Guide: City Planning, Interactions, and Effeciency of Villages

Crumpaloo · 2018-12-18 05:46:06

Prologue:

Very often ill find villagers on any level of the tech tree wandering aimlessly, sure they could have a plan of what they want to do, but unorganized towns and misplaced items can hinder a villages progress alot more then you may think. This goes along with another issue: communication. Most people are running around and wont see you asking for the location of a certain item, and more often than not the people that arent running about are at bakeries and smithys, who probably havent moved from that spot in the last ten min and would have just a good of guess as you to where that axe is at. But if all that wasnt bad enough, you could have a kid while trying to look for that axe, so now instead of doing whatever you were gonna do when you got the tool, you gotta spend precious time taking care of a kid when you much rather be getting back to helping the village. So how do you fix all this? Well i got a idea...

Solution:

A "center" a 5x5 or up to 7x7 functional area with boxes of tools, food, firewood, and clothes, with roads on all 4 sides connecting to productive areas around the village, with the entire center itself being situated in the most active part of the town. There are 3 things this idea will do good, with all of them focusing around interactivity with other players in the village respectively.

Mortality of children:

With the introduction of a "center" or city center if you wanna call it that, any villager that has a baby can immediately identify where their child can get the best care, and thus save them the cumbersome task of dragging their child around with them while they try to half do their job, and half feed their kid. Even better the center can contain food and clothes for the mom and her newborn making it a more appealing option in more ways then one. While the mom is there, she can talk to other people that are at the center taking care of theirs and other childs, maybe even people on their way from one part of town to the other. This is because of the second outcome in this whole idea...

Localization and Connections:

Now, the "center" or city center being self explanatory, is meant to be as close to the middle of all activity in the village, the ideal place would be between or right next to both the bakery AND the smithy. By establishing a center between both these hubs of productivity, people going back and forth between the two will end up one way or another in the center, allowing for more convenient interactions between players, and with the center doubling as a nursery, those people have even more of a incentive to stop, and chat with the nurse or the babies being taken care of, maybe even a little RP. With this going on, the next outcome allows for even more incentive to come to the center...

Decreased Down Time for Players Looking for Tools:

So, adding on the nursery, the centralization of the "center", AND the roads around the village being connected to the center, there is yet another and final incentive, and that is, essentially, turning the center into the added option of a sort of "Lost and Found" for tools. Basically, create wood boxes in the center, and start picking up unused tools that arent related to a bakery, or a smithy, I.e, axes, shovels, saws, etc.. The idea is by using your centeralized center to your advantage, and placing unused and misplaced tools in the center, anyone wanting to do a bit of crafting but doesnt wanna go on a scavenger hunt for it instead just has to walk to the center of town, and grab it out of a box. This creating yet another incentive to come to the center, and by proxy, fraternize with the other players there.

Conclusion:

So to wrap things up i just wanna outline a ideal scenario that this structure and methods could create:

So a villager just has a child, in the middle of smithing she does not have time to breastfeed her youngling and plans to take it over to the center to be taken care of. While there she spots a nurse, and a couple other babys with her. Being the center of town people are frequently heading in varying directions with varying tasks, yet all coming through this part of town to stop, say hi, and carry on with their day. Everyonce in a while, someone will take a tool out of the nearby boxes, and on the rare occasion, see someone put one back after they're done using it. All happening in a area the size of a 5x5.

This is basically a post boiled down about the issue of communication in OHOL and the ideas ive come up with on how to not fix, but medicate the problem, if you have any similar to that of my owns, feel free to post about it and maybe ill make another post trying to combined them all.

pein · 2018-12-18 06:05:14

generally i would make an outpost in the closest jungle if it has a pond

now with the new engine, one single shallow well can be upgraded to infinite water
once you got a cistern and start composting there, you can farm endlessly
the jungle heat is 2-3 times more optimal than desert edges

i miss the tree farms, the signs, the hunting outposts and the horse fences around cities, we should also spread it out, like smaller but multiple berry farms and multiple sheep pens, ovens, etc

i did scavenging in a life, and found tons of stuff, and put in sides of the city, was like 30 tiles

we need clothing storage, firewood room ( possibly planted trees around it)
make things simple

komody · 2018-12-18 07:48:54

we desperately need the ability to stack more items like crops (carrots, corn, etc.), and seeds which make up a good chunk of the clutter

xclame · 2018-12-18 07:52:14

About your tool suggestion, don't take shovels away from the pen or compost area, that is essentially the only place a shovel should be.
Take take the saw away from cart making area, usually advanced towns will have a certain area that is where people build carts, saw, froe, mallet and wood logs will be found here.

Putting the tools in their correct area or leaving them in their correct area is much better then putting them in a central location, because these tools usually need other stuff and room to be used. The only tools that are okay to be boxed up in a central area are the adze, chisel and maybe the file (but that is usually left by the forge, because theses are tools that aren't used as often, in fact it's much better to have a box near the forge for these extra tools, when they break you have to bring them to the forge anyways (And PLEASE bring back broken steel tools to the forge, they can be used to make new tools), so they might as well be there when not in use.

I also don't totally agree with your central spot for raising children, unless there is a babysitter it's a waste of the mothers time and waste of the towns town, you can easily take care of your baby while you do your work, the only one that can be a problem is smithing, but you can do much more good that if you see the smith has had a child in the middle of active work, you take the child and take care of it for the smith while they finish their current active job.

Crumpaloo · 2018-12-18 14:48:41

xclame wrote:

I also don't totally agree with your central spot for raising children, unless there is a babysitter it's a waste of the mothers time and waste of the towns town, you can easily take care of your baby while you do your work, the only one that can be a problem is smithing, but you can do much more good that if you see the smith has had a child in the middle of active work, you take the child and take care of it for the smith while they finish their current active job.

Of course, im not suggesting taking your kid and dropping him off there with noone to feed him, im simply saying that, while not debilitating, if a mother can find someone to take care of their kid in a central location, and maybe later down the line other babys are born that can be taken care by alternating nurses, that can take a load of mothers who would otherwise abandon their kids AND increase interactivity within the village.

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-18 17:55:31

I second much of what xlcame wrote.

Most objects have natural places that they should be. You can reasonably expect to find them there, and you should plan to return them there if you need to use them elsewhere for a short time.

Most activities require a collection of equipment and materials that are specific to and (mostly) unique to that activity. This naturally leads to having different places where different activities take place, so that all the equipment and materials needed for that activity are close at hand. New players might not have any idea where the bow saw is, but experienced players should expect there to be a carpentry area, and should make efforts to move butt logs, ropes, bow drills, adzes, froes, mallets, and bow saws to that area and to keep them there afterwards and to move everything else away from that area so that there is uncluttered workspace available for carpentry projects.

Besides being found where they are used, you can also expect to find equipment and materials where they are created. No hoe at the farm? Go check the smithy. No rope at the carpentry area? Go check the milkweed farm. No bucket at the farm, or cistern, or well? Go check the carpentry area. Not there either? MAKE ONE, or let someone else know it's needed and ask them to make one (say "please", please!).

There is a degree of spontaneous organization taking place, and that's good. It allows for dynamic reorganization in the face of changing circumstances. A famous principle from campus planning is to plant grass everywhere, then see where the grass gets trodden down by people walking to and from various critical locations, then make sidewalks where the grass was trodden down. The paths arise naturally from human activity in ways that you cannot easily predict, and then once the natural and efficient paths have been identified you improve them.

The same thing happens time and time again in OHOL. There's no single optimal city design. There are a lot of valuable guidelines, but every situation is different and may require ignoring some of the guidelines. But you can see where activity is naturally taking place, and then take steps to make that activity more efficient by "formalizing" it, i.e. moving the needed tools and supplies there and moving everything else away.

Putting down wood floors and making walls is a good way to help with this, but often the people who start those projects make it sized for the current needs which ends up being undersized for the future needs.

A nursery is a great idea, and usually develops after the basic practice has already gotten started in small scale during early settlement. Someone happens to be near the middle, on a warm spot, with a kid, and doing some task that doesn't require a lot of travel. Other people have kids and ask if she can feed them too. Eventually that location becomes the informal nursery, and then eventually either it becomes "formalized" or someone builds a better place specifically for that function but in a less-cluttered spot.

Morti · 2018-12-18 19:39:31

pein wrote:

the jungle heat is 2-3 times more optimal than desert edges

Optimal temp is optimal temp.

Whether it's;
on the tile of a roaring fire with two tiles of grassland, swamp, prairie or badlands around,
on a desert edge tile with 3 desert tiles in the 3x3 box around it and 5 desert tiles in the 5x5 box around that,

or you are half clothed on a jungle tile with all other tiles in the 5x5 box around you jungle as well.

--

I agree with the rest of what you say, especially about spreading out.

Spread our towns out more, people.

We need more free space in between working areas. Clutter causes confusion and frustration. It should not be arguable whether a plate was near the oven or near the forge. Try to leave at least 3 plates, 3 bowls and 3 flat rocks for the kiln/forge to work with, at all times. If you want to make pies, get clay for more plates first. If you want to give your mother's grave a headstone, get the flat rock from somewhere besides the forge, preferably not from the lines of them set out for roads.

I know how when you decide you want to do something, it's very important in that moment, but always be considerate of the rest of your family; the work that the rest of us can do, and have setup for others to be able to do, more conveniently.

We need space.

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-18 20:04:28

pein wrote:

we should also spread it out, like smaller but multiple berry farms and multiple sheep pens, ovens, etc

Two berry farms means that one of them will go untended. I have seen this numerous times.

Also, it's a waste of labor. One or two people can easily keep a very large berry farm tended, even a highly-used one. Two berry farms needs two or four people, because you can't split one person's attention between two different locations.

I have seen a very successful use of a second berry farm, once: a small one right next to the sheep pen. No one used it besides the compost-makers, who also tended it. The crowd ate from (and tended) the big one elsewhere. It was perfect.

mrslax · 2018-12-18 21:30:58

Due to the limit of time, how much work, it takes to make most things, and random chance of ever coming back. You can throw planning the city out the window. anything spread out will kill the town. larger the town faster it dies. I saw a few small towns around a big town once, there must have been a war at some point.

The Best towns I have seen that last the longest has been big enough to have everything but small enough where everyone can watch, and keep an eye on each other. just been able to see what others are up to helps so much, it keeps murders down and helps teach people how to do stuff, Plus pickup slack on a missing job. Other than roads and wood floors everything else is too time-consuming or dangerous to make. doors, closing chests, walls is just a potential killing tool, wast of time and resources.

The only planning is how to set up the bakery, sheep pen, carrots/wheat compost, and smithing all next to each other without overlapping

BlueDiamondAvatar · 2018-12-18 22:36:14

I need to write up my own post about this...but instead of creating a physical space to be a center, I take on the role of "Carter" I move stuff from areas of town where it is seen as useless junk to the place where it is needed. If there are a ton of green bean pods cluttering the bakery, I put them in a bowl, and move that bowl to the stew farm and cooking area. If I find a broken steel tool, I move it to a pile just above the forge. If the town is drowning in bones, I put together a cart of baskets, pick up all the bones, and move them out.

The trickiest is figuring out a good space for all the tools used in making backpacks and clothes. It's a bit of a triangulation between proximity to the sheep pen, where the rabbit hunters come into town, and the bakery (which is useful for making those rabbit carcasses dissapear). The fact that both needles and flint are practically invisible doesn't help. Somehow this profession is not as well respected as smith or baker, too.

Many town layouts are happening organicially, as people are struggling to survive. Roads get put in when a roadbuilder shows up and makes their best guess as to what areas need to be connected. An intentional town center seems unlikely to evolve organically, unless you are building a new part of town in a jungle biome area that has been cleared of both trees and mosquitoes. Having things work out so that you have four roads heading out in different directions from a single spot doesn't happen that often.

On the other hand, I have seen many successful nurseries - someplace where the busy working mother could drop off their child for care. Most are in the middle of a berry patch, but there was one very good nursery on the edge of the bakery, right where the exit to the sheep pen was. One of the key features a nursery needs is NO CLUTTER at all, whatsoever. Because the caregivers need to be able to put things down quickly when a baby says "F". Combining a central tool repository and a nursery does not seem like a good idea to me.

Greep · 2018-12-18 23:37:46

mrslax wrote:

doors, closing chests, walls is just a potential killing tool, wast of time and resources.

It isn't just a tool for griefers, it legitimately makes things worse on a planning level. What does walls and a door around a bakery do? It subtracts that much room for boxes is what.

Last edited by Greep (2018-12-18 23:38:05)

Morti · 2018-12-19 13:40:20

mrslax wrote:

Due to the limit of time, how much work, it takes to make most things, and random chance of ever coming back. You can throw planning the city out the window.

mrslax, with all due respect, we have been planning and building towns for a long time, and the more we plan outside the game, the better we get at constructing them in the game. Not only that, but just playing with people who have been around for quite some time, you pick up on a lot of good habits from their experience as well. Eventually you will learn to recognize them and distinguish them from people who have only recently started playing. Layouts are the key to successful towns; the way that towns are shaped by the first, by the environment, and secondly by the experienced players, who know what they want, because they want it to work.

I've devoted several days to OHOL almost entirely, playing for over 12 hours a day is not unusual for me (some of us on this Earth have no obligations but what we choose to do from day-to-day) and I've had some periods where I have been awake for more than 36 hours and played for what has felt like at least 24 of them. In 12 hours of playing you can easily see the same town 3 or 4 times, if it's a good one. The four "towns" that come to mind first, in terms of the number of times I have played in them, have been stretched well over a hundred meters (a meter being a step, or a tile, in game) in length and have been populated for days on end.

Now, this is not the same game it was nine months ago, there are no gigantic adobe castles with courtyard you could get lost inside, they were so big. They were so big they had rooms within rooms, as if two or three adobe castles had been connected into one, gigantic one. It's not that game. There are no coordinates used by the game, at least, not to my knowledge, and so, people do not find their way back to the great castles, or at least, cannot work their way inward to the 0,0 origin of the x,y axis that each servers original spiral of Eves generate.

Jason is periodically adjusting the algorithm that determines where Eve's spawn, so, as far as cities staying alive, we can't always count on finding our way back that way. But I have made many roads; of wood, hard rock and flat rock, that have lead to towns that have been populated time and time again by new families and it is still important, if a town is to be found or repopulated, that there is a clear sign of player activity around it, that will draw people towards it.

It is still quite important that towns are spread out, if they are to stand the test of time, as well as if the families inside them, are to do the same.

mrslax wrote:

anything spread out will kill the town. larger the town faster it dies. I saw a few small towns around a big town once, there must have been a war at some point.

I suspect what you are calling a town, was just a new players desire to strike off on their own. This should also be encouraged, as new players should know how to make basic tools as well as setup their own smithies, bakeries and farms, but a dozen items around a forge is not a farm. There have also not been wars in this game that it has the potential for. There may have been disputes between families that have lasted for a day, in town chains that have lasted for nearly a week, but if anything, that is testament to the success of the large towns. After people began making castles out of stones a quarter the size of the great adobe walled bailey designs, they simply ran out of other things to do. This is another very important reason for spreading out, not just of the town(s), but of the family itself.

The game can still be completed by a civilization in 6-9 hours, in that time, some of us have been to those same towns, and lived full lives, 2, 3 or even 4 times. Heck, if you do it right you can live for as much as 90 minutes in a town every 3 hours. That's if you happen to die before spending 30 minutes there and then are reborn and live a full 60 minute life. There is a 3 hour timer between "lives" spent in a town, but I've not seen it made clear if that timer starts at the time of your birth or the time of your death. It has seemed to me that I have lived lives where I was born to a civilization where I had previous spent a full life there, less than 3 hours ago, but I have not busted out a timer, watched a clock or added up all the time I lived lives between those in the same location. It may be a full 3 hours after death, before you can be reborn, and that time has been so good for me that it has just flown by.

I've also had days where my 12 hours spent was between many repeats of many towns. Where maybe there were 2 or 3 great sized towns that day and I spent 2 or 3 long lives between each of them, with maybe only 1 or 2 lives that day spent with a younger civilization, or, as an Eve starting my own town. Some days I've been an Eve for more than half of the usual 9-12 hours I might play.

Point is, I have a lot, if not the most, experience of any player, when it comes to just time spent playing the game. At least, by any metric I've ever seen.

mrslax wrote:

The Best towns I have seen that last the longest has been big enough to have everything but small enough where everyone can watch, and keep an eye on each other. just been able to see what others are up to helps so much, it keeps murders down and helps teach people how to do stuff, Plus pickup slack on a missing job. Other than roads and wood floors everything else is too time-consuming or dangerous to make. doors, closing chests, walls is just a potential killing tool, wast of time and resources.

Really just sounds like you are having trouble with people who are bored or frustrated.

People who are happy working, are not people who are killing each other or, making traps for people just for luls. This is yet another reason why it is important to spread out. 30 people living in a small town leads to more frustration between players, spread those same 30 people out in an area 3 times the size and you have only 10 or so clustered in the same space. Meanwhile, with any number of people, there are likely to be players out in the woods around towns, gathering, working, or having children and moving back towards home. The more spread out they are, the less likely one person is to pick off the important ones, or to pull a few pins and bring the whole civilization down.

Why civilizations die is often up to the players, not always, but often. It's not why they die that concerns me so much, it's how they live, how we, manage to live with each other, that is important to me. And even with all the stackable objects added over the last few months, we still need more space for our things. There are just more of them now, and there will continue to be, until the final update drops.

mrslax wrote:

The only planning is how to set up the bakery, sheep pen, carrots/wheat compost, and smithing all next to each other without overlapping

This is why I can't take your post seriously. This is the problem. You leave everything else out, and as such, everything else becomes clutter. This is what I want to stop. Not only does this type of view leave out the rest of the products of our civilizations, but it also, invariably leads to stagnation, repetition; of the fewest possible things, and boredom. One of the things that I love about this game is making past realizations fit into present situations. It's a little like Tetris, but it reminds me more of a game I used to love playing, called Rampart. Which was a fort building game with Tetris-like pieces, it's like that x1000. There are 1000 pieces and 1000 landscape arrangements in which to place them and for someone who likes to not only try and perfect function, but form, every life presents me with a new and intriguing problem.

In the long run this game is not about speed, or even function, so much as it is about beauty, direction and allure. People need to be happy with where they are born if our towns are ever to last again for a week or more. When they look attractive, they feel attractive, and attractive towns generate stories, and, in their own unique way, they generate culture. The kind of feel and culture people aim to simulate in future homes, and, in so doing, generate new and unique stories, for new lives, in new lands. I think if you were to ask the top ten players with the most played time what some of their most vivid memories of the game have been so far, they could paint for you recreations of the landscapes around the towns where those events happened. We have these ways of making mental maps of our surroundings, and each story is embedded into one of those maps. We do not shy away from scale. We do not hesitate to move out into the landscape around us when we know that that is what needs to be done. We've done it to gather resources and we've done it to plant the seeds of the most valuable things of all; our families, our labors, our homes.

Even if that home just turned out to be a couple planted berry bushes, a forge, and a dozen dishes and tools, for others to see, and wonder; who were we?

mrslax · 2018-12-19 20:36:26

The most imported part of any project or cycle in this game is it has to be visible and self-explanatory for every next generation.

This game sound awesome in the way back with castles and all. I saw some old post about maps of cities and roads and a lot of cool stuff. but all that was before my time. I have only picked up this game a few months ago. In the last few months of playing This game, It has changed quite a bit in that short time. I had to unlearn and relearn things with each update. Due to always changing updates, total time in the game is not as imported as like in other games. Reviewing change log and trying the new thing help. There is a lot of things to keep up with in this game.

Nice that some people have nothing much to do IRL so they can play this game so much. I tend to put in 3-6 hours about every other day.

Well, let's run through your points:

Morti wrote:

In 12 hours of playing you can easily see the same town 3 or 4 times

Dude wow, but most people have a life outside of the game. So cutting that time back to a stander game time you'll get lucky seeing the same town twice in 2-3 hour game season.

Morti wrote:

if a town is to be found or repopulated, that there is a clear sign of player activity around it, that will draw people towards it.

This needs to happen more. It can be hard to find towns as the map is so big and we don't have mini-maps or anything. (Side note here it would be awesome if we got maps like Minecraft.)

Also, things decay in the game to an old town will be gone in like 2 days if no ones there. so building an over-elaborate city becomes completely pointless if no one can find them.

Morti wrote:

It is still quite important that towns are spread out if they are to stand the test of time, as well as if the families inside them, are to do the same.

From what I have seen within this last month that towns need to be able to run at high and low pop times to stand against time. If the town is too big and spread out then it will die at low pop times. But if the town is to cramp then it gets clog up and some people die.

For your family line just don't only stay in a city. I would recommend new towns 1,2,3 K away from a bell town, farther away from the better but harder it will be. this will keep new players going off dying in search of the bell. Plus anything with the 1K of the bell town will be riped of resources sooner or later.

Side note if the towns are too close they will fight with each other for resources. Like that time I found a lot of smaller towns around one big town. (I'm not talking about camps sites they were towns) all within the 1k radius of the big town. I think iron was the issue that made the end of all of them.

mrslax wrote:

The only planning is how to set up the bakery, sheep pen, carrots/wheat compost, and smithing all next to each other without overlapping

The only reason I had these 4 was this is the core of any city. Without these cycles going the town is on a death timer. You could say this is the city center. The only missing main item I was thinking about is the berry farm but it can be placed on the way to the water or in a nice temper zone close by. Everything else can be placed out form the core zone.

The big idea here is the town is self-explanatory for the core zone. where a new player can start a new job that they have no idea that there doing and find everything they need. Or a pro player can run the entire town single handly. If the core is not Planned out well the town is doomed. Everything else can be moved around, optimized, and not super permanent or required. Just thinking about it other than the 4 items and the berry farm, is there anything else that is permanent in the game?

If the core of the town is good then you can play Tetris around the core.

Flooring and roads options are good tools to add style but if it not functional then it becomes useless. One bell town I lived in someone added doors to the bakery. It looked great and worked well till someone lock the doors and ran off with the key. I never saw that town again. The point is this is not a base making game anymore ( or right now) but more of a life sim. So those good old days of towns and castles are way over.

Morti wrote:

In the long run this game is not about speed, or even function, so much as it is about beauty, direction and allure.

This is where I feel you are way wrong. Without speed and function then there will be no one around to enjoy the "beauty, direction and allure". Jason made sure the game didn't look too nice and have an overcomplicated tech tree so you have to rely on the pass gen to make cool stuff for the next gen to complete.

The most imported part of any project or cycle in this game is it has to be visible and self-explanatory for every next generation.

.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-12-18 05:46:06

Guide: City Planning, Interactions, and Effeciency of Villages

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Re: Guide: City Planning, Interactions, and Effeciency of Villages

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Re: Guide: City Planning, Interactions, and Effeciency of Villages

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Re: Guide: City Planning, Interactions, and Effeciency of Villages

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Re: Guide: City Planning, Interactions, and Effeciency of Villages

#10 2018-12-18 22:36:14

Re: Guide: City Planning, Interactions, and Effeciency of Villages

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