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Laborer Update...

May 31, 2014 | Dukus | 110 Comments

I've been working on the mod kit, and also some tools to make it easier to roll out patches to all users simultaneously. However as many people have pointed out, laborers are waiting a long time to walk long distances in the current build, so I decided to start some fixes for version 1.0.3 sooner rather than later.

In this new beta build, laborers don't have any constraints on when they'll go to do work or how far away it is. However, all other professions will still stick closer to their home and job unless a job is fairly old and no laborer has done it.

You can opt into the BETA on steam by right clicking on the game in your library and picking properties, then BETAs and then picking the 1.0.3 beta.

Or you can download new exe's (Banished_1.0.3_Beta_140531.zip) for non-steam builds. Non-steam builds will still read 1.0.2 - but the fix is in the exe. You'll need to have downloaded 1.0.2 for these exe's to work properly.

I'd love to hear some feedback on this change, or if you think other professions need tweaking for how long they take to do a job not in their own profession if it's far away. The idea is to keep farmers, tailors, etc from walking across the map needlessly to pick up a single item so they get back to work quickly should work become available.

Thanks!

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110 comments on “Laborer Update...”

  1. Yeah, one thing, farmers. When the growing season is approaching, it would be nice if farmers didn't wander across the map to do a laborers job.

    Many times planting season comes and goes while my farmers-turned-laborers are off chopping down trees.

  2. Man i hope this will be real modding and not just some config editing to replace models or tweak predefined behavior.

    Anyway, thanks for the update.

  3. > I’ve been working on the mod kit

    Great to hear, thanks a lot!
    Looking forward to early release... And many many languages,... for an even better gaming experience. πŸ™‚

  4. Awesome, I am going to test this.
    And awesome that you're working on a mod kit.

  5. You never seize to amaze us Luke! Great job getting this update out so quickly. Gonna test it out this weekend. Thanx!

  6. Thanks you for the updates πŸ™‚

    btw, in my mind, the main problem with laborers/prof isnt the same as some people think. In my mind, if you go cut a tree or mine a rock... sorry but if you cut it, you grab it ! if you dont want to grab the log/stone then DONT go cut/mine it !!! thats simple !!! most of the time you need 2 Citizen for each log/stone/iron/etc. 1 to cut it, 1 to go pick it up.(80% of the time)

    fix that and it will be very different πŸ™‚

  7. A suggestion: I would like a "button" on one of the menu's that would bring up a KEY, showing what all the different symbols (that float over buildings/people mean. I realize that the tut covers some, but feel a need for in game quick refresher.

  8. My only issue on improvements would be have the foresters plant a forest faster then 2-4 years make It like 1 year. Also allow the person to choose how much supplies they can start with at the beginning of a game. Allow the user more control over creating a map randomly like deciding how big the mountains can be, how flat the land can be.

  9. I take it you only have to over write the relevant files in the application folder ie Exe, runtime and video 32 or 64 bit as required

  10. I assume you only have to drop the new files into the application folder and over write the existing exe, runtime, and video files depending on whether it is 32 or 64 bit

  11. I have double posted. There appears you can't edit or delete a post here

  12. One thing I noticed was when you reach a cap. Those villagers would become labourers. A cool feature would be a dual occupation so you could passively do this for jobs that are seasonal.
    Eg. Farmers , woodcutters.

    So for your farmer. During summer he would farm. During winter he would be a blacksmith. It doesnt even need to be that complex. You could just have a prrcentage for each job.

    Blacksmith 60%
    Fisherman 40%.

    Something like that. So in a nutshell production queues.

    Oh and more building levels πŸ˜›

  13. Does anyone know when banished will come out on mac I have been wanting it for a long time??!!!

  14. @Max - 1.0.2 should be available from the Humble Bundle site if you bought the game here, or GOG if you bought it on GOG. For the HB link, you would have an email from when you bought the game which will have the download link.

  15. Now THIS is great! I'm perfectly content to just have farmers stick close by. I see no reason why farmers need to wander and to go through the PITA process of singling out professions and how far they go. In the "real" world, a farmer doesn't go mine during winter. There are still things to do to the field. It's one thing to chop a few trees down close by - quite another to send them across the map for any time period.

  16. Hmmm, awesome.
    Talk about staying on top of a problem.

    I honestly didn't expect a solution for another month, so I didn't even start one map on the official 1.0.2.

    Going to grab the beta 1.0.3.
    Lol, I spend more time playing on betas than the official patches :p

  17. Great! Glad you are making the beta patch available to non-Steam users. Looking forward to the mid kit.

  18. @keaton, you can play banished on a mac.
    Just google search it or search for
    "Paul The Tall wrapper".

    There are a ton of links on the comments section of 1.0.1 beta as well.
    (Want to help test version 1.0.2?)

  19. I like the change alot. Should help a lot with collecting crucial resources or setting up a market and a few houses to prepare an expansion. On that note I'd suggest a similar change for builders as well.

  20. Hi Luke,
    in regard to the problem of labours who do not perform tasks that are too far apart, I must report that I have encountered this problem only in the transition from version 1.02 Beta to version 1.02 Final. During the game with version 1.02 Beta I never had any problem: nor the "death march", neither the "not doing the work 'cause too far away", and everything was fine.

    In any case, you're doing a great job and you must be proud of it!

    Sincerely,

    Fra

  21. Hello and thanks for the game so far.
    I would like some tweaking in the Market system, i.e. you decide the quantity to store in each market (like the trading posts).
    That would help a lot in micromanaging the efficiency.

  22. This is great to hear - opted into beta on steam, and will let you know how it goes. Love the game - very enthralling and immersive.

    One thing that could help with professions and streamlining is enabling certain workers to both live and work in their place of business. I can understand farmers, teachers miners and stonecutters (etc) needing separate residences, but it does seem logical for certain workers, such as tailors and blacksmiths, to just move in to their workplace!

  23. Thanks for this latest patch. another tweak maybe.
    Some farms harvest a lot quicker than others. Therefore I would like to see the neighbor farmers auto help each other. maybe one or two road px distance farms only. Instead the farmer taking off to cut wood, if a neighbor farm is still working they auto go an help them harvest or work on their farm.

  24. ha who the hell assigned the achievement levels in steam. I think they need some tweaks to.

  25. Bugz - I can't leave the box blank. It wont let me upload without a code. This didn't happen for the 1.0.2 beta. Am I missing something here?

  26. ->Steam, u need a stock pils to start collect

    speed 20x n 50x , with 1000+pop ur game its slowly

  27. Thanks,
    was trying to work out why those workers would not go and collect stone n Iron Arrrrhhh.

    But alsa, next day there was a new beta adressing it!! fantastic.
    those little people are going where there told now...

    D

  28. Thanks, this sounds like a good solution.
    I think the farmers & co. should always stay close to their home/workplace. If I want them to do some far away jobs in the winter, it is my decision to change them to laborers. That's fine.

    Above I read the suggestion that farmers should help other slower farmers with the harvest. I like the idea (exspecially as the orchards seem to be generally slower than the fields), but this should be limited to a short range around their own field. Maybe the same range, they would travel for other laborer jobs.

  29. I also +1 on farmers helping each other harvest. This would be a big boon to farm efficiency.

  30. I think being able to toggle gatherer huts to only collect out of farming season, then work the farms during the growing season could assist in the division of labour during winter/summer. This toggle would have gatherers working as gatherers when farming fields are fully harvested or disabled, and leaving the gathering roles to farm when spring arrives. It's a bit tedious managing large farm systems at the moment.

  31. Ketchup earlier posted:

    "btw, in my mind, the main problem with laborers/prof isnt the same as some people think. In my mind, if you go cut a tree or mine a rock… sorry but if you cut it, you grab it ! if you dont want to grab the log/stone then DONT go cut/mine it !!! thats simple !!! most of the time you need 2 Citizen for each log/stone/iron/etc. 1 to cut it, 1 to go pick it up.(80% of the time)"

    I agree with this - the particular mechanic concerned might help with the specific problem this patch is trying to address. If the worker is not able to devote the time/distance resources in order to both breakdown and transport the goods, then he should not do either and select a job that he can. With the exception, of course, being his primary occupation. You wouldn't want a farmer refusing to cut his field if he couldn't also carry it to market because he got hungry. This would also apply to the cooperative farmers idea a few people have discussed in the comments. Even if the outside farmer can't also transport the goods, being able to at least harvest them is a much more efficient use of his time than more general jobs.

    I also noted that some of my laborers (in 1.0.3) would be carry goods already when they showed up to clear a site. Sometimes they passed right by storage in doing this so it isn't a matter of efficiency either. Something to look into, perhaps?

  32. There is still some idling going on but on the whole, the labourers tend to move on to other jobs quickly.

    I did notice that the Priority change didn't seem to raise a job in the work list as quite a few labourers were still starting and doing low priority jobs when something was raised in the priority list.

    Another tweak I would suggest is in the resource collection tools. You have Wood, Stone, Iron and Everything buttons to collect resources. What about adding a button to gather any food resources. This would make it easier to tell the labourers to collect food resources rather than selecting each individual food resource.

    Regards Icemanau

  33. I'm guessing not a priority just yet but labourers just walk through pastures with no regard for fencing.

  34. I just wanted to say thanks for listening to the complaints of the non steam users and making the fixes available for download. Knowing someone is actually listening on the other side goes a long ways!

  35. Im in the UK on steam and all i can see in the beta selection is "test" and "beta test for 1.0.2

  36. Like Robert, I want to thank the author for making the beta available for DRMfree copy users.

  37. I have the latest beta build and it seems to be working as intended. The only problem though is now builders aren't building anything even a moderate distance away. For example: I'm trying to build a new marketplace which is only as far from the nearest built marketplace that the circle of influence doesn't overlap, yet none of the builders I assign to it will go build it and will only idle. This has starved my town as well because they wouldn't go to build a gatherers hut either (and I had a surplus of building resources and labourers in both examples).

    So please change the distance requirements for builders.

  38. I have the same problem as SGrahambo. I built a new town and I have 15 laborers and 2 builders idling while I have a bridge to build and a whole forrest of wood to collect. This is also a range or 2 of a marketplace away from my town. Prioritise didnt work.

    Ive played 150 hours of Banished and I didnt have troubles with it, even long range resourses I could gather with very few deaths. So theres something strange going on πŸ™

  39. Does anyone know how to get banished and have it work completely on a mac book pro.
    If so could u give me detailed steps on how to do so please. Thank you!

  40. Hi!

    Before the update to the 1.02 Final I had no problem. After the update the game start with the Labourer problem. After the update 1.03 beta the situation is a little better but the labourers still have problem harvesting materials, even if the area is not so far away and even if in the same area they are able to build some buildings without problem.

    Thank you!

  41. why not add a "creative" mode with infinite resources, I know the game isinΒ΄t about building a city but surviving, but a mode were you can make a city without preocupation would be nice.

  42. My novella:

    After putting in around... 30 hours on this version, I have to say - bugs aside - the "intended part" is a little silly. First, the bad: I know there was a big problem with MoD but now it's almost impossible to expand without leaving a trail of houses and fiddling/micromanaging until you get builders in those houses. Given the spacing of the markets, if you have even a single logging area (the area where I would personally build a setup of 2 foresters on each end of the setup, 2 woodcutters, 1 gather, 1 hunter, 1 storage barn and a 10x6 "woodpile") in between the two, they refuse to expand into the new area until I build several houses along the way - which then means less total harvestable/log... able space.

    This means three problems - a ridiculous amount of micromanaging, more need for map space dedicated to logs/hunters/gatherers (which leads back to problem #1) and quite a bit more materials needed to build the temp homes to get the builders over (again, leads back to #1).

    I honestly can't tell if I prefer MoD or this. I've had a cemetery waiting to be built for 17 years because only 1 home was in range so it took forever to clear, forever to bring materials to and then forever to build. I would suggest keeping those employed in professions within... say 50 or 100 squares but allowing laborers (ONLY) to be able to travel 1/3 to 1/2 the map. This gives a harder learning curve but is also completely manageable as well. Worse... if resources are far away, then no one will even go and get them so even if I actually have builders in the right places, people won't bring the stone or logs. The problem is especially annoying with the logs because you need them both in town and at the woodcutters. So you have to constantly delete woodpiles, then wait for them to populate it in the new area, then wait until that is done before deleting the NEW woodpile for them to move it back to the woodcutters who won't get the wood in town. This also means stone quarries all over the place and they are huge and forever. As of right now, there is a lot of wasted space from all the resource micromanaging.

    The good things about this update are the way fires are fought. I prefer everyone drop everything and that's exactly what they do. Before, even if I smattered wells all around the market, the market would ALWAYS burn up. (Literally, surrounding the market with 24 wells.) Now, one on each corner and placing them throughout the area - much like fire hydrants would be - can make a big difference. I only lost a major portion when I failed to put a well in. I also at one time lost 1500 tools because I put all my "eggs in one basket" but doing a mining area, blacksmiths all in between and storage barns next to them. This forced me to rethink and redistribute my mining areas along with blacksmiths - much more realistic, if you ask me.

    I also notice disasters so far aren't triggering like they used to and that's *awesome*. Before, I could have 3 diseases, a tornado and fires that have just burned down entire market areas. I'm getting more on average, but less all at once. It would be quite frustrating to have none for 30 years, then get hit by 5-10 in 2 years time.

    All the above is dependent on my playing a city to 190 years and using a single city to finish 78% of accomplishments, with two other cities played to 20 years.

    I also second Lucas' suggestion on a creative or sandbox mode. It would be fun just to see how much I could build and how on a map. Leaving the ability to turn disasters on or off with this allows a fun, different way without all the stress of resource management and could be a great tutorial type feel to it without the harsh penalty, since there is no "formal" tutorial.

  43. Quite frankly, I'd prefer it if nobody ever switched jobs. Specialists should do their assigned tasks and only their assigned tasks. If more logistics are needed, then I'll assign more laborers. Reliable workforce operations are more important then AI management "efficiency", IMO.

    A somewhat tangential suggestion I'd like to see implemented is the option for houses, or groups of houses, to lock certain professions to them. For example, if I switch all my farmers to miners in the off season, then I don't want my nearby fishermen to be displaced by miners. I'd also like to station builders and laborers on the frontier so they have an easier time pioneering new settlements.

  44. Would it be feasible to make this kind of tweak a configurable option in game? Via the options panel or a cheat console or something? Seems to me like there's no one true way for this -- what makes sense depends a lot on how you play, what the map looks like, etc.

    I'd rather not have behavioural parameters change with every game update, if it can be avoided =) this is not actually broken, it just makes more or less sense depending on game situation ..

    Other than that (and OT), am I the only one for whom 1.0.2 has *introduced* (instead of fixed) road unremovability issues? I'm on the Humble download version.

  45. Yeah, if types like farmers, tailors and blacksmiths, etc, couldn't walk to far from their work places and only walk away from it to get supplies, that would be good.

    By the way, I am loving Banished, it's such a great game!

  46. Fix when not focuced, it use so many recourse gpu n cpu

    u need stop the engine when not fucuced

  47. First, I just recently bought Banished on Steam. It's phenomenal. You're doing something right. It has that "it" quality that makes you want to tell all your friends to go buy it. Keep it up.

    Before giving feedback, let me mention that I'm on the 1.0.3 beta on Steam.

    -Regarding laborers and builders.
    Performance seems inconsistent. Sometimes I can't believe how quickly they clear an area, gather resources, and finish building. Other times, they seem to just do nothing. Progress on the building just sits idle. I don't know what makes the difference, as it seems somewhat random. But the inconsistency is frustrating in a game that values careful time and resource management.

    -Regarding prioritization
    Doesn't seem to be working correctly. I had three homes and a woodcutter planned, but then needed to quickly put up a new storage barn for more goods. Prioritized the barn, but the builders and laborers finished supplying and constructing one home and the woodcutter before moving over to the barn.

    -Regarding options for downtime during professions
    I think it was optimage above in the comments who suggested the ability to designate secondary jobs. I agree with this whole-heartedly. For the first few years, I keep the woodcutter, blacksmith, and tailor windows all pinned because I only need one worker to switch between the three as needed to maintain plenty of each in the early game. One worker can easily keep 1000 firewood, 50 tools, and 50 clothes and still have idle time. This becomes less important later on for this specific example, but it would be very useful to be able to specify a secondary occupation for when the first one is idle. However, this might require a storage max and min system so the guy doesn't go over and chop one unit of firewood every 10 seconds.

    This would also be tremendously helpful for farmers, who could be assigned to a secondary occupation for the winters. Speaking of farmers...

    -Regarding farmers
    I like farmers and how they function for the most part, but I understand the frustration that people are describing when the farmer spends all of early spring just walking back to their field from whatever random laborer work they were doing. I would suggest that instead of beginning to move toward their fields when early spring starts, their behavior should be to arrive at their field when early spring starts.

    -Regarding housing
    To reiterate something mentioned multiple times above, the ability to bind certain homes to specific jobs (or at least to a certain radius) would be nice. My schoolteacher currently commutes about a third of a season each way every morning. If I were her, I'd get a new job.

    Also, the current system for upgrading houses from wood to stone is clunky. I know it's always better in real life to "build it right the first time," so I don't really mind the whole deconstructing and reconstructing mechanic, even if it seems to take forever. The issue is that the people who move out of the house for the upgrade don't move back in after it's complete. It seems that only two do, anyway. I had a house with five occupants, but after upgrading, only two moved back in. Had to build two more houses, which resulted in unwanted population growth as those couples quickly filled those new houses with children.

    -Regarding stockpiles
    This is a small thing, I guess, but the ability to increase the size of a stockpile would be nice. I don't mean increase the max size, but rather to be able to expand a stockpiling area which was initially made small. For instance, the stockpile already present when starting a game on medium is not the max size (which it shouldn't be). But as my town grows, I'd like to be able to expand it to the max size. This goes for cemeteries and farms as well.

    I hope that's useful feedback. The game is terrific. Can't wait to see how you continue to develop it.

    -iTheGM

  48. What would be nice is that the wood cutter would chop the logs for fuel rather than having multiple stock piles filled all around him but no firewood in any of those piles.

  49. Speaking of priority, it would be nice when you need, say, logs and iron for the blacksmith. My blacksmith always has a small 3x3 stockpile out back for iron (coal) and logs to build tools. But when the logs run out, I'd like to assign the labors to chop down the Orchard and take the logs to the blacksmith rather than move the piles around, and then rebuilding them, finally ending up at the blacksmith.
    And for that matter when you clear out a forest area that involves logs, the labors cut the tree and take the logs to the closest pile then to turn right around and bring that same log back to the house the is being build. Why doesn't the logs just stay there and be counted for the build of what ever it is. I know that I'm sounding critical here but this game is cool. I really like it but sometimes its just frustrating.

  50. Came across a major bug that deals with this laborer issue.

    Either go back to the risk of MoD or this needs to be addressed somehow and hopefully soon (though my hopes are low). At approximately 1300 population... after waiting for 20 game years to build new areas, there is a new bug that pops up. Between 1300 and 1400, the first issue is that laborers stop filling empty positions. The event log shows that someone has stepped in but the job management window shows no one taking the position. (A big problem when you need 100 fishers and 200 farmers at least.) This is still going on at a 1600 population.

    Then, somewhere in what I believe is this bug or in the new restrictions on going too far away, people "walk off" from their jobs. Because they have moved into homes so far away, they wander around for a bit (again, not producing anything) then get the "?" popup. Checking their job description, there is no excess workers on the jobs and in fact, may not even be maxed - this happened most often with fishers. You have to drop the numbers down and then back up for them to "snap out of it". While they are wandering around, they won't get clothes, tools, food, etc. They just run around frantically.

    This bug dropped my food production from 170k food to 140k food.

    Now, that doesn't sound unmanageable with the trading posts right? Except the traders won't go far enough from the trading posts to get anything to stock it with. Even with 10 full traders at each of 6 posts, they have yet to fill it with any of the selected items after 20 years.

    There is also another issue with a memory leak. To add to that, I had to drop my graphics down to a minimum as it began to stutter pretty badly with this new version (I'm also fully up-to-date on drivers). This is a gaming computer that can run Battlefield and Rift maxed out on graphics. There should be no reason a game with such basic textures and such few building types should be pulling that kind of comp use. If I'm on any buildings or paths, my FPS drops as low as 5 (10x - no reason to use anything slower, especially now that it takes decades to build a house or market). Even moving it to an unpopulated corner only brings it up to 15 or so when it's really bad (usually a mix of harvest time and snow).

    After about 500, the game is unplayable on my son's laptop.

  51. That are some serious bugs Seola is mentioning. I adressed the laborer bug already and I think everyone knows about it. So I tried to complete the Mountainous achievement. But they wouldnt even gather stone and iron one range of a marketplace away from my town..

    This and the previous bugs make the game unplayable. I cant understand why this bugs exist because it was Beta tested right? So there must be people who have seen this, especially the laborer bug.

    My experience with the fps on high population, I think its better on 5x speed. It seems to be as fast as 10x but with more fps :p But I have a crappy pc so...

    Even tough, I must say that this game is amazing. I can run this game on my pc after douzens of failures with other games. And all that because of 1 guy thats making this game. He should get a medal or something ^^

  52. Are you guys starting new maps/towns with latest patch? or just trying loading your old/current?

  53. reason I ask is try a new town see if things work better? I thinking cause your current town is so huge it will have major affects until it balances out. just and idea.

  54. I have not tried the new beta yet. I have been playing the same city now for about 2-3 weeks. (not constantly but about 2-3 hours when I get home from work). I have a very large town with about 800 citizens but my gameplay is now slow. everything moves slower, gameplay, camera, effects. Is there a way I can fix this by changing settings? Please let me know. Thank you.

  55. Bugz, no old towns for me. When the new patch was released to the public, I completely uninstalled it and did the REGEDIT removal because of the previously mentioned dirty uninstall. I downloaded a fresh version and started from there.

    It's torture. I've actually decided not to play. I was a glutton for punishment (and I happen to let the game run if I'm doing housework or schoolwork on another laptop like I do with all God/Sandbox games) and in one map, I was able to complete over 90% of the achievements which is a game feature issue rather than a bug, but that was my goal - to get as many as I could.

    Even though I was annoyed at pop 500, frustrated at 1000, I stuck with it still trying to fill a map. At pop 1600 (large map - no reason to play anything else unless you are going for Mountain Men), I was near delirious at the level of micromanagement. It's bad enough trying to force laborers/builders into the right houses across the map, but having to actually manually replace a population that has about 100 deaths every season minimum... I don't want carpal tunnel.

  56. Copenhagen88 - go into the Options menu and reduce all your graphics settings. This helped when I hit about 1200 population and was lagging out. If you aren't building, try to keep your screen on a section of the map that is empty. That will help with speed some.

    It's only a temp solution as you keep building, it only gets worse. I have to restart the game every 2 hours or so to deal with the memory leak or it starts to clock my fan speeds super high and brings the temp of my computer up over 150 degrees. Like I said, it makes no sense for a game that is as "simple" as this is unless there is a lot of buggy code that the game is trying to cycle through. Graphics wise, it's circa 2000. The small amounts of textures and building types shouldn't be doing this which leaves the combo of a memory leak and buggy coding the game is trying to force/cycle through to keep the jobs going. I suspect this same type of buggy code is what is leading to the population/jobs bug I mentioned. It stops being able to push through the bugs and people just "give up" until you manually restart them in their job.

  57. For me there is a consistently reproducible bug when alt+tabbing out of the game to the desktop and then coming back. Upon return, I can no longer scroll the view using the bottom or right edges of the screen with the mouse. Keyboard keys still work fine. The problem doesn't seem to be dependent on the actual terrain, as rotating the view doesn't change which edges won't scroll.

    I'm on Windows 8.1 with a 4770K and GTX 780. Running Beta 1.0.3

    Also worth mentioning, I'm amazed by how hard my rig has to work to run Banished. My GPU routinely crosses 70 degrees playing Banished, while never leaving the 60s when playing BF4. Seems odd.

    -iTheGM

  58. iTheGM - this has been going on since the original release. I can't reproduce it every time but I suspect it has something to do with the game trying to get back out of Windows mode.

    I've also found that in some cases, the mouse loses track of the terrain/controls so I may have to hover up a full button size to click on it (or click on a house above the one I'm trying to click). The only way to fix for that is to close out and restart.

    I've watched the fanboys go crazy over the game or defend the shoddy parts and I do think it's "cool" for one guy to do it. But I also don't let it slide because he has been offered free help and has openly stated he won't hire anyone and the lack of communication along with ridiculous excuses (and early on, the whining) when there are very, very remedial bugs that should never have made it into release. The dirty uninstall is something that is basic game creation. The PC load for this game should have been figured out way, way early - especially since there are so many willing to give info on it. The problem isn't "one man" but rather an ignoring of certain bugs and slapping on cosmetic fixes... or in this case, a giant patch which was largely cosmetic but actually worsened the bugs that were basic to start with and created a whole bunch more.

    I am critical because I think this game can be so much more than it is - and really, in some places, it should already be.

    I have a lot of high hopes for the game. I think it's got a good foundation, but when it was released, it was completely unplayable for some, the save game crashes, etc. that didn't get fixed until this last patch, and so on. This game has the capability of expanding exponentially as well. But for goodness sakes, these gamebreaking bugs get old and currently, it's so flipping tedious with the no-building builders, I'm walking away altogether.

  59. 1. Dirt roads which have not yet been built require laborers to delete them if you have saved and reloaded the game. Otherwise, they delete normally.

    2. Cancelling a building after all the materials have been delivered, but before any building work has been done on them, gives zero materials. Previously, cancelling a building before any building work was done on it resulted in the return of 100% of the materials which had been brought to the site, while cancelling it after building work had begun on it resulted in the return of 50% of the materials. This intermediate stage of getting zero materials returned is new.

  60. 1.0.3 beta

    1. I think workers should be more efficient, not just cut a tree, and run. Then pick up the logs, and run.
    2. Increase priority does not seem to work, or if it's working, not working the way I expect. Is there a way to see the list of priorities (that would be nice).
    3. Need the idea of dual jobs. If my farmer isn't busy during the winter, I want to assign second job.

  61. Played the game since update came out. Mild weather, procrastinated with the woodcutter. As soon as I hire a woodcutter, all my population instantly died from freezing in a matter of 5 seconds. Every. Single. One of them. I quit. I think I won't play this shit game ever or even hope it will be fixed. I'm off to Tropico 5. Cheers.

  62. Just wondering when this game is coming out for Mac, my friends and I have been waiting scince it was released. Please port it to Mac or if feasible, create a native Mac version.

    Thanks

  63. Hello!
    I do not get tired of thanking for the great game, on the first place πŸ™‚

    Don't know is it connected with the 1.0.3 beta or not, but still:
    "Increase Priority" tool always used to work just fine. But with the beta I see the thing:
    I try to build forester's lodge, herbalists, storage barn, hunter's and a few wooden houses in the middle of the forest. It's not the first set like this in that town (I'm trying to get "One with nature" achievement).
    They have built hunter's house and do not want to move any more - don't even bring any materials. Buildings in other places are worked out fine.
    I refused beta, then deleted marks of buildings in that forest and created new ones on that place - still nothing, laborers just don't wanna go in that forest (it's not 50 miles away from any other building). Don't know why can it be. I can tell any required details or provide with save game if needed.

    There's also a strange game behaviour I can't explain. It just happens that one day most of buildings start to be less useful than they used to be (like, for example, fishing dock that brings 1100 units of food per year for dozens of years, starts to bring 900, 700, and then 400 units and it can't be helped).
    Or this sutiation with tools: town always had a resource of 100-200 tools. But one day it dissapears in just one-two years (no nomads, no enormous growth of population) and people start to use broken tools. I have iron and logs. I try to hire more and more blacksmiths (three times more than before) but even in a few years there are still some filks with broken tools.
    I don't know even when to start diagnostics. Maybe the game just doesn't want me to get that achievement, "One with nature"? πŸ™‚

    Thank you, I still enjoy the game!

    Basil

  64. Oh lol, my village become "ghost-town" without one reason - childrens stop borning.
    Why? Dunno, happines 5-stars, health - 4,5 hearts, all building, full supplies (food any kind, alcohol, tools,stone, coal, iron, clothes, medicine etc etc), all buildings, roads, regullars tradings, mines was building in distance, all palacework no vacants, all have houses (and spare few), woods around, no one freeze, no one hungry.

    Simply children stop borning.
    I ended with literally empty village with buildings and stores, barn etc. full of resources.

  65. Suggestion: Let the depleted quarries fill up with water in 8-10 years (less if near a lake or watercourse) and then allow fish and
    a fishing dock.

    I have Beta 3 "patch" and have had none of the comp problems mentioned. I've got a very generic computer over 2 years old. But I've also never been able to get much over 1,000 population because around that point people start dying of cold or starvation. That's despite plenty of food everywhere and good roads everywhere.

    Also, at one time or another I've experienced many of the problems mentioned above. Some I can correct, some not. So I have to agree that there are some serious bugs or code errors (or both) that need to be addressed. I hope they will, but I'm not too optimistic - at least in the near term.

    It's still a great game and, bugs and all, worth the money.

  66. beta doesn't start. Can get to "load saved game", then it goes poof after it's done loading. New game poofs too during map creation process. 32-bit Vista

  67. If they do the job they should pick it up.

    Suggestion: this could be a second level education option leading to 4X efficiency in workers.

  68. Went through most of the comments. Spotted some of the same bugs or strange game behaviour as others in version 1.02 , and am not really interested into getting the "1.03" now ! The priority tool doesn't seem to work consistently with labourers (better with builders. Maybe.) ;And the big one, labourers don't go pick up resources although in fair walking distance ;the weird one : food output goes decreasing at fishing posts -- healthy workers, houses very close by. Game seems more sluggish than first release. (The scrolling issue was already there indeed.) I haven't played long enough with 1.02 (year 56 only) to check the cemetery decay rate -- I confess I didn't dislike the cheat bug !:-) Or the Trading Post bigger capacity -- everything is mostly stalled now because of the lack of resources and the grrrr labourers. I'm thinking of going back to version 1 and wait. Once you get the strategy around some of the game…peculiarities in that version, I found it extremely enjoyable.

    Considering all this, it seems meaningless to present again a wish list, but I heartily concur with some of those presented here -- the maximizing of the stock piles, for instance, (of the quarry filling up with water in time, although that is only… eyecandy). One annoying little bug I'd like to have seen fixed : those pesky little lone square of non terraformable terrain in an otherwise nice, flat, usable surface ! The labourers and builders terraform way more when they build dirt roads or houses, they should be able to fix them. But I suspect they are not in the terrain, but in the coding (or something like that. I'm not into the technical jargon of the thing. Just a gamer.)

  69. please make a super noob mode for all the whinging people who don't know how to play this game.

  70. First off want to say the game is amazing and to a fellow aspiring game designer your blog has been both informative and inspiring. Secondly I've noticed something while playing Banished and I'm not sure if it's been brought to your attention because it's rather subtle. I've had citizens starve to death when they've had food in their hands, and hopefully in their inventory. What will happen is the citizen will run to a market or storage barn (while starving) and carrying the food back to his/her home and die before they get there. I don't know how detailed the A.I. or if the food needs to be prepared before citizens can consume said food? Anyway something I noticed and some citizens are needlessly dying while having food in their possession.

  71. Started a new game with 1.03, now 7 years into it. Found that builders and laborers stands around idle when resources are low, and if I select stone/iron to gather, not all of them do, some just stay idle. And if it's too far (how far is too far?), no one goes to pick it up. I think this needs work.

    Priorities are a problem, sort of. I thought the first thing ordered would be the first thing built. That's no always so. Somehow, certain things get done immediately, other wait. For example, clearing land happens instantly. Work on mines, quarries, bridges seem to be next. Other construction...well, it varies, but housing always seems to be last. Then, if I use the priority tool, sometimes it works, sometimes not. Depends on availability of resources, perhaps, but perhaps not. I would certainly like some explanation of this, somewhere, somehow - by the developer!

  72. I've played a few hours with 1.03b and it works much better than 1.02. Laborers can move a reasonable distance from the town, at least to the next valley so it can expand. I haven't encountered any problems with the priority tool, provided that only one or maybe two buildings are chosen.

    What this game desperately needs is a point to point transfer system between stockpiles. Having to delete all but one stockpile to move inventory becomes rather laborious in larger cities. The ability to include/exclude resources by type would also be welcome.

  73. I'm not touching 1.03 yet, got burned with 1.02, am a sissy, OK, but you make a very good point re stockpiles ; that's a tweak which would (will?) be more than welcome once the general mechanics of the game have been addressed and become stable.

  74. It would be nice to see a similar application to the market place for stockpiles aka storage yard/stockyard. A building with 1 or 2 workers who go around the city(or closest storage yard) and gather wood, stone, iron, coal, wool, leather etc.. This building would have a adjustable quantities for each item until max capacity. This would ensure each wood cutter, blacksmith and so on would have easy access to raw materials. Make the building have an effective diameter (similar to marketplace). Just my opinion and think it would make a great addition to the game and add another level of resource management.

  75. Another good point. This would not detract from the game's specific "difficulties" that make it fun to play. Just something logical in world creating:-) Sometimes those Banished people really look too stupid the way they organize themselves !:-)

  76. I agree with you, after a certain time or once my city gets big, my fire wood cutter will go to other side of city to get wood all while passing other fully stocked stockpiles. Same problem happens with my blacksmiths and tailors. Never seem to go to the closest location with the raw materials they need. I really like this game and hope more they add more buildings and add specialized work for our laborers. and fix the logistical issues. I like the idea I read earlier, during after harvesting is over, have our farmers do a secondary task. The senerio I see this working best is - Once done harvesting, a farm worker would help at a local blacksmith(if your tool count is not at its full capacity) and continue to help until planting season starts. This could work for tailors, wood cutter, foresters, hunters, gatherers, etc. My largest city has 200 farmers ( each lot is 7x7) so I have ALOT of unused workers once harvesting is over.

  77. Its pretty easy...
    Labourors AND (yes AND) builders should do theyr job REGARDLESS how far away the job is...
    As it is now I have laborors clearing a site and transporting material there but my builders just keep idling because ... well some restrictions in their ai i guess

  78. Laborers should do the highest priority task (assigned by me), any where. A farmer / or other occupations should be able to be assigned (by me) a 2nd back up job. If both those jobs are finished, the AI can take over (assign them to move stuff around, or become laborers, etc).

  79. That sounds good - non-labourers deciding not to walk insanely far to to laborer work makes sense.

    As for how far laborers should go to me the logic seems like it should be simple: if they could get there, do at least some work, and get home in time for supper and bed (ie they're not going to die if they trie to do this job) then they should go immediately, if they can't then they should never go, you should have to build houses in-between. To aid that, maybe you should be able to designate a house Laborer Only, so that other professions don't nab the houses nearest the far away places. Or better yet: Inns! Inns would also be super cool!

    Keep up the good work (or if you've made enough money to retire then don't keep up the work at all, I wouldn't blame you!), awesome game! πŸ˜€

  80. When i have a population of 1000 or more the game freezes for a few seconds, but the big problem is that when it runs again, some of the workers becomes labourers, farmers or foresters or somebody else. If i have 88 farmer after the freezing i have 81 for example and they become labourers, and i have to reassign them again.
    Same thing happens in two different saves, always when i reached 1000 population, and same thing happens if a play with low graphics or high.
    Game information: bought in Steam, patch 1.0.3 (i had the same problem with the patch 1.0.2)
    Pc information: i7, 8 ram, graphic card ati 6770, directx 11.
    I speak spanish so i did the best with my english πŸ˜‰

  81. @syberiana Your English is perfect, better than most Brits or Americans one reads on tintermawebs. Well done!

  82. HEY. Great work but not on the labourer update. The entire game.

    Though I would suggest that idle villagers are to always be doing something if there is something available.

  83. Well, at first Thanks a lot for this inspiring game! If only I could do such stuff! My son and me love to play Banished for hours! Thank you again and again!
    While playing it occurred to us that there are few animals to keep. What about bees for honey, goose for another sort of meat?
    Keep on the good work! I guess that lots of people love to spend some money on a work like this! I did with joy!

  84. PATCH 1.03 Everything is great so far! Thanks for all the hard work Luke!

    Get that modkit out asap! Everyone is craving extra content from the community of modders lurking and waiting to add things.

    Hurry the modkit before interest dies down.

  85. Using Patch 1.03. This game is excellent. I enjoy it very much and chat with friends who also have played it.
    We have come up with a a list of features we think are important for better management of the game in later years.
    Stock Piles and Storage Barns.
    Like the trading post we need the ability to control the inventories on a per item level.
    I have run into a problem where I have filled the stock piles closest to the wood cutters by buying iron and coal making firewood production come to a halt. Being able to designate stock piles for just one item like coal iron and wood or stone, or controlling the amount of each type of resource in the stock pile.Control of food types, finished tools and clothing in the storage barns will help production and supply chain management. Storage barns next to tailors set only to hold leather and wool. and another one for just finished clothing.
    The idea of being able to designate supply chains is important. When the game becomes large you have to have storage barns near your fields to assure fast harvest of your crops. A feature to make it so the outlying storage barns send to storage barns near the town center. This would make it easier for the vendors to get goods and saves time and possibly preventing starvation.
    If one can also assign a forester to send wood to a designated stock pile you can focus firewood production to different areas as needed.
    This also should be applicable to Quarries and Mines. Being able to set a stockpile priority or destination when doing mass cutting of wood, or rock and iron collection would also be a great help.
    The current logic it seems is that things are stored in the available space for the earliest created stockpile area if it is not too far away. This is what led my workers form ignoring the stock pile next to the trading post and fill the earliest made stockpiles near the wood cutters with coal and iron.
    Most of these things I have seen in other civilization builders like the Pharaoh and Caesar.
    Crop harvesting.
    It seems that only the assigned farmers to a field or orchard actually collect the food. I all to often have half fields dying at late autumn because they cant harvest fast enough even with the maximum number of farmers possible assigned.I have also started harvests early and still not gotten the entire field even though there are storage barns nearby. I have had 20-30 general laborers idle and the ability to assign them to JUST harvest at that time of year is critical to your people not starving to death.
    Population Management.
    There needs to be better control over who resides in housing. For example if i have several houses next to the crop fields, but the farmers live on the other side of the map next to the mines and the miners live in the houses next to the fields then the time they take going back and forth just getting food and supplies, no work is being done. Being able to designate houses built near the fields for the farmers of THOSE fields to live in would be a great help.
    Also I have run into the hunger death march. I have had many starving people die going all the way home for food and pass by a barn with food in it. So if there is not food at home they do not do the lunch box idea and they pass by storage barns with food to go home first and starve along the way and die before getting home to then go to the market to get food. This could be averted with the supply chain as well.
    Elderly citizens.
    I find many many houses that have only one elderly person living in it waiting to die of old age. If there was the ability to consolidate them to living with each other or to a different house, it would allow for new families to move in and grow faster without having to build so many new houses.
    I hope that what I have said here makes sense. I thank you again for a great game. I look forward to the further advances of this game.

  86. @Matt
    All those specific things will be solved with the modkit and seperate mods as the current game works perfectly IMO in that sense, careful placement and organization are key. And the market solves heaps of issues as well.

    It really sounds like you are going about a lot of things the wrong way, you need to maybe search for answers online instead of requesting the game to be made into something that is not even challenging. I have made a thriving town on this patch with 1300+ and i can safely say no problems.

    It's so easy for people to think user mistakes are game related but you just need to learn the game, or wait for a mod to make the game super easy for you to make you happier.

  87. I get this:

    "A fatal error has occured and the application cannot continue.

    DirectDX9: THe application failed to failed to create a DirectX9 device.
    VideoDX11: Failed to create color buffer with format
    DXGI_FORMAT_B8G8R8A8_UNORM[124x0 2xAA]
    VideoDevice: Failed to load or initialize a video interface!"

    I tested just before patching. It worked fine then.

  88. UPDATE:

    It was due to my resolution. Usually I have been using a 1920x1080 resolution, but tried 1920x1200. That made the game go boom.

  89. OK, I give up. This V1.0.3 sucks! I've commented about this in the regular forum ("My Laborers Won't Labor" and others). Until this patch get's patched, I'm through with this game. Too bad, because I really, really like it - V1.0.0, that is.

  90. Clearly you are doing something wrong if version 1.03 doesnt work for you. It works fine for me 100%.

  91. Can't get 1.0.3 working with Pauls Mac Wrapper, always keeps crashing. Too bad. πŸ™

  92. This is fantastic news!
    Was just browsing around the internet just yesterday to find out to get labourers to work further away from home.
    Thanks!

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April 17, 2022
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