Banished by Shining Rock Software

You get some graphs if you build the town center, or mayors office, or something like that. On the menu with the school, hospital, etc.

Edit: It's a Town Hall.

Feegle wrote:
garion333 wrote:
RPS wrote:

I know roughly what went wrong, and that is that, during a time of relative plenty, I actively chased expansion rather than first laying all the groundwork which would support it.

Game. Over.

I'll reserve judgment on the rest of what he said until I've played more.

I'm honestly not sure how what he said would be any different about a game like Caesar, or SimCity. Aren't those effectively spreadsheet games as well?

Yes, but this spreadsheet didn't have enough spreadsheet to determine why the spreadsheets were hungry for other spreadsheets while chopping down spreadsheets for burning spreadsheets to keep warm.

In other words, it wasn't quite transparent enough for him and because of that it was more difficult than it could/should have been and took all the fun out of it for him.

Okay, so I got through the tutorials and started up a game on medium difficulty. Looks like I'm on year 3 currently, somehow surviving the last couple winters with a stockpile of food and people making babies. I'm sitting at 17/0/9 for population right now with full health and happiness, so I guess I'm doing okay for a first try?

Not quite sure what I think about it so far as I haven't had any disasters come my way yet and everything appears to be manageable. Hopefully that'll change soon as I may have to just start a new town and kick up the difficulty a bit.

EDIT: Huh...now no one is having kids. Looks like I topped out at 30 population.

NSMike wrote:

But it appears, sadly, that this village will succumb to dying of old age. Guess I didn't make enough room for young breeders.

I've been playing exclusively on hard. My first game ended after a few years with probably 1/4 starvation, 3/4 freezing to death. My second game I got the firewood up early, but just barely didn't get enough food, do we slowly starved to death.

My third game is a bit over 16 years in, and we just pushed through our own old age crisis. I think that we are definitely safe now though. We went from 25 adults to 17 over a couple of years, the result of my 4 to 8 house baby boom dying off at around the same time (and a couple of their children starved to death).

Luckily the boomers had the village in a good state before they started doing off, 4600 food stored away and three well maintained forests. The downside was that all the local stone and iron was used up, so the walk to those resources was long, AND we ran out of tools at the same time, so the work took a long time as well. Due to those stockpiles though, I was able to pull more than half of my food and forestry citizens off duty and we got a quarry and mine up close to the town.

Our food dipped to 2700 at the nadir, and we ran out of firewood once, but everything is good now. I even have a school and teacher!

One other thing, all those deaths without a cemetery saw our happiness drop from 4.5 to 2, but I didn't see any obvious ramifications.

Lastly, I saw what I'm guessing is the most gentle disaster, a hunter was trampled by a wild boar.

garion333 wrote:
Feegle wrote:

...snip...
I'm honestly not sure how what he said would be any different about a game like Caesar, or SimCity. Aren't those effectively spreadsheet games as well?

Yes, but this spreadsheet didn't have enough spreadsheet to determine why the spreadsheets were hungry for other spreadsheets while chopping down spreadsheets for burning spreadsheets to keep warm.

In other words, it wasn't quite transparent enough for him and because of that it was more difficult than it could/should have been and took all the fun out of it for him.

So... his real complaint was "I'm not smart enough for this game?"

It's challenging, I get it, but it's not stupid frustrating challenging, like Dark Souls or anything. I guess I just don't see the difficulty that he does.

CptDomano wrote:

EDIT: Huh...now no one is having kids. Looks like I topped out at 30 population.

Look at their ages? Might have to wait until the kids get older and marry.

Feegle wrote:

I'm honestly not sure how what he said would be any different about a game like Caesar, or SimCity. Aren't those effectively spreadsheet games as well?

Well, after spending some more time with it, I'd call it similar to those games, but much less forgiving. Your citizens aren't very productive, and your margins of error are quite low. It's almost impossible to kill off your whole population in Caesar and Simcity... it's very easy in Banished. Getting your various industries balanced is not easy, and there's not much info available on what's going on... you need to build a mental model of your economy, rather than having the game do it for you.

For the most part, SimCity and Caesar are exercises in how successful you are, rather than whether or not your city succeeds at all.

garion333 wrote:
Feegle wrote:
garion333 wrote:
RPS wrote:

I know roughly what went wrong, and that is that, during a time of relative plenty, I actively chased expansion rather than first laying all the groundwork which would support it.

Game. Over.

I'll reserve judgment on the rest of what he said until I've played more.

I'm honestly not sure how what he said would be any different about a game like Caesar, or SimCity. Aren't those effectively spreadsheet games as well?

Yes, but this spreadsheet didn't have enough spreadsheet to determine why the spreadsheets were hungry for other spreadsheets while chopping down spreadsheets for burning spreadsheets to keep warm.

In other words, it wasn't quite transparent enough for him and because of that it was more difficult than it could/should have been and took all the fun out of it for him.

I'd like to chime in on this, in case anyone is wondering if the game gives you enough information to succeed. I think it absolutely does. The absolutely vital resources are food and firewood, and even without graphs it's simple to keep your eye on food and make sure it's mostly going up.

All of the resources have Limits, and there is a big obvious icon when that limit its hit. That limit is also for storage stuff, not things already claimed by citizens. The houses hold enough fire wood for at least one winter, so if your firewood limit is 200 and your chopper stops working that means that not only does the town have 200 wood, but all the houses are probably good for winter.

Every year you turn on the chopper until it reaches the limit to replace the wood used last year, then take him off the job once he's done.

Once you get into the habit of a quick scan of your important resources now and again it works completely fine.

garion333 wrote:

In other words, it wasn't quite transparent enough for him and because of that it was more difficult than it could/should have been and took all the fun out of it for him.

I actually like the fact that it's not that transparent. I love city builder games, but I hate it when fans break it apart and reduce it down to numbers so they can build the "optimal" town.

I will, however, say that RPS' criticism about making you dig for information about who died is kinda spot on. When there's only a few dozen people in a town, it should be big news when someone gets ill or dies. That and you really need to know if there's a critical position that's no longer filled. Those tidbits of essential information tend to get lost when you're cruising at 5 or 10X speed. Hell, I'd take a simple year-end/New Year screen that summarized the big events of the year: births, deaths, etc.

garion333 wrote:
CptDomano wrote:

EDIT: Huh...now no one is having kids. Looks like I topped out at 30 population.

Look at their ages? Might have to wait until the kids get older and marry.

Your houses are probably full (and I'm guessing that you have six houses). If not, it may also be a gender issue, I also have a couple of bachelor's living alone because I don't have as many women.

OG_slinger wrote:
garion333 wrote:

In other words, it wasn't quite transparent enough for him and because of that it was more difficult than it could/should have been and took all the fun out of it for him.

I actually like the fact that it's not that transparent. I love city builder games, but I hate it when fans break it apart and reduce it down to numbers so they can build the "optimal" town.

I will, however, say that RPS' criticism about making you dig for information about who died is kinda spot on. When there's only a few dozen people in a town, it should be big news when someone gets ill or dies. That and you really need to know if there's a critical position that's no longer filled. Those tidbits of essential information tend to get lost when you're cruising at 5 or 10X speed. Hell, I'd take a simple year-end/New Year screen that summarized the big events of the year: births, deaths, etc.

Do you have the event panel up?

Yonder wrote:
garion333 wrote:
CptDomano wrote:

EDIT: Huh...now no one is having kids. Looks like I topped out at 30 population.

Look at their ages? Might have to wait until the kids get older and marry.

Your houses are probably full (and I'm guessing that you have six houses). If not, it may also be a gender issue, I also have a couple of bachelor's living alone because I don't have as many women.

It was the first one--I plopped down a few houses and got 6 kids before the next season even started

CptDomano wrote:
Yonder wrote:
garion333 wrote:
CptDomano wrote:

EDIT: Huh...now no one is having kids. Looks like I topped out at 30 population.

Look at their ages? Might have to wait until the kids get older and marry.

Your houses are probably full (and I'm guessing that you have six houses). If not, it may also be a gender issue, I also have a couple of bachelor's living alone because I don't have as many women.

It was the first one--I plopped down a few houses and got 6 kids before the next season even started :lol:

Population won't grow without new houses, but only when the kids in existing houses come of age. That age, however can be as low as about 10-12 (hey, times were tough).

I love the tough population balance. You need people to work the buildings and resources, but your food and firewood requirements can spike drastically before you know it.

Loving this so far.

Yonder wrote:

Do you have the event panel up?

There's an event panel?

Yup, under the Tools and Reports (F2) menu:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/I34lBv3.png)

It'll bring up the panel, then just drag that off to the corner and you'll have a running list of everything happening--births, deaths, etc.

Plus you'll get icons appearing to the left of the clock whenever an important event happens.

CptDomano wrote:

Yup, under the Tools and Reports (F2) menu:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/I34lBv3.png)

It'll bring up the panel, then just drag that off to the corner and you'll have a running list of everything happening--births, deaths, etc.

Well that seems like it would be helpful! Thanks!

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Plus you'll get icons appearing to the left of the clock whenever an important event happens.

Quit nagging me about the lack of food and firewood!! We wouldn't be in this mess if you lazy SOB's would work harder!

I keep the log and the info panels up all the time. The log lets me know when I have another worker available to gather wood work in the mines hunt work on the farm. The info panel lets me know that winter is coming. Always.

So, 5 people per house is the limit, then? I built 3, and build another when someone shows as "homeless".

Also, am I right in thinking that the shops (Blacksmith, tailor, etc.) aren't also homes for those workers, just places of work?

Feegle wrote:

Also, am I right in thinking that the shops (Blacksmith, tailor, etc.) aren't also homes for those workers, just places of work?

That is correct, shops are not homes.

Here's my bustling metropolis, early summer, year 15 (click to embiggen):

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/t4zhxGfl.jpg)

My biggest problem is that I have TOO MUCH food. I started with a "forest center" with foresters, hunters and gathererers, then expanded to a second when I wasn't getting enough hides to make coats. And I added an herbalist.

Problem now is that I'm swimming in venison. Not to mention beans and pecans after I planted. I have to keep shuffling them between the storage barn and the trading outpost storage.

I think maybe I just need a second barn or something. The goods shuffling is driving me crazy.

Also, it seems that 8 foresters in 2 managed forests are not enough to keep up with the demand for firewood for my 62 citizens. That doesn't seem right.

Anyway, I think I'm done with this town, because it's on a small map and I'm starting to run out of room. I only really have one more area suitable for a forester, and if I grow much more, the firewood demands are going to limit growth.

Hmm... I just had an idea. What if I switched to stone houses...

So do i have to build the quary and mine right away or something? No ability to get any stone and iron once out of initial supply unless mine and quarry? Or am i missing something...

Think i made a mistake building houses first at this point as i seem to be able to bring in 0 iron and stone required to actually build the mine and quarry now.

Feegle wrote:

So, 5 people per house is the limit, then? I built 3, and build another when someone shows as "homeless".

No, AFAICT it's 1 family per house. If a couple has no kids, there will only be 2 people living there.

Fuzzballx wrote:

So do i have to build the quary and mine right away or something? No ability to get any stone and iron once out of initial supply unless mine and quarry? Or am i missing something...

Think i made a mistake building houses first at this point as i seem to be able to bring in 0 iron and stone required to actually build the mine and quarry now.

I believe that laborers or builders (not sure which) will get stone from boulders. A quarry, from what I can tell, is something that lets you access stone beneath the surface.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Fuzzballx wrote:

So do i have to build the quary and mine right away or something? No ability to get any stone and iron once out of initial supply unless mine and quarry? Or am i missing something...

Think i made a mistake building houses first at this point as i seem to be able to bring in 0 iron and stone required to actually build the mine and quarry now.

I believe that laborers or builders (not sure which) will get stone from boulders. A quarry, from what I can tell, is something that lets you access stone beneath the surface.

That's what he means about the initial supply, those stones and iron will run out on the surface.

Err, my Wood Cutter building says that "the materials required to perform work are not available." I'm confused. Does it mean Tools? I have tools in my barn.

I assumed that initial supply meant the content of your starting stock pile. It's hard to run out of surface boulders, you'll just have to go further.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Err, my Wood Cutter building says that "the materials required to perform work are not available." I'm confused. Does it mean Tools? I have tools in my barn.

That probably means you are out of logs. Did you build a Wood Cutter building when you meant a Forestry lodge?

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Feegle wrote:

So, 5 people per house is the limit, then? I built 3, and build another when someone shows as "homeless".

No, AFAICT it's 1 family per house. If a couple has no kids, there will only be 2 people living there.

1 family per house, but that house fills up with five members. You'll have grown children living with their parents if you don't build more homes.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Fuzzballx wrote:

So do i have to build the quary and mine right away or something? No ability to get any stone and iron once out of initial supply unless mine and quarry? Or am i missing something...

Think i made a mistake building houses first at this point as i seem to be able to bring in 0 iron and stone required to actually build the mine and quarry now.

I believe that laborers or builders (not sure which) will get stone from boulders. A quarry, from what I can tell, is something that lets you access stone beneath the surface.

Stone and iron are strewn all over the landscape, you just need to get a quarry and mine as the walk to the virgin landscape becomes prohibitive.

BadKen wrote:

I think maybe I just need a second barn or something. The goods shuffling is driving me crazy.

Also, it seems that 8 foresters in 2 managed forests are not enough to keep up with the demand for firewood for my 62 citizens. That doesn't seem right.

1. A market has a lot of storage too, and will actively pull in goods when employed. I would definitely build that before you build a second barn.

2. The 8 workers are probably not helping much. While you can use a lot of workers at first, when rocks and iron need to be removed and trees need to be planted, once they are maintaining an established forest 2 workers are more than enough to keep pace with the aging trees, and more won't give you any benefit.

It's also possible that your trees haven't started adding yet. Especially if you created a brand new forest you may not have actually started getting wood yet. If you watch the forests for a season or two do you see/hear any trees coming down?

I have 30 citizens 8 wood and 2 stone houses, and three forests are keeping me nicely stocked with a surplus for expansion (and I have been exporting firewood because the last two stupid merchants wouldn't buy venison). From my firewood exports and construction I think that 3 forests would probably keep me going at 60 people even with wooden houses, although I probably wouldn't have much extra left over.

Ohhhhhh, they chop logs there, not trees. Thanks, I misread.