Banished (Game)
Nov. 24th, 2021 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseI have this. Bought it years ago with Humble Bundle DRM-free and then because of issues, bought it again on sale with Steam. It's on sale again for about $8 U.S., so I thought I'd plug it.
This is a several years old town building game for Windows; I've got it running under Q4Wine on one laptop and Steam-Proton on the other (because of Issues with one of my Linux machines), probably works under Crossover for Mac but I haven't checked. There are no skill trees; you get everything that you can possibly make at the beginning of the game. It is abandoned by the developer but the fandom is active and the modding community is vibrant. (If you buy through Steam, it has the Steam Workshop, which makes it easier to get and use mods.) The only downside with the mods is that you can't get your game achievements with a modded game. Oh well.
The idea is that you start with a handful of families that have been banished from their homeland and must make a new life. You have to steadily build housing and work buildings, as well as make sure you have enough sources of food for your growing population (crops, orchards, fishing, foraging, hunting, and raising animals). It's really easy to move too fast and have your villagers starve or move too slow and have them all die of old age. Like Stardew Valley, it's the work of one single person.
So, early game you have two priorities: starting on food production and getting your villagers housed before winter. I usually plunk a dormitory down first thing and then get either a fishing dock or crop started (depending on difficulty and map). You don't start with a builder by default and you need one, so that's my first task after plunking down food and housing. The gatherer's hut is usually my next priority; I find an area away from the main (because foraging/gathering works better when it's in the woods) and plunk it down, with a Hunter Lodge next door. Between these, you get a steady supply of food early on for your villagers. I usually mark off the hunting/gathering area with a road so I don't accidentally build too much there.
Then I add a trio of important buildings, to be built as time allows. Usually they're in the order of Woodcutter, Blacksmith, School, though sometimes I build the school first. Educated workers are important in this game! After those three I usually add a tailor to make coats and my first house. Because my laborers are usually busy gathering resources, I sometimes mark the house as priority so that it gets built after the first winter but before the 2nd winter so that the villagers have kids. (They can have kids in the dormitory, but they don't produce as well as they do if they have their own house.) I grow from there, keeping track of my villagers. I try to build the trading post/town hall/market trio if I see the population dying a lot of old age as you need that to attract nomads to (re-)populate your village.
I've gotten to 200-something people before I get a bit greedy and having my village never recover from that.
If you do not care about the achievements, I suggest getting mods that give you a greater amount of stone/iron/wood when your villagers gather them, along with one that tells your villagers to stop using the coal to warm their homes (trying to make steel tools is a pain when they do that.)
You can modify the seed at the beginning of the game if you've found a starting area that you like. Here are some I've found that are usually in valleys near water: 185712566, 80440873, 421272686, and 366427517.
This is a several years old town building game for Windows; I've got it running under Q4Wine on one laptop and Steam-Proton on the other (because of Issues with one of my Linux machines), probably works under Crossover for Mac but I haven't checked. There are no skill trees; you get everything that you can possibly make at the beginning of the game. It is abandoned by the developer but the fandom is active and the modding community is vibrant. (If you buy through Steam, it has the Steam Workshop, which makes it easier to get and use mods.) The only downside with the mods is that you can't get your game achievements with a modded game. Oh well.
The idea is that you start with a handful of families that have been banished from their homeland and must make a new life. You have to steadily build housing and work buildings, as well as make sure you have enough sources of food for your growing population (crops, orchards, fishing, foraging, hunting, and raising animals). It's really easy to move too fast and have your villagers starve or move too slow and have them all die of old age. Like Stardew Valley, it's the work of one single person.
So, early game you have two priorities: starting on food production and getting your villagers housed before winter. I usually plunk a dormitory down first thing and then get either a fishing dock or crop started (depending on difficulty and map). You don't start with a builder by default and you need one, so that's my first task after plunking down food and housing. The gatherer's hut is usually my next priority; I find an area away from the main (because foraging/gathering works better when it's in the woods) and plunk it down, with a Hunter Lodge next door. Between these, you get a steady supply of food early on for your villagers. I usually mark off the hunting/gathering area with a road so I don't accidentally build too much there.
Then I add a trio of important buildings, to be built as time allows. Usually they're in the order of Woodcutter, Blacksmith, School, though sometimes I build the school first. Educated workers are important in this game! After those three I usually add a tailor to make coats and my first house. Because my laborers are usually busy gathering resources, I sometimes mark the house as priority so that it gets built after the first winter but before the 2nd winter so that the villagers have kids. (They can have kids in the dormitory, but they don't produce as well as they do if they have their own house.) I grow from there, keeping track of my villagers. I try to build the trading post/town hall/market trio if I see the population dying a lot of old age as you need that to attract nomads to (re-)populate your village.
I've gotten to 200-something people before I get a bit greedy and having my village never recover from that.
If you do not care about the achievements, I suggest getting mods that give you a greater amount of stone/iron/wood when your villagers gather them, along with one that tells your villagers to stop using the coal to warm their homes (trying to make steel tools is a pain when they do that.)
You can modify the seed at the beginning of the game if you've found a starting area that you like. Here are some I've found that are usually in valleys near water: 185712566, 80440873, 421272686, and 366427517.
