LadyCrimson

I have discovered ... Deer Island!

I remember liking most of the first season of SGU, but then I stopped watching. Can't remember why, I did have a reason, one of those things where I probably noticed something for a couple episodes and got annoyed or something. I thought Robert Carlyle was great tho.

I heard about that. Outside of Ghostbusters, I haven't seen many of the movies he's been in. Which isn't to say he wasn't in something I've seen. Just usually in small roles. But he was great in Ghostbusters.

30 years from now, if any of you see some white-haired, fragile looking, little old lady arthritically limping across the parking lot of a grocery/drugstore with a cart full of diet Mt. Dew ... that'll be me. Also...darnit, where's hubby. I'm lonely.

If 99% of your population is educated, quarries/mines don't kill them off very often. But yeah, that's what I was thinking ... at some point even "old age" deaths come fairly rapidly, sometimes in waves depending when you build houses. Another thing - no graveyard/full graveyard, I can have max stars of happiness, then someone dies. If their spouse (or whoever) is unhappy for it, I seem to lose half a star. And it stays that way until that spouse actually dies themselves. Even if I build a Tavern after, nothing makes the half-star loss go back up. Am I imagining this effect or ... ?

Occasionally whilst playing this game, I wish I could slap the peasants like I could slap minions in Dungeon Keeper.... Speaking of graveyards, I read/learned that gravestones do eventually disappear to make room for new ones, so one doesn't absolutely have to have more than one. But I'm not sure if rate of headstone decay is fast enough to keep up with a huge population death rate.

That's about what I said when I played that. Don't get me wrong, I do think it's probably the best of BL1's DLC's, but the driving back and forth on those freeways really became an annoyance after a while. Hehe.

Anyone else have the "problem" of reaching a certain point in a map and then wanting to start over on a new map? In terms of pure "city building" (I still haven't bothered with Disasters) I'm finding reaching a stable, well stocked town of 200-250 or so pretty old hat now ... and I do want to get to the very high pop. marks that supposedly become really difficult to maintain. Yet I keep starting over. I guess at the moment it's more fun to try a new map...that early struggle in the beginning. What I hear about high pop towns (over 700-800) is that one big hurdle is there seems to be no limit to the distance which laborers etc. try to go in order to do a task. Thus you can have multiple market hubs and housing all over the map, but when build or clear land etc. workers from everywhere try to march to the spot, with a lot of them actually starving to death before getting there or getting there/back again. Which makes it difficult to keep growing the population to get even higher population numbers. Maybe that's put me off a bit on high-pop goals. It's fine if it's tough because of lack of space for food/resource production or something, but if it's mostly because walker-AI has no distance limit, that's kinda...irritating. And stupid. Anyway...reaching 500 would be a nice middle ground - 2-3 housing/farm/market hubs. But for now, I just can't seem to stop starting over. Current town (97 pop with lots o' kids). Tried to make something less haphazard than usual, but it still turns into something not so elegant. Compared to some, I suck at making "pretty" towns. (click for bigger)

The white flowers on the neighbor's crabapple trees are starting to blossom (crabapples: kinda like tiny plums crossed with miniature mushy apples). Spring is coming! I've been purposely avoiding playing the Banished game during the day, because I know I can over-obsess. With the sunny-ish recent days, instead I've been going for walks/hikes (nothing intensive), visiting some friends/family I haven't seen in a while, shopping, getting stuff done ... then I return home. Unfortunately, by early evening I then think to myself "I'll play some Banished for a few hours." And next thing I know it's 2am. Stupid game.

When we had a small no-defrost freezer, I just used a regular stainless steel tableware knife.

Heh, yeah...Nomads are all about the timing. Sometimes you're fine/want them, sometimes you don't. Just have a doctor built before taking any in - they tend to bring disease outbreaks. I currently have a very nice balance between new adult spawning, birth rate and death rate for my pop. growth/housing expansion wants, and Nomads would probably put that all out of whack.

38 strangers, who'll have more kids, eat all the food, bring disease, etc? Nonono, not ready for that, do not want. DENIED! ...and so away they trudged, back into the wilderness, looking forlorn. I felt a pang of guilt, but what's a town overlord to do? (took them 6 minutes to walk off the map...)

Took a break from obsessive city building, went out a bit, ate some good food, watched a silly action movie, now thinking about going to bed early. Really early. *yawn*

I think I'm going to do that tomorrow. Not sure what, either, but I haven't eaten much this week and I feel like stuffing my face with something horrible for you. That's not pizza or cheap Chinese food. Maybe that local BBQ place ... some of their yummy beef ribs. Or the pub-grill with the awesome, thick cut pastrami ruebens. Dang, I'm hungry now, but unlike in NYC, nothing's open at 230am here...nothing good anyway.

If you're making five spice chicken and decide to add an extra spice, does it become six spice chicken?

Not that I'd find it as amusing if I stepped on such with a bare foot or something, I'm sure, but ... None of my cats were/would be good mousers. They're all spoiled, coddled indoor brats who only know that if they give me wide-eyed stares for long enough, tasty food sometimes falls to the floor.

That's because Spacey's lens-flare like awesomeness stupefies all other characters into constant brainfarts and brainfreezes. ...but I do know what you mean. I find House of Cards to be an "ok" show, with Spacey doing that Spacey thing being the main reason to watch. But then I'm pretty biased re: Spacey, have been for years, so pay no attention to me.

Well, at least if the gameplay is something I really like, I can still obsess unnaturally over a game, at least for a time. Banished might even be that game that I keep going back to periodically for my main gaming fix, until PoE arrives. By then I should be finally tired of huge towns + "starting over." Should be just about right, that timing.

Try playing for 40+ game years, reaching 200+ people. You'll find that easy to harvest stone/wood and stuff doesn't last very long as you're constantly building, creating tools/firewood for new folks, and trading. But yeah, not everyone's going to like the sandbox nature. That's the general idea, only I don't do it far apart. Build a stable area around one market place, create another marketplace hub the next plot of land over. Just a lot of connected suburbs, each with it's own shopping mall, storage/farms and eateries. Repeat forever. Still takes a long time. The timing is still difficult, too, and the mines don't last forever. Already went through two (around the 35 yr mark), and they're now useless spots of land I can't build on. At least if you have more than one trading post, you get more trade boats per year to show up. Helpful.

Single-player: I like endless saves and being able to savegame whenever I want.

Can't stop playing. Started over. Was going ok but an inefficient mess for trying to reach really high population. New town, largest map, better planned/going smoother. Nomads: seem to require Townhall, Trade Post, Marketplace and possibly the boarding house or empty houses. They don't show up all that often, maybe once every 2-5 years, but variable. They're mostly useful if your population is declining from age and no children, or if you want to keep population at a certain level (don't want to build lots of houses). Otherwise I'd reject them, at least for a while. Reproduction: Adults apparently can't have more kids once they're past 40 or 50. So if you want the kiddies to have more kids, they need their own lovenest houses before they reach that age. If you want slower growth/less kids to feed, don't build them houses until they're 30ish. If you're using a school, 2-4 new houses every year or so seems to work fairly well. Trading: Steel, or Iron tools if you don't have coal. Three+ blacksmiths and set their max. production number high. Then I'd tell the trade post to collect 40, wait a bit, then up it to 80 (or whatever suits you), repeat until there's a lot in the trade post, then wait for the right trade boat. Only need to buy one seed to get it in your farm option menu. I haven't bothered with livestock (did try cows late in 2nd game just before I stopped) because farms take up so much room I just stick with the crops ... I focused on mining/tools instead and just bought wool coats when traders had them or, if you don't have any Hunters, leather for the tailor. Not as high sell price, but if you have a well staffed Quarry, once you've built most stuff, stone isn't required often and you can easily push most of it to the trade post to sell.

30** game years in, more or less. --orchards suck. Eventually either woodcutters cut so many of the trees (even if they're far away) or the orchard just goes bad, and then you have to cut it all down and wait 2+ years before it produces anything again. --160 adults/20 students/35 children (approx. 56ish houses) = them all sucking up 12000-15000+ food a year into their homes. Each house can stock a whole lot, apparently. I can barely keep up, and I have a lot of food production. Also, the new adult rate is barely able to keep up with the loss to death at this point. Soon as a laborer is generated, some old fart dies 2 seconds later and the new guy immediately takes their place, so getting ahead labor-pool wise is terrible. If you build new houses all you get is oodles of children for 8-10 years and then they trickle into the workforce piecemeal. --the game badly needs a "grid view" for placing buildings. **wrote 20 before, for some reason. Memory dump.

Heh. It's not the difficulty increase that makes BL2 better co-op. BL1's co-op just felt like...single-player with another person along. BL2 feels more complimentary and exciting for working together.

I think you'll be able to zoom in enough to get a decent telling glance re: general body shape, even if it's an isometric game. They'll still be rather small, however, so a lot of body config. types isn't something I'd put much focus on. Full 3D games are where I sometimes wish for more variety in body shape. That said, a "slim," "average" and "stocky" option would be fine. But I doubt it'll even have that much. Mostly clothing type detail and portrait/imagination options.