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I got the idea to play with the nomad sign from Kid where you can choose the number of nomads. I’ll better show you some pictures before Brad comes with his ideas. š
First, I wanted to see how it works in vanilla gameplay. Back to basic. Always nice. I must confess, I was a bit over-confident. Normally, I find a vanilla game easy but I never was comfortable in my first attempt. I made two mistakes; I set the nomad post, 20% nomads each spring, right at the beginning and I choose a medium start. I played to a population of about 150 but was short on most everything except food. The hunters couldn’t provide enough leather for clothes for everyone. This made it even more difficult to collect enough logs and stones in winter. There were never stones enough to build more than one trading port, so the chances to get sheep that could produce enough wool for clothes for everyone is gone, I need to buy logs and stones for houses and don’t have much to sell, so I can’t afford to buy wool as well. When I didn’t even have enough stones to build the needed second school, I gave it up; saw no prospects of ever sort things out.
I made two changes, choose an easy start with sheep and waited 5 years to take the first nomads.
That game worked better. I played 16 years. It was difficult, stressful….. a lot of fun. Before you look at the screenshots, you can guess the population in year 16. Now people start to starve, it was a bit bad luck, a very bad harvest year after a bad harvest year. With a full harvest one of these years, it could have worked a few more years. Anyway, I’m satisfied with this game.
As next I will start a Nordic, nomad game. Maybe I’ll blog it from the start.
Pictures:
First nomads
10 years
Before disaster
After disaster
As I said, I started a Nordic game with the nomad sign. Like the vanilla version, I played a few years until I set the sign. This is a “shepherd” start with mild climate. I think these are the start conditions that may work. We need a lot of sheep from the start. Opposite to a normal Nordic game, population will grow faster than sheep and I don’t want to run out of coats later.
You can see that I’ve already built a trading port. I want to buy seeds as fast as I can, first barely and beans, later also wheat that I want to process to bread.
The first couple of nomads in year 4 are rather an asset than an obstacle.
Year 6
We got bean seeds early, without ordering! I had to collect all sellable to be able to buy them because there were only 2 gold nuggets close enough. Beans is the beast vegetables. The weight is only 2 compared to other vegetables with weight 3. You can store 50% more in each barn. That makes a big difference and worth the little higher price compared to turnip seeds.
We could also collect enough boulders for a thingstead. I will reject all of the Thingstead nomads. Kid’s nomads will be (more?) than enough, even if it’s still a small number.
Harder? Yes and no. The North has less powerful food producers, that makes it hard but on the other side it’s real-time ageing and it has cheap houses for small families that makes building new houses easier and the population growth slower. We will see how it goes on.
The first screenshot was from year 10. I obviously pressed f12 instead of f11 so it’s without menus. The population was about 60 compared to over 200 in the vanilla version. You can see that I could buy some barley seeds and that I’m expanding the sheep herds as fast as I can. There are also a few fisher and some gatherers and hunters in the forest. So the food situation is fine.
I wasn’t sure which houses I should build or if I wanted to try to work with happiness. Happiness do pay off but I don’t think that I can afford enough houses without happiness detraction. I would also need to expand the number of happiness maker faster than I think is possible when the size of the nomad groups increases. So my decision was to build a combination of longhouses for 3 families, goahtis and a few peat houses. I want a good natural population growth, so only the cheap goahtis for 3 persons will not be nice. I make some “population management” when I have time; letting people change houses in order to get as many new babies as I can. I think this can work.
Second picture from year 13. The nomad groups are getting more impressive.
I see I didnĀ“t answer your question about builders, Brad. It was a bit excessive that said I put the half of the nomads to builders. But I use as many as I need for active building projects, not more not less. Unemployed builders donĀ“t work slower as labourers, never saw that but I try never to assign more than I need for another reason: Builders have a high priority when it comes to job assignments, so they live close to the building sites and mess with the efficiency of other production sites because their workers suddenly live far away. ThatĀ“s the reason I have problems with farming on new fields in developing areas. The houses where I have planned farmers to live are occupied by builders and the farmers live far away.
The Nordic settlement grows. So far without problems. As you can see, I will play more years in the Nordic game (but maybe not to a larger population, we will see).
First picture, year 15
Food looks OK. We will manage this group, too.
Second picture, year 16
We donĀ“t want to run out of tools, so I started this small industrial area. WeĀ“ve also managed to buy wheat and apple seeds.
Now I’ve played the Nordic game to its end. It went well another few years. I was a bit nervous about the tools but managed to increase production enough. The difficult thing is to clear enough land for new fields every year. It was hard enough in the vanilla game, here the bog makes it even harder and slower and I couldn’t clear enough land the last years, so I saw it coming.
First and second picture year 20
The population graph is pretty scary. Here I’m about to expand the iron and tool production. I’ve moved some sheep and fields and is about to replace them with buildings for ironworks.
Third picture
I was a bit too busy thinking about tool production that I forgot to produce enough iron fittings. I’ve built too many larger barns and longhouses for one small blacksmith to keep up. So the nomad group from year 21 was located in this refugee camp where no iron fittings are needed.
Fourth picture
I’ve seen it coming for a few years. I have increased food production as much as I could but it wasn’t enough. 22 years, almost 800 inhabitants; a little less than in vanilla. A lot of stress, a lot of fun.
Played this one to its end, at least almost. 3 of the last 294 nomads who arrived in year 19 starved to death in summer before the harvest. The rest of the about 1800 Bannis will survive until next spring but I don’t think that I can manage to build enough houses for all homeless nomads and in no way survive longer.
Last year was hard enough. I could barely build enough houses until this last group arrived. Since I ran out of lumber, I even had to build some other cheap houses. There wasn’t time to clear enough land for enough new fields, so no chances to go on.
Again a fun game. As I thought a bit easier than vanilla but still a good challenge.
The picture shows the impressive row of the last nomad group.
I have used these farmyards before even in a pretty large settlement, so I know them. As I said, they are lovely. My favourite is the pigs and mushroom patch with the pigs enjoying the warm sun and mushrooms as big as the piglets. Another favourite is “three sisters” where the beans climb on the corn and the squash squeezed in between, very untidy and nice. “Unfortunately” they are a bit overpowered for my taste to use in a normal game but of course they are the natural way for a small farm to run their supply.
And in this game I “can live with” the high production. Or literally, I do live from the high production because it makes it possible to take huge numbers of nomads without big concerns about food, tools and clothes. (I need some firewood from normal cutters)
I just finished this game. ItĀ“s totally crazy. ItĀ“s not game-over. ItĀ“s enough, lags also in 1x speed. I wanted to stop several years, I make the same things every year, not so fun but I always thought, just one more year just to see if it works this well even bigger. It always did.
Two years before I stopped, I thought the next “batch” will be bigger than IĀ“ve ever seen before. So I took it and after they all had houses I thought; if I take one more group this game will be bigger than IĀ“ve ever done before. But I havenĀ“t built houses for them all. ThereĀ“s an epidemic going on; 1330 sick people and 1333 nomads walking around make the game unplayable; lags as bad as IĀ“ve never seen before. But itĀ“s almost 8000 inhabitants.
First picture
Year 20. At this point, I first wanted to stop. The picture shows how more or less the whole map looks like. RedĀ“s little country houses (need only 48 lumber, no stone, can host 6 people and has a decent heat economy) various farmyards in the courtyards together with a barn and a firewood stockpile and sometimes a small market.
Second picture
This is how I usually do it. After every nomad has a house, I continue to build houses for young couples and start to fill the yards with patches. I also start to prepare the houses for the next yearĀ“s nomads.
Third picture
Also these 1050 nomads got a warm house, a coat a tool and enough food before winter.
Fourth picture
But these will get no house.
