Overview
Which buildings do you need? How often do nomads arrive? Can you still get them if everyone in town dies?
Intro
[link]
Nomads can be a lot of fun, but people tend to have a few questions about them when they first start playing Banished. This guide answers the most common ones that get asked in discussions.
Which buildings do I need?
[link]
If you play the base game with no mods, you need the following buildings before nomads will arrive:
- A completed Town Hall since it contains the user interface to allow or deny nomads
- At least the footprint of both a Market and a Trading Post. By “footprint”, I mean an incompelete building. In other words, you can get nomads even if you simply start, pause, and never finish building a Market and Trading Post.
Mods can change these requirements. Some examples:
- Colonial Charter requires the Central Marketplace[colonialcharter.com] instead of the base game market.
- Townhall Only Nomads[worldofbanished.com] eliminates the requirement for a Market and Trading Post.
- Boarding House Nomads[worldofbanished.com] changes your nomads destination from the Townhall to Boarding Houses.
How often do nomads arrive?
The base game has Nomads set to arrive every 2-5* years. Mods can change this to be a shorter or longer time frame. I don’t currently have an example of a mod that changes the time frame.
* Yes, the base code says that nomads arrive every 24 to 48 months, but I have seen the gap be 5 years. This may be due to the fact that the base code says nomads only arrive in months 1-3. I haven’t had a chance to verify this, but plan to eventually.
If everyone in town dies, can I still get nomads?
[link]
Yes, but only with mods. The base game requires that you have at least eight people before nomads arrive. However, there is a mod called Nomads Zero Pop[banishedinfo.com] that lets nomads arrive even if everyone dies. This even works if you started a map without mods, have all the right buildings, and your entire town dies. Simply enable Nomads Zero Pop and nomads will eventually show up.
Nomads zero pop really works (see opening screenshot), but there are two things you should be aware of:
- It can take a painfully long time (e.g., up to 5 years) for nomads to show up.
- You need to plan for allowing nomads so they don’t die for the same reasons that your original population died 🙂
What does the code look like?
This is from a file called townhall.rsc in the Banished mod kit. It’s where you can find answers to questions about nomad arrivals:
Updates to this Guide
[link]
I’m happy to update the guide based on questions or comments. If you have what you feel is a correction, please provide a screenshot or artwork.
No guarantee when updates will happen… I’ll get to them as soon as I have time.