A complete list of bugs and gameplay feedback

This is by far my favourite version of Banished, and I almost only play the North at this point, with occasional jumps back to Colonial Charter for variety.

Over my many hours, I noted down all the little bugs and balance issues that I could find (including some things that are definitely just personal preference, but might still be good feedback). I figured posting it would be a good way to pay it back for this excellent mod so I tried to check everything thoroughly.

I kept playing for many more hours after writing this up, and couldn’t find anything else I wanted to add.

THE LIST.

Bugs/Clear balance issues

1. Smokehouse: Inferior to Smoking Shed.

There is no real difference in productivity between the smoking shed and the smokehouse, as the single worker goes and gets an armful of meat and then smokes it straightaway, so rarely utilises the extra storage. You can also place four sheds in the space of one smokehouse, for less stone and wood, and have multiple workers or meat types.

Fix: not sure. Working speed, or extra workers might help. Or just turning one of them into something else.

2. Same issue for the schoolhouse.

I only ever build the school extension because it’s the same as the school but takes much less space – and it’s usually better (IMO) to scatter smaller schools around than have a single giant one anyway. Might be worth lowering the number of students that can study there for balance?

3. Forester behaviour.

The forester stops gathering stone and iron ore when wood production is reached, which is slightly annoying as they are the only one to collect those automatically, especially if they are set to plant only. They also destroy oaks, without replacing them, which is an issue for some games. More on that further down as it falls into playstyle feedback.

4. Minor crop balance issues.

Most of the time it only makes sense to grow cabbages, with maybe a few beans mixed in. I’d expect other vege crops to shine more in milder climates, but they still end up worse than cabbages. It seems like there should be more of a tradeoff between growing for sauerkraut and base production, or a shift with education, but cabbages keep winning in every climate and situation.

5. Non-walkable peat bogs.

The blog post about the peat bogs says they are walkable, but the surrounded tiles aren’t reachable, so any collection tasks sit there indefinitely (I tied up a lot of builders over the years until I realised that!). Minor, just mentioning in case it isn’t intended behaviour.

5A. Peat cutters ignore priority.

While they generally cut peat in the order placed, they often just seem to jump around randomly and using the priority tool does nothing, There might be some behind the scenes logic at work, but it’s very common for them to leave one or two awkward peat spots and wander off to another area of the map.

6. Ex-priests trapped in a cult.

People get trapped in the small church when they switch jobs, and then the new priest comes in and works happily while the old one is stuck perpetually ‘picking up resources’. This isn’t a problem for the stone church because the priest stays outside on the steps, and only shows up on some maps because job switching is very variable.

If they switch jobs while out of the church, they aren’t trapped. I assume they’re finishing up their ‘work time’, but aren’t able to properly complete the task or be interrupted by needs.

The Healer’s Hut might have the same issue (removing them from the job leaves them in there for a long time ‘finishing’ their task) but stopping work on the building is enough to kick them out.

7. Hunting cabin isn’t properly used by hunters.

While the Hunting Cabin makes sense and sort of works, the bannies tend to pick up their entire kill and default to storage that accepts everything they want to drop off, or at least the biggest item, so rarely use it properly and waste a lot of time finding alternative storage. There’s no difference between using the Hunting Cabin vs a trapper cabin + ‘temporary’ hunting spots.

Given there are four buildings for hides storage (2 hunting cabins, the trapper cabin, and the toolshed), the hunting cabin doesn’t really fill a good niche right now (the wider range is good, but sabotaged by the storage issues) and needs to be paired with a small market (which only accepts the meat) to be used at all.

Possible fixes: Add meat storage, or add a custom meat only storage barn to place nearby. Or upgrade the hunting cabin into a living space or something that actually processes the materials onsite so it still has a unique role.

Stuff I want (Preferences/Suggestions, not actual bugs or problems for gameplay)

8. Trade screen defaults to inventory.

In Colonial Charter (and maybe the base game? Not actually sure) the trade screen defaults to the last used, but in the North it always opens on the inventory screen. Minor annoyance that requires a lot of extra clicks over time, as the trade screen is the most heavily used.

9. Big market vs little market.

This might just be a gameplay preference rather than an actual issue, but in case it’s a balance thing worth considering: I almost always build the small village shop first, and only build the large market later when there is a much bigger population to support and the little shops are struggling to keep up. Wadmal often needs to be traded for as well, with most starting conditions, so I often end up with the supplies for both at about the same time. Basically, they feel the wrong way round, the little store feels more mid game, and the large market feels late game.

10. Clay pits – non-intuitive removal.

The clay pits drove me nuts for years because not only do they require constant switching between builders and miners, I was constantly removing them before they’re flattened because I assumed they were full, or I expected them to be dismantled ‘normally’. Sometimes the workers add extra clay that just sits there in storage, so it’s hard to even look at the clay amount to know if it’s in progress or not.

I’ve finally figured out how they work now and wait til all options are greyed out, but it’s not very intuitive. Tweaking this process would be a good usability thing – maybe have them remove it automatically once refilled, or throw up a peat bog style flag.

8. Root cellar!

Being able to build into the mountains to carve out a storage area would be awesome on certain maps and makes sense (like Colonial Charter’s root cellar). They’d have to be fairly expensive in stone, or non-removable, I guess. Maybe similar to the clay pits? Honestly, I just want more custom storage options, and root cellars seem the most in theme.

9. Nomads Be Gone.

I’d love a way to disable nomads entirely for some playthroughs, the notification gets very irritating when I don’t want them and this mod especially shines with the slow growth approach – Colonial Charter has a non-nomad attracting ‘ship’ building, so I know it’s possible. I rarely bother building the townhall options anymore because the nomads are so annoying.

10. Granary – add flour to list

I mostly use these to keep the flour in one place for bakeries before it all vanishes into houses, but there’s no option to collect flour, and leaving a worker active to move bread out means that they steal all the flour out far away as well. Adding flour to the list of collectable options would be awesome.

11. Oak tree cultivation.

The oak trees tend to slowly die out on their own, without careful curation, and unlike pines, have no automated way to manage them for honey/herb focussed groves to complement the wood/firewood/fur pine groves (Nor do peat bogs, but they make sense that way and hold their own until manually cleared).

The oaks provide something extra to encourage investing in nature into the later game, rather than stripping it all for a fur trade economy and farms, so I think they are worth giving a bit more in game support (I didn’t even really notice them for years and I played this mod a lot, and now they are one of my favourite bits).

I don’t think the oak trees themselves should change – slowly growing a forest over 80+ years feels rewarding and realistic.

Clearing all the encroaching pines out every couple of years is very labour intensive for the player (I often play Banished when my hands hurt too much for other things, so the extra clicks on this and a few other things are very noticeable). It would be great to have a forester or ‘special’ gatherer building or something relevant that cultivates them (clears stuff around them or at least doesn’t chop them for logs if the forester, as planting them outright might be a little unbalanced). Or just a selection tool that avoids the oaks while targeting the pines.

Some kind of druidic role that boosts various natural resources (e.g. the deer?) might also be appropriate – this is the only mod which really rewards long term hunter gatherer societies so boosting that into the late game would be worthwhile without converting everything into plantations.

12. Renewable gold.

In the same theme of long term ‘working with nature’, it would be nice if gold occasionally replenished in the spots it tends to be washed up. Mostly just because it doesn’t feel right playing for 100 or 200 years and never ever having any more natural deposits, when I can build sand pits and sift out 1 or 2 gold every year, so clearly there is still gold washing around the river.

13. Ashlar production.

I don’t think this is really a balance issue, but it is a pet peeve because I get stuck optimising for stone and miss out on some building options at the time they make sense. An uneducated worker converting stone into ashlar gains no extra resources, so it’s pointless doing that for roading, and stone is usually too limited to waste on simple stone roads, but building proper roads is still useful before the populace is fully educated. I just hate wasting stone when it’s already too rare to be worth selling most of the time.

Emotionally, I think it would feel better if it was slightly tweaked to get at least a slight bonus even with an uneducated worker.

14. Trader frequency.

There are noticeable bumps in frequency/cargo amount at 50 and 100 (ish?) population, but then nothing after that. Would be nice to have at least one or two more increments for large populations (you can build more ports, but the main benefit of that is just to spread out the trading centres, it gets a bit silly building multiple ports just to increase the number of ships – there’s no reason a single port can’t become busier over time. Also some maps have limited valid placement options on rivers due to wobbly banks).

15. Labourer/Builder only job menu.

Another one borrowed from CC, 90% of the time only the labourers and builders need to be actively monitored/adjusted, the rest can be checked via buildings, so would be nice to save some screen space.

16. Can’t buy glassware from traders.

This seems to be the only item that can’t be ordered. It’s minor, but I sometimes try and do no factory runs to keep the traders useful/limit my building sprees, and this means I can’t build that final tavern upgrade.

17. UI for the months

I don’t really like playing with the named months, it would be nice if the options were toggleable – currently I stack an older menu with the latest one so I can see all the resources and also the ‘early spring’ or ‘slaughter month’ name.

The progression makes sense and works well in some games, but it loses some immersion and I enjoyed the thematic/seasonal descriptions. (And I switched hemispheres at one point so July now means both winter and summer to me forever, which is really confusing playing a game where the seasons matter!).

18. All tools are ‘Durable’

When looking at a bannie, it always just says ‘durable’ for both iron and steel tools.