Just climbed into the cockpit and blasted some Tie Fighters out of the sky. Even after all this time, X-Wing is still a fun game. It would be nice to play a newer version of it, or of a similar Star Wars flight sim game. But there hasn't been one out for a long time.

Man, this Banished map is a bear. Leastwise it is when starting out on hard. I've had no disasters (yet?) but am having a heck of a time finding good spots to plop down essential services. I established a herbalist only this evening, and its facility is further from the village hub than I like and in an area not nearly as forested as I ideally prefer. (Herbalists need to be surround by old growth forest to work at peak efficiency.) I was almost too late switching my foresters from Plant Only to Plant & Cut, running out of logs for firewood at crucial times. Thankfully the village pulled through. I'm still barely keeping up with demand for stone and iron. That'll hopefully change if and when I get enough laborers for major foraging expeditions. I eventually want to trade for both stone and iron, but the village is far from having the luxury of a trading post. What would it use in trade? It barely makes ends meet providing for itself.

Kirby´s Pinball Land for Gameboy. Got this game when I was a kid on a Christmas morning and thought I´d relive some memories


I have beaten it many times but not this time.

Decided to treat myself, and joined the ranks of those playing Banished!

Fired up the game, which set itself up to run on medium graphics going by the menu, which is fine by me, and ran through the tutorials. That done I started a game, leaving the settings for the start as they were. I guess it wasn't a bad starting point, on a river, a decent amount of forest, a fair bit of stone lying around.

I went straight for a forester, gatherer hut, and a fishing dock, followed by some stone houses. Winter was getting too close to build them all, so I had to build a boarding house. I put a herbalist and a hunter's lodge on the other side of the river, because I didn't really ave the space for them, but they seemed to be doing quite well. I got the school built early, along with a woodcutter, blacksmith, and tailors. It was going fairly well; the hunter's lodge wasn't in the best place, and I was just scraping by in terms of food, with a village of thirty four who'd survived a few years.

Then I moved my laptop so I could get up, the power cable got tugged just enough, and because I was running it on the mains with the battery removed, it cut out.

Still, it was fun.

Good job! (The settlement, not the laptop incident.) Certainly better than my first attempt, which didn't survive much past its first full winter. My recently started village had to locate its herbalist across a river, though in my case it meant doing without of some years thanks to the distance involved. Even my first (and thus far only) fishing dock had to wait for year two. Heck, even the foresters lodge was delayed until the second year, and then set to PLANT only for at least a year. It needed a blacksmith far sooner than expected. No school yet or for some time to come. Our population needs to be appreciably larger before delaying folk from joining the workforce. As it is, none of our food producing facilities (Gathering Hut, Hunting Lodge, Fisherman's Dock) or the Forester is up to strength, leaving no manning for luxuries like a school house, trading post or market. Luckily none of these are, in my opinion, essential early on. (Famous last words?)

Did your save file survive????? Hope so!

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Dec 26 2015, 01:18 AM

I didn't actually think to look before an autosave before restarting. *facepalms*

But the restart's going even better. The map's not great, I've got a circular lake forcing me to build slowly around it, when there aren't hills in the way, and a river constricting me even more. So far the only problems I've had are the frequent shortage of stone, partly due to building stone houses all the time, and an outbreak of mumps that killed two children before everyone recovered. I made a mistake in the beginning, looking to expand south rather than west, so when I got bottlenecked by a hill I had to juggle things around to move eastwards. And since I had to cross the river to get more stone, I decided to put the land to better use.

Th main settlement has all the necessities; blacksmith, tailor, school, woodcutter, and the trading post, as well as about 15 stone houses at present. It's got a couple of large pastures stuffed with chickens, the only animals I've been able to get hold of. I bought 8 and I've not got over a hundred of them, I think.

The second settlement across the river is pretty much dedicated to farming, four fields, 8 or 9 stone houses, with a herbalist nearby that I didn't get until the ninth or tenth year when health dropped to four, and a market to make things easier for them so far.

So far it's in its 16th year, I've got a population of 73(people have been dying of old age for the last few years), and a good sized surplus of food. I've basically run out of stone, so I've been requesting it from traders, as well as animals.

Edit: Now in year 22, over a hundred people. I'm completely out of stone, running low on wood and space. This is going to get ugly.

2nd edit: And later this evening, I'll be playing Dishonored

Edit the Third: Well, I think it's safe to say that attempt at Banished is dead. It seems I expanded and grew too quickly. I ran out of stone, didn't have anything to trade, and my two woodcutters couldn't keep up with the demand. I think I might just take my mistakes and restart. Also, I'm tired of the noise made by 116 chickens.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Dec 26 2015, 09:49 PM

Too bad about the village, but you didn't do badly all things considered. It can be rewarding to salvage a seemingly dead settlement. You might want to keep a good save-file and look at it again once you know the ropes better . . . assuming you abandon it, that is.

My village shares your stone shortage. There is in reality lots more stone to be had on the (large) map surface. But what's left creeps further and further from the settlement with each foraging expedition. I was hoping to avoid a quarry, but might not have that luxury. Too, my tailor isn't getting enough hides despite having two fully manned hunting lodges. I desperately need either sheep or cattle, but that means a trading post, which eats stone and a few precious manning slots. And like you, I have no excesses to trade. On the plus side, food seems to be doing well, and firewood is adequate of not plentiful, as are tools.

I need at least two more wells, but that's yet more stone.

I splurged a bit (for year eight) on a hospital . . . didn't want to risk losing the settlement to one of the more deadly diseases. Right across the road from it is my first, small, cemetery, also a bit of a luxury. With some settlers in their late fifties I reckon it won't be overlong before the oldest of them begin to pass. I've been lucky thus far in losing only one villager . . . to mumps.

No school yet. I had a lot for one on pause, but removed it to make room for the cemetery.

Here's the settlement at year eight. Not much to it. The original forest node. Two additional, less crowded, forest nodes. A small support district between them at the river. My screen is cluttered with pinned buildings, but I like to keep certain circles of influence visible at all times so as not to mistakenly build on them more than is absolutely necessary.

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In Minecraftia, the Autarch harvested both main and auxiliary tree farms as well as all Upper Plateau crop fields save melons. He bred and slaughtered livestock except at the Lower Terrace sheep ranch, reserved for shearing only. He explored a recently found abandoned mine shaft, but returned to the Hill Fort with much yet to discover.

Well, I've taken another stab at that village, and it's definitely dead. It's borderline on both food and firewood, to the point that I regularly run out of both, I've used up all the stone on the map, and I can't get anything stockpiled to trade. Perhaps if my village survivors long enough for my sheep to start producing enough wool to build up a stockpiles of warm coats then I'd have something to trade, but I don't think they'd last long enough.

My latest attempt is going much better though. It's year 25, I've got about 130 people, plenty of stone(but practically no iron), a better layout, and a full size pasture of sheep and cows. I've also just built some orchards and a couple of taverns. I've got a herbalist and a gatherer's hunter's cabin to the northwest, and another hunter/gatherer/forester node to the southeast. It looks like I'm about to start another phase of expansion down south.



Beyond Banished, I've also been playing Dishonored, which is damn good fun.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Dec 29 2015, 11:27 PM

This is amazing that you are surviving on so little in such harsh terms as this! And three births! That is Awesome! Geez, and I was killing off whole villages on the medium and easy levels !!! Awesome, Decrepit!

My village finally got the trading post, but didn't have enough workers - I could only put one trader in there. And so far, no one has come through with any needed supplies.

I haven't played since the day before the surgery (couple weeks ago); but it was really getting tight on supplies and health/happiness levels when last I played, urk.

Ran out of firewood, next thing you know people are freezing. Then the trees are getting cut down to make firewood; and the herbalist and gatherers/hunters are having trouble finding what they are supposed to. And for some reason, after I made some extra nice stone houses (and now am out of stone and iron because of it) - suddenly the people have moved into every house as singles and their happiness levels have gone way down! Grrrrr, lol.

The game is a blast, I just haven't found the right balance yet, lol.

I've little to report. The settlement grows bit by bit. I established a school so as to eventually graduate educated, more productive workers. Much as I didn't want to quite this early I now have a working quarry just north (abutting) my original forest node, with a mine plotted but not built next to it. (Unlike with stone, I've still a decent amount of surface iron available reasonably nearby.) I've a working trading post with one trader assigned, but not enough excess goods to purchase crop seeds or animals. Was surprised when the events log announced my two barns were full. Thankfully I knew roughly where the third barn would go and had enough materials on hand to construct it. More houses of course. I'm still doing okay firewood/food wise, and suffered no natural disasters or illnesses.

Speaking of disasters, here is the penultimate episode of a shortish Banished LP I finished watching earlier today. Titled "Double Tornado", it and the concluding episode might better be termed "Death of a Settlement", the player throwing in the towel at its end. As he says himself, he might well have salvaged things, but past a certain point decides it just isn't worth the effort.


I like the look of this new settlement. Most everything seems placed in the most logical and sensible locales to feed on and support each other. I too wanted market-centric village hubs, but the combo of a hard start in bad terrain led me to go the 'forest crossroads' route. Once/if I expand into more suitable territory I hope to deploy markets.


Hard mode isn't all that much more challenging than the easier modes once you know the ropes. The first few years are more of a race against the clock, since there are very few stockpiled supplies to fall back on. I don't see lack of fields/orchards/pastures as much of a limitation early on. I would likely have established a forest node first (for the firewood) even were crops available to me. Granted, my settlement would sport a few fields and a sheep pasture by now were those available to me. Any screen captures of your settlement to show us?

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Dec 30 2015, 02:06 AM

Good luck Decrepit. Sounds like you should be a developer at Beth with all that settlement building!

**


I am playing Fallout 4, GTA IV and Forza 6 at the moment.

Fallout 4 is so good that I cannot go back to Skyrim with its clunky controls.

And GTA IV is showing me just how bad the single player story is in V.

Well, my game of Banished has moved onwards.

Since I'd run out of iron, I built a mine to the south, threw 15 labourers into it(I had a couple of dozen at that point) and then went a bit nuts:

See?

The first picture's got the mine, the additional housing, a second blacksmith(I ran out of tools, and couldn't build them quickly enough), and a couple of farms because I needed the extra food.

The second picture's the northeast, well, north-northeast really. I've now got fifty sheep and forty cattle, a couple of farms with one person working each(best use of space), and another trading dock.

And the third picture is my main section, with its new trading dock. I'm completely out of stone, and I'd rather trade for it than try and fit a quarry somewhere. I've also found that venison and mutton are great for trading to food merchants, since you can end up getting three times as much food back off of them. Oh, and after trading a sizable amount of stone off a trader, I put stone roads over the dirt ones. Not all of them, but most.

And, to my surprise, I've been picking up some achievements with this run: Trader, Foodie, Healthy, and Smiles All Round. But, I've now reached the point where I've basically run out of space. Unless I start hacking down my forests I've got nowhere else to expand to, so now I'm just gonna see how high I can get the population without everyone dying.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Dec 30 2015, 05:50 PM

You already have a better feel for the game than me, or so it seems. Three trading posts. Very nice. My old 'large' village had no more than that. Yes, trading for stone is preferable to quarrying, the more so on the smaller maps where every usable inch of real-estate is valuable. Mining isn't quite so bad since only a small portion of each mine is on land that can be used for something else . . . tunnels excepted.

I'm in something of a holding pattern. My village needs to expand to keep its population young and growing. But . . . right now the only way to do so is with yet more forest-node hamlets. I desperately want farmland and pastures, but don't have the trade goods to buy seeds. I can now afford one sheep . . . if a merchant ever shows up with any. I already have a pasture built, ready for turn-on when the time comes.

I had one person become an adult and join the labor pool right before ending my brief morning session, a first since establishing the school. Seems a bit early to me, but I recently heard (on YouTube) that the amount of time each student must spend in school isn't as cut and dry as I thought.

Some but not all my original settlers have died off.

Funny (????) story. At one stage of my old long established village I kept getting messages that my storage barns were full. I'd build another, only to get a message not much later. For some time I just kept building them without paying much attention. I finally decided to see what was taking up so much room in my barns. The vast majority of them were filled with nothing but wool!!!! I offloaded much of that to my trading posts and was able to trade for most anything I wanted for some time to come. (I eventually ran out, but no big deal, not with the amount of sheep I had.)

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Now 31 Dec (2015) I'm having no luck finding a trader that carries sheep. Still can't afford crop seeds, though I just plotted one 15x15 fields. Wishful thinking I reckon. Also plotted a third forester lodge and know roughly where I want its wood cutter. Oh, have a second working fully manned fishing dock. I wasn't hurting for food without it, but my stored food excess wouldn't be high enough to support much expansion for any length of time. Leastwise I don't think so. A minor setback, just as the fishing dock was being completed two citizens died in quarry accidents, followed soon by a natural death from age. That combined with the dock taking four able bodies reduces my labor force to uncomfortable levels, for the short term.

The quarry now has six assigned workers. Not a lot, but enough to allow me to start building stone houses, which in the long run should significantly reduce fuel consumption. That in turn will hopefully allow me to add more firewood to the trading post, though I don't consider firewood an ideal solution. Gotta make do with what I have.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 1 2016, 01:12 AM

Not so much what I am playing, but rather than Angry Joe is playing. Here is Angry Joe's Early Access to Xcom 2. It looks fantastic! If you like tactical, squad-based games like Wasteland 2 or the original X-Com games, you are sure to like this. I am looking forward to this coming out.

My Banished settlement hobbles on despise my best efforts to the contrary. To the plus, establishing the third Forester Lodge and Wood Cutter has allowed me to store enough excess firewood in the trading post to exchange for seeds (or livestock, which trade for appreciably less). To the minus, I moved that firewood to the post bit by bit so as not to short-sheet the village proper. That took time, time in which I missed a chance to acquire bean seeds. I did have a chance at chickens. They are low on my list. I passed, but put in an order with that trader for sheep and cattle.

Otherwise I've not accomplished much other than plop down some paused building/field plots and think on where I want specific services. I know where Town Hall will go. I had a boarding house plotted but am having second thoughts.

I almost unpaused construction of our second trading post to allow us two trader visits a year. Nixed that until I have enough excess firewood (or other resources) to make it worthwhile.

Might need to unpause construction of a mine near the settlement's original forest node before too long.

I still worry that I am letting the settlement stagnate too long while waiting on seeds and livestock.

ADDENDUM: My settlement now has a cow/steer. Wanted sheep first but settled for what I could get. Hopefully I'll have a second pen to transfer cattle to by the time a trader with sheep arrives. No crop seeds yet, alas. The Boarding House is now in place, sort of out of the way. Inconvenient for those who might be forced to stay there, but unlikely to burn down if fire ravages the village proper.

ADDENDUM 2: The settlement now has plums. Again, not my first priority, but it's a start. The orchard was already in place, witch a stone house plotted next to it ready to unpause and build, which I did. I've a start of a new area plotted, large pasture, small crop field, two houses to cover those, barn, stockpile. Think I'll plot a small/medium orchard there, with another home. It's just across the river from the settlement proper, with a bridge connecting the two. Doubt I'll begin building/using any of its structures until I've animals for the pasture.

Still no disasters of any sort. All deaths are from age or quarry accidents, plus that one long ago death from mumps.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 2 2016, 01:53 PM

I am playing Divinity Original Sin - Enhanced Edition (it seems every game has an enhanced edition or director's cut out there now...). I bought the game back before the EE, but did not play it much. The EE came to me free once it was out (thank you Larian Studios and Gog), so I downloaded it a few days ago and started playing.

One thing I did not like in the original version is that you could only pan the camera around about 180 degrees. Which made it hard to see in some places. But the EE allows you to move the camera a full 360 around your characters, which makes the game much easier to play.

So far it is fun. The game itself looks beautiful. It is a pretty classic turn-based RPG. I am so glad these games have made a comeback. At first it appears to have classes, as there are bunch of them to choose from when you create your two characters. But in reality it is a classless system. The classes you pick to start with only really determine what equipment you start with. For example, the Knight starts with a two-handed sword. So pick your starting class solely on what gear you want.

Everything else is completely customizable when you create your character, such as attributes (this game has them!), skills, abilities... So you can pick a Knight, and then take all magic skills, spells, and so on. Assuming you wanted a magician with a two-handed sword of course. When you level up you get to add a point to your attributes and another to your abilities. Skills are learned and raised by buying skill books. The word skill is a little bit of misnomer. Actually the Abilities are what we would normally think of as skills: Two-Handed, Bow, Witchcraft, and so on. They effect your basic ability with using weapons or magic. What they call skills are more like perks or spells. They are special attacks with weapons, like a ricochet shot with a bow, or a charge attack for a melee character, or a summon critter spell. You start with 3 of these, and the rest you have find as you play.

You start with 2 characters. Everything I read everywhere on the web said that it is always a male and female. But the truth is when you customize your characters, you make them any gender you like. So you can have two men or two women. I don't know why everyone wants to keep that a secret. There are also other companions you can recruit in the game, though I have not found them yet. What I read is that you can have up to 4 people total in your party.

The combat is all turn-based. Characters act in order of initiative. They have action points that determine how far they can move and what they can do. When you mouse over places it will show you how many action points it takes to get there, or to perform an attack, which is helpful. So it is like Wasteland 2 or the X-Com games in the way the combat plays out.

One thing that is really neat is how the game uses elements and environmental effects. You can blast open a barrel filled with oil and it will spill out all over. Follow with a Flame Arrow (or a fire spell, or even throwing a lit candle) and it will cause it to explode. Cast a water spell (from the Hydrosophist Ability line), and you will put the fire out. There are even water balloons you can use for the same purpose, and water barrels you can blow up to spread water. My character used a Rain scroll to put out a fire that was burning a ship. There are other cool combinations too. If you cast cold magic on a wet area, you make ice, that can knock people down. Cast lightning on a wet area instead and it does shock damage to everyone in the pool.

Gear does degrade with use, and you need a repair hammer to fix them. Not a regular hammer, which is a weapon. The repair hammer was something I had to buy from the first wizard I met (he's part of the main quest, you meet him early). There is a pile of crafting as well. I have only barely scratched the surface of it. You can take a knife and a piece of wood and make an arrow shaft. Combine that with an arrowhead and you get an arrow.

Speaking of which if you use a bow it comes with an invisible quiver than never runs out of normal ammunition. So you never have to worry about running out of shots. Only magic arrows are craftable, or kept track of by the game. There seem to be quite a few of them you can find and create. Plus some really neat ranged skills. So archers are a very feasible character type in this game.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jan 2 2016, 05:46 AM

Wait, I thought you just started a new character on NV?

Another game now.

How you do this?

Since my last Banished update Pritchbuie Village hit several milestones. It at long last has field crops. Potatoes and beans to be specific. Animal wise we goofed, buying one lone cow, web research stating that that is all one needs to start a herd. The cow died. As luck would have it, sheep arrived with the next trader. We acquired three and have since bred two more. Next trader carried bean seeds, the next potato seeds, the next cows again. Bought three cattle. Had a large pasture already prepared for ‘em. That’s a grand total of two food crops, two farm animals and one fruit tree (plums). Between those, various forest node food produces, and two fishing docks we’ve vittles coming out of the rafters. I didn’t sufficiently update our food limit after planting the fields until noticing unharvested crops standing unattended during autumn. Corrected that oversight before losing anything.

Here’s the village southward expansion as of year 19. The yellow circle-of-influence centered at screen bottom is the border of our original forest-crossing node. Beans are planted but not potatoes. They are on the incoming trader boat. Town Hall, seen plotted screen left, has since been built. The second Trading Post remains paused. Our sheep pen is offscreen immediately below the schoolhouse at bottom right.

Note the water well just beneath the Gathering Hut designators pinned at screen top. That well features prominently in my next image. The settlement had its first fire year 20. It occurred in that forest node, a node containing our sole Herbalist along with a Gatherers Hut. It broke out in the wood house across from the herbalist. As the image shows, the fire brigade pounced on it pronto, carrying buckets of water to the house until the fire died. They did not, alas, save the structure. The fire did not, however, spread as could easily have happened. I was right pleased to see it! I last played Banished not long after launch, v1.0 or 1.1 of memory serves. Back then, wells were all but useless except as happiness boosters. Numerous times buildings caught fire near them, which the populous proceeded to ignore. I never once saw a well utilized to combat fire. Works like a charm now, if this one incident is any indication. Next session I’m going add more of them throughout the settlement, stone supply permitting. (Once we acquire a reasonable variety of field and orchard crops we intend to trade for most of our stone and iron needs.)

Another milestone -- the settlement exceeded 100 villagers during year 20.

All remains well with the settlement. Its only bout of illness was an early case of mumps which took one life. That and the recent fire are the extent of it -- knock on wood. One cause of concern is my lack of markets. For whatever reason I always forget about them until too late.

It only now occurs to me that I forget to figure in a tavern. (ADDENDUM: Problem solved. I found a decent if not ideal tavern site by shifting a few road squares ever so slightly to the west.)

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 3 2016, 01:45 PM

I've been playing ARK: Survival Evolved, on the Xbox One preview program. So far, so fun. So difficult.

For those who haven't heard of it, ARK is an MMO set in a mysterious land that's inhabited by various dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures (Which you can tame at later levels). You can choose between PvP and PvE servers (I chose the latter).

The game focuses on survival, and it's pretty tricky early on. There are no tips or tutorials, your character wakes up on a beach. That's it. You just wake up and have to fight to survive straight away.

You have to deal with hunger, thirst, extreme temperatures, and various creatures. When you die, you respawn in a random location - minus any items you were carrying at the time. You can find your corpse and retrieve your gear, but the world is big and you might spawn several miles away.

I've learned how to craft basic tools, and I'm working on a shelter. Found a nice area of rainforest that has plenty of trees, and a colony of Dodos nearby that I can hunt for food. Took me about an hour to figure the basics out, and I'm excited to delve deeper into the game.