Why is this game so damn hard?!

[Mizuki 水城 泰士]

No matter how many times I try I always lose my villages and never seem to get any more, I don't see what I'm doing wrong, I start off as advised with houses and food supply and within a few seasons, especially winter, they die. Also yes I provide firewood.

[Grace1957]

A screenshot with info windows open would help us see what the problem is.

[Mizuki 水城 泰士]

Eh, I don't bother saving cus I get so sick and tired of failing so I just restart >_>

I think I've finally got it.. I actually used one of those boarding houses instead of building multiple houses and it helped alot it would seem.

[Masadow]

I lost my first 3 game on hard settings, each time, I understood why, and I made a move forward, now I'm on year 37, have about 100 villagers, plenty of resources. I guess this game is just a die hard and retry and that's why it's fun. Starting position can help a lot, or bring you to death quickly.

Be careful and for every decision you take, try to understand all consequences. You'll learn a lot and won't make twice the same mistake (almost ^^)

I had your problem once, and it appears I didn't build enough houses so my people didn't have room to make children. When they became older, they died with nobody to take on the next gen. Try to think about this aswell

[mbutton15]

I have a 900+ population and nearly run out of food, got down to my last 6000 !!

I had started to do 'clever' forward planning things, like stock iron/stone in a trading post and generally just got side tracked into that and took my eye off the ball elsewhere. I was using food to buy in the iron/stone at trade posts and never noticed my food supplies getting low. Well, I did have a 140,000 surplus at one point so stopped paying attention to food levels !! Then I noticed my tool and clothes reserves had also halved. Thankfully, I had plenty of food shashed in other trading posts so think I've bought myself some time to stabalise the food. The tools and clothes are an on-going issue !!

Guess what I'm trying to say is, even when you think it's going well nothing can be taken for granted.

[ebrumby]

Check out some of the YouTube videos. Be sure you are watching those of just the vanilla game. I think Skye Storme made several (also various with Colonial Charter mods) and Honeywell did a series called a Perfedt Town. Both people play differently so you can pick what you like.

[Mizuki 水城 泰士]

I seem to be doing well now but my population isn't growing much, supplies are going great for the moment except for firewood but plenty of trees around so meh lol. I think perhaps I took too long to make houses this time.. oh well, back to the drawing board.

[#SheSquads]

People will only have children if they have their own house, and if you don't keep building more housing the population won't expand. At any point in the game, even a well developed population, if you don't keep building houses your population will stop and then drop as the aged take up space in houses.

[mbutton15]

As a guide, you usually need 5 houses for your initial population. Then you need to expand by 1 house a year, so after 15 years you should really have 20 houses. Once you feel you have a solid foundation switch to 2 houses a year.

Another useful early guide is 1 house for every 2 adults. A Town Hall is a very useful building for assessing population levels. Once you see the population is no-longer growing it's again time to increase the number of new houses you build a year. But don't go mad. I don't think I ever build more than 4 or 5 houses a year, even with my 900+ population.

The adult/student/child ratio I aim for early on is usually 4/1/1 or 5/1/1 (or 4/0/1 if no school). When you build a house look to see who moves in. If it's people between 18 and 25 then I feel things are going well. But if older couples move in then it's a sign you still need more houses.

From my experience poeple stop having children once the woman reaches 40.

[MyProfile]

I also found that the homeless shelter made the game easier early because the people were to dumb to eat if they have their own house.

[Crowb4r]

Ok here is the easiest way to play this game well:
The hard part is the start but here is how you overcome it.
1. Understand that the villagers only breed if they have a house to themselves. If you build too many houses too fast the villagers can and willl breed like rabbits until you have no food.
2. Understand how food supplies work. Farms are seasonal, meaning you get a bunch of it at once and it needs to last all year. Fish and Animals are not. Animals and Trees are delayed.
3. Understand placement. If the villagers live too far from where they work, they get no work done. You want things like farm plots with houses on all sides and buildings like the tailor nearby. Storage needs to be close to farms too, or else they spend too much time during harvest season just moving food to the barn. Markets allow the houses within their range to distribute food.
With house management, food management, and placement you are ready to roll.
So you start the game... now what?
1. Find your nearest river/lake. Build at least one fishing house. You'll build a second soon after. This garuntees a year-long food source and will get you through until the coming harvest.
2. Find the nearest thickest forest and place a cluster in the middle that looks like wood-cutter, gatherer, and a house. Over time you can build into the wood cutting ring and still do fine. They only need like 40% of the range covered in trees.
3. Build enough houses just for your initial group. I never use the homeless shelter; It's unnecessary and expensive if you know what you're doing.
4. build farms. There's a cool guide out there about the most efficient farm sizes but the jist of it is that small farms > big farms. Build something like 6x10 or something small and have one person work it, and lay out a few of these. Have them all ready as soon as winter ends.
5. you can wait with trees and animals. It takes a while to get their full use so save them for your second year to bolster the upcoming population increase and add food diversity.
6. Dont worry about mines/quarries for your first 5 years. You should find enough rocks out and about as long as you are building wood houses.
7. get your tools going though. start with the cap at 50 and use the basic tools. you dont want all of your scarce above ground rocks to become tools right away. get a tailor once you have animals for clothes. If you dont have leather/cotton animals then get a hunter. dont build a tailor until you actually have stuff for them to use.
8. always always always have a ♥♥♥♥-ton more food than you need. once you get going and have a townscenter its easier to see the slope/derivative of your food stockpile and analyze how you're doing so before then play it safe.
9. however, do not let your people grow old. You are racing with time to get enough food to keep the population young and working to get more food to keep the population young.... etc.. its a feedback loop and thats the point of the entire game.

[MyProfile]

Thanks, Crowb4r.

I read your post above last night and give it a lot of thought. I have a couple of hours into this play and things are working a bit better.

I've basically stopped thinking of it as people and places and now I think of it as compnents and wiring. If you wire it and use the correct components it seems to work.

[Crowb4r]

Yes that's a very good way to look at it. Please ask if you have any other questions.

I will say 6x10 isn't the best size for a farm plot actually, I was misremembering. "To maximize the output of your corn farm, choose a size between 110-130 squares (i.e., 8x14, 9x13, 8x15, 10x12, 11x11, 9x14, and 10x13) and use only one worker. 121sq seems to be the 'safest' size with virtually no risk of losing crops to frost while still nearly maximizing output." https://www.reddit.com/r/Banished/comments/1yr2iy/ideal_farm_size_to_maximize_output_per_labor_input/

[Kiyoshi D'Larnath]

Originally posted by Crowb4r:

Ok here is the easiest way to play this game well:
The hard part is the start but here is how you overcome it.
1. Understand that the villagers only breed if they have a house to themselves. If you build too many houses too fast the villagers can and willl breed like rabbits until you have no food.

Actually, villagers will breed in the boarding house, just much slower than if they had their own house, I typically do not build any houses until year 2 when playing vanilla. After that I'll use the boarding house as old people/single people storage.

[MyProfile]

Is there any way to assign who lives where?

[Kiyoshi D'Larnath]

I don't believe there is a way to assign where someone lives.