Banished - town building colonization survival game

[trader/warrior]

My first succesful village rather ironically named Grimstead (Not so much for Grimstead 1-3. RIP). Up to 150 population in year 23.

The original starting point and core area of Grimstead. You might notice that I've actually wiped out all pine trees in the area between the stream and the river where the main town is. Nice detail that they can't spread back, also makes the land seem a bit more domesticated.

Wider overview with surroundings

I'm trying to establish a more decentralized economy with large outskirts and farmsteads and multiple villages. I've found that farms work quite well far away from the village centers, with the farmers consistently staying at their farms for the farming season, then head in to market to resupply and go about their laborer tasks during the off-season.

Even farther away is the beginnings of my first attempt at a second village; Grimlake.

Heading a huge building project far out in the wilderness was a huge exertion for the population, testing the long built up stores of the village.

 

[trader/warrior]

In other news, citizens from a farm outside Grimstead claimed to have witnessed a miracle as a young walnut orchard seems to have sprouted beans of all things. Clearly divine intervention. Although cynics might say it was probably just some beans from the next door bean field that were misplaced by a lazy farmer.

 

[warpus]

According to steam I played Banished for about 18 hours

My last city was the most interesting and the one I spent the most time playing, I think. It was during this gameplay that I figured out optimal placement for markets, houses, and food generation buildings. It allowed my city to expand to about 90, at which point a tornado killed about half of the goddamn city. The rebound was easy but fun to guide and next thing I know I have 160 people... and then next thing I know THE WHOLE GODDAMN TOWN starves to death. I'm not really sure what happened and maybe 20 people survived, but it put me off the game for a while. There was also a stretch there where I didn't have any students and only 2 kids and everybody in the town was in their 60s and 70s.. I thought I was doomed... until a band of wandering kids showed up at my town hall and saved my butt.

It was very fun figuring out proper placements of things in terms of how you can grow your city to a large size. but once you've got things figured out? The steps to get there aren't as exciting for me. It was definitely worth the $20 and I got a lot out of it, but I wish it had more replayability value. It feels like it needs more meat in there somewhere, and by that I definitely do not mean more micromanagement. I guess mods are coming, but I just want more stuff now.

My terms are unrealistic and I will probably play this game some more in the next couple weeks & months to come and I do bow to the developer for being so awesome and putting out a decent damn game

 

[Antilogic]

My main frustrations are still stock handling. I want to be able to direct stock from one place to another and set priorities and put bans on certain gods in certain stores.

You and me both. I don't have a pic of it, but I had a stockpile near the woodcutters that was supposed to be for the wood generated by my forester, and a stockpile right next to the quarry for the stone. Turns out the stone stockpile was a tiny bit closer than the wood one when road travel was taken into account, so my foresters started dumping all their wood right next to the quarry.

In other news, citizens from a farm outside Grimstead claimed to have witnessed a miracle as a young walnut orchard seems to have sprouted beans of all things. Clearly divine intervention. Although cynics might say it was probably just some beans from the next door bean field that were misplaced by a lazy farmer.

Spoiler :

I think this happens when a farmer assigned to one field finishes his task and then goes to help out on another field. I have a bunch of crossover plants.

I also learned that if you change the type of tree planted in an orchard, they won't cut down all the existing trees and replant new ones immediately. I was really confused why my pecan orchard was producing peaches until I watched the workers start cutting down the trees after awhile.

I favor orchards over crop farming--it takes longer for the food to come in, but they require significantly less labor for maintenance.

...

My terms are unrealistic and I will probably play this game some more in the next couple weeks & months to come and I do bow to the developer for being so awesome and putting out a decent damn game

I've started up a second small town on a harsh mountain map to try for that achievement, and it's playing a bit differently than my big Ashdown map. At the very least, I'd give that objective a shot.

I do think there is plenty of room for expansion maintaining the core vision the designer put up (stuff like furniture, carts to increase carrying capacity linked to specific buildings/fields, glass manufacturing, etc.). I think the game would also be a more significant challenge if happiness dropped quicker or had a more tangible effect on the game. As I've played, it's been trivially easy for me to maintain at least 4/5 happiness. Poor health due to low food variety and lack of herbs was a much more significant problem. Putting a greater emphasis on happiness would force the player to make some more interesting tradeoffs in the middle period of your development (after the initial concerns of gathering and firewood are handled).

I'm happy to say, though, I'm a fan of the game. Can't wait to see how it develops from here.

 

[sophie]

Things I would like to see now that I've put some time into the game:

More transport options, as mentioned above. This game seems to favor having a bunch of little village/hamlets bringing in the bread to the main center. So I would love to say, set my town up on a river, then build a forest RGO up river and be able to punt supplies down to the center. On this end it would be nice to have some kind of actual currency, if only to make trade a little more interesting. Being able to sell/buy wood and stone would be nice.

More to do in the later game. Surviving the first 30ish years or so are great fun, but I would love more options for turning that burgeoning town into an actual city. Diagonal roads, more options for things to do with city squares (for example the ability to build actual plazas), more expensive (but also more aesthetic) housing options, noble or elite palaces, multi-story rowed houses/apartments. Basically once you reach a point in the game where you're no longer worrying about surviving, all you're doing essentially is sitting around waiting for a disaster to hit so you can clean up after it. I would love to have more things to do later on.

 

[Antilogic]

Things I would like to see now that I've put some time into the game:

More transport options, as mentioned above. This game seems to favor having a bunch of little village/hamlets bringing in the bread to the main center. So I would love to say, set my town up on a river, then build a forest RGO up river and be able to punt supplies down to the center. On this end it would be nice to have some kind of actual currency, if only to make trade a little more interesting. Being able to sell/buy wood and stone would be nice.

More to do in the later game. Surviving the first 30ish years or so are great fun, but I would love more options for turning that burgeoning town into an actual city. Diagonal roads, more options for things to do with city squares (for example the ability to build actual plazas), more expensive (but also more aesthetic) housing options, noble or elite palaces, multi-story rowed houses/apartments. Basically once you reach a point in the game where you're no longer worrying about surviving, all you're doing essentially is sitting around waiting for a disaster to hit so you can clean up after it. I would love to have more things to do later on.

Agreed on the rest, but on the bolded the resource merchant sometimes shows up with stone and logs for purchase (as well as iron, coal, and firewood). You can specifically request logs or stone every time that merchant shows up, but it will cost you more (I think 20-25% more).



I just got the Mountain Men achievement by a slim margin, after my population suffered a massive 30+ tool shortage despite 2 blacksmiths going full power making the best steel tools available, which caused my food gathers to lose efficiency to the point where I had nearly 70 deaths from starvation. I was really getting frustrated with the town here, since I had the capacity and the machine just fell apart.

Oh well, time to abandon Pine Mountain and go back to Ashdown.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I feel like noble or elite palaces, or even palaces in general would kind of go against the game's atmosphere. This game has a very egalitarian, communal, small town feel to it. More buildings would be good, but it shouldn't clash with what already exists in the game.

Also you lucky bastards, making it past 30 years My towns always seem to hit a sore spot around 20 years, or 80 adults, whichever comes first. I end up running out of food because I'm establishing mines to deal with stone and iron shortages, and I never have enough people to staff either.

 

[Antilogic]

Playing on large valley maps helps because there are a lot of surface stone and iron resources you can take advantage of. My experience on a smaller mountain map has been pretty depressing.

EDIT: Maybe instead of palaces, a row-housing option that fits the same number of people into a 3x5 slot instead of a 4x5 slot. Will increase population density by about 33% in downtown areas, could be important if more significant industries are implemented later or or for large farming communities that require a lot of labor.

 

[sophie]

I feel like noble or elite palaces, or even palaces in general would kind of go against the game's atmosphere. This game has a very egalitarian, communal, small town feel to it. More buildings would be good, but it shouldn't clash with what already exists in the game.

Also you lucky bastards, making it past 30 years My towns always seem to hit a sore spot around 20 years, or 80 adults, whichever comes first. I end up running out of food because I'm establishing mines to deal with stone and iron shortages, and I never have enough people to staff either.

Yeah, it's more of a rowhouse-y feel, but larger houses would be appreciated too. I suppose it depends on how you see the game/what you want out of it. If you see it as a communal egalitarian thing then it makes sense, but I'd like it as a city-builder game set in (presumably) High Medieval Times with a much more brutal realism than you would typically get in an Impressions or Maxis builder, and I like the idea of taking a simple fishing village, struggling for years, and watching it evolve into a proper Medieval Urban Center. But that's just me, I guess.

 

[Antilogic]

To be honest, I couldn't figure out if this game is set in the medieval period or in the modern times and people are just exiled from the traditional centers of civilization.

I kind of like that ambiguity.

I also like the idea of adding city beautification (as mentioned upthread, I put orchards in my city center for precisely this reason) and increasing density of housing coupled with industry that demands more labor. Say a tailor or a blacksmith could employ up to three people, or city hall requires a staff to compile all those statistics, and so on. Say there were also mills to process grains, and butcher shops to process meat, and so on. In that case, there would be a natural need for players to build up density in their towns to support the infrastructure that comes with it.

 

[Antilogic]

Got lucky here:

I'm dropping wells like they are going out of style, I figure with a name like Ashdown I am just tempting fate. I just accepted over 50 nomads and hit the 600 pop goal.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Playing on large valley maps helps because there are a lot of surface stone and iron resources you can take advantage of. My experience on a smaller mountain map has been pretty depressing.

Yeah, I've been playing on valley large maps this whole time, I think I just need to nail a balanced growth model.

Yeah, it's more of a rowhouse-y feel, but larger houses would be appreciated too. I suppose it depends on how you see the game/what you want out of it. If you see it as a communal egalitarian thing then it makes sense, but I'd like it as a city-builder game set in (presumably) High Medieval Times with a much more brutal realism than you would typically get in an Impressions or Maxis builder, and I like the idea of taking a simple fishing village, struggling for years, and watching it evolve into a proper Medieval Urban Center. But that's just me, I guess.

To be honest, I couldn't figure out if this game is set in the medieval period or in the modern times and people are just exiled from the traditional centers of civilization.

I kind of like that ambiguity.

I also like the idea of adding city beautification (as mentioned upthread, I put orchards in my city center for precisely this reason) and increasing density of housing coupled with industry that demands more labor. Say a tailor or a blacksmith could employ up to three people, or city hall requires a staff to compile all those statistics, and so on. Say there were also mills to process grains, and butcher shops to process meat, and so on. In that case, there would be a natural need for players to build up density in their towns to support the infrastructure that comes with it.

I can see that ambiguity as well, I always treated it either as people being Banished in modern times, or like setting up a colony in the new world. But, heh, it really is timeless. Besides specific construction techniques, or the use of iron tools, this could honestly take place anywhere in time. It just consists of the bare essentials of surviving in an agrarian society.

And yeah, those additions would be neat, can't wait to see where he takes this game in the future.

Also, have you guys experimented with overstaffing at all? My friend was asking about this, because it does seem like you can have two people working one blacksmith, but I have no idea what effect that has on tool production at all.

 

[EQandcivfanatic]

I tried overstaffing a blacksmith, and I did not notice any significant increase or decrease in production. I HAVE noticed that overstaffing at harvest time is good for farmers, as it helps clear out crops, especially if you have a lot of fields in play.

The ambiguity of the times is interesting as the architecture could be about anything, though I'd say the presence of a starting wagon, rather than say, a truck, does imply that the setting is pre-combustion engine. Other than that though, could be anywhere from medieval era to a post-apocalyptic world.

 

[Antilogic]

Yeah, I've been playing on valley large maps this whole time, I think I just need to nail a balanced growth model.

I've found that the line between a stable town and a starving hellhole can be quite narrow, keep at it and I'm sure you'll be able to hold on. If it helps, I tend to go for at least two forest RGOs (a full forester, gatherer, and hunter) and a fishing dock or two before I start growing crops.

Dropping down additional stockpiles can increase the rate at which you can gather distant resources (because your laborers will drop them in a nearby stockpile rather than walk all the way to the other side of town with the stuff), although then you are going to want a road so that your laborers can get that back to town quickly when they need it. I've also started buying stone and coal by selling ale, which Ashdown is awash in. I have at least 400 units sitting in my trade port at all times.

You can even make ale out of berries, so theoretically you can start production in your first couple years. Ale is usually worth 8 to trade--not as good as steel tools or heavy coats, but still incredibly valuable compared to the other commodities.

I can see that ambiguity as well, I always treated it either as people being Banished in modern times, or like setting up a colony in the new world. But, heh, it really is timeless. Besides specific construction techniques, or the use of iron tools, this could honestly take place anywhere in time. It just consists of the bare essentials of surviving in an agrarian society.

And yeah, those additions would be neat, can't wait to see where he takes this game in the future.

Also, have you guys experimented with overstaffing at all? My friend was asking about this, because it does seem like you can have two people working one blacksmith, but I have no idea what effect that has on tool production at all.

More than one worker cannot work in the same building (except for food gatherers), so overstaffing tailors, blacksmiths, woodcutters, etc. only provides marginal improvement. Basically, if one guy takes a break to eat food, the other assigned guy will walk over to the building and start working. However, that person could be far away doing laborer tasks so the amount of time saved is minimal.

Overstaffing farmers can be helpful during the harvest, but is otherwise useless, I'll usually assign an extra 5 or so in late summer to help get the harvest in, and take them out during the winter.

The ambiguity of the times is interesting as the architecture could be about anything, though I'd say the presence of a starting wagon, rather than say, a truck, does imply that the setting is pre-combustion engine. Other than that though, could be anywhere from medieval era to a post-apocalyptic world.

My villagers could just be a bunch of Amish people.

 

[EQandcivfanatic]

If they are Amish then why does the person who trades with them use a rowboat?

 

[Maniacal]

Well according to Google, its because they can't use motorboats for their wives.

 

[warpus]

I'm curious, how do you guys deal with stone? All the other resources can be seemingly farmed, and stone can too, but it's just toooo slow. I usually end up building a quarry, but even if I have 10 guys assigned to it, the stone just slowly trickles in.. I never get enough and have to send out teams to far away places to stripmine a new part of the map of all stone... So that's not that bad, but eventually all that stone will be gone.. and what then?

 

[EQandcivfanatic]

I'm curious, how do you guys deal with stone? All the other resources can be seemingly farmed, and stone can too, but it's just toooo slow. I usually end up building a quarry, but even if I have 10 guys assigned to it, the stone just slowly trickles in.. I never get enough and have to send out teams to far away places to stripmine a new part of the map of all stone... So that's not that bad, but eventually all that stone will be gone.. and what then?

Personally I've found a great way to make sure you have all the stone you need is to wait a good long time to make stone houses. Once you have a full 15 guys working a quarry, and can support yourself otherwise, then you can begin the slow building up of the town. I haven't had any problems if I just avoid building stone houses.

 

[warpus]

Personally I've found a great way to make sure you have all the stone you need is to wait a good long time to make stone houses. Once you have a full 15 guys working a quarry, and can support yourself otherwise, then you can begin the slow building up of the town. I haven't had any problems if I just avoid building stone houses.

The thing with wooden houses is that they use twice as much firewood as stone ones, so I prefer to build stone houses as soon as I can.

Maybe I'm building my quarries in bad spots? I try to put them where I know a lot of stone used to be.. but nope, I might have 10-15 guys working in the quarry and I barely get any.

 

[metatron]

Ok...

I'm going to show you my first "real" game. I have played a bit before, but never really past an adult population of, say, 40. I mostly put down neat forest camps, enjoyed the small town flair, built my merchant dock, traded for my first seeds, realised that i had no idea on how to proceed, was unable to, like plan, how i would want to further develop my town and annoyed by the prospect of just trying it out opted to start a new map and do all of the above again.
So, clearly i needed a plan... or a project or whatever...

Then i ran into this excellent starting position on the edge of a fairly large plain and an idea began to form...

The premise:

• I'll build a town with all housing within the range of a single market (if 3/4 of the house's box is inside the circle i'll take it).
• I'll build no mines and no quarries.
• No churches either (redundant, due to lack of mines and quarries).
• This is on a large valley map with climate and stuff on the medium (default) settings. And on hard - i hate it when they want to tell me i have to have a barn in some aweful location.

Please keep in mind that before this i had never actually built a market, or a boarding house or a Tavern or done any farming. Of course i've read up on all those things and watched people play and stuff. Anyway, bear with me.

So here it goes:

Or rather it doesn't because i have to do some major clicking to get a halfway decent name for my town. Apparently most town names fall into one of either category: There are the awefully generic ones ("Fieldtownvilleport" maybe not...) and the possibly inappropriate ("Clinchcocker" - that was an actual suggestion courtesy of the Banished town name genrator).

Anyway, here's one of the early drafts of my initial settlement. It only took my about 20 minutes of further OCD-ing to actually unpause the game (with virtually no visible difference as a result):

Spoiler :

Things went well enough and by fall my people have made themselves a home.
The surroundings of the Gatherer's Hut are of course suboptimal, making for a rough few first winters, but i wanted to settle in the proper location relative to where the market is supposed to go later. And tearing the intital forst camp down later to move it would be a horrible waste of, like, 40 stones and therefor impossible, so i thought.
In hindsight that was a very dumb thought.

Spoiler :

By year 4 things are finally getting easier with the food and around that time i managed to set up a second functionally identical forest camp. Here's a brilliantly concieved screenshot that does not actually show it.

Spoiler :

Soon enough i have a third such camp where people get to walk to their jobs over a neat bridge. And i can finally put down that market, covering all three camps.
My first merchant post is online as well.

Spoiler :

I setup a subscription for buttloads of stone and also get my first seeds.
Here you can see my accidental approach the concept of the "good orchard". (5x4 tiles).

Spoiler :

I am quite lucky with my mercharts. I get plenty of stone and also my first seeds for farms.
Now, apparently a "good orchard" is virtually alround superior to farms. The orchard requires less labor per year and produces roughly 9.5 food per tile per year compared to the roughly 7.5 a farm produces.
Of course the farm has the upside that it is less prone to having the yield ruined by early snowfall.

In theory anyway.

Spoiler :

[/IMG]

But the town if growing none the less. The second merchant port is helping with the stone and iron imports.
By now they are offering me thousands of stones per shipment. I have a hard time paying for that, since my export of choice - firewood - faces increasing domestic demand.

The mid game was kinda fun. I got to build more and more workshops (got to sew a lot of them wool coats to pay for my stuff) and could manage shipping the vast quatities of raw materials around the growing town.
Trading post are just fun in general and can also be very nicely abused as super-barns.
Unfortunatly the unfunny part of the game (micro-managing loads of farming) began to creep up on me.

Spoiler :

Large streches of mind-numbing clicking through those 5x4 orachards and plenty of farms were briefly interupted by "Fire!".
Too bad there were wells on both side of it and some 200 largely idle citizens to dump on this pleasant interuption.
Had the boarding house (that i essentially built because it looks pretty - never really used it) caught fire at least other parts of the town would have been affected.

Spoiler :

Ok... *sigh*
This is where i'm kinda "done" and may very likely abandon this town (the original goal achieved) and play some smaller mountain maps (or something) instead.
Managing the farming is killing me. And i have to expand it, too - my current food economy is unsustainable in the face of the still rapidly growing population.
Essentially, since i don't need stone anymore, the reasonable course of action would be to import wood instead and turn the closer two of my remaining five forest camps into orchard land (already did that with the original camp). That sounds more reliable than straight up importing some food.
Anyway, with a surplus of roughly 700 coats per year and maybe a fourth merchant, this should be managable.

Spoiler :

But, yeah, i'm not sure if i'm ready for more damn orchard clicking madness.

Spoiler :

I want that island.
So pretty.

Dropping down additional stockpiles can increase the rate at which you can gather distant resources (because your laborers will drop them in a nearby stockpile rather than walk all the way to the other side of town with the stuff), although then you are going to want a road so that your laborers can get that back to town quickly when they need it. I've also started buying stone and coal by selling ale, which Ashdown is awash in. I have at least 400 units sitting in my trade port at all times.

Don't remind me of stock piles. Every winter the first thing i'd do would be to delete stock piles at the edge of the town or out of town to have the whole stuff shipped inwards. Often deleted half a dozen full barns too. Once 200 people had been on that task for like a month i'd save the barns at low percentage and redeploy all the stock piles.

Re: Trading ale. I always wanted to do that. But i always ran out of cherries and pears in a few month. Apparently my people don't like to eat potatoes...
I always had like 200 at each trading port to help whenever a trader would take the stuff (most didn't want to hear anything about it), but it never came close to paying for a shipment of 2000 stones at "order price".

Hm...
That would be 6000 cherries.

I even tried to store my fruits in the trading ports and realease them gradually so my people wouldn't eat them all before the Taverns could use them.
But that didn't really work all that well either.
I suppose my food surplus was just lackluster in general.

I'm curious, how do you guys deal with stone? All the other resources can be seemingly farmed, and stone can too, but it's just toooo slow. I usually end up building a quarry, but even if I have 10 guys assigned to it, the stone just slowly trickles in.. I never get enough and have to send out teams to far away places to stripmine a new part of the map of all stone... So that's not that bad, but eventually all that stone will be gone.. and what then?

I don't know. Trading for it was fun.
It's unreliable at first. But if you don't stick to a silly limitation like i did, you could use a quarry first and later abandon it in favor of trading finished goods for stones.
I suppose it would work even better with tools then with coats.
A few mines right next to one another sure take up less space than a gazillion sheep. And the output is in one place, so you can set up smithies and stock piles right next to it.

Edit: The forum ate my attachments.
Tried to put them in there again.
I hope it still all fits.
Damnit. One is missing and i can't find it in my mess.