Starting your Settlement Guide

Overview

Tips, screenshots and tricks to get started

Beginner things to note

This section will have some basic tips as to how things work. I will cover some basic game mechanics that will affect your game over the course of time.

Modding – It will disable achievements so get them first if you are a hunter.

Food – how it affects villagers.
***Villagers will roughly eat 100 food each per year. If you have 100 villagers, you need to produce 10,000 food annually to survive.

Distance – how it affects gathering rates.
***This game is all about travel time and distance. The farther your villager walks getting somewhere, the less time they spend doing that activity. To help, you can build roads to speed up the time they take to get somewhere.

Storage – How it affects villagers and the town.
*** Similar to distance, the farther away storage is, the longer it takes to do an activity. Gathering food, you want to walk the least distance possible to place it in storage so you can get back to the field to gather more.

Starvation factors – what can cause this.
*** Many things can affect if/when your villagers starve. The most important being that it takes LABORERS to move the food, (or crafted items) to storage before anyone can pick it up to use it. Food does noone any good sitting on the fishing dock, it has to be put in a barn or market before a villager will put it in his home to eat it. Its also possible to have a baby boom that will drain your reserves quickly. Farms and orchards are affected by weather factors such as an early frost. Do not have more than 1/3 of your food supply coming directly from farms and orchards. Use all the various food producing buildings equally. Farms are better than orchards also.

Laborers – what do they do?
*** Laborers are the single most important part of your society. Without laborers goods do not move and your society will decay rather quickly. It is very important to have 10 to 20% of your population as laborers. When titled villagers die, a laborer will replace them, ie a tailor dies so a laborer will step in and assume the role. If you have 0 laborers then the titled jobs will go without anyone filling that role. This can cause a cascade effect such as running out of tools which in turn makes each job a villager does without a tool take 1/3 longer to do their job. In a tight economy this can be devastating to long term survival and put you in a tailspin you may not recover from.

Aging – how it affects schooling, births and death.
*** Villagers age 4 years in 1 game year. Basically each season (spring, summer etc…) is a year to a villager. So if you view a villager whos age is 10, it could mean that villager is 10 to 14 roughly for marriage purposes. Once every so often, you may notice a big decrease in the population. It happens when you add alot of houses in a year or 2. Spread building houses out to a couple per year. You will still experience a death cycle but its reduced and you wont have to micromanage as hard to keep a baseline population.

Plot sizes – how the radius of buildings affects the environment.
*** Most building that gather food have a radius that the building gathers from. It is important when placing buildings of the same type, try not to overlap the circles to much. A little bit here or there wont hurt, but having 50% overlap will reduce the effectiveness of gathering that resource.

Schools – How villagers are affected by education.
*** Children will start school at age 10. They will attend based on time spent in the classroom, not years. Its kinda like when you build a building it takes so much wood but in this case its learning. The closer the house of the student the faster they will graduate. So spread your schools out over your settlement. An educated worker will produce more/work faster than an uneducated worker. Tools and clothing will last longer also.

Trade Posts – How to use them to help grow or sustain your village.
*** Your village will produce goods. Sometimes its to your advantage to over produce some items so you can stock the trade post to trade with the outside world. For instance the most common item to trade is firewood as its cheap to produce and easy to store. Some people do alcohol.

Nomads – How to use or avoid the effects that come with them.
*** Once you have a town hall, a trade post and a boarding house built, a group of wanderers will approach your village every few years and ask for acceptance. If you allow them they will assimilate into your society and join the work force. Nomads have negatives as well such as diseases and poor clothing so make sure you are ready to accept them as they can drain your stocks quickly. Make sure your food production can handle the amount of nomads that join or starvation could come a knocking.

Town Hall – most important building in game
**** This Building by far is the most important you will need to manage your village as it grows. It has several tabs so you can view most items that are important such as how many homes you have vs the number of families you have. You can view how much food you are producing currently or look to see how much you produced last year. This will let you see in advance if you are going to come to a famine or not. It is important to remember how many villagers you have as each one eats 100 food per year so you can use this to forecast how much you need to produce and always try to produce 10% more to end the year with a surplus. Its very important.

Roads and why they matter.
*** Roads are the arteries of your empire. Without roads things would move across the land at a snails pace. Dirt roads and later, stone roads will help you speed up the transport of goods so your people will stay healthy and happy. Careful planning will ensure the shortest routes because speed is the difference between surviving and dieing.

Buildings

I will cover the basic buildings you need to survive and thrive.

Food
Gatherers Hut
——Gathers mushrooms, berries, roots and onions

Hunters Cabin
—— Supplies venison and leather

Fishers Hut
——- Supplies fish

Farms
——- 8 crop types – beans, squash, cabbage, potatoes, peppers, wheat, corn, pumpkins

Orchards
——- 8 Tree types – walnut, chestnut, pecan, pear, peach, plum, cherry, apple

Animal Pens Pastures
——- 3 Animals – Cattle – beef and leather, Sheep – mutton and wool, Chickens – meat and eggs

Support Buildings
Town Hall – ****most important building in game****
——- Allows you to monitor productions rates, housing, families and more

Tailor
——- Clothing – hide coat, wool coat and warm coat

Blacksmith
——- tools – iron and steel

Wood Cutter
——- firewood

Trade Post
——- Trades for goods/food or building materials from products you produce

Well
—– Water used for health, happiness and fire fighting

Brewer
—— Uses some fruits or grains to brew some suds for the villagers – helps with happiness

Herbalist
——- Gathers herbs from the forest for minor health needs

Hospital
——- Doctor who keeps health up from major outbreaks of diseases

Church
——- Cleric helps with happiness

Graveyard
——-Helps happiness by allowing villagers to visit ancestors when they die

Storage

Barns
—– Place for laborers to place foodstuff gathered from buildings. Must have at least 1 for villagers to gather household food from.

Stock Yard
——- Materials such as logs, stone, iron ore, firewood and coal are placed here. They can be most any size you choose as shown here.

Markets
——– Collects goods from all over to a central location so villagers can gather needed items for their home. 1 stop shop

Roads
Dirt
—— Basic road allowing slightly faster travel

Stone
—— Allows fastest mode of travel – really helps villagers get from place A to B.Nearly doubles rate of movement.

Housing
Wooden House
——- Allows up to 5 occupants – uses more firewood/coal for heating/cooking

Stone House
——-Allows up to 5 occupants – reduces usage of firewood/coal for heating/cooking

Boarding House
——-Allows many occupants – early game use can help with waste/misuse of resources due to hoarding. Can also allow Nomads a place to stay if accepted into village. Its basic use is a temporary place to stay while upgrading a wooden house to stone.

In Game tools

There are a couple really useful tools in the game that you should really familiarize yourself with.

The pathing tool is of particular interest as this tool will help you make a few decisions on things like do I have enough houses/jobs in this area. Its really important to balance the market hub area with enough housing vs enough jobs so villagers arent walking 1/2 across the map to do a job. Ideally if you have 10 houses you will want a minimum of 20 jobs in the immediate area. To use the tool, select it from the Tools and Reports button, then select pathing tool. While the tool is highlighted click on a building such as a mine and look at the paths from it going to the homes of the villagers who work in it. If all the paths are close then it’s good. If you have a couple that go a long ways, it means build another house in the area. Do this for each building in the area and you will get an idea how well the area is setup.

The priority tool is also useful in that it will set the area you highlight to the top of the builder queue. It basically makes this building a top priority. It does not mean that the builders will be there asap because they depend on the lot being cleared and the materials delivered first. I have noticed that with quarries and pastures, this tool does not seem to be as effective, over the course of a few games. Most other buildings do seem to be rushed though.

Starting Out – part 1

Welcome to Banished.
You want to make a settlement that thrives? Do you need to get some advice on why after the first few years everything seems to go downhill? Do you need to figure out why you have plenty of food, many homes and lots of people but everyone is starving? Why does everyone stop working and do nothing?

One thing to remember, Banished is just as much a city builder as it is a transport simulation. Each citizen has a role to play and it will take them all to make it work.

Year 1
I decided to make a large map on seed #275335419 with valleys, fair weather, disasters off, and medium start. Pause map once it appears to get a look at it.(spacebar). First thing to do is look over the map and get an idea in our head about how to lay out our town and where. The start is important so we can get off to a successful village. Open the PROFESSIONS assignment panel so you can assign 3 builders to start some dirt roads to get a general layout going and to also give some sight lines for reference.

Look for a large forested area for the first food hub. Then place a gatherers hut, forrester lodge, hunting cabin, herbalist and a barn. Pause them all but the gatherers hut as this will be the first primary food source. During the next 2 or 3 years, the stone and iron in the hub area will be your primary building materials. As you unpause buildings, you should first gather some stone,logs and some iron from here to keep a small supply going.

Next to the north of this, lay out a market (pause it) and then place 7 houses on its border and pause 2 for later

So now we have the gatherers hut, hunters lodge, forrester and a woodcutter built and at first place 1 employee in each building. In abit you will place 4 gatherers to get a start on some food stores. We also want the hunters lodge producing leather for hide coats we will need soon. The venison helps with food also. You may have to juggle a bit in the beginning to keep the food up as its the single most important resource or your village dies. If you have to juggle abit, its ok, you will just have to pause some other activities for a season or so. Once you get ahead of food, keep clearing the hub area of stone and iron so the food stuff will grow such as roots, onions berries etc…. Watch the food constantly and always try to leave 4 laborers so someone is moving the food to the barn. Remember villagers cant eat food that is not at the barn – it HAS TO BE there for them to take it home to eat. Also add 1 more employee to the hunters lodge.

You also place a footprint for a fishing dock. For fishing to be effective, make sure you get as much water under the circle as possible, otherwise you will be wasting resources. Look for where the land juts out into the water. Place another footprint for a second market so you know which direction to expand into, planning ahead. Along the north part of this map will be the main population and work areas to the south.

Year 2

This year we will concentrate on finishing the food hub area cleanup of the stone and iron and get the food supply stabilized. In the beginning it can/will fluctuate some. Select a small section or stone and ore to clean out in the food hub.

Place a farm plot to get some materials for building. Wait until next spring to assign a farmer since farmers plant in early spring. You should also get an orchard planted this year and then pull the farmer back to a laborer for a year since it takes 4 years for orchards to produce.

Unpause 1 more house to get it built. You need to build a slow steady population in order to avert the population die off in 20 years time. Remember a villager ages 4 years to 1 game year. In 20 years the ones being born now will be 80 and close to the grave. Once in awhile early on, select each house to see how many age 14 and up young adults you have since these are the ones you need to grow the population. Once you have a few get another house built to not waste their child bearing years.

You need to plan spots for a tailor, blacksmith and a graveyard. A brewer will come later as you need to have a supply of berries for him to use. A trading post needs to have a spot planned that will have decent access to the barns and market to draw the goods from.

Look at the space between the 2 markets for buildings like the town hall, chapel, school and hospital. We want the school close to the housing so students graduate faster.
Here is an image of the town laid out with a Town Hall, school, chapel and hospital. Also note an added cemetery and a couple more houses to keep the population growing.
Notice there is a new blacksmith and tailor to keep our tools and clothing up. If you are short on people, you can alternate 1 villager between these 2 professions, 1/2 year as blacksmith and other 1/2 as tailor. Set the cap at 15 for each so they dont consume all the resources to early and can also help out around town gathering resources like stone, iron and logs. It pays to pay attention to caps early in the game otherwise villagers wont get fed since noone will move goods around.

Here is a look at my proffession distribution in year 4.

This is the village stats of year 4.Notice the food is growing by the number of villagers x100. You have to keep that number growing otherwise a few births can drain your food quickly. This supply is enough for 1 year. Keep adding a villager to the food chain as you can but keep the laborers number high also, its a must.

The key is slow steady growth. Keep adding 1 or 2 houses each year as you gain new laborers. Keep checking your current houses for teens to move into their own house so the pop grows and you keep adding to the labor force. If the food dips some, add more farmers, fishers, hunters for a season to get it back in balance. If you leave them to long, the goods will stop moving in your village so its a balancing act. A couple games under your belt and you will start to get a feel for it.

Once the fall rolls around and its time for crop gathering, look over the map some to get an idea of where you can gather a few stone, iron and logs for some expansion during the winter. Soon, we will need to think about students since an educated workforce produces more, works faster, and reduces wear and tear on their tools and clothing, it helps so they wont go through our stock as fast. Conservation.

Forward a couple years to year 6.
Year 6 with a couple more houses built, a wheat field added, a school and finally the townhall. Attached is 2 of the most important tabs you will need to have a successful village. First is the overall view showing Housing vs Families. Use this stat to know when to build houses and when to close a few houses. NEVER EVER let the houses get larger than the families number. WHY? Well it means you will have single people move into homes and then no children will come. Population death will ensue and your town will die off. Try to keep this roughly 2/3 or say 20 houses to 30 families. You may have to close a few houses as the population ages so that this doesnt happen. By closing, it is meant to mark the house for either upgrade or demolition. Use caution as a builder can remove a house if you aren’t on top of it.

Starting out – part 2

And last is the production tab so you can monitor food production to know where you are, to see if you can add more population without starving. Look at the produced value as this will let you know if you are borderline on producing enough food to keep growing. Again 1 person eats 100 food per year so if you are producing 6000 food like I am, I could support 60 people atm. Not bad for first 5 years. Now I can unpause the 2 other houses I have paused to get more kids.

Notice I also have the school up and running. Be careful with the timing of starting the school. You want enough laborers so the kids can finish school without putting a crimp in your supply lines. those goods have to keep moving. Children graduate school after a certain amount of time has passed IN the classroom, its not measured in years. If they have to walk far, then their face time is halved and it takes longer.

Here is our first educated student graduating to laborer. Things will look up from here on out.

And here is the overall shot of the town well on its way to thriving.

You have plenty of room to expand west for more food and wood. East can be another market hub and south of the current food hub you can add even more markets to continue expansion south. This town is well on its way to growing. On this same map seed, I made a village of over 1100 easily and you can too.

I hope this guide helps you get the most out of the game and leaves the frustration behind. Any comments or omissions, additions please feel free to post them in the comments and I will consider adding them in.

Thanks for viewing!

I would like to give credit to Chavara for proof reading this to help weed out the errors.
Thank you lots!!