Really, Banished needs to be clearly understood to be a one man indie game and nothing else.

The reviews, outside of this context, either are saying that city building games have sucked since the 2000's or that the reviewers have never played a legitimate entry into the genera.


People are also playing too deeply into the game by making extensive "strategies" when you need only to understand how the game works.

A) Build Slowly (and plan 10 years ahead):
The punishment for building quickly is steeper than most, but most games of this genera have this as the first "rule".

B) Always Overstock
Again, terrifyingly obvious. If you know how to micromanage, you can stock "just enough" to get by and transfer labor around but this assumes you have the slightest familiarity with this genera.

C) Only expand your population when you have all the resources/industries needed to sustain the larger population
Again, something people seem to be ignoring. I created a population boom from 20->80 over 15 years, but only after 15 years of setting up the industry to support it. (Could you go faster? Yeah... third play through, hard, harsh, disasters on... there's much to improve but that's beyond the point.)

D) The only reason the game is difficult is because of the horrible A.I. that intentionally tries to sabotage you
The game would be dead easy if the A.I. didn't have so many problems and, quite frankly, the best part (being the first 15 years) would be very dull. The way the A.I. sabotages you isn't really in need of documentation as designing around it really is the core difficulty of the game and once you reach population boom there is no difficulty.




Unfortunately, seeds, livestock (sheep *hehe*), trading, these are just tacked on. Sure you can get absurd returns from subsistence farming with fewer workers than Hunting/Gathering... but with more workers than you know what to do with, and absolutely obscene gains from a hunter-gatherer society, by the time you have a strong enough city to really consider trading for these things, you don't need them. And after you get them, you don't need trade.




So yeah, the praise makes sense more so directed at a one-man indi dev game; but as a ground breaking game? This is not. The problem isn't that it can easily be reduced to formula, but that the formula is insanely short, despite how many people seem to be acting like it is bigger than life.

Heck, the whole lack of procreation without empty houses can be more easily solved just by kicking the old people out to live in boarding homes. It isn't as big a deal as people make it out to be, only if you ignore it can it cause issues.


Really, the game is much easier than people make it out to be; other than further improving how fast I master the wilds (again, first 15 years) expanding simply because I can expand is rather pointless.

I think I'll try freezing + starving everyone to death, just to see how quickly I can make the city bounce back only by adjusting labor and kicking old people out of my houses.

I kind of see your point, although I'm still loving it. I don't have mods or anything, but now that I've got a handle on things I wonder when I'll start to lose interest. There really aren't that many buildings so it doesn't seem like there will be a lot to change other than expanding. I wonder if the creator has any plans.

I had a lot of fun with the game, there is more depth to it than it appears at first. However, once you figure out things, it is a bit like Settlers - you do that each game, follow the recipe, and at some point you get bored.

I spent many, many hours on the game, though, and it was fun (and challenging) to build a town with several thousand inhabitants.

I'll probably go back to it one day, especially when it works on Linux.

Well, this is true, but there are ways to make things more interesting. Probably for different reasons than yours, but I wanted a challenge as well. So what I did is start a new game with harsh conditions. What makes it even more interesting is the mod that I'm using - Colonial Charter, and the starting conditions give me only 2 guys at the start, on a harsh climate and a lot of mountains on the map. No fancy resources either - any seeds, animals, etc. I would have to trade for. The mod adds a ton of buildings, which, to be honest, you can do just fine without a lot of them, but again - they are another option and something that makes the game more interesting. Also I do feel this game is more about the journey, not the destination, so sometimes you have to make your own way and do things "out of the box", not according to strict "recipes" that you would follow.

Would love to post my videos of this play through, but I'm not able to post any links at the moment..