SinPritchbuie Village has begun a rather risky expansion. This image shows it plotted out, except a quarry and several mines unseen beyond screen top. Since its capture the orchard has been enabled, the market was built and manned, forest lodge and woodcutter are operational. Houses were added as needed.

I had not planned to utilize the expansion so soon. Felt force to begin when my sole functioning orchard became infested and had to be cut down. I do not yet have alternate orchard trees with which to replant that orchard. The expansion orchard was in place ready for use. My plum trees now grow there.

That done I felt the need for other facilities, and in any case wanted an extra forester lodge and woodcutter to increase firewood output enough to open a second trading post. All this said, I don't have manning to pull it off without short sheeting needed improvements at the established settlement. Should something go amiss I might be hosed.

Sad thing is, I should have that extra orchard tree. A trader showed up one winter with it on his/her boat. I eagerly bought it. Only, I wasn't paying chose attention. What I bought instead was the field crop right above the apple tree. Didn't catch my mistake till too late. I had a good save not a year prior, so reverted to it. This time round, that boat did NOT carry orchard trees. Within a year my existing orchard became infected. Such is life.

I've had my eye on ARK for some time. It looks to be a fine game indeed. One can find a number of decent LPs of it at YouTube. It should be pointed out that the game has a strong single-player component, or so such LPs indicate.

Now year 29, the Banished settlement expansion seen plotted but little utilized in my previous report has undergone a fair amount of attention. Comparing that post's linked image with this one shows a goodly number of buildings and functions now operational.

. . . The market is operational.

. . . A second cemetery, reduced in size from what I originally plotted, is operational.

. . . A fourth Forester Lodge with two or three workers is operational. This was mostly to allow more firewood in my two trading posts without overly harming home firewood supplies.

. . . A fourth woodcutter is operational, again mainly to speed up firewood production for the trading posts.

. . . A second Trading Post (not seen in the linked image, which contains the unbuilt plot for what will eventually be my third Trading Post) is now operational.

. . . A second orchard, already built but not utilized, is now functional thanks to the arrival of apples on a trading boat. We have since gotten pecans but have not plotted an orchard for them.

. . . A third pasture, just above the cemetery, holds sheep. Between this, a smaller sheep pasture, the full size cattle pasture, and my two hunting lodges, we have enough raw material to make 'warm coats' for everyone.

. . . A second Tailor was built, allowing us to crank out coats fast enough to put some in the trading posts.

. . . An additional storage barn has been added to the area.

. . . A water well was installed near the Tailor.

. . . Our first Chapel was at long last built, thanks to a Trader boat arriving with 100 stones on board.

. . . A second hospital has been plotted but not built. The road to it can be seen running off screen at bottom right.

. . . Sufficient homes were built to support all added functions. All homes fall within the Market's circle of influence.

My current thought it to next build the plotted quarry, our second, unseen just above the sheep pasture. It will be manned by four to six workers. Homes for them are plotted but not built. I suspect that after doing so I will need to built and utilize a plotted gathering hut seen in the forest node screen right.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 6 2016, 01:26 PM

Have you completely abandoned Oblivion now, Decrepit?

I'll never completely abandon Cyrodiil until I become to decrepit to game, or unless my current playthrough corrupts beyond salvation or becomes unplayable for some other reason. If the latter I would need to seriously evaluate if I feel I have it in me to start afresh. A problem with my current playthrough, if you see it as such, is that it has been in many aspects well nigh perfect from inception. I doubt I will witness its equal again, much less better it. Nor can I envision any future playthrough as other than an attempt to recreate my current decrepit avatar's adventures in detail. Such thoughts are mere speculation on events that may or may not come to pass.

As to the here and now, it has long been my practice to rotate between the games I enjoy, devoting most or sometime all my gaming time to one title to the exclusion of all else. Right now I'm hooked on Banished again, which is in truth a great surprise. I thought I had gotten it out of my system during its initial play early 2014. In any case I'll likely spend most of my gaming time for the next some days or weeks expanding my Banished settlement (assuming it doesn't crash and burn before then), then move on to something else, be it Oblivion, Minecraft or Daggerfall (the most likely suspects) for a time before switching yet again.

So no, I've not abandoned Oblivion except for the short term.

In Minecraftia, the Autarch harvested both primary and secondary tree farms at Hill Fort. He also harvested cactus and baked 18 potatoes.

In Banished, already plotted mines and a quarry were constructed and manned. One mine is devoted to coal. An already plotted second hospital was built. Stone homes were provided as needed. Truth to tell, I could have simply doubled the manning at our pre-existing quarry and mine rather than establish new ones. But this way each operation has a longer life span, and constructing them caused no unwanted material shortage. The second hospital is a luxury in that my villages never seems to get sick . . . knock on wood. Two bridges were built in preparation for future settlement expansion.

For what it's worth, very little, here's the settlement save file in ZIP format as of this morning, 7 Jan 2016. Might provide a good laugh for fellow Banished players.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 7 2016, 03:38 PM

That's a nice village. Just loading it up gave me the Builder award(I haven't bothered with either churches or graveyards), and I made use of that nice big lake to get the Golden Gate one too, so thanks for that I'll have to start a village on a large map at some point, all that space!

Fired up my village, Mulburg, and did a little poking around. Built a couple of storage barns because I was getting warnings about running out of space, and a Town Hall just because I haven't got one. I love being able to get the stats on the village, currently:

Year 35
75 homes, 72 families, and a population of 228, of which 145 are adults.
99% clothed, 97% educated, 5 hearts for health and 4.5 stars for happiness.

So I guess I'm doing pretty well. Now all that's left to do is see how high I can get the population before it all starts going down the drain.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Jan 7 2016, 04:45 PM

Still on with ARK. Was doing quite well for myself, hunting Parasaurolophuses (Parasaurolophi?) and whatnot, then I logged on this morning to find my character had died while I was offline, and all my gear and supplies had been lost

THEN I realised that you can play offline single player, and set your own server settings up - Easier dino taming, easier resource gathering etc.

Tamed a raptor, saddled him up, and set out to explore. Aside from getting lost in a swamp and chased by a particularly determined Titanoboa, I've been having lots of fun. There's a snowy area to the north which I'll head to after I learn how to make fur clothes and preserved meat. Not sure the raptor will be able to operate in those temperatures, but I'm sure I can find a suitable replacement.

Disaster . . . of sorts:
The Settlement lacked emergency pastures. I've been telling myself to build one from the get go. Never got around to it. It caught up with me this evening. My large sheep pasture became infested. After a brief panic I paused the game, searched for a serviceable site, and erected the backup pasture. Took forever. By the time it was operational the infested pen held only one sheep!

My sole saving grace is that I have two functioning sheep pens, far enough from each other so that infestation doesn't spread. Sadly, the second pen is rather small, holding only 12 sheep, half the capacity of the infested large pen.

That one sheep was moved to the emergency pen. I then transferred cattle from their pen into the now abandoned large sheep pasture, standard practice for surviving infestations. That done, I split the small sheep pen, sending half its animals to what had been my cattle pen ere its move. I next moved the single emergency pen sheep to one of the other sheep pens. That set things to rights, until the next infestation.
The emergency pasture stands ready to handle that. Its a smallish pen. I'll lose up to half a pastures animals transferring them there. But it's better than losing them all to disease.

The settlement saw significant expansion today. I had not intended to expand again so soon, but the labor pool swelled to the point I felt something had to be done before they ate the village into oblivion. Added were two orchards, two crop fields, my first chicken pasture, market, a third trading post, a forest node with Foresters Lodge, Hunting Lodge and Gathering Hut, wood cutter, tavern, barns, and homes to house all workers.

The settlement continues to make to with one herbalist. Folk just don't get sick. That said, it had a small outbreak of mumps today. The infected person marched straight to a hospital and stayed there until was cured.

The settlement hit 200 population. It needs a second chapel. I have one plotted but am not sure I like the location.


Pritchbuie has given me, in addition to what I earned with my first successful settlement, 'Smiles All Round' and one other. 'Jack of All Trades' maybe? I'll have to see if I have Golden Gate. Don't think so. My old map has at least one large lake I intended to span. Whether I actually did so is debatable. Yeah, liking long duration play-throughs as I do the Large Map option is pretty much mandatory.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 9 2016, 04:09 AM

I did it! Bought King of Dragon Pass off GOG.com. It can be had on Steam too, but . . .

. . . the Steam version is a port of the phone version, which is itself ported from the PC original. GOG offers the original PC version with no DRM. Most of those who have compared the two on YouTube say tend to prefer the original PC version.

. . . the GoG download is cheaper.

Being on slowish DSL it's still downloading. Don't know that I'm gonna install it first thing in any case. Too involved with Banished at the moment.

Speaking of which, the settlement saw another major expansion. It has almost 300 population now. Tons of food and firewood, the latter my trade item of choice. We have four trading posts now, allowing four visits a game year. We now have all crop/tree seeds, so trade our firewood for stone, occasionally iron, and sometimes coal. Started in on another expansion, but am not happy with it. Think I'm gonna back out, since that entails no more than dismantling one house, shutting down and maybe dismantling a market, and removing several short stretches of roadway. Gonna think on it more before committing.

In Minecraftia, the Autarch harvested his secondary tree farm, mined netherrack, smelted the netherrack then converted it to Nether Brick, spent a good bit of time shearing colored sheep at his sheep ranch on the Lower Terrace, and made a feeble stab at roofing the Keep. As with past roofing attempts, nothing came of it. Unlike past attempts, he left what little he built in place, in hope of salvaging something good out of it. We're not holding our breath.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 10 2016, 11:04 PM

Ark sounds really neat, because, dinosaurs! Is it still in the beta stage though?

I think it's called 'Early access' on Steam, and it's part of the game preview program on Xbox. So it's sort of a beta, sort of a partial release. I don't like calling it a beta since you have to buy it, and it'll be playable until the full release in June or July.

Reminds me of that quote from Oceans 13 about the soft/grand opening of the casino

I remember when they opened the Flamingo. One day it was closed, the next day it was open, end of story.

I've been playing the tactical RPG, The Banner Saga.

Very much enjoying it so far. Good mix of storytelling, tense combat, and fantastic artwork. The story in particular is really interesting and enjoyable.

The basic gist of it is that you control different groups of people who are making their way through the world. There are Humans, Varl (Giants), and the Dredge - evil metal atronachs that are the main enemies you'll be facing.

Outside of combat you'll be faced with various problems and different ways to solve them. Every choice you make will have an impact somewhere down the line. For example, one of my Varl warriors lost his life trying to save a cart of supplies from tumbling down a cliff. Perhaps I could have saved him, maybe I would have lost more warriors if I chose a different option. It really makes you consider your actions, especially since the loss of even a single warrior could cripple you from a combat perspective.

The narrative perspective also changes every so often, so there isn't one specific protagonist. Currently I have two groups of people - One is mainly made up of Varl returning home, and one is made up of Human refugees trying to escape the relentless Dredge. Both groups have very different strengths and goals, which keep things interesting.

Got some screenies here too:

Combat

Travelling

Conversation

Hazmick, thanks for sharing! Looks fun!

I'm still slaving away at Banished. Population now circa 400! I thought things were going well, and in most aspects they appear to be. That said, just this morning I discovered that I significantly underestimated the number barns needed to store crop yields, wool, leather, herbs and the like. Every settlement barn except those in our two newest market nodes are crammed to the rafters or nearly so. The scary thing is that most of our nodes are utilized to the max, with almost no undeveloped space available to plop down additional barns, unless I build them within dedicated forest nodes, which I hope to avoid. I managed to find room for another six or so, but their locations aren't always ideal.

When I started plotting out my most recently completed nodes (combo forest and market abutting each other) I thought myself ahead of the game, with few supurfluous citizens to move there. I couldn't build fast enough to keep up with population growth. By the time those nodes were more or less fully developed and manned I again had more laborers than is necessary and need to start plotting more nodes pronto.

For fellow Banished players, here is the save file for my settlement as it was when I exited the game this morning, 14 Jan 2016. Winter, year 61, population just over 400. You'll note that I have an excess of laborers/builders. Note also that our active mines and quarries are lightly manned. That's because we rely on trade to supply the bulk of our stone and coal, and to a lesser extent iron. Not sure whether I want to continue on with rapid expansion or slow down and fine tune what I have to hopefully better avoid scenarios like my recent discovery of inadequate barns coverage. Too, I'd be interested to know if the settlement as it is now, with a bit of tweaking, will trigger a death spiral? If so, have I established safe guards to ensure it survives?

Sounds and looks to be an interesting game. Enjoyed the captures.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 14 2016, 04:50 PM

Work on settlement expansion in Banished is halted until I decide in which area(s) I next want to expand.

In Minecraftia, the Autarch has been busy. He at long last tackled the daunting task of roofing the Keep, spending much of Jan 15 and on into the 16th slaving away at it. In the process two new interior floors were added, along with a tiny open-air observation deck at top.

The new 7th floor is, for the time being, devoted to Nether Wart growth. The Autarch has no real need for another Nether Ward farm, the one next to his chicken pen being sufficient. But we didn't want the floor to stand empty, and our potion room is two floors below. The 8th floor contains four 'guest' housing cubicles. Neither floor is finalized or fully detailed.

Here is an overview of the Hill Fort as of 16 January 2016, with the Keep roof in place. It too is apt to undergo modification before I am content with the results. Also seen are the horse and mule stables with attached corrals on the Lower Terrace, along with improved lighting in that area.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 17 2016, 12:07 PM

What a neat painting (or tapestry perhaps) on display of your Decrepit Champion and his ward Vilja!

In Banished, the settlement saw further expansion. It now numbers over five hundred citizens! It has seven or eight Trading Posts. Traders arrive so rapidly I've taken to ignoring them unless we're running low on the several materials we trade our excess firewood for.

In Mineraftia, the Autarch went on two grand clay expeditions, mined netherrack in the Nether (where else?), harvested his tree farms, and fine tuned the Keep roof. Here's the Keep tower showing one minor roof modification, the other two not yet having occurred. (They can't be seen from this camera position in any case.)

I originally planned to replace the entire Minecraft paintings file with game-centric 'artworks' drawn mostly from various RPGs I've played over the years, but me being me abandoned the project with eight or nine paintings to go. Part of my dilemma is that some of what I want to do calls for actual drawing/painting skills, which I totally lack.

I've been playing Ark on the XB1 a lot lately. The game is very deep with several levels of tech that are hard won through leveling up and spending points. It's combat based but you gain xp from a wide range of things such as building structures and taming animals.

The dinos all have strengths/weaknesses and those will define their use when tamed. For instance an Ankylosaurus is excellent for collecting stone and metal. The Utah Raptor is fast and dangerous but can't carry much so it is useful for recon/hit and run tactics.

It is one of the best games I've ever played and well worth the $35 you'll spend on it. The full release will cost more so if you are interested jump in now. The online play is unforgiving but believe it or not every single player isn't always a kill first eat you corpse later type. You will run into tons of these type players though so forming/joining a tribe for protection is important.

My Banished settlement hit potential hard times the other day. All of a sudden its food supply, which had been pinging 60k-plus with crops sometimes left partly unharvested in the fields, dropped drastically. If memory served they eventually hit a low 11k in storage. No one starved during this period, or went hungry. But the writing was on the wall. Something had to be done.

I was in the midst of creating a new market-node at the time, so made it more agriculture centric than was originally conceived. I also enabled some existent but dormant fields left unattended when we had too much food rather than too little. (Not that that's a problem, except that one eventually runs out of places to store it all.) Between those two measures things eventually turned around. With a food limit of over 70k we're back to letting crops rot in the fields . . . for now.

During my 2014 Banished run I put no emphasis on markets. Indeed, that settlement had no more than two or three, none of which were sited for best utilization. This play-through is if anything market node centric, with most everything planned around them. Only the oldest parts of the settlement lack markets. Even there I was able to shoe-horn two, though a number of homes and facilities remain outside their radius.

We suffered another few fires. Thankfully all occurred very near wells. That didn't save the buildings in question, but seemed to keep fires from spreading. In only one case did fire spread, and then to only one home.

We had several bouts of disease. None proved overly harmful thanks to a wealth of hospitals scattered throughout the settlement. At best we lost one citizen to disease. The rest recovered and returned to work.

We had a number of pasture infestations. With an empty pasture held in reserve, infestations were corrected pronto with little to no lost of animals.

We had field and orchard infestations. Field infestations are no biggy . . . just rotate crops and wait out the year. Orchard infestations are a pain since one must start over from scratch and wait years for the trees to reach maturity.

The settlement is in its 96th year (or thereabouts) and has a population of well over 600, possibly 700. (I forgot to check this morning.) Everyone is healthy and happy. Much of the map is filled. Much remains to fill.

My chief concern is that a goodly number of homes are inhabited by old folk. Will I have the reserves to replace them when the time comes? We shall see.

Here's the village save file as of early morning 24 Jan 2016. It starts with the viewpoint hovering over the combined market/forest-node expansion I worked on much of the day yesterday. You'll also see a number of unbuilt market and forest-node indicators plopped down in the middle of nowhere. Those are food-for-thought only and not to be taken seriously. Their eventual placements are apt to be quite different from what you see.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 24 2016, 01:54 PM