The Wilderness of Gratitude: A Banished Interactive AAR

[Deaghaidh]

A brave handfuls of believers, alone in the wilderness, seeking to build together a worthy community. They have cast themselves out from their own past, and they shall rely on each other to face what comes. They will take nothing for granted, and therefore have dubbed their new homeland Gratitude.

For those unfamiliar, Banished is a rather unique town building game, where the player takes charge of a small band of people in a virgin wilderness. Depending on the start conditions, these can start with as little as a single cart full of supplies. There are no hostile armies or monsters or anything of that sort. The challenge is simply to survive and grow, alone except for the occasional trader or wandering band of nomads.

This will be a moderately interactive AAR. You the people will speak for the community members and weigh in on critical decisions. Sadly afaik there is no way for me to rename in game citizens, which imho was a big missed opportunity. But each of you can represent a single citizen's vote.

Census

The Stomsen Family (Stingrex)
Carrold (m, 17) and Hatti (f, 22)
Colee (f. 5)

The Coleman Family (Audren)
Shellen (m. 21) and Venesse (f.18)

The Wynagert Family (DensleyBlair)
Turnelious (m. 26) and Cecelie (f. 17)
Weaverley (m. 7)
Babettie (f. 6)
*Drucile (f. 15) (legal adult, can be claimed by a player)

An as yet unclaimed family
Macker (m. 24) and Nette (f. 16)
Mychalmer (m.12) (will be an adult within the next year)
Anastacey (m. 3)
Micharis (f. 10)

 

[Deaghaidh]

The first decisions:

The first question of import is how much to prepare for our journey.

The Hard start gives us only a few families, their tools and clothes, and some firewood. No seeds or livestock, which means we will have to barter for them.

Medium gives us slightly more people, a storage barn, and seeds. No livestock though.

Easy gives us more people, seeds, and a small herd of either chickens, sheep, or cows, along with a barn AND about four houses. Huge difference in the first year.

 

[Ironhide G1]

Hard Start is my vote.

Very interested. Do I have to be just 1 person or can I be a couple(maybe with a small baby?) Also what culture? What time period do we come from?

 

[Deaghaidh]

One of the charming things about Banished is that the context is almost entirely a blank slate. The buildings are a sort of generic western europe in style. The Chapel looks christian, and some of the headstones in the cemetery sport Celtic Cross motifs. There are new and old world crops, suggesting post 1492, and everything is clearly pre-industrial.

Overall it feels kind of New England-ish, especially on Harsh climate. But I've imagined back stories from being settlers reclaiming the abandoned lands of Arnor in the reign of King Elessar, to the colonists being the space Amish types from the classic Firefly episode Our Mrs Reynolds.

I figured building a Lore for our community would be one of the fun aspects of making this interactive.

As for claiming a couple, on Hard we could have as few as 4 families, so if we have more than that many people interested we might have to have people play individuals, with a wait list of future babies.

Usually I play with a mod that sets citizen aging to a realistic speed. By default I think kids mature at a 3 to 1 speed. Aside from periodic nomads, this is our only source of population growth. I might forego the aging mod for this game minutes.

 

[Stingrex]

I agree that we should have a hard start. It'll make the game a lot more interesting, and there's possibly more roleplaying opportunities.

 

[Audren]

I concur with the hard start.

 

[DensleyBlair]

I had never heard of this game before, but the premise has intrigued me enough that I'll throw my hat in the hard ring.

I'll also voice my support, whatever it may be worth, for the New England settlers idea. Because, you know, New England.

 

[simcull]

Interested, but I'm involved in two games and running my own, so no guarantees I'll be able to participate.

 

[Ironhide G1]

Depending on number of people interested and start, I'd like to give an idea of what I could have.

Preferred from highest to lowest:
-Man, wife and small child
-man and wife
-man

 

[Deaghaidh]

There seems to be a consensus about Hard start, so I think we can go with that.

The second big decision is where we should go. What map settings should we use?

The factors are
Size: Small, medium, large. Self explanatory.
Climate: Harsh, fair, mild. Harsh has the hardest, coldest winters and most chance of frosts ruining our harvests and such.
Terrain: Mountains or valleys. Valleys have more buildable space. Mountains have more unbuildable and impassable land. The upside for mountains is there are more suitable sites for mines, but you don't need many of those.

Another factor is mods, yeah or nay? I usually play with a modest number of mods, notably one that makes cattle give milk and make dairy products available, along with the apiary mod and some additional crops. We can go pure vanilla if the community prefers.

 

[Ironhide G1]

Large fair valley. IDK about mods.

 

[Deaghaidh]

Some other things we can tell about our society from how the game functions:

Our people ignore gender roles. Women or men can be blacksmiths or masons or hunters etc.
Our people are all extremely versatile, and will work any job equally well. They typically take the job closest to their home.
Our people don't use money, and practice some sort of communal economy. Everyone deposits the results of their work in the barns, and takes what they need. We DO have markets though, they serve as storage and distribution hubs and are actually quite important.
Our people aren't greedy or lazy. They all work, and don't take more than they need from the collective supply.
Our people have some sort of government, as there is a town hall building. But there are no political or bureaucratic jobs, so it must be some sort of direct democracy.
Our people practice some kind of religion, probably an offshoot of Christianity judging from the look of the chapel and graveyard. There is a Cleric job, who boosts community happiness.
Our people don't eat pork, as pigs are not available in game. They DO drink alcohol though. It makes them happy.
Children live with their parents until they can move into a house of their own. They won't marry/breed while living in their parents house. This can be a problem when the parents live to be very old, and the next generation is pushing 50 by the time they inherit their house. But the other side is they will move out as early as 10 years old if there are vacancies!
Children are put to work at 10, unless there is a school with room for them. Then they get a proper education. Being a student counts as a job, and students can move out and marry.
Our people have little to no disparity of wealth. Everyone's house is the same size, the only issue being whether it is stone or wood. Everyone consumes the same amount of food, tools, clothes and alcohol.
Despite the above, our people DO have private property of a sort. They will gladly take a freezing neighbor into their homes to warm up, but once they have their home stocked with food and clothes they do not share it outside the family.
Our people have highly effective herbal medicine. Herbalists collect medicinal plants, and the Physician can treat even very serious conditions like Typhoid and Yellow Fever.
Our people do not have oxen or horses, and haul everything around with their bare hands or wheelbarrows.
Wherever we live there are no dangerous people or animals. So we don't need guards or soldiers. Interestingly, there can be, on very rare occasions, murders! There's really nothing to do about them when they happen though.
Apparently, nobody ever poops, even when they get dysentery. Sanitation isn't an issue, and water supplies matter only for firefighting purposes.

 

[DensleyBlair]

Some sort of valley sounds fun. Mods I would happily leave at your discretion, Deagh.

 

[Stingrex]

A medium fair valley should be decent enough. I suggest you use the Colonial Charter mod, as it truly gives you the atmosphere of a colonial town.

 

[Ironhide G1]

I have a question. Could I be the cleric but it is a Catholic church? Would that work, or would it ruin the game?

 

[Deaghaidh]

A medium fair valley should be decent enough. I suggest you use the Colonial Charter mod, as it truly gives you the atmosphere of a colonial town.

I looked at colonial charter. I haven't tried it yet. It looks much more complex than the base game.

I have a question. Could I be the cleric but it is a Catholic church? Would that work, or would it ruin the game?

Well it will be some time before we can build the church, and of course there is no mechanism in game that will keep the cleric from being married. Also you can't assign specific jobs to your citizens, they are just automatically filled.

 

[Deaghaidh]

I experimented with Colonial Charter. It looks very promising but not for this, since I'd need quite some time to get a handle on all the new features. I'm thinking I'll stick with my usual pack of mods:

A few extra crops (lettuce, figs, maybe a few others)
Dairy and Creamery
Apiary
A 1:1 aging mod.

Valley and fair seem to have a majority, with a tie between Medium and Large. Large maximizes the chance of us having a couple of decent town sites, so if it stays a tie I'd opt for large.

My census of participants so far:
Ironhide
Stingrex
Audren
DensleyBlair
Simcull
Luftwafer

5 people for what will be 4 families at start. A fifth family will probably develop once we have five houses, as you usually start with some older children as well. So we could have players speak for a household

 

[Deaghaidh]

I was testing start settings, and got a map I really like, so I'm going for it. It's a Large Valley Fair map. Trying to get a decent screenshot of the whole map is tricky, but this is the key area for now

Our intrepid settlers have hauled the cart with all their worldly possessions through the wilderness for weeks. An axle finally broke in a fair stretch of meadow, near a broad river that flows into a lake. Taking the breakdown of their cart as a divine omen, the people decided to make their home here.

Well not right there. The initial settlement will be where the river flows into the lake. It is likely to be virtually ideal fishing, which will be extremely valuable. Well situated fishing docks can be one of the best food sources there are.

Our community, day 1.

The citizenry. Until homes get built, I know of no way to figure out just who is with who. 4 'adult' men and women. Turnelious is the old man of the group, at age 23. 13 year old Nette is technically an adult woman. 12 year old Drucile is still considered a little girl. Newborn Anastacey was born on the way here.

All of our adults are educated, and everyone is happy and healthy. This was taken before everyone raided the cart for clothes and tools, but we have enough to equip everyone.

Everybody is a Laborer at the moment, but half of them will become builders in a moment. After the first wave of building is done, most will have other jobs.

 

[Luftwafer]

Damn it I'm in aswell

 

[Deaghaidh]

There is all manner of work to do in building a new village. So the settlers made a plan.

At the point where the river and lake meet, they planned to build the heart of the new community. Space was set aside for a fishing dock, a storage barn, a yard to chop firewood, a well for firefighting, and houses. For the moment, one house was all that was platted out. There wouldn't be enough time to build houses for everyone before winter AND secure a food and firewood supply. Everyone would have to take turns seeking refuge in the warm house.

South there was a long narrow valley filled with trees. This area would be where the foresters, gatherers and hunters would work, and a barn and a well would have to be built here also. There would need to be some houses, though the issue will be where to put them so that they don't intrude on the important wilderness but are still close to the workplaces.

First stockpiles were cleared for construction supplies in both areas, and swathes of woodlands were designated for clearance to provide the necessary lumber and stone. After that, priority 1 was the Fishing Dock.

Macker and Nette went to work as fishers. Young Drucile then joined the workforce. She was 13 now, and with no school she became an uneducated laborer. She'd be less effective than her educated peers, but she knows enough to carry rocks and logs to work sites.

If we relied on our cart for storage, Macker and Nette would spend all their time walking back and forth from it. So next project was an old fashioned barn raising! Now our fisherfolk could just hurl their catch straight from the dock into the barn, like they do at Pike Place Market!

Next job was about securing firewood. It was late summer, and it finally stopped raining, but we needed to start chopping firewood now. So a woodcutters yard was built, and for some reason Drucile was put in charge of chopping firewood. That's the kind of job you get when you are the only one what ain't got no schoolin', I suppose.

Next up was a house to heat with that wood. Eventually we will have enough for everyone, but we can get through the winter with one. So we built one adjacent to the fishing dock. Though everyone will be using it for the moment, the house was claimed by our first confirmed family!

Old man Turnelious briefly took over the woodcutting, but shortly took over fishing. Since jobs are assigned by closest resident, and we have only one house, villagers wound up rotating jobs quite a bit. That should settle down in the future. In any case, Turnelious and Cecelie are clearly married. Drucile is clearly a younger sibling, probably of Turnelious. 5 year old Weaverley and 3 year old Babettie are more ambiguous. Weaverley is slightly too old to be Turnelious and Cecelie's baby. Villagers will move out at 10, and possibly even marry soon after, but they don't start popping out babies for a few years. So for the sake of argument I'll assume they are little siblings or cousins as well.

It's a good thing we prioritized shelter, since the first frost came in mid Autumn, which is a tad early for a Fair climate. Doesn't matter, since we aren't farming, and fishing, gathering and hunting work as well in winter as any other season. Heavy snow started falling not long after, and we put two more villagers on fishing, while our builders broke ground on a forester's tower.

Cecelie briefly took a job there for no clear reason, rather than work at the fishing dock outside her front door. In any case, two villagers were assigned to work as foresters. They will cut logs at a steady rate, supplying raw material for our firewood industry as well as building supplies. They will replant as they go, and also they will clear out the stone and iron deposits in the area around the tower.

At the start of the village's second year, the Grateful (as the residents of Gratitude we called) had much to be grateful about. They made it through their first winter without anyone starving or freezing. The fisherfolk were bringing in plenty of food (albeit not much in the way of variety), and health was good and spirits were high. But going into their second year there was a looming issue. Living rough all winter was hard on their clothes, and they had a meager supply to replace them. Their iron tools were likewise wearing out. And of course they couldn't all keep sharing one house forever.