So on my easy starts, so far my maps have all had very few trees, meaning its a race to get the gatherers and hunters situated before the first summer baby explosion empties the food stores and I end up with too much hunger that first winter. I really have found the 'easy' starts to be a lot more challenging than the hard starts!
I simply don't trust farming to feed them that first year, and pasturing takes up so many resources that I don't usually build one until the hunter/gatherers are situated, especially as I almost always have to build a bridge to get to the closest decent forest. I always build the school now first thing, at least its a cheap build and eliminates the need for so much job shuffling to keep the uneducated kids away from key positions for a decade.
I'm going to experiment with forced homelessness to see if I can get them to build infrastructure before procreating, postponing the babies for at least a few seasons of that first year or during other crunch times, but I'm also wondering if I don't need to start reforesting right away.
On that note of forced homelessness: has anybody noticed what priority upgrading houses takes if you have builders? I have noticed that if I don't have any builders, I can keep the houses empty as long as I want before reclaiming them (forcing some rearranging of house/work which is really useful once things get a bit sprawly later on, inevitable when resources are so spread out). But if I have builders I want to focus on actual building, will they first jump to upgrading houses like they do to any road? Or can I keep them away from the houses by prioritizing the building project where I want them, while still keeping people homeless for a bit without risking the actual upgrade?
But back to trees. Has anyone noticed how long it takes for a forest to grow old enough that the gatherers and hunters actually have something to do? I've set up forest huts in desolate areas in town, for aesthetics and to see if I could do selective tree harvesting right in town when I need logs for a quick end to a build later on, and it seems to take about 7 years for the trees to look big. Is that about right? However, I have no idea at which point the gatherers would find anything if they were placed in a forest started from scratch. Would it be sooner than the 7-ish years, like 3-4 years, or do the trees really have to be as big/old as possible? I do notice that they don't collect much in my forest hubs if that forest is pretty sparse and rocky for the first 3-5 years. I really have to 'plant' only for a few years before I allow cutting by the foresters.
Also, has anybody noticed how many trees are needed to do their own reseeding? Or what the area is that they will reseed? Does the forest spread, if you leave a patch of a few trees? Will a single tree seed itself? So far I've been too caught up in micromanaging other things to notice answers to my own questions lol.
Ha, you can tell that I'm not about building vast endless farming expanses. So far I'm just trying to get sustainable villages where there is always enough food and wood to let me rest a bit and think about planning layouts, fitting in graveyards and useless but charming churches, squares, having enough firewood to trade for more seeds and some sheep, and building enough houses for the horny little villagers to pop out babies in enough supply that I avoid any demographic bombs of death every decade or so.
And survive the dreaded generations of single gender births, shudder...If someone mods same sex marriage/domestic partnership soon, I can't wait for that. Like in Tropico, it would help with the housing situation and allow for more firewood to trade instead of burn. And if you could adopt orphans through the trader (from all those starvation plagued Banished settlements), that would be very cool, soothe out the gender imbalances and wild population swings. Plenty of actual hunter/gatherer/subsistence communities have had all kinds of domestic arrangements, it wouldn't be anachronistic at all.
Can't say much to most of your questions. I usually start on med, build gatherer hut first then school. My gatherers usually seem to do well right from the start. I remove all iron and stone asap.
I really love your idea of traders bringing kids to adopt. :o How much would they cost? More for older kids, less for younger? Boys cost more than girls because usually it's boys I am short of (but not always)?
As much as I like this game, if it ever adopts the selling of orphans by traders, it will be a deal breaker and I'll drop it faster than a hot potato.
We were joking...I think...
@gatinhoo65, I won't get into trading babies, but as to foresters: If your starts so far have been relatively treeless, you have been unlucky. I admit that if I don't have some forest nearby, I abort and try another map seed. If you don't have trees on an easy or medium start, don't be afraid to plant, especially if you have beans. They harvest pretty quickly. Don't worry about hunters--they need open space but not trees. If you are near the water 4 fishers will get more meat than 3 hunters, but the hunters get you leather along with food. When I set 1 forester to plant only it takes about 3 game years to fill in blank areas, but that is in a location that already has a fair number of trees from which I have removed stone and iron. 2-4 foresters would go faster, but I think that 3 years is about what it takes for a tree to mature--that is what it takes fruit trees to bear fruit. That being said, you may find food in the young forest earlier. As soon as you start to see the onions, mushrooms and berry bushes growing up around your trees your gatherers should start producing something.
Medium starts really are easier, isn't that interesting? I only started trying the 'easy' starts because I wanted to see what it was like to have animals and buildings right away. Its tough!
Well, in traditional and even modern societies today in some places, adopting extra kids, even if their parents are still alive and even local, meant taking responsibility for their care and feeding and education, so actually just as much a burden as an extra working hand. Its not about buying them, its about getting them in situations with potential. I lived in parts of Latin America where getting your kids 'adopted' by a family that would employ but also house and educate them was very common. Parents did it for their kids, as well as relatives trying to place a family orphan. Yeah, of course there are cases of exploitation and abuse, but there is plenty of that in 'natural' families as well. Nobody is talking slavery here.
I think the older kids should be 'cheaper', as you don't have to just feed them while they are hopefully going to school and not working. 'Price' difference should be more for educated than uneducated, but gender should be equal.
As far as what it is they are traded for, hmmm. Nomads are free but come with a lot of baggage. Adoption could be free perhaps, why not? The 'price' is housing them and feeding them until they begin to work. Or maybe traded for livestock? Firewood equal to the price of seeds? They are kind of like seeds I guess. And yeah, I'm always short boys, which can be a good thing when I want to prevent too many births, but wait too long and I get the death bomb and have to plan for a drastic reduction in population for a while while all the single ladies die off.
Nomads are free but come with lots of baggage, it would be nice to have the option of more controlled growth by adoption. Traders aren't all that frequent anyway, if several orphans showed up, between 1-3, every couple of years on a boat, that would be awesome.
@gatinho65: I too think that easy start is the hardest start. From the sound of it, you might do better on medium, where you can decide when to build houses. Gives you better birth control for your population. And, if you don't give much for farming, you might go for hard.
Like
@Bobbi and
@rkelly17, my experience is that gatherers do pretty well right from the start. Put them in a forested area and it should be okay. I've never had trouble with a forest too far away and never had to build a bridge in the first few years.
Gatherers have a very high food production per person. With a forester it goes up, but that indeed takes a few years of growing. I often set my first forester to planting only for 2 or 3 years. In optimal conditions the gatherers produces more than 750 food each (3000 for a fully staffed hut). That makes them an excellent choice for early game, when you still have a lot of space.
If you feel you have bad results from gatherers in the first few years, or if you're wondering how much forest is enough forest, feel free to post a screenshot of your early game.
As for the trading of orphans: I will gladly pay for them with some single elder person. 8)
I wondered about my luck with the easy maps. I thought maybe it was the tradeoff because you have buildings, seeds and livestock. I wondered if the increase in trees on the other starts was the compensation for the lack of those other advantages. I'll have to just see a lot more maps instead of just starting on whatever pops up.
I didn't realize hunters could produce in relatively open areas, I'll have to place some there and see. I've never started with beans so I'll plant them when I do. I don't ever start with fishers because of the way they go through tools, meaning I have to get that blacksmith started when I'd rather build other things first. Tool shortage is horrible.
I'll have to really pay attention to what the baby trees look like each year. They do seem to grow slower than the orchard trees, I suspect they are not considered mature quite so quickly. But I'll also have to really pay attention to when the understory fills in for gathering.
Another word about the kids: apologies if I offended anyone or sounded flip. I guess I've lived in so many places where lots of 'trading' in kids was so normal, I didn't think of how it might come across.
In many of the traditional village societies where I've spent time, life circumstances really do vary enormously, like in the game. Kids are often moved around a lot to ensure that they are taken care of, that they least of anyone suffers hunger during the lean years. These adoptions are nothing like the formal legal expensive ones we think of in the west. They are not selling kids or exploiting them, even though of course everyone works in these societies, often even the kids attending school. There is a sober realization of how much cost is involved in caring for anyone and how to balance that with 'labor' provided, but its not the kind of 'economic' thinking we are taught to see as normal. Its socialism of a village kind, while still being pragmatic. The kind of solidarity I think would be very natural in this kind of game where people shuffle to every duty needed and keep the whole society functioning in the face of all the challenges.
@gatinho65 and, especially,
@Bobbi -- I think I owe you both, and probably everybody here, an apology. My post was a gut reaction, having been raised in the southern US, with the prevailing prejudices of the times, and being just old enough to remember the aftermath of the civil rights movement in the 60's. It was not my intent to imply that either of you were supporting the (unfortunate) values of a less-than-stellar period in US history.
I hope that you will accept my apology in the most sincere spirit in which it is offered. I meant no disrespect.
No problem. I was planning on treating them really well, feed 'em and send 'em to school, then hope they would stay around to help on the family farm. Instead they would probably run off to the big city at the very first opportunity.
Madame Champion -- I humbly, and gratefully, accept your forgiveness. You are a wise ruler, second only to The Big Chihuahua.
Giggle
@salamander: no problem, I could tell it was a gut reaction. It reminded me that one can never be certain how things you write online will be taken, and I clearly hadn't thought enough about that before my rather flippant suggestion.
I think its kind of fascinating to see how differently people respond to some of the ethical issues that are inherent, if not always examined, in most games, even the ones that don't involve any killing or conquering.
I love Tropico and always play as a commie, which makes for plenty of success, as keeping people happy and mostly equal is what works in the game. Something very much resented by players who are boisterously capitalist in their strategies and love assassinating intelligent courageous agitators or fighting rebels, according to what you read in forums lol. And when I play Civ IV, I almost only play for cultural or diplomatic victories, I really hate having to go to war at all if it can be avoided. Some people can't get enough competition and fighting in games, I'm exactly the opposite.
In Banished, I quickly realized that I wouldn't be comfortable trying to find ways to force the old couples into a boarding house, or speed them on their way to the resentfully built graveyard. I once tried 'freezing' a few older folks to death to free up houses that I simply couldn't afford to build, but ended up feeling terrible when I was successful! And I can't bring myself to starve a few children to death because I want to choose building something rather than food production with my limited adult workers. Even if I was tempted;)
I figure part of the challenge I create for myself will be to build enough sustainable infrastructure so that I can tolerate lots of houses full of fuel consuming older workers while still providing houses for the younger ones so they can have kids. Even if I end up building houses that will end up empty from time to time. And I like getting to a point where I don't have to force all my farmers to do other jobs during their slow season. I can let them just be more idle or do the odd laboring jobs they do. It makes resource management even more critical and difficult, but then that is part of the fun of the game.
Its not a 'superior' way to play, just particular to me. But I do get my own gut reactions when I read some ways other people approach certain issues in city builder games.
One of the most appealing things to me about Banished is its intent to look at sustainability and limited/non-renewable resources, even if some of those factors were taken out of the game before release. I'm sure they will be made into mod components that some people will really enjoy playing around with. But not everyone! Probably the never-depleting mine/quarry mods (or peasant war mods) will be most popular lol;) I guess that is why some games are so fascinating and successful: the rules may be universal (without mods) but still they can be played in so many different ways.
And back to trees:) During my recent playing, I tried to take more specific notice of growth patterns and timeframes, but with all the micromanagement required, I lost track of a few things before learning what I hoped to learn.
But I did notice a few things. Single trees don't always spawn new trees in the same place when they die, unless they are near enough even a few other trees. They don't always grow goodies underneath either, if in isolation. Small patches of trees sometimes have goodies, sometimes not. And trees don't seem to spread, they only regrow in spots that had forest already.
The forest trees grow more slowly than orchard trees, but live longer. It seems to take about 7 game years or so for the trees to be really big and have lots of understory goodies. The goodies do start showing up at around 4-5 years, but not lots of them until later. The biggest oldest trees seem to die after 11 or maybe a few more years. I lost my favorite old tree in town after 13 years I think, but I didn't remember the year when it was first a seedling, so it could have been older. That is where I need to take more notice, how long they live after their first year.
Growing a forest from scratch is no quick fix. It means having to plant only for 5 or more years. But then understory seems to get established and a few years later one can plant/cut and really produce, plus provide for gatherers.
Having lots of trees in town makes for beautiful scenery, it just means having to leave at least 2 spaces between structures, which I do now in spots where I want some green space. Also, if you avoid paving everything between structures, leaving patches of green earth, lots of deer wander through town. Its particularly beautiful in winter, when the villagers hang out in the square near the fountain, alongside browsing deer. I like creating park-like spaces with some big trees and understory in town, especially near the plazas and town hall and other bigger buildings. It requires a lot more space and planting a forest hut that won't ever really harvest, but I think I will do that more now.
My latest town has been incredibly difficult, even on another 'easy' start! A tiny spot between endless mountains and rivers, so few trees that I simply had almost nothing to harvest for the first decade. Those bridges I needed to build to the only available trees were so pricey!! Only after building 7! forest huts and waiting almost 15 years have I finally been able to produce enough logs to actually get things going. Its nerve wracking to alternate between starving and freezing at 1X for a few years so that nobody dies, as you move workers from moment to moment from one job to another to keep everyone alive.
Its really beautiful now, plus lots of food, enough houses, essential jobs filled, finally a trading post and a town hall. Still barely 60 people, but happiness and health never went below 4, even with all the cold and hunger, mostly hovered at 4.5. No starvation death and I survived the first baby explosion (forgot to try my temporary homeless birth control method). Equal numbers of babies and students now, so I think there will still be some careful growth ahead, even with the death of the first generation. Success so far;)
I had read and always believed that you needed at least two squares to get my town forester to plant a tree. But wouldn't you know it, I was proved wrong. The other evening I had plotted out the roads for my town square area and left a one-square hole in the roads for a future well. My minions built the dirt roads and then wandered off to do something else. Along came the town forester and planted a tree in it! So, there you go--a tree in a single square surrounded by roads.
I have seen trees in single width patches of land as well, but not often. I like to space my houses one square apart, and sometimes trees will grow between those houses if a forester is near (which is often enough in my towns).
Ha, that's great news about the trees in tight spaces. The only ones I saw growing in 1 square were those I thought were already there, I'll have to pay closer attention. I wasn't going for a tree lined look, I kinda like the randomness of where they get planted or survive, but its good to know I can get away with tighter spacing if I want to.
Has anybody actually placed gatherers or hunters right in town as well, especially if you've left in big green/wild park spaces? Man, I need to just keep loading until I get a map with that kind of space and enough resources to try those things! I have yet to break 100 population on my maps before I run out of available stone, so I usually have tried to just get to a steady state economy by then, not really enough left over to trade for more stone. I've seen some pics of pretty incredible plazas with creative paving and all kinds of stuff I'd expect from SimCity but didn't even think were possible in Banished. I guess it really is picking the right map.
On my mac, I have yet to figure out how to do a screenshot, my mouse and keyboard controls are already a bit wacky. Anybody playing a wine version who has figured out how to get good grabs, without UI, and where they are to be found if you do take some? Then I could post some pics, if I create something worth looking at.
You have to trade for enough stone to do some of those things that are in player's screenshots.
@gatinho65: like
@slink said, you need to trade quite some to get enough stone for paved roads and plazas. You'll have to build up a decent dwelling first and get your economy going, so you actually have something to trade with. That will usually require a bigger town than 100 citizens. In my experience the map seed only has limited influence on your survivabilty and building options once you get beyond the first 50 to 100 citizens.
As for hunters in town: I found they do okay as long as there is enough open space without buildings. Once the town gets larger around the hunter, the productivity drops. Others have reported better results though from a crowded hunter in town. Gatherers really need that forest, I think.
As for screenshots: try assigning different buttons to both screenshot functions. The default buttons are poorly chosen and don't work for many people (including me). I've assigned them to F10 and F11, and that works perfect for me.
I still don't understand your trouble with the maps. Either you have very bad luck, I had very good luck or you are a bit too pessimistic about the opportunities of a random map. Could you post a screenshot of your next map (when you get that screenshot function working) and tell us where you would build your gatherer/forester. It would either allow us to express our sympathy for your bad luck, or allow us to give you some hints on where to build.
Also, gatinho65, unless you are opposed to using seeds others have found, there are a number of threads suggesting some great map seeds. One good one is on the Shining Rocks website.
http://shiningrocksoftware.com/forum/discussion/331/best-map-seeds-
I have to admit, I find the idea of 'trading' for children in any sense in the game, distasteful. Whether you are paying for them with cash, or with trade goods doesn't matter...you are still buying them. :(
That said, I do not think anyone meant it in that way, so I am not offended or angry. The thought of it in the game though does make me very sad.
I think it is very unlikely to ever occur through Luke, but who knows what kind of mad mods people will come up with. One can always choose which mods one wants, and which are legal in contests I guess
Some American colonists "bought" their brides. They paid the ships for the cost of the transport plus some profit so that someone would bring them clean but poor, and usually orphaned, women to choose from. They did not own their new brides in any sense more than any man back then owned his wife. The women probably benefited from the transaction because their lives were less hopeless than they had been, if harder in some ways.
So think of the trader bringing children "for sale" as that sort of transaction, and you will understand that it is not slavery. It is recompense for expenses, plus some profit, for transporting orphans to a new life.
However, from my observations on downloaded saves, a child without parents dies instantly. Therefore the trader cannot bring children for adoption. We'll have to make do with nomads.
Really? A child with neither parent alive dies? I always wondered what would happen, would they move in to another house with an open spot, could be considered a relative? But I have never had it happen in any of my games. Had a student left alone in a house, he just married up quick as he could.
Interesting indeed (sorry, sounds a bit morbid). Does the eventlog state anything when a child or student dies? I know most of the weird deaths for adults, but never seen or heard about a child's or student's death.
@slink I do realize that paying for costs is not the same as buying a child (or bride). That is how adoption mostly works today. I've wanted to adopt for years but it is too expensive for us. :\
As I said, I do realize that nobody meant it really as buying children as chattel or anything. I am perhaps (or definitely) too sensitive on subjects pertaining to children and their care and welfare. I was a nanny for over a decade and have been taking care of other people's children since I was about seven-years-old. It is sometimes difficult to distance myself. I did not mean to imply that I was upset or angry or anything. I guess mostly I wanted to share with
@salamander that they weren't the only one who felt that way on originally reading this.
P.S. I have to go pick up my son from his art camp so I will be gone for awhile. I didn't want it to seem as if i were leaving because of this. ;D
The early "populating" of both France's and Britain's colonies in North America has some incidents that might not make all us Americans and Canadians proud. Women brought to New France, where there was a severe "shortage" of marriageable women, were often women who had been arrested as prostitutes in Paris--Jail or New France were the options. The women had a fairly short time in which to get married once they arrived in Quebec or face jail anyway. Between 1869 and the 1930s something over 100,000 orphans were sent from institutions in the UK and Ireland to Canada, often called "Home Children" or "Bernardo Orphans," they were sent to orphanages across Canada for potential adoption. Some of them were abused badly and some ended up with a better life. There is some question whether all were actually orphans. So, trade in women and children is part of the history of many of us. And that's without even mentioning the slave trade.
One of my proudest moments was when my Grandson figured out in studying the history of the Underground railroad that he was descended from people on one side who helped conduct the UR and on the other side from people who might well have been passengers. At one level that is the best we can hope for from our past efforts at trading humans.
Sorry for waxing serious. Sometimes a game can open doors beyond games.
I find it kind of funny that this thread has been hijacked by an adoption debate.
If anyone saw this story in the news, there was an article about Catholic nuns in Ireland taking in "fallen" women who had babies out of wedlock, and how many of the children died of starvation or disease. I forget when. In to the 20th century. I bet those children would have loved to be a banished child.
Here is the article I found re the children.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/irish-church-fire-childrens-mass-grave-23979097
Yikes, I feel embarrassed that my first posts to the forum as a noobie made me sound like an idiot, I really should have thought about how my suggestion might be taken. Not a great start...
I still think it would be a great addition to the game and could be done in a very appropriate way, but definitely as a mod that could be chosen or ignored.
I'm sad to learn that the kids die if the parents starve to death. I hadn't thought to check, I've only had death by starvation in one game, which I ended up stopping, it was too disturbing already lol! I wonder if it couldn't be modded that kids are adopted right away into another family if the parents die. That is actually much closer to real life. My own spouse's father was adopted by a neighbor village family when his own parents died during a drought. Very common, even if no relatives are around; these adoptive people have always been considered 'the family'. Within my own history, my grandmother's father was orphaned when his game warden parents were murdered by poachers, he was also taken in by neighbors and became their 'son'.
Since the game already has dark elements, you can't get much darker than starvation and death, I don't think we need to be squeamish about other issues, like family arrangements, adoptions (let's call it that and not trading children), things that are true to the setting of the game and add elements that can promote the sense of solidarity and group survival and flourishing that are already there.
It was in a downloaded game that I saw the children dying when their parents died. Adults were both starving and freezing to death, so it is possible that the children were also starving and/or freezing, but my impression was that the children were just automatically dying when they no longer had an adult to support them. They did show up on the log, but I did not save the game after I failed repeatedly to turn around the situation.
I used the map button for the first time, the seed on my town is 381927568. Turns out it is mountain, not valley as I thought I'd chosen. No wonder it had such small workable space! I'll figure out how to take screen shots and see if some are worth posting. Of course it looks good now, I've covered the area with trees, but man was it mostly barren at the beginning.
How do you type in a seed that you read is a great one and want to play? I don't remember noticing anything like that as an option.
@gatinho65 No worries, as I said I understood what was meant by it. The idea of trading for them just made me sad. If there way a way to adopt children, it should be free, like the nomads as the town will still need to educate and feed and clothe them.
I am all for adoption in the actual world; there are so many children who could use someone to love and care for them!
My mother was adopted at birth by my grandma. Her mother was a Russian immigrant whose parents threw her out when she found out she was pregnant. My grandma ran a boarding house back then and took her in and let her help clean the rooms for her board and food. The father of my mother was a Polish immigrant who disappeared once her mother discovered she was pregnant. Without any means of supporting a child, she asked my grandmother if she would adopt the baby. My grandma loved children but was unable to have any of her own so she was happy to. My mother's biological mother disappeared after my mother was born and my grandmother adopted her before she left the hospital.
Back to the game, I have never noticed if the children die when their parents do. The next time I accidently cause a death spiral, I will have to pay attention to the children. Until now, I've always been too horrified to even think about it.
To type in a new seed, start a new game and where the seed number is, just change it to what you want. It is on the same window with the world size, weather, terrain, and such.
Quote from: gatinho65 on June 11, 2014, 03:13:21 PM
Yikes, I feel embarrassed that my first posts to the forum as a noobie made me sound like an idiot, I really should have thought about how my suggestion might be taken. Not a great start...
-- You shouldn't [feel embarrassed]
-- They didn't [make you sound like an idiot]
-- You can't anticipate every possible way someone might take what you say. I overreacted, pure and simple.
Seems to me like you're fitting in really well, here. :)
@gatinho65, you're doing fine. We know that you're not an idiot. Now, if you want some serious idiocy, google Toronto mayor Rob Ford. This is a quirky group here, which is why I like it. Every one of us has said something that tends to the odd at one time or another. Most threads end up talking about something completely different from the original post or announced topic. Obviously we can't really have "conversations" since we can't see things like body language, but we come as close as one can come in a forum context. Hopefully we see each other as something more than patterns of electrons on screens.
I agree with
@rkelly17, I enjoy the diversity of our group here! If we all thought and acted the same, it would get pretty boring, and our opportunities for growth or to expand out point of views would be pretty low. And as for being embarrassed, don't be! If I had a dollar for every time I have felt embarrassed, been misunderstood, said the wrong thing, or simply been wrong on the internet (or in the actual world!) I'd be a wealthy woman! ;P
Thanks for the kind comments all. I'm no expert on online life, but I have had enough experience to know how brutal and disillusioning it can be, how ugly. Its a pleasant and welcome surprise to find a place where even making a bit of a mistake up front doesn't just lead to more of that, but rather more a feeling of being happy to have found something cool. I hope it stays that way, even as it grows, which of course is also a good thing. Tiny clubs get tedious and claustrophobic, just as being enmeshed in the herd is lonely and frustrating. Balance, so essential, so very hard to achieve, a moving target I guess.