist or maybe very narrow to fit the rows (but I suppose that would look weird).

I hear you. :)
I will consider making some 'tiny' rowhouses.

Håller på med storkok till kålpudding, men jag tänker på radhus. :)

Mmmmm, synd det är långt till Skåne. Hemmegjord kålpudding, det är fint det!!

But that shed for 3 persons? I don't know. It is good and a realistic looking house, that settlers would build for a start. But in this large, good looking settlement? It doesn't feel right. I will struggle on with the 4 person houses. I have some ideas, that I might try a little later, if (sorry :-\), when it's getting worse.

And to Mathieuso, I don't know. I somehow heard long ago, that he got a job in the computer gaming business. And if you do such things for a living. You will probably do something else as hobby. But as I said, I have no idea, if it's true.

2 big pots with cabbage parboiled!
Into the freezer and hmmm... (already waiting for autumn) :)

Your choice Nilla! I have ideas of upgrading rowhouses with better
textures but that can go terribly wrong.

I have thought (during cabbage-boiling) about rowhouses.
1 left, 1 (2) middle, 1 right and it should be possible to build
by the road or 1 tile in. Should do the work. This also makes
them buildable alone like a small row (3-4 houses).
Will start tonight after dinner.

I would suggest to be careful about using Cossacks (Mathieuso) fountain mod code/meshes for release.

He indeed put up the sources a good while back but there where some issues between him and Black liquid about using his sources.
He stated that his sources where made public for learning purposes only and not to be used in a mod without his permission.

Black Liquid remade everything from scratch to avoid further issues.

I would to be on the save side and ask his permission to use/modify his sources for release unless of course you already did that and I crawl back into my corner.  :)

Just a suggestion from my side, nothing more  :)

I understand.
I removed the wood house and will be more careful later.

I did try to reach him but he is probably completely off the boat,
so he did not answer back.

I played a few more years yesterday evening:

I said; I had some ideas how to deal with the probems I face at this moment.

The problems are:
The population grows too fast -> I need more food -> I need new land for fields -> I need new houses in the area where the fields are -> The population grows more. Bad circle!

The first two pictures show my ideas.

1. Use the space between the forest circles, even steal a little space here and there. People already live here. I need no new houses.

If you look at the inventory, you may see, that there's mostly potatoes. All my orchards gives enough apples, not more, but I'm running short on proteins. Not much to do about it. I use every spot I can for fishing. This is one more disadvantage with this plain map. The only thing I can do, is to build more herbalists.

2. Demolish houses where many laborers live. They will move into the new areas and there will be less new couples and less babies. As I build new houses, I mostly estimate quickly, how many working places there will be in the area. Than I build one house for 2 workers. That works fine, as long as you build houses for more or less every adult. I don't do that anymore, so there are often 3, sometimes 4 working people in the houses. This means; too many houses in some areas.

3. This seems to be quite successful; the food store increases again. But there are always small setbacks: This was a bad year; a very cold summer. I can't remember, that I ever had such a bad harvest. No field reached 100%. You can see the small potato plants. I would have needed a long warm autumn, but it just turned October (Autumn), and the temperature reaches the freezing point.

I see the Inventory and (some) buildings have been translated to Swedish. Is this something you have done yourself or is there a mod for it?

So many changes through mods now that I'm getting all confused easily  ;D But on a more serious note, can't they easily unbalance the gameplay quite a bit from the vanilla/unmodded game?

Then again, one of the problems with the game has always been that it's hard to get a stable population going. Once you stop growing pop/building houses or run out of space, you tend to wind up with these up and down curves. Kind of wish it was possible to change that a bit, but that would mean changes to core gameplay, and I guess that isn't moddable.

This behaviour certainly brings its own kind of challenges, and as you say it's a vicious cycle. Maybe the Chinese had it right with the 1-child policy :D

(Of course, they have abandoned it now, so maybe not. But these things aren't universal truths either. What is right in one context can be wrong in another.)

Your wish is come true @Nilla !
The small version of a small house. :)

Three persons and nearly as warm as a stone house.
Of course they can be more than three when they
move in, but they will not have more children until
all children have moved out.

I don't update the main file just yet, I wait to see
if there are more ideas lurking in the autumn mist.

Ett rent nöje!

No, @Pangaea, the translation comes from @Tom Sawyer, who also made the highly recommendable Nordic mod. I just helped a little with a couple of words, because he's German. What I like about the Nordic mod (together the lovely design) is, that it's possible to choose options, that makes the game harder than the original. That's quite unique.

But you are right about the unbalance. Many mods makes the game easier; more.... better..... . Of cause, there are also a lot of new buildings, that more or less only brings variety, without any changes in the gameplay.

Many of the modders who discuss their mods here, have an ambition to keep their mods balanced. If they create something new, they want the building cost, production and trade value in the same range as in the vanilla game. They are very talented and "spit out" mods in a speed, that not even the most diligent tester, with a lot of free time (like me) have a chance to test them all. I don't make any mods myself, but it's very nice to read the threads and see, that it's really a community: They encourage and help eachother, they give away their codes for others to use; a very nice and helpful atmosphere.

I think it might be possible, if not totally change, at least to control the population variation a bit better with something, we are just discussing here: Houses for different family sizes. Of cause, it has to be tested and it will probably not work perfect at the first attempt. A little bit of Chinese 1 child experiment ;)

Thank you very much @kid1293 ! I have downloaded your lovely small houses but I haven't dared to add it to my game yet. I guess it could work, but I have a few bad experiences with crashes adding mods to an existing game, so I don't know. But maybe I'll be brave and give it a try. It would really be helpful.

I played a few more years. Not much new to tell. Just a small Christmas greeting from Sligona in December 26. Santa will soon collect his reindeer and go for his annual ride. You can see that my strategies for food/population control were quite successful so far. One bad year didn't hurt much.

Edit: if you look carefully, you may see my second, really bad mistake by the rowhouses, sorry @kid1293 ; not your fault! :-[

I played a little more. The map is quite full. Than I thought; It doesn´t matter anymore I´ll take the risk. So I loaded the 3 person houses from @kid1293. No crash! I should have done this earlier. Silly me; too coward! I will play with these mini houses tonight. I´ll tell you more tomorrow.

I must say; the 3 person houses are really small. If you look at a the size of a person, it's not bigger than 2,5 *3,5 meters. Not even a full sized "Friggebod" @kid1293 . ;) . But I suppose, it would be possible for a small family to live in that tiny space if they are good organized in all their actions.  ;D

The rowhouses are good as they are and my request for houses for small families, might be very special, so maybe this is not such a good idea, but anyhow, I`ll tell you my idea:

From each design there are 3 models of the middle low rowhouse, and two of the corners. One of each has no windows on the first floor, the others have some. What if you just reorganize them and make the models without windows on the second floor as a separate 3-person house and the ones with the rooms upstairs, the way they are now; for 4 people?

First picture

Again I have problems with the warehouses. I have 4 of them, with mines, woodchoppers, charcoalburner, blacksmiths and tailors in the area. In 3 of 4 there's a lot of coal and no iron, in the 4th a lot of iron and no coal. The tool production is a catastrophe!  They are all uneducated, so it's never high, but at the moment my 29 blacksmiths only produces some 500 tools each year, much less than I need.

I think I've found out what my problems are: There are few barns in the area and for many producers, the warehouse is the closest storage place. It would be used as a barn. (You may see the same with vanilla markets in farming areas with too few barns; there might be no proteins because the farmers fill the market).  And in this case; I think, the fact, that iron, coal and steel all have the same "flag" prevent the vendors from carrying any other materials in there.

I don't know, if it's possible to change anything in the mod to improve this. Could it be made in a way, that only vendors carries things into the warehouse? In any case, I think it's possible to reduce these problems by building more barns and locate the warehouse a bit different. (I`m about to solve the immediate problems in this game by closing charcoalburners in areas, where there's too much coal and change the production from iron to coal in the mines, in the area, where there were only iron. The tool production has increased)

Second picture

I've been a bit too eager increasing he number of fields and orchards. I actually have too much food! So I'm making the opposite to @Pangaea; I'm giving land back to the forests, demolishing fields and orchards in areas where I've stolen the land before. ;)

Sorry, it seems like I forgot the pictures. Here they are!

Are the pictures in the last post missing for anybody else? I can't see them.

One of the aspects that can be really tricky in this game is logistics. I always find it's a pain to get enough logs (and firewood) from the forest nodes to the central areas in an orderly fashion, and the same with food variety. Some markets may be overflowing with fruits or farm products, while others (typically in the outskirts) are filled with meat (fish and venison). In areas with lots of live animals, you may get piles and piles of leather, wool and meat, and preciously little else. I wish the vendors were better at distributing goods around.

It can be partly solved by fake-demolishing stockpiles and gradually releasing bought logs and other products, but it's a pain in the neck with such micro management (and even more so for the people playing at 5-10x).

About small houses, before my hiatus I recall @slink making some small houses that looked quite neat. Although it's very nice to be able to use smaller housing units, a concern can be that it allows even more people on the same space. Although they look very good, that is a concern for me with the two and three story houses via modding.

Starting with the impossible option sounded too hard, but you're right that more options there is good, because the start of the game can be a little easy once we know what to do. I remember in the very beginning, when we tried all sorts of different things, and many ended in disaster and deaths. I lost more than a few villages to mass starvation or mass freezes  ;D

@Nilla - I understand even without pictures, but your idea about
3-family versus 4-family rowhouses can be a bit tricky to implement
now when I have the mod up and going. Maybe it would be
compatible, maybe not. I dare not take the chance!

For now it works with the those 'extra-small' rowhouses.

Logistics is really a challenge in Banished. The warehouse (or other specialized markets) can help.

I think the problem with your warehouses is, as you describe it @Nilla. Probably the laborers meddle in the logistic of the vendors. This warehouse on your picture (as far as I can see in this fog ^^) is surrounded by charcoal burners without barns or sheds. All the coal is carried directly in the warehouse and it is over the limit. In my final test of the new setup, there were exactly 200 iron, 200 steel, 200 coal, 200 firewood etc..

If iron and coal would have different flags it could solve it, but we don't have free flags and with the next resources it would be the same... I would like to see if some barns or sheds next to the production buildings can solve it...

For your second picture you get the Banished Award for Conservation of Nature and Environment. And maybe you can apply for EU funding. ;D

No, no, no @Tom Sawyer; no EU fonding. Sligonia is a communist settlement of the most evil kind, remember. It will never lose its independence over such a trivial thing like money!

I have decided to stop this game; no fun anymore. The map is full; I have the tool production (and every other production) under control. I build a few new 3-person houses each year, so the population still grows a little bit. I try to have about 15% children. If I wanted to run this settlement, I think I could reach a quite stable population. But as I said, I will not. This is not a self running game, you can leave without attendance some hours, than come back and see how it has developed. And sit here in front of the computer, letting it run at 10x speed, demolishing some infested farms and orchards, taking care of old orchards, change the mines between iron and coal is too boring.

I will answer my question:

Could the north be easy?

Yes, it can! Maybe not easier than a vanilla game, but definitely not harder.

Choose a mild climate and the farming works just fine; most years 100% harvest on fields and orchards. Of cause, you have to choose the right crops. Not everything grows well in the north. But if you start medium or easy, use the starting crops for the basic supplies. @Tom Sawyer will not let you down, by giving you impossible crops to start with. If you want diversity on your fields, try some others. Some work fine, others not at all. And forget, how the crops work in a vanilla game. Everything is changed.

If you want to be self sufficient on fruit, the orchards might give you some trouble. They are much easier to harvest, than in a vanilla game. One farmer manages the harvest of a really big orchard (up to 200 tiles) but a full harvest gives much less fruit. The trees also grow very slow. They also live longer, but when they start to die, it gets a bit complicated; the autoharvest doesn't work proper. I cut the trees, as soon as they started to get old and let the orchard rest until the trees were big again. You need a lot of space to be self sufficient on fruit, but it might still be worth the effort; fruit cost 2, if you want to buy it.

I didn't trade in this game, but from my other games with the Nordic mod, I could say that trade is a bit more complicated, than in a vanilla game, but works fine. Many trading values are changed, so don't try to sell any firewood. That's one of the few things, that gives you no profit! You will need coins, if you want to buy things. If not firewood, what is good to sell? Many things, take your pick! There are two different merchants who want to buy your products for coins; One wants rawmaterials. I sold logs at the beginning and steel later.  The other merchant wants Nordic products. I sold venison and salmon early, steel tools and Nordic coats later. Ale from (imported) wheat is also good. But here is no best product. It changes over time and from game to game.

First picture

The winter light is a bit dark here too, but now I have the iron/coal situation under control. I was running a bit short on logs, so I closed the charcoalburner and get coal from the mines. There are always 2 mines at each industrial spot. If it look like this at the warehose; one for coal and one for iron. If there's much more iron, I produce only coal and reverse. That works fine. Even if the careless blacksmiths throw all their fresh produced tools in the snow, the stores are filling up.

Second picture

I've cut in some production statistics. You can see, that most things have had their ups and downs. (Except food, I was a bit too eager in expanding the farms, I have had bad experience with uneducated and food before) I had to take care of things all the time. As example; wool (textiles). As it was running shorter, I built new pastures, it was shown to be too many, too fast, so the place was flooded with wool. I made a few Nordic coats and the problem was solved. These things makes the game interesting. With some trading ports it's easy to buy/sell to get/get rid of what you need. Here you have to think differently.