Current Events > I'm trying to play Banished and I'm really bad at it. Any tips?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think I overdo it with the harvesting or something but once I get a few houses built they have no food. At that point I'm broke and try to make them eat leaves
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I haven't played the game in forever, but usually keeping a balance of everything helped, though winter always fucks me over because of various reasons...

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Isnt that Sim Medeival Village? I boght that game years ago, looks cool. Never really gavce it a chance (It wasnt even done when I got it)

A few fishermans and gatherers get you through the early game. Farming is for later. They'll just have to deal with their slowly weakening constitution from being malnourished for a generation or two.

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JimmyFraska posted...

Isnt that Sim Medeival Village? I boght that game years ago, looks cool. Never really gavce it a chance (It wasnt even done when I got it)

Same. Finally going to take the dive and check it out. I havent played a game in years unless phone solitaire counts
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NightRender posted...

A few fishermans and gatherers get you through the early game. Farming is for later. They'll just have to deal with their slowly weakening constitution from being malnourished for a generation or two.

Thanks for the advice!
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Fishing, hunting, and raising animals provides food all year long, gathering might too but I can't remember for sure right now. Always build more barns before they're all full, and cluster homes around markets. Stone houses are worth the extra cost, otherwise you'll suddenly find yourself out of firewood one winter with people freezing to death. Build hospitals before you need them, and give people lots of pathways so they're not too clustered together, or else disease outbreaks will kill a lot of people.

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https://i.imgur.com/jIzmuOX.png

How am I supposed to feed them? There's not enough room to build a fishing dock and they ate all the berries

(yes I know one of the houses is misalined)
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When I played recently, I'd make several little offshoot areas (2-3 houses) built around a barn, a forester, and a gatherer hut. Gatherers get food all year round from the surrounding area, but need a robust forest to really hit their stride. My hunter-gatherer society built around gathering and fishing went pretty well, honestly. Foresters also prune dead trees, so you can have woodcutters nearby as well to help get you through winters. Optionally, you can have a hunter lodge nearby to get a little food (not that important) and leather for coats.

I rarely build markets, actually, so I don't remember what they do that much. I think the person gets samples of all crops, fruits, resources, etc. and brings them to a hub? Yeah, that can be a smart idea if you've got a semi-developed region working.

Are you playing with mods? There are some useful ones -- like infinite-use mines and quarries -- to help develop regions without leaving eventual dead zones (pits, etc.) where nothing grows.

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Oh hey. I wasn't sure if it was you or error but iirc one of you was a fan. Thanks for the advice!

I hope my people don't die

edit: no, no mods. I'll check those out though
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Mods disable achievements, but they have some good quality of life stuff. I think I used the ones (besides the mining stuff) that gave medieval multi-story housing.

Oh, and another tip I remembered for fields: people will automatically begin harvesting in early Autumn, I believe, which doesn't always leave much time to properly get all the food (winter kills crops). I think a 15x15 plot makes 1500 food or something. You can probably start harvesting in early summer if you wanted, especially if there are only a couple farmers in a big plot. (In my memory, you can harvest early and the crops continue to grow anyway, which can be good, but I don't know if the numbers bear it out. Good for growing annoying crops that usually give bad yields anyway, like those damnable orchards.)

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Shotgunnova posted...

I rarely build markets, actually, so I don't remember what they do that much. I think the person gets samples of all crops, fruits, resources, etc. and brings them to a hub? Yeah, that can be a smart idea if you've got a semi-developed region working.

Yes, they're highly useful when you cluster your houses inside their radius, not having them will lead to homes lacking essential supplies even though you have a surplus of them, because people are spending too much time wandering around collecting them when your settlement expands. It gives everybody more time to spend at their jobs, as well.

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Gatherers get the most food early on. Forget all the rest; make a gatherers hut and an herbalist. You only need one person collecting herbs. You can put them next to each other but both need to be in the wilderness with nothing else around but a road.

This will get you pretty far. Get a woodcutter for firewood next and then build houses as needed. Put laborers and students to work clearing land.

You need to establish a schoolhouse and farm/cattle ranch around the same time. You have to educate the populace as it makes them more productive; soon after you need a blacksmith to make more tools as the starting tools break.

From there you should have some padding and can experiment. Keep cultivating animals as they can provide emergency food the fastest. Dont worry about maxing out each buildings laborer count; only a few really matter doing that, like a farm.

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Banished is one of those kinds of games where I get a random urge to play it every few months, then play for an hour or so, realize that I don't know what I'm doing, and then stop
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UnholyMudcrab posted...

Banished is one of those kinds of games where I get a random urge to play it every few months, then play for an hour or so, realize that I don't know what I'm doing, and then stop

I get to 200 population and then want to make an army to go to war, and get bored.

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IIRC, herbs definitely only need one person to gather them, since they're pretty useless unless people are sick. (They also make people walk a really long way if you don't have multiples.) I sometimes have randoms be extra herbalists, though, since you can sell 'em for a bit more than other basic resources.

synth_real posted...

Yes, they're highly useful when you cluster your houses inside their radius, not having them will lead to homes lacking essential supplies even though you have a surplus of them, because people are spending too much time wandering around collecting them when your settlement expands. It gives everybody more time to spend at their jobs, as well.

Ahh yes, I forgot about the whole "make room for other stuff in stockpiles/barns" angle. I actually used trading posts for most of the storage, since they have way more capacity than any (maybe even 2-3) barns.

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Started playing again lol. At 75 pop, having a bit of trouble with food between harvests.

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Oh yeah this probably goes without saying, but take your farmers out of production during winter and post-harvest. There's nothing to do during winter and it doesn't seem to bother the orchards either, the trees die after a few years anyway.

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Shotgunnova posted...

Ahh yes, I forgot about the whole "make room for other stuff in stockpiles/barns" angle. I actually used trading posts for most of the storage, since they have way more capacity than any (maybe even 2-3) barns.

Hmmm, I've never thought to use trading posts that way, you can specify what and how much you want stored in them, but it's a little more labour intensive. However, I don't care about the storage capacity of markets, they exist to make sure everybody has fair access to all the supplies they need, otherwise when your community gets larger you'll end up with some houses overstocked on some things and completely without others. You'll get people starving even though there's plenty of food, because they live too far away from the barns where it's stored, but the inventory of their homes are completely full up with way more firewood than they need because they live next to the woodcutter. They can't go get more food in that situation until they use up some of that firewood to make space in their home inventory, which leads to deaths from starvation.

Another tip I'll give you is to be selective about when you let nomads join your town. They often bring diseases with them, and the unplanned-for increase in population can lead to shortages in supplies and housing down the line, because they also cause an increase in population growth from the extra adult couples having children once they've settled in houses. Don't feel like you need to accept them unless you know for sure you want the extra people. I often put them to work in the quarries and mines because those are higher mortality professions. Generally speaking, you need to always be planning for expansion and make sure you're already prepared to meet the needs of the additional people, or else you'll build yourself into a food shortage. When your village gets big, if your food supplies get low before you build more production, you're too late and people are gonna starve.

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At about 130 including kids/students. 84 productive adults, had a big generation die off around 70 so we're coming back. Had a huge boom so we should be good until they start kickin the bucket.

Starting to need double of damn near everything. I've got 4 separate districts, each with their own food supply, but building projects are taking a looooong time because those resources are concentrated in certain parts of town.

Once I get around 200 is when I start getting bored and the holes in the armor of the game start showing; it works a lot better with smaller hamlets than what is fast becoming a city.

Then it makes me move on to Black and White 2 :D

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ShyOx posted...

Once I get around 200 is when I start getting bored and the holes in the armor of the game start showing; it works a lot better with smaller hamlets than what is fast becoming a city.

Building a large town takes a much higher degree of planning right from the beginning, and maybe a few mods as well, but I really like the game when my village gets big. You have to be smart about where you locate things and how you spread out resource production. Building lots of paths is important, and if you have the infinite quarries mod then there's no good reason not to upgrade all your paths to stone once you have a surplus, getting people around quicker is worth the cost. My problems start coming when my town goes over 1000 pop, because then my 10-year old computer starts to chug.

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Been busy the last few days. Going to play when I get home from work. Thanks again for the tips
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