Banished (PC) (City Builder)

[Lucavi]

Year 19 on my second town: Last I checked I had around 80 citizens, brought in around 20-ish nomads and things seem to be running smoothly. I'm about to expand north across the river and make a second "hub", then start all over again. Considering the achievements are insane with over 500 citizens for decades.... I've got a lot of work to do!

[BaneTheBrawler]

holy fuck. i got up near 25 citizens (i forget after how many years) and accidentally sank all my lumber into some extra barns, so i ran out of firewood. no problem, my guys have lots of coats and houses! they'll be fine! and they were. UNTIL THEY WENT ON HUNGER STRIKE OR SOMETHING. THEY ALL LITERALLY STOPPED MOVING AND STARVED TO DEATH EVEN THOUGH I HAD 6000 FOOD WHAT THE FUCK

[Kaelan?]

Edit: Nvm! I think I'm starting to figure this game out. Took 4 tries, but finally made it past a decade with a fairly stable city

Spoiler: show

Year 13, 92/20/30


and this happened once...lol

[tyven]

much like how my town looks. Flanked one two sides by forests with hunters lodge. one has a foresters lodge and the other gatherers and herbalist

My population is waaaaaaaaay less tho and I have open houses. I need these kids to grow up!

[Eldelphia]

This is fun. Although running out of iron messed me up. I think I try and build too fast.

[Eldelphia]

Filling up your graveyard in about 6th is not so fun lol

[Arkanna]

Yeah, available housing is what makes your people reproduce. People also try to live as close as possible to where they work, so spreading out your houses seems to be the best tactic so far, since people will regularly leave their jobs to get food. Having houses close to your production buildings will result in farmers living close to farms, hunters living close to hunting cabins, fishermen living close to fishing docks, etc.

Also I noticed an annoying bug (??) ... what I do is, when I want to lay down a new forest node (that's what I call the cluster of buildings out in the woods, containing a forester lodge, hunting cabin, gatherer, herbalist), I lay down a stockpile next to where I want those building first. That way, when people are clearing the sites for the new buildings, they drop off the materials at the stockpile that's right next to them. Makes sense, right?.... and also, when they are grabbing materials from the stockpile to begin building the structures, they should pull the mats from that same stockpile. Except, they don't. Not always, anyway. I've watched my people walk to a distant stockpile to collect a material that's overflowing from the stockpile right next to the damn building they're working on.

Lastly, a few random thoughts:

Everything has a trickle-down effect. For example, if you move 100 logs to your trader or something, firewood production might be affected and thus people may run low on firewood that winter. Always pay closest attention to your base materials. Before long, you should be bumping up the production caps on everything from logs to tools. I only have about 60 people right now but I've more than doubled the production caps for just about everything.

When it comes to housing, expand SLOWLY. If you throw down 10 houses at a time, the trickle-down thing I mentioned will happen ... houses need to be stocked with food and firewood, and if you build a bunch at once, people will drain your stored resources very quickly. It also helps to control the flow of new people and thus, demand for resources.

Food variety keeps people happy. Don't throw down 6 fishing docks and leave it at that, the more different foods your people have, the more it seems to sustain their happiness. A hunter's lodge, gatherer, fishing dock, and a crop field will be far more effective than 6 fishing docks, even if your overall food numbers are lower. And similarly, if for example you have a shit-ton of fish, load 1000 or so into your trader and trade them straight up for 500 pumpkins and 500 peaches or something. Just to get more variety.

Throw down a mine and upgrade to steel tools as soon as you can. A mine is a fairly expensive building, but it only needs 1 worker initially to get the steel tools flowing. Once you have the mine down, put a small stockpile next to it and convert your blacksmith(s) to steel tools. Once you have some supply of steel tools, go to your trader and make the desired quantity of IRON tools well more than you actually have, to flush all the iron tools out of storage. They're pretty valuable in trades.

Finally, upgrade to warm coats as soon as you can. You need sheep to do this, unless you can trade for wool early on (which is not a bad option if you can do it). I ran out of coats initially and didn't notice ... it seems that not being clothed well has a bad effect on peoples' happiness, but not so much on their health, at least not right away. Once you are producing warm coats, use the trader as I described above to flush all the hide coats out of your storage.

Storage: distribute your storage barns and stockpiles anywhere there's production buildings, but make sure to build centralized markets. Your production buildings will offload their products to the closest storage barns and stockpiles, while your markets' vendors will go to all those storage areas and collect things for the market. The market is convenient to get all products close to your people and limit their walking outside in the cold.

School: don't fuck yourself like I did by laying down a school early on. What happens WITHOUT a school is, a child will transition into a laborer around age 10 I think. If you throw down a school, children transition into students instead, then later, transition into educated laborers. That sounds great and all, but if you do it too early, you wind up with a period of time where nobody is transitioning into laborers and your growth halts.

I think that's it for now, lol.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Broke down and bought this after all the positive chatter here, other places, and on my ts. Hope it's as good as it sounds.

[Kellen]

Edit: Nvm! I think I'm starting to figure this game out. Took 4 tries, but finally made it past a decade with a fairly stable city

Spoiler: show

Year 13, 92/20/30


and this happened once...lol

What seed is your town? There's so much open space there. I don't think I've had any with that much space.

[Jaybar]

So great. A couple things I'm learning here as well. I figured the housing expansion was required for breeding but I was expecting an icon as well. I was building four service buildings at once and thought "Boy it sure would be great if I could prioritize one than another" then BAM the Prioritize button appeared before me.

I also suffered from early expansion, killing two to starvation before it tapered off. It's almost like an historical simulation of the first settlers to the Americas! Anyway what I've been doing is placing workers in jobs that need surplus instead of having them sit at the shop constantly hitting peaks every game-week. I hardly needed a blacksmith so when he got to fifty tools I let him work on the nearby farm and watched as tools barely declined (and when they got to ~20 I just put him back to work again briefly). Same for the woodcutter. I would put him to work starting in Summer and through Winter to keep firewood at a reasonable surplus and put him to work on the fields in the Spring. So far so good (except a Dysentery outbreak - wtf is this Oregon Trail meets Sim City?!).

Oh and fires - citizens seem really slow to putting them out, even with a well and river nearby. Hopefully disaster response is tweaked.

[BaneTheBrawler]

i can never seem to get the priority setting to work with construction, just with remove resources. instead, i just lay down the stuff i want to build, then click on them and pause their construction. then i unpause 1 or 2 that i want them to build first.

[Jaybar]

Well I have no idea if it was working - hah! It just seemed to work because that area started getting built after they removed the surrounding resources. It comes out as red tiles so I don't think it works then? I like the pause idea, though.

[Kaelan?]

Also I noticed an annoying bug (??) ... what I do is, when I want to lay down a new forest node (that's what I call the cluster of buildings out in the woods, containing a forester lodge, hunting cabin, gatherer, herbalist), I lay down a stockpile next to where I want those building first. That way, when people are clearing the sites for the new buildings, they drop off the materials at the stockpile that's right next to them. Makes sense, right?.... and also, when they are grabbing materials from the stockpile to begin building the structures, they should pull the mats from that same stockpile. Except, they don't. Not always, anyway. I've watched my people walk to a distant stockpile to collect a material that's overflowing from the stockpile right next to the damn building they're working on.

Yeah, I noticed this too. It also happens if you mark resources for removal. Even if you already have laborers on it and you have a shitton of materials in stockpiles which are right next to a building site, your builders will still walk across the entire damn map to wherever you marked resources for removal and gather them there, then bring them all the way back to the building site.

Really annoying when your village starts getting big and you're constantly doing multiple things at once. I have to cancel all resource marks every time I want to build anything :/

Few extra things I noticed:

If you're having trouble expanding even with enough housing/happiness/health, build enough clerics to cover your whole city (doesn't matter where, they have infinite range), then start making some booze. People will start popping out kids left and right after a season or two.

Markets are best for when you're a fair bit into the game and expanding into new housing hubs. They have a huge coverage, and way better access than barns and stockpiles. A single market can service a ton of houses and pretty much cover your entire expansion on its own. They take 12 workers though, so you can't really use them early on.

Spoiler: show

Tunnels can be pretty useful if you're on the right type of map. In my town above I expanded first to the left, then up around the mountain. When I had enough resource surplus, I just dug a tunnel right through it and connected both expansions. Coupled with stone roads, they can share resources/workers pretty easily now.

Food is always going to be a bottleneck. I thought I was fine once I got to ~200 citizens and still had a huge food surplus (i think I got to 25k at one point). Then I got a population explosion and my food started dropping like crazy. I noticed it early enough to account for it without anyone dying, but even then just barely (I've had it go down to ~400 a couple winters). Once your city is this size, by the time the game gives you a notification, it's already too late and you're probably screwed. You have to notice this kind of stuff before the game tells you about it to have any chance of recovering from it.

I haven't bothered with Warm Coats/Steel Tools yet. I'm at ~350 citizens and still don't really ever run out with just 1 Blacksmith w/ Iron Tools and a couple tailors w/ regular coats. I've had my tools production capped at 150 for ages (so it doesn't chew through all my ore) and it doesn't look like they're running out anytime soon.

What seed is your town? There's so much open space there. I don't think I've had any with that much space.

846432324 - Valleys - Medium Size - Fair Climate
It's definitely a lot better then the first couple maps I played on, I'm liking it a lot so far

[Arkanna]

The only thing about that post that I disagree outright with is markets not being usable early. Like I said, I only have about 60 people in my town but the market has been a great addition, even with only one worker assigned to it. Stock stays high yet everyone gets what they need. Surely it's not *necessary* early, but it has definitely helped my town's efficiency. It serves as a sizable storage area for food, as well, which is something I really, really needed since I shoot for a very high surplus of food at all times.

[BaneTheBrawler]

might be misunderstanding what you were describing, but you don't need to clear away resources before you build something there. you can just drop the building, and then the workers will clear away just enough for its footprint as part of the build process. works for stockpiles as well as regular buildings. not sure if it'll work on farms, as i haven't gotten to the point where i have seeds or livestock. works for graveyards though. sometimes it works for roads, sometimes not. im not sure why.

[Jaybar]

might be misunderstanding what you were describing, but you don't need to clear away resources before you build something there. you can just drop the building, and then the workers will clear away just enough for its footprint as part of the build process. works for stockpiles as well as regular buildings. not sure if it'll work on farms, as i haven't gotten to the point where i have seeds or livestock. works for graveyards though. sometimes it works for roads, sometimes not. im not sure why.

That is what I meant - the process before collecting resources to the job site requires that the land be cleared first. You can do it manually or plop down a footprint and the construction queue will include removal as part of its work chain. I haven't looked at it closely but it could also allow for both the clearing and collecting to occur at same time.

[Arkanna]

Yeah that works for everything, but what I meant was, I like having a small stockpile right there for them to drop the resources at. Otherwise they'll cart the materials halfway across the map to another stockpile, even though the very building they're clearing space for NEEDS the materials. It's frustrating.

[BaneTheBrawler]

oh, yeah, i got the bit about the stockpile; shit's dumb as hell. i was just thrown off by the bit about canceling resource marks. although, i think i see what you mean. my (new) city is still just my initial families, plus some children. i have one laborer and two builders. I'm trying to build a fucking barn because my stupid wagon is full. All the resources have been assembled at the site.... but my builders just ignore it. They REFUSE to work on it. It's the ONLY thing available for them to build; everything else is paused. instead, they fuck around all day and harvest resources. THAT'S NOT YOUR JOB GET BACK TO FUCKING WORK.


edit: herpaderp. i just realized why. i ran out of logs, and the barn is missing three logs.

edit2: i also just realized that it's Laborers that stock up a building site with its materials, not Builders. Builders might help too, but I'm not so sure. But i'm sure about the laborers.

[Lucavi]

The only thing about that post that I disagree outright with is markets not being usable early. Like I said, I only have about 60 people in my town but the market has been a great addition, even with only one worker assigned to it. Stock stays high yet everyone gets what they need. Surely it's not *necessary* early, but it has definitely helped my town's efficiency. It serves as a sizable storage area for food, as well, which is something I really, really needed since I shoot for a very high surplus of food at all times.

This. Markets are useful as soon as you have a decent variety of food. Two workers are sufficient for my 80 population town to fully stock and supply the market full of goodies that I produce and trade for, and my health skyrocketed once I placed all those mats in a central location for everyone to eat from. I'd get a market as soon as you start getting around 5-7 different reliable food sources. I'd recommend keeping at least 2 workers full-time for the market, as if one worker can't access all the items quickly enough, people will go back to eating 1-2 things and their health will drop.

[Cichy]

how do you get livestock?