Banished (Settlers/Tropico type game) - Released

[Revolution 11]

Banished does have staying power but some users may not. You really have to stick with the game, failure after failure, to see the beauty of the game. The learning curve can be high, mostly because you don't realize what the game mechanics are until problems happen.

That is not to say the mechanics are non-intutive, unfair, or cheating, but there is a clear logical chain to requirements and effects.

This is very different from SimCity games where the mechanics are always clear and the problems can be seen coming a mile away. Is the power out? You will get 50 warnings about it before it happens. Let me show you what happened to my first town during the 16th winter.......you would think I learned enough to survive winters during the first 15 times.

Example
In Banished, if you are low on firewood, you will only realize once your villagers start freezing to death unless you are very proactive about managing inventory and supplies. And unlike SimCity, where fixes are instant, there is significant "ramp time" in Banished.

If you need more firewood NOW, you are out of luck. You first will have to make a new woodcutter, wait for the building to be built (which can kill villagers without firewood in winter because of freezing :\), wait for someone to be assigned to that building, and then start producing firewood.

Oh, you didn't realize that your timber supplies were low? Now you are out of both firewood and logs. By the time you get more foresters, lumbermen, and woodcutters ramped up, half your town died in the blizzards.

Welcome to Banished.....

 

[wanderer27]

Steam is selling Banished for $9.99 in a Community Choice sale. I'm thinking of getting it and giving it a try. For those of you who have played this game for a a few months, do you still recommend it? How's its replayability value?

Though it's not in the rotation of Flash sales, it's also on sale at GOG for $9.99 in case you want the DRM free version.



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[xantub]

I would have purchased it but realized it doesn't have a campaign. I guess I'm weird that way but I like to play campaigns instead of 'free form'. Loved Tropico 4 for example, which is another city builder, but I only played the campaigns there. Maybe Banished 2 will have a campaign and I'll get that one.

 

[pontifex]

It's a fun game even without campaign

 

[Subyman]

Missed out on the 75% off! Hopefully it goes on sale again.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Banished does have staying power but some users may not. You really have to stick with the game, failure after failure, to see the beauty of the game. The learning curve can be high, mostly because you don't realize what the game mechanics are until problems happen.

That is not to say the mechanics are non-intutive, unfair, or cheating, but there is a clear logical chain to requirements and effects.

This is very different from SimCity games where the mechanics are always clear and the problems can be seen coming a mile away. Is the power out? You will get 50 warnings about it before it happens. Let me show you what happened to my first town during the 16th winter.......you would think I learned enough to survive winters during the first 15 times.

Example
In Banished, if you are low on firewood, you will only realize once your villagers start freezing to death unless you are very proactive about managing inventory and supplies. And unlike SimCity, where fixes are instant, there is significant "ramp time" in Banished.

If you need more firewood NOW, you are out of luck. You first will have to make a new woodcutter, wait for the building to be built (which can kill villagers without firewood in winter because of freezing :\), wait for someone to be assigned to that building, and then start producing firewood.

Oh, you didn't realize that your timber supplies were low? Now you are out of both firewood and logs. By the time you get more foresters, lumbermen, and woodcutters ramped up, half your town died in the blizzards.

Welcome to Banished.....

Yea, I pretty much can only play by leaving the inventory window open at all times, and checking it every minute or two ...

Also helps to keep some extra firewood at the trade port

Also, I always run out of stone and iron so usually I have extra logs as I build 2 logging camps towards the beginning of the game just to have ongoing wood supply ... (usually i build 2 more, and set them only to plant with 1 worker, and then build the hunter, gatherer, barn, and huts ... but that seems almost like an exploit since it really makes the game MUCH easier...)

 

[Revolution 11]

Yea, I pretty much can only play by leaving the inventory window open at all times, and checking it every minute or two ...

Also helps to keep some extra firewood at the trade port

Also, I always run out of stone and iron so usually I have extra logs as I build 2 logging camps towards the beginning of the game just to have ongoing wood supply ... (usually i build 2 more, and set them only to plant with 1 worker, and then build the hunter, gatherer, barn, and huts ... but that seems almost like an exploit since it really makes the game MUCH easier...)

Yup, the game becomes sustainable if you control how much sprawl your town has and use foresters to get firewood to sell for all the stone and iron you need. You will need a large agricultural and livestock economy base for this to work well but after the setup period, which can be brutal, it is smooth as butter.

I am still on a medium town as scaling problems with transportation and resource distribution appear on larger populations.

 

[mizzou]

the game has a steep learning curve...but staying power it doesn't. It's difficult because you don't really understand the complexities of how things work, and things work not in a general expected way.

Once you get things working, the game is over.'

It's a GREAT game, but short.

 

[TheSlamma]

50% off again

 

[Skott]

I bought it last night for $9.99 off Steam. Hopefully find time this weekend to play around with it.

 

[dud]

I bought it last night for $9.99 off Steam. Hopefully find time this weekend to play around with it.

Was the game worth $10? It is on sale again 50% off again.

 

[paperfist]

Was the game worth $10? It is on sale again 50% off again.

I paid full price for it 2 or 3 weeks ago and it's been the only game in a long time to hold my attention. Played till 5 AM a few times.

It's not quite as deep as a Simcity, but there's still plenty to do and worry about. If you really want to excel at it you kind of have to micro manage a bit. You have to pay attention to layout and not put houses and buildings just anywhere as things are interconnected. People need to stop and eat too, plus walking so putting a fishing hut far away from housing decreases your efficiencies.

Modding is starting to take off for the game now too so that's a plus.

 

[paperfist]

Think slow and steady growth, not exploding with a ton of houses all at once.

I'm not building any houses but for some reason the population is 'exploding' and it's a struggle to feed them before starvation hits. It all started when letting in 10 harmless nomads lol.

Just over 200 people now, the game must be a monster at 1000

 

[dud]

I paid full price for it 2 or 3 weeks ago and it's been the only game in a long time to hold my attention. Played till 5 AM a few times.

It's not quite as deep as a Simcity, but there's still plenty to do and worry about. If you really want to excel at it you kind of have to micro manage a bit. You have to pay attention to layout and not put houses and buildings just anywhere as things are interconnected. People need to stop and eat too, plus walking so putting a fishing hut far away from housing decreases your efficiencies.

Modding is starting to take off for the game now too so that's a plus.

Thanks. I bought it and am going through the tutorials. Its appears not to be the type of game you just jump into ...

 

[paperfist]

Thanks. I bought it and am going through the tutorials. Its appears not to be the type of game you just jump into ...

No it does have a bit of a learning curve

The tutorials were pretty good, but even after doing them I still couldn't get the trading post to work for a while.

Let me know if you need some tips, I don't want to list any spoilers if your set on learning yourself. There's some accepted sizes for farms, orchards and pastures.

 

[Revolution 11]

And I would recommend not worrying about best practices like efficient labor chains, space-efficient yet fire-resistant building placements, sustainable and scalable resource production, or minimalistic transportation routes in the beginning. That is all knowledge you pick up after many hours of playing.

The game is most fun (and challenging) if you let your town grow organically with no help from guides and realize 10 hours later that you put the storage barns in all the wrong places, the 5 wells only cover half your town, your 4 trading posts had a full set of 24 workers doing nothing, and that town hall is blocking a important mine you could have used.

 

[paperfist]

And I would recommend not worrying about best practices like efficient labor chains, space-efficient yet fire-resistant building placements, sustainable and scalable resource production, or minimalistic transportation routes in the beginning. That is all knowledge you pick up after many hours of playing.

The game is most fun (and challenging) if you let your town grow organically with no help from guides and realize 10 hours later that you put the storage barns in all the wrong places, the 5 wells only cover half your town, your 4 trading posts had a full set of 24 workers doing nothing, and that town hall is blocking a important mine you could have used.

Urban renewal!

That's what I love(d) about SimCity, you build like you said organically and then down the road when resources became available you have to rezone your city to make things work better.

 

[acheron]

So I picked this up in the Steam autumn sale and was playing a bunch over the weekend. Pretty cool. First game actually went pretty well, though my town is randomly thrown together with no efficiency. Also I'm basically pinned in now with no more room for growing, and I'm only at 125ish people. Probably do a restart this week on a larger map, try to plan things better from the start, etc. Lots of fun though.

Have there been any regular updates or anything since the game came out?

 

[lozina]

I found it to be too limited - too simple. I did enjoy it for a couple of days and was happy to support the developer for his hard work.

 

[Kalmah]

I havn't seen this game update since its release.

The game is fun until you figure it all out, then it's just a grind with no real substance. Once you are passed the difficulty hump the game becomes freebuild mode. I guess the developer accomplished what they wanted but it's too limiting to me.

 

[Fire&Blood]

I havn't seen this game update since its release.

The game is fun until you figure it all out, then it's just a grind with no real substance. Once you are passed the difficulty hump the game becomes freebuild mode. I guess the developer accomplished what they wanted but it's too limiting to me.

Not they, it's he, one man made the game.

I do agree, game mechanics become too transparent after a while. I find it difficult to motivate myself to play again after "beating" the game the first time around but at the very least I don't regret buying it, I had fun.

Introducing a military arm/conflict with other towns would have kept the game interesting for much longer but I suspect it would have increased cost/time of development exponentially.

 

[sandorski]

There are Mods that add Content, but they don't change gameplay much. I really like the game, but agree that once you get past a certain point it becomes easy and repetitive. I recently played it again, until I had just over 100 population. At that point I was pretty much set to Copy/Paste until I filled the Map or whatever.

I'd buy a DLC that added something to change up the gameplay. Perhaps at a certain size add Raiders or something to defend against.

For what it is, it's a really great game though. I don't regret buying it at all and will play it again.

 

[dud]

I havn't seen this game update since its release.

The game is fun until you figure it all out, then it's just a grind with no real substance. Once you are passed the difficulty hump the game becomes freebuild mode. I guess the developer accomplished what they wanted but it's too limiting to me.

I have had a similar experience. I bought the game a few months ago but have put 2 hours on the game tops ...