Banished: Beginners Guide

The world of Banished is not a forgiving one. If you beat off the cold and starvation, you're bound to get killed off by tuberculosis, a rampant fire or maybe just a freak tornado. However, if you make the right preparations, maybe it won't be the end for you and your little settlers!

This guide provides a brief introduction on getting started, as well as some tips and tricks for those intermediate players.

Getting Started

Getting Started

Alright so here we are, first thing you should do is sort out your HUD, I recommend having all of the information visible. You'll need to be able to see exactly what is going on in order to keep your settlement going.

The first order of business is to clear out a bit of the surrounding stone and trees from around your starting position. Then it's to the task of building some basic infrastructure. Make sure none of your citizens are idling around as they should all be busy in this vital starting year! For your starting settlement you should build near the water so you can fish efficiently and getting water to put out fires shouldn't be a problem. Here's a decent order in which you should build in that first year or so.

• Fishing Dock (if close to water)
  
• Foresters Lodge (try and build this in an already heavily wooded area near the settlement, clear out any iron and stone in its location)
  
• Gatherers Hut (build this close to the Foresters Lodge, it'll benefit from being in a heavily wooded area)
  
• Wood Cutter (we can now start building up a little supply of firewood)
  
• 4-5 Wooden Houses (build enough for all the starting families) Make sure this is done before late Autumn!
  
• Blacksmith (tools are really important and we need to maintain a steady supply)
  
• Hunters Lodge (this will top up our food and get us some leather)
  
• Tailor (and now we have clothes too!)

It's not necessary to have all the buildings fully staffed, put people to work where it's needed. It helps to swap a tailor and blacksmith around to do whichever of the two is needed at this early point. Set a lower surplus of tools and hide clothes, perhaps just one stored tool and set of clothing for each adult citizen, we can't afford to waste resources and labour. The gatherers hut is a real priority, it'll be bringing in most of your food so try and keep it well staffed.


We should be looking pretty cosy at this point, the Gatherers Hut, Hunting Cabin & Fishing Dock should be keeping us well supplied with food. The Forester's Lodge and Wood Cutter should give us enough firewood. The Tailor and Blacksmith should be keeping you with enough tools and clothes. Now for the tough part!

Expansion!

At this point you'll want to build a couple more houses to help your population grow, some dirt roads will help speed things up a little too. We need to keep an eye out for ageing populations, if adults don't have their own house, they won't have children. If we expand the population too quickly, then we run the risk of running low on supplies. Expansion is all about getting the balancing act right. I tend to aim for around 10-20% of my population as both students and children.

Education

Education is a luxury in Banished, if there's more important work to be done then they don't get it! However, if everything is going as planned and you have a handful of children with no immediately pressing work or vacancies for them to fill, send them to school. It'll improve their performance. If things suddenly get hectic and you need the workers, fire the teacher. Instant child labour!

More Supplies!

Alright, things seem to be going okay, but our supplies won't last forever. We're going to need some more food coming in to accommodate any population growth. Here is what I use to keep a steady influx of food and wood coming into the settlement.

A Forester's Lodge, Gatherer's Shelter and nearby Hunting Cabin, with a few houses nearby so the workers don't have far to travel. Having a few of these on the outskirts of your settlement will help keep a steady flow of basic materials coming into town.

Digging for Iron

So we've got a growing population and plenty of stockpiled wood, food, clothes & tools. The next step is to get a herbalist hut going to keep citizens health up. These are best built in the heavily wooded areas along with the above setup.

Next, we can't keep gathering iron manually forever! Get some stone & wood together and build an Iron Mine. Sure it'll take a while but it's a convenient source of iron for decades. It's all about staying one step ahead!

Once you have an iron mine in place, the next step should be a quarry. We won't be able to build on top of this once its depleted, so best to keep it out of the way. As stone isn't a vital resource for basic survival, only mine it when it'll be needed.

Harvest Time

If the food supplies from the Hunting Cabins, Gatherer's Huts & Fishing Docks are starting to fall, it's time for some farms and orchards!

My preferred way of making farms & orchards is in a 15x4 strip. They can be harvested perfectly by one worker living nearby. If you keep the crops in each strip different (or at least with different crops intermittent one another) you avoid the spread of infestation. If one of the strips becomes infested, change the crop that is grown in it for the next season.

Getting Fancy

Now that we should have a healthy supply of all the basic materials, it's time to make sure they're being put to good use! Consider building a hospital, as diseases can cause serious problems for settlements at this stage.

• Trading Post
  A trading post will help out now. Be sure to only stock the trading post with goods that you have in abundance, and should those goods suddenly start running out, take them back out of the post again. You'll want to try and buy some different varieties of seeds to help diversify your farms, as well as some livestock to keep the production of food and clothing up. Firewood is a great commodity to be traded as it's easy to produce and has a value of 4.
  
  
• Market
  The Market is a great way of storing and distributing resources, don't hire too many vendors though! Try give it a central position in your main settlement to maximise its coverage.
  
  
• Tavern
  If there's a lot more food coming in than going out, build a tavern! Firstly because it'll keep your citizens happy, secondly, they deserve an ale by now! Try and set a couple of extra farms to gathering the crop that the tavern will make its beer from, as it'll use up quite a bit making the ale.
  
  
• Chapel & Cemetery
  A Church is another good way of keeping the happiness in check, though it is quite resource heavy, it'll only take one cleric to minister to two hundred citizens. The Cemetery will stop the negative effects brought by deaths.
  
  
• Wells
  Wells are a good investment for areas that are far from the waters edge, it'll help keep and fires that emerge under check!
  
  
• Town Hall
  Well, you only get to build one. So try and put it in the right spot first time, it costs a lot of resources to build. The Town Hall gives access to lots of useful information on the life of the settlement and allows us to accept nomads into the community. If you're going to accept nomads make sure there are enough supplies for them and a Boarding House so they aren't homeless.

Thanks for reading my guide and best of luck to you in putting together a successful city!

[Dante]

Nice guide, i'll see if my village doesn't die out so rapidly now

[rizzlerskibidi]

nice guide

[SAJ1573]

only here for the use of "beat off"

[Chernov]

how long does it take to get nomads, cuz mine aint coming

[brendan4]

My Tutorial crashes when I try playing the 3rd Tutorial (Food and Farming) any suggestions.?

[SESD95]

Thanks a lot for this guide! I was searching for a good "first steps" tutorial. Now that my homework is done... Banished, here I come!

[Nerdy Dork]

why not a boarding house instead of houses? (you villaes are greedy with a BH they have to share)

[DankHabibi]

thanks helps alot I always lose half of my villagers by the first winter and makes it nearly impossible to recuperate

[alabamldy]

Thank you.

[GrungeBro]

tried to follow this on hard cause with seeds to start i expanded way to fast and everyone died! But i can never get all buildings built before late fall..tried many times!