.
I agree that using peat is a very good thing. That´s the reason I´m so concerned that it works, in every aspect. So sorry, if I sound critical in my comments. I know, Tom is used to it and can take it.
I´ve also learned to get around the builder problem. If you are aware of it, it´s no big thing to be sure that real building projects have builders assigned before you mark the peat cutting areas. In this case, the builders stay and finish the building projects and when they are done, the labourers have usually prepared the bogland and builders have no reason to move into these areas. But still, I find something need to be done about this. It shouldn´t be necessary to understand and adapt to these “mechanics” to use peat cutting in a “normal” way.
Next minor issue; sacrificing. I´ve looked into that, too. And I can say, I don´t really understand how the temple works. It looks very much like it also works as a storehouse for meat (and other proteins).
I´ve made a few screenshots to show. Some menus are cut together.
First picture
First, I thought my idea about building the temple close to pastures worked very well. Here´s 507 mutton in the store, I´ve even seen more than 600. I also saw how the shepherd made some sacrifice; bringing mutton directly from the pasture to the temple.
Second picture
But it didn´t take long until it was totally empty. Here I caught a very devoted 1-year-old Christian child, stealing the last 64 sacrificed mutton from the temple. I haven´t caught one “in the act” but I suspect that also traders take away mutton from the temple when they find it more convenient than to walk to the stores further away. It´s the only explanation that 500 meat or more disappear as fast as it does.
Third picture
But it didn´t take long until the temple was filled again. You can also see the happiness graph. The first drop to a lower level is because of an influenza epidemic. But the “peaks” down comes when the store of sacrificed meat is empty.
I studied what happened with happiness when people got ill and I made notes of the names of the sick people. Most of them lost stars when they were ill, a few children didn´t. I will follow and see if those who lost stars, can regain happiness. I haven´t looked in detail but it looks like children, especially if they live in loghouses regain happiness but adults don´t. But I will take a look later and report about it.
Builders do move close to building sites. (Or rather, the occupation of the people who happens to live close to a building site change their profession to builders). Builders seem to have the highest priority and a lot of builders may mess up your production because other professions will live farther away from their workplaces. It´s always been that way in Banished and a thing you must think about when you build large towns with a lot of building projects and a lot of builders. With only a few projects, it doesn´t matter much.
To the temple. I like the idea of sacrificing. It evens the spiritual effect of the temple and the chapels. As you may know, I like to make such decisions; what is best in this town, to use goods or manpower for the same effect. But I think we need something less common than meat to sacrifice. Can´t the priest produce something inedible like “sacrifice gifts” in the temple? By the way; I always wanted to ask, is more meat needed when the population increases?
I´ll show some winter pictures this time. There are no new obstacles. I have just started to autotrade and can´t say so much about how it works, yet. The capacity of the small port is now enough. Just before I built the export port and started to take away different goods from the small ports, it was overfilled a couple of times when the big boats arrived with logs and beans and that´s good. After all; it´s a small port and if you want to make “heavy trading” for a larger population, you need to use other methods than barter at small ports.
Since there´s not so much ore on the ground, I will now expand to the closes mountain where a mine can be built. Now with the bog, it needs a bit more planning than earlier and that´s good. It adds something to the game.
I looked a lot into these assigning professions at the vanilla time and I don´t think that the order at the profession list has anything to do with the priority of professions to workplaces. I don´t remember everything but builders have the highest and miners are at the bottom, they may live very far away.
I don´t think sacrificing hides would be a good idea. As you say, they are rarer and I´m pretty sure that no tanner would let the hides be sacrificed if the temple was closer than a store with hides. Meat is better. I think, that the problems would be smaller if you locate the temple further away from the trading ports or you avoid selling the kind of meat you sacrifice. Traders seem to be opponents of sacrificing, maybe they were in contact with too many Christian merchants. If you keep the meat as it is, it would be good to have an “empty store” button at the temple. I don´t really trust the gods, so if you are short of food; better eat what you have than make a sacrifice.
I went on with the game this afternoon and I can say; the adults who lost stars as they were sick, still only have 3 stars, also after everyone has moved into a log cabin. The influenza was about 20 years ago. I have made similar observations before. In one way, I like that there´s no doctor early. It´s realistic. I don´t mind that people are longer ill and that some die if there´s an epidemic but I don´t like these long term effect on happiness. Now I don´t really know, how the doctor works and if it´s possible to variate its function but is it possible to make an early doctor where people can go (and not lose stars) but they will have the same probability to die as if there wasn´t a doctor?
I´m not so pleased about the merchants to the export port. Why are there two different merchants from the same place? One English merchant only wants to pay good for tar, nothing else, so that one is pretty useless. The other also wants meat, wadmal, glass panes and maybe something more I don´t remember and far more useful.
First picture
It´s no big thing but when I wanted to clear one bog tile, I forgot when I cut peat, the tool “reclaim bogland” also clears iron ore.
Second picture
The dense birch forest is very beautiful.
Take a look at your files, Tom. There are two kinds of merchants from each county. One of them only pays the high price for 1 item, the other, as you say, for several goods. (I´ll make some screenshots when I play later if you don´t believe me) I would be satisfied if you take away that second merchant from the same country who only pays well for one thing. I like the different merchants. It´s also a motivation to produce and export different goods. That´s good.
First picture
Year 64 a little over 200 inhabitants. I need a second export port to get rid of my goods and to get enough daler. The 3 small ports for import of ordered food are more than enough. 2 would have been enough but I needed all 3 of them before the population reached 100 inhabitants and the big boats arrived. There was even a time when I was a bit short of import goods; logs as well as vegetables. I also have one big port for barter trade of not ordered goods, like steel, salt and sugar. I don´t get enough of it at that one port so I also make no order by some merchants at the small ports. All in all with that second export port, autotrade works as I expect it to. It´s always hard to set the order; to get enough but not too much of what you need but it seems, we are slowly getting there.
All in all; if you take away that second merchant from the same country from the export port, also a larger trading economy will work with not all too much work.
Second picture
The over-all happiness is now 5 stars. I´m trying to keep track of my “3-star people. I´ve found Dylandre, one of my original settlers. He isn´t on my sick list but as I´ve seen before, the conditions at the beginning are hard and these people never recover, the sick adults neither.
Third picture
My mining village. I will now expand the production of tools/other metal products for export. All stones close are also used, so I´m about to build a quarry. I find, that the amount of stones on ground is quite perfect. There´s never been a large surplus of stones, as it was earlier in “seafarer” but until now enough on the ground.
I made some screenshots from different merchants. So far tonight only the Hanseatic merchants came of 2 different kinds but also the merchant from England who only pays the high price for tar was there.
First picture
This Hanseatic merchant is the best. I have a lot of wool coats to sell but not many want to pay the high price, but as you can see; he doesn´t pay high for anything else.
Second picture
This Hanseatic merchant pays the high price for various goods but unfortunately not for wool coats.
Third picture
This English merchant only pays the high price for tar, so he´s not very useful. It´s a very small product. But there is another one who pays the high price for other things like meat, wadmal and glass.
The idea isn´t bad that merchants want different products suiting their region but what I don´t like is that there are two different from each place. I liked the old merchants because you instantly knew what business you could make, or if it happened to be someone like the “timber merchant”, you immediately knew, there will be no business. But if you prefer these regional merchants, it´s also OK if they aren´t too many. You will soon learn what to sell to wich merchant. But now when one merchant arrives, I must always look at my whole list to see which of them it is and I don´t remember everything all of them want. These doubles make the trade unnecessary complicated without adding anything good to the gameplay. If you want more different merchants; let them come from different places.
I don´t want everyone to buy all of the products. That would make the trade less fun and less challenging. I can say; it´s not hard to produce enough goods to sell to support your population without farming. But it is difficult to “finetune” the trade and that´s what I like.
I can say now that I shouldn´t have built that second export port so early. It wouldn´t have been necessary at all. I did run out of daler and couldn´t buy as much food as I wanted for a short period but that was simply bad luck with the merchants. This settlement does depend a lot on the export of wool coats and if for a period of time, fewer merchants arrive that pays the high price and those who actually do arrive only bring a few coins (it looks like the local merchant is poorer than those from further away) we have a financial crisis. I could have solved this if I had bartered a bit longer and built up a larger stock of coins before I started to autotrade. Or I could have “diversified” even more by my export. I don´t mean that anything needs to be changed, it´s such challenges that make fun to manage. (graph coins on the first picture)
At the moment I have too much export goods. I will shut down some wood/firewood/charcoal consuming industries. At the moment, it´s a bit hard to keep up with the log import. This will also free some workers to clear new land. It´s been a bit neglected lately.
And I have good news! I can´t find more than 2 of the people who were sick that only have 3 stars. It took a long time, more than 30 years but finally, most of them regained all stars. I have absolutely no idea whats´s different with these two.
First picture
Latest developing area. Graph of coins.
Second picture
Harbour village. You can see a lot of “out of material” signs. I don´t want to micromanage those sites that need imported raw materials, like grain, salt and sugar and because I (almost) only buy these materials at one port, it´s not enough to run them continuously.
It´s berry time. I temporarily unemploy all stockbreeders, peat cutters, blacksmiths, woodcutters and miners and send them out in the woods. As you can see in the next picture, this makes that I have enough berries in my stores.
Third picture
Industry village and storage. I still need to “tune” the trade and order fewer beans and more logs.
It sounds logical but it´s hard to say without testing how they actually work together in a trading economy. I see two reasons to build an export port and of course, it must work in both cases.
One is to get rid of a large surplus of goods you happen to produce. You may not be very interested in buying a lot at the moment but coins are easier to store for later when you for some reason will need to buy something. Every game is different and you need to be able to sell everything to a high price but you will not be very dependent on that “the good merchants” arrive regularly.
The second (and I find most important) is when you need to support your settlement with some basic supply using trade. This will most likely be food in a “harsh” game and logs in “seafarer” or both in such a game I play now. And even if it´s not that easy to build pastures as it used to be with all that bogland, the main export is based on wool, leather and meat; products that don´t grow and don´t need any fuel to be produced. That´s logical, I guess most players will do this under such circumstances. You are dependent on getting rid of these products regularly and I hope that your new merchants manage this. Anyway; if there´s a risk that a “good merchant” arrive seldom, it might be a good idea to increase the space of the export port and the amount of coins the merchants bring. Earlier when I sold more meat, I was pretty close on the 100% limit.
One other thing I´ve been thinking about; Clothes.
As it is now, to produce some kind of warm clothing, you´ll need either fur or linen. On a “harsh seafarer” game you can´t produce the raw material for warm clothes yourself; a trapper finds nothing and flax don´t grow in the cold. Raw materials need to be imported. That makes no sense to me. The Icelanders could most certainly produce warm coats from wool and sheepskins. In my world linen is not a material to keep you warm. It rather keeps you cool in summer.
I would suggest some changes: let linen coats be the best (cheapest or/and fast produced) kind of clothes in a mild climate where you can grow flax. Make warm coats from wadmal, sheepskin and leather. This will also add something to the gameplay; a competition about the sheepskins. What is best, to produce leather or coats?
I played some more years yesterday. It works pretty well. I still need to “tune” the trade; at the moment I buy too much bread and grain and I still have a lot of daler, even if the store doesn´t grow that much anymore. The population is soon 400 and I still only autotrade at the 3 small ports. There has been a couple of times when I´ve bought beans and logs, that I couldn´t buy the whole order because the port was full but it wasn´t often, so I can say; autotrade for a large amount of food and logs work very well.
First picture
A fire started at the pottery and spread to the glassmaker and a few other buildings. I have had fires that started at the brickyard and the glassmaker in other games. Are these buildings more probable to catch fire than others? Could make sense.
When I unassign the worker at the glass store, all kind of material is stored there? Must it be that way? It´s no big problem because the worker will carry it away but I see no reason that textiles are stored there in the first place.
Second picture
Some smaller issues, similar to that above. All kind of food is stored at the alehouse and I can´t see if it´s any roasted meat/alcohol left. I guess we can´t prevent workers from using it as a store but maybe you could add a few lines to the inventory so that we at least can see everything. The temple would also need a few more lines, there are only 2. I also missed seeing everything the forester clear; at the beginning, he can pick stones, boulder, iron ore, firewood and cut trees but there are only 4 lines at the inventory.
Third picture
My latest development. You can see the content in the houses. Even if there´s more firewood, peat plays an important part in heating the houses. I now use 20 peat cutter and 7 woodcutters (except in the berry season). I still have enough fruit but even with almost 100 labourers in the autumn, it´s now getting harder to get enough berries to support everyone.
By the way; you saw that I happened to find some not updated things at the Wiki page. If you need help to look more systematically, just tell. Since both my husband and I are in the “risk group” for the virus, we stay at home and I have a lot of time.
No, I don´t think I will learn how to get through source files. I´ll rather look in the game but of course, this will take some time but I don´t think there´s any hurry. I will try to do it systematically.
I stopped my game (temporarily?) yesterday and started to look at new maps. Just to see how much bogland there is and so but I landed on this (first picture); again seafarer but a mountain map. Not easy! But it´s not so bad as it might be, I was a bit tired of micromanagement so I choose “mild” climate. We´ll see how long I like to play it.
