This time I´ll only show a couple of pictures.
First picture
This lady was stuck idling on the trading jetty. I could save her by building these small boardwalk pieces. I don´t know how this could happen. It wasn´t directly after it was built. Are there any “rules” how you can build this port? I´ve made it directly at the small port. Maybe there should be one tile in between. Or can you make something at the model that prevents this from happening?
Second picture
The village develops. It´s my usual dense village building style. I try not to set everything in perfect rows. But it still looks a bit too neat. Maybe that could be a possible future development; houses that are not in perfect angles. DS has some you can turn just a little “out of the row”. Such houses would make fun to use here.
You can see the food graph. This ups and downs are typical when you need to rely a lot on trade.
Basically we have export goods enough to buy the food that´s missing. I still have that one field, more of nostalgic reasons, we could do without it but I still need to send a lot of people out in the woods to pick berries in the autumn. The merchants simply bring too little fruit. I think fruit too is heavier, weight 2, so the merchants only bring half of what they did before. I order beans and bread from some merchants but I´m too stingy to pay the ordering fee on fruit so I only buy from those, I don´t order anything from. That strategy used to work in earlier Nordic games but it doesn´t here, at least not yet. I´m about to build a third small port to increase the chances to get some. We will see how it goes on.
Yesterday was a lot of sport on TV. It´s a nice combination; winter sport and Banished.
Not much to tell; it´s a big difference between this normal woods and Iceland birches; no lack of logs or fuels. My ambition here on this harsh map is not to farm and no need to send everyone to pick berries but I´m far from there yet. 1 port isn´t enough to support even this small settlement with food. I tried to close the turnip field but that was no good idea; last year we were almost out of food so it was opened again and I will now move it because I want that spot for a second port.
I have started to invest in better houses even if will take a long time to have them “paid off”. It´s a big difference in cost between turf and log or frame houses. What about increasing the amount of stone needed for the turf houses? On seafarer, where you really need them, there are a lot of stones on the ground, so that wouldn´t hurt much and on other maps, it would motivate to build the more advanced houses.
I got some bricks and roof tiles and yes; I can say that it was bad luck on the other maps with only a few roof tiles; this time, both had about the same amount. But a bit more totally would be good.
The picture shows the content in the house stores. Last year I bought about 1000 of each bread and beans. Most of the beans are gone into the houses but there´s still bread left in the stores.
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.
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)
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.
Ooops, forgot the pictures.
Since you think that there will be a new version this week, Tom, I went on with this town. We live but it´s still a struggle. Perfect, as it should be! I have looked at some more things; it looks like glassware is cheaper and much more profitable to produce for export than glass panes. What´s the reason? At the moment, I don´t bother to look at production numbers. With a partly educated population, it´s tedious. In other more planned games, I use to start a new village with educated couples a bit away from the old town but since I have no intention to play this game so much longer, I haven´t in this town. So I take it as it comes.
Sometimes it brings surprises: I had a lot of boulders blocking my stockpiles, so I decided to build a stonemason. First I just cut them to small, more useful stones. Then I saw that he can also produce millstones. We need to buy a lot of food so another thing to export that doesn´t cost any logs is great. I saw, 1 boulder gives 1 millstone. Sounds reasonable. The production was slow at the beginning but after a while, it increased in a strange way and I saw that now 2 millstones were made from each boulder. It looks like one of my younger cleverer workers saw how inefficient the older generation handled the stones and decided to do it better himself. By the way; the menu says that “stones” are used to make millstones. It would be better if it says “boulders”.
First picture
I´ve played with things I usually never use in a Nordic game; here cray fishing. The idea that a gatherer can empty the catch cages is clever. Now, it´s not much use to have a gatherer picking wild food on “harsh” so I concentrate on cray fishing and have located 4 spots in it the area. When they are empty the gatherer picks his deadwood until I have time/remember to put out new spots. Also good. On this picture, the output is very consistent but I have seen everything between 15 and 90. I don´t know if it pays off but it´s something different.
Second picture
This one is a little extreme, but principally not unusual. There are much more seeds and animals than advanced goods delivered to the big port. I´m glad you want to change this, Tom.
The settlement still lives. It´s still a struggle. I have reluctantly built a few more fields and I´m about to expand the number of pastures. With a second forester, I also hope that we can increase the charcoal production and be able to increase the production of fuel-consuming export goods. Students have started to graduate. It´s too early to see an overall effect yet. I´m trying to locate the educated workers to “important” sites but they are still few and are not easy to force to be glassmaker instead of traders at the close trading port.
My major issue at the moment are the markets. They don´t work as I want to (and as they use to at a vanilla game). First I used the Wagon Vendors. They worked very well at the beginning but as the settlement grew, it was getting harder to keep them filled, even with 2-3 vendors. This is something I´ve seen in other games, too. They are simply too small to support a lot of houses. Since the Lanthandel “bugged”, I built first one and now two big markets. But they can´t be filled. Look at the pictures; there isn´t much food at the market. I want to fill it with as much food as I have in the barns so I assigned 6 vendors. Normally it doesn´t take long and the market will be well filled. But these guys refuse to work. At the second picture, at least 2 of them do but at the first; none! I can´t understand what´s wrong. Any hints?
Also; I have never seen any firewood at one of the markets. I don´t know if this is a bug or if it´s too heavy for my reluctant vendors to carry. And maybe some of the materials like barrows, potash, pottery, rope, tallow should be removed. Maybe space for such things is reserved at the markets and make it impossible to fill it with food and firewood. Textiles and salt may have a point to store there, to be able to locate tailors and salt consuming sites close to the market.
The merchant Conniel has no title but wants to buy ironware, glass and pottery.
Irrelevant; I have noticed, too that anvils have a good profit but I don´t sell any iron products at all. (I put some spare iron fittings in some of the ports just to see which merchants pay good for them but I haven´t sold any). The reason is that I always was short on logs and fuels. So I made a small calculation of which goods made a good profit/used log. And since iron products use charcoal at each step, thay cost more logs to produce than pottery and glass.
If my calculations are right; you get a profit for one used log:
iron tool 29
iron fitting 35
anvil 39
pottery 97
glass 77
First picture
Vendors prefer collecting resources than to fill their market.
Second picture
Now at least two of them are working but the market is quite empty, even if there are a lot of meat and fish in the barns. I held the menus open for quite some time and never saw more than two of them working at the same time, often it was only one or none.
Third picture
They don´t even empty the mead house anymore, what they did at the beginning of the game. Now, I don’t complain about this, it´s just a notice. If the vendors were too diligent at the beginning, now it has changed to the opposite.
