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wcbarney 4 Mar, 2014 @ 5:16am
Power Start --Only Stone Houses
No More Wooden Houses or Boarding Houses -- and no more scrambling around to build enough shelters for the first winter: I have tried this a half-dozen times with different maps with harsh weather & hard start: Make 2 builders & get everyone else busy clear-cutting what will likely be your town center. Start out with a good sized stockpile & then gather all wood, stone, iron, mushrooms, ... Make two builders, and:

1. Build one stone house; the new occupants will immediately hoard half the 100 firewood.

2. Build a gatherers' hut in the nearest convenient forest & assign four gatherers.

3. Unless the gatherers' hut is close to the wagon (which it almost never is), then build a storage barn right next to it.

4. It will probably be late summer or autumn by now; you can usually get one more stone house built before winter -- and the new occupants will hoard the remaining firewood.

5. Winter arrives: Your laborers continue to clear-cut the town center area + pick up stones and iron in the area served by the gatherers' hut. Your builders should build a wood-cutter next to the stockpile; assign a woodcutter. When all the homeless folks get hungry they eat off the wagon or out of the storage barn; when they get cold they go stand next to one of the stone houses to get warm.

6. Your two builders continue to build stone houses, until you have a total of six. This provides shelter for everyone, plus provides a private house for one young couple.

7. After building the six houses, you should build:
a. Blacksmith, in the town center.
b. Forester -- next to the gatherers' hut.
c. Herbalist -- in the deep woods that won't be serviced by a forester.
d. Hunter -- next to the gatherers' hut.
e. Tailor, in the town center.
f. Market.
g. Another house, then another, then another .....

Anyway, this gets you through the first couple of winters without a mad scramble, and without losing anyone to either cold or starvation.
Last edited by wcbarney; 4 Mar, 2014 @ 5:17am
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Showing 1-15 of 18 comments
Enhansed 4 Mar, 2014 @ 5:37am 
Good writeup! I never build wooden houses: you can add the reduced strain on log and coal consumption to the reasons why stone houses are just great.
#1
dcbobo 4 Mar, 2014 @ 5:59am 
stone houses route can greatly reduce your growth, and you should never have starvation or food problems with wooden houses, in fact with wooden, it should make things easier.

not that going stone houses is wrong. It just makes your life harder :)
#2
Fronto 4 Mar, 2014 @ 6:10am 
I think the answer lies somewhere in between, as it so often does.
#3
mafilux 4 Mar, 2014 @ 6:25am 
I usually just build 6 wooden houses at the start, and replace them later. It's really not that big of a deal to replace a mere 6 homes, not to mention you will need the stone for more important buildings in the beginning. After you have 6 wooden homes you should be producing enough stone to switch over to stone houses without issue anyways.

As for boarding houses, all I can say is nomads. You need to have a boarding house if you're going to accept nomads, unless you like them eating up all your firewood and food.
Last edited by mafilux; 4 Mar, 2014 @ 6:26am
#4
SKaREO 4 Mar, 2014 @ 7:14am 
Instant fail. You can't start with stone houses because there's not enough rocks to support a growing town. You need a quarry and about 100 villagers before you can even consider upgrading the houses to stone.
#5
Kagemin 4 Mar, 2014 @ 7:29am 
Originally posted by SKaREO:
Instant fail. You can't start with stone houses because there's not enough rocks to support a growing town. You need a quarry and about 100 villagers before you can even consider upgrading the houses to stone.
Worked fine for me to start building stone houses well before reaching that high population or building a quarry. Both on normal valleys map and a hard, harsh, small, mountain map.
#6
Billy Idle 4 Mar, 2014 @ 7:40am 
I followed the Power Start --Only Stone Houses instructions and am in my 10th year and never lost a citizen to hunger or cold. Everything went exactly as his post said it would. It goes against the way I have been playing on Hard but it works! I had to RAPE a large portion of land South of me to get enough resources but now have a few Foresters replanting. Thanks for the info!


Originally posted by wcbarney:
No More Wooden Houses or Boarding Houses -- and no more scrambling around to build enough shelters for the first winter: I have tried this a half-dozen times with different maps with harsh weather & hard start: Make 2 builders & get everyone else busy clear-cutting what will likely be your town center. Start out with a good sized stockpile & then gather all wood, stone, iron, mushrooms, ... Make two builders, and:
#7
wcbarney 4 Mar, 2014 @ 8:01am 
Originally posted by SKaREO:
Instant fail. You can't start with stone houses because there's not enough rocks to support a growing town. You need a quarry and about 100 villagers before you can even consider upgrading the houses to stone.

I would not have posted the Power Start tip if there was any chance of failure, let alone "instant failure." You are just absolutely wrong that you can't start with stone houses because there's not enough rocks. There really are enough rocks laying around to get going fairly strongly; then you can build a quarry if you must, but it's more efficient to trade hide coats & venison for stone.

BTW, I am not a noob; my first towns were built by following the guides -- i.e., quickly build 5 wooden houses or a boarding house to shelter your settlers before winter. I just realized that they don't all need to be sheltered before winter and can survive quite nicely with just one house to heat 'em up while they eat from the wagon. With my all-stone-houses towns I have managed to get every achievement but the 200-year "Tenure" one, which I am currently working on (though it is way more tedious than it is difficult).


Originally posted by Billy Idle:
I followed the Power Start --Only Stone Houses instructions and am in my 10th year and never lost a citizen to hunger or cold. Everything went exactly as his post said it would. It goes against the way I have been playing on Hard but it works! I had to RAPE a large portion of land South of me to get enough resources but now have a few Foresters replanting. Thanks for the info!

Thanks much for the endorsement Billy!
#8
wcbarney 4 Mar, 2014 @ 8:06am 
Originally posted by NoQuarter:
stone houses route can greatly reduce your growth, and you should never have starvation or food problems with wooden houses, in fact with wooden, it should make things easier.

not that going stone houses is wrong. It just makes your life harder :)

Stone houses don't reduce your growth by one iota; maybe you're thinking of school houses, which do reduce your growth at first, but you end up with workers that are doubly productive compared to the uneducated 10-year-olds that you are maybe including in your growth.

Stone houses do make your life a little harder at first, I guess, 'cause you've gotta scrounge around to find enough stone to build with. On the other hand, you never have the firewood issues that you almost always have when you have lots of wooden houses.
Last edited by wcbarney; 4 Mar, 2014 @ 8:06am
#9
dcbobo 4 Mar, 2014 @ 8:07am 
Fot what it's worth, here's a link 300 pop in 20 years. https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/242920/discussions/0/540734792593662818/

It's a shame it got so little attention. dcbaby getting 300 at 20 years was pretty cool...

But the point of the link is, stone houses can really slow your growth early.

So define power start? I wouldn't call stone houses a power start, doesn't make it any less of a cooler start though. And long term, there is no denying, stone houses beat wooden.
#10
wcbarney 4 Mar, 2014 @ 8:17am 
Originally posted by NoQuarter:
Fot what it's worth, here's a link 300 pop in 20 years. https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/242920/discussions/0/540734792593662818/

It's a shame it got so little attention. dcbaby getting 300 at 20 years was pretty cool...

But the point of the link is, stone houses can really slow your growth early.

So define power start? I wouldn't call stone houses a power start, doesn't make it any less of a cooler start though. And long term, there is no denying, stone houses beat wooden.

Yeah, I was totally amazed when I saw her challenge post. I had already done the achievement in 60 years, so that wouldn't even be good enough for 11th runner up!

I do have to agree that if you're going for a totally rapid expansion, then the stone houses will undoubtedly slow you down. Being in a race, however, was never one of my goals here.
#11
Warner Vachanges 4 Mar, 2014 @ 9:57am 
I experimented with early stone houses. I had success, and I had starvation. I really tried to make this playstyle work, to avoid wooden houses, but starting with wooden houses has always, for me, been the "control" state. And it is no wonder, really, with wood being the single easiest resource to obtain.

Bottom line is, I want a shelter built fast so my people won't freeze, and then they must collect food.
#12
mafilux 4 Mar, 2014 @ 9:59am 
Originally posted by zep_guy20:
I experimented with early stone houses. I had success, and I had starvation. I really tried to make this playstyle work, to avoid wooden houses, but starting with wooden houses has always, for me, been the "control" state. And it is no wonder, really, with wood being the single easiest resource to obtain.

Bottom line is, I want a shelter built fast so my people won't freeze, and then they must collect food.

Too bad they can't eat wood XD
#13
ChewMyFudge 4 Mar, 2014 @ 10:06am 
So whats wrong with boarding houses? The reason I even build it at beginning, is not just to build stone houses right away after first winter, but incase of a sudden fire or tornado that might take out alot of my houses, there will be this building.. incase, I duno, due to some events elders took up houses that couples could use to increase population and I got no real time to build more houses, I can use the destroy house option to make them leave into boarding house and cancel it, giving a chanse for younger couples to take houses..
#14
Rilos 4 Mar, 2014 @ 10:12am 
I switched to stone houses only and have not experienced any changes in how my towns grow other than the normal map and weather differences. Stone is fine to start with, it just takes a little longer to gather the material.
#15
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Banished > General Discussions > Topic Details
Date Posted: 4 Mar, 2014 @ 5:16am
Posts: 18

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