Tornado...

[jaxrobman]

You're better off turning disasters off..spent hours getting 150+ awesome town going...then my gameplay ruined by tornado destroying everything and killing 100 of them.

[jaxrobman]

can you toggle on and off once the game started??

[happyscrub]

I'm lucky. The only tornado I saw happened in a new game and within 1 min killing half of my people. I was like, "screw that" and restarted.

[Sparrow]

Disasters can certainly add a bit more fun to the town life. Had a fire destroy my main city, about 30 stone houses, town hall, market, some misc production. Was able to rebuild it all but my economy took a bit of a spanking in the process.

[Ottomic]

Tornados aren't bad. They can actually be pretty beneficial for a town and its builder. Allow me to explain:

The city of Ottoburgh was ravaged by a tornado around year 40. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥ hit like a tactical strike, leaving an impressive trail of destruction in only a matter of seconds. I lost about 10 houses, a couple stockpiles, a hunter's lodge, two fishing ports, a granary, tailor and blacksmith, but most tragically of all, the City Hall, along with my pool table and private reserve of pear ale. Oh, and the tornado also picked up the village's school, with all the students inside. I had 2 of them, but for some reason the little lemmings decided to bunch on that precise one. The death toll was around 50 adults out of 120, all students (about 20 of them), and 20 kids out of 30. And with that, I turned the game off and went to work.

Now, I'm not gonna lie, I didn't have really high hopes for the survivors, and I considered hightailing it to New Ottoburgh. Although a 70/0/10 population balance wasn't necessarily bad (unbelievably, the tornado did MUCH less damage than what it potentially could), that much loss would probably complicate things a lot. I guess this is really the point where you need to decide on population viability and make the hard choice between ditching the game or to push on. Villagers have a penchant for boinking however, and there was also a couple of bright sides to all the death and destruction: Although the main population center was hit, I had multiple hunting and gathering centers strewn around the outskirts, along with a bunch of farming fields, and of course, living space was not a concern anymore.

First of all, the villagers didn't really seem all that fazed about picking teenager chunks from their roofs for a couple weeks (1 happiness star lost, at most out of about 70 deaths without a cemetery to put them on), so rebuilding efforts were efficient and immediate. Thanks to the fact that now there was way less people to feed, I was able to stockpile a good amount of food in anticipation for all the adults that were going to die before I had any available laborers to cover for them. Thanks to all that food excedent I was able to gradually crank farm production up. After rebuilding the town hall in the exact same place of course, (because I sometimes mistake tornadoes with ligthning strikes) it was just a matter of keeping my villagers healthy and fed, and wait for a bit.

15 years later, Ottoburgh is a farming powerhouse, with food reserves ballooning up to 7000 at harvest season. It now houses more than 200 citizens confortably when I was barely able to maintain a 110 population on the pre-tornado years due to the lack of farming. In a sense, the tragic deaths of half my population didn't set me back as much as it gave me a chance to reformulate my strategy. Also, I found my pool table among the debris! It landed on top of a bunch of students, so that softened the blow. I had it bolted to the floor this time, just in case.

TL;DR: Don't lose hope and enjoy the death and destruction.

[ES]

I think the tragedy makes this game what it i. Its nice it can be turned off so we can learn how to build big but it also adds that lvl of fun when its on. Fires are terrible reminds me of the first stronghold but the fires in banished so far have been more forgiving. Stronghold i had several wells and watched my entire castle burn to the ground anyways. Banished they seem to make a difference if villagers use them.

[ƎϽ∀ƎԀ]

If you don't like the disaster you got just load a savegame prior to the disaster and it will give you a different one.

[Ottomic]

Still haven't had a fire. Not in a hurry to have one, either.

I was used to Simcity's tornadoes, which are usually a game ender due to the incredible damage they can do to the very, VERY delicate balance of zones and taxes you need to get to run a city properly. This must be the first city builder where I've been able to recover from a disaster of this magnitude, so it's a very nice change, to be honest.

I would like a bit more impact in happiness however. Not Dwarf-fortress-tantrum-cycle consequences, but y'now, a bit sad, show them grieving for a while, the sort.

[Coup d' oeil]

Originally posted by Saxi:

Disasters can certainly add a bit more fun to the town life. Had a fire destroy my main city, about 30 stone houses, town hall, market, some misc production. Was able to rebuild it all but my economy took a bit of a spanking in the process.

shh the yougn'uns call it lame or "cheese". no adversity allowed!

[itssirtou]

So... I wasn't going to wuss out and do the restart thing... Until my first tornado came through and drove a perfect line straight through most of my homes, both my barns, and my school. The school was only a loss of 4 people, so not a huge deal, but the fact that it drove through my entire housing and storage area left me with about 8 villagers and almost no supplies... And when I looked I had exactly ONE breeding couple of villagers.
Kinda dumb for me to have built everything in a line but I thought the odds of a tornado going in that EXACT area was really small. So now I have to redo the past hour and a half which was basically me getting my pasturing taken care of. A full set of chickens and a half done set of sheep... the only part that really survuived the tornado -_-

[Ottomic]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=234561446

DEAR ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TORNADOS:

PLEASE STOP ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TEARING MY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CITY A NEW ONE EVERY TIME YOU DECIDE I'VE GONE LONG ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ENOUGH WITHOUT A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TOWER OF WIND AND DESTRUCTION PLOWING THROUGH MY MOST IMPORTANT DISTRICTS. YOU ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I'M SURE YOU'RE ALL LAUGHING NOW IN YOUR ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ STUPID TORNADO HOUSE WHILE EATING DOUCHEY TORNADO SNACKS. "HA HA!" YOU'LL BE SAYING "WE SURE SHOWED THOSE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HILLBILIES WHAT FOR". WELL ♥♥♥♥ YOU.

I'VE ALREADY REBUILT MY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TOWN HALL 3 TIMES NOW. JESUS.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ YOURS,

OTTO VON ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ KEWL
THE MAYOR OF YOUR WEEKEND ♥♥♥♥♥ WE CALL "OUR TOWN".

[Tie]

50 pop>Tornado>8 pop>QQ

[Ottomic]

*sigh*.

Death toll, for those interested:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=234567535

Looks like about 160 to 170 dead total as a direct cause of the tornado. As a silver lining, the disaster seems to have killed all 3 teachers in my town, which caused the schools to immediately close and declare all students adults, resulting in an increase of my working population of 10 to 20. The material losses could honestly have been very worse, seeing as how most of the fields the tornado passed through had been just harvested, either totally or partially. Some 30 houses have been destroyed, along with taverns, one of my hospitals, 3 full pens of cattle, several orchards, blacksmiths, tailors and a whole bunch of good men and women. And my city hall. Turns out, tornados don't work like lightning strikes.

Following the direct aftermath of the tornado, the construction effort drained my wood reserves, which compounded by the fact that most of my woodcutters were destroyed means 2 years later my people are still freezing dead. The resource gathering jobs have caused many deaths by starvation, and transporting what little firewood gets produced has put such a strain in my vendors that some houses get left out of food, too. There's been a couple of episodes of chronic famine all throughout.

We'll recover, though. Hopefully. Just some elbow grease, that's all.

[ÐC]

Originally posted by jaxrobman:

You're better off turning disasters off..spent hours getting 150+ awesome town going...then my gameplay ruined by tornado destroying everything and killing 100 of them.

if you spent hours to get 150+ maybe read a guide, maybe mine especially the forrest cluster section ;) otherwise i agree a good placed tornado = gg

[wRong]

oh tornado? i remember that thing happens right in the middle of my houses when i started a new game for like 5mins. wipe all house and 99% people, 2 survived

[Ric]

I love tornados. They allow to laugh at all the tears on the forums.

We've all been there. Lost half my food in one recently. Good times :)