Banished by Shining Rock Software

Yonder wrote:

Hey look! The houses have a scrollbar!

Speaking of houses, I am so screwed (year 22).

I have 17 adults, and 11 houses. 8 of those houses are old men living alone, only three families.

I have a Boarding House for house spillover. That way peeps can reproduce as they like.

I hope.

Still limping along, although the food stockpile from the time of plenty have gotten very low.

Eliah the Herdsman was trampled by livestock

At the time I got this message my only animal was A SINGLE CHICKEN. That must have been the weirdest (and slowest) trampling ever.

I think Eliah committed suicide to avoid my wrath when I found out that my chicken pen had somehow gone from full (14 chickens) to empty (1 chicken). I don't understand how this happened, I've continuously had a herdsman tending this (my only) pasture, and I didn't get any notice about livestock sickness. I did have two quick "herdsman die from old age" in a row, so maybe even though the job was filled right away each time the replacement didn't get to them for several seasons? This is especially possible if the replacement was from the town center really far away from my pasture...

Possible issue i've identified is, a couple can grow quite a large family in one house, but no second couple seems to be able to form in a house once an adult or adult couple has staked ownership.

So old man and marriagable boy in one house, middle aged couple and marriagable girl in 2nd house. Boy and Girl won't get together unless you build a 3rd house. I think a lot of folks are runnin into problems cause they're basing houses on population count which is typical for a game like this, but this game is basing it's population growth mechanics on a 21st century American concept of you don't get hitched and make babies till you have your own house.

It's a concept that doesn't fit the period of the game very well.

Said boy and girl above really should get hitched and live in the boy's dad's house...i mean the house is goin to waste with the just the soon to be dad by himself till he dies and someone else can move in...

So in order to produce babies, a boy and a girl have to have an empty house they can move into together. At least that's how it seems to me. It's like a trigger mechanism.

Dean "Rocket" Hall (via Twitter) wrote:

I hope I can make a game half as good as Banished during my career. It's absolutely fantastic. @ShiningRockSoft

YES! Agreed. Man, this game is sucking my playtime away.

50 years. The village is now completely self sufficient, no more ripping down trees or ranging outside the village to gather stone and iron. The mine runs at full capacity, we have grown many varieties of crops, nuts and fruits. We have cattle to provide leather, chickens to provide eggs, and sheep to provide wool, not to mention plentiful meats to sustain our tirelessly working citizens. We've even welcomed wanderers to join our community, people not unlike our original settlers.

Little did we know these swine brought plague and death amidst their company. Measles they call it. We were prosperous for a time, but now all our hopes and dreams lay in ruin. Damn the outsiders, damn them all. Never again shall we hold our hand out in friendship, for through those same hands the devil does his work unto us.

What lesson have we learned? Get a darn physician or two!

My village is now 34 years old, and we are finally through the low period. For five years now my population has been close to a nice, stable 16/4/4. We seem to have recovered from the decade of unstable and dangerous population of 24 adults and no children that first occurred more than 20 years ago. Twelve years ago we had a population of 17/0/3, but now we have a healthy pipeline indeed.

I did have three woman due in childbirth in the last few years, I hope that doesn't put too much of a damper in my recovery.

For those who haven't played yet and are confused at how what I describe is possible, you actually have a village of (apparently) dog people, because they age 5+ time faster than your weather calendar. In my 34 year village I've seen... I dunno, five generations, six?

Year 14:
Managed to clear 100 citizens. My biggest problem is firewood. I've got 3 woodcutters (only assign 1 person/building? Weird.) but always run low in the winter. My two foresters (with eight workers) are keeping up with the wood okay, but not great. They also require a large part of the small map I'm playing. Should have gone big.

Not crazy about my town layout either. I feel a fresh start coming on.

IMAGE(http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3336343713705733307/1DD64AEA5DE7C0F843DC37EA54AE59C9979BD11B/)

Last town: about 10 uneducated peasants with no tools slowly dying from starvation because of the dreaded demographic death spiral.

New town: nearly 120 educated citizens rocking steel tools and chilling out in stone houses, getting their needs at a central marketplace, all while working in a stone quarry, a coal mine, and an iron mine. Heck, we've even managed to get chicken and sheep pastures as well as a walnut orchard going the last couple of years.

The only problem is that we had a bit of a population boom and, well, the only thing keeping us from starving during the winters is that I buy out the stock of food from whatever trader comes (firewood, it's like printing money). The good thing is that having a lot of people makes it really easy to expand. Over the course of one winter I was able to build a bridge to a new section of flat land and completely clear it out in preparation for some serious potato farms (once that trader brings me my spud seeds).

Now I just have to hope that I can keep the firewood flowing so everyone doesn't starve!

The trader does seem to be a key means for success once you've stocked up on enough resources. I'm able to trade excess beef and assorted vegetables for pretty much anything I require (minerals, tools, seeds) whenever a merchant with a variety of goods comes down the river. Food is my main export because I'm generally sitting on about 30k regardless of season.

My main focus now is expanding outward and creating self sufficient hamlets. I put up a stone road, a marketplace in the middle, a couple homes, and a variety of crops around it. I may even need to build a new church soon. Next stop, 300 citizens.

Ok, getting this game for the weekend. You guys have enabled me.

OG_slinger wrote:

New town: nearly 120 educated citizens rocking steel tools and chilling out in stone houses, getting their needs at a central marketplace, all while working in a stone quarry, a coal mine, and an iron mine. Heck, we've even managed to get chicken and sheep pastures as well as a walnut orchard going the last couple of years.

Nice!

I'm currently on year 6 with about 35 citizens. My most recent buildings are a stone quarry (3-4 workers) and a trading post, although a trader has not yet come by my town.

Panorama time:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/uIOrhm8.jpg)

So, sounds like people want the game to be modded so people age for real. I can see that being interesting, but you'd probably also want to mod in a 20x time speed.

Yeah, it would totally flip the time-scales, I think. There's quite a lot linked to a season, rather than a year. I don't mind it the way it is. 12-13 seasons for a child to become useful, or 50 seasons?

I am highly distressed that people may appear to age faster than 1 year in a year....this is potentially highly disturbing and funky.

I think they age one year per season. That's a pretty common tactic in games like this, so that your population grows faster and your generations don't take so long. One full generation in that system is about 7.5 years, instead of 30.

Enjoying reading these posts.

Regarding the population, does it go down to the level where your people have names and family trees etc ? , or is it just like 2 peasants, 3 blacksmiths etc. ?

Jacknine wrote:

Enjoying reading these posts.

Regarding the population, does it go down to the level where your people have names and family trees etc ? , or is it just like 2 peasants, 3 blacksmiths etc. ?

They have names, though family trees don't seem to be a (large?) part of it.

@mr_n00b
How did you get that POV of your town? I can't zoom out that far.

A free camera for screenshots would be a nice mod.

You can zoom out and the tilt the camera slightly with Page Up/Page down. I'm guessing, though, that mr_noob did some funky panaroma-ing in an external application to get the full thing.

Jacknine wrote:

Enjoying reading these posts.

Regarding the population, does it go down to the level where your people have names and family trees etc ? , or is it just like 2 peasants, 3 blacksmiths etc. ?

From what I can see, it goes down only as far as names. If you pay attention to the event list (like I'm assuming NSMike did with his story) you can trace families that way, but there is nothing I can find in-game that lets you track generations or anything like that.

This game married to Crusader Kings would be quite fun.

omnipherous wrote:

You can zoom out and the tilt the camera slightly with Page Up/Page down. I'm guessing, though, that mr_noob did some funky panaroma-ing in an external application to get the full thing.

Nailed it.

Jacknine wrote:

Enjoying reading these posts.

Regarding the population, does it go down to the level where your people have names and family trees etc ? , or is it just like 2 peasants, 3 blacksmiths etc. ?

I just came here to post how much I would absolutely love for the game to generate family trees. For most of these successful villages people are having they wouldn't look like anything special, but with me stubbornly refusing to abandon this almost failed village plagued by gender imbalance helped along by death in childbirth and just recovering from two generations of age instability I have gone through more than 5 generations of villagers with a population that never climbed above 30, and was often 20.

I think my village must be hilariously inbred right now, and I would love to see a diagram of it.

Regarding the population, does it go down to the level where your people have names and family trees etc ?

Well, yes, but name and gender seem to be the only points of differentiation between citizens. They don't have any other (visible) stats, unlike, say, Tropico, with scores for things like intelligence and bravery, and they don't seem to have skill levels, beyond the flag "educated" versus "uneducated".

Citizens in Banished are all pretty much cookie-cutter.

By the way, after many, many tries, I found an excellent large-map seed: 468358963

This starts you with fairly close access to a lake and to hills (for fish and mining), medium-density forest to both the left and right, and an extended flattish area extending out to the left and down. Lots and lots of iron and stone in close proximity, too.

Trading will take some effort, as the actual river is some distance to the south, but at least in my last game, by the time I was ready to trade, the manpower to move the stuff down there wouldn't have been any big deal.

I've encountered a fatal error with my current game, whenever I try to save or the game auto-saves the game crashes. Farewell for now Tontice.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/jAMp8Jt.jpg)

mr_n00b wrote:

I've encountered a fatal error with my current game, whenever I try to save or the game auto-saves the game crashes.

This is happening to many people after a certain point (either once they hit higher populations or many hours on the same map). You can report it and upload your save game here.

Overall, this is remarkably stable code.... bummer about that bug, but really, this code is extremely solid.

Excellent panorama image, mr_noob.

Also, +1 for the addition of a family tree diagram.

Malor wrote:

Overall, this is remarkably stable code.... bummer about that bug, but really, this code is extremely solid.

I have zero experience in the programming languages that are used to make games, but I would think that, in a way, it makes sense that the code is very solid. One person wrote it all, so he surely knows every line of code inside and out.