Fairy Tips for Banished
Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 5:47 pm
Hi all,
I am posting here some random tips that came up during Cohh's streaming .. as Twitch was eating messages I'm posting the collected stuff here. Most if not all is from my own personal experience. I'm currently close to 1700 townfolk and some students and kids myself and so far everything is pretty stable with my first settlement and at about 300700 + kids with my second one in harsh climate, 200 with third and fourth each with small and mountainous maps. Maybe it helps you a little, I might add more when I think of them.
Ryn
Game Version: 1.0.0 Build 140210, 23rd February 2014
Herbalists and Forest Ressource Buildings
As for the herbalist, it counts the mature trees in an area and I just tested it with forestry (including felling trees) as long as you keep other buildings outside and just have 1 barn and a medium sized stockpile as well as 2 or 3 houses in the area, you can put all 4 forest buildings (herbalist, forestry gatherer and hunting cabin) in one place in the middle and the yield is still decent enough to justify it instead of splitting it up and wasting double the forest space.
What you will likely want to do is take 2 or 3 of them, add 3 houses a barn and stockpile and use it that way, because efficiency for using the forest to its fullest does not make up for longer traveling times. An example of a forest expansion is in the posted image below.
Mines and Quarries
For some more information see the post further down
Mines and Quarries are a waste of space and time imo ..
1) stoneworkers have a high chance to die early of rocks,
2) the ressource income is horrible , not enough stone or coal or iron to make it worthwhile
3) there are a lot of iron and stone ressources around just farm them while expanding at the same time and expand earlier instead of taking the time to make these huge mines that net you just a lot of wasted space.
Get more forestry places early and a trade hub and just buy your iron and stone that way. This is way more efficient and won't leave you in trouble once your mines run out and you have no more room to make a new one fast.
Limits
One of the most important limits is the one for firewood, because if you don't set a limit your logs get eaten up and your building gets slowed down considerably. Another important limit is on your tools, as you don't want all your iron get used if you have enough tools.
Don't forget you can also use limits as a notification tool. It's very easy to see buildings on the map that are at the limit with the big yellow icon. If you are working for a specific amount of ressources and just wait for it, you might use limits as a way to make you aware of certain tasks being completed.
Expansions, Centralized or De-centralized?
This comes mostly down to preferred playstyle so please see all below as my own opinions and personal way that I like the most.
Localized autarkic housing places normally work better than huge centralized cities. They are more resistant to desasters, villagers are less likely to die when one main production route got a problem and won't cause a wave of collapsing your whole population like you've seen with Cohh's last city. They do take longer to setup yes, but in the end a slow and steady growth is normally better in the long run than rushing things and end up with dead people.
Also with the current maps, there is rarely if ever one huge big plain. Mostly its split into many many valleys making one big cluster of houses hard to realize. If you centralize all you will end up with production buildings far away and people have to run forever just to get to their workplaces.
As a personal suggestion: All your places should have a barn, a stockpile or a few, some stone houses (4-10) 1 forestry 1 gatherer 1 hunting lodge 1 school 1 hospital 1 woodcutter.
If theres any remaining space around thats not in the wood radius place your other buildings there (fields and orchards and pastures primary), second barns and more stockpiles as necessary for those, 1 blacksmith and 1 tailor normally does fine for ~ 5 of such housing areas but at some point a second one of each will prevent you getting issues is something goes haywire with the first one or if there is a huge distance between them.
Use the main river and flood it with trading hubs as soon as possible (2 should do for a start, more later on). If you go the above mentioned route you will have a huge surplus of firewood to trade.
Take a break! Your old stuff will fall apart otherwise while you're not looking!
Every few minutes of playing, at the least every quarter hour, take the time and pause the game and just click through your existing, especially older buildings. Check 1) If your barns have enough space left 2) If food sources are allocated properly among your barns 3) If your markets have enough people for the population around them and if the workers live in houses close by. also if barns are close to the markets so they can be restocked 4) if you have any big surplus of any one ressource (venison is a good example that at some point quickly floods barns) you might want to move this to tarde hubs for selling for other more required ressources
A primer on food production
Very Early Game / After a desaster: Hunting Cabin
Early Game: Hunting Cabin, Gatherer Hut
Mid Game: Farm Fields, Orchards
Late Game: Pastures
Thoughts behind it:
You want to get a lot of food quickly at the start of the game or after a desaster that caused major problems among your food production because you don't have enough or none, Hunting Cabins net you the best food income per worker and time, even though at the cost of a big area they require to operate properly.
Similar to hunting cabins, Gatherer Huts have a very good efficiency per worker and are a very good follow up building after hunting cabins, because you can stack them into the same wooden areas.
You want to build fields and orchards in mid game because at this point you will likely already have a stable food supply and don't need more food but instead would like to make enough room for other buildings and/or want to give your villagers more variety in their diet. Every different type of food increases the people's health a little. While just one food type will keep them alive, it won't keep them very healthy. Orchards take years to grow and be used properly, fields only provide food once a year, so these are more long term solutions for food.
Fields and orchards can be very efficient. They all vary a little bit depending on the exact type of seed you use, but they average out at about 3-4 times the amount of food per single square compared to a gatherer, not as efficient per worker if you just compare one gatherer building with 1 field, but a lot more space efficient. Make sure you don't overwork a field, 10x10 fields and orchards can all be harvested fully by a single farmer if his home is close by even though the game might offer you to place a second one. Turn the number down from X of 2 to X of 1 so when you raise the number of farmers from your overview you don't assign unnecessary people to already worked fields. Numbers of necessary farmers depends on climate, tools and way from their home to their workplace as well, you might have to tweak it a little depending on your tools and your climate setting.
Pastures can be very expensive for you first have to buy the animals from traders and then already need to have or quickly establish a pasture before the animals die in the trade hub. The rate of food they generate is also not really awesome. The main reason to make these is even more variety and materials you can't get otherwise like wool for clothing. If you have the choice and have to pick one always get sheep first, they provide wool for better clothing. You get some leather from hunting cabins and eggs are just another food source so not as valueable.
Forestry and the different options
By default a forestry will both fell and replant trees with the replanting rate slightly higher than the felling rate. Meaning that if you leave both options set to on, your forest will get thicker over time.
What many are not aware of however is that the tree planting option also gathers stone and iron, making room for new trees. This is useful when you have a new area and don't want to get all your laborers to do the job and are not in a hurry to gather the stone or iron.
I am posting here some random tips that came up during Cohh's streaming .. as Twitch was eating messages I'm posting the collected stuff here. Most if not all is from my own personal experience. I'm currently close to 1700 townfolk and some students and kids myself and so far everything is pretty stable with my first settlement and at about 300700 + kids with my second one in harsh climate, 200 with third and fourth each with small and mountainous maps. Maybe it helps you a little, I might add more when I think of them.
Ryn
Game Version: 1.0.0 Build 140210, 23rd February 2014
Herbalists and Forest Ressource Buildings
As for the herbalist, it counts the mature trees in an area and I just tested it with forestry (including felling trees) as long as you keep other buildings outside and just have 1 barn and a medium sized stockpile as well as 2 or 3 houses in the area, you can put all 4 forest buildings (herbalist, forestry gatherer and hunting cabin) in one place in the middle and the yield is still decent enough to justify it instead of splitting it up and wasting double the forest space.
What you will likely want to do is take 2 or 3 of them, add 3 houses a barn and stockpile and use it that way, because efficiency for using the forest to its fullest does not make up for longer traveling times. An example of a forest expansion is in the posted image below.
Mines and Quarries
For some more information see the post further down
Mines and Quarries are a waste of space and time imo ..
1) stoneworkers have a high chance to die early of rocks,
2) the ressource income is horrible , not enough stone or coal or iron to make it worthwhile
3) there are a lot of iron and stone ressources around just farm them while expanding at the same time and expand earlier instead of taking the time to make these huge mines that net you just a lot of wasted space.
Get more forestry places early and a trade hub and just buy your iron and stone that way. This is way more efficient and won't leave you in trouble once your mines run out and you have no more room to make a new one fast.
Limits
One of the most important limits is the one for firewood, because if you don't set a limit your logs get eaten up and your building gets slowed down considerably. Another important limit is on your tools, as you don't want all your iron get used if you have enough tools.
Don't forget you can also use limits as a notification tool. It's very easy to see buildings on the map that are at the limit with the big yellow icon. If you are working for a specific amount of ressources and just wait for it, you might use limits as a way to make you aware of certain tasks being completed.
Expansions, Centralized or De-centralized?
This comes mostly down to preferred playstyle so please see all below as my own opinions and personal way that I like the most.
Localized autarkic housing places normally work better than huge centralized cities. They are more resistant to desasters, villagers are less likely to die when one main production route got a problem and won't cause a wave of collapsing your whole population like you've seen with Cohh's last city. They do take longer to setup yes, but in the end a slow and steady growth is normally better in the long run than rushing things and end up with dead people.
Also with the current maps, there is rarely if ever one huge big plain. Mostly its split into many many valleys making one big cluster of houses hard to realize. If you centralize all you will end up with production buildings far away and people have to run forever just to get to their workplaces.
As a personal suggestion: All your places should have a barn, a stockpile or a few, some stone houses (4-10) 1 forestry 1 gatherer 1 hunting lodge 1 school 1 hospital 1 woodcutter.
If theres any remaining space around thats not in the wood radius place your other buildings there (fields and orchards and pastures primary), second barns and more stockpiles as necessary for those, 1 blacksmith and 1 tailor normally does fine for ~ 5 of such housing areas but at some point a second one of each will prevent you getting issues is something goes haywire with the first one or if there is a huge distance between them.
Use the main river and flood it with trading hubs as soon as possible (2 should do for a start, more later on). If you go the above mentioned route you will have a huge surplus of firewood to trade.
Take a break! Your old stuff will fall apart otherwise while you're not looking!
Every few minutes of playing, at the least every quarter hour, take the time and pause the game and just click through your existing, especially older buildings. Check 1) If your barns have enough space left 2) If food sources are allocated properly among your barns 3) If your markets have enough people for the population around them and if the workers live in houses close by. also if barns are close to the markets so they can be restocked 4) if you have any big surplus of any one ressource (venison is a good example that at some point quickly floods barns) you might want to move this to tarde hubs for selling for other more required ressources
A primer on food production
Very Early Game / After a desaster: Hunting Cabin
Early Game: Hunting Cabin, Gatherer Hut
Mid Game: Farm Fields, Orchards
Late Game: Pastures
Thoughts behind it:
You want to get a lot of food quickly at the start of the game or after a desaster that caused major problems among your food production because you don't have enough or none, Hunting Cabins net you the best food income per worker and time, even though at the cost of a big area they require to operate properly.
Similar to hunting cabins, Gatherer Huts have a very good efficiency per worker and are a very good follow up building after hunting cabins, because you can stack them into the same wooden areas.
You want to build fields and orchards in mid game because at this point you will likely already have a stable food supply and don't need more food but instead would like to make enough room for other buildings and/or want to give your villagers more variety in their diet. Every different type of food increases the people's health a little. While just one food type will keep them alive, it won't keep them very healthy. Orchards take years to grow and be used properly, fields only provide food once a year, so these are more long term solutions for food.
Fields and orchards can be very efficient. They all vary a little bit depending on the exact type of seed you use, but they average out at about 3-4 times the amount of food per single square compared to a gatherer, not as efficient per worker if you just compare one gatherer building with 1 field, but a lot more space efficient. Make sure you don't overwork a field, 10x10 fields and orchards can all be harvested fully by a single farmer if his home is close by even though the game might offer you to place a second one. Turn the number down from X of 2 to X of 1 so when you raise the number of farmers from your overview you don't assign unnecessary people to already worked fields. Numbers of necessary farmers depends on climate, tools and way from their home to their workplace as well, you might have to tweak it a little depending on your tools and your climate setting.
Pastures can be very expensive for you first have to buy the animals from traders and then already need to have or quickly establish a pasture before the animals die in the trade hub. The rate of food they generate is also not really awesome. The main reason to make these is even more variety and materials you can't get otherwise like wool for clothing. If you have the choice and have to pick one always get sheep first, they provide wool for better clothing. You get some leather from hunting cabins and eggs are just another food source so not as valueable.
Forestry and the different options
By default a forestry will both fell and replant trees with the replanting rate slightly higher than the felling rate. Meaning that if you leave both options set to on, your forest will get thicker over time.
What many are not aware of however is that the tree planting option also gathers stone and iron, making room for new trees. This is useful when you have a new area and don't want to get all your laborers to do the job and are not in a hurry to gather the stone or iron.