I think we need more members. How do we recruit and lure people in to not only the wonderful game of Banished but also our forums here?
Tell your friends and talk about this site on other forums to help point people to a place where there is plenty of room and good forum tools to enjoy discussing Banished and anything else you want to talk about or show off!
I have noticed over on the ShiningRockSoftware forums that things have really slowed down recently. Like was suggested early on here, the subject of just Banished might not be enough to keep a busy forum going.
I have made room for other topics and ideas and features here on World of Banished and will even change the name when a good user base gets settled in and find what they want to talk about and show off.
How about expanding this perhaps to all city-building games? I realize that's quite broad, but... it's the basic component here, I think.
Or advertising this forum (and Banished along the way) on other gaming forums, topsites, and city-building community links of some kind?
Personally I've stopped posting as much because I'm playing more! I spent a while reading and absorbing and discussing, and now I'm trying to incorporate some of what I read into gameplay.
Also, I think the current slowdown is because of the 1.02 patch. It's been out long enough that there are no more surprises, but it hasn't been officially released, so it just feels like a waiting game.
Also, and I've noticed this on other forums, too, once the weather starts getting nicer, posts seem to drop off as folks are spending more time outdoors -- especially in late spring/early summer when all the yard work needs to be done to get back into shape after winter. At least that's my guess.
You've got that right,
@salamander. We have three dying oaks to get cut down, and two lindens to get planted. We transplanted the strawberries to a new, single-level, rectangular, raised bed, and are demolishing the old circular, three-tiered anthill ... er, I mean raised bed. We're clearing the brush from the front fence, to improve visibility at the mouth of our driveway. We're cleaning out the garage and the barn, and looking at replacing some equipment. Plus there is all of the mowing that has to happen when rain falls from the sky. ;D
@Demonocracy , I can certainly expand on the city building games and thought that would be one good are to expand into. I even posted all my Simcity 2013 cities in the gallery just to get them up and add something different.
What other city builders do people want to discuss and have a place for their conversations and pictures and videos?
@canis39 , I think you are right about the waiting.
@salamander and
@slink , I spent all day outside yesterday working on the yard, changing up some older landscaping and looking at some new ideas for the yard. My bananas have escaped their containment area so I need to dig them up and put some elsewhere. I moved several Hostas that are looking very good now, the dianthus plants are now blooming and look fantastic, and I need to move some Azeleas now that they have finished their blooms.
I enjoy the real designing as much as the virtual!
@solarscreen: Bananas? *intensely curious expression*
Quote from: slink on May 25, 2014, 12:11:55 PM
@solarscreen: Bananas? *intensely curious expression*
I have a small clump of banana trees that grow on the southwest corner of my house. They grow in a predefined space but this year I have several plants coming up, outside that circle, in the yard!
@solarscreen: Huh. That's amazing. I live in zone 4b. No bananas for me. ;D
Quote from: canis39 on May 25, 2014, 09:05:58 AM
Also, I think the current slowdown is because of the 1.02 patch. It's been out long enough that there are no more surprises, but it hasn't been officially released, so it just feels like a waiting game.
That's partly the cause in my case :)
Along with me starting another game in a 4x game I play called Stars!.
http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Main_Page
and
http://starsautohost.org/sahforum2/
and
http://starsautohost.org/kn2050.htm if you want to grab the demo/game.
http://starsautohost.org/files/stars26b.zip unlimited turns, limited to tech level 10/26.
It costs only about $2 to get a key and it's one game I've been playing for more than 15 years and haven't gotten bored off.
http://starsautohost.org/sahforum2/index.php?t=msg&th=1158&start=0&rid=1464
@nmid: Stars! doesn't work on Win7? I tried it set to Win 95 compatibility and as an administrator, then set to Win NT, Win 98, and with visual themes turned off, and with 256 colors. It just keeps telling me that the version of the game I am running is not compatible with my OS.
32 vs 64-bit, maybe?
I'm running 64-bit Win 7, so either one should run.
Anyway, I got it to run under Win XP in a virtual machine. It's kind of a poor man's MOO2 as best as I can tell. I was only able to do less than half of the tutorial because after I split a fleet with "Split" instead of "Split All" I was not able to make the tutorial advance past that point. I even merged the fleet back together and used the "Split All" button, but it would not budge. So I went and played a real game for a while. I may start the tutorial over again after a while. I obviously missed some points, such as watching the fuel supplies on my ships. :-[
Stars! will not run on a 64 bit OS, only 32 bit.
@slinkOh darn.. I'm so used to playing it on a VM.
As
@solarscreen said, it only works on 32 bit machines.
Downloading oracle virtual box and installing win3.11 / win95 (if you have a copy or a bootleg version) would be one way to get it to work.
Takes about 30 mins to set it up... Let me know if you are interested.. I'll send you the links.
It works on linux as well, but I'll have to ask another player to help out, if you need that option.
@nmid: I have VM, so there is no problem now. Thanks anyway for the offer.
I don't quite understand why a 64-bit machine can't play a 32-bit game, because I run other 32-bit applications on it, but Microsoft never was very good at backwards compatibility for games. We had to keep a DOS 1.1 boot floppy for our machines after we upgraded to DOS 2.1, because Fire & Sword wouldn't run on DOS 2.1. In that case it had to do with Microsoft BASIC compiler making direct OS calls. And it is why we keep VM around. Not for Fire & Sword, but for more recent games.
I think it has to do with performance. Games often tend to do low-level types of things for speed, by-passing many of the services offered by the operating system. My guess (and that's all it is) would be that the graphics portions of the 32-bit games that don't work well under 64-bit OS's are doing some sort of direct (graphics) memory access.
It may also be that the game is actually 16 bit. 32 bit machines and OSs (including VMs) can run 16 bit programs; 64 bit OSs can run 32 bit software but cannot run 16 bit. The word processor/notes indexer/bibliography program that I have used for years is a niche market product for academics and so was a bit slow moving up from 16. They finally have so I can run it native 64 bit, but for a long time it was VM or keep the old XP computer going. Since all my research material and bibliography was involved, switching would have been far worse.
@rkelly17: That makes sense. I see that the game is listed as compatible with Win95, so it is almost certainly 16-bit.
@rkelly17 's right once again!
It is a 16 bit application.
I got a bit careless using 16/32 bit in my description.
@slink if you do start playing, let me know how you found it.
In my current multiplayer game of 8 players, we are just in year 2405 and it's pretty slow atm.
Quite a lot of fun in the game is designing the race (about 30% of the fun is in that.. ). Seeing how it works and diplomacy makes up the remaining 70% :)
Just a small tip if you move up from using the standard races...
Try JOAT (inbuilt pen-scanning + better pop holds each planet.. so eco monsters) or IT races (that allows you to gate pop/minerals around as well).
Don't play CA too much (even though it's the most OP race with it's free terraforming), as it's heavily penalised in human games. 200+ points have to be left in the race wizard most times, if not outright banned.
Use 17% GR at least. Use your f3 reports. Keep your cap on your homeworld between 25% to 33% for max growth.
Take weapons cheap or normal in the tech settings. Con can be normal or exp. Rest of the tech can all be exp.
Oh, take No ram scoop engines + Improved Fuel Efficiency (NRSE+IFE).. as you get the best starting engine (Fuel Mizer) to use... and the NRSE acts as a point mine to balance the cost of the IFE.
Take OBRM (only basic remote mining) as that gives you more pop on ground + reduces MM of taking care of the miners.
Don't take OBRM + ARM (adv. remote mining).
Don't take GR(Generalised Research) or UR (ultimate recycling) or BET (Bleeding edge tech) as they aren't worth the eventual slow down.
Oh well... play a few games against the AI and know the best fun is against humans :)
I'm sorry I came late to this... I'm a new member and REALLY appreciate this forum!! But as someone else said, I have been playing more and therefore on the forum less... mea culpa. I have been telling all my friends about the game, but few of them actually play computer games, and so I haven't been able to "convert" anyone, except maybe my niece... but I keep trying. ;D Thanks again!