Banished

[Sava]

dd/mm/yyyy worked better for me

[Felch]

****ing tornadoes, man.

Got my pop up to a little over 300 around year 35ish, and then, WHAMMO. **** got Wizard of Oz on me. Once again, it headed for my pasture lands, but I had learned from my previous mistakes and built extra pastures. So while I lost 20 head of cattle, 25 of sheep, and 66 chickens, and all the leather, wool, and food they produce, that was only half of my herd instead of the whole shebangabang.

Of course, it also tore through my wheat and bean fields, and my chestnut orchard, so my harvest was utter ****, to say nothing of all the farmers who died. After the tornado itself and the resulting starvation, my population dropped to 200. BUT, things have stabilized, and we are beginning to grow anew.

300 pop by year 35? I'm almost at 100 in year 31, without disasters (although I was hit with diphtheria). I guess I need to be more aggressive in expanding my housing.

I don't really understand the benefits of the different food types. Are any better or worse than others, or is it just pick one grain, one meat, one veggie, one fruit, and one nut? I wonder if different crops have strengths or weaknesses, like one might be higher yielding but more vulnerable to weather or disease. I don't really see any explanation of that.

[Al B. Sure!]

Dark Souls is $4.99 on xbox live marketplace today. An 89 metacritic game for 5 bucks.

[Guynemer]

300 pop by year 35? I'm almost at 100 in year 31, without disasters (although I was hit with diphtheria). I guess I need to be more aggressive in expanding my housing.

I don't really understand the benefits of the different food types. Are any better or worse than others, or is it just pick one grain, one meat, one veggie, one fruit, and one nut? I wonder if different crops have strengths or weaknesses, like one might be higher yielding but more vulnerable to weather or disease. I don't really see any explanation of that.

Well, some ripen a lot faster, that's for sure. Beans are especially quick.

[self biased]

Beans are especially quick.

[Felch]

Yeah, I noticed that corn would be harvested before potatoes. It's hard to generalize beyond that with my small sample, and it may be due to some hidden variable, or maybe plants are just harvested alphabetically. I hope there'll be tool-tips or some sort of additional documentation in a future update.

Dark Souls is $4.99 on xbox live marketplace today. An 89 metacritic game for 5 bucks.

If you want to buy games based solely on some metacritic/price ratio, go ahead.

[Al B. Sure!]

If you want to buy games based solely on some metacritic/price ratio, go ahead.

Metacritic/price ratio is about the best system you could possibly use. In the absence of demos in modern gaming, how the game is reviewed and its price are the two most relevant variables. What else could you use to make intelligent purchasing decisions?

(I usually also look at some Let's Plays and walkthroughs to get a feel for the game, though they only reinforce the reviews either way. Also, the developer's reputation is a factor.)

[Sava]

Metacritic/price ratio is about the best system you could possibly use.

No.

Personal judgment is the best "system". Now go away.

[Sava]

I don't really understand the benefits of the different food types. Are any better or worse than others, or is it just pick one grain, one meat, one veggie, one fruit, and one nut? I wonder if different crops have strengths or weaknesses, like one might be higher yielding but more vulnerable to weather or disease. I don't really see any explanation of that.

Food types don't have a particular benefit over other kinds. However, a diversity of foods leads to a great health rating. Also, different kinds of buildings produce food at different rates and times based on a number of factors.

Fish, for instance, is collected at a constant rate. Fishermen work all year round, so there is no disruption of supply. Their overall output is based upon how much water is in the collection radius. More water = more fish. So placement matters.

Gatherer huts require wooded areas... the same with hunting lodges. I like to pair the two up along with a forester's hut and herbalist. That way, you have an area of forest dedicated to the production of those four goods. It's best if you can get the collection radii in as much forest as possible. Gatherer huts also produce 4 kinds of food. Hunting lodges also produce a little leather.

Once your town is pretty stable, then you can go for farming. Farming can produce a large amount of food. Though, you have to wait for the crops to mature. They get planted in the spring. So if you build a farm and it finishes construction in the summer, it won't get planted until the next year. Farmers also work as regular laborers when they aren't farming. Some people like to reallocate their labor manually. I find this is not necessary. The type of crop you grow doesn't necessarily matter. The goal is to get a diverse group of foods. So as your food needs grow, just build different kinds of farms.

Orchards take a little long to bear fruit (lol). It takes an orchard around 2-3 years before it produces anything. You should start to build orchards when you have a town with a large food and labor surplus.

Some foods can be turned into alcohol at the tavern. Since it is easy to produce a lot of fish, I like to stockpile fish and trade for other kinds of foods. That way, my stockpile is more diverse. When you have a lot of different kinds of foods, individual types will be consumed slower. You can set wheat to be made into alcohol, for instance. But if you only have one farm, you will ultimately struggle to keep up with alcohol production.

As I expand, I'm placing multiple locations for gatherer hut/forester/herbalist/hunter combo. Berries get collected by the gatherer. When you have 3-4 gatherer huts, it is safe to use berries for alcohol without exhausting your supply. I find this is better than designating a specific farm or orchard product for alcohol. Gatherer huts produce 4 different goods. So it isn't so bad if you have multiple instances of them. Also, unless you have at least one kind of farm per type of produce, I wouldn't recommend building a second just to be used for alcohol. You will ultimately have large stockpiles of that food... which you could use for trading.

It's not like there is a wrong answer. But that method works best for me.

If your population is educated, equipped with steel tools, warm coats and the food production building is located close to a barn and houses, your production will be maximized... assuming building placement is optimal (in the case of gatherers and fishermen). Farm and orchard efficiency does not rely on a specific location. Though, I've seen experiments where people have a greater overall yield per worker and surface area by making smaller farms. I'm not too sure about that. Lots of people on reddit are coming up with some strange results.

I hope this is helpful.

[Felch]

I've been doing the forester, gatherer, hunter, herbalist trick, and have had good results with it. I didn't realize that fishing was based on water in surrounding tiles, but it makes a lot of sense. Fishing, hunting, and gathering are the main food sources in the town I'm working on now. A lot of the strategy in the game seems to come down to minimizing trips that your workers make, so I've been working on a repeating pattern of housing cluster and storage connected by a road to the four forest buildings (although I only built the herbalist in my first forest patch).

The yield per worker and surface area interests me. There's no easy way to predict it while you're laying out farms, and my instinct is just to go 15x15 whenever possible. I'm also not sure if I should be going as high as 6 workers with those farms. It would have been nice if there was some sort of transparency there.

[Sava]

Check out the reddit page. There are a lot of active users posting efficiency experiments.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Banished

Here is the farm output efficiency thread:

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

TLDR conclusion:

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.

So far, I have yet to employ this strategy in my game. I'm working on a city now that just eclipsed 200 adults. The town is growing fast. I'm starting to get some of the issues with laborers and builders walking too far to job sites. That's definitely something that needs to be fixed. I think a building, similar to the tavern, could be made that just serves as a place for citizens to top off their food and warmth meters.

Hopefully, the dev releases some mod tools. There are a lot of people ready to makes such mods... myself included.

[Guynemer]

Year 65, we've gone over decade without a major disaster, total population over 400, everyone is in a stone house, food stores around 55000 and rising. I just need to start stockpiling some stone and iron and extra tools for when the next disaster strikes.

[Colonâ„¢]

You can't go wrong with subways when you get traffic jams. Avoid buses.

[Guynemer]

SimCity.

I imagine last year's cluster**** has killed any chance of an actually good SimCity in the future.

[Wiglaf]

You think Banished is better than Simcity? Simcity had a manual. Where is the Banished manual?