Thought on Banished from a Caesar III and Caesar IV player

[CobraA1]

Banished is an interesting game. A very interesting game. And it gets even more interesting if you've ever played Tilted Mill's Caesar or Children of the Nile games.

I personally have played Caesar III and Caesar IV. So - why do I bring up these games?

Because Banished is very much like them.

Some people compare it to SimCity, but it's much closer to Caesar. You have a group of walkers that move resources from one area to another. You have to manage the movement pf those resources as you struggle to grow your town (or in Caesar, your city) - and you can't grow it too fast, or you're left wanting for resources.

I'm on my first playthrough of Banished, and it does seem to be pretty difficult as claimed - although I've gone through several years without losing all of my villagers. Managing emergencies seems to be very similar: Focus your people on tasks needed to stay alive, shut down everything that isn't strictly needed. Thankfully, I don't seem to need to actually destroy buildings to recover, just shut them down.

One of the key differences seems to be that Caesar actually had a campaign with several maps, each with a set of goals, whereas Banished is just a single randomly generated map. I did like the sense of progression and accomplishment when I finally finished the final map, which was very difficult.

So maybe a Banished 2 could have a campaign?

I wouldn't say that Banished is as difficult as the final Ceasar map, but perhaps one of the final maps before it. Meeting the requirements of the Caesar map was a devil of optimization and micromanagement.

One feature I would suggest is being able to control which resources a storage barn/yard can accept. That way, I don't have walkers walking accross the map to store items that could be stored nearby. In Caesar, being able to control where the resources go can be vital on the large maps, or you'll have the most distant parts of the map starving very often. I imagine Banished isn't that different in that respect (although I started with a small map just to get the hang of the game).

So, those are my thoughts :). It's very much like Tilted Mill's games so far, and I think anybody who liked their games will also like Banished.

[somekindawizard]

Im currently in my first play through of Banished and Caesar III is precisely what came to mind. That weird satisfaction you get when you get a good trade from the trade boat reminded me so much of buying raw materials in Caesar and producing higher quality goods for a profit. Banished is a beautiful little game and I can only hope it expands into a modern Caesar style format in the future.

[kevinshow]

At the same time, when you play these kind of city-building games that have map campaigns, some initial part of the game-play is just to establish the basic buildings...again..and again...and again.

So it's a toss-up between having a game that seems to lead to a conclusion, which is finishing the campaign, or a sandbox-style game where you can repeat only what you want, and stop playing when you want, which invariably will relate to the amount of time that you think you needed to understand the logistics of the game. For some, that is growing and maintaining a population of 100, and for others, it is 1000.

[General Chaøs™]

Personally I prefer banished as a Colony survival sim. However what would be nice which is something that was not done in the Ceasar series would be if instead of a campaign, you get to send out explorers and prospectors to look for new places to colonize.

This would make it have a more dynamic campaign because you would be essentially hand building from the ground up colonies that in conjunction with one another would turn into a nation or multiple nations. Something like this would keep the game completely open ended and would keep the game more about colony survival instead of turing it into a city building strat.

Instead of armed forces you would have business owners,laborers,black market dealers,merchants,pirates,religious/faction leaders/followers,predatory animals,sickness,weather related disasters,etc as the opposing forces. Which would cause disputes over territory,resource shortage,money shortage,etc.It would would keep a non military strategy to Banished while keeping to its Colony survival vs. the elements core.

Obviously war and bloodshed are a part of survival,but Banished does not incoporate that aspect instead focuses on the land,weather, and well being as your major opponents. Even to that end, a more simple system of conflict having to deal with supply runs and outskirt areas being ambushed could be added where a colony/town would need to raise/hire guards/escorts along trade routes or to accompany caravans containing needed cargo. This I think would tie over enough people who want some sort of conflicts without armies being needed.

[Axz]

It would be like Caesar if there was a decent resorce management system, that's all it's missing. I know I keep going on about that, but it's the only bad part of the game and it is a neccassery, easy and logical thing to have, but for some reason it got half finished and left like that.

I don't accept this games resorce management system as a resorce management system, it's a half finished system that was "phoned in".

[SIX]

I dont see the point of a campaign or war stuff in a city building sandbox really. The storage management is the biggest feature missing so you could establish a real economy and or the village you really want without having to sell excess for the sake of having empty space in some storage or barn.

[Mel]

I'm not sure I understand your point about managing the storage barns. The people walk to the closest barn to store their goods. That helps with efficiency. Once you have a couple storage barns, utilize the market. A couple vendors will pull from the barns to maintain a bit of everything for your populace to utilize.

[Axz]

Originally posted by Mel:

I'm not sure I understand your point about managing the storage barns. The people walk to the closest barn to store their goods. That helps with efficiency. Once you have a couple storage barns, utilize the market. A couple vendors will pull from the barns to maintain a bit of everything for your populace to utilize.

Unfortunatly they don't. Once your town starts getting big they will often walk past the nearest barn and sometimes even take it to the furthest possible barn / market / stockpile away from them.

People will keep taking coal as fuel, as your town gets bigger that becomes a majoy pain in the ****, I'm on around 350 / 90 / 90 and 8 foresters huts, 10 woodcutters, 3 mines working at 100% with 10 laberours and 3 blacksmiths nearby and they will be lucky to see 25 of ever 200 coal mined. Mainly because they take the coal right past the barns / blacksmiths so they can be put in a stockpile (sometimes) and when they don't they go right to the market and get taken as fuel.

It happens with nearly everything, but it's totally random, it might happen it might not. Why not have a system like in Caesar 3? A list of all items in every storage building with a box that can be checked / unchecked to say accepting / not accepting. Or set the limits for items in each storage building like we can resorce limits.

But for the moment it's just a melee of resorces everywhere, even where they are not needed / wanted.

[CobraA1]

Oh hi - all the sudden, a single lonley post made months ago got traffic.

I like General Chaos' idea. It sounds pretty good.

Originally posted by ΣƑIX:

I dont see the point of a campaign or war stuff in a city building sandbox really. The storage management is the biggest feature missing so you could establish a real economy and or the village you really want without having to sell excess for the sake of having empty space in some storage or barn.

Well, the Caesar games were essentially city builders; the military stuff was actually quite weak. Age of Empires was actually a much better choice if you wanted something with a strong military component.

Caesar 3 actually had two tracks: One where you had a lot of military conflict, and a more peaceful one with very little conflict.

[Sparzy]

I remember playing Caesar and Pharoah, Banished also reminds me of the first Settlers cept without the battle part. The pure joy of just creating a working balanced town.

I would like to see a mill ffor flour (since we have wheat) and a baker.