Year 4: Built herbalist, 3 stone houses


Is there a need for an early Herbalist? I think I haven't been building one until year 10-15 and health seems to remain 4 1/2*. I had been playing on medium and only recently switched to hard though, so maybe I'm taking a risk?

I usually build one early, on the theory that I'm covered in case of illness, and usually they end up cranking out herbs to the max and then becoming a functional laborer anyway.

I usually build one early, on the theory that I'm covered in case of illness, and usually they end up cranking out herbs to the max and then becoming a functional laborer anyway.

Plus it's easy to build a stockpile of herbs early and then use them to trade for other goods.

Thank you Blackie, your opinions have and still carries a lot of weight to me. I still owe you for getting me obsessed with Skyrim. :)

Thank you.

Is there a need for an early Herbalist? I think I haven't been building one until year 10-15 and health seems to remain 4 1/2*. I had been playing on medium and only recently switched to hard though, so maybe I'm taking a risk?

My health dropped to 3 pretty quickly so I was trying to stop it from plummeting further.

Herbalist is great for rounding out the health meter, but what matters most of all is food diversity, ie more than 2 crops and bringing in MEAT. Gatherers bring in a ton of food, but the banished hate eating it. From what I can tell, theyre not entirely fond of fish either.

edit: and one worker/herb shack is more than enough until at least 200 population.

Just had my blacksmith die from being burned in the forge. I wonder can people randomly die in all professions? So far I've seen this and stonecutter.

Builder fell off a ladder and died.

Ive seen murder and suicide too. Dark days.

Herbalist is great for rounding out the health meter, but what matters most of all is food diversity, ie more than 2 crops and bringing in MEAT. Gatherers bring in a ton of food, but the banished hate eating it. From what I can tell, theyre not entirely fond of fish either.

.

So true. I had a pasture full of sheep and was churning out mutton until a virus struck and killed them all.

It just hit me that a way to combat that could be to split livestock into smaller groups.

I find it interesting that the villagers will change jobs frequently - other than situations where they will take a job closer to their house, I'm not sure why that is.

I have been building a schoolhouse early on - I didn't see it in those progressions, but it seems to me the earlier you build it the more you'll get a jump on having educated people - plus it's cheap to build and just needs one teacher.

That's what I've been going with too. A schoolhouse isnt much use to start with, keeps children from being productive for a few more years and ties up one valuable adult citizen, but without out it you're just setting up trouble a few years down the line when you have a gang of uneducated citizens producing at half-speed.

In my town I've just accidentally brought in 17 nomads in late summer, they're all wandering around homeless with too little time to build houses before winter. Waiting to see what affect frozen nomads lying in the street will have on happiness of the rest.

I find it interesting that the villagers will change jobs frequently - other than situations where they will take a job closer to their house, I'm not sure why that is.

I think that if they have nothing to do for their assigned jobs, they revert to general laborers until there is something to do again for their job.

Eeek that moment when you get all excited at your first nomads, bring them in, house them, then have 11 people die of starvation one winter later.

I think that if they have nothing to do for their assigned jobs, they revert to general laborers until there is something to do again for their job.

That is true, but what I mean is that they will just switch jobs a lot if you keep the house window open I've seen them change jobs twice in like 15 minutes. Forester to Gatherer to Stonecutter, etc.

The trading is the most frustration for me.

First off, the boats come way too infrequent , maybe because I don't want to tie up 4 ppl to move goods around? Usually just one can keep up with the amount of boats.

Then, half the time they have the same crap I do, or like 66 pieces of a fruit I don't have yet.

Ultimately, when the mothership I want arrives. The trader is wearing a black mask and trying to fleece me for 600 per animal which is fine and good. However, the bastard wont take ANY of my produce and will only deal in tools. At his extortion, ahem, exchange rate of like 150 tools for 2 animals I have to hope will reproduce. Dismissed!

I think the infrequent boats is used to represent how isolated you are. It's not a major port on the Atlantic Ocean

Abe, did you really say that your village in the mountains ran out of stone? Am I the only one that finds that funny?

To be honest I view the trading post as basically a gamble - set it up with one guy and hope a trader comes by with livestock or seeds I need. The stuff is expensive but a lot of firewood will pay for much.

That is true, but what I mean is that they will just switch jobs a lot if you keep the house window open I've seen them change jobs twice in like 15 minutes. Forester to Gatherer to Stonecutter, etc.

house window?

I mean when you click on a house and it will show you who lives there and their profession - if you wait a bit you can see their profession change.

I mean when you click on a house and it will show you who lives there and their profession - if you wait a bit you can see their profession change.

aha

That was funny, you made it sound like they would escape the house through the window to switch jobs.

Abe, did you really say that your village in the mountains ran out of stone? Am I the only one that finds that funny?

Correct!

The trading is the most frustration for me.

First off, the boats come way too infrequent , maybe because I don't want to tie up 4 ppl to move goods around? Usually just one can keep up with the amount of boats.

Then, half the time they have the same crap I do, or like 66 pieces of a fruit I don't have yet.

Ultimately, when the mothership I want arrives. The trader is wearing a black mask and trying to fleece me for 600 per animal which is fine and good. However, the bastard wont take ANY of my produce and will only deal in tools. At his extortion, ahem, exchange rate of like 150 tools for 2 animals I have to hope will reproduce. Dismissed!

Nothing effects the frequency of the boats coming. You can have your port turned off and unstaffed and they still arrive at the same schedule. I find it best to build a second port if you are wanting frequent visits.

Setup a grocery list. Soon as I get a resource boat, I select Iron and Stone too delivered every visit. In later years, they bring a ton of goods as well. The grocery list is very important, just dont forget to select 'every time' (or one time if preferred) from the drop down.

Then, there are three types of boats. all of them will trade for firewood, and then the grocer wants tools/fuel and the resource boat (i think) wants general/grocer goods.

I try to keep 4k of firewood stocked in two ports.

God quarries are awful.

And I'm a horrible person. I cannot wait for this 60+ year old widow to die. Hag is taking up one of my precious few stone houses!

The trading is the most frustration for me.

First off, the boats come way too infrequent , maybe because I don't want to tie up 4 ppl to move goods around? Usually just one can keep up with the amount of boats.

Then, half the time they have the same crap I do, or like 66 pieces of a fruit I don't have yet.

Ultimately, when the mothership I want arrives. The trader is wearing a black mask and trying to fleece me for 600 per animal which is fine and good. However, the bastard wont take ANY of my produce and will only deal in tools. At his extortion, ahem, exchange rate of like 150 tools for 2 animals I have to hope will reproduce. Dismissed!

You only need 1 chicken because of egg-laying (I only could afford one chicken) though I imagine other animals yeah you would need 2.

Pro tip - adults WILL pop out kids in the boarding house, unlike adults living with their elderly parents.

Apparently some crazy orgies go on in those communes.

These Banished folks are strange. They're too shy to procreate under their parents's roof, but they have no compunctions about doing it in front of half the town, their parents included, in a communal home.

And I'm a horrible person. I cannot wait for this 60+ year old widow to die. Hag is taking up one of my precious few stone houses!

Haha. I built a stone house and a 65 year old moved in. I was pissed.

D'oh. Turns out 2 cows will not always lead to an ever-growing inbred herd. Sometimes they die.

Pro tip - adults WILL pop out kids in the boarding house, unlike adults living with their elderly parents.

Apparently some crazy orgies go on in those communes.

I have 4 "just had a baby" messages at the same time when all my people were living in a boarding house.

This could be a great idea for the FOFC forum :D

All use the same seed and post screens every 2-3 years to show how each other are developing.. call town Fofcville or something so all on the same page... Would be great to see how each different town developed!

Use Mannings stats for the seed, give it a fofc feel.. (completions/yards/td)

Seed : 450547755
Valleys
Medium
Fair
On Medium for all the other settings...

Tried this seed, though I used Hard for the difficulty. Pretty decent looking layout - nice spot on the river for some fishing huts and some immediately promising forester/gatherer locations as well. Might run with the set up to see what I can make out of it.

First off, thanks for the firewood tip chinaski. very helpful.


So, Im chugging along today, like year 17, and finally got the trading going to get my 2nd crop. Health for most is at 1/2 and declining so they needed a new staple food. Mid Summer and have 3 fields and one orchard going. half my population is farming and aging. Of my original 6 wooden house start in the beginning, one is occupied by a single 74 year old woman.

With only labor to spare for 2 builders, I kick her out and upgrade it to a stone house. Everyone is in the field when the house 2 doors down catches fire. It burns to the ground and catches another house next to it, than another, then another. Basically all of them except the one I was in the process of tearing down, so it couldn't burn. Oh, and to top it off its now late summer/harvest and my barn catches and burns down too.

I struggle to finish building another house across the river and when 21 homeless people are running around the crop fields, the now 76 year old widow moves in ASAP.

I scramble to build another barn quickly (or lose most of the crops) and get a boarding house up before it goes below 0.

Because my small mountainous maps has such small area space, heading into year 41, instead of the typical firewood economy, I have a heavy coal based economy. I have two mines, with 40 miners, in a town of 81/20/18, making a bunch of coal, and selling it (for more than firewood, btw).

yay - just officially got the Mountain Men achievement, after three tries at a Himalaya like start,

Going strong in year 14. Pop 62/11/18, we're starting our second 'village' expansion (I've sort of taken to building a village around a marketplace - that's what I'm defining it as). Stone is still a major problem, and I keep feeling the bottom is gonna drop out on our population. They're doing far too well.

You guys are just taunting me to buy this damn game!

BUY IT.

You guys are just taunting me to buy this damn game!

I paid 20 dollars and just passed my 36th hour of gaming. Totally worth it.

The expanding land of Aerigal....as much as I can fit it into one screenshot, at least.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-XEyn4UUZdXI/UxAC0x2CFNI/AAAAAAAAA2I/evcYZz98V_Q/s800/Screenshot2.png

Does anyone have an idea how the "decay" of farming works? I mean I know after a certain amount of time the yield starts to really bottom out, but is that a specific date or is it sort of random? Had a food crisis last winter when my main field barely produced anything.

I noticed it slightly, but I just changed the crop to rotate it

Started a game on hard last night, great fun. The small amount of food you start with just doesn't seem enough so it was a race to get a boarding house and woodcutter up and running before the winter to keep them warm and dry and then get a gathering hut built and functioning to get food in asap.

Unfortunately I was pretty much down to 0 food by the winter so was using food as the gatherers generated it, which is never good. Wasn't able to restrict population growth as even in the communal boarding house they were popping out sprogs. Came to head in year 4 when I went from 19 adults/7 kids down to 7 adults/1 kid between Spring and Autumn due to starvation (nothing sadder than seeing a message saying 'Beven the child has died of starvation'), although that stabilised things and now I'm able to build up my food reserves (up to 1500) and slowly build houses to monitor growth. Running with just one labourer as well which is certainly more frustrting than when I had ten of them running around clearing and building!

Anyway, as my people are now miserable as shit due to all their relatives dying can you build a cemetary to benefit previous deaths? I wasn't planning to have deaths so soon so didn't build one, if I throw one up now will they exume the bodies from whatever shallow graves they dug or finally clear the stinking bodies from the spare room and properly bury them so that I can get the happiness benefit?

Does anyone have an idea how the "decay" of farming works? I mean I know after a certain amount of time the yield starts to really bottom out, but is that a specific date or is it sort of random? Had a food crisis last winter when my main field barely produced anything.

From what I saw on reddit, dimishing returns on farms is a myth that never made it into the final version.

Cemeteries will only accept new deaths as graves.

Damn it! Thanks though.

Heh. Anyone in my lands who is 60+ has zero happiness.

Everyone younger is still happily going about their mindless tasks like the good little zombies they are meant to be. Churches? Taverns? BAH!

Taverns are pretty awesome if you have fruit. Ale sells for 8 a pop.

Unless they can make chestnut ale, I'm screwed.

Besides, you can't coddle your people with things like 'churches' and 'taverns'. Time spent at those places is time they could have spent GETTING ME MORE ROCK.

There's a great thread on the subreddit about how these sort of games turn you into a heartless dictator. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE TAKING A BREAK? GET BACK OVER THERE AND GATHER ME SOME WOOD UNTIL YOU DIE OF ALD AGE!

There's a great thread on the subreddit about how these sort of games turn you into a heartless dictator. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE TAKING A BREAK? GET BACK OVER THERE AND GATHER ME SOME WOOD UNTIL YOU DIE OF ALD AGE!

Fuck you. ;)

I just looked at the subreddit, decided the graphics were on-par for what I would expect/desire, and now I'm thinking I'll have to pick this game up.

From what I saw on reddit, dimishing returns on farms is a myth that never made it into the final version.

Interesting - I thought I had seen this multiple times, where older fields seem to produce less and less, but maybe it was just years of bad weather.

Interesting - I thought I had seen this multiple times, where older fields seem to produce less and less, but maybe it was just years of bad weather.


Bad weather, unhappy farmers, or something else. That is my only beef so far with this game, really. Sometimes it is hard to find a reason for production drop-offs.

I cannot figure out how to use markets effectively. I used one pretty well and even a second, but the third one really tanked my economy where my town is dying off due to starvation. I feel like I have plenty of food dispersed evenly throughout my town to the point where I should have plenty in reserve no less.

I have my houses centered around the markets mostly and I have resources dispersed around those (crops, livestock, hunters fisherman). The routes are short for each market yet my town is hemorrhaging people

Any ideas?

I have yet to try a market, but it seems that markets are surefire ways to starve your citizens if you don't keep them well staffed with workers.

After keeping tabs on this thread the past several days I caved and picked up the game last night. I've only played the first tutorial so far but I look forward to watching my own villagers starve over the coming days and weeks! :D

Hmmm my experience with markets is different to you guys. I have one market smack bang in the middle of my houses, and have had no issues - only 1 person working there.

I finally hit 100 people in my latest town and yup, wouldn't you know, along comes a cyclone. Yikes. Took me back to 62 workers and destroyed a lot of my more pricey buildings.

I haven't built a huge city yet but I do have one with four distinct expanded ares (three of them hunting/gathering/forestry, one has two trading posts and some farmland/pastures). I've been able to set up two markets, each one covering the housing in two expanded areas, and have had no problems getting goods to people. For a long time I only had three vendors total, I bumped it up to 5 total vendors for the two markets with the most recent expansion since it is a little further away.

I got my city up to what I would define as 6 expanded areas today, I finally reached a large lake that was a long ways across the map where I could set up four fishing huts, and designated a mountainous area in the southeast corner of my map for mines and quarries, I don't have those running yet but started building up the housing nearby to support the workforce. I'm up to four marketplaces and I think I have 16 vendors now.

I hit 200 adults/250 total people, I had a brief food scare at some critical point of expanding, I had 20,000 food in reserve and saw it quickly drop to 15,000. I started a huge effort to produce more food (built four more farms and found a place to squeeze in 2 more fishing villages and set up another gatherer/hunter that i was planning but wasn't prioritizing). My food reserves got as low as 3000 before I got it fixed, its going up steadily again, whew!

I've been lucky with disasters, I've had a number of tornadoes hit but nothing destroyed yet. No fires, no harvests destroyed by disease, etc. It took me awhile to get going, but I'm really happy with this one! I'm really hoping to fill up the map completely and see how many people this area can sustain.

I had a fire but luckily it hit kind of an outlying area and only burnt down three buildings. Still enjoying the game but not sure I could get to 200 people - once I build all the types of buildings I start getting bored and want to move on to the next village.

I had a fire but luckily it hit kind of an outlying area and only burnt down three buildings. Still enjoying the game but not sure I could get to 200 people - once I build all the types of buildings I start getting bored and want to move on to the next village.

This is how I am. I am at 70 people and kind of bored.


r.e.the market. What is the tangible gain from it? I built one but never staffed it with with more than 3 /12 people.

As I understand it the market has one main function - to centralize the stuff stored in all your storage barns. Personally I never had a lot of far flung storage barns so it didn't seem so useful, but once you do it would save your people a lot of time.

My village is basically made up of a bunch of satellite housing clusters, so I'm not sure exactly how much a market would help, if at all.

My village is basically made up of a bunch of satellite housing clusters, so I'm not sure exactly how much a market would help, if at all.

That is ho mine is laid out as well

Mine's one massive centralized housing district, with the resource production facilities feeding it. I've never had a problem with marketplaces.

112 adults in my village, plenty of iron and logs, running 2 blacksmiths and I am 50 tools in the hole. Does that make sense to anyone?

The combination of a decent sized fire and a tornado running through the middle of the map has brought my first village to an end. I topped out around 500 people total with around 450 probably being sustainable. After the disasters I'm down around 250 people and not looking to incrementally rebuild as the trader brings enough stone.

112 adults in my village, plenty of iron and logs, running 2 blacksmiths and I am 50 tools in the hole. Does that make sense to anyone?

1. Make sure you aren't trying to build Steel Tools, which also require Coal.

2. These Blacksmiths spend much time running around to get materials, I always build a stockpile next to them.

3. They also have to run the tools to the storage barn, which if its a hike away can take more time.

4. Lastly, if you have a bunch of workers in the quarry or mine, I think they use the tools up much faster than others.

Eek, had my first starvation crisis last night in my current town. It started from a mass tool shortage that led to a reduced harvest, that further hit my populace:food ratios that had begun to slide a little. Really really need to keep an eye on that graph once you start to mass expand on people, through either births or nomads. D'oh. I was up to 180 people, then dropped well below 100...

112 adults in my village, plenty of iron and logs, running 2 blacksmiths and I am 50 tools in the hole. Does that make sense to anyone?

Make sure you don't have any tools stored in your trading post - I had an issue with that for a while and was able to release the tools from there and solve the crisis.

I have solved my tool problem by basically trading for them. I harvest a bunch of wool and leather and trade it for tools. Seems to be working well enogh.

1. Make sure you aren't trying to build Steel Tools, which also require Coal.

2. These Blacksmiths spend much time running around to get materials, I always build a stockpile next to them.

3. They also have to run the tools to the storage barn, which if its a hike away can take more time.

4. Lastly, if you have a bunch of workers in the quarry or mine, I think they use the tools up much faster than others.

Great advice.

Eek, had my first starvation crisis last night in my current town. It started from a mass tool shortage that led to a reduced harvest, that further hit my populace:food ratios that had begun to slide a little. Really really need to keep an eye on that graph once you start to mass expand on people, through either births or nomads. D'oh. I was up to 180 people, then dropped well below 100...

Also, make sure your citizens are educated. In my current game, I waited a few years to build a school and it almost killed me. Uneducated workers were working my fields and my harvests began to plummet. Luckily for me I had an overproduction of food, so I weathered the storm and now I'm back to having 10,000+ food in storage. :)

I'm up to year 18 of my first village. I've had two points where my town basically reset itself: at year 3 I had built up to about 17/2/11 when about a half-dozen adults starved to death over the winter, and then in around year 8 or so I worked my way up to 28/6/7 but didn't focus enough on food and ended up losing dozens of folks to starvation over the next couple years, reaching a low point of 8/1/4 in year 10.

Things seem to have stabilized and in the 7 years since I've edged back up to 15/3/4. I've made a concerted effort to bank way more food then ever before, and I'm not building anything new until I have the current infrastructure humming along at max capacity for 2-3 winters without any massive consequences.

One thing I find strange: the people age at a faster rate than the town. It seems as though they age about 1 year per season. That feels like a curious decision to me, and sort of bothers me.

OK, you bastards broke me down THANKS :)

This is a really cool game and after my trial run (starvation crisis year 3) and a bunch of single people living alone in houses, I am ready to start again and think I have a good plan now.

This is going to be a time sink for me...

I'm up to year 18 of my first village. I've had two points where my town basically reset itself: at year 3 I had built up to about 17/2/11 when about a half-dozen adults starved to death over the winter, and then in around year 8 or so I worked my way up to 28/6/7 but didn't focus enough on food and ended up losing dozens of folks to starvation over the next couple years, reaching a low point of 8/1/4 in year 10.

Things seem to have stabilized and in the 7 years since I've edged back up to 15/3/4. I've made a concerted effort to bank way more food then ever before, and I'm not building anything new until I have the current infrastructure humming along at max capacity for 2-3 winters without any massive consequences.

One thing I find strange: the people age at a faster rate than the town. It seems as though they age about 1 year per season. That feels like a curious decision to me, and sort of bothers me.

The age thing isn't curious at all. If you had accurate aging, the game would take forever or the seasons would pass in about 5 seconds, which would ruin the impact. Really, there's no other good option if you think about it.

---

It's up to year 35 for the town of Gleede. We have 300+ folks, three separate town centers (marketplaces), two churches, stone houses for everyone, two mines, one quarry, 4 docks (one produces 1,700 fish/yr by itself) and everything else you could want. We have cherry and peach orchards producing the sweetest fruit you've ever eaten and our crops are corn, wheat, beans, pumpkin and potatoes. We have beef, mutton and chicken and there's more venison than you can shake a stick at. Three woodcutters keep us warm in the winter and our sustainable management program gives us plenty of wood, berries, mushrooms and other delectable bits.

Well, that's the news from Gleede, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.

---

Of course, one well-placed tornado in South Gleede would destroy a good portion of the farms and pastures...but that never happens, does it?

One thing I find strange: the people age at a faster rate than the town. It seems as though they age about 1 year per season. That feels like a curious decision to me, and sort of bothers me.

Age and years are arbitrary numbers, who is to say 1 full year in Banished land isn't 2 full years in the human life cycle?

Yeah the age thing confused me at first, it makes sense that they age quicker but only now I know. I assumed at the start they aged one year every year, and it caught me out a few times when I suddenly realised I had couples too old to reproduce before I expected it.

Broke the 100 adult cap last night. I still only have one residential center (that's jam packed full of houses), which I'm going to need to expand to a second soon. Not because I'm running out of room, but because I'm running out of jobs to assign these guys to!

Doing my first play through and got up over 40 in 8 years and things looked solid, then the mother of all famines hit.

In one season I went to 18 residents, 3 of which were too old to reproduce, and a bunch of single residents. Luckily the town teacher is a bit loose and has had 2 kids out of wedlock back to back years and two of her students had a kid too :)

Currently at 22 in year 12, but it is a struggle. I am currently juggling several residents from farmers in the spring/summer to hunters/fishermen in the winter. Right now it is just a matter of eeking out an existence keeping everyone fed.

This game is a challenge.

For you Banished fans, PC Gamer has done a 25 year "time lapse" photo essay with one of their attempts to play the game:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/03/13/banished-photo-essay-25-years-of-farming-and-surviving-harsh-winters/

Saw this review and laughed, wanted to share




A 10-year-old girl claimed a house to herself and managed to hoard the whole town's food until everyone else died

10/10

So everyone has burned out on the game?

So everyone has burned out on the game?

Don't know about anyone else, but yeah, pretty much for me. It's a basic game, not a lot of replay value. However, I paid $20 for it and Steam says I played it for 31 hours, so I'd say I got my money's worth. And I'm sure I fire it back in a few months, especially if some DLC is released.

So everyone has burned out on the game?

Not yet but I have been taking it slow because I could see it being a potential burn out game.

So everyone has burned out on the game?

Similar for me too. I put in 35 hours, ran a few places, knocked off more than 75% of the achievements on Steam, and now I've moved on. I'm very happy to turn $20 into 35 hours of gaming, with the potential for a lot more. This game is very well developed, and I'd happy to pick up some official DLC or some unofficial mods here and there to play with the engine.

So everyone has burned out on the game?

Not entirely, but I have slowed down a bit. The game is great at what it does, but it is ultimately fairly limited. Supply chains are short, there are no "prestige" buildings and you can achieve a point of equilibrium pretty easily once you know how. That being said, I got more than my moneys' worth already and when the mod kit comes out this game will probably get a new life with additional buildings and resources.

Still worth every penny I paid.

Anyone still playing this? Enjoying it?

I'm seriously considering buying a copy of Windows 7 and running Boot Camp on my Mac so I can play this and/or Age of Wonders III.

Black summed it up perfectly. It's a great game for what it is. You'll get your money's worth and then some out of it. But, it's limited, and there's just not enough to it for the long term. I do have some hopes that the modding community goes nuts with it.

Yeah, I had a blast with this for about a week and a half, but once you get past the early-phase of the game and learn to balance food and population, there's not a whole lot to do, and very few reasons to start again once you have a successful town.

I had to uninstall it in order to stop playing it. :)

First major update out (1.02). Changelog:


* 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.
* Fixed a bug that caused non-laborers to not fight fires.
* Citizens fighting fires will only be interrupted by sickness, freezing, or starving.
* Citizens will now only search for water in an area around the fire. Far inland areas need wells for fires to be fought.
* Increased the number of citizens that can fight a single fire to 50.
* Increased the area of effect for citizens fighting a fire.
* If enough water is brought to a building on fire, the chance of the fire spreading is lowered.
* Fixed a bug that caused buildings on fire not to be high priority.
* Fixed a major slowdown in large towns when fires break out.
* 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.
* Because citizens can eat from home when far away, they can better deal with freezing, and visit a warm place when needed.
* Fixed a bug that caused citizens not to warm up when eating at home in some cases.
* 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.
* Citizens now limit the distance they’ll walk in the winter when it is very cold.
* Tombstones now decay in 4-6 years instead of 13-17.
* Existing tombstones have had their decay time reduced by half.
* The trading post volume was been increased to 60000. This allows larger auto purchases to occur without overflowing storage. Existing trading posts need to be removed and replaced for this change to take effect.
Here’s the rest of the changes already posted:

* Mouse buttons now obey system setting for flipped left/right buttons.
* Input options now allow binding of mouse actions.
* Input settings can now be bound to any of eight mouse buttons.
* Fixed a bug that cause meat and other resources to show up in the corner of the map.
* Fixed being able to pop a building back into existence after being damaged by using the cancel removal tool or reclaim button.
* Fixed grave count on cemeteries when it is marked for removal then reclaimed.
* Fixed crash at trading post when trading, dismissing trader, and then selecting a custom order.
* Fixed a bug that allowed auto purchase to over fill the trading post.
* Fixed a bug that caused cycling through laborers to show children and students.
* Foresters no longer cut down orchards.
* Fixed water showing inside merchant boat.
* Builders will no longer walk the long way around to the other side of a bridge or tunnel when constructing it if it’s more than twice the distance to the closer side.
* Fixed building pause icon staying up when a building completes construction after pausing construction.
* Fixed a bug that caused starving or freezing people to get stuck in a loop doing the same job over and over if no food or warmth was available to resolve the starving or freezing issue.
* Fixed a bug that caused pending roads to not be cancelable if they were under a tree, rock, ore, etc.
* Fixed a bug that caused roads to be unremovable.
* Fixed a bug that caused areas to be unusable after roads were removed in certain cases.
* Dirt roads can no longer be quick removed by zoning over them with stone roads and then removing them. They now revert back to dirt roads and work has to be performed to remove them.
* Placing stone roads over pending dirt roads no longer cause unusable areas.
* Disasters are now disabled in tutorials.
* Fixed several spelling and grammatical errors.
* Fixed crash in audio streamer due to missing thread synchronization.
* Fixed a crash that occurred if a video card doesn’t support sampling from a depth texture.
* Fixed a bug that caused very wide screen displays to calculate an incorrect FOV.
* Windowed mode now allows resizing of the window.
* Window position is now remembered and restored on game shutdown/startup.
* Graphics initialization now has better error handling and exception recovery.
* Added a game launcher that allows changing video settings if the game doesn’t display properly on startup.
* The game launcher only shows if an error occurred, on first time startup, ctrl is held on startup, or /launcher is on the command line.
* Added selection of refresh rate to graphics settings
* Added selection of graphics adapter to graphics settings.
* Save games now check for truncation and crc validation to make sure save games haven’t been corrupted.
* The scene shown on the background of the main menu now has better error checking in case the file has become corrupt. If the file is corrupt it will show the original scene that the game shows on first time startup.
* Files are now created in a temp directory and are moved after writes complete. This stops partial files from being created if a thread crashes while a background thread is performing file I/O.

I wish they had addressed some of the problems with fires.

Be nice if he got around to released the modkit, or at least documented how some of the data files were stored, for modders to get to work.

I wish they had addressed some of the problems with fires.

haha, yes, but now I want to re-install it....must.restist.the.urge.... :)

Talk about flash in the pan. I couldn't get enough of this game for a week or so then bam, I haven't fired it up since. It was really fun while it lasted, though.

I could Google this myself, but did a modding community ever emerge for Banished and add more functionality?

I don't think I've ever gone from "just one more turn" to "uninstall from Steam library" quicker.

Browse Banished Mods (http://banishedinfo.com/mods/browse)

Talk about flash in the pan. I couldn't get enough of this game for a week or so then bam, I haven't fired it up since. It was really fun while it lasted, though.

It seemed to me like the whole game was figuring out how to survive. Once you got the generic formula down, you could survive anything, and it wasn't really difficult, just busywork to expand.

For the price I think most, if not all of us, bought it though, I think we got our money's worth.

Yeah, more an observation than a complaint. I enjoyed it for what it was worth.

I actually started playing it again recently and still really enjoying it.

The developer released a mod kit a few weeks ago and a modding community of sorts is starting to get off the ground. I've played with a few of the new mods and enjoyed them, though they've mainly been quality of life things.

I will agree that it does have a limited lifespan, but that you definitely get your money's worth. It needs some sort of "2nd stage" to generate more replayability.

But for now after enjoying it a lot at first, it's still fun to dust off here and there to see how I can get my villagers to survive those first few winters.

Damn, I didn't know the mod kit had actually been released. That's awesome. I'm sure we'll see some very good mods come out since that's the same tool he used to create the game itself. I expect in 6 months there will be some total conversion update that really adds to the game.

Speaking of city builders, I just bought the Cities in Motion 2 Collection for $7.50 from GreenManGaming. I didn't like the first one because I found the interface obtuse, but the second has a much better interface and this is the kind of game I really enjoy. I won't get a chance to play it until this weekend, but for $7.50 it was worth the gamble.

In other news, some of these Banished mods look intriguing.


Here's one for ya:


Colonial Charter - Colonial Charter - Topic: CC: Maple Harpoon RELEASED (1/4) (http://colonialcharter.com/index.php/forum/welcome-mat/227-cc-maple-harpoon-released)

In fact, their whole website is about enhancing Banished as a colonial game, and they have been incorporating a lot of other mods:

http://colonialcharter.com/

In other news, some of these Banished mods look intriguing.


Here's one for ya:


Colonial Charter - Colonial Charter - Topic: CC: Maple Harpoon RELEASED (1/4) (http://colonialcharter.com/index.php/forum/welcome-mat/227-cc-maple-harpoon-released)

In fact, their whole website is about enhancing Banished as a colonial game, and they have been incorporating a lot of other mods:

Colonial Charter - Colonial Charter : A Banished Mod (http://colonialcharter.com/)

Highly recommended - the game is still to easy in many ways but it makes it considerably more fun and gives you a lot more to build

New one just came out a few minutes ago!!!


Colonial Charter - Colonial Charter - Topic: Colonial Charter Iron Curtain Released (1/1) (http://colonialcharter.com/index.php/forum/welcome-mat/474-colonial-charter-iron-curtain-released)

Just finished year 11 in my reboot, and Ihave an apiary with bees, a glassworks, I've had two shore houses for a while, at first they were catching frogs and turtles, but now they are getting supplies. And I have the normal blacksmith, port, tailor, and so forth.

After building a Dairy in my town with the mods, I am making cheese, and it is, by far, the quickest eaten food stuff we make. My peops can;t get enough!

There have been a ton more mods hitting, and the main mod, has hit a another major milestone. All you have to do is download this one mod, and then get it to run on your PC and you have massively changed the game for the better.


Steam Workshop :: CC: New Frontier (1.55) (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=500578844)


These are just the changes from 1.4 to 1.5. The changelist for each of these is incredibly staggering

Colonial Charter - Colonial Charter - Colonial Charter 1.5x: New Frontier (1/1) (http://www.colonialcharter.com/index.php/forum/welcome-mat/1726-colonial-charter-1-5x-new-frontier)


As of today there are more than 1200 mods. But this one is enough!

That mod implies some sort of warfare taking place. Is that correct?

That mod implies some sort of warfare taking place. Is that correct?

I think that' a long term goal and they've added rifles and cannons and such like that to get them there. But it's really just backstory, there are no people to fight or anything.


Here's the 1.4 changelist image of everything new, from the 1.4 expansion, which brings you up to speed, somewhat, for the 1.5 one. Image si too big for this thread. Check it out here:

http://www.colonialcharter.com/index.php/forum/welcome-mat/1255-colonial-charter-curse-of-the-golden-llama-1-4

Gotcha. Thanks.

Sure thing!

One of my favorite changes is actually how many different starts there are, from Adam and Eve (one couple) to a Missionary outpost that begins with some religious buildings, there are some interesting spins on the starting situation

having fun with the Colonial Charter mod. thanks a bunch!

Yeah the CC mod is great, highly recommended for anyone who hasn't touched the game in a while. Looking forward to starting one of the more unique starts once I get bored with my current game.

Here's a little hint I found helpful. Now that the CC mod added ducks to the game, I find that killing waterfowl, taking their feathers, and meat makes a powerful adjunct to your Hunting Lodge, and the Lodge now brings in a lot more deer meat/leather or duck meat/feathers, and you get more reliable production from them as a result.

So I see Banished in the Daily sale on Steam-66% off. Since this thread is now 8 pages long, I take it the game is worth at that price?

Yes, an absolute steal at that price

Having said that, anyone play this with CC recently? Went back to it over Christmas and had the old bug with folks wandering all over map and freezing to death, not sure if it was the new version, the mod, the combination of both or something I was doing wrong

For $6.80? Definitely worth it.

Banished and many other city-builders are on sale on GOG.com right now for seriously cheap. Tropico series, Caesar series, and many others.

https://www.gog.com/promo/20170209_special_promo_city_builders_sale

I have a couple of copies of Tropico 5 with Steam codes that I'd trade for $5

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

Northgard on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/466560/)

New city builder will be entering early access in 11 days.

This is funny, because I just started playing banished again this weekend. I hadn't played in forever. I got the Colonial Charter mod and the Mega mod of Steam workshop, which adds a bunch of choices (really maybe too much). This first city, I was trying to settle on a theme, and failed dramatically. Almost every set of homes are different than the next. Playing again also reminded me how frustrating trying to find the correct buildings in the button menu.

Still a fun game, but I am so rusty. Every time my population hit above 120, I would hit a starvation death spiral. I'm obviously doing something wrong, most likely with my crop fields. I'm probably going to start over this afternoon, after looking at more tips and hints to refresh my memory.

I am going to try the supposedly really hard Shipwrekced satrte from the latest 1.7 CC and see how it works.

This is funny, because I just started playing banished again this weekend. I hadn't played in forever. I got the Colonial Charter mod and the Mega mod of Steam workshop, which adds a bunch of choices (really maybe too much). This first city, I was trying to settle on a theme, and failed dramatically. Almost every set of homes are different than the next. Playing again also reminded me how frustrating trying to find the correct buildings in the button menu.

Still a fun game, but I am so rusty. Every time my population hit above 120, I would hit a starvation death spiral. I'm obviously doing something wrong, most likely with my crop fields. I'm probably going to start over this afternoon, after looking at more tips and hints to refresh my memory. I'd always keep a Gatherers Hut in each forestry circle, and toggle that amount of workers as needed. Trying to get cute early with the food supply risked a supply interruption, and it's not like the game requires a varied diet for health - always good to have those nuts & berries in reserve! The more annoying part for me was to remember to bring housing supply online slowly & consistently... never fun when you realize that you have a glut of people who went through childbearing age without making babies because they were still living with the parents.

I am going to try the supposedly really hard Shipwrekced satrte from the latest 1.7 CC and see how it works.Do any of these present continual challenges? I had a lot of fun with challenging starts (like Harsh winters, Mountainous, 2? family start), but once (if!) you get past those first few challenging winters it kinda just turns back in to a regular game.

https://s3.postimg.org/vsvftzddf/Shipwrecked.png

Here's a pic of my starting space.

Options are here for starting the game:

http://blackliquidsoftware.com/index.php?/topic/893-new-game-settings-terrain-climate-size-starting-conditions/

I'd always keep a Gatherers Hut in each forestry circle, and toggle that amount of workers as needed. Trying to get cute early with the food supply risked a supply interruption, and it's not like the game requires a varied diet for health - always good to have those nuts & berries in reserve! The more annoying part for me was to remember to bring housing supply online slowly & consistently... never fun when you realize that you have a glut of people who went through childbearing age without making babies because they were still living with the parents.

I was doing that as well. I had a huge food supply system and couldn't figure out why I would get into those spirals. I read up and figured out what I was doing wrong: markets. You need markets to evenly distribute food, and had never even built one. So, people where hoarding food in their houses, and when I had a population jump people would starve. Simple mistake from not playing for too long.

Northgard on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/466560/)

New city builder will be entering early access in 11 days.

I picked this up on release. The game is currently missing a lot of features (multi-player, campaign, diplomacy) but what's there is definitely fun. It's a game to keep an eye on.

I just finished full textile industry in the last few years I got white mulberry, and flax, and cotton, plus I have a couple of sheep pastures, so I have everything made from 3 silkworm huts to all sorts of weaving the best clothes, rug making, rope making, oil making, and so forth. I'm basically set.

I'm thinking about starting up a Desert start or native start.

Here's a sample Desert start I'm considering. I chose Desert, Arid, and Antilles, sparse resources to set up the map. Note the palpable lack of pretty much any resources, from lakes to wood. This is also a hard start with just 4 families and no seeds, livestock or anything built.

https://s8.postimg.org/a89og0ulh/Desert_Start_banished.png

I'm currently doing the opposite thing(Very Harsh + Bleak Mountains), and also the Adam & Eve beginning(two people at the start). When it's freezing or below more than half of the year productivity is unimpressive. Still mostly just a challenge to get everything going of course, get enough people and things start taking off, but I think Banished is quite interesting still.

Totally agree, and I love the idea of an A&E start, haven't gotten to it yet though

I'm sorely tempted by Life is Feudal:Forest Village. It looks enough like Banished to almost be a ripoff, but it's so pretty and it has castles so I can forgive the ripoff.

I'm sorely tempted by Life is Feudal:Forest Village. It looks enough like Banished to almost be a ripoff, but it's so pretty and it has castles so I can forgive the ripoff.


Please tell me if you like it. Looks interesting.

Please tell me if you like it. Looks interesting.

I held off buying until it went on sale. 40% off in the Steam Xmas sale, so finally pulled the trigger.

It's very like Banished. It's what Banished II would have been like if it was made, much the same game but with better graphics and more options. It's a ripped off idea, really.

Quick thoughts:

I'm trying it right now. Not a super big fan of the UI.


It has a lot of the same gaming conventions. From how to send people to work to how to cut and grab items. You need to build more houses for them to spawn. Even a snowflake over the house to tell you it needs firewood. Gatherer's huts? Sure. With a limited range? Sure. Forester's lodge? Sure. Hunters? Fishers? Sure. A few minor changes. Need water to farm crops, for example. It's more 3d so you have to worry about raising and lowering land as well. Different food has different calorie counts that reflect their value in eating and feeding your people. There's a bear right outside my camp, not sure if it is distrubing it or not though. Looks like people assigned to work a site aren;t gathering supplies to make it from your storage, so you have to have laborers open too.

I don;t like that my zoomed out function isn't zoomy enough if that makes sense. Rain looks prettier. So far I feel like the options and such are a little more robust thatn the inital Banished game, but nowhere near the amount of it modded.

I do like the idea of getting more seeds and such, not with trading posts, but instead by sending out expeditions. We've all had to wait for the right trader for years.

Like Banished I'm never not playing on teh fastest speed, and it still feels slow. Have to wait like 90 seconds for some buildings to finish on the fastest speed.

One change is you can click on a person, take control of them, and then in 3d do the tasks they are supposed to do, faster and better if that's your thing.


You have to do some tasks manually that were automatic in Banished.


It looks like Hunters have defensive capabilities and aren't jsut bringing down deer but also help to protect your cattle and such from wild animals and reduce your chance fo getting rabies, which is rpetty cool

Different crops have different requirements, such as temperature and moisture.I'm currently growing taters.

You'll need to grow the right food for your animals. Oats for pigs, hay for cattle, etc. You can turn off your people eating a certain good just by simply double clicking that food item.

Fisherman can outfish their area and need to relocate.

Bigger buildings take a ton more resources than Banished ones do, and the game sort of plays slower as a result. Also, fewer time in a year, I have been playing the same game for 45 mintues, still in year 2.

Don't sleep on making fences


My quick summative comment


If you are looking for another Banished, Tropico, and city builder, than this game isn't detailed enough, has the right UI, and so forth. It's also way too slow. You could put hours and hours and hours into one island, and still not have it really fleshed out yet.


However, if you are looking for a 3d builder that you can explore, see the places you built, build it up over time, sort of really live with in in major ways, then it's better.


It's design elements are good if you want to build walls, battlements, enclosures, and more. It's more build-y and design-y than it is manage-y if that makes sense.


I'm more of a zoomed out, play Tropico or Banished or SimCity over this. But it has a lot of value for those looking for something more about building up and growing. It reminds me of this one scenario I once made for RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 that took up the entire map, had everything unlocked, and I spent like 75 hours making the perfect park. That's how this game feels to me.



Now there are some things I'm not a fan of (terraforming the ground in order to build on it if it's not straight) but the design does have some interesting options, and you can see the benefits of it in some options out there, and I hope the mods will make it a little more robust.

Oh, and all of my villagers are wearing Santa hats too, btw



And I've had three crashes to desktop today while playing it as well

8 years on guys and I finally put my first 10 game hours into Banished! I feel like I should get a cookie or something. I had struggled to get into it back in the day. Happy I finally got some time to get back to it this week. Made it though year 6 in my first go around so far.

It’s such a great game.

Picked up this one that's still in early access. Kingdoms Reborn on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1307890/Kingdoms_Reborn/)

It's got a deckbuilding mechanic to it, and AI opponents, so depending on where you decide to start relative to their positions (and the level you choose) you could have a peaceful buildup until the late game or a cutthroat one from the start for territory to expand into.

Picked up this one that's still in early access. Kingdoms Reborn on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1307890/Kingdoms_Reborn/)

It's got a deckbuilding mechanic to it, and AI opponents, so depending on where you decide to start relative to their positions (and the level you choose) you could have a peaceful buildup until the late game or a cutthroat one from the start for territory to expand into.

How is the learning curve? I struggle with games that take a long time to learn the mechanics. Is it super micro managy or pretty easy to work through turns?

If you've played a Banished or anything like that it's super intuitive. You get a 3 minute? timer countdown which gives you a selection of cards to choose from, but whenever you research a technology you also have the option to buy the card outright so it's never a huge hindrance. If you're near other opponents early there's time pressure to expand before they do, but if you're not you can play at a very relaxed pace with no worries.

Like Banished I'd say it's only difficult if you put yourself in a tough starting position, but this at least adds some mid-late game options instead of feeling very much like once you get over the initial hump it turns into the same experience every time.

Still EA and in active development too, so hopefully the AI does continue improving or more is added in. Has a multiplayer mode too, that might be a fun challenge but not something I've ever tried.

Can you pause the timer?

Yes you can pause the game and select building sites etc.