Welcome to Banished. An unforgiving village-builder where your villagers will die in their first winter the first few times you try to play it. It's a game that's hard to master, but is as addictive as your favourite vice if you're a micromanaging fanatic determined to survive, thrive, and put your brain into overdrive.

Seriously: play this for one hour too many and you can't sleep later that night. You'll be micromanaging villager numbers in your dreams.

I'm writing this post not as a Review or a Let's Play, but simply to ramble about my strategy. I should mention here that I'm not very good at focusing on my points. I'm a babbler, it's why on my steemit description I have: "Babbling Rambler Extraordinaire" as my thingee.

Maybe I'll do a video of this at some point... hmmm! Ideas! 😁

Anyway, my partner has been playing this game a lot lately and has been getting exceedingly frustrated... so I thought I'd share my tried and true strategy. 😊 Unfortunately, I discovered while doing this that my laptop can't handle super high populations. For this specific post I made a new game and reached about 900 before it was unplayable. Anyway!

First off, only masochists play this game with Disasters turned on. With Disasters off, your people will still die and you will still get disease, but at least you won't have to worry about tornadoes and fires every three seconds.

Starting conditions: Medium. Not Easy, you can choose Hard if you really want to, but never Easy. You'll start off with wooden houses pre-built in an annoying square if you start on Easy - it's detrimental.

Seeeeeds. You probably will not find an agreeable seed on your first attempt. Ideally you'll be placed near a river, with lots of trees, and flat ground. A good smattering of stone and iron littered around the place is fantastic.

The following picture is not seed: 800080008, that seed was shyte, so was the next, so I flubbered around a bit with random numbers til I got this:

Not perfect, but adequate.

First: Some Tips

There is a PAUSE button in this game. Remember to use it.
- Spacebar is your quick access to pause!
Markets and storage barns and stockpiles are your friends.
- Too many stockpiles might look ugly, but you need them. Can always remove them later.
Gatherers are the most overpowered food source.
- Set them up wherever you can and keep them fully employed.
Fishing Docks should be on every available bit of water.
Acquiring sheep is your first trade priority.
A 7x7 crop field will fit one farmer.
Roads make your villagers walk faster.
- Dirt roads are fine. Don't replace with stone until later.
There is a 'Prioritise' function - use it!
Labourers are necessary.
- You need them. Don't employ everyone. Labourers. Good.
Woodcutters and Blacksmiths should be placed within marketplace range
- But not right next-door to houses, unless you want unhappy neighbours.
Trading Posts can be used as another storage point.

Beginning Strategy

There are many strategies for this game; people have all found their own ways of building at the beginning. Some people build a school first thing to get a headstart on education. I don't. This is what works for me, personally:

First off, create another stockpile. Of decent size. You're going to need it. Can always remove it later if it's an eyesore, or you need the space for something else.

Place a Gatherer's Hut smack bang in your nearest forest. You'll also want a STONE house next to it. A Forester. And another stockpile. Soon you'll place a Hunter's Lodge there too, and a Woodcutter will be nearby also, but take things slowly. You're only going to have one house so a Woodcutter's firewood isn't necessary yet.

Also. Stone houses. Not wood. Pretend wooden houses are a figment of your imagination. There is only stone. Stone houses are more fuel-friendly. It's a slower start but you'll thank me later.

Get 4 builders to Prioritise the Gatherer's Hut and the Stone House. You'll need the food the Gatherers bring in, and you need at least one house so your people don't freeze to death come winter. One house is enough for your first winter, when people get cold they'll visit the one house then get back to their work. Only for your FIRST winter though, or you'll have a population crisis.

While your 4 measly builders are doing their thing, the rest of your peasants should be gathering ALL THE RESOURCES. Make them grab all that stone, all that iron, all those trees that are NOT in your gatherer's circle.

Scout out another bunch of trees where you'll fancy a future Herbalist. A Herbalist should NOT be in the same circle as a Gatherer; they both gather the same resources. Do not chop those particular trees. Hell, prepare another forester for that spot too --we're conservationists!

Once you have your one stone house and Gatherer, fully employ the Gatherer's Hut. They'll give you all the food you need for the time being and then some. Finalise the Forester and set ONE person to run it. Now is acceptable to start building the other houses you'll need and the Woodcutter to fuel these houses with firewood.

Stone. Houses.

So, I've chosen to plop my Herbalist/House/Another-Forester down in the left grouping of trees, and I have my Gatherer in the right grouping. I'll be building towards the south and have started clearing that land. I've built a paddock so if an Animal trader stops at my Trading Post, I'll be ready. SHEEP. Need sheep. The Market Place is well-positioned so as to service all the houses in its radius.

I haven't built any crops yet; I'm still relying on Gatherers. But have also got a couple of Hunters going. I didn't build them for food though. I have Hunters because I want leather for clothing. The venison they acquire serves as a good item to stock in your Trading Post, also. Not all traders passing by will accept food, but some do.

Clothing and Tools are your next priority after food. You only start with a minimal amount of clothes and tools and by Year 3 or 4, if you haven't got those sorted, you're screwed.

I move around one single villager to be a woodcutter/tailor/blacksmith as needed while the rest of the peasants work on other things. Happiness, for example. I've built an Orchard and in this picture I'm in the process of building the Tavern.

People can have stable jobs later when the population is higher.

Market Places!!

You only need ONE vendor per Market Place. You have the option to throw 12 people in that sucker; don't. One is fine and will continue to be fine. As your settlements grow, then consider increasing that number, but early on - one is enough.

Put all of your excess into the Trading Post. Whether you want to use it as currency or not. You can store vast amounts of food, tools, herbs, clothes, etc in there and if, on the off-chance your people start needing something, you can set the stored amount to zero and release it all back into the town.

Only excess. Keep what you need out for your population.

If a trader pops by with stuff you don't want - order something you DO want! Keeping in mind that ordered items will be slightly more expensive than if it were to randomly arrive. And make certain to change "never" to at least "just once".

Apparently some people miss that dropdown and make an order without specifying how often they want it. And the trader, well, he'll never come back since you inadvertently told him to leave.

Once you've got your food, herbs, clothing and tools sorted, you should get your school and teacher placed - it is time for your people to receive a quality education! A church with graveyard is also recommended to keep your people's happiness at a good level.

In this picture we've begun some Village Expansion. My personal strategy is lots of little hamlets with their own marketplaces/farms/schools/taverns/etc, with gatherers/hunters/foresters in-between.

I've placed yet another gatherer/forester/hunter combination in the middle and have placed my second Market Place ready for the beginnings of a new district. There is also a Storage Barn smack bang in the middle there too! STORAGE BARNS. They should always be placed in strategic locations. Your workers place stuff in them. Marketplace Vendors then take them to the market. Your people will then acquire what they need. Have a fishing dock fairly far from the city centre? It needs a storage barn. Also their own house.

I've placed crop plots ready for when I feel like giving my villagers some variety in their food. They don't need to be manned at all times, especially if you have other things coming in, but later on when you have a good amount of villagers you can activate them and the food variety will lead to an increase in health. So you'll have loads of fish, venison, the gatherer foods, assorted crops and orchards, chickens/cows/sheep....

Sheep!

Sheep are the most important animal you can get from the trader boats. They give you mutton for your peasants to feast upon and wool for your tailor to create better clothing. They are the second reason I even have a Trading Post. First reason is the aforementioned excess storage. Third reason is the acquirement of crop seeds you may not have.

To lessen my excess now and then, I also buy all stone/iron that comes my way. Those particular traders usually accept fish and venison and you ALWAYS need stone and iron, so it's a great trade-off.

You'll want to place a Town Hall relatively early so you can start expanding your population with Nomads. Make SURE when you build a Town Hall, you also have enough resources to build your first Hospital.

Nomads, while great at giving you a larger population and workforce, come bearing disease a lot of the time. You'll want a Hospital at the ready to treat it.

You'll also want to make sure your village can HANDLE the influx. I only got 3 nomads in this case, but sometimes 100 can descend upon you... which sounds great in theory! But do you have enough food? tools? clothes? resources? Can you build them the houses they need?

Ideally you'll make around 100 food per citizen. If you are making 10,000 food but only have 40 villagers, you're fine, go ahead and grab 40 nomads, but your first focus should be getting MORE FOOD PRODUCTION. They'll be fine homeless for a while. Get to work on that extra food and THEN focus on their new homes.

Circled in red we have the current population!
Workers / Students / Children.

You always want to make sure you have enough houses that your population feels they can reproduce. If you don't, you'll end up with an aging population, reliant on the rare nomad arrival, and all of your people will die out because they're old.

Keep an eye on it though, because if you have too many you might end up with a population eating all your food before you can catch up!

15% children to adults is a good number to maintain your population. I'm almost at 50% in this screenshot, but I'm preparing for the influx with more fisheries, gatherers, hunters, I have more sheep/cattle/chickens in their respective paddocks, and have even manned the farms I had prepared earlier and a few more.

Always watch the food. Always. You'll have a starvation crisis before you know it.

This is the point where my partner gives me a smug smile and says, "Talk to me when you reach 300 adults. The game is bugged. They'll all starve even though you have 50,000 food in reserves."

"Alrightyyyyy then!" I exclaim, doing my best Ace Ventura impersonation and spending the remainder of my day playing til I reach an amazing amount of people.

Not what I was hoping for, but good enough. Unfortunately my laptop couldn't handle any more people running around on the screen.

TL;DR

So, in short -- ironic after this giant wall of words -- my key to success in this game is little hamlets with their own marketplaces, food sources, schools, churches, hospitals, etc. Hunter/Gatherer/Forester combinations placed in-between each hamlet. Storage barns placed by all producers make your market-vendor's lives easier. Which, in turn, makes your villager's lives easier.

Only build stone houses, and the very second you can start making Warm Coats and Steel Tools - DO IT. No plain coats and iron tools. Your people deserve better.

This game is a Micro-Manager's dream. Focus on the numbers. Whether they're your employment numbers or your town's stock reserve numbers. Be strategic, be methodical, pause every so often and think about what you're doing.

May you and your Banished Villagers find success. 😊
And may your computer handle a population greater than 926 before it goes ppbbbbbtt.

_{All images in this post are screenshots taken by me, Hive account@kaelci, and are from the game: Banished.}