Getting Started With Colonial Charter
#9


I've been playing Banished (both vanilla and mod) for several years now. I've started numerous games under a variety of game conditions. I completed 100% of the achievements in the vanilla version. I can usually achieve a stable population in under 20 (banished) years or about 1.5 bani generations...sometimes less. There are indeed many ways to play the game, but when it comes to getting started...and you have played the game a lot, a little, or not at all...I can tell you this:




A- Build a food resource gathering structure immediately. My go-to is the Gather's Hut, but a Duck Blind, Crop field, Hunting Lodge or even a Shore House works. An Orchard or Animal Pasture are not good ideas because they do not produce food immediately. Assign one Bani to what-ever the task is, once the structure (or crop field) is built, and you have an immediate jump your most fragile resource. Food can go fast; a surplus can disappear in two seasons. Many of the resources required to build a structure like a Gather's Hut (logs, stone) can be gathered by laborers while they are clearing a site for the structure. Don't forget to build a stock yard near the site of your food gathering structure so that builders don't have to walk far to construct the structure or clear the building site. Put your food gathering structure near your barn or supply wagon too.




B- As soon as a food gathering structure is being built, start the construction of some sort of Fuel gathering resource structure. We are talking about a Wood Cutter, or Stacks Burner, etc.. Unless you are playing a tropical environment (where Bani's still put fuel in their homes, they just don't use it!), you will burn through all your firewood or fuel bundles during your first winter. If you don't get a surplus going right away, it is hard to play catch up later when you want a labor force to build other structures, like homes. Again...place stock yards for logs and fuel close to where this operation will be happening, AND use the activity of clearing the site for construction also as a means of acquiring the logs and stone your Bani's will need to build the fuel gathering structure.




C- While food and fuel structures are being built (I usually assign 2 builders to these tasks, who move diligently from one building site to the next in the order in which I laid them out to be built) I assign laborers to gather pockets of stone, ore, and logs. My recommended trick here is to assign them to gather these resources in small pockets close to your starting point. You don't need many resources your first season so don't let your labor force get too far away. My third structure is almost always some sort of Forester. With C.C. Banished, this means a player can select the kind of forester structure that grows trees that produce edibles, AKA fruit trees. With a Gather's Hut built next to a Apricot forester for example, Bani's get an additional food resource (eventually). In the meantime, the foresters are cutting trees and producing logs. Building some sort of forester as the third structure allows a player to concentrate on other game dynamics while the log resource is being managed. I recommend assigning at least two or even three Bani's to the forester because early in the game, logs are a highly desirable and useful resource.




D- Only after food, fuel, and foresters are set up would I recommend worrying about homes for your Bani's. They are quite comfortable working outside with no home until the middle of winter if they have to. Keep in mind, that as Bani's move into their newly built homes, they completely raid the fuel and food from the supply barn (or cart) for items for their home inventories. If your first homes are built one at a time, in different places, what often happens is that the first homes built have all the food and fuel in it, and the last ones built get almost nothing! To re-mediate this situation I recommend building your first four or five homes all at the same time, in a relatively tight cluster. Use the "pause" setting in the construction box menu to pause building construction as a home nears completion. When all the homes are 80 to 90% finished, complete them all simultaneously, and hopefully food and fuel resources get divided more evenly between excited Bani's moving into their new homes. After the first year, I have found that a regular, consistent pace of home building, whatever pace the player chooses that to be, is necessary to prevent large and sudden swings in population. Building multiple homes at a rapid pace and then stopping for several seasons (or years) produces an interesting death/birth rate cycle that becomes increasingly challenging to deal with as the game progresses.




E-The last two "steps" to getting started playing Banished (C.C. or vanilla) is to construct a Blacksmith and a Tailor. Your Bani's will start to burn through clothes and tools as soon as they start working and by summer of year two they will have used up all these supplies unless you begin to replace them. Crude Tools and Survival Coats are better than naked, bare-handed Bani's so these two structures are essential to the game-play. From this point and on-wards... the game can unfold in a thousand different directions, as others have mentioned many times before. However, when it comes to "getting started" in this game, I have found that the pattern I have just described is particularly challenging to deviate from. Progressing from this stage of the game however, is indeed another discussion entirely!




OK.....Now we have something to read under this thread!


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Messages In This Thread
Getting Started With Colonial Charter - by Badger2054 - 01-10-2018, 05:54 PM
Getting Started With Colonial Charter - by Reino - 01-25-2018, 09:08 PM
Getting Started With Colonial Charter - by stiles - 07-13-2018, 02:27 PM