Welcome to the world of Banished! In this city-building strategy game, you control a group of exiled travelers who decide to restart their lives in a new land. They have only the clothes on their backs and a cart filled with supplies from their homeland.
The objective of the game is to keep the population alive and grow it into a successful culture. Options for feeding the people include hunting and gathering, agriculture, trade, and fishing. However, sustainable practices must be considered to survive in the long term.
Survival
Surviving the winters will be among your greatest challenges. Your tailors can make clothing, your people can build houses and burn firewood. But necessities have a price—Cutting down forests reduces the deer population you can hunt. Although your foresters can plant new trees, the cures for many diseases can only be found in forests that have existed for decades.
Farming for many seasons in one place will ruin the soil. Taking fish and game faster than they reproduce will lead to extinction, and your starvation.
Wandering nomads can join your town to grow the population quickly, but allowing them in increases the chance of illnesses from far off lands!
Gameplay
The townspeople of Banished are your primary resource. They are born, grow older, work, have children of their own, and eventually die. Keeping them healthy, happy, and well-fed are essential to making your town grow. Building new homes is not enough—there must be enough people to move in and have families of their own.
Banished has no skill trees. Any structure can be built at any time, provided that your people have collected the resources to do so. There is no money. Instead, your hard-earned resources can be bartered away with the arrival of trade vessels. These merchants are the key to adding livestock and annual crops to the townspeople’s diet; however, their lengthy trade route comes with the risk of bringing illnesses from abroad.
There are twenty different occupations that the people in the city can perform from farming, hunting, and blacksmithing, to mining, teaching, and healing. No single strategy will succeed for every town. Some resources may be more scarce from one map to the next. The player can choose to replant forests, mine for iron, and quarry for rock, but all these choices require setting aside space into which you cannot expand.
The success or failure of a town depends on the appropriate management of risks and resources.
Shining Rock Software has only a single developer doing all the software development, artwork, and audio.
My goal is to make simple and fun games for people to enjoy, similar to the enjoyment I got from playing shareware games back in the 1990s.
I've been gaming and programming for a long time. I used to work as an professional graphics engine programmer making console games for about 10 years before going 'indie'.
I've been following this game for quite some time now. You can clearly see the amount of dedication and love to the genre and game he put into his work. Really looking forward to this game. I hope he will have success with this game. You can read some of his blog posts on the website to get an Idea how much passion he has for this game
I was looking forward to Medieval Mayor but it got canceled, then I discovered this game. Looks right up my alley. I just hope its not a let down and it's well polished and supported considering only 1 guy is working on it.
On November 15 2013 01:42 L3gendary wrote: I was looking forward to Medieval Mayor but it got canceled, then I discovered this game. Looks right up my alley. I just hope its not a let down and it's well polished and supported considering only 1 guy is working on it.
I think it will be because he cares alot about his game.
Not fond of the graphics, wish they were touched a bit; but I was really intrigued with this game. Since Sim City 4; not many games piqued my interest of the same genre. I liked the idea micromanaged; a la Black & White 2 and this definitely looks like it goes a step further with some realistic ideas to add some flair to the game's challenges.
My interest in this game is pretty minimal at this point in time (this is my first time actually hearing about it), but I must say, his dev blogs are pretty good reads.
For some reason I have a really hard time buying nearly any game anymore that doesn't have multiplayer. Unless its a cheap indie game on Steam or something, multiplayer is usually where I seem to get most of my value/fun out of games.
Yeah I've been watching Quill18 play this game on YouTube and I'm also really looking forward to release. Also exciting is the fact that he's planning on releasing a mod pack...I feel like this is one of those games that will have a smaller, very dedicated fanbase which is always a good thing for the modding scene.
The thing about the hype may be just that some people (like myself) saw Chexx's original post, looked into it a bit and thought "Wow, this game looks great - I'm going to buy it right when it comes out!" but never bothered saying anything.
I tend to do that a lot with the "game-review-type" posts on TL ^^
Instabuy for me too, planned that since at least half a year. <3
I think I respect the guy most for his "Game is released when it's done"-attitude and none of the bullshit early access we're seeing way too much nowadays.
Totalbiscuit said he will make a video of Banished. I think then it will gather way more hype.
I think the graphics really fit to the game. After watching quite a few lets plays I dont really mind it and the good thing is it will run on my old laptop :D
On February 13 2014 05:50 r.Evo wrote: You do realize that this is a 1 man project and looks fucking gorgeous compared to anything else in this currently almost nonexistent genre, right?
I already know, not sure how that changes my personal opinion of what I prefer in a game.
This game looks great, I cant believe I've found about it just now.
I've always looked for a game that has the Black & White style of building and managing your village/town. This looks like it might be what I was looking for.
Just watched TB's coverage, and it seemed a pretty fair assessment. There were a few things I think he missed the mark on though:
1) Micromanagement. It may be a fault in the tutorial system that he didn't know this, but it seemed like he wasn't aware that if your citizens have nothing to do, either because you haven't assigned them anything to do (Builders) or because of the season (Farmers), they default to Laborers and will fill in as needed assuming you have queued something up. I feel like there is less overall micromanagement required than he was describing, although if you want to min/max the crap out of your village, it seems like it is still a good idea to be fiddling with the professions window on a regular basis.
2) Modding support. It won't be in the game at launch, so maybe that's why he didn't mention it, or he doesn't know, but Shining Rock is planning on adding modding support to the game, which could fix a lot of the problems he sees with it so far. Adding additional tech, buildings, disasters, seeds, livestock, etc. To me Banished seems like one of those games that will have a small but extremely loyal playerbase that will generate some really good mods in the long run.
3) He kept saying 'they' throughout the video, so maybe he doesn't know that it was one guy who made the game, because he usually mentions it in his WTF videos if he is impressed with a game that was developed by one person, and expectations are tempered as a result. Not a big deal, but I think it's worth noting what he was able to achieve by himself and with a smaller budget and provide to us for $20.
On February 18 2014 04:13 Manit0u wrote: So, is this basically Dwarf Fortress with graphics?
It's not nearly as complex as Dwarf Fortress, and probably can never be without a combat system, but with mods I would expect it to get much more complex over time.
But yes, you can draw a lot of comparisons between them, and as someone who can never really get into Dwarf Fortress because of the (lack of) UI, it looks pretty appealing to me because I love the genre.
To be realistic no. Its nothing like Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress is what is is because of the utter wierd stuff you can do it in. Engineering works of almost anything and the psychology of your dwarf makes the game.
Does anyone know when it's going live on Steam? Considering pulling an all-nighter instead of waiting until I get off work tomorrow. This'll be the first non-"esports" game I've played in a while, and I'm insanely excited to get back to the shit I used to love playing
On February 18 2014 13:17 Cedstick wrote: Does anyone know when it's going live on Steam? Considering pulling an all-nighter instead of waiting until I get off work tomorrow. This'll be the first non-"esports" game I've played in a while, and I'm insanely excited to get back to the shit I used to love playing
my steam shop has a countdown. Just check yours to see how long you need to wait
Is it realistic meaning that it does hinge on a lot of exterior and inner-population issues? Plus, is it continually challenging or is it pretty much just medial management after the first big huffs of establishing your town?
On February 19 2014 01:23 Torte de Lini wrote: THOUGHTS THOUGHTS THOUGHTS?
Is it realistic meaning that it does hinge on a lot of exterior and inner-population issues? Plus, is it continually challenging or is it pretty much just medial management after the first big huffs of establishing your town?
you always need to keep a close eye on your food, coats, etc even though I play on easy together with my gf on the same mapseed if I expand to fast I struggle for food etc.
In the beginning your people as a resource are very rare most of them are needed for the food production. I gathered alot of stone and iron which is all over the map but still quite short on wood.
On February 19 2014 01:38 Torte de Lini wrote: Are there any ideal settings? I want to play on a very large map
I dont think that everything is known yet. I only know so far that hunter cabin, gatherer and herbalist get better results if they are surrounded by many trees.
On February 19 2014 01:38 Torte de Lini wrote: Are there any ideal settings? I want to play on a very large map
What do you mean by 'ideal,' performance wise or just general enjoyment? If you want to play a large map play one, just keep in mind if you want to build it out it could take you dozens of hours of gameplay.
I must say I disagree with the reviewer, but such is life.
Gotta love the comments saying "You are unprofessional!" the reason apparently being that he didnt go watch a bunch of Lets Plays to learn how to play the game and struggled with it. Sorry, if your game doesn't teach you how to play then you've done a bad job explaining things. Referring to secondary user-created resources such as Wikis or Lets Plays should only be required for really high-end stuff.
I must say I disagree with the reviewer, but such is life.
Gotta love the comments saying "You are unprofessional!" the reason apparently being that he didnt go watch a bunch of Lets Plays to learn how to play the game and struggled with it. Sorry, if your game doesn't teach you how to play then you've done a bad job explaining things. Referring to secondary user-created resources such as Wikis or Lets Plays should only be required for really high-end stuff.
The game teaches you how to play. It doesn't explain how to win though. But that's the point of the game, surviving. I guess losing in 2014 is too frustrating.
I must say I disagree with the reviewer, but such is life.
Gotta love the comments saying "You are unprofessional!" the reason apparently being that he didnt go watch a bunch of Lets Plays to learn how to play the game and struggled with it. Sorry, if your game doesn't teach you how to play then you've done a bad job explaining things. Referring to secondary user-created resources such as Wikis or Lets Plays should only be required for really high-end stuff.
The game teaches you how to play. It doesn't explain how to win though. But that's the point of the game, surviving. I guess losing in 2014 is too frustrating.
I very much doubt that. Last few years we've had a desire for challenge. You can't tell me "losing in 2014 is too frustrating" when we are in the era of Dark/Demon Souls, Flappy Bird, I Wanna be the Guy and its billions of clones, speed running as its most popular ever, a bevy of extremely popular permadeath survival sims and roguelines and an explosion of popularity for complex grand strategy titles. No, people are fine with losing, but they want to understand how. The article did accurately point out that the game doesn't quite give you enough tools to figure that out on your own and as many people have also explained, you'd THINK planting stuff is a good idea but in reality you want to be using hunters and gatherers far far more.
I gotta say, last time I did a game I had a gatherer almost completely surrounded by a deep forest, the place that the wiki said I should put it and its production was dreadful. There are times when the game doesn't quite work logically and is counterintuitive. That's a reasonable criticism to make and the tutorial does very little to explain as you said, how to win or even how to start winning necessarily.
Well I can't comment on your experience. Just that so far, things have been working as written and more or less logically for me. I find the game intuitive and the tutorial was enough. I mean... I've played Paradox Games before so I guess I'm used to tutorial being even worse (or even Dark Souls in another genre).
Getting a town to 100pop on hard on my first play wasn't hard so understand me when I have a hard time understanding where complaint of difficulty or the game being too obscure comes from. Sure at some point you unbalance your growth and you'll have a wave of death from starvation, that is the game.
I can understand someone not wanting a city builder that has a huge focus on survival, forcing you to be very careful rather than creative. This is certainly not SimCity or Anno. And someone looking for that will be probably disappointed.
Edit: I'm fairly sure however that currently the production statistics window is a bit messy. It bugs on me sometimes and seems to show the total year production rather than for each seasons with each year beginning in spring. So if a building shows unexpected low production make sure it was active for a whole spring-winter cycle.
I'm finally all ready to play this game, and I'm going in fresh. If you don't mind watching a newbie, come watch me play as I talk shit with my bro on Skype.
I'm honestly not sure where all the "this game is too hard" and "not enough documentation" comes from. TB explained in his WTF is...? well why the tutorial sucks exactly, I grinded through it anyway and then in my first try (similar to many others it seems) everything exploded during the first winter. Fine. I spent about 5 minutes with google and I was missing exactly two tips:
1) Gatherers gather more if their area has lots of mature trees around 2) Gatherers are more efficient per person you put in (one easily nets 2k+ per season) and farms are more efficient for the space they take up.
...keeping those two in mind I didn't find it hard to get my second town to 250 population so far. There wasn't any real stress because early game I could focus on expanding my population asap (since 2-3 gatherers + forestry that doesn't cut but only plant brought in insane amounts of food for almost no investment) and once I had the manpower (60+) a full 47x47 area with fields and barns/houses in the middle carried the next large amount of people.
If anything I'm disappointed that I feel like "cracking" the first couple of hours was this easy. Sure, the real challenge comes most likely from trying to reach 1000+ population but as it stands it feels more like an aquarium than a game for me. It's fun and beautiful, don't get me wrong but for a "builder" game like this it is incredibly straight forward without any game mechanic in place that randomizes things in an entertaining way (think DF), no mechanic that makes me want to keep going to see something awesome and huge (think Anno or older Sim Cities) or any threat whatsoever (besides starving/no-tool-cascade) it kind of gets reduced to a stockpile simulator or management sim.
I still love what the guy did with this game (mostly since good games in this genre are highly underproduced imo) but I think Banished will need a modding scene to step up to make it really awesome.
e: This part of the review above is kind of awkward for me:
I’ve spent three days obsessed with Banished, and yet I don’t like it. I was obsessed because I was determined to find a way to break its back, to succeed even when its severity and its strange logic worked so hard to punish me. I don’t like it because it is so short on breathing room, so determined to stack the odds against me, that there is no scope whatsoever to enjoy the act of city-building. While no head turner, it is perfectly attractive, but that matters naught when it’s not paired with any excitement. I want to be challenged, sure, but I also want to be able to sit back and say ‘guys, just look at what we’ve made.’
...I'm on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. I'm pretty confident that I "broke" the game within my first 3 hours of playing and the only reason for me to keep playing more is the "This is so pretty!" combined with "I can listen to this music for hours" and "Let's see how I can space things out to get the map full". ;;
I gotta say, last time I did a game I had a gatherer almost completely surrounded by a deep forest, the place that the wiki said I should put it and its production was dreadful. There are times when the game doesn't quite work logically and is counterintuitive. That's a reasonable criticism to make and the tutorial does very little to explain as you said, how to win or even how to start winning necessarily.
Was the pathing for homes or storage really far/inefficient? So far it seems to me gathering huts are the best food per worker by far. A weak harvesting hut for me makes me about 1200 food per season and a strong one goes over 2100. A weak fishing makes about 600 and a strong one about 1000. A weak hunting lodge makes about 800 and a strong one about 1200. However this makes sense because those have other benefits. Fishing takes a lot less space and vension sells for 4 times as much as gathered food.
I'm not sure how people are finding it so hard. After the tutorials I started 2 villages that died in first winter because I was dumb and forgot to assign builders, so nothing got built. Then the next town grew to 250 pop and still going, nobody so far has died to starvation or exposure. Learning process, gatherers seems to haul in the most food, fishers seem worst for the amount of people you put in them and farms save space. Haven't read any wiki, I just find the game works rather intuitively. Fun game, not regretting a bit buying it on first day.
I gotta say, last time I did a game I had a gatherer almost completely surrounded by a deep forest, the place that the wiki said I should put it and its production was dreadful. There are times when the game doesn't quite work logically and is counterintuitive. That's a reasonable criticism to make and the tutorial does very little to explain as you said, how to win or even how to start winning necessarily.
Was the pathing for homes or storage really far/inefficient? So far it seems to me gathering huts are the best food per worker by far. A weak harvesting hut for me makes me about 1200 food per season and a strong one goes over 2100. A weak fishing makes about 600 and a strong one about 1000. A weak hunting lodge makes about 800 and a strong one about 1200. However this makes sense because those have other benefits. Fishing takes a lot less space and vension sells for 4 times as much as gathered food.
Yes Gatherer are best from my experience, they need to be on the edge of your city though. In my experience fishers are the best yield per space but have weak yield per worker, gatherer are the best yield per worker and hunters provide leather as a bonus to their weak yield. Farmers are a happy medium between space and efficiency (they take more space than fish but are more efficient per worker). Chickens seems a bit better than farm production per worker but takes a lot more space to get the same (2 pastures). Sheep are used for wool and Cattle are equivalent to Hunter I think.
On February 19 2014 01:38 Torte de Lini wrote: Are there any ideal settings? I want to play on a very large map
What do you mean by 'ideal,' performance wise or just general enjoyment? If you want to play a large map play one, just keep in mind if you want to build it out it could take you dozens of hours of gameplay.
I mean when you start the game, you have to pick map, difficulty, seed, etc.
I started Harsh weather in mountain terrain with hard difficult. It's my first game and everything is ok atm. Might run in to problems if there aren't enough babies to replace old people soon about to die though. Tbh gatherers are OP
Those of you who are cruising on 250+ population villages on your first playthrough, is that on Hard? I'm determined to play on hard, and with my first village I reached a plateau at ~50 population where I couldn't really generate any more food without farms or overextending my villagers, and I couldn't expand my housing because I wasn't confident in my food production/storage. I was slowly pushing towards my trading post in order to trade for some seeds, doing pretty good season to season but not really growing anymore, when a tornado wiped out 75% of my population, leaving me with about 12 middle-aged adults and 2 children. Proceed to slowly bleed out because my adults couldn't breed and my children were too young.
Just an example of how quickly the game can turn around on you. I had reached a difficult spot but was slowly managing when RNGesus decided to give it to me up the ass. Looking back there are several key mistakes, mostly revolving around me building some things too soon (Town Hall, Schoolhouse) without allowing my infrastructure to build up a bit first. I did feel like I had prepared for the eventuality of a Tornado pretty well by spreading my town out into 3-4 little clusters of homes and workshops, but it literally zigzagged through 3 of them which seemed pretty unlucky.
Regardless, a really fun game (for me) and I'm looking forward to seeing what mods bring to the table.
On February 20 2014 00:30 Chexx wrote: Orchards need to grow so you wont get anything from them in the first years.
Yes I thought of that but as planted my orchards winter 2 and by summer 6 nothing had grown yet, so how many years should I wait ?
the number that was told was 4 years. Note that Winter 2 to Summer 6 is slightly less then 4 years.
Give it time.
As for the person asking about growth. Im only playing hard aswell and getting crops really is a big deal. costs 2500 for a seed but like you I was stuck at 50 pop before I acquired one because I just couldnt sustain more population. Once you get seeds tho your food production really booms hard. I got a trading post up by Winter year 4, got a blacksmith/tailor but no real other buildings aside from food production. A school delays your workers being 'ready' by 2 years which imo isnt worth it when your still on a sub 30 population. Got a Tailor tho because when i didnt before half my town froze to death in there rags ><.
On February 20 2014 00:30 Chexx wrote: Orchards need to grow so you wont get anything from them in the first years.
Yes I thought of that but as planted my orchards winter 2 and by summer 6 nothing had grown yet, so how many years should I wait ?
the number that was told was 4 years. Note that Winter 2 to Summer 6 is slightly less then 4 years.
Give it time.
As for the person asking about growth. Im only playing hard aswell and getting crops really is a big deal. costs 2500 for a seed but like you I was stuck at 50 pop before I acquired one because I just couldnt sustain more population. Once you get seeds tho your food production really booms hard. I got a trading post up by Winter year 4, got a blacksmith/tailor but no real other buildings aside from food production. A school delays your workers being 'ready' by 2 years which imo isnt worth it when your still on a sub 30 population. Got a Tailor tho because when i didnt before half my town froze to death in there rags ><.
Ok, yeah I was into Year 9 and still didn't have a Trading Post, so I think I was just prioritizing unnecessary shit like the Town Hall. Looking back now, I actually think my biggest mistake was investing in a Mine/Quarry too early when I didn't have nearly enough people to work them efficiently. It is much more effective to just have extra Laborers and use them to scrape the landscape within a reasonable radius of your town, and start in on the Quarry/Mine when that isn't really viable anymore.
In my experience, and I wasn't watching it closely so I may be wrong, but education delays their entry into the work force by much longer than 2 years, unless you mean two full season cycles instead of citizen age, which seems to advance quite a bit faster. As opposed to 10-year old "adults," I'm seeing 18 year old students.
I feel like, while it was really suboptimal, I was going to be able to pull it out just by disabling the buildings I didn't want to use until I got a bit more population, but while I was treading water the tornado took me out and it was pretty much all over from there.
How many natural disasters have you guys encountered? The one that wiped out my first town happened in the 9th year, and I just had one in my brand new town (2nd year) that didn't cause nearly as much damage, but did kill a handful of people. Am I just getting unlucky?
On February 20 2014 00:43 ZasZ. wrote: Those of you who are cruising on 250+ population villages on your first playthrough, is that on Hard? I'm determined to play on hard, and with my first village I reached a plateau at ~50 population where I couldn't really generate any more food without farms or overextending my villagers, and I couldn't expand my housing because I wasn't confident in my food production/storage. I was slowly pushing towards my trading post in order to trade for some seeds, doing pretty good season to season but not really growing anymore, when a tornado wiped out 75% of my population, leaving me with about 12 middle-aged adults and 2 children. Proceed to slowly bleed out because my adults couldn't breed and my children were too young.
Just an example of how quickly the game can turn around on you. I had reached a difficult spot but was slowly managing when RNGesus decided to give it to me up the ass. Looking back there are several key mistakes, mostly revolving around me building some things too soon (Town Hall, Schoolhouse) without allowing my infrastructure to build up a bit first. I did feel like I had prepared for the eventuality of a Tornado pretty well by spreading my town out into 3-4 little clusters of homes and workshops, but it literally zigzagged through 3 of them which seemed pretty unlucky.
Regardless, a really fun game (for me) and I'm looking forward to seeing what mods bring to the table.
The key to efficient food production is proper placement of the production buildings. A fishery will actually provide a lot of food if you can place it in a location where it has a lot of water around it, not just a little bit of a stream. For example, in my current village, I have a big lake that has a big river run through and past my village, so I placed my fishery on a little piece of headland, so it has far above 50% of the working radius as water. That fishery has been making me ~2k food per season now for years.
Another big producer is a single gathering hut, close to that lake was a quite sizable island, almost the working radius of a gathering hut. So I first made a foresters on that island and deselected Cut job from it, so they simply planted more trees. I let that run for 2 years, then removed the forester and built the gathering hut and 2 houses next to it, so the workers wouldn't have to travel much. Now that thing is also making over 2k food per season, so my fledling village of 50ish is having a surplus of food from just 2 buildings, 8 workers.
I'm running into a bit of a problem with stone though, as I converted all houses into stone houses, so now I have to gather from a very large distance to build anything else. Working on a quarry to remedy this problem currently.
Started this village on hard, I have no reason to rush for trading posts, basic needs of my settlement are well in order and when I want to expand, I'll add another isolated gathering hut+hunting cabin for food requirements.
Quarries will get depleted yes, but you won't mine one out in a year or 2. It will leave a big hole in the ground that can't be used for other stuff so stone and iron/coal are basicly a finite resource, but I don't know how many thousands of game years you'd need to play to cover the map in old quarries.
Overlapping same kind of production buildings will decrease production, but I'm quite sure it doesn't if it's different kind of buildings, like say a hunters and a gatherer working in the same area.
On February 20 2014 00:43 ZasZ. wrote: Those of you who are cruising on 250+ population villages on your first playthrough, is that on Hard? I'm determined to play on hard, and with my first village I reached a plateau at ~50 population where I couldn't really generate any more food without farms or overextending my villagers, and I couldn't expand my housing because I wasn't confident in my food production/storage. I was slowly pushing towards my trading post in order to trade for some seeds, doing pretty good season to season but not really growing anymore, when a tornado wiped out 75% of my population, leaving me with about 12 middle-aged adults and 2 children. Proceed to slowly bleed out because my adults couldn't breed and my children were too young.
Just an example of how quickly the game can turn around on you. I had reached a difficult spot but was slowly managing when RNGesus decided to give it to me up the ass. Looking back there are several key mistakes, mostly revolving around me building some things too soon (Town Hall, Schoolhouse) without allowing my infrastructure to build up a bit first. I did feel like I had prepared for the eventuality of a Tornado pretty well by spreading my town out into 3-4 little clusters of homes and workshops, but it literally zigzagged through 3 of them which seemed pretty unlucky.
Regardless, a really fun game (for me) and I'm looking forward to seeing what mods bring to the table.
The key to efficient food production is proper placement of the production buildings. A fishery will actually provide a lot of food if you can place it in a location where it has a lot of water around it, not just a little bit of a stream. For example, in my current village, I have a big lake that has a big river run through and past my village, so I placed my fishery on a little piece of headland, so it has far above 50% of the working radius as water. That fishery has been making me ~2k food per season now for years.
Another big producer is a single gathering hut, close to that lake was a quite sizable island, almost the working radius of a gathering hut. So I first made a foresters on that island and deselected Cut job from it, so they simply planted more trees. I let that run for 2 years, then removed the forester and built the gathering hut and 2 houses next to it, so the workers wouldn't have to travel much. Now that thing is also making over 2k food per season, so my fledling village of 50ish is having a surplus of food from just 2 buildings, 8 workers.
I'm running into a bit of a problem with stone though, as I converted all houses into stone houses, so now I have to gather from a very large distance to build anything else. Working on a quarry to remedy this problem currently.
Started this village on hard, I have no reason to rush for trading posts, basic needs of my settlement are well in order and when I want to expand, I'll add another isolated gathering hut+hunting cabin for food requirements.
I didn't start near a lake, so the fishing dock I did have was netting about 1k per year. There may have been a more ideal place to put it, but the map was fairly mountainous so I had to work with what I was given for the most part. The real problem was I was stretching too much for some of the "luxury" buildings before just getting a good base food supply. I had a nice little forest town with gatherer/forester/hunter but tried to expand into the open land without seeds instead of building another similar town nearby in another rather old forest. I tried to stabilize by building that forest town, but the tornado put an end to that.
The gathering hut is strong on any difficulty, but especially Hard when you have no seeds and fishing is only situationally strong. There may be a point much later in the game where it doesn't make sense to have such a large area collecting a relatively small amount of food compared to farms, but having a cultivated forest nearby for logs/firewood in a pinch is never a bad thing, considering you clear cut all of the development areas and sending your Laborers further and further out can get dangerous.
I never got to the point in that first game where I felt upgrading to stone houses felt worth it or even viable. It takes a lot of resources, and my people weren't having a hard time with the cold, even though some weren't fully clothed. I think it's because the way I had set up my homes meant they all had a relatively short commute, but heat was never a problem. I do think the stone houses look a lot nicer though, stone just seems to valuable in the first ~10 years of the game to spend it on that.
On February 20 2014 03:45 LaNague wrote: overlapping things like gatherer huts and docks will decrease production for individual buildings, yes?
mines etc are limited, too, right? So at the end i need to exchange food for iron and stone.
Yes overlaps diminish production.
On February 20 2014 00:43 ZasZ. wrote: Those of you who are cruising on 250+ population villages on your first playthrough, is that on Hard? I'm determined to play on hard, and with my first village I reached a plateau at ~50 population where I couldn't really generate any more food without farms or overextending my villagers, and I couldn't expand my housing because I wasn't confident in my food production/storage. I was slowly pushing towards my trading post in order to trade for some seeds, doing pretty good season to season but not really growing anymore, when a tornado wiped out 75% of my population, leaving me with about 12 middle-aged adults and 2 children. Proceed to slowly bleed out because my adults couldn't breed and my children were too young.
Just an example of how quickly the game can turn around on you. I had reached a difficult spot but was slowly managing when RNGesus decided to give it to me up the ass. Looking back there are several key mistakes, mostly revolving around me building some things too soon (Town Hall, Schoolhouse) without allowing my infrastructure to build up a bit first. I did feel like I had prepared for the eventuality of a Tornado pretty well by spreading my town out into 3-4 little clusters of homes and workshops, but it literally zigzagged through 3 of them which seemed pretty unlucky.
Regardless, a really fun game (for me) and I'm looking forward to seeing what mods bring to the table.
Yes on hard but with Fair/Valley settings for me, catastrophes active. To be honest I didn't find hard to be much harder than medium if you know what you're doing. It's simply a lot slower.
Food is key either way. You don't really need seeds fast, just take your time building little hubs of gatherer/hunter and don't build too many houses until you can trade for seeds. Once you have good stone production build a town hall, having datas helps A LOT for large population. The most useful data being the used vs produced food per year. If you see you have a strong margin you can expand, otherwise you need more food.
This looks really cool to make because it looks like the old anno games. Does it play a lot like them? I noticed you can't really upgrade from your wooden houses.
Afaik, the diversity only helps to keep the population healthy. Although if your people are not healthy, they will not have children. You need empty houses to make your population, otherwise adults will stay at their parent's house and never become parents themselves
On February 20 2014 05:05 anatase wrote: Hm is it diversity in the food production or especially seed that help the population grow ?
EDIT: You can upgrade your wooden to stones houses.
As far as I know food variety doesn't have anything to do with population growth, except that it affects how healthy/happy your citizens are. From what I can tell, people need to be happy and healthy and in a home that has room for a family in order to breed. If you see more than 2 people over 10 (no education) or 18 (education) in a house, it means you could probably grow your population if you build more houses.
Whether or not you can support that population is largely a food question, although other resources will be consumed at a faster rate as well. Like was mentioned above, the Town Hall can be a great resource in order to figure out whether you have the food production to sustain a larger population.
Seeds have no special magical power that help your population grow, and generally farms and orchards provide less food per worker than something like a Gathering Hut, but it is also the most efficient food source per land area, except maybe fishing, and the only food you can grow in wide open space, i.e. the land surrounding your most developed areas.
I feel like markets should have vastly bigger working area, or I haven't understood how to properly utilize them.
Stone houses take less firewood to warm them, something that will eventually save you workers and space due to less need of woodcutters / log industry. Plus they look nicer, but the stone drain early game is hard, agreed.
for those who asked, playing hard/fair/disasters on.
On February 20 2014 05:56 daemir wrote: I feel like markets should have vastly bigger working area, or I haven't understood how to properly utilize them.
Stone houses take less firewood to warm them, something that will eventually save you workers and space due to less need of woodcutters / log industry. Plus they look nicer, but the stone drain early game is hard, agreed.
for those who asked, playing hard/fair/disasters on.
What do you mean by working area? In my experience, the radius of the market is referring to the homes it serves rather than where the goods are collected from. I think as long as you have someone assigned to it, they'll get the goods wherever they can get them, and then people within the market radius come to the market for their stuff. It gives you an idea of how many people it can serve, assuming you have enough vendors to keep it stocked.
Also playing hard/fair/disasters, although with two tornadoes in 11 combined years of gameplay, I briefly considered turning them off for my next one, but almost all the best stories in these games come from the disasters rather than the successes.
I'm unsure how market work exactly. I don't know yet if the area display is their source area ortheir distribution area. I would believe its only their distribution area and that vendor can go anywhere to look for items but I'm really unsure. I'd have to make tests putting a market in a remote location.
On to my third town, the previous one being too much in disarray after the fire that burned 2/3 of it.
On February 20 2014 05:03 fmod wrote: This looks really cool to make because it looks like the old anno games. Does it play a lot like them? I noticed you can't really upgrade from your wooden houses.
it plays like children of the nile, not anno.
it plays like a CotN with a bit more survival and less cultivated stuff like building monuments, taxes, army.
How much extra food is a good amount to keep stored up? I consume about 15k a year atm and make about 18k. This is built up over the years into about a 25k excess food. So at least 2 years worth if for some reason I stop producing any food at all. Feels like I'm hoarding too much.
On February 20 2014 09:54 randombum wrote: How much extra food is a good amount to keep stored up? I consume about 15k a year atm and make about 18k. This is built up over the years into about a 25k excess food. So at least 2 years worth if for some reason I stop producing any food at all. Feels like I'm hoarding too much.
Meh reached about the max of what i can do with my Small Mountain map at just under 100 pop. I just dont have enough room to grow my town any further :p
Has anyone found a use for Chickens? Had a pasture full of them but they seem utterly useless. Producing less food then sheeps while not providing another product (wool). Seems like a terrible waste of space.
Also Farm worker allocation is a little wierd. Since a field can always hold 6 workers regardless of size its actually faster to split up fields into small parts rather then work with max size because production stays the same. It helped make sure my far away fields were planted in time for a full harvest come the autumn.
Nearly starved my town by taking in a bunch of nomads. Some panic farm clearing and fisheries kept me barely alive (dipping down to 200 food with 200 population).
A very efficient (early) game combo is to have 1 forester limited to 1 worker and only allowed to plant coupled with a gatherer limited to 3 workers +2 houses in some far corner you don't need in the coming years. I found that without a planter the trees eventually clear out over many years. Make the houses stone so they take less firewood, meaning less worker trips to a storage.
I have read about the game in this thread a couple of days before release and could restrain myself from watching Let's Plays so that I can get the full vanilla experience. From all the hype and the first post release comments I expected to have my first village die off fairly quick but so far it is still running.
I am at 209 population in Summer 37 now, have I been playing it "too safe" and that's the reason everything went better than expected? What is a good population to have around this time?
I did start on medium, fair climate and disasters on and had one tornado and one fire so far (though the fire came at a "good" time as I was about to finish a couple new houses and had a boarding house ready & unaffected as well).
On February 20 2014 21:25 Chexx wrote: I think my chickens make roughly 800-1000 with eggs and chicken and its just two people
Yeah but a sheep pasture of equal size makes more food and gives wool aswell Oo
you are correct I think it starts faster to produce food but other than that no advantages
Keep in mind though that food variety is never a bad thing, and that + disease and general aesthetics is enough for me to vary up my food sources, even if some are clearly more efficient/productive than others.
Does anyone understand how fisheries work? Some games I have one that produces ~550 per worker, and sometimes it's abysmal, something like 200. It seems like covering two different sources of water is the key (small river + big, or river + lake), but it's not all there is to it. Water coverage from a single river is never enough, but simply having a fork doesn't guarantee insane income either.
Also, is there a point in having more than one hunter per cabin? One hunter will usually get 600-800 + 16-24 per year, while two or three hunters usually get marginally more (920/26 is the highest I've seen). It also seems like a small map can't support more than ~3 hunter cabins with lone hunters, as there simply won't be enough game running around.
Finally, is there any difference between seeds? Aside from food diversity, they all seem very similar, while sheeps seem much better than both chicken and cow.
On February 21 2014 06:06 Pwere wrote: Does anyone understand how fisheries work? Some games I have one that produces ~550 per worker, and sometimes it's abysmal, something like 200. It seems like covering two different sources of water is the key (small river + big, or river + lake), but it's not all there is to it. Water coverage from a single river is never enough, but simply having a fork doesn't guarantee insane income either.
Also, is there a point in having more than one hunter per cabin? One hunter will usually get 600-800 + 16-24 per year, while two or three hunters usually get marginally more (920/26 is the highest I've seen). It also seems like a small map can't support more than ~3 hunter cabins with lone hunters, as there simply won't be enough game running around.
Finally, is there any difference between seeds? Aside from food diversity, they all seem very similar, while sheeps seem much better than both chicken and cow.
Not sure on fishing. Think its about how much water they have in there range.
Hunters is the same issue as gatherers. Other Hunters in there radius will reduce the yield of both so your limited by space.
No difference between seeds other then preventing problems with Infections destroying your entire food income. Haven't used Cattle yet but there about space efficient leather in the same way that sheep are about wool. Chickens just seem useless in general compared to the other 2 since there food is lower and they produce no other goods.
Chickens are quick to reproduce, if you can't afford more than a few animals from trading, then you get some chickens and soon can start splitting your original pasture. Have to try out different numbers of hunters per cabin, I've kept them at 3 but the food/worker is abysmal.
I managed to make a stellar fishery by building one on a spit of headland next to a river and lake, so most of the area is water. Best year I checked it made 2.5k food for 4 workers.
On February 21 2014 06:06 Pwere wrote: Does anyone understand how fisheries work? Some games I have one that produces ~550 per worker, and sometimes it's abysmal, something like 200. It seems like covering two different sources of water is the key (small river + big, or river + lake), but it's not all there is to it. Water coverage from a single river is never enough, but simply having a fork doesn't guarantee insane income either.
Also, is there a point in having more than one hunter per cabin? One hunter will usually get 600-800 + 16-24 per year, while two or three hunters usually get marginally more (920/26 is the highest I've seen). It also seems like a small map can't support more than ~3 hunter cabins with lone hunters, as there simply won't be enough game running around.
Finally, is there any difference between seeds? Aside from food diversity, they all seem very similar, while sheeps seem much better than both chicken and cow.
Not sure on fishing. Think its about how much water they have in there range.
Hunters is the same issue as gatherers. Other Hunters in there radius will reduce the yield of both so your limited by space.
No difference between seeds other then preventing problems with Infections destroying your entire food income. Haven't used Cattle yet but there about space efficient leather in the same way that sheep are about wool. Chickens just seem useless in general compared to the other 2 since there food is lower and they produce no other goods.
From what I can tell the main difference in seeds is increased food variety and slightly different growing seasons, but that can be hard to prove empirically in game. But it means, should you get an early frost or late thaw, you are less susceptible to your entire crop being severely hampered.
I think one of the big things missing from this game, and perhaps will be one of the first things added once the modpack is released, is supply chain management. I want to be able to mill my wheat into flour and turn it into bread which is a much more useful food product that takes less overall space. That's the best example I can come up with, but there is a lot that can be done with the raw materials provided in the base game, let alone what people would add later.
I hadn't noticed that only one hunter provides so much of the overall yield for a Hunter's Cabin. I'll have to look into that, I'd been maxing mine out mainly to get a steady supply of leather as fast as I can, but it sounds like I can dial it back a bit.
Fish is pretty fickle. I usually get one early if I'm in a spot where it makes sense (river delta, lots of lake tiles, etc.) but unless you have a perfect spot they only seem to churn out ~1k fish per season with 4 workers, which isn't great. It's a lot of food for how much space it occupies on the map, but that's pretty much the only positive other than general food variety. I also have a feeling that fish may be a more important resource on the Small/Mountain/Harsh settings because the other food sources can be difficult to establish under those conditions, whereas fish doesn't take up much space and has a fairly consistent yield year-round.
Like I said in an earlier post I go by the following guidelines when it comes to food:
-Fish is best food per space but worse food per worker. -Hunting is on the same level as Fish but provides some leather (maybe as someone said it isn't worth it to put multiple people in it and only one worker is a strong yield). -Gatherer are best food per yield but need to be isolated on the edges, so you're probably limited in their numbers. -Farm is your go to food for large cities. They provide diversity and are a happy medium between space and productivity. They sadly however create huge variations in food supplies making it hard to gauge if you'll be fine. Also an early freeze is a potential nightmare. -Pastures is probably the best after gatherer in term of productivity, it also creates wool/leather and the meat is the food that is worth the most at the trader. The drawback from pastures is that it takes time to go online and isn't as efficient as farms when it comes to space. -Orchards are terrible and should only be used for ale and diversity.
What is missing as someone pointed out are luxuries. Something like what the Anno series does. It would also make more sense to create huge town centers with all the shops and manufactures. Right now it's a bit too limited on just growing and increasing the basic needs over and over.
How do you guys manage the raw goods storage? I've found it affects the productivity a lot but I'm not sure what is the best way to go about it. At the moment I am using a small storage space (2x3) next to each producing structure (forest lodges, mines, etc) so that the workers have a place to leave their stuff close by and can get back to the real work fast, and then a bigger sized storage closer to the actual town or building sites, the idea being that the labourers move the goods closer to the useful sites once the small primary storage spaces are near full.
However I'm not sure who really moves stuff around and how to optimize for it. I have read labourers tend to do it, but then builders seem to sometimes take stupidly looong walks to the other side of the map to try and get some raw materials to their building site. Also marketplace workers seem to move stuff around but I guess they are just bringing it to the market.
For me the first merchant took around 2 years to appear on the river, then you get one more or less every 9 months. I tried building a second trading post on the same river to see if I would get twice as many merchants, but it doesn't seem to work. I guess building two of them only makes sense if you have access to two independent river streams?
The game is nice and quite challenging, but I guess once we get all this kind of stuff figured out it will get stale fast. I agree adding more map diversity and luxury goods/buildings (like ornamental fountains or monuments) would go a long way without having to fundamentally change the basics of the game.
I read that every trade post has its own timers so with more trade posts you should get more trade ships.
I think that people misinterpret laborers. In big villages you need alot of them to move the goods from place to place. Many just reassign them to other jobs but being a laborer is already a job.
I have stockpiles near where resources are produced aswell. Outside of mines/quarry's/lodges. Travel time is then from these stockpiles to building sites which can take a while but it is mostly done by laborers so its not that impactful. I dont think bigger stockpiles closer to your town matters much since I dont think you can really move goods from 1 stockpile to another atm.
I can't seem to get to 200 population. Every time I get close to that, the town takes up too much space and everyone starves to death walking to the wrong storage area. I watched a fisherman walk right past an empty storage barn and then starve to death holding a crate full of fish. What's the trick to laying out your town so people don't spend all their time walking?
Are you using markets at that size? They seem like a good way to handle long walk times for food when your town gets that big.
Also if your town is spread out to much you might want to spread out your houses aswell since citizens will often live in the closest house they can so you can create 'suburbs' to house the far out workers with a market keeping them stocked on food from far away barns
Yes, always plan housing so you have them near where jobs are, that way travel times are shorter and everything is more efficient. For example, a remote fishery with 2 houses can be very productive, as the workers don't need to travel much back and forth. I plan each area with the needed workers in mind and place as many houses as needed too. So a gatherer/forester, 3 gatherers 1 forester planter, I also put 2 stone houses and that's a very nice little spit of land that will be productive and I can totally forget after it's built.
For a big population center, plan things around a market, so the majority of your population gets the benefit of all products you produce/gather.
Now to find out how many workers does a market really need to be effective.
What buildings should go in range of the markets? Maybe I don't have the right buildings inside the radius or not enough wheelbarrow nobs to cart the onions
On February 21 2014 23:57 Ghin wrote: What buildings should go in range of the markets? Maybe I don't have the right buildings inside the radius or not enough wheelbarrow nobs to cart the onions
The radius is just for houses i believe. They will go the market to get food and the market will get food to give out from the entire map if needed.
A lot of people seemed to have trouble starting out so I made a video detailing how to start out and survive your first year and onwards, especially on hard difficulty.
Damn, this game is great. I got it recently and can't stop playing! Finally I made it to 200 citizens, survived large scale starvation, and now swim in food. On topic of food - is it necessary to rotate crops? Like change each field to a different seed every year?
On February 21 2014 07:15 rezoacken wrote: Like I said in an earlier post I go by the following guidelines when it comes to food:
-Fish is best food per space but worse food per worker. -Hunting is on the same level as Fish but provides some leather (maybe as someone said it isn't worth it to put multiple people in it and only one worker is a strong yield). -Gatherer are best food per yield but need to be isolated on the edges, so you're probably limited in their numbers. -Farm is your go to food for large cities. They provide diversity and are a happy medium between space and productivity. They sadly however create huge variations in food supplies making it hard to gauge if you'll be fine. Also an early freeze is a potential nightmare. -Pastures is probably the best after gatherer in term of productivity, it also creates wool/leather and the meat is the food that is worth the most at the trader. The drawback from pastures is that it takes time to go online and isn't as efficient as farms when it comes to space. -Orchards are terrible and should only be used for ale and diversity.
I believe we can improve on a few points. As I've pointed out before: A lone hunter in a cabin can produce as much as 1000/30 in a year. There is no point in having more than one hunter per cabin, unless they're in the middle of nowhere and they can't make the trip back to town in time for the next hunt. Note that venison is worth 3 per unit and leather 10 when trading, so a hunter brings anywhere from 2k to 3k+ in a year, which is the best ratio per worker in the game, with sheeps being 2nd at somewhere around 1k meat + 100 wool for 2 workers in a full pasture.
Fishing can hit as high as 2500 per 4 workers, which makes it as productive as gatherers, but more space-efficient. You need a few key ingredients: a) 60%+ water coverage in the radius, b) Houses right next to the fishery, c) A close barn to reduce time spent walking At this point, I think that barns should be built anywhere you have a few food production buildings. Something like 2 fisheries + 3 fields should have its own barn, or even hunter + gatherer + herbalist. It will reduce the time spent walking a lot, both for dropoff and resupply, and a barn lasts forever.
As for alcohol, it should only be produced from wheat or berries. A single wheat field produces 1500+ per year with 3 workers, with the 2nd best source being berries if you have a lot of gatherers, at ~500 per year, while a full orchard seems to yield anywhere from 300 to 800 per year for 2 farmers, but it takes years to grow and is space inefficient.
On February 21 2014 20:33 Ender985 wrote: How do you guys manage the raw goods storage? I've found it affects the productivity a lot but I'm not sure what is the best way to go about it. At the moment I am using a small storage space (2x3) next to each producing structure (forest lodges, mines, etc) so that the workers have a place to leave their stuff close by and can get back to the real work fast, and then a bigger sized storage closer to the actual town or building sites, the idea being that the labourers move the goods closer to the useful sites once the small primary storage spaces are near full.
The trick is to place stockpiles right next to the important buildings, or somewhere on the way to one. For example, say you have a spot with forester + gatherer + hunter, you should place the stockpile around the end of their radius on the way to town, and that's where you should place your woodchopper if you want him to hit 1k firewood/year. This way, the supplies flow from outside inward and no one wastes any time walking. If you place the stockpile in the middle of the group, they might produce slightly more, but your woodchopper will have to walk a lot to get his logs, and for some reason, no laborer can work for him. He gets his own wood, and the shop sits idle the rest of the time.
In the middle of your town, I think it's good to place stockpiles in every unused corner too small for anything else. You never know when you'll need a dropoff point, and it might save someone a trip sometime. Also, you should place a stockpile next to any building project that requires laboring. For some reason, if you chop a tree to build a house, they won't place the logs in the stack for the house right away, it needs to hit a stockpile first. Simply delete the stockpile when you're done, you lose nothing.
On February 22 2014 01:03 ViperPL wrote: Damn, this game is great. I got it recently and can't stop playing! Finally I made it to 200 citizens, survived large scale starvation, and now swim in food. On topic of food - is it necessary to rotate crops? Like change each field to a different seed every year?
I haven't found rotation to help, except in case of infestation. The weather has the biggest effect on any late harvest (apples, pumpkins, etc.), while stuff like corn and beans is very stable at 7 per square, one worker per ~100 squares (15x15 -> 225 squares, 2 workers will usually get you ~1500 if barn is close).
I see no reason to ever have an ochard at this point, unless you really need to for alcohol.
On February 22 2014 01:03 ViperPL wrote: Damn, this game is great. I got it recently and can't stop playing! Finally I made it to 200 citizens, survived large scale starvation, and now swim in food. On topic of food - is it necessary to rotate crops? Like change each field to a different seed every year?
only real reason to diversify crops is to avoid infection blowouts. There is no reason to rotate crops otherwise. It was mentioned for the beta but got cut for being to tedious.
Fisheries are really tricky, you likely won't have many spots on the map where you'd get a really productive one. If there's no awesome spot on the map near you, then I'd advice skipping fishing totally. It is horribly inefficient per worker if the spot is not ideal.
On February 22 2014 03:27 daemir wrote: Fisheries are really tricky, you likely won't have many spots on the map where you'd get a really productive one. If there's no awesome spot on the map near you, then I'd advice skipping fishing totally. It is horribly inefficient per worker if the spot is not ideal.
on hard difficulty there required to get enough food before you manage to get seeds. Being inefficient is fine if you have no other means.
I don't find that to be true on hard. Gatherers and single worker hunters work just fine. I'll always have my eye on a fantastic spot on the map for one though. If you score the ideal spot early game, that will fuel your expansion for decades.
Is there a way to prevent villagers from stealing coal from mine? The blacksmith doesn't get enough of it to make steel tools, because people take coal to their homes.
On February 22 2014 04:20 ViperPL wrote: Is there a way to prevent villagers from stealing coal from mine? Because blacksmith doesn't get enough of it to make steel tools.
On February 22 2014 04:20 ViperPL wrote: Is there a way to prevent villagers from stealing coal from mine? Because blacksmith doesn't get enough of it to make steel tools.
Atm no.
I think if they have firewood they wont take coal. Try to increase your firewood supply
Anyone who is having early game food problems, just use a gatherer in an optimal spot, meaning put it in a spot where nearly 100% of the working area is terrain where you can plant trees. Chuck in 4 workers, make an early forester with 1 worker on only plant and there you go, no food worries for many years. Build the gatherer as your very first building so you start getting food early on.
Here's a screenshot of my 3rd year harvest, where the area isn't even fully cleared yet (lot of iron and stone lying around) and the forester hasn't managed to make the forest as dense as is ideal. 2nd year harvest was over 2k as well, first year harvest around 1.5k. I still half of the original potatoes given at start left in the starting cart.
The biggest reason why people talk differently about the same thing is growing speed. Some grow much faster then others which screws a lot of the comparisons.
On February 22 2014 04:20 ViperPL wrote: Is there a way to prevent villagers from stealing coal from mine? Because blacksmith doesn't get enough of it to make steel tools.
Atm no.
I think if they have firewood they wont take coal. Try to increase your firewood supply
I had over 2000 firewood around the stockpiles and they were still stealing coal. I saw a suggestion of putting the priority field on a working blacksmith, I might give it a try.
EDIT: What's with the "7x7 fields are most optimal" that people are saying around the web? Are they really better than 15x15 fields? Or any other size?
This game needs some sort of threat to your village because it gets boring really fast. The "challenge" in this game is to get a functional village, but it's so stupidly easy (even on hard) that it very quickly gets repetitive to grow your village.
Seriously fires are stupid. Or wells are I don't know.
I have a ton of wells, every 4 buildings almost, 300 laborers (pulled everyone out of quarries/mines asap), fire still destroys everything. Then for whatever reason your guys start to consume tools and cloths like crazy. All this combine is a sure way to starvation for a massive city. Dropped from 1000 to 300 due to a single stupid random event. I really have no idea what to do now... no tools no clothes and the AI is way too inneficient for a big city (or there are not enough ways to restrict things I don't know).
I consider playing without disasters, infestations are a joke, biggest annoyance being they reset the speed to 1X. And one big fire is essentially either a game over or you sit there for 2H waiting for 50buildings to get rebuild.
And as I typed this another fire started destroying AGAIN just what I rebuilt... despite wells again of course.
Edit: Still dropping... I'm at 250 now, having to disable work in many buildings to make the work force more concentrated. And................ another fire broke on what's left. Reached 110... so yeah.
I haven't had a fire yet, though I've only had two towns learning the ropes that didn't make it to 100 villagers. On my third now, and just crested 100. Things are going well. I have ample number of wells to make sure I don't fall to the fate of fire like so many others.
On another note, I've got the same feeling what many have said -- even after only ten hours of experience -- that this game will lose it's novelty fast. It's a great game, but there isn't a ton of content. I hope the developer gets the mod stuff ready quickly, as that'll give a huge boost to the game's life. I can see myself eventually sinking hundreds of hours in to this with proper modding content, but I'm worried he'll take too long and I'll lose interest before any mods even come out.
My immediate concern is fixing-up some of the little inconsistencies and bugs on launch, though, like villagers not properly dealing with fires, if at all.
stopped after 50 years. "fought" two fires. I used the quotations because I have wells but my villagers don't use them. The game was really fun for that 6-7 hours I played but I don't know if I will play again Though I haven't tired mountains yet.
On February 22 2014 19:21 Gorsameth wrote: From what I understand hes taking a break atm, can't blame him since he spend his last 3 years on this. And then indeed he will add Mod support.
The game is already pretty good imo but once mod support is added these sort of games can really take off.
I sincerely hope he made some good money with it and have a good break in fact. True the game might not be that deep for now but for a 1 man developer team it is really a great game imho, he really deserves a break
On February 22 2014 19:21 Gorsameth wrote: From what I understand hes taking a break atm, can't blame him since he spend his last 3 years on this. And then indeed he will add Mod support.
The game is already pretty good imo but once mod support is added these sort of games can really take off.
I sincerely hope he made some good money with it and have a good break in fact. True the game might not be that deep for now but for a 1 man developer team it is really a great game imho, he really deserves a break
Considering its at the top of sales and seems to peak at 18k a day I think he made pretty good money
On February 22 2014 04:20 ViperPL wrote: Is there a way to prevent villagers from stealing coal from mine? Because blacksmith doesn't get enough of it to make steel tools.
Atm no.
I think if they have firewood they wont take coal. Try to increase your firewood supply
EDIT: What's with the "7x7 fields are most optimal" that people are saying around the web? Are they really better than 15x15 fields? Or any other size?
It depends on a lot of factors. If you have a barn on the side of a farm or one close to each end, two workers can pull ~1500 per harvest out of a 15x15 field. But it works differently for orchards.
Horizontally, you get one tree per 2 squares, rounded up, meaning that 7 and 8 gets you 4 trees, and 15 gets you 8. So 7 and 15 horizontally are both optimal. Vertically, you get one tree per 3 squares, rounded up. So 7,10,13 are optimal. But a single worker with a barn right next to the field can empty a 15x10 orchard on his own for early harvests (i.e. pecans) and get 600-1k depending on the number of mature trees.
Earlier in the game, you might want to keep an eye out on the weather in autumn. Whenever it gets below 15C, you should manually harvest every field that hasn't started yet, otherwise you'll probably waste a lot of that harvest.
Now that I think about it, late harvests (pumpkins, apples, cherries, etc.) are simply annoying and yield less on average (even with fair climate?). Wheat, corn, beans, pecans, etc. are simply much better.
First of all, great game ! I have a question though, for some reason it seems almost impossible to manufacture enough tools to keep people going ??. I have about 135 people in the workforce, and after getting it down from a whooping 100 tools needed, its down to about 35, and now its up to 50. I have 3 blacksmiths going, and they just cant keep up :/ Oh and get this, my blacksmith is missing a tool, so he goes to the market to get one, his freakin colleague made for him, wow !
On February 23 2014 01:00 Chanted wrote: First of all, great game ! I have a question though, for some reason it seems almost impossible to manufacture enough tools to keep people going ??. I have about 135 people in the workforce, and after getting it down from a whooping 100 tools needed, its down to about 35, and now its up to 50. I have 3 blacksmiths going, and they just cant keep up :/ Oh and get this, my blacksmith is missing a tool, so he goes to the market to get one, his freakin colleague made for him, wow !
Iron tools dont last very long so at high population your turnover is huge. Try making Steel ones and you should notice a very sharp decrease in there consumption.
On February 23 2014 01:00 Chanted wrote: First of all, great game ! I have a question though, for some reason it seems almost impossible to manufacture enough tools to keep people going ??. I have about 135 people in the workforce, and after getting it down from a whooping 100 tools needed, its down to about 35, and now its up to 50. I have 3 blacksmiths going, and they just cant keep up :/ Oh and get this, my blacksmith is missing a tool, so he goes to the market to get one, his freakin colleague made for him, wow !
Maybe they don't work at good efficiency. Mines may be too far from a pile or from houses, or blacksmith are too far from that pile... things like that. Or you don't have a good fuel/food spreading and your miner/forester/blacksmith spend a lot of time running around to find what they need.
One or two blacksmith at full regime is usually enough up to 135 in my experience.
Man, when your population reaches high numbers and your town covers big part of the map the citizens' ai can't handle it too well. The most common thing I noticed is plenty of starvation deaths even though your markets and barns are filled with food. Maybe super careful and meticulous planning can help to some extent, but I don't think you can completely prevent it. Anyone had any luck with 600+ populations and going for the 900 people achievement?
I have the 900 achievement. Had no problem getting there when I was being careful with my placement and constantly checking paths. It crumbled later due to a fire (see earlier rant post).
The huge disasters are so dumb. I wish there was some minor bad stuff constantly happening instead of things you have no control over that simply destroy you.
This tornado wiped off my market and trade depot, including what little stone I had left. There is none left in the map, and I couldn't afford a 2nd depot yet. Can't rebuild anything, GG.
In another game, you get 4 infestations that barely dent any progress, and it gets a bit boring because of how steady everything is.
I hope the dev understands the situation or the community gets a good mod pack going. The game is solid and fun to play, but it gets frustrating considering how much better it could get.
On another note, does anyone know what's the actual effect of education? I was struggling for a while with clothes even though I had 3 lone hunters for a single tailor, then I realized that the tailor was the last uneducated citizen alive at 78. Is it possible that he would consume the same leather but output less clothes instead of simply working slower?
disasters are like, the real hard mode. if you don't plan ahead and set up reserves and actually know how to recover they crush you. Learnt the hard way you kinda need firebreaks else your town burns. I dont' understand why you're so angry that your town burnt tho. if you stack everything up, you'd kinda expect it all to burn unless you have modern tech and plumbling.
If you just want to simcity it up, then turn disasters off.
the 'easy/medium/hard' starts aren't the real difficulty settings, its more about the climate/terrain and disasters.
It was Winter 12, the food supply was abudant, 4.7k in storage for a small population of 55. When Spring 13 arrived, my population was growing, to 70, and all of sudden, Gluttony kicked in. My population started to eat like crazy and my food supply dropped first at 1300 by winter 14. Some started to die of starvation, all while my gatherers' season were lowering in yield. I thought it was a low period, that next year would be better.
By Winter 15, a food crisis occured, 200 food supply and starvation all through my villagers, 35 passed away.
Took a break from there, I could not take it, so many dead.
I think once food gets scarce, people have to travel farther to get it, so you produce less, and it goes downhill from there... At this point I spam barns and overproduce. You never know when the next tornado is gonna be anyway.
It must be something like that.. I had the great famine of '75, where despite having 200/500 workers working the crops and 100 in the remainder of food production, the production was not big enough to feed everybody. More than half my adult population died of starvation waiting for the crops to mature and I had to call GG.
Now I wonder if expanding while making 15x15 crop fields with 6 workers on them is what killed me, thinking going big would be the way to expand buy maybe 4 1-man crops of 7x7 would yield more food per capita.. Will have to test it and see.
Also probably the fact that I had more than half my population producing nothing for the whole winter was to blame as well.
You only need 2 workers for a 15x15 crop for most crops if the weather isn't terrible, as long as there's a barn next to it. One worker is usually sufficient for a 15x10 orchard.
Has anyone noticed a glitch when trading for ale? It seems like workers never unload the ale as it can only be consumed in a Tavern, and they can't deliver there. It would help a lot with depressed people if markets could store it :-/ Edit: Apparently it can be fixed.. not sure exactly, but after selling most of it, they emptied the rest. Weird glitch.
Is it possible that some kind of professions eat up more food than other?
Since i've opened a coal mine (10/15) my food supply has lowered from 5000 to 500 more or less, my pop grew at the same time but only 40~ or so, they are over eating, aren't they ?
Also do population consumes more food if "cold", meaning with a snow flake icones over houses/citizens ?
On February 25 2014 07:34 anatase wrote: Is it possible that some kind of professions eat up more food than other?
Since i've opened a coal mine (10/15) my food supply has lowered from 5000 to 500 more or less, my pop grew at the same time but only 40~ or so, they are over eating, aren't they ?
Also do population consumes more food if "cold", meaning with a snow flake icones over houses/citizens ?
Snowflake means they don't have enough firewood/Coal to heat there house. Once its owners get cold aswell they will go to the house to warm but its not warm either so they die a little while later instead.
The food drop you saw it likely a result of the growth + houses needing to restock. There seems to be no link between profession and food intake. Esp since the professions are very fluid. People will switch professions to be as close to there work location as they can.
Also, it seems that mines and quarries are never worth it. One worker in a mine produces 30 coal/year, which is worth 180 in a trade. A lone hunter produces ~800 venison + 24 leather, which is worth 2400 + 240. Every random fisherman produces over 200. Not to mention that you can easily buy steel tools for 10 a pop which might be cheaper than crafting them, and you don't risk the run of having your citizen burning coal.
For a building that has a limited total output and leaves a permanent scar on your map, the yield is terrible.
Finally, the cold makes your workers way less productive, which usually lowers your food output. Then death makes them depressed and they work even less. The swings all compound each others in this game, but fortunately, it works the other way as well.
You can wait a long time to get as much from the trading post as from a quarry in stones or to get enough tools for a 1K pop from the same trading post. And I don't really see your point, you don't need to employ everybody in food anyway. I always have plenty of workers to employ in a quarry/mine.
Sure maybe hypothetically you can get a better return with the trading post if you wait for slow arrival of stones and don't want to scar the map but that would require such a slow play that I would just hang myself playing that way.
You can build 5 posts for 5x the trades, or get orders of 4k stones, aka an entire quarry, that you get for 8k firewood... It's actually faster than mining it, plus a post is over 20k storage, so 4 barns, or 2(?) markets.
I guess it doesn't matter as much if you play a large valley, but small maps or mountains can't fit that many quarries/mines anyway.
On February 25 2014 21:00 ViperPL wrote: How does multiple trade post work? Each of them has separate timer on trader, so you can have a few traders present at the same time?
Yes! You normally get 1 trader per trading post per year, so more trading posts is a great idea if you rely on trading!
There is absolutely no reason to build mines or quarries, because for half the workers for either you can make another forester + wood chopper and simply trade for all your coal/iron/stone needed via trading posts. Build multiple with 1 trader in each and it's not slow at all. Firewood is an unlimited resource.
On February 25 2014 14:14 Pwere wrote: You can build 5 posts for 5x the trades, or get orders of 4k stones, aka an entire quarry, that you get for 8k firewood... It's actually faster than mining it, plus a post is over 20k storage, so 4 barns, or 2(?) markets.
I guess it doesn't matter as much if you play a large valley, but small maps or mountains can't fit that many quarries/mines anyway.
Hmmm I didn't know you could increase the number of trader by simply making more posts that certainly open up possibilities.
Hmm I can't agree, I currently incorporated this strategy and I just automated the trading docks, doesn't feel tedious to me and it made the game even easier than it already was.
Fishing can hit as high as 2500 per 4 workers, which makes it as productive as gatherers, but more space-efficient. You need a few key ingredients: a) 60%+ water coverage in the radius, b) Houses right next to the fishery, c) A close barn to reduce time spent walking At this point, I think that barns should be built anywhere you have a few food production buildings. Something like 2 fisheries + 3 fields should have its own barn, or even hunter + gatherer + herbalist. It will reduce the time spent walking a lot, both for dropoff and resupply, and a barn lasts forever.
Just note that fishing can be even more efficient than that. I have a fishery that produces 2k with just 2 workers (I haven't bothered increasing the workers beyond that). It's not a situation you can place often, but look for peninsulas or the areas where lakes and rivers meet. In good conditions there you can get up to like 80% water coverage and then your fishery will really boom for production.
I think, given the correct conditions, fishing at its best is the most efficient food production per worker and the most reliable. It's just that for any given map you'll only have like 2-5 places on the map that hit that efficiency.
I just managed to get 1500 citizens. http://imgur.com/a/vi87Q#0 The game is really great but has so many little flaws that make it barely playable in late game :/ I cant wait for the modkit though.
For me the game is worth the price despite the flaws it indeed has. But once mod tools are released it will only get better. It really is an amazing game already when you considering it was made by 1 guy in 3 years.
There are a lot of flaws, but all of the flaws seem like they're at the higher level of the simulation (other than diagonal roads not connecting, I hate that). The core simulation seems so strong and compelling there's really a ton of room for the game to grow by mods or not. Considering the game doesn't slow down to a crawl at 400 (or presumably 1000+, but I haven't gotten there) population is enough to make the engine fantastic.
On February 28 2014 03:29 Logo wrote: There are a lot of flaws, but all of the flaws seem like they're at the higher level of the simulation (other than diagonal roads not connecting, I hate that). The core simulation seems so strong and compelling there's really a ton of room for the game to grow by mods or not. Considering the game doesn't slow down to a crawl at 400 (or presumably 1000+, but I haven't gotten there) population is enough to make the engine fantastic.
It actually does slow down. I have an i5-4670 and it started at around 1k pop. Whenever it reassigns workers (the game automatically reassigns who works where to shorten travel routes every few minutes) the game freezes for 2-3 seconds. I figure this will get exponentially worse with more people.
Yes game slow down for me on 1K+ pops, can't really play 10X at this size, I have to downgrade to 5X which I find painfully slow but it runs fine at that speed.
That's a shame, but still ~1000 simulated AI workers is pretty good; other games tend to cap at around 100-200 (Dwarf Fortress and the like) at much slower simulation speeds. 10x is doing a lot fairly quickly.
On February 28 2014 03:01 Warri wrote: I just managed to get 1500 citizens. http://imgur.com/a/vi87Q#0 The game is really great but has so many little flaws that make it barely playable in late game :/ I cant wait for the modkit though.
Wow.. thats pretty impressive oO.
Did you just get lucky when it comes to desaster or did you manage to handle them somehow ? The housing layout seems pretty tight (has to if you want to get so many people ofc), so I suppose a fire would majorly screw you over.
I have discovered that the game is over if a market burns because the citizens will never be able to distribute goods properly ever again. Is there some trick or strategy to dealing with fires that people have discovered?
On February 28 2014 18:34 Ghin wrote: I have discovered that the game is over if a market burns because the citizens will never be able to distribute goods properly ever again. Is there some trick or strategy to dealing with fires that people have discovered?
I've never had a fire spread across three tiles of stone road. but that could be luck so who knows. also did you report the bug to the dev, a 1 man team isn't likely to find that without some help.
Heh, having an uneducated population is so much harder than I thought. I tried to get a bunch of achievements (no school, farm/orchard/pasture, post, mountain men) in the same small mountain with harsh climate map, but I quickly realized that there wasn't enough stone so I'd need trade posts. Having a 100% uneducated population means that you get abysmal ratios when crafting, your herbalists are terrible, you get less logs and your woodcutters make less firewood out of those. Your fishermen can't really break 1600, and most of them are under 1000. Your population slowly gets unhealthier as food/herbs get scarce, which makes everyone even less productive... I pushed it to 275, but never got close to 300. It would be easy in a bigger map, or simply a valley, really, but at least this was challenging.
On February 28 2014 18:34 Ghin wrote: I have discovered that the game is over if a market burns because the citizens will never be able to distribute goods properly ever again. Is there some trick or strategy to dealing with fires that people have discovered?
Had my only market and half 1/3 of my houses burn down in a fire. Had 0 problems rebuilding. Didn't even rebuild the market until all 24ish houses had been rebuild and had not a single hunger case. Donno what went wrong for you.
I'm really enjoying small mountain maps, though I didn't try to combine small mountain challenge with anything else besides hard mode and harsh conditions. Just in general I think the game is better if you push the settings in the right direction (smaller maps, harsher conditions, mountain vs valley, hard start).
With the small map you really need to managing things carefully to push your population. Initially stone is a huge resource so managing your supply until you can start trading is tricky. Even after that there are a lot of concerns. Space is the obvious one, you really need to place things carefully and really think about what you need and where. Do you really need a cemetary? Churches? A town hall? A On top of that resource management becomes much less forgiving. Start using too much wood/firewood and you can't just place more logging camps; you need to have been prepared for the situation. Not getting enough herbs for your population? Well you better hope they last until you can figure out how to squeeze an herbalist hut somewhere. Not to mention good luck finding areas where you can make a stable big enough to split cattle or sheep.
It also balances out some of the food options, well maybe. I'm not too sure about using orchards, but things like fisheries end up being pretty relevant even in non-optimal locations simply because they're space efficient.
Anyways I'm really enjoying the extra challenge and thought required for small mountain and it's comforting to know that I can 'finish' the tower well before it taxes my CPU (or before I get bored). Well that or the compact city is just going to burn to the ground one day; though the mountains and rivers provide some nice fire protection at least. It was a nice surprise how putting the difficulty up changed things; it's not even that the game is harder, it just took more thought and planning in a way that felt very nice and organic. It even sort of diminishes some of the min/maxing you will likely do on a larger map as you really have to do a lot of things sub-optimally to instead do them in a way that saves space or resources.
----
Also does anyone have good info on orchards & ranches like the farm size data linked before? I don't necessarily care about optimal efficiency, but I'm specifically curious about a few things. How does an orchard compare to an equally sized farm in production? How large does a ranch have to be to support enough cattle or enough sheep to be a population that can be split?
On February 28 2014 03:01 Warri wrote: I just managed to get 1500 citizens. http://imgur.com/a/vi87Q#0 The game is really great but has so many little flaws that make it barely playable in late game :/ I cant wait for the modkit though.
Wow.. thats pretty impressive oO.
Did you just get lucky when it comes to desaster or did you manage to handle them somehow ? The housing layout seems pretty tight (has to if you want to get so many people ofc), so I suppose a fire would majorly screw you over.
Hey, this came up on reddit as well so ill just copy what i posted there: Frankly, yes [, i just reload]. I started the map with disasters on because it was the second map i played and i realized that disasters are no fun and dont add anything to the gameplay for me. So i just reload. I built many wells, but they dont do anything. And tornadoes are pure RNG, i had 2 that did absolutely nothing so far. With plagues i continue and manage them. I dont have same crops next to each other, so just harvesting one helps. Livestock plagues can be dealt with by quickly slaughtering or splitting the stock in question.
On making fireproof blocks of road: Yes, ive read that it works, but it takes so much space and the grid becomes misaligned, taking even more space. Also there are no small buildings or statues or colored roads or anything that can fill in the holes to make it pleasing to the eye. So it looks ugly and you get less people per area and even longer walking distances. I think when the modkit is released and fires are bit nerfed/fixed i will stop loading and deal with them properly, but for now ill stick with it.
On February 28 2014 03:01 Warri wrote: I just managed to get 1500 citizens. http://imgur.com/a/vi87Q#0 The game is really great but has so many little flaws that make it barely playable in late game :/ I cant wait for the modkit though.
Wow.. thats pretty impressive oO.
Did you just get lucky when it comes to desaster or did you manage to handle them somehow ? The housing layout seems pretty tight (has to if you want to get so many people ofc), so I suppose a fire would majorly screw you over.
Hey, this came up on reddit as well so ill just copy what i posted there: Frankly, yes [, i just reload]. I started the map with disasters on because it was the second map i played and i realized that disasters are no fun and dont add anything to the gameplay for me. So i just reload. I built many wells, but they dont do anything. And tornadoes are pure RNG, i had 2 that did absolutely nothing so far. With plagues i continue and manage them. I dont have same crops next to each other, so just harvesting one helps. Livestock plagues can be dealt with by quickly slaughtering or splitting the stock in question.
On making fireproof blocks of road: Yes, ive read that it works, but it takes so much space and the grid becomes misaligned, taking even more space. Also there are no small buildings or statues or colored roads or anything that can fill in the holes to make it pleasing to the eye. So it looks ugly and you get less people per area and even longer walking distances. I think when the modkit is released and fires are bit nerfed/fixed i will stop loading and deal with them properly, but for now ill stick with it.
I'm having so much trouble after season 15 on Easy mode, It seems like a get a huge amount of deaths and my food production suffers and I cannot keep up with everything before everyone just dies.
On March 01 2014 05:51 masterbreti wrote: I'm having so much trouble after season 15 on Easy mode, It seems like a get a huge amount of deaths and my food production suffers and I cannot keep up with everything before everyone just dies.
What was your population at the time? It could be your growing to slow or to fast with nothing enough food production.
On March 01 2014 05:51 masterbreti wrote: I'm having so much trouble after season 15 on Easy mode, It seems like a get a huge amount of deaths and my food production suffers and I cannot keep up with everything before everyone just dies.
What was your population at the time? It could be your growing to slow or to fast with nothing enough food production.
I reach about 80-90 adults, but I've had the same happen to me with 60, and even 40. Even though not 2 seasons before I would be floating 1500-2000 in the middle of summer.
On March 01 2014 05:51 masterbreti wrote: I'm having so much trouble after season 15 on Easy mode, It seems like a get a huge amount of deaths and my food production suffers and I cannot keep up with everything before everyone just dies.
What was your population at the time? It could be your growing to slow or to fast with nothing enough food production.
I reach about 80-90 adults, but I've had the same happen to me with 60, and even 40. Even though not 2 seasons before I would be floating 1500-2000 in the middle of summer.
Always ensure you have 2 or more laborers, if people die dropping you below that remove workers from non essential jobs to fill up. Hard to provide a lot more tips because of all the variables and how people play differently.
Ps. 2000 food is nothing at 100+ total population. Your consuming 10k or more every year at that point.
On March 01 2014 05:51 masterbreti wrote: I'm having so much trouble after season 15 on Easy mode, It seems like a get a huge amount of deaths and my food production suffers and I cannot keep up with everything before everyone just dies.
You might be doing a few things...
-Under building houses or having poor health and happiness will cause your villagers to under procreate which can create a situation where a bunch of people die with no one to replace them. Especially dangerous if you lack housing then add a bunch and get a baby boom + an aging workforce. Then the old people die and there's no one to provide for the children. -Inefficient work locations. As the town grows if your people are stuck marching long distances your productivity will grind to a halt and you'll die out. -Not farming/not ramping up food production. You need to keep an eye on your food production and keep it ramping up as your population grows before your supplies start dwindling. For the most part if your food reserves aren't growing steadily early on you're under producing food.
@The screen shot above. Maybe it's just my perception, but I always found large projects to really wreck farming production while they're happening. The farmers take on tasks near the end of winter (or more rarely during the season) that take a fair bit of time, like gathering far away resources, and won't actually start farming or tending fields until they finish or abandon the task. So if it's something that takes a while the farmer might not actually start farming until mid/late spring.
I always try to start projects right at the start of winter if they'll last less than 1 winter or after early spring when the fields have been sown at least a little bit.
On March 01 2014 05:51 masterbreti wrote: I'm having so much trouble after season 15 on Easy mode, It seems like a get a huge amount of deaths and my food production suffers and I cannot keep up with everything before everyone just dies.
You might be doing a few things...
-Under building houses or having poor health and happiness will cause your villagers to under procreate which can create a situation where a bunch of people die with no one to replace them. Especially dangerous if you lack housing then add a bunch and get a baby boom + an aging workforce. Then the old people die and there's no one to provide for the children. -Inefficient work locations. As the town grows if your people are stuck marching long distances your productivity will grind to a halt and you'll die out. -Not farming/not ramping up food production. You need to keep an eye on your food production and keep it ramping up as your population grows before your supplies start dwindling. For the most part if your food reserves aren't growing steadily early on you're under producing food.
@The screen shot above. Maybe it's just my perception, but I always found large projects to really wreck farming production while they're happening. The farmers take on tasks near the end of winter (or more rarely during the season) that take a fair bit of time, like gathering far away resources, and won't actually start farming or tending fields until they finish or abandon the task. So if it's something that takes a while the farmer might not actually start farming until mid/late spring.
I always try to start projects right at the start of winter if they'll last less than 1 winter or after early spring when the fields have been sown at least a little bit.
If you mean mine, its an entire album, not just one screenshot there, check the top right corner. But no, there was nothing to be build, the paused buildings dont take away anything. As you can see there are only 14 builders needed, so theres not much to carry. The locations are just too far away and inefficient, i should have assigned more farmers per field i think. But anyway, the freeze started in mid autumn already, i just didnt take the screenshot until late autumn. Also, i think it was mainly due to the bug, which reassigned workers really poor and made them run around all the time from workplace to workplace.
Out of curiosity did you have the game running while placing and pausing buildings? You were screwed anyways from the sound of it, but I know that pausing a building doesn't stop the in progress resource deposits at those buildings so you can still end up with work being done towards paused buildings. So if you're running the simulation and you place & pause buildings it's still possible that it's creating a bunch of tasks that don't get canceled.
On March 01 2014 05:51 masterbreti wrote: I'm having so much trouble after season 15 on Easy mode, It seems like a get a huge amount of deaths and my food production suffers and I cannot keep up with everything before everyone just dies.
You might be doing a few things...
-Under building houses or having poor health and happiness will cause your villagers to under procreate which can create a situation where a bunch of people die with no one to replace them. Especially dangerous if you lack housing then add a bunch and get a baby boom + an aging workforce. Then the old people die and there's no one to provide for the children. -Inefficient work locations. As the town grows if your people are stuck marching long distances your productivity will grind to a halt and you'll die out. -Not farming/not ramping up food production. You need to keep an eye on your food production and keep it ramping up as your population grows before your supplies start dwindling. For the most part if your food reserves aren't growing steadily early on you're under producing food.
@The screen shot above. Maybe it's just my perception, but I always found large projects to really wreck farming production while they're happening. The farmers take on tasks near the end of winter (or more rarely during the season) that take a fair bit of time, like gathering far away resources, and won't actually start farming or tending fields until they finish or abandon the task. So if it's something that takes a while the farmer might not actually start farming until mid/late spring.
I always try to start projects right at the start of winter if they'll last less than 1 winter or after early spring when the fields have been sown at least a little bit.
If you mean mine, its an entire album, not just one screenshot there, check the top right corner. But no, there was nothing to be build, the paused buildings dont take away anything. As you can see there are only 14 builders needed, so theres not much to carry. The locations are just too far away and inefficient, i should have assigned more farmers per field i think. But anyway, the freeze started in mid autumn already, i just didnt take the screenshot until late autumn. Also, i think it was mainly due to the bug, which reassigned workers really poor and made them run around all the time from workplace to workplace.
That is not a bug. Every few minutes the game re-evaluates all workers and optimizes job assignments so limit travel time between house/workplace. What your seeing is people being reassigned while there moving to there work. Dont chance assignments as often and you will not that problem.
On March 01 2014 05:51 masterbreti wrote: I'm having so much trouble after season 15 on Easy mode, It seems like a get a huge amount of deaths and my food production suffers and I cannot keep up with everything before everyone just dies.
What was your population at the time? It could be your growing to slow or to fast with nothing enough food production.
I reach about 80-90 adults, but I've had the same happen to me with 60, and even 40. Even though not 2 seasons before I would be floating 1500-2000 in the middle of summer.
The less food there is, the more people have to walk to get it, so the less they work, and it snowballs from there. I think 2k is very little for a population of 90. 5k seems more reasonable, to ensure that most barns have enough so that people get a balanced diet. If their health lowers, they output less, and you start the death spiral that way instead. Maintaining a balanced diet is really important, as herbalists have a terrible output and it takes a lot of time to get the herb and get it to the herbalist. I think the game considers the 4 groups to be grains, fruits, veggies and meat/nuts, and people really don't need a lot of meat.
On March 01 2014 06:17 Logo wrote: I did look at the whole album! Was a good story.
Out of curiosity did you have the game running while placing and pausing buildings? You were screwed anyways from the sound of it, but I know that pausing a building doesn't stop the in progress resource deposits at those buildings so you can still end up with work being done towards paused buildings. So if you're running the simulation and you place & pause buildings it's still possible that it's creating a bunch of tasks that don't get canceled.
No wasnt paused, but with 200 laborers there shouldnt really be any trouble filling the material immediately.
On March 01 2014 05:51 masterbreti wrote: I'm having so much trouble after season 15 on Easy mode, It seems like a get a huge amount of deaths and my food production suffers and I cannot keep up with everything before everyone just dies.
You might be doing a few things...
-Under building houses or having poor health and happiness will cause your villagers to under procreate which can create a situation where a bunch of people die with no one to replace them. Especially dangerous if you lack housing then add a bunch and get a baby boom + an aging workforce. Then the old people die and there's no one to provide for the children. -Inefficient work locations. As the town grows if your people are stuck marching long distances your productivity will grind to a halt and you'll die out. -Not farming/not ramping up food production. You need to keep an eye on your food production and keep it ramping up as your population grows before your supplies start dwindling. For the most part if your food reserves aren't growing steadily early on you're under producing food.
@The screen shot above. Maybe it's just my perception, but I always found large projects to really wreck farming production while they're happening. The farmers take on tasks near the end of winter (or more rarely during the season) that take a fair bit of time, like gathering far away resources, and won't actually start farming or tending fields until they finish or abandon the task. So if it's something that takes a while the farmer might not actually start farming until mid/late spring.
I always try to start projects right at the start of winter if they'll last less than 1 winter or after early spring when the fields have been sown at least a little bit.
If you mean mine, its an entire album, not just one screenshot there, check the top right corner. But no, there was nothing to be build, the paused buildings dont take away anything. As you can see there are only 14 builders needed, so theres not much to carry. The locations are just too far away and inefficient, i should have assigned more farmers per field i think. But anyway, the freeze started in mid autumn already, i just didnt take the screenshot until late autumn. Also, i think it was mainly due to the bug, which reassigned workers really poor and made them run around all the time from workplace to workplace.
That is not a bug. Every few minutes the game re-evaluates all workers and optimizes job assignments so limit travel time between house/workplace. What your seeing is people being reassigned while there moving to there work. Dont chance assignments as often and you will not that problem.
I know, but i really mean the specific bug in my case. If you look at the screenshots some professions arent 100% filled and some workers are in professions but have no job anyway. And its not just for some time until they run to their new location, they are permanently unassigned/bugged until i manually reassign and up the counter. Btw, my pc freezes for about 5 seconds every time it reassigns people.
Finally got my mountain men achievement ! Had 53 people at the end, so was cutting it quite close. The trader ships really didn`t bring any useful stuff, but oh well, 69% done on the achievement part.
I got a decent town going with around 750 people, but for some reason the game keeps crashing when it wants to autosave :/ Guess I might have to start another one. Do people here with towns over a certain size have problems with people starving to death eventhough you have plenty of food? (yes I have markets ) When I want to build new houses, people, often useless farmers go over there to clear, eventhough I have plenty of free labourers, resulting in them starving to death on their way back to their house. Any tips on how to fix or avoid this would be helpful, since everytime I want to build new stuff, people tend to die.
On March 01 2014 23:18 Chanted wrote: Finally got my mountain men achievement ! Had 53 people at the end, so was cutting it quite close. The trader ships really didn`t bring any useful stuff, but oh well, 69% done on the achievement part.
I got a decent town going with around 750 people, but for some reason the game keeps crashing when it wants to autosave :/ Guess I might have to start another one. Do people here with towns over a certain size have problems with people starving to death eventhough you have plenty of food? (yes I have markets ) When I want to build new houses, people, often useless farmers go over there to clear, eventhough I have plenty of free labourers, resulting in them starving to death on their way back to their house. Any tips on how to fix or avoid this would be helpful, since everytime I want to build new stuff, people tend to die.
I got all the achievements a few days ago (before going to the countryside for the weekend) and couldn't brag about it (if it's worth bragging about !).
Not sure what to do, guess trying a "How much I can reach in X,Y conditions" I guess. But since the game slows down hard at 1500 pop on my computer I'm a bit disgruntled to really continue playing.
On March 03 2014 09:38 rezoacken wrote: I got all the achievements a few days ago (before going to the countryside for the weekend) and couldn't brag about it (if it's worth bragging about !).
Not sure what to do, guess trying a "How much I can reach in X,Y conditions" I guess. But since the game slows down hard at 1500 pop on my computer I'm a bit disgruntled to really continue playing.
Sounds like you may have experienced all you really can until the modkit is released and people get cracking on mods.
I feel like there are so many possibilities with modding, although it depends on how much power the kit gives you to alter the game. Specific Things I would like to see:
1) Much more complex food and food industry, and an in-game wiki to support the complexity. It may be that some of this already exists in the game's engine, but it difficult for anyone to know. Regardless, I'd like to see different types of food providing more or less hunger based on the type of production. Meat should satisfy more hunger than crops. You should be able to process raw food and materials into cooked food which satisfies more hunger like bread, pies, stews, etc. This would be a great opportunity to expand the Tavern into a building that can hold more workers and accomplish more than just brewing Ale. The in-game help or wiki or whatever you want to call it should provide details for crops on growing seasons, irrigation requirements, and what uses the crop has for cooking and feeding livestock (see below).
2) In a similar vein, the pasture system should be enhanced. Livestock should produce meat (like they currently do), and meat should be highly valuable as a high-satisfaction food. To balance that, you should require a food source for your livestock in addition to your citizens. You should be able to feed certain crops to your livestock, and maybe new crops such as alfalfa should be introduced that can only be used to feed livestock, but have higher yields per tile than crops for human consumption to encourage their use. This would facilitate little ranching communities where you have several pastures and crop fields growing hay for livestock feed, and they can export their meat to the rest of your civilization in exchange for what they need. There are also a lot of things about the pasture interface that could be reworked, like knowing how many animals a pasture can hold before it is constructed, being able to sell animals at the trading post, and by extension store a handful of them there in case of an infestation. It's a bit strange that they will hang out in that little pen after you buy them, but you can never move them back.
3) Lots of little simulation and quality of life improvements, like the classic "I cleared 80 trees to make room for this market, but can't use the logs sitting on the foundation, I have to take them to the nearest stockpile and then bring them back." problems that are just frustrating to witness.
I'm sure there is more I'm forgetting, and I love this game but modding has the capability to make a great game truly timeless and I'm glad he's realizing this.
You can also start on a small embark and try to push your population as much as you can (small shouldn't hit CPU limits). I'm currently working on that for my small mountain map and it's pretty interesting. With such tight space restrictions you really need to figure out how to get the most you can out of your population and what buildings you really need (or don't need) for a long running city.
I feel like the dev should quickly add scenarios. You'd simply get restrictions and an objective. Something as simple as no school changes the game a lot, and you could throw in stuff like a tribe of vegans, carnivores, pacifists (no animal killing), etc.
I don't think scenarios would really help; besides achievements already do that a bit.
The problem with the game is that after maybe 100-200 population everything ends up more of the same. Having no tech tree's is great; but when your town is essentially the same pattern replicated several times across the map the game feels stale and there's no sense of accomplishment in the later stages. The game is at its best <200 population where there are some real concerns about feeding, clothing, and warming everyone (though you get the hang of it generally after a few tries).
The sort of thing that might be worth doing would be to have food decay in storage unless it was processed into something. So implement bakeries, butcher shops, mills etc. in that way. It wouldn't affect the already solid early game as you tend to only stockpile small amounts of food, eat it constantly, and you are not on a seasonal food income basis. Later on as farming takes over you'll naturally need to expand into those industries to account for the seasonal nature of the industry. You could of course also include something like happiness bonuses for eating processed food, but that'd only matter if happiness wasn't trivial to keep very high.
A few other things would help too, especially better AI in the face of disasters (in game ones or poor management disasters). Right now the way the AI does certain things is setup in ways that pretty much ensure death spirals. Besides the whole fire priority stuff, things like the way food is distributed ensures that any hiccup in food production means everyone starves rather than a % of the population. It'd be nice if workers would take a desired amount of their own production before depositing it (so a fishery worker wouldn't starve so long as they were able to collect fish). You'd still have spirals; if the woodcutter starves the fishery worker will freeze to death, but you'd at least be able to have a better avenue to recovery depending on how you were hit. I've never really seen much in the way of taking a bit hit and recovering for a town.
On March 04 2014 06:19 Logo wrote: The problem with the game is that after maybe 100-200 population everything ends up more of the same. Having no tech tree's is great; but when your town is essentially the same pattern replicated several times across the map the game feels stale and there's no sense of accomplishment in the later stages. The game is at its best <200 population where there are some real concerns about feeding, clothing, and warming everyone (though you get the hang of it generally after a few tries).
I think it is even worse. After 250 or so pop you essentially don't have any progress any more. You probably have made your switch from gatherers to space-efficient stuff like farming and fishing by then.
The only thing that can happen, is a disaster that turns everything to shit. There is literally nothing else to look forward to. A massive turn-off for me.
On March 04 2014 06:19 Logo wrote: The problem with the game is that after maybe 100-200 population everything ends up more of the same. Having no tech tree's is great; but when your town is essentially the same pattern replicated several times across the map the game feels stale and there's no sense of accomplishment in the later stages. The game is at its best <200 population where there are some real concerns about feeding, clothing, and warming everyone (though you get the hang of it generally after a few tries).
I think it is even worse. After 250 or so pop you essentially don't have any progress any more. You probably have made your switch from gatherers to space-efficient stuff like farming and fishing by then.
The only thing that can happen, is a disaster that turns everything to shit. There is literally nothing else to look forward to. A massive turn-off for me.
It's not that straightforward to run a town that's no longer growing. You have to put up with population fluctuations, deal with imbalances of production, and deal with a constant building sadness from people dieing with no place to bury them (or only a % get buried).
Then on top of that industries like fire wood production and herding are space inefficient so there's the challenging of minimizing your reliance on those industries, but that's tough because those very same industries are the ones that produce good trade goods (directly or indirectly).
EDIT: Also holy hell do you lose a lot of population when you stop expanding. When your city is expanding your townspeople naturally fill up houses as potentially child bearing couples which drives birth rate pretty well. When your city is stagnant in growth the houses fill up such that you have parents + children all aging in the same house. The parents die unevenly and the towns people don't really move around in a reasonable way so you end up with a ton of your population not procreating. Then you get a natural die off. My small map mountain town went from 350 people -> ~175 people purely from natural causes. I think it's finally leveling out now, but it's sort of a weird oscillation. With the reduced population I can afford to cut back some aspects of production for more housing and other things which will expand the population again then cause another mini crash.
On March 04 2014 06:19 Logo wrote: It'd be nice if workers would take a desired amount of their own production before depositing it (so a fishery worker wouldn't starve so long as they were able to collect fish).
God forbid that your blacksmith runs out of tools, and then can never get another one, because he can only get his from the barn, and never grabs it when he drops his tools...
On March 09 2014 01:13 PrinceXizor wrote: People who are bored should focus on mining towns. no firewood only coal ect. its actually really fun figuring it all out.
That's why I think scenarios would be fun. I don't care if you can open a guide online to solve them, you can always do that in this kind of game, but solving the puzzle yourself is fun.
Let's face it, the game is pretty much won over 100 population baring a major disaster (which are not fun), unless you have your own restrictions. Game wasn't made for large or even medium maps. Trade posts break the game, mine/quarries are terrible, and seeds are just an on/off switch. But we can't expect fixes every week from a lone dev. He promised mod tools, so let's wait for those. Anyway, game is still great for 20$ in its current state.
On March 04 2014 06:19 Logo wrote: It'd be nice if workers would take a desired amount of their own production before depositing it (so a fishery worker wouldn't starve so long as they were able to collect fish).
God forbid that your blacksmith runs out of tools, and then can never get another one, because he can only get his from the barn, and never grabs it when he drops his tools...
On March 09 2014 01:13 PrinceXizor wrote: People who are bored should focus on mining towns. no firewood only coal ect. its actually really fun figuring it all out.
That's why I think scenarios would be fun. I don't care if you can open a guide online to solve them, you can always do that in this kind of game, but solving the puzzle yourself is fun.
Let's face it, the game is pretty much won over 100 population baring a major disaster (which are not fun), unless you have your own restrictions. Game wasn't made for large or even medium maps. Trade posts break the game, mine/quarries are terrible, and seeds are just an on/off switch. But we can't expect fixes every week from a lone dev. He promised mod tools, so let's wait for those. Anyway, game is still great for 20$ in its current state.
Indeed, $20 is a steal of a deal for this quality.
I gotta say, the most fun I had in this game was before I found out how efficient the gatherer's huts are. I had to find ways to make my town more efficient while lacking one of the most productive buildings. Trying to figure it all out is certainly best part about these kinds of games.
On March 04 2014 06:19 Logo wrote: The problem with the game is that after maybe 100-200 population everything ends up more of the same. Having no tech tree's is great; but when your town is essentially the same pattern replicated several times across the map the game feels stale and there's no sense of accomplishment in the later stages. The game is at its best <200 population where there are some real concerns about feeding, clothing, and warming everyone (though you get the hang of it generally after a few tries).
I think it is even worse. After 250 or so pop you essentially don't have any progress any more. You probably have made your switch from gatherers to space-efficient stuff like farming and fishing by then.
The only thing that can happen, is a disaster that turns everything to shit. There is literally nothing else to look forward to. A massive turn-off for me.
I don't think the endgame for builder-survival games has any real permanent solution. Games like Civ had the same problem. The only thing that can be done is to extend how long it takes to get to the 'assured victory' state. Banished is even more impossible to design, since it's not like the natural world is getting harsher as the days go by. At least for Civ you always had to stay ahead of everyone else. In the end, there isn't anything else to see once you 'figure it all out' in a single-player game.
At the very least, the best way to keep me entertained would be to add a little more randomness to the game rather than trying to fix the endgame. As it stands, every game I play takes the same path. I want terrain to affect my build design a little more. Right now I'm going back to "No Gatherer's Hut" rule, which is certainly spicing things up a bit but it won't take too long before I figure all of this out also.
Overall it addresses two major issues of the game: Fire control and some parts of long distance worker efficiency. Of note:
* Citizens are now more effective at fighting fires and putting them out. * When fires break out, citizens fighting the fire now run at high speed. * Citizens working in an area where a fire breaks out will now be interrupted to help fight the fire. * Citizens fighting fires will only be interrupted by sickness, freezing, or starving. * If citizens are already walking to get food at a distance location and become starved, they’ll now interrupt the walk and get food at the closest market or storage barn. * If citizens are working far from home and become hungry, they’ll eat food from their home as if they brought food with them. This will not interrupt the current task. If no food is available at home they will interrupt the walk and get food at the closest market or storage barn. *Citizens now won’t be assigned far away tasks without a specific profession (pickups, gathering, clearing, etc) unless the tasks have been around for a long time, or haven’t been assigned to someone local. This keeps citizens far away from walking across the map in most cases.
It's not something that changes the base experience or some of the sameness problems of the game, but it does make it far easier to push into the higher population numbers without your town grinding to a halt from AI inefficiencies or unstoppable fires.
I'm still hoping for the mod tools, but only somewhat because I'm skeptical of the level of control we'll get. I think what the game could really benefit from is some deeper simulation. I'd love something like soil/sunlight properties in different areas to influence crop yields, trade posts to more accurately simulate something coming from a different town rather than just a boat of generic goods, and more importance in the townspeople's individuality or positions. Also just some other things like professionals taking advantage of the task they perform (i.e. a blacksmith should always get first dibs on a tool they make, a farmer food, a lumberjack wood, and so on).
On November 28 2014 20:07 SixStrings wrote: Does anyone still play this?
1.04 is on Piratebay and Steam, is it worth installing Windows for?
I really like it and with all the mods its pretty great!
I haven't played the game since close to launch. What kind of mods are out there for it? Steam Workshop or is there a separate site for mods?
one of the best mods is the colonial charter mod. New resources, new buildings and lot of decoration things http://colonialcharter.com/
The mods are on the steam workshop
Does the mod really add anything besides more stuff to build?
I liked Banished a lot, but it felt a little shallow in terms of things that could happen. Once you had your city established it sort of just ran on its own and you'd have to add things to keep ahead of the growing population. There weren't any really advanced industries that eventually had to be implemented, or any that would even do anything once they were.
Rather than just more stuff the game sort of felt like it needed more sort-of goals or at least variety in events. To make a comparison to Dwarf Fortress, DF has stuff like Strange Moods, Noble Demands, becoming the mountainhome (capital), or needing recreational things and nice buildings to keep positive moods up.
On November 28 2014 20:07 SixStrings wrote: Does anyone still play this?
1.04 is on Piratebay and Steam, is it worth installing Windows for?
I really like it and with all the mods its pretty great!
I haven't played the game since close to launch. What kind of mods are out there for it? Steam Workshop or is there a separate site for mods?
one of the best mods is the colonial charter mod. New resources, new buildings and lot of decoration things http://colonialcharter.com/
The mods are on the steam workshop
Does the mod really add anything besides more stuff to build?
I liked Banished a lot, but it felt a little shallow in terms of things that could happen. Once you had your city established it sort of just ran on its own and you'd have to add things to keep ahead of the growing population. There weren't any really advanced industries that eventually had to be implemented, or any that would even do anything once they were.
Rather than just more stuff the game sort of felt like it needed more sort-of goals or at least variety in events. To make a comparison to Dwarf Fortress, DF has stuff like Strange Moods, Noble Demands, becoming the mountainhome (capital), or needing recreational things and nice buildings to keep positive moods up.
not like in Anno or AoE but they offer more varity and you get a wider varity of things to do
I played like three sessions and during the third one I build a stable empire after two hours or so. Now all I can do is expand horizontally, but not vertically, meaning I can build more of the stuff I already have. That's like 3 hours of gameplay in total.
On December 09 2014 00:51 SixStrings wrote: Well, this game was kind of a letdown.
I played like three sessions and during the third one I build a stable empire after two hours or so. Now all I can do is expand horizontally, but not vertically, meaning I can build more of the stuff I already have. That's like 3 hours of gameplay in total.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ErUfB9r.jpg)
