Banished is one of those games you either "get" or you don't. I wrote up a little strategy guide type thing many moons ago that you can see at the following link: Banished — there's a strategy in here somewhere... more referring to the fact that the strategy was buried beneath mountains of my babbling than to there being a strategy hidden within the game. xD It's quite easy once you get the hang of it, and then it's just a numbers game.
I find myself with 21 of 36 achievements complete, and I, some sort of masochist, wish to get them all.
Due to a few conflicts with certain achievements, this is going to have to be achieved over several games. 😱 So, let's begin with the first lot of achievements I plan to focus upon:
Uneducated (reach a population of 300 without building schools)
One With Nature (reach 400 citizens without building crop fields, orchards, or pastures)
Master Trader (use trading posts to trade 100,000 units of goods in a single town)
Miner (maintain 2 mines with 30 workers each for 3 years)
Mason (maintain 2 quarries with 30 workers each for 3 years)
Established (build a town that has a population of 300 after 100 years)
I think those ones will go quite nicely within the one township. I can use the trading post to get things I otherwise wouldn't be able to get, like wool and various foods, and I can mine and quarry my way to financial fantasticness. Uneducated basically means I'll be plowing through my tools a bit faster and won't be able to gather quite as much, but that'll be fine, I'll have plenty of miners to get me all the iron to make MOAR TOOLS.
Let's begin!
As usual, my game settings are as such:
Valleys, because mountains are annoying and I already have my Mountain Men achievement so I'm never using mountains again.
A Large map size, because, well, bigger is better. Hurr hurr.
Mild climate, because I'm not that much of a masochist.
Disasters are turned off, because no one needs fires every two seconds.
Medium starting conditions, because easy comes with crappy wooden houses pre-built in an annoying circle, and hard, well, eh. Not like I get an achievement for it.
After starting many, many new maps until I got one with a decent layout, the small township of Swisherburn was born!
May it prosper. May it grant me many achievements I have yet to achieve. May it be glorious.
First things first, I place down a gatherer's hut, forester, a hunting cabin, and a fisherman's hut and onnnne house. Houses aren't important straight off the bat. Of course you want them to be fully housed by your second winter, otherwise you'll have population issues further down the track, but during Year One, it's best not to worry about houses yet.
Your people won't freeze to death or anything. They'll seek warmth from that one lonely house if they have to.
By the time the first winter comes around, I focus on the woodcutter, tailor and blacksmith.
At this stage of the game they don't even have to be staffed and one worker can be switched among the jobs as needed while everyone else focuses on food, gathering resources, and starting on the housing situation.
I was a little bit slow during this playthrough; I didn't get everyone fully housed until Summer of year three... I can only hope that that doesn't end up detrimental to my overall plans.
So far tools and clothing are fine, though my woodcutter is only just keeping up with the demand for firewood.
Now my focus is trying to gather all the stone I can from the nearby mainland to have a steady stock ready for more houses. It feels rather liberating not having to deal with farms or schools, but I will need to build a trading post soon so I can start getting some resources that I can't make myself.
Eventually I get my trading post up and running, and my trader happens to be a 12 year old boy named Agustice. xD The perks of an uneducated society — the children are actually useful!
My first trading boat was one I would've loved in any other game — he sold sheep! — but I'm not allowed pastures or anything in this playthrough so I had to deny myself the glory of sheep.
I began expanding further south and made my first quarry for a little bit of stone. I need to have two of these things fully-staffed which is going to take a while. My population growth is a bit slow and I need to even it out consistently with a lot of food.
One thing you learn very quickly in Banished is that each person eats a year's supply of food in one season. You need thousands of food items. Thousands! At all times. You have a mere 50 people? You need 5000 food in storage, minimum.
My next item of business was to build a church and cemetery in order to keep my people happy. And once my food was overwhelming, it'd be time to build an alehouse to also keep my people happy. I also need a town hall. But before a town hall, I need a hospital. When you have a town hall, nomads start to drift into town and that's often when diseases start showing up. Will need a hospital at the ready to counteract that. SO MUCH TO DO!
By year 15 my population was dwindling. I had enough to keep the population at a stable 50-60, but I wasn't able to increase it. Worse, my tools kept running out and I didn't have enough labourers to wander around and find me some iron. So I prayed and I prayed that a boat would come along with tools on it, and iron, so I could continue my town's expansion and finally grow a little.
A boat was winding its way down the river...
And thankfully it had some tools.
Insultingly, however, it was a boat that had been at my village previously and I had asked for it to return with tools, iron, stone, clothes, everything! But all it brought with it was 16 tiny tools.
They would have to do for now. At least they could give me a small buffer whilst my blacksmiths got to work on more tools.
I try to build a town hall. I need nomads to kickstart my stagnant population.
Unfortunately, my builders are fighting with the blacksmiths; both need the iron. There's not enough iron to go around! I pray for another boat to arrive at my trading dock. One does. It has clothes in it. They're helpful, yes, and I buy them, but they're not what I so desperately need. I pray for more boats. Useful boats.
I try to prioritise a bunch of ore still on the surface. I have 10 labourers! They need to go get the ore and rocks!
But they don't. They ignore the orders I have given them. And so, I force them into the mines. At least they'll get what they're supposed to in there... as well as a chance of death thanks to cave-ins and mining accidents. Ugh. Just what I need. More population loss.
Luckily, no one has died from ill-fortune... yet. And thanks to alternating between mining coal and iron, my blacksmiths worked 'round the clock to make steel tools which last a lot longer than iron tools. Soon my numbers were going up and I had room to breathe a little.
Then, at last, nomads requested entry to my little village.
Only 8.
I wanted maybe 15 or so for my first migration, but 8 is better than none. I got them straight to work on food production since they'd inevitably eat a gigantic chunk of my reserves.
Ten years later, I find myself struggling to maintain a decent childbirth rate. Every season that passes, I hope that more nomads join me. At the same time, most of those nomads will go on to food production instead of mining and quarrying like I need them too.
These two achievements are proving to be difficult and I might not be able to do them until 300 years in the future when I assume I have a very hefty population. Unless, of course, everyone dies of old age because they're not procreating.
At Year 45, I found myself in a position to focus on the mines.
I had two mines running, one with only 18% of resources remaining within its dark and gloomy confines. I hoped that was enough for 3 years worth of work and hoped that no one would die in the mines during this time. They had to work as hard as they could to give me my first achievement of this playthrough!
The smaller mine ran out so I built another one and moved all the workers there.
Eight years passed. No achievement.
Then I realised the achievement was 30 workers PER mine, not 30 workers fully maintaining 2 mines. So 60 miners.
My dreams for my very first achievement were dashed. I was disillusioned. I died a little inside.
I saved and closed the game. And I endeavour to continue this playthrough another day. xD
...I might need to lower my achievement expectations and do one or two per playthrough and not six or so at once... haha.
Until next time!
All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, 
Posted from Kaelci Games with Exxp : https://kaelci.games/2022/07/23/banished-achievements-disillusionments/