Testing North 7 v3

Ooops, forgot the pictures.

I think you are wrong about the sheep, Tom. First, I don´t think it´s a good idea to eat most of the initial 8 sheep they brought because that´s what you would need to do if you´re not fishing. It will be at least 4 months until anything will grow and in that time the 6 Bannis will need at least 200 food=5 sheep. They normally don´t start to breed at once. Second, the lambs don´t only appear in spring. It´s during the whole year and it looks like the sheep also get offspring when there´s no herdsman working. It´s less than if he´s working but the herd still grows.

It´s difficult to measure the influence of the herdsman. If the pasture is full, you need one to slaughter. If you´re not slaughtering the herd will grow to 3 more than the pasture can hold, no matter how big it is and then stop growing until some are slaughtered.

At the beginning of this game when I´m short on workers, I have a herdsman assigned but I take him away in August/Septemeber to pick berries, November/December to pick deadwood and April/May deadwood again, so he´s working as shepherd about the ½ time. Normally 8-10 sheep are slaughtered this way. The last two years, I let him stay at his pasture the whole year; the first year 13, next 16 sheep were slaughtered.

The last picture shows a sheep experiment. I split the herd; the smaller pastures for 15 sheep was full from the start and occupied a herdsman all the time. The large pasture had 19 sheep after the split and no herdsman sat his foot there. After about 1 year the herdsman in the small pasture had slaughtered 9 sheep and the herd without a herdsman grew from 19 to 32 at the same time.

Conclusions? Not more than; if you want as much meat as possible from a herd; employ a herdsman. If you need him elsewhere, you can take him away only losing a little meat.

The food situation has improved. I still can see more meat, fish and barley in the house stores but it looks like houses with many inhabitants more often have some turnips in the stores. I have also bought some beans, weight 1, that the Bannis seem to love and some other vegetables. I thought the processed sauerkraut would “lose weight” at the processing but it doesn´t; still the weight of 3.

First picture

The healer´s hut looks lovely but I´m no “herbalist person” and I hope there are other testers who are, so I decided not to spend 24 logs on it. I hope there will be more buildings in that style in the future.

Second picture

This screenshot is from year 14. I add a picture from my last game year 14. Compare the forest. A big difference. I can manage but I need to collect logs during several years when I want to build something like the chapel, that need more logs. And without the deadwood, I would have been forced to make exactly what the Vikings did on Iceland! I have deliberately not built any forester, yet, just to test. What is with the forester trees? Do they also grow this slow? Or can we “cheat Iceland” by building foresters?

Talking about the chapel; The pause sign is missing on the footprint. I couldn´t understand why no one cleared the ground and brought building materials. I used the priority tool; nothing. I´ve forgotten that I paused the building site during some harvest season and there was no sign to remind me.

The fields are typical; all barley harvested, only very little turnips. So far, I find the – weight higher than the + when it comes to the heavy turnips.

Fourth picture
Pasture experiment.

It´s been a long time since I had such an evil decease so early. In my last game 1 or 2 Bannis had Influenza once. It was later in the game, didn´t spread and had no consequences. A bad side effect of early diseases is that the people who were ill without a doctor are harder to get happy.

Changing the text might be nice. I´ve always “made fun” of those people who are “visiting the herbalist” where there isn´t and never was any.

I just saw; I made not one single screenshot yesterday. Probably a good sign; no bugs or other weird things. This version is getting mature.

These screenshots are from where I stopped in year 23.

First picture
I just built this forester. I guess it would have been wise to build one earlier; I would recommend as early as possible on an Iceland scenario. But I wanted to test the original wood/fuel supply a little longer. So far my strategy of picking deadwood has worked fine. You can see the fuel graph. I had to use the chopper twice in the past few years; first after I´ve run the production of charcoal and potash at the same time, then again after I´ve made a larger batch of charcoal and tar.

Second picture
Here´s the village. Many people are fully happy but as usual; it´s hard to get the original settlers in turf houses happy. I´ve forgotten to ask, Tom: Do the Frame Houses still need more fule than the Turf Houses or did you make any changes here?

Everyone is pretty healthy. There are still minor issues with turnips. I order as much beans as I can. If I buy 2000 beans they are gone fast. It looks like these people love this imported exclusive food. If I have 1 field that makes some 300 turnips, there are still turnips left in the stores next year. But if I look, there are turnips in some houses, especially now when most of the last batch of beans are eaten.

The glassmaker looks a bit odd in this Viking village. I made the decision to build one because the forester needs so much glass. To be honest; the forester also looks odd in these surroundings. For the gameplay, it´s interesting that you need to invest a lot to be able to establish forestry on Iceland but from a historical point of view, it´s weird that you need glass to be able to plant a tree. I don´t think the Vikings could make glass, so a primitive-looking glassmaker would also be historically wrong. I would like it better if the small woodcutter cabin also could plant trees; at least at the Iceland scenario where I don´t think you can develop a larger settlement without forestry. (Or maybe you can if you import logs, I haven´t tried that option, yet, primarily because I want my beans)

It might be possible to make a real Iceland scenario. After I´ve built a second larger port, I´ve started to order logs. Last year I even got more than 150 logs. So I guess that I could have stayed in the “real Viking time period” longer.

I now also understand why the beans I order disappear so fast; these “little bastards” prefer a double potion of beans over the cheaper and easier mutton and turnips; the same thing the blueberries everyone pick in the fall do disappear fast; they don´t need any barley if they take a double portion. This is a big disadvantage you get when you let something belong to more than one category.

I´ve never liked beans as both proteins and vegetables but I haven´t complained about it because there have always been alternatives. I have simply avoided beans. I also didn´t say anything about your “berry tweak” before I´ve tested it. But I can say; I don´t like it. This effect of Bannis eating expensive berries instead of cheaper grain is one disadvantage and the “positive effect” you has as motivation; to make it easier at the beginning to achieve full health is for me a negative effect; you take away a part of the challenge you have with the harder starting options where you can´t farm for grain. I find it would be much better to add barley from start to the easier starting options and leave the berries as fruit only.

I have one question about bricks and roof tiles: As I´ve seen, they can only be bought from the Hanseatic merchant and he arrives very seldom to the small port. That´s OK. I could order bricks and roof tiles after some years and after something like 15 years, he arrived with the ordered goods; only, he brought more than 100 bricks and only 25 roof tiles. It was something very similar in my last game: a lot of bricks but not enough roof tiles to build a school or brickyard. Is this bad luck or something left from North 6 where you needed more bricks than roof tiles to build a brickyard (if I remember it right)? Anyway, when they arrive so seldom, it would be nice if you can get enough roof tiles to build a brickyard without needing to order the roof tiles a second time.

I hope you´ve got your coffee, Tom. That´s one advantage now when I live in the town; there are 200 m to a supermarket. If I forget something, it takes a few minutes to get something instead of an hour as it used to be.

If you take a look at the inventory and compare items in store and items in houses, you will see a difference. I made a screenshot of this in year 24 as I looked a bit closer at it and I also looked as I stopped the game in year 34 (yes, I´ve started a new game, more to that later).

58%/49% of all the beans
70%/56% of all berries
32%/39% of all turnips
26%/14% of all mutton
6%/4% of all barley
6%/7% of all salmon

are to be found in the homes. My conclusion is that they prefer beans and berries, no matter how much there are in total. I cut the menus together in the first picture.

As I said, I decided to stop this game but I wanted to stop it with a “hammer” by building a temple! Yes, it is possible to build a temple at an Iceland scenario, also with a small population. It´s built of imported logs.

I wasn´t tired of my first game. It was nice and I could very well have played it further but I want to try a “normal” scenario because I want to compare how much easier the wood/log situation is.

First picture
Comparistion of inventories store/homes.

Second picture
Overwiev Iceland village.

Third picture
I had to start the new game twice; in the first, one of these berserk huntresses was in action. After she killed most of the deer in the big herd she went on with the black grouse. Killing rage!

Fourth picture
It´s an Anders and Ella start on a small lowland map, harsh climate, disasters on. I wasn´t sure of what to do but I started with a large claypit and a trading port (even used the 4 iron they brought for wheelbarrows). It worked out and the first merchant even brought cows. They could also collect enough boulders to build a Thingstead. Now we are waiting for new inhabitants.

I think this selection comes both from vendors and the inhabitants filling their homes. Beans, barley, turnips and mutton are similar good distributed in close barns to the market wagon, berries more far away. So I don´t think it has much to do with where the goods are stored. It´s so much more obvious to see in a village like this where there are so few different kinds of food. It´s simple statistics and probability calculation; if a vendor has room for 200 fruit in his cart; he´ll get 200 blueberries but for 200 grain, he vill statistically get 100 berries and 100 barley. Now there are 300 berries and 100 barley in the stores. The inhabitant that grabs food acts in the same way; the consumption of a double-category food is 3 times as high as a single category food if you only have one alternative. If we would have had other grain products as well, the consumption of “grain berries” would probably not have been this high.

I will go on in my new village and keep an eye on this. Anyway; everyone is 100% healthy without ever seeing a real grain. I don´t find that that´s an improvement of the gameplay. If you´ve given Anders and Ella some barley seed, it would be a consideration; should I grow barley or turnips, both or none of them? That´s much nicer to me.

It would be interesting how other testers find the “berry tweak” (and the protein beans in combination with all other(?) vegetables being 3 times as heavier).