Banished

[Fr8monkey]

I have 30 hours and no crash yet over here...

[RickC Sniper]

@Nippelspanner
You need to quit breeding arsonists!!!!!!!!!!!



Thanks guys, I'll give the Steam version a go.

[danlisa]

Feel bad turning away Nomads but I'm struggling with stabilising Food Production.

Farming mechanics seem a little off. Even with spare labourers and fully staffed farmers, most of my crops won't be harvested before the onset on winter, where they start dying off. It makes for some twitchy bum moments towards the end of winter.

Not much I can fault with banished. A couple of niggles. For example, why can the population walk over terrain and I can't build a road over it?

[Egan]

Is it possible to over fish or over hunt an area? One of my hunting lodges was turning out a huge amount of venison but has, over the last year, really reduced it's output. I am aware that the edges of the village have begun to encroach on it's hunting area, and that has an effect as it scares wildlife away, but can simple over hunting be a factor too?

I really really must stop playing this game. I've got a bunch of articles I need to write and it's impossible whilst looking after those little buggers.

[Arclight]

I noticed the same with a fishing dock. According the game's web page it's possible for such things to happen:

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.

http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/game/

Would take a fair few years though. My fishers are at half capacity and hunters at 3 quarters, seems stable. Farming output is still steady.


Dan; haven't had issues with farming. Got 8 15x15 fields, 6 farmers each. Some crops are ready for harvest early/mid summer. Getting 1400-1500 per field each year. Are the farmers all educated?

[Egan]

Originally Posted by Arclight

I noticed the same with a fishing dock. According the game's web page it's possible for such things to happen:
http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/game/

Would take a fair few years though. My fishers are at half capacity and hunters at 3 quarters, seems stable. Farming output is still steady.

Yes, that seems probably a good compromise. I have three hunting lodges. I am toying with the idea of keeping one manned at a time, and moving those workers from one to another as game becomes over hunted. As for farms, I have noticed this year that my potato crop is much reduced. I am going to try to leave a couple of fields fallow for a year or two and see whether that makes a difference.

Hell of a clever little game.

Well, Didn't manage to put the theory into practice in time - lost about 25 people to starvation in the course of one summer. I'm having real problems creating enough firewood as well - no building underway, plenty of timber in the stock piles and two woodcutter working 24 hours a day and i just can't keep up. Seems a might strange considering I only had a population of about 120 at the towns peak.

[danlisa]

Originally Posted by Arclight

Dan; haven't had issues with farming. Got 8 15x15 fields, 6 farmers each. Some crops are ready for harvest early/mid summer. Getting 1400-1500 per field each year. Are the farmers all educated?

It's possible that some aren't. Currently have a population of 346/60/78, so some may not be fully educated, I do have 58 farmers.

Trying a new tactic and creating farming communes, exactly enough homes per field/orchard should result in a more dedicated workforce.

Of course, it could be the crop at fault. Do certain crops take longer to yield and therefore harvest later? I aqquired my last missing seed from a trader today, I should test it out.

[Arclight]

Yeah, was gonna bring that up; beans grow really fast, harvest early summer. Corn is fast too, then wheat and cabbages. Potatos are slow growers (stopped planting squash, pumpkin and peppers at some point, can't remember how well they do).

I was playing in a mild climate too. Started in a fair one now, seems to get cold a lot sooner.

* just like housing, barns in close proximity help a lot too.

Originally Posted by Egan

Yes, that seems probably a good compromise. I have three hunting lodges. I am toying with the idea of keeping one manned at a time, and moving those workers from one to another as game becomes over hunted. As for farms, I have noticed this year that my potato crop is much reduced. I am going to try to leave a couple of fields fallow for a year or two and see whether that makes a difference.

Maybe the deer roaming the map are an indication of the total population? I recall seeing a lot of deer wandering at first, right around town, but I don't recall seeing them around lately. Theory that needs investigating.

Originally Posted by Egan

Well, Didn't manage to put the theory into practice in time - lost about 25 people to starvation in the course of one summer. I'm having real problems creating enough firewood as well - no building underway, plenty of timber in the stock piles and two woodcutter working 24 hours a day and i just can't keep up. Seems a might strange considering I only had a population of about 120 at the towns peak.

Ran into that issue as I had small stockpiles scattered about the place. Particularly, I had a 5x5 stockpile just outside the radius of a forester, with 2 wood cutters beside it. Logs tended to rest against the limit, so not a lot of cutting went on, and even then that forester was only 1 of 4. Once the logs in that stockpile ran out, those cutters ended up traveling a hell of a long way for logs.

Prolly better to have few large, centralized stockpiles than many small ones.

[Arclight]

Ah right, the thing that kind of crippled my thus far most succesfull town: markets. Do not put producers close to a market. They end up delivering their goods their, and it won't get distributed to other markets.

For example, if the closest drop off point for your fishing docks is a market () then all the fish ends up in there, and no one else gets any. It gets really problematic if, say, the majority of your tools or clothing ends up like that. Not sure if citizens will even make the trek, but needles to say that trek would become longer and longer as you expand. Much better to get your goods into barns and stockpiles so the market vendors can pick them up and distribute to markets.

[danlisa]

Did you build 'around' the market or add one in as a latter thought?
One thing with markets that I have learnt is that it should really have a Stockpile next to it. This ensures that any material that can be stockpiled doesn't take up space that could be better used by food items.

Just opened up my second seed, this time I'm going to plan the entire town layout first, pause everything and bring it online when needed. Let's see how that works out.

[Oberon]

I broke it.

It would seem that if a farmer accidentally leaves a basket of wheat/whatever in a field over the winter, the field will not be replanted come spring.



Apparently it is a known bug, so hopefully it'll be fixed. Thankfully it was on my smaller, first, wheat field, so I can probably put a house on it or something.

(and yes, I know in the screenshot it's not in the right mode, but that's because I deactivated it to switch the workers to my other field which was currently being rested.)

[Arclight]

That's an odd one. Does a laborer pick it up though? Field becomes useful again?

Haven't seen any stray items laying about too long.

Originally Posted by danlisa

Did you build 'around' the market or add one in as a latter thought?

Afterthought. First town went tits up pretty quick, that was my 2nd which ran for 76 years with some 300 citizens before I felt I had to give up on it. The logistics became unmanageable since I was just learning while going along. Worked myself into a corner basically.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Arclight

That's an odd one. Does a laborer pick it up though? Field becomes useful again?

Haven't seen any stray items laying about too long.

I've been told here:
http://shiningrocksoftware.com/forum...nting-planting

That changing the priority might do the trick, so I'll have to give that a try, had to rattle the report off quick though since I was just about to head to work. Still, on the up side, I have yet to have a mass starvation loop this time, which is odd because I was under the impression that going to crops straight away was a bad idea, and yet so far it's been the most successful strategy I've had, since my other towns fishing/gathering/hunting ventures all ended in the starvation feedback loop. I've managed to weather one blight so far, so we'll see how it goes.

I fully expect another mass starvation feedback loop before my population reaches 50.

Originally Posted by Egan

Is it possible to over fish or over hunt an area?

Yes. Every food source can break down if you get too greedy. For this reason, I never use more than 2 people for each building, no matter if it is a hunting cabin, a fisher hut, or a gatherers hut.

This has three positive effects:

1. You won't extinct any food source
2. In case of emergency, you can add workers to these buildings and double your food-income for a short time to prevent starvation.
3. You don't need as many workers for food production, so you can use them elsewhere.

[Arclight]

Well, that was... new. Didn't freeze all winter. Coldest it got was 0C early winter, after that it got gradually warmer until hitting 8C at the end of winter.



Then as soon as spring hit it rapidly dropped to 3C for a bit.