Banished

Gask_sl said:

I enjoy the building and management but my issue is the fact that you can play for several hundred game years and nothing really ever changes beyond scale; you start with a small village and end with that and several other satellite villages scattered around it. In all that time you achieve no new tech, no government, no new buildings and no new threats present themselves; you start with starvation, fire, disease, cold and that's it for the duration. It would have been far more interesting if you could see progress through the years beyond adding yet another 0 horse town adjacent to the last; more buildings, economics, government, law and order, and all the other systems that come into play once a reliable food source is present. At any rate I'm sure that the mods will go a long way toward enhancing some things.

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This is very true. Its more of a survival sim with building parts than it is a real city builder. Your town will always be small, it will never really grow to large population numbers but your foot print on the land does grow. You still manage what you build and how much but you don't gain any tech there really isn't any advancement. Assuming you have the materials you can build anything right from the start.

Game essentially comes down to micro managing what your population does and building stuff to suit that. There is no tech tree or advancement to say except that your townspeople are still alive and you have enough wood / sweaters / food / etc to survive the winter. There is trading which allows you to trade goods you have for goods you need or would like to start using (different seeds as an example) to but that really isn't the same as a tech tree.

Overall its fairly basic if still fun for $20. I'm guessing more stuff will get added over time.

Been ahving fun with this but having trouble expanding past 60 people. I have two settlement areas but can't do any more expansion because I've been stagnant for several years now.

lindz_sl said:

Been ahving fun with this but having trouble expanding past 60 people. I have two settlement areas but can't do any more expansion because I've been stagnant for several years now.

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You may need more houses. I stalled for a while until I realized my houses were full of adult siblings.

Game is fantastic. Best city builder in a long time

Nutron_sl said:

Game is fantastic. Besthamlet/villagebuilder in a long time

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fixed that, now true.

it's very simple, but addictive and fun!

very much looking forward to mods and feature expansion

Killjoy_sl said:

You may need more houses. I stalled for a while until I realized my houses were full of adult siblings.

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I've got empty houses atm. My adult population just keeps going down, can't get kids and students fast enough it seems.

Someone said this already b ut I cant believe ONE person made this game...the mechanics feel so polished.. triple A games really need to take lessons on what aspects of games make it fun (not omg super cutscene graphics during a fight bro) such as everything in this one and stop letting the marketing department run their developement.

so, 21 years in... hard mode...

population steadily declining since 12-14 years or so... admitting nomads whenever possible...

I have 0-4'ish people per house, where the first decade or so was double the population/house

several houses occupied by same sex and/or old folks... wtf, why can't my population agree to boot the old folks from their 1-2 pop homes to live together, and move in the younger breeders to keep the birth rate up?

it's like they want to die

Could somebody get on the banana phone and have them copypasta the sim nature of this shit into EQN:L?

yeah. saw all the talk and jumped in.

got to say, Im disappointed.
I would agree its fairly tightly balanced for your first or second playthrough. making it fairly likely to kill your town.


The overall complexity, and tech is weak, as noted. I am not expecting highways, airports or anything... but there is ALOT of room for more.
Is this "done" or still be worked on?

your townfolk.
They have health, sex, age, happiness, cloths.

Dwarf fortress/gnomoria style depth here would be Very welcome.
-Skills.
Someone takes a job as a forester should get better at it.
As it is in this game, people can swap jobs at any time and be 100% effective.
-More depth in injuries, personality. long term injuries. broken bones, etc. Giving the hospital another use.
Giving the townfolk more character would go a long way.

-Trade
Trade routes. not just water based. but allow roads off the map. Wagon based trade depots.
Add quality to materials. Let you build a town renowned for high quality Pear Alcohol.
Tie this into skills even. A notoriety stat perhaps. Producing lots of high quality material, increases the trade value of that material above raw quality.
Right now, materials have a flat value. Venison is worth 3. its 3 to buy, 3 to sell. Even if you sell 100000 venison, the price will still be 3.


-blacksmith.
more then just tools.
Tools themselves do what exactly? more durability? or increased production.
Tech upgrades.
metal wheels? wagons? wheelbarrows?


-Bakery.
with all the crops. really should be one.
-Butcher. same deal.
-Kiln.

-clay houses. -leather houses/huts.

More artwork. With different architectural styles. Nordic themed? germanic? Chinese?
More superficial elements. Decorative additions. Totem poles, statues, gardens. herb gardens. planting trees. Flags. etc.

Pests/hazards.
Rats/rabbits -spreading disease, eating food
birds-eating food
cats, dogs.
foxes,bears,wolves,lions. eating livestock/attacking hunters.



I can't recommend honestly. I think it would be better to just go back and play ceasar 4 or something. Maybe a peaceful kingdom gnomoria/DF. Those two give much more simulation, and let you be way more creative in building cool things as well.



I suppose though. What else is there?
I think Ceasar 3 might be the last one I played.
Tropico 4. but, that is a bit different I think.


I haven't seen any nomads. not sure why my town hasn't gotten any.

Nemesis_sl said:

so, 21 years in... hard mode...

population steadily declining since 12-14 years or so... admitting nomads whenever possible...

I have 0-4'ish people per house, where the first decade or so was double the population/house

several houses occupied by same sex and/or old folks... wtf, why can't my population agree to boot the old folks from their 1-2 pop homes to live together, and move in the younger breeders to keep the birth rate up?

it's like they want to die

Click to expand...

Build more houses, earlier.
(but not too much, you'll hit a population boom with more kids/students then the adults and provide food for.)

What happened was:
parents have kids.
Kids live in the house with the parents.
Without new houses to move into, the kids stay in the parents house when they are adults.
Since they never moved out, they DIDNT get married. So those kids, when adults, did not have kids.

So yeah, now you have an aged population, and are missing that younger generation with kids.

Nutron_sl said:

Someone said this already b ut I cant believe ONE person made this game...the mechanics feel so polished.. triple A games really need to take lessons on what aspects of games make it fun (not omg super cutscene graphics during a fight bro) such as everything in this one and stop letting the marketing department run their developement.

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Oh my god this. The problem is, he didn't have to answer to some head of a department and had no publisher or deadline over his head. The unfortunate thing is I don't believe that this kind of thing scales up well at all. It's awesome for 1 person, maybe a few, but past that management and other team members are the biggest obstacles to developing such a wonderful polished game.

Gorgolicious_sl said:

Oh my god this. The problem is, he didn't have to answer to some head of a department and had no publisher or deadline over his head. The unfortunate thing is I don't believe that this kind of thing scales up well at all. It's awesome for 1 person, maybe a few, but past that management and other team members are the biggest obstacles to developing such a wonderful polished game.

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Sort've... It cant be that same level of freedom, but they can and should empower the lead creative director over the lead marketing VP in terms of gameplay decisions. ;p

To answer caliane, all your concerns are valid, but keep in mind both gnomoria and Dwarf Fortress have more than 1 person working on the project as far as i know and DF has been in production for like 12 years with incremental updates. DF has a ton of depth, but the game is far from polished, has no graphical component and is filled with usability problems...that's not even considering the insane amount of bugs which are the main reason I stoped playing it (getting squads of archers not doing anytyhing is pretty cool).

So while I agree a lot more depth can be put into this game, it was made by one person alone, was self financed through kickstarter only and is still relatively new. The base to build on is solid and I can easily see everything you mentioned and more being patched on top of it. It's much harder to polish a turd ;p I think the best thing to do with this game would be to open it up for modding. Especialy all the ui components and stats system (which would be nice to see evolved like in DF as you mentioned).

Hopefully the what looks like massive sales on steam (its been top seller since it came out) will help push the game in the right direction!

I think both DF and Gnome are also both just 1.(or DF was just one for the longest time, but did get modding.) but at the same time, yeah, I am aware both are not exactly the same type of game either. And graphics issues.

Praising it just being one person doesn't mean much if the game ends up being so shallow honestly. some help from crowd modding probably would have gone a long way.. Definitely right. I was thinking the same thing. Looking at starbound. what community collab has done for DF/Gnome. Even was looking at the Folktale dev diary and THEY are talking about community entries, and how they've taken community work, and implemented it.

If the game is still in progress, then yeah. I think this might be worth looking at in a year. Right now, its incredibly shallow, and I think missing some key elements.

Caliane_sl said:

What happened was:
parents have kids.
Kids live in the house with the parents.
Without new houses to move into, the kids stay in the parents house when they are adults.
Since they never moved out, they DIDNT get married. So those kids, when adults, did not have kids.

So yeah, now you have an aged population, and are missing that younger generation with kids.

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wait... are you describing this board?

(thanks for breaking it down, I'll give that a shot)

Nutron_sl said:

Sort've

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i've never seen that spelling of sort of before.

Nemesis_sl said:

i've never seen that spelling of sort of before.

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Haha! Must of been the early wake up for the canadian game this morning

Nemesis_sl said:

wait... are you describing this board?

(thanks for breaking it down, I'll give that a shot)

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heh.

Its really were all the difficulty in the game comes from. Its not a bad design idea.


Basically everything you do is fairly delayed.
Kids take what 5 years to enter the workplace? its 8 if you have a school? something like that, dont know the specific.
So, you have families in a house with kids. you build a new house, kids move out as a couple. and start a new family. 8 years of eating food without adding back to the work force.
you need to be ready for that. expand too quick, and you have a ton of kids, needing food and firewood. and not enough adults to gather it.

Pastures. you can force kill pastures to get food. but, likely the ideal is to let them fill up and then overflow=food.
That takes ALOT of time. and buying animals is very expensive. so, animals will not give you a fast turnover for food. More like a good 10 years for that likely. esp if you start with only 2.
Orchids. 2years for a tree to start producing.

Mining/stone. high entry cost to build. Then require ALOT of manpower to actually mine.

A good amount of the choices you make in this game dont really play out until a good 2-5 years later.

I'm a huge dwarf fortress fan and i really like this game. it's simple and looks like it's going to be a bit shallow compared to DF, but it does a lot of things DF should emulate, and all builders should emulate.

DF makes me want to stab my eyes in the late game when the trader comes. this game handles that shit like a champ.

banished's resource hauling is also great. I wish i could make 'wood pile' and 'stone pile' but those things being gathered then moved to a barn then moved to a market, with peasants favoring the markets...is huge. less retards walking half way across the world to use one thing.

The game mechanics behind tools and clothes and firewood I just love.

I'm impressed that one guy made it, but I'm also impressed (with no 'one guy' qualifier) with the smooth ui, ease of mechanical functions, excelent resource moving and pathfinding (insert simcity joke here) and smooth animal/farming/resource management. Every survival/detailed builder sim i play it seems that managing animals is a nightmare (it's beyond a nightmare in DF), but here's it handled smoothly.

I hope this game gets developed and improved. but most of all I hope that other games like this, seek to emulate parts of this game. I hope dwarf fortress blatantly steals the pastures, markets,auto-trading, and just everything from banished