World of Banished

Afternoon everyone.

So yeah, I played with RK Editor Choice for a couple of days and I am back to Vanilla where I belong. There was nothing wrong with RKEC, I intend to go back to using it as soon as possible but I need to learn the core game first. I knew this from the start but got ahead of myself and was excited to try "every piece of candy in the candy store" as it were (all the different mods and changes to the game). RKEC just threw so much stuff at me and I was a bit overwhelmed by it all.

Anyways, I'm back in Vanilla as of this morning and I do admit my game is a bit more fun and it's lasted so much longer -  it's still going too despite my first population die off of 30+ citizens because I neglected my food supply when my population reached 70+. My population expanded but my food production did not, it was still stuck at a 30-citizen capacity. No biggie, it was a teachable moment.   :D It's kind of nice being unshackled from the aging mod! What a difference! hehe


So population growth!?  More specifically - how exactly do you do this and what methods do you use? It was during this phase of me trying to experiment with some of the stuff I read in the forums (things @RedKetchup and @Nilla had said) that things got out of hand and went downhill leading to my first mass die-off. I read things RedKetchup and Nilla said and tried to implement it myself but I didn't fully understand the ways of doing it and well... I messed up obviously and apparently.

This whole "destroy and reclaim" homes and "kicking people out and pairing them up" is what I am seeking more information on right now specifically. If I could just get this done properly it would drastically improve my game play in Banished. I tried setting homes for destruction, waited for them to get their belongings, then waited an extra ten minutes or so. At this point several homes were empty but not yet destroyed; the reclaim button was still available. So I used the reclaim button but was disappointed that it was all for naught! Everyone moved back in, just as they were prior to me evicting them. I'm trying to get the extra adults and older children out, but keep mom and dad and the toddlers inside. But it didn't work that way, everyone went back to their former homes and living arrangements. What am I doing wrong and more specifically how is it that you do it?

After I get the hang of doing that, then of course I would be happy to receive other "population control" techniques and methods any one might have that has nothing to do with destroying homes and playing match maker. Tips and tricks regarding Nomads and what ever else helps to regulate population. Speaking of Nomads, I did accept my first batch. I think I had a population just under 50 when 6 Nomads arrived and I accepted them because I already had 4.5 hearts in general health and also a two Herbalists employed and a Hospital with a Physician - so I wasn't afraid of those Nomads entering.

Thank you in advance and I look forward to all replies, help, and any secrets you are willing to share.  ;)

~MarkAnthony
               

You can´t control "pairing" in other ways than building enough houses for new couples to move into. And building new houses is the only thing you need to do in a normal case. Only if you have built too many houses or so many people have died that you have more houses than families, you need to use the "fake demolishing"trick.

If you want your settlement to grow fast, you build a new house as soon as a girl is an adult. If an adult girl and a student boy move together, children are born, but no student girl become a child. Think about that! ;)

In the beginning, it´s easy to keep track of each individual. Later you can see at the town hall menu how many families you got. The number is a bit confusing and not totally reliable but still useful to see how many houses you need. When the settlement is supposed to grow, I build a couple of houses less than the number of families. If you have more houses than families, a couple may separate or a student moves in with an adult. In a small settlement, it doesn´t matter but if you build several schools on larger maps, the student may move to a place very far away from his school and it takes very long to graduate. I´ve seen 24 years old students, who spend more time on the road and in school.

If you don´t want to grow so fast, you build less new houses but I strongly recommend to build houses continuously otherwise you may get a drop in population because of over aging.

I wouldn´t take any nomads until you are a bit more used to the game. Nomads are uneducated. Education is important in Banished. Uneducated produce far less than educated and also "destroy" raw materials. If an uneducated tailor makes 2 coats from 2 hides, an uneducated makes 1. That´s a reason I use to build a school as (one of the) first building. If you still are tempted to take nomads (or some children who have missed school) make sure that they make things where they do little harm. Teachers, priests, and doctors are the best. Here are uneducated as good as educated! Simple food producers like fisher, farmer, gather are also OK. Uneducated produce around 1/3 less. But build the nomad houses far away from tailor and blacksmiths. Here they do most harm. I also don´t want them to be laborers to clear ground. They become less stone or iron from each precious rock.

My understanding of Banished can be summarized in two short and simple rules:

1) Build Home and Work and Storage all as close as possible together.

This 4 minute video explains it detail. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJiHMaP4Lns)

2) Only build homes with jobs.  As a rule of thumb consider each home to be 2 jobs.

A Fishing Dock has 4 jobs.  Build a Barn and 2 Homes directly next to it.

A Gathering Hut, a Forester, a Hunting Cabin, a Herbalist etc. all together?  I'd build 3 to 5 homes right there. 

A School?  Build 1 home.

A Physician?  Build 1 home.

A Tailor and a Blacksmith next to each other?  Build 1 home.

Quote from: Nilla on June 21, 2019, 03:29:18 PM
You can´t control "pairing" in other ways than building enough houses for new couples to move into. And building new houses is the only thing you need to do in a normal case. Only if you have built too many houses or so many people have died that you have more houses than families, you need to use the "fake demolishing"trick.

If you want your settlement to grow fast, you build a new house as soon as a girl is an adult. If an adult girl and a student boy move together, children are born, but no student girl become a child. Think about that! ;)

Thanks for your reply @Nilla .

Yeah, I had a good handle on my population at first in terms of the housing to families ratio. Every couple of in-game years I would cycle through the homes peeking at the occupants and after a while I started seeing some in the ages where they should be living in their own homes. So if one home showed mom and dad and two young kids and also a couple of students who were old enough to move out and have their own place - I'd build a new home. But what happened was just a single student would move in. I thought maybe that'd be okay because that student would eventually hook up - but I don't know if they ever did.

So with no aging mod, what age does a girl become and adult? Or a boy for that matter? So you are saying:

   
• Build a new home when an individual girl becomes an adult
• An adult girl + a student boy = children born

What about:

   
• Build a new home when an individual boy becomes an adult? Won't he find someone to marry and have kids with?
• An adult boy + a student girl /= (does not equal) children born?
• What about single adults male and female - won't they pair up if a new home is built?

So how exactly is that "fake demolishing trick" handled? What are the steps to doing it properly because I don't think I did it right since everyone seemed to move back in just as they were before I kicked them out.

An adult girl marries a student boy and has kids but no one marries a student girl? Or if they can marry a student girl, they just won't have kids because girls in school were taught to not have sex?  lol  :P   I think I read that somewhere in the forums on Steam. /shrug

So break it down for me please: Who marries who? Which paired couple has children? Which paired couple does not have children? Do single people living in homes by themselves ever get anyone else to move in with them? Or does one person moving into a home by themselves = instant failure and need to be demolished? I'm confused a bit by the mechanics of all of it.

And how do I fix things (housing) after a mass die off when I end up with more homes than families? Should I just immediately start destroying homes? Which ones in particular should I be on the look out for?

Quote from: Nilla on June 21, 2019, 03:29:18 PM
When the settlement is supposed to grow, I build a couple of houses less than the number of families. If you have more houses than families, a couple may separate or a student moves in with an adult.

The part in bold - I understand the words that are coming outta your mouff (Rush Hour movie reference) but that doesn't make sense!  ;D It seems backwards. If I want my population to grow wouldn't my housing ratio be for example something like 24 families /24 homes? And so if I want population to expand I'd build a new home or two so like 26 homes/24 familes.  No? My brain cannot handle the logic of - "if I want more people then I need to have less homes for the families I already have." Can you make my brain smarter please and explain that?  ;)

And why is it so bad that a student moves in with an adult?

Quote from: Nilla on June 21, 2019, 03:29:18 PM
I wouldn´t take any nomads until you are a bit more used to the game. Nomads are uneducated. Education is important in Banished. Uneducated produce far less than educated and also "destroy" raw materials.

... That´s a reason I use to build a school as (one of the) first building.

I read about that in the forums before I started playing so I understand the warning about uneducated people, especially nomads. But do I need to be concerned if my town educated % is at a certain point? For example, when my nomads came my town had an 86% educated stat prior to them arriving - then a while later it went to 94% before I came back to the forums here to ask more questions.  And yeah, I too like to build a school as soon as possible.

Quote from: Nilla on June 21, 2019, 03:29:18 PMIf you still are tempted to take nomads (or some children who have missed school) make sure that they make things where they do little harm. Teachers, priests, and doctors are the best. Here are uneducated as good as educated! Simple food producers like fisher, farmer, gather are also OK. Uneducated produce around 1/3 less. But build the nomad houses far away from tailor and blacksmiths. Here they do most harm. I also don´t want them to be laborers to clear ground. They become less stone or iron from each precious rock.

Okay now you got me scratching my head. Nomads and children who missed school = uneducated. I get that, but you continue to say that I should make sure they take certain jobs. Basically that is what I am hearing you say to me. How do I control what jobs they take? Or if I find an uneducated citizen in a job he should not have, how do I fire them from the job and make them take something else? Up above you're making it sound as if we have control over their jobs and I'm wondering how.

LOL @Nilla  -  bet you're sorry you replied now aren't you? hehe.  Thanks again for your reply, I await your new answers.  **bows to my new teacher, Ms. Nilla! **  ;)

And to @smurphys7  :)   Thank you for your reply as well and I am proud and happy to say, I did everything you said!  It makes sense and it's simple and I am glad I actually started off doing it that way.

they sent you to the corner? i wouldn't have gone without  a fight.where is my cannons? don't feel bad they still tell me i don't play right either.

    you don't have to do all the chains with the RK it was designed much better than the CC versions and chains.tghose would really overwhelm you. RED adjusted the balance between workplaces much better. you can make lower grade tools like stone or iron ore and not even need to process iron.

     most of your issues are figuring out your own playstyle everyone is different and uses different mods. there are several ways to handle the populations.to deal with nomads i build a boardinghouse.this keeps them happy and housed while working to build them their own house. "pairing" bannies up is more game controlled than by us players. i have seen bannies that did not want to leabe home and others who wanted to stay as bachelors.nomad groups come and are divorced also. do not fear this they can still have babies and multiply. on an adam and eve start it is desireable to split the 2 you will have more children faster.

         what works for me is to divide the number of adult workers by 2 and build that many houses. adjust and compensate for bachelors or a heavy male population. so if i have 20 adult bannies,i should have 11 houses,10+1 boardinghouse.  you can, with different modded houses,get larger or smaller families. more children does mean more food. every bannies eats 100 food units each year. does not matter the age.

       map i am on now i created a dilema with larger houses. a colonial village was suppose to work to feed everyone. with families having 5 and 6 children per house,they were in fact eating up all the "extra" food.

        the pairing issue can be partly due to the game giving you mostly male children it will do this randomly.if you start with mostly male children, it will take a while to get families. back to the age mods,PLURAL. they have options to when the bannies move out on their own and pair up they have options as to when the bannies bear children. each version has the ages set differently.the vanilla setting isn't in sync. the bannies graduate school at 1 age,bear children another,start school too young,which means they can move out if there is no school.marry at another age,etc. without a school, they are still children when they can become workers.yet they will not pair up for many years. with a school, they finish schooling but it takes longer than a age moddeed game.

        i skip the school for the 1st few children. even working slower since they are un-educated they do more than 0.this is time to build surpluses of food,logs,etc,and to clear land. with or without a school,as the females get to 16 yrs of age,i build houses. once they go to school,they graduate by then.so they graduate and move out and can bear children at the same age. every year or so check the adult count and housing count,1 house to every 2 adult or working bannies.

      as to the "fake demo trick",that is done on an ADAM and EVE srtart. forcing the parents to split and thereby doubling the number of children allowed since they also are split. BANNIES DO NOT NEED TO BE PAIRED TO HAVE CHILDREN. the female will bear children and the game will send them to live elsewhere until the house is full. whereas the parents in a house gives you 2 spaces for children,with 2 houses you have more space for 6.  NOTE you also need firewood and food for 2 houses now.

too many variables to your last set of questions. some i cleared up wioth my other post. adults bannies are working adults but not neccessarly old enough to move out or have children. to confuse you even more children will move closer to school,leaving their own parents and move in with others.

        "who will marry who?" i am not sure even LUKE can answere that. it is so random. some will not marry at all some will later than others.some will right after a death of their own spouse or a friend's. the bannies have minds of their own and act accordingly. whatever we try to make them do they will do the opposite. tis a mystery bigger than the owl and a tootsie pop.

    as for "forcing" nomad bannies to certain jobs.it is not foolproof. you build the house for them and the workplace near it. odds are the bannie will take up the close job. so say you build a house near a forest,odds are they will work there and not as a blacksmith in town. as a bannie reaches the age of moving out from the parent,sometimes they like to keep their job and will only take a house nearby. again not fool proof. i've built 3 houses all different types and sizes nearby and a girl never moved out when her "friend" died,she moved in with the widowed husband and children.

Quote from: brads3 on June 21, 2019, 05:51:56 PM
they sent you to the corner? i wouldn't have gone without  a fight.where is my cannons? don't feel bad they still tell me i don't play right either.

Huh? What? Who put me in the corner? "No one puts Baby in the corner!" (another movie reference, Dirty Dancing) ;)   

Quote from: brads3 on June 21, 2019, 05:51:56 PM... to deal with nomads i build a boardinghouse.this keeps them happy and housed while working to build them their own house.

I knewwwww about boarding houses... I ... just.....forgot to build one!!! But that's alright I think since I only had six nomads come in to my population of 49 at the time; they had 4.5 heart health and 86% educated rate also two herbalists and a physician. So I don't think those six itty bitty nomads hurt me at all.  But yeah, I forgot all about the boarding house, whoopsie!

Quote from: brads3 on June 21, 2019, 05:51:56 PM
         what works for me is to divide the number of adult workers by 2 and build that many houses. adjust and compensate for bachelors or a heavy male population. so if i have 20 adult bannies,i should have 11 houses,10+1 boardinghouse.

Yeah, that's how I was doing it and it seemed to work then whoopsie!!! I forgot all about expanding my food production and I lost 30+ people due to starvation.  Now I got ten more houses than families? Something like that.

Quote from: brads3 on June 21, 2019, 05:51:56 PM
      as to the "fake demo trick",that is done on an ADAM and EVE srtart. forcing the parents to split and thereby doubling the number of children allowed since they also are split. BANNIES DO NOT NEED TO BE PAIRED TO HAVE CHILDREN. the female will bear children and the game will send them to live elsewhere until the house is full. whereas the parents in a house gives you 2 spaces for children,with 2 houses you have more space for 6.  NOTE you also need firewood and food for 2 houses now.

Up above in the bold - what method do you use to force a couple to split? Where does this "fake demolishing" come into play? Is the fake demolishing trick different than what you do to split up couples? If so, how?

The underlined part - explain your math please. How do you get 6?


Thanks for your reply @brads3  :)
               

yeah the fake demo is different. say a bannie dies,now you have a single bannie with children. if you have another house way over there with a single bannie,you can demolish both houses ths way they all go homeless. then reclaim 1 house and hold your breathe,they should move in  together. then you have a choice with the 2nd house. do you reclaim it and hope they do not split again and a couple youngsters  move in  or just tear it down? this trick also can be done with a older person with a young bannie and older bannie in the same house. or in my case where 1 girl stayed with the parents longer. it would have forced her to move problem is then  the whole family goes homeless children can be mobed into other houses with different parents. a widow might pick up 1 of the older parents also.causes confusiion to the bannies. if i remember correctly in the case where the girl stayed home longer,she did have a child while living at home.

    don't feel bad about the boardinghouse. NILLA made all the bannies drink water with no food before too,not even bread. poor poor bannies

As you might understand, Brad and I have a "history". Not that we´ve ever met personally but if each of us finds an opportunity to make a little joke or some "nasty" comment about something the other said or done, none of us will miss the opportunity. ;)

Back to your questions. I might express myself a bit unclear. You must apologize; English is my third language and I´m doing my best to improve but sometimes I mess up with the language.

First; a student never moves out alone or couple with another student. The single student you saw must have a mate somewhere; an adult girl who also lives alone in a house (or with some children). If you fake demolish his house (Fake demolish ist demolish and immediately undo) he will move back home to his girl. (Maybe there´s a newborn that cries all night and he wants his sleep, who knows why he moved out) Edit: the wife may have died. In this case, he doesn´t move back to mum´s place but lives alone until a suitable girl moves in.

A student girl does couple with an adult boy but there will be no children before the girl gets an adult. After that, it´s as likely as by any other couple, that children are born.

If you see a single adult living in a house, it´s mostly a widow/widower or the one part of a separated couple. It can also be a an adult who moves out alone, but only if there´s no mate in a suitable age, (less than 20 years age difference), this is rare. Widows/widowers remarry as soon as there is someone available in suitable age (again less than 20 years age difference), the same with the single adult. The separated couple can live apart and will not move back together spontaneously, you must force them together by fake demolishing one of their houses. But there will still be children born and none of them will pair with another person as long as the other part lives! Normally, people separate only if there are too many houses. But again it´s not foolproof. I mostly keep the building menu of a house under construction open until someone moves in; mostly to check that there isn´t a big gender unbalance and many students move out but also to prevent these (rare) separations.

You don´t need to bother much about the fake demolishing trick. Use it when you see a single person living in one house that´s not likely a widow/er or if you want to relocate some person (an uneducated blacksmith out in the woods). It´s not suitable to use to make couples.

I will not demolish the houses (unless there´s a special reason). Normally after many people have died your settlement is fully developed and you don´t need to build anything during the recovery. In such a case it´s easy to set the number of builders to 0 and "demolish" the houses you don´t need for the moment. Since there are no builders no house will be destroyed. When there´s a new couple, undo the demolish. But don´t forget; no builders. If you assign one the house will soon be gone.

I´ll answer more questions later.

QuoteWhen the settlement is supposed to grow, I build a couple of houses less than the number of families.

I can understand, that you are confused. First; I´m not talking at the very beginning of the game where, as I said; I use to build a house for every adult girl, I talk about a little later when it´s too much work to keep track on each individual in each house.

First the "Number of families" is a bit odd and not totally reliable. If it´s only mother father child, student. It´s alright. It tells us how many families there are in the sense we mean. But as soon as there are adult children living at home or students who move together with an adult, it´s getting nasty and hard to explain (especially in a foreign language). Simplified:
-an adult living at home counts as 1 family
-when 2 adults move together, of course, they become one family. If we say you had 25 families before they moved out after there are 24.
-an adult male living with a student girl does not count as a family until the girl gets adult but an adult girl living with a student boy does.

Confusing? yes. But also an answer to your question. If I had built 2 houses in my example when the statistics said that I had 25 families and only 23 houses. There would have been one too much. Too many houses ->separations. Cost fuel and building material. Not good!

You also ask why I don´t like students to move out. I think I already answered that;

QuoteIn a small settlement, it doesn´t matter but if you build several schools on larger maps, the student may move to a place very far away from his school and it takes very long to graduate. I´ve seen 24 years old students, who spend more time on the road than in school.

The graduation time is the time the student actually spends in the school (the teacher must also be present but is seldom the problem). If he lives very far away he spends a long time walking between home and school and the education may take several years longer, compared to if he lives next to the school. Students attend the nearest available school when they become 10 and never change schools.

QuoteHow do I control what jobs they take? Or if I find an uneducated citizen in a job he should not have, how do I fire them from the job and make them take something else? Up above you're making it sound as if we have control over their jobs and I'm wondering how.

No, we don´t have control or rather; we only have control to a certain degree. You have noticed that the game tries to minimize the time people need to spend between home and work. How it does this isn´t always possible to understand but if you follow the advice from @smurphys7, as you say you do, they will mostly live close to their workplace. On rare occasions when I take nomads or if a child gets adult too soon for school, I often build a house for these persons close to a fisher or far away in a farming area. It´s likely that they become fisher/farmer. As Brad says; it´s not foolproof but works in most cases.

Don´t be so sorry about the boarding house. I seldom build any. Several reasons; I seldom take nomads and if I do, I have prepared for them with building materials, maybe also partly constructed houses so they will fast have a home. And later in a game where you want to take 100 nomads, you´ll need several of these ugly boarding houses. Some mods have really nice ones and I might build them and also use them but never the vanilla.

I hope you can understand at least a part of what I´ve written. If not, ask again. I promise; I will answer. I´m also pretty amused that you quote movies. I´m more the music kind of person so I occasionally quote songs. Once I named all my screenshots after the songs of one album. It looks like no one except me was amused!   ;)  :-\

And one more thing; Don´t believe everything that Brad says; it´s not quite as confusing. No Banni girl living by her parents has ever had a child! I´m sure it was her little brother he saw in the same house. ;)

Wow @Nilla , just wow!!!  ??? :)

I am so grateful to you for spending so much time with me and explaining the answers you gave. Everything was clearly explained and there were so many explanations for many questions that I will also be bookmarking this as a reference until it all becomes rote memory to me.  And by the way, your use of English was never the problem, you are very well spoken. When I didn't understand something it wasn't your English or word choice I didn't understand, it was the concept being described that confused me. So don't ever worry about your use of English and never say you're sorry! Your command of the language is much better than most native speakers in 'Murica!  Lol  ;)

You said, "fake demolish = demolish and immediately undo". When I read various forum posts and discussions that you and RedKetchup had with one another or with other people this "fake demolish" was mentioned from time to time. I assumed it was as easy as you described but I wanted to be sure. Now in practice, when I went to use this method myself it didn't quite work out as I expected. The citizens I kicked out, moved right back in. I would expect that to happen if I only demolished one home but as it was I demolished ten homes and nearly everyone or everyone (I don't recall now) went back as they were before. So what gives? Why did it that happen like that? I figured that by demolishing more than one home, those evicted citizens (the pool of homeless citizens) would mingle and mix together and when a home became available it would randomly reassign people from the pool the way we would want them to be, but that didn't happen.

There is a small difference in the way I did it though and I don't know if this is what caused that to happen. You said to "immediately undo". I thought to myself that if I did it immediately that nothing would change, that they would instantly go back as they were before because for example maybe they didn't even get a chance to step outside the home, or get enough distance away from the home to affect change. So what I did differently was, I hit the demolish button then waited for them to gather all their belongings, and after the homes were completely empty I waited for an additional five minutes or longer to let them mingle and mix together within the town; then I reclaimed the homes. But as I said they all went back almost exactly like they were before.

Quote from: Nilla on June 22, 2019, 03:12:17 AMNormally after many people have died your settlement is fully developed and you don´t need to build anything during the recovery. In such a case it´s easy to set the number of builders to 0 and "demolish" the houses you don´t need for the moment. Since there are no builders no house will be destroyed. When there´s a new couple, undo the demolish. But don´t forget; no builders. If you assign one the house will soon be gone.

Emphasis mine. That's handy to know. I don't know if I would have ever thought to do that so thank you for the crucial tip! When I told you that after hitting the demolish button I waited for five minutes or longer and then hit reclaim, in hindsight I see now that it's possible I didn't have any builders available when I tried to do the fake demolish and pairings which allowed the homes to remain in an unused state for so long; but I didn't purposely set the number of builders to zero. Just a coincidence I suppose; but again it still didn't work as everybody went back to the way they were before.

Quote from: Nilla on June 22, 2019, 03:12:17 AM
-an adult male living with a student girl does not count as a family until the girl gets adult but an adult girl living with a student boy does.

So if I want to try to do some pairings and play match-maker I should look for an 11+ year old male student still living at home in one house and find a single older female living alone somewhere else, and then build a new home to accommodate them? Same for a 20yr+ single male living alone and either a single adult female with or without kids? How about a single middle-aged male and a single middle-aged woman, them too?

Quote from: Nilla on June 22, 2019, 03:12:17 AM
Don´t be so sorry about the boarding house. I seldom build any. Several reasons; I seldom take nomads and if I do, I have prepared for them with building materials, maybe also partly constructed houses so they will fast have a home. And later in a game where you want to take 100 nomads, you´ll need several of these ugly boarding houses. Some mods have really nice ones and I might build them and also use them but never the vanilla.

That's how I have been doing it in my last and current game; I pre-build the homes and pause them after they have all their materials gathered.

A question about boarding houses: In my previous game when I got my first Nomads, I forgot to build a boarding house for them though I did have a pre-built home waiting for them so I guess it didn't matter much in that case. In my current game after building the Town Hall I built a boarding house too (I remembered this time!). My question is: While I have been waiting for Nomads to arrive (they still haven't come yet) I have had several students become adults; how come they are not moving into the boarding house temporarily? I know it's not ideal, but they still can have children in a boarding house just at a slower rate is what I hear. I was expecting to see citizens who were ready to move out, make use of the boarding house since it sits empty.

Again @Nilla thank you so much! It's been very kind of you to teach and explain things to me, I am very appreciative!

P.S.
My fifth and current game has been the best so far, and I am still in vanilla Banished.  :D   I came across a "Let's Play" YouTube series by a girl named Honeywell. She's super-fantastic! She's a micro-manager / pause-player like I am and also logistically inclined like me. She's easy to listen to, she doesn't swear and is always calm (which calms me), and she clearly explains why she does something without us watchers needing to guess. She also doesn't zip around the map like a maniac like most, and she's methodical and well... she's far better than any other Banished player on YouTube I have come across so far out of nine others. 

Sadly for me and all other new players to Banished, she no longer plays Banished - it's been a few years for her since she was last in game but her helpful and informative videos are priceless!!!  She even did a huge tunnel in episode one!!!  lol  :P   She didn't build it of course, but she placed it down in future-planning her town for end-game!

You of course and the others here who are experienced Banished players may have no need for videos anymore, if at all ever but I really think they are worth watching regardless. I hope you'll check her out! Oh and she also showed her "qualifications" as it were by showing her Achievements window before she entered a new game in episode one. She has them all completed too like you guys!  :)

Here is the link to Honeywell's series episode one for Banished:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7vhVDECn5M (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7vhVDECn5M)


~MarkAnthony



               

I'm really enjoying Honeywell's Banished series on YouTube. I'm watching her episode four right now.

Oh @Nilla , I think you would be very pleased with her about the attention she gives her Banies.  :D She's always peeking into their homes looking for those who need their own place, much like you would I imagine. She concentrates primarily on Laborers. She even does the fake demolish when needed to fix mismatched couples assigned by the game. She's definitely a pro at it. This episode four is where she started needing to use the fake demolish.  :) You'd like her I'm sure. I feel like I have learned a lot from her.               

forcing bannies to do anything especially move is tedious and a lot of luck.  you did right by waiting for a few minutes so they walk around. part of them moving does depend on who walks by the soonest and their workplaces. they do prefer to be closer to work. this is evident if you watch the builders. they move as you begin construction here and there to be closer. more so than laborers, even thou i think the laborer is more needed. 

Quote from: MarkAnthony on June 22, 2019, 10:24:33 AMSo if I want to try to do some pairings and play match-maker I should look for an 11+ year old male student still living at home in one house and find a single older female living alone somewhere else, and then build a new home to accommodate them? Same for a 20yr+ single male living alone and either a single adult female with or without kids? How about a single middle-aged male and a single middle-aged woman, them too?
           

Quoting myself here - I think instead of going into that much detail, I'll just concentrate on Laborers like Honeywell does in her videos. It seems so simple the way she does it and always works out as planned.  But I still wouldn't mind an answer about what I asked in the quoted section, though I think I may have been really off on the age of the 11yr old male student.

there are several ages that matter.i don't remember exactly what they are for vanilla speed.

age to become an adult/worker,or start school 10 for vanilla
age to move out from home   
age to move in with someone or be married,
age to graduate school, does depend on distance to school usually 16-24yrs old
child bearing age to begin having children
age they stop having babies i beleieve it is 40-45
death age,usually a range +/- 10-20 yrs
there is also a range to the age they will pair up with.so a 70yr old won't pair with a 18yr old

Thank you @brads3  =)  You've been good to me too despite all those things @Nilla says about you behind your back!   :P   Just teasing of course.  8)   

As you might have noticed I have a habit of writing long posts but I think I´ve found my superior!  ;) And don´t feel shy to ask things again. I´m happy to practice English. I need to practice English! My Australian son-in-law will come to visit in two weeks (together with my daughter who also lives in Australia but of course, speak Swedish and German our other two family languages).  :P

I rarely look at YouTube Banished videos. I did look at a few (very nerving guys) before I bought the game, to see if it´s something for me to buy. I rather like to explore things myself and make my own mistakes. Rather spend ½hour playing than watching videos. But that's me. I´m glad you´ve found a series that you like. and that helps you.

I must ask you what was your purpose as you tried and failed your "fake demolishing"? I don´t think the time was crucial. A couple will always stay together, no matter what. As I said they may live in different houses but are still a couple. No way you can "mingle and mix "them. And what would you achieve if you would have siúcceded?

QuoteSo if I want to try to do some pairings and play match-maker I should look for an 11+ year old male student still living at home in one house and find a single older female living alone somewhere else, and then build a new home to accommodate them? Same for a 20yr+ single male living alone and either a single adult female with or without kids? How about a single middle-aged male and a single middle-aged woman, them too?

You can try to play matchmaker but the bannis will not always do what you want. Again look at the girls. Build a house for each girl who finishes school. She will find herself a mate. If she´s 17 it may be a 10-year-old student or a 37-year-old widower with 3 children. It´s her choice that you can´t influence anyway. Single middle aged people seldom live alone. It may look that way but if you find one, you will probably find his/her mate also living alone in another house. You can easily force these two together again with fake demolishing one of their houses but never force them to move in with someone else. If they really do live alone there will be no suitable mate to pair with.

But principally the same rules for everyone called "adult"; a 10-year-old uneducated or 80-year-old widows; as soon as there´s a free house and some single of the opposite gender with less than 20 years age difference; they will hook up!

QuoteA question about boarding houses: In my previous game when I got my first Nomads, I forgot to build a boarding house for them though I did have a pre-built home waiting for them so I guess it didn't matter much in that case. In my current game after building the Town Hall I built a boarding house too (I remembered this time!). My question is: While I have been waiting for Nomads to arrive (they still haven't come yet) I have had several students become adults; how come they are not moving into the boarding house temporarily? I know it's not ideal, but they still can have children in a boarding house just at a slower rate is what I hear. I was expecting to see citizens who were ready to move out, make use of the boarding house since it sits empty.

No one that isn´t homeless will move into the boarding house spontaneously. You can use it to establish new couples but it´s tedious and will seldom work the way you think. If you have many young adults living at home (Young adults not students!)  and not yet enough houses for all of them you can give it a try. "Demolish" the houses where families with young adults live. The homeless families will move into the boardinghouse. When you undo the demolishing, some of the young adults may stay in the boarding house/move into the "undemolished" house while the parents stay. But it may also happen that the whole families will move back as it was. A rather annoying insecure way to make new pars.

Once there was a challenge; to use no other houses than boardinghouses. It works but I will never make it again. It´s not true they have fewer children or at a slower rate. It´s exactly the same as in a normal house. But very tedious. I will see if I find the challenge and a link to it. Here it is. Not so easy to find: http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=792.45

Just a suggestion....   the whole point of a game like banished is solving the puzzle.    Instead of asking how to manage your population, you should be downloading the charts and other information out there that gives you information about the pieces in the game.    That is the kind information I found to be lacking in the vanilla banished.   How long does it take to age, how much food does a child/student/adult eat, how many tools are made from how many resources, how much fuel does a house use per year, on and on.   Although this could be considered part of the puzzle, it's actually relevant information the game should have provided.   Maybe it does provide this information and I just never found it.

What I did find was Colonial Charter and all it's charts and some websites that detailed out all the production numbers and storage numbers and everything else needed to fully understand the pieces in the game, even for vanilla version.   Using that information, it then becomes your task to solve the rest.  How do you want to build and mange your town?  That's the entire object of the game, to figure that part out.

You likely will fail miserably for quite a few attempts, it's fully expected.   You start to learn what to do and what no to do through trial and error.    So, don't give up your experience by having others solve the puzzle for you.   Once you learn the solution that works every time, you will start to try other things.   IE... try to only trade for seeds and animals and nothing else.  Those are the two things you can't get any other way but trade.     Do the opposite and try to become a trade only society where you don't grow food or raise any animals.   Become a mining only town.  Etc, Etc.

Lots of ways to enjoy the game, so don't spoil the fun by letting everyone else solve the puzzle for you.   Besides, everyone is so different, you'll just be overwhelmed with the suggestions.   Be overwhelmed by the charts and information instead.   Start your own spreadsheets and enjoy the mystery.

Wise words @theonlywanderer. But it also brings you a lot to discuss different matters with other players along the way.

Absolutely, I understand fully how people enjoy discussing all aspects of the game.   I'm merely speaking to somebody that is new to the game.   Don't deprive themselves of the main point and accomplishment of the game, solving the puzzle.   Once you solve the puzzle and can pretty much make it through even the hardest of starts, well, it's fun then to discuss other game strategies with people to spark some new ideas.

i'm still trying to figure out this RUBIX cube and you want me to do what....?

@MarkAnthony

Having said what I said, I will go against it for this one other suggestion since it seems to be the main focus of your thread here.    I've seen other people obsessed with trying to micro manage the bannies on a personal level and I've yet to understand the purpose.   The truth is, you really cannot control them individually despite how hard you try with all the hacks like fake demolishing and reclaiming homes or anything else.   It's more an illusion of control and waste of time that you could be spending on better management elsewhere.   During the countless towns I've played through, I have yet to find a single reason to pay much attention to who is where or how many is in each house.   You won't force anyone to move out and you won't force anyone to move to the correct house next to their job, or anything else.  It will all just kind of happen at some point as you build new houses.    One trick everyone said to use occasionally was to clear all jobs and make everyone laborers.  Wait some unknown time period and put all the jobs back and they will sort out their homes a lot better.  I got roped in to trying that trick, but don't recall it ever working that great.  My best advice here is to not be so obsessed about trying to micro manage the bannies.

There is no set level of how you grow the population of your town.   You can grow slowly, but you risk die off of workers if you have a school since students take awhile to educate.  You can grow fast, but risk food shortages if you don't prepare for that.  You simply have to solve the puzzle your own way.   It can be solved so many different ways which is why people continue to play this game.

I like to grow fast so I'm always on the edge of needing more food, more tools, more fuel...more more more.  I also like complex product chains, the more the better.   They provide jobs and buildings to fill a town and make the game a little less repetitive for me.   I also like to occasioanlly play in what I call sandbox mode, which I use debug to set free build, no starvation, etc..  and just design a town for the sake of it without worrying about the game play.

Hopefully I've given you some reasonable advice without actually guiding you as to how to solve the puzzle.   It's kind of tricky to do.   

Thank you, Marc Anthony, for asking all these questions, and Brad and Nilla for your detailed answers! I'm also a newbie, and this discussion really helped me understand better how some of these processes work!  ;D Now I'll have to start a new game and see how the dynamics you describe play out.

And Marc, I've done the fake demolition a lot because it seems I get a lot of single male residents (now I understand a bit more why) - sometimes it goes bad as you describe (I don't wait for all the goods to be gone, just one percent less), but when I'm being stubborn, I kick them out again and again, and often on the 3rd try, I get a new pair... not sure why, but when i have what seems like 50 or more couples waiting for housing, I just can't stand when the singles show up! I also have tried "demolishing" a house w/a single male and one single female... sometimes they pair up; sometimes one of them goes somewhere (at 10 years on, town is too big for me to see where)...

QuoteI've seen other people obsessed with trying to micro manage the bannies on a personal level and I've yet to understand the purpose.   The truth is, you really cannot control them individually despite how hard you try with all the hacks like fake demolishing and reclaiming homes or anything else.   It's more an illusion of control and waste of time that you could be spending on better management elsewhere.   During the countless towns I've played through, I have yet to find a single reason to pay much attention to who is where or how many is in each house.

Let me try to explain that from someone who comes into the game from the other side. I could care less about charts and perfecting the puzzle. The reason for keeping track of your Bannies and micro-managing some control over them (which is indeed hard, but not entirely impossible), is one core  force: The narrative.
I want to care about this town and its people I painstakingly planned and built, I wan't to have reasons and characters.
If you take that out of the game, or ignore it, indeed it becomes more about the numbers and charts. Which is not why I play a city builder, especially not Banished.:)

I do enjoy the puzzling and growing, but it takes second priority. I can well understand these are no viable reasons to you though.:P

My game play is story based and is the reason at the beginning I pay closer attention to the characters. Later in the story it is only main character I keep tract of.  My main characters who are educated usually are in the same houses they start in and thus are usually still working at those jobs that are best with skilled workers - the first blacksmith and tailor that are built.   I very rarely spend time and effort fake demolishing trying to get them where I want them.  I pay closer attention to production numbers when testing new mods or again for storytelling comparisons.  Time spent to get 10 more of this or 10 more of that to have sit in storage barns and warehouses is not my idea of fun, unless it is the set goal of the story.

Story telling is also the reason I use the 1:1 aging mod, for story telling and linking events between different stories. I have an overall timeline.  I do not use an aging mod when playing a non-story map, but I don't do that very often anymore, and it is most definitely easier without the aging mod.

My puzzle solving, if you want to call it that, and challenge starts before the map does - finding a map that fits the location I choose for the story and then selecting the combination of mods that look well together and that will help me reach the goal I have set for the story while building an attractive looking town.  I have few if any problems or conflicts or annoyance with mod list order - certainly no fun at all there.  My style of play is definitely not the usual style of gameplay, but it works for me. And I hope people enjoy reading my blog stories.

@Artfactial

That's all fine and dandy, there are lots of different ways to use Banished.  However, if you explain your style of playing to somebody actually trying to the play the game the way it was designed and intended, your reasons for keeping track of bannies has no actual purpose in the game, just as I stated.    MarkAnthony is clearly interested in just trying to play the game.   Again, this is why I suggested he focus more on learning the pieces in the game and not getting strategy information from other people.  Too many people have changed the entire focus of the game to some completely different personal way of playing and can confuse people who are just trying to play the basic game.    Again, that's fine, many of us have bent and twisted Banished in to what we want, but we can't forget there was still a design and intention for the basic game.  Within the actual game, no matter what you try and do, no matter how you play, change it up, whatever, you will not and cannot control every aspect of bannies, it serves no purpose in the game itself.    And I would have to question that "Not entirely impossible" part.   Using all the tricks over and over again until you finally get some results isn't control, it's just chance.  Ie... the illusion of control I mentioned.   You may indeed have success in getting Seth and Abigal in the same house after using a hack trick 25 times.   Again, that's not control, it's just chance.   It's certainly not how anyone should explain the game to somebody new.... to start off using hacks in order to beat the game when in reality it has no real affect on the game itself whether Seth and Abigal hook up or Seth and Betty.