Impressions-Style City Builders?--(Morphed into the "BANISHED" Thread)

[Ben E Lou]

I've got a hankerin' to dig up some clay, take it to the potter's, store it in a warehouse, deliver some to my plebes' homes to upgrade them, but balance it out with exporting it for cash. Anything current that fits the bill?

[Radii]

There's a game called Banished that's actually releasing today that a lot of us are hopeful for.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/242920/

Here is the gameplay video that got me excited about it:

Banished Gameplay - Agriculture - YouTube



I believe there has been a little discussion in the video games thread on it, there are some 'lets play' type videos on youtube available and I think a few folks here are definitely buying it. I'm trying to resist myself to wait for a few first impressions.

[NobodyHere]

I too wish for a new impressions style city builder. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom was always my favorite.

I always found the Anno games to be amusing but never got sucked all the way in.

Banished just came out, maybe I'll that a try.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

Banished just came out, maybe I'll that a try.

The initial web reviews from a number of sources have been quite positive. Even the Cynical Brit (the WTF reviews) said it was pretty good and his was easily the most critical review I've heard.

[Ben E Lou]

OK. That's freakin' hilarious. I have no idea why I was riding home from dropping my daughter off at school and thought of this type of game. I probably haven't played one in 10 years. And a new one is releasing today for only 20 bucks. Loved the video, Radii, and good to hear about the reviews. Sign me up. Thanks, gents.

[dzilla77]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

OK. That's freakin' hilarious. I have no idea why I was riding home from dropping my daughter off at school and thought of this type of game. I probably haven't played one in 10 years. And a new one is releasing today for only 20 bucks. Loved the video, Radii, and good to hear about the reviews. Sign me up. Thanks, gents.

HEY, get back to coding the CCFL stuff!

j/k

I might actually pick this one up too. Never played this type of city builder before, but it sounds kinda cool.

[Izulde]

This looks really intriguing. Loved the Impressions city builder series and have thought about getting them from GoG. I may just get this instead, though.

[Peregrine]

Is Banished really released? Steam said it was on early access - to me not the same.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Is Banished really released? Steam said it was on early access - to me not the same.

You must have misread it. Banished does not show up as an early access game on Steam.

Banished on Steam

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Izulde

This looks really intriguing. Loved the Impressions city builder series and have thought about getting them from GoG. I may just get this instead, though.

Considering the incredible number of hours that I have spent playing Pharaoh/Cleopatra (and to some extent, Zeus/Poseidon), I have often thought about starting them up again since they are have held up well over the years (I believe). But whenever I do so, I think that I ought to be playing more Civ5 instead. I do recall that I have loaded both games on my Windows 7 machines without any issues, so there's that.

[Radii]

League of Legends bad lag yet again tonight, TotalBiscuit's video gave me enough confidence that the game was stable to go ahead and buy. If League stabalizes I may not play enough to give any real impressions, but one tip immediately:


If you run dual monitors, by default "clip mouse to window" is off, so your mouse goes off to your 2nd monitor instead of scrolling when you hit the side of the screen. You're gonna want to turn that setting on in the options menu.

[Peregrine]

Be interested to see how Banished is - worried it would be a bit too dry for me. Will be following the thread.

[MizzouRah]

Me too.. more Banished impressions!

[INDalltheway]

Getting it loaded up here. I am having some resolution issues (which I expected). That is one of the issues with having a higher than 1920x1080 resolution system. I'll try to get some impressions going tomorrow.

[MizzouRah]

$20.. I'm IN..

Just ran through the tutorials.

[bhlloy]

First impressions - solid game, think it might be a bit too shallow to keep playing for a long time - there's really only four or five buildings in each "group" to build, your people will quite happily eat raw crops without having to process them further, there's really only three or four raw resources to speak of. I did have to nuke my first settlement because I built my trade post downstream of my fishing dock which (I think) meant no traders could get there, but it already wasn't feeling like much of a challenge.

Feels to me like a clone of some of the city builders floating around 5 or so years ago (Imperium Romanum comes to mind), but without as much depth. Not sure that's a good thing. But I'm sure I'll get $20 out of it, and maybe they plan to flesh it out more?

[MrBug708]

Bought it too...will probably get 20 dollars out of it. Not a resource hog at all, so it's nice to play in the background

[Radii]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

First impressions - solid game, think it might be a bit too shallow to keep playing for a long time

I can see this being the case right now. I put in a couple hours tonight and thoroughly enjoyed it. I will absolutely get more than $20 value out of this, though I could see the game having a bit limited replayability once I feel like I've really had a successful village. I did read some comments indicating that the dev intends to support a modding community and to add to the game if its successful (and it seems like it already is, there were 13,000 people playing it at one point tonight, and this guy is a solo developer so that's a pretty damn impressive number of sales).


Reading through a couple reddit threads, I came across this:

Banished is a ton of fun. However it's very hard.

I was doing great until a tornado came through and killed all the children and young adults in the town.

What I was left with was a population of elderly useless people who couldn't reproduce.

Essentially I had nothing to do but wait for them all to die, barring some kind of miracle.

Eventually, years later, the last two people were left. A husband and wife. The husband died of old age, and I expected the wife to die soon as well.
But no. She decided she was gonna give me the middle finger and keep on keepin' on until the ripe old age of 92. I guess she didn't appreciate the last 20 years I had her work in the mines for no good reason.

As a final fuck you I had her build her own cemetery, so there's that.

[Radii]

dola, in my first game I think I tried to expand too fast and didn't keep up food production enough for the growing population and I'm about to see some starvation that I'll have to fix in my next playthrough.

[Izulde]

I decided to cave and buy it since I found $20 while doing laundry the other day. Will post impressions tomorrow.

[Izulde]

First game through I didn't diversify food so it ended up the last 4 villages fishing until they froze to death.

Second game, I got up to 19 people and nobody wasn't getting pregnant, so now my villagers are old and dying off, even though I built Town Hall, Trading Post, and Market to try and lure nomads in.

[Buccaneer]

This seems to be a good twist on the city-building games - where you have significant negative consequences. I love that. Normally in games like this, the primary consequence of your building choices is that you are not big or powerful enough (where negative events can easily be taken care of).

[Izulde]

I found out via the forums what I was doing wrong. In order to grow population, you need to have empty houses so kids move out and start their own families. Otherwise they stay with their parents until the older generation dies off and by then it's too late in a lot of cases, as 40 is the cutoff point for childbearing age, I think.

Off for Try #3.

[Lathum]

I am intrigued.

Question for those who are playing. Is it really micro managy where I have to constantly check on my crops, assign everyone tasks, etc...

I love the old Roller Coaster Tycoon games, but it got cumbersome when you had to assign trash collecters, police guards, etc...

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Izulde

I built ... Market to try and lure nomads in.

The only significant bug I've read about so far involves the marketplace. Apparently if you have a marketplace but don't have anyone working at it the people that live near it will just starve to death instead of walking further to other areas where food is stored. I haven't built one to see that for myself yet, but that's how I've seen it described.

Originally Posted by Lathum

Question for those who are playing. Is it really micro managy where I have to constantly check on my crops, assign everyone tasks, etc...

Pretty much, yes. You don't have to click on the individual people walking around and assign each one, but I am constantly changing how many people are assigned to each available job to try to make things run efficiently without killing off my villagers.

[Radii]

dola, I should clarify that I never got into rollercoaster tycoon so I can't directly compare the levels of micromanagement... but a big part of this game is managing your workforce efficiently. Its certainly not a starcraft level of micro where i am clicking on individual units to give them orders all the time. But I am constantly saying "ok take away one person from hunting to gather more logs for now, ok turn one laborer into a builder to get this project done faster, ok now I need less builders what role should I give that guy who just finished building a house for me next?"

[Draft Dodger]

not excited about the micromanagent stuff, but the premise of this game really interests me.

of course, I won't buy until it's on sale sometime, but it will go on the wishlist I'm sure

[Buccaneer]

I think that was the failure of the sequel to the impression city building games - like Children of the Nile. You were micromanaging individuals/families in a sims-like interface in addition to buildings. Games like this work best if you are managing the resources and the infrastructure and then watch how the people respond. That was the first thing I did when I heard about this game - to see if there any @&?!$ floating thought bubbles.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

I think that was the failure of the sequel to the impression city building games - like Children of the Nile. You were micromanaging individuals/families in a sims-like interface in addition to buildings. Games like this work best if you are managing the resources and the infrastructure and then watch how the people respond. That was the first thing I did when I heard about this game - to see if there any @&?!$ floating thought bubbles.

I played Children of the Nile recently. My main two complaints didn't have anything to do with managing the people. The first was that the resources were almost always split on the map via a river, so I had to create two separate colonies to really get everything I wanted. It felt very "gamey" to me. The second was that it was so sloooooooooow. And my last complaint was that the art style made the cities less attractive than they should have been.

[Lathum]

Bought Banished last night and played a bit.

Early impressions.

I started the tutorial but lost patience with it. I'll probably go bac through it at some point, but they lost me when I had to wait almost ten minutes watching people build houses. A minor complaint is I wish when you hovered over a function key the purpose of that key would come up immedeatly, there is about a 3 second delay.

The game looks great and doesnt seem to have a huge learning curve. I think there will be a lot of defferent stratigies that can be employed. I a mstill really early into it. I have had about half my village starve to death, and I have almost no foor and fo some reason don't produce any firewood, and like Ned Stark says winter is coming so I think my village likely won't make it through the winter.

[Scoobz0202]

ProTip: I'll spoiler it just because some people may want to figure this out on their own.

Spoiler

Place a forester in a nearby forest. Turn off cutting for a couple seasons. Place a gatherer right next to said forester. Maybe a herbalist as well. A house or two. Storage barn. Enjoy great early food production. After a couple seasons you can probably turn on cutting. The thicker the forest the better the food production of your gather. I get almost 2K food a season from a gather with 4 people working it.

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Bought Banished last night and played a bit.

Early impressions.

I started the tutorial but lost patience with it. I'll probably go bac through it at some point, but they lost me when I had to wait almost ten minutes watching people build houses..

You know you can speed it up 10x by clicking the clock and the arrows, right?

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by Scoobz0202

ProTip: I'll spoiler it just because some people may want to figure this out on their own.

Related to this:

Spoiler

If you go on major deforestation, your food production will drop alarmingly. It's how half my village died of starvation after I built it up to 45 people. I'm slowly building it up again now by leaving one section of nice, thick forest on one side, and only clearing out the other side. It's still creating firewood issues, but right now I have enough to just barely keep everyone from freezing.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Izulde

You know you can speed it up 10x by clicking the clock and the arrows, right?

Even when you do that it takes forever. I just don't get the point of having to wait.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Even when you do that it takes forever. I just don't get the point of having to wait.

I did the tutorial twice and don't think I ever had to wait for more than a 30 seconds or so for anything?

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Radii

I did the tutorial twice and don't think I ever had to wait for more than a 30 seconds or so for anything?

Hmm.

There was a part at the begining where you had to build 4 houses, and it tells you that you can speed up the game speed by 10, and it still tok forever. I wonder if it has something to do with my horrible Windows 8 laptop.

[HarryLime]

Grabbed banished myself, it is a mix of city-building and survivalist game! Havent had much success with it yet.

Also, I saw another new game released in "Early Access" and they are pushing for a Steam Green Light, called 1849.

somasim games

is the link to the site and is available for $10. Have not had the chance to fire this up yet, but look forward to it today.

[NobodyHere]

I would also like to give a shout-out to Tropico IV, which has probably been my favorite city building game since Impressions lost their touch.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

I would also like to give a shout-out to Tropico IV, which has probably been my favorite city building game since Impressions lost their touch.

Tropico is definitely a fun game. It doesn't hold much challenge though and that gets old. Once you get sugar/tobacco and rum/cigar plants running, it's a cakewalk. I played the campaign on Tropico 3, Tropico 4 and the 4 expansion and I don't remember ever losing or even coming close to losing. But it's a good suggestion!

So is the Anno series, which I prefer to Tropico or perhaps even the old Impressions series. I prefer Dawn of Discovery to Anno 2070 because I find it easier to relate to good and production that I'm familiar with rather than futuristic stuff. Plus, I hate the underwater building thing. But I find Dawn of Discovery truly great, especially the scenarios where the combat is turned off. You can make some wonderful and beautiful cities in it. It's all about supply chain management and it can get very complicated. It's easily my favorite city builder since Simicity 4.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by HarryLime

Grabbed banished myself, it is a mix of city-building and survivalist game! Havent had much success with it yet.

Also, I saw another new game released in "Early Access" and they are pushing for a Steam Green Light, called 1849.

somasim games

is the link to the site and is available for $10. Have not had the chance to fire this up yet, but look forward to it today.

Please let us know what you think. I've never heard of this one and I'm always leery of the complexity of games that go on tablets, but it like Theme Hospital in an old west setting and that could be a lot of fun.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Blackadar

I prefer Dawn of Discovery to Anno 2070 because I find it easier to relate to good and production that I'm familiar with rather than futuristic stuff.

Good to know. I'm the same way. In the last few days since posting this thread, I've read some good things about Anno, but the futuristic stuff is a huge turn-off for me. Not sure I'd be able to get past that.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Hmm.

There was a part at the begining where you had to build 4 houses, and it tells you that you can speed up the game speed by 10, and it still tok forever. I wonder if it has something to do with my horrible Windows 8 laptop.

Yeah I started up the tutorial again just to make sure, building those 4 houses took 55 seconds at 10x on my machine.

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by Izulde

Related to this:

Spoiler

If you go on major deforestation, your food production will drop alarmingly. It's how half my village died of starvation after I built it up to 45 people. I'm slowly building it up again now by leaving one section of nice, thick forest on one side, and only clearing out the other side. It's still creating firewood issues, but right now I have enough to just barely keep everyone from freezing.

I like how the game seems to reasonably follow common sense. Put too many hunting lodges in the same patch of forest and everybody drops in production. Put a hunting lodge and foresters in the same patch of forest and the hunting suffers. You actually have to leave plenty of untouched space to make proper use of the gathering and such.

[Radii]

How many logs are you getting out of a fully staffed forester a year? I had two going last night and felt like they weren't meeting my needs without me still having laborers cutting down a lot of trees, I wonder if I was doing something wrong w/ the resource gathering, or if I was trying to expand too fast or something (I was building new houses relatively frequently to try to increase my population/workforce as fast as I could)

[GrantDawg]

Funny enough, I bought this last night and didn't see this thread till this morning. I only played about an hour last night, but plan on really burning on this over the weekend. Keep the tips coming!

[Scoobz0202]

I have 50/9/9 or so going right now. I have 6000K food, 2K logs, 2K firewood. I am running into some population issues and getting enough stone/iron/coal.

I have three foresters running around my town and each one has a gatherer, storage shed, and storage pit thing. I disabled cutting for three years to get max growth of the forest then enabled cutting. I am producing a lot of firewood as i use that at my trade outpost. I got lucky and got sheep at my trade outpost and put them in a pasture. Wool is good currency.

With the gatherers I have two hunting cabin things. One with a forester colony and one in the middle of an open field with nothing else around. I forget if one is doing better then the other. I need the hunting cabins for leather.

I have a fishing dock, but I removed all the workers due to my food surplus to put them to work elsewhere.

I have a herbalist with one of the colonies as well. I am using the herbs as currency in the trade post.

Few things I've seen/read. Marketplace earlyish. I put only one or two vendors, especially one early. When you have little gatherer/forester colonies having a market really cuts down on distance traveled by woodcutters and the other labor jobs. Trade post is good as well. Good currency for me seems to be firewood and herbs since they seem to be EASIER to get a surplus of and be worth enough. Blacksmith early is big too. If you run into a tool shortage it can get bad quick. School seems to be pretty important as if it goes long enough you will have a colony of uneducated people who don't produce nearly as much as educated.


I have yet to unpause my farms that I built as i haven't needed them. My problem has been maintaining the stone/iron/coal. I maybe should have started mining earlier, I don't know. I may have started growth of my town a little later than I should have because I feel that everytime I have somebody leave school to enter labor they are replacing a dead person so I am struggling to get past this 50 adult level, and get a good workforce on all three things (wood, food, mining). But one major mistake is to expand too fast. It can be easy to enter a food shortage/wood shortage that can be tough to get out of. If i start over I may do something where if I build a house and the people that move in are 30-40+ then I am expanding too slow. Especially if there are multiple adults in a house.

Kind of random thoughts. It may be hard to read, but Im just throwing out stuff I have experienced and read

Edit: Also, build houses each time you build jobs away from the main town. Build a house or two with each Forester colony... one by your fishing..one by your trade post... a handful by the mining... This realllllly cuts down on travel time for your little people.

[MrBug708]

I bought it too and am enjoying playing in the background of other things.

Building houses gets new kids pretty fast. Dont over expand because your resources get spread thin too. I learned that the hard way. Once starvation hit, I was sunk.

Don't underestimate clearing the brush out early to get wood/iron/stone. It's you stuff pretty fast early on. You will have to set aside space to put the extra things stored up.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by MrBug708

It's you stuff pretty fast early on.

[Abe Sargent]

Maybe we should change the title of this thread to "Alright Boyz....Thoughts on Banished!" or somesuch?

[jaygr]

Bought it tonight and enjoying it so far. I don't have a lot of experience with city builders but something about this has been grabbing my attention so far. Glad I picked it up.