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[Siegfried]

Can someone give me some tips on how to start a town on hard? I always fail :\

I tend to focus on fishing docks since I have no seeds to start, but after 3 years it's like there's no more fish so everyone starts to starve to death. I also get really nervous about destroying all the forests around my starting area because it might hurt me in the long run, so I tend to build a forester pretty soon.

Anyway, I always fail, what is the best tactic to start a town playing on hard? In what order should I build my stuff?

 

[archnemesis]

Here is my approach for starting on hard difficulty:
1. Build gatherers hut.
2. Build four or five houses.
3. Build a woodcutter for firewood.
(This should be enough to survive year one. You can use laborers to manually gather building material.)
4. Build hunter and forester.
5. Build blacksmith and tailor.
(You now have a sustainable tiny settlement.)
6. Continue to expand with new houses every now and then so you have a steady growth of workers.

Trading for seeds is very expensive and most merchants don't accept food as payment. You need 625 firefood for a seed and you could also trade tools, clothing, stone or iron if you have a large surplus. Herbs and venison might also be good alternatives for trading.

 

[Siegfried]

Thanks! Never tried starting with a gatherer instead of fish. Can you get seeds and cattle any other way besides trading for them?

 

[archnemesis]

No, not that I'm aware of. Gatherers and hunters are great in the beginning of the game but it's possible that you would prefer to use the space for other buildings later on.

 

[Granadier]

Last night I started a new town in order to test out this strategy.

I ended up creating the food production areas too far away from the houses, and my town starved / froze to death.

Has anyone had luck utilizing the satellite production areas like that? Is it worthwhile to leave the gathers with nothing else in their circle of influence?

 

[AbortedWalrusFetus]

You need a house or three in the circles. Otherwise workers have to travel too far. Also wood cannot be put in barns and needs a stockpile.

 

[Brainsaw]

Last night I started a new town in order to test out this strategy. I ended up creating the food production areas too far away from the houses, and my town starved / froze to death.

Has anyone had luck utilizing the satellite production areas like that? Is it worthwhile to leave the gathers with nothing else in their circle of influence?

I tried out a similar strategy on hard with success. Before this I always had food supply issues, until I realised I was building the gatherers too close to my city. So this time I placed my gatherer on the northern forest and built expansion to the south. I also placed the forester (or whatever the dude is that plants trees) nearby and collected all stone and iron in the area. A year later there was a lush forrest for the gatherers to pick berries and whatnot.

Also, I placed the hunter near that spot (roughly 5 tiles away) in the hopes the deer would be attracted to the lush forrest. I'm not sure that part works well though, since leather and venison production seem to spike and drop often.

Anyways, the big change for me was focussing mostly on gatherers for food and put them in lush forrests on the outskirts of town. Fishermen on the other hand seem very ineffective for sustained food and I really only have 2 huts for diversity. Mind you, I'm not far yet (year 7 or so I'd guess), but I have a rather large surplus of food with 50 adults/15 kids. I also built a 2nd gatherers hut in a forrest to the south of town for a total of 8 gatherers which was needed to sustain the population increase.

[Edit] Just to be clear: my current setup looks similar to the picture, but I group my forresters and gatherers together. Also, the distance between the satelites is very small so their radius don't overlap with the town's, but almost touch it.

 

[Mengy]

Last night I started a new town in order to test out this strategy. I ended up creating the food production areas too far away from the houses, and my town starved / froze to death.

Has anyone had luck utilizing the satellite production areas like that? Is it worthwhile to leave the gathers with nothing else in their circle of influence?

You need a house or three in the circles. Otherwise workers have to travel too far. Also wood cannot be put in barns and needs a stockpile.

You have the right idea Gattsby, but Aborted is right, you need at least two or three houses within the circles so that the hunters/foresters/gatherers live next door to where they work. This is paramount for enabling them to work as much as possible. Also, stockpiles next to foresters are efficient too, and having the storage barns outside the circles only makes them walk further to put the stuff away.

Hunting cabins off by themselves and in choke points is interesting though. I've noticed that deer seem to be just as abundant out in the open as they are in the woods. I've been putting my hunting cabins in my forester/gatherer areas, but the bunch of buildings do seem to keep the deer away somewhat. A hunting cabin by itself, with only a house or two with it, might do better than mine currently are. And if I completely encircle the cabin radius with houses / farms / pastures / etc, to force the deer within the cabin radius, that might improve the gains too.


I think I need to make a "testing town" and try out some variations of setups to see how they compare.

 

[Rentahamster]

Pretty good post on Reddit about testing farms:

After a while, though, I usually end up with more laborers than I know what to do with, so I just leave the farmers at their default settings, or overwork certain farms, if I notice that they aren't harvesting everything in time.

A good takeaway from this is also that corn and beans grow the fastest, if you haven't noticed that already.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Banished/comments/1yr2iy/ideal_farm_size_to_maximize_output_per_labor_input/

Purpose:

To determine the ideal farm size to maximize yields with the least amount of labor input by altering both the farm size and worker number (including using more or less workers than the in-game default).

Methodology:

All Farmers were educated with steel tools, with full health, and maximum happiness. I paused the game and inspected each worker to verify this each year during the early-spring.

All of the homes for the farmers were directly touching the road next to their farm. I used the pathing tool to verify that the farmers were using the proper home closest to their farm each year.

Each farm had its own storage barn directly touching the road next to the farm. I followed a random sample of workers each year to verify that they were using the closest barn and not wasting time running around the map. I didn’t reassign any jobs or build anything during the tests to ensure that homes weren’t being swapped around or workers shifted around based on proximity to the new work/buildings.

All crops must be completely gathered by the middle of autumn otherwise I consider the farm to be underworked, which would increase the risk of losing crops due to an early frost.

All storage barns are inspected before each harvest to verify that they weren't full.

I had one-third of my total population (~125 people) set as laborers year-round to minimize the chances of my farmers walking across the map to do laborer jobs during the off-season (i.e., winter) and then end up getting a late start in early spring planting the seeds.

I built three of each tested farm size and ran the tests for 5 years and averaged the output. More thorough testing than this is mostly unnecessary in this game because there’s no variance in the year-to-year yield aside from the variance caused by weather and villager pathing, both of which i attempted to control for.

All tests were done using corn, which is the second fastest growing crop after beans.

Tests:

4x14 (56sq) w/ 1 worker: Done by the beginning of late summer; 392 average yield; Conclusion: Heavily overworked, farm size too small. This is the farm size I've seen recommended often here on Reddit (any farm size that's a multiple of 56 squares using the default number of workers), but as you'll see below, it has an output 2-3 times worse than other farm sizes where you manually select fewer workers than the default.

8x14 (112sq) w/ 1 worker: Done by the end of early autumn and the beginning of autumn on average; 784 average yield; Conclusion: Farm size is close to ideal, if space isn’t a concern farm size could probably be increased slightly which would increase yields during good weather without significantly reducing the yield during bad weather.

11x11 (121sq) w/ 1 worker: Done by the middle of autumn, usually right before the first frost of the season. Lost ~20% of two farms due to an early frost one of the years; 868 maximum yield, 845 average yield. Conclusion: Closer to ideal than 8x14. Farm size could be increased slightly to increase yields during perfect weather.

13x10 (130sq) w/ 1 worker: Done by the middle of autumn to the beginning of late autumn, lost ~20% of the total yield one year to a mid-autumn frost; 924 maximum yield, ~740 yield during the frost year, average yield of 887. Conclusion: Higher maximum and average yield than the 121sq farm but the risk of losing crops to early frost may outweigh the potential benefits. With a less than perfect setup (e.g., with long walking distance between homes and work) the risk of loss to early frost increases.

15x15 (225sq) w/ 2 workers: Done by the beginning of autumn; Average yield of 798 per worker; Conclusion: Close to ideal but still less output than the 1-man farms. See overall conclusion below.

Overall Conclusion:

The ideal farm size for corn production is somewhere around 121 squares per worker. The exact size doesn’t matter since farm output is always ~7 food per square, so choosing a farm size to fit your available space while still being within ~10 squares of 121 would be ideal (so between 110-130sq per worker) since it would allow you to maximize your usable land while not compromising total output by too much. The distance the worker has to walk between their home, their work, and the closest storage barn should also be considered. The less optimal their walking path is the smaller the farm should be. As a very rough rule, if the house and barn are touching the farm, size the farm to ~121sq and for every five squares the house and barn are away from the farm reduce the size of the farm by 1sq. So, as an example, if the house is 10sq away from the farm and the barn is 10sq away (so a total of 20 additional sq), reduce the farm size by ~4sq to 117sq.

A 15x15 farm (225sq) being worked by two workers would have an output very similar to a 112sq farm being worked by one worker, but the total potential output would still be less than two 1-man farms of 113sq-130sq. A 15x15 farm is also very difficult to place compared to a farm with ~121 squares since you can choose from multiple different orientation (i.e., 8x14, 9x13, 8x15, 10x12, 11x11, 9x14, and 10x13) to fit your useable space. The only advantage a 2-man, 15x15 farm has over a smaller 1-man farm is it takes less time to change the crops and disable work if needed, which would make reassigning your farmers during the winter easier.

TL;DR:

To maximize the output of your corn farm, choose a size between 110-130 squares (i.e., 8x14, 9x13, 8x15, 10x12, 11x11, 9x14, and 10x13) and use only one worker. 121sq seems to be the 'safest' size with virtually no risk of losing crops to frost while still nearly maximizing output. Only use 130 if you're in late-game with a perfect setup (i.e., houses and barns touching farms) and have a lot of food security and can risk an early frost. 110-115 is ideal for early-game (to remove risk of frost loss) and should also be used if your farmers have a sub-optimal walking distance to their farm.

Addendum: Something to note that i forgot to mention: the best way to maximize crop yield with the least amount of total labor time is to heavily micromanage each individual field based on the weather. I haven't thoroughly tested this so i can't really say for certain what the best approach is, but it seems like the ideal strategy is to use only one worker until late-summer/early-autumn on a 15x15 corn/bean field to plant the seeds and then swap it to two workers in late-summer/early-autumn to harvest everything before the frost hits. Once frost hits you take all of the farmers off the field by clicking the stop work button for the entire winter and assign them to do other stuff during that time (like mining or gathering). You could even swap to three workers in autumn if the temperature is below ~40 degrees and you don't think your two workers will finish harvesting before the frost. That way, you basically only have 1 worker on the field for spring and summer and 2-3 in autumn and none in winter. This might be one of the best approaches for early-game to maximize total resource production with the fewest number of workers but it's definitely too micro-intensive late-game to be worth the hassle as far as i'm concerned.

 

[Rentahamster]

I wish there were more achievements that required hard difficulty and harsh climate.

I just did the Mountain Man one, (20 years of 50 pop, hard/harsh) and it wasn't very difficult to do.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

I wish there were more achievements that required hard difficulty and harsh climate.

I just did the Mountain Man one, (20 years of 50 pop, hard/harsh) and it wasn't very difficult to do.

The game is easy once you survive the first 2 years, even on the hardest conditions. The mountain man one you can get screwed on starting locations, that's about the only hard part.

 

[Granadier]

You need a house or three in the circles. Otherwise workers have to travel too far. Also wood cannot be put in barns and needs a stockpile.

[Edit] Just to be clear: my current setup looks similar to the picture, but I group my forresters and gatherers together. Also, the distance between the satelites is very small so their radius don't overlap with the town's, but almost touch it.

You have the right idea Gattsby, but Aborted is right, you need at least two or three houses within the circles so that the hunters/foresters/gatherers live next door to where they work.

I created a new village and ended up utilizing these tips. It's working much better now, and I'm able to maintain a surplus of firewood and food.
My "central" village has houses, market, storage, stockpile, and utility buildings. Then my gatherer has a storage barn + stockpile + forester, and same with my hunting lodge. My gatherer was close enough to town to live in those houses, but my hunting lodge has it's own housing.

Thanks for the tips.

 

[Prototype Viktor]

Used Chubzdoomer's seed number and nearly screwed myself over in year 3 getting cocky with the great placement when a harsh winter happened in back to back years that took 5 years to recover from.

Also coats and venison are the best things to use for trade as both a cause of hunter's. Coats for everyone that's not Ryana. Venison for the excess always caused when you have a diverse food supply

 

[Mengy]

Pretty good post on Reddit about testing farms:

After a while, though, I usually end up with more laborers than I know what to do with, so I just leave the farmers at their default settings, or overwork certain farms, if I notice that they aren't harvesting everything in time.

A good takeaway from this is also that corn and beans grow the fastest, if you haven't noticed that already.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Banished/comments/1yr2iy/ideal_farm_size_to_maximize_output_per_labor_input/

Interesting read, but man one farmer on an 8 x 14 plot? I can't do that in my current town, I pretty much max out the number of farmers for every field (up to five at least) in order to try and keep any losses from an early frost to a minimum. I would like to have more houses and barns around the fields but thats not always possible. I have noticed that some crops seem to harvest faster than others though.

 

[Rentahamster]

Have any of you who've played on large maps figured out a solution for minimizing the long marches of death?

For those of you who don't know, this happens when a laborer (or a temporary laborer, like a farmer in the off season) walks across the entire map just to move some crap around, and then walks all the way back without eating anything, and starves to death in the process. (inorite :/)

I was thinking about using more pastures instead of farms, since pastures get worked year round, and trading wool coats for food.

Also, have the farms only in the middle of the map, so off season farmers would have to walk at most, half map distance.

 

[Chubzdoomer]

Someone on another forum I frequent just shared some interesting advice:
Since stone houses keep your people warmer, they will use less firewood as a result. Stone houses apparently burn slower if they happen to catch fire, too.

This might just sound like common sense, but I certainly wasn't aware of it until now (especially the bit about firewood). My town is comprised of almost nothing but wooden houses, so I'm going to try and upgrade them soon.

 

[Rentahamster]

In my new town that I just started, I'm using stone from the beginning.

Large maps have a shit ton of stone out on the surface, anyway.

 

[Bedlam]

Made my second town in the last 2 days. The first one died since no one wanted to have children. When I read that I need to build more houses, it was way too late, everyone was past the sex age. I'm having more luck with "Wolvern" now.

Events in Wolvern so far:

- made a 3 hour detour yesterday because I missed my station while playing this on the train (I'm not joking, it kinda sucked, I had to wait one hour in freezing cold)
- Tornado killed about a dozen citizens earlier tonight, including a couple of children
- one and only cattle trader I ever saw in this game arrived shortly after the tornado, I had nothing to trade
- a baby boom happened shortly after the tornado, almost half of my ~90 people were children and students

Anyway, I don't care about maximizing efficiency all that much. Half the reason why I'm playing this game is to make a nice looking town. Therefore I leave spaces here and there for trees. I also try to build the layout somewhat organically and very tight in a way that resembles our beautiful German old towns. I'm nearing year 30 and everyone in Wolvern is super happy and healthy it seems (well, half a star away from super happy admittedly).

Couple of screenshots:

Welcome to Wolvern (unless you're a nomad)

Harvesting Season (Wheat, Apples, Chestnuts, Potatoes and Cherries)

Wolvern in Winter

Built a cemetary right next to the quarry. That thing is a death trap.

the mods will be mostly esthetic

I'm okay with that. I'm always hesitating with building a quarry, for example, because it's ugly as hell. And the stone houses look like burnt out buildings.

 

[Raxum]

After a few failed attempts at towns, trying to use fishing and farming to start off, and without reading a lot about the game before trying it, I finally got a town off the ground with Gatherer's Huts and such as people have been recommending.

I hit a population of 600 or so recently, but am finding that I've done a poor job of laying out my town. Occasionally have people dying of starvation from taking jobs on the other side of the map when their house is right beside their place of work. I feel like I need to start again and plan better for places of work and things that can be done, possibly condense some areas a bit better.

Does anyone know if the Market supplies places of work? Like if there's a woodcutter near a market, can the market supply the woodcutter instead of a stockpile with logs? Or does the Market only supply houses?

 

[Bedlam]

Does anyone know if the Market supplies places of work? Like if there's a woodcutter near a market, can the market supply the woodcutter instead of a stockpile with logs? Or does the Market only supply houses?

I'm pretty sure I've seen my blacksmith get his stuff from the market. So I'd say yes.

 

[subrock]

Anyone here tried this supposed mac wrapper app? http://paulthetall.com/banished-mac/

just installed using this method and it works great. I'd recommend trying it if you are on a mac and jonesin

 

[Prototype Viktor]

After a few failed attempts at towns, trying to use fishing and farming to start off, and without reading a lot about the game before trying it, I finally got a town off the ground with Gatherer's Huts and such as people have been recommending.

I hit a population of 600 or so recently, but am finding that I've done a poor job of laying out my town. Occasionally have people dying of starvation from taking jobs on the other side of the map when their house is right beside their place of work. I feel like I need to start again and plan better for places of work and things that can be done, possibly condense some areas a bit better.

Does anyone know if the Market supplies places of work? Like if there's a woodcutter near a market, can the market supply the woodcutter instead of a stockpile with logs? Or does the Market only supply houses?

markets provide everything to anyone, hungry people will even eat there if it's closer to their house. the main strength of the market is to stop the greedy families from causing others to starve when everyone in the home goes to the barn/their work and takes food back home

 

[Qvoth]

i'm so bad at these kinds of games
halp!

i just can never plan things properly

 

[Brainsaw]

I just had something of a revelation, but I honestly feel a bit stupid finding out so late: food producers bring food to the storage (I always thought laborers did it).

It seems super obvious now, but I only just found out. This in turn led to the discovery that my producers are extremely inefficient thanks to my layout, especially hunters and gatherers. So I started building barns close to every food producer and I'm now witnessing a rather fast turnaround for food stockpiles. My market is placed almost at the exact center of town and my barns are just on the edges of its circle. Thanks to this setup, my hunters now only have a few spaces between their hut, home and storage, so they can spend most of their time hunting deer.

Ironically it was my fisherman that led to the discovery, whom I only placed because I had quite a few starvation deaths (despite having a full gatherers hut and 2 hunter huts). He lived almost next door to the barn and it was super obvious to notice when he was absent from his dock. Fearing he was spending too much time with his wife (and thus only going to increase my problem), I started to track him. I then discovered he wasn't seeing the wife (or the neighbour's), but was instead running off to the barn every 2 crates or so.

 

[Jintor]

The game Banished most reminds me of in tone at least is Black & White.

I miss that game. I wish it was a better game.

 

[shykyoichi]

So excited to reach population of 600 and just to do quickly, I accepted 80+ nomads.

Bringing with them an epidemic of tuberculosis. It hit my town back to 100.

No to uneducated nomads! Close the borders!

 

[Wrayfield]

Made my second town in the last 2 days. The first one died since no one wanted to have children. When I read that I need to build more houses, it was way too late, everyone was past the sex age. I'm having more luck with "Wolvern" now.

Also, careful with building a school too early. In this case, every citizen who turns 10 years old will not be a working member, just a student. That will also make him NOT move out of his house (just like in real life, eh?) and mate with a partner (absolutely not like in real life, unless a potential partner already lives in a house on his/her own and has a job). This killed my first town. You can always remove the teacher so the students become workers immedietaly, just don't wait too long like I did.

Questions to banished brothers and sisters:

1. Does anyone know how long it takes for a citizen to become educated? I gave up in one of my towns after 6 years or so because I needed more workers...

2. Once the seeds are planted on a crop field, can you remove the farmer to do other jobs until the yield is high enough and food can be harvested?

3. Same as 2, but for orchards. I seem to have wilted trees after removing the work force there.

 

[B3N1]

Maybe a weird question, but has anyone tried running this on a Surface Pro 2? I'd love to know if it runs on that.

I ran it on my Lenovo Miix 2 tablet on low settings. Game won't launch without mouse. After connecting a mouse I started the tutorial which I couldn't pass, since you need a keyboard to spin buildings you are about to bulid.

I'd love some touchscreen support.

 

[Jintor]

It seems to take approximately one full year to become educated, but it might be a factor of 'time spent in school' rather than 'age reached' - I've had 15 year old graduates as well as 17 year old students, so who knows.

You can remove the farmer, but you might as well just leave them; if they've nothing to do, they'll automatically become laborers anyway. They might need to tend to the field or something like herdsmen do?

 

[Alastor3]

All right, I think im gonna start over and just making the most beautiful city EVER!!!

 

[Wrayfield]

It seems to take approximately one full year to become educated, but it might be a factor of 'time spent in school' rather than 'age reached' - I've had 15 year old graduates as well as 17 year old students, so who knows.

You can remove the farmer, but you might as well just leave them; if they've nothing to do, they'll automatically become laborers anyway. They might need to tend to the field or something like herdsmen do?

That's weird, I had a bunch of students living near the school and they didn't get educated for a whole six life years. Maybe the mountain folk are just dumb... Should've waited another season or so.

 

[Jintor]

Kids (well, everybody really) seem to age 4 or 5 years for each four-season cycle. So it takes roughly a cycle to get educated, so you delay your labour force by that long.

I wish you could click on the school and see how close to completion they are though

 

[Mengy]

So last night my town finally climbed over the 600 pop mark:

And then suddenly I started having food shortage problems. I know what I did wrong, I laid down too many houses at too fast a pace, my huge food reserves made me overconfident. however, it all can fall apart VERY quickly. Suddenly I was low on food, low on firewood, tools were running out, and clothes were becoming scarce. So I rapidly built a lot of new farms, pastures, and orchards, and slowly but surely I stemmed the downward spiral just in time.

However, just as I saved civilization from starving to death, I had an immense rash of old people dying off. I mean holy shit, I went from 530 working adults down to like 400 in a matter of years. I did have a large amount of free laborers, probably too large, but luckily I was able to cut back on miners and stonecutters and keep all of my important jobs filled. Now I've got like 80 students and 90 children waiting in the wings to mature and help my town grow again to what it once was.

I'm going to try and take this first town of mine all the way to 900 population for the achievement, but it seems once you get to a certain size growing larger becomes very difficult. The long walks to get around end up killing a few people per year, and everything becomes a delicate balancing act of having enough available housing near jobs. For the time being though my resources are maxing out. In fact, I keep running out of storage space for every harvest. Most of my barns end up with crates of food on the ground all around them by late Autumn, lol.

 

[Chubzdoomer]

Did you guys know you can construct diagonal roads by holding SHIFT as you drag them out?

 

[GusG]

Do we know if deer are unlimited? I guess what im asking is if I have multiple hunters full of workers is it possible to wipe out all the deer? I think I would worry less if I knew there was an unlimited supply. Same with the gathering huts, as long as they remain in a forested area will they continue to produce?

 

[Alastor3]

Do we know if deer are unlimited? I guess what im asking is if I have multiple hunters full of workers is it possible to wipe out all the deer? I think I would worry less if I knew there was an unlimited supply. Same with the gathering huts, as long as they remain in a forested area will they continue to produce?

deer are unlimited, just don't overlap the same building twice

 

[fifasnipe2224]

So whats is your guys build order?

 

[Prototype Viktor]

Kids (well, everybody really) seem to age 4 or 5 years for each four-season cycle. So it takes roughly a cycle to get educated, so you delay your labour force by that long.

I wish you could click on the school and see how close to completion they are though

I gladly delay my workforce in every city I make by year 7 with schools. Got tired of my uneducated people dying in my quarry the first and only time I did not. Also I depend on the output buff for coat and venison production

 

[PsychoSoldier]

So whats is your guys build order?

I tend to clear out a bunch of resources, then build gatherer, forester, and hunter in a well forested area and then build houses and a woodworker.

Then I try to get a blacksmith and tailor up as soon as possible--and somewhere in there I build storage in both areas so there's less moving back and forth.

 

[Alastor3]

Someone on another forum I frequent just shared some interesting advice:
Since stone houses keep your people warmer, they will use less firewood as a result. Stone houses apparently burn slower if they happen to catch fire, too.

This might just sound like common sense, but I certainly wasn't aware of it until now (especially the bit about firewood). My town is comprised of almost nothing but wooden houses, so I'm going to try and upgrade them soon.

I will try this later today

 

[Mengy]

Someone on another forum I frequent just shared some interesting advice:
Since stone houses keep your people warmer, they will use less firewood as a result. Stone houses apparently burn slower if they happen to catch fire, too.

I will try this later today

It's true. If you notice in my pics above all of my houses are stone house. I upgraded the wood houses I started with and I now only build stone houses. Helps a lot with the firewood usage, plus I've only had one house fire in 75 years, and it was so minor that it didn't even hurt me in any way.

 

[CzarTim]

I'm at 25 years right now. No fires, no crop/livestock losses, no disease outbreak (one person got sick, but was quickly cured), no weather events. Worst thing I've had was one person dying during childbirth. I really wish there was a little more to it. I still really like the game, but it's very simple.

The only time I really thought I was doomed was after I accepted one too many nomads, and my food production severely dropped. I bounced back though.

 

[Alastor3]

It's true. If you notice in my pics above all of my houses are stone house. I upgraded the wood houses I started with and I now only build stone houses. Helps a lot with the firewood usage, plus I've only had one house fire in 75 years, and it was so minor that it didn't even hurt me in any way.

so, do I need a quarry early in the game ? Because, man, it take a lot of worker to pick up some stone in there plus a few of my people in my last game died because of it. Unless im starting my village where there are lot's of stone on the ground.

 

[Prototype Viktor]

I'm at 25 years right now. No fires, no crop/livestock losses, no disease outbreak (one person got sick, but was quickly cured), no weather events. Worst thing I've had was one person dying during childbirth. I really wish there was a little more to it. I still really like the game, but it's very simple.

Almost certain you are on fair weather or disasters are off otherwise you nearly guaranteed to have on by year 30

 

[Wrayfield]

I had a tornado on Harsh/Mountains 14 seasons in. Wiped out 30% of my population. Also two infectious diseases, but luckily, just built a doc.

 

[TekGryphon]

Last night I started a new town in order to test out this strategy. I ended up creating the food production areas too far away from the houses, and my town starved / froze to death.

Has anyone had luck utilizing the satellite production areas like that? Is it worthwhile to leave the gathers with nothing else in their circle of influence?

That guy has some mechanics mistaken.

Fishing doesn't need to be done in satellites and forget maximizing water in the circle. Cram them in on every major (large river or lake) body of water spot you can without overlapping the circles.

Hunting as a satellite is fine, but good lord on the assumptions. First, the deer you see on screen are just graphical flavor. Hunting is actually done like fishing, only with forests. So the best way to use hunters is to put them with a forester and gatherer. Pop them over in largish corners and don't worry about losing a portion of the circle to a lake or hill - they're plenty efficient as long as you get about 75% coverage, and then subtract the space used for the hunter/gatherer/forester plot.

The main thing to keep in mind is logistic efficiencies. I like to keep all my forester/hunter/gatherer stations lumped together off of one main road artery. Then I can plop down a bunch of storage barns and a big stock yard and use that for my industrial hub. Woodcutters go there, so do tailors. If I can also get some ore mines nearby it makes a perfect spot for blacksmiths, and then I try to get someplace reasonably close to plop down some sheep farms to provide wool for my tailors to go with the hides.

 

[Cerity]

Just hit 380 people in my town, severe housing shortage and poor job/housing layout for now. Also just about finished battling a major tools shortage.

Food production is in the green despite the tools problem. Still producing at least 7k more than I need every season so far, it has set my plans back a little though. currently at 71 farmers, not minding efficiency right now, I just have so many people that I might as well throw them at jobs.

 

[Incandenza]

How close is this game to something like Tropico? Or is it more of a Dwarf Fortress-y thing?

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

That guy has some mechanics mistaken.

Fishing doesn't need to be done in satellites and forget maximizing water in the circle. Cram them in on every major (large river or lake) body of water spot you can without overlapping the circles.

Hunting as a satellite is fine, but good lord on the assumptions. First, the deer you see on screen are just graphical flavor. Hunting is actually done like fishing, only with forests. So the best way to use hunters is to put them with a forester and gatherer. Pop them over in largish corners and don't worry about losing a portion of the circle to a lake or hill - they're plenty efficient as long as you get about 75% coverage, and then subtract the space used for the hunter/gatherer/forester plot.

The main thing to keep in mind is logistic efficiencies. I like to keep all my forester/hunter/gatherer stations lumped together off of one main road artery. Then I can plop down a bunch of storage barns and a big stock yard and use that for my industrial hub. Woodcutters go there, so do tailors. If I can also get some ore mines nearby it makes a perfect spot for blacksmiths, and then I try to get someplace reasonably close to plop down some sheep farms to provide wool for my tailors to go with the hides.

I just put the woodcutters next to the foresters + stockpile

 

[Rentahamster]

Tip for large maps:

Notice how the people who work at the trade depots have wheelbarrows? They can haul a lot more goods per person than regular laborers. Use this to your advantage to move a large amount of goods quickly.

Scenario: You have an extra trading depot that is centrally located, with plenty of barns and stockpiles open nearby. On the outskirts of the map, your stockpiles and barns are full of logs and firewood, and wool.

Strategy: Increase the trading depot's stock of logs/firewood/wool to max capacity. All the workers will travel throughout the town and pick up stock. When the trading depot's inventory is full or almost full, set the stock back down to zero, and the traders will then commence sticking all that crap back in the centrally located stockpiles/barns, since those are closer.