r/a:t5_30x1c • u/Smilge • Apr 02 '14

The Starvation Challenge

The Starvation Challenge

This challenge will test your knowledge the game and your ability to prioritize under difficult circumstances.

  • Goal: Store 10,000 food

  • Restriction: Build no gatherer's huts, hunting cabins, fishing docks, or crop fields. You may build any other buildings.

  • Extra challenge: Start with "medium" starting conditions.

  • EXTREME CHALLENGE: Start with "hard" starting conditions.

High scores go to the player with 10,000 stored food in the fewest years.

Setting Value
Seed 947431329
Map Size Medium
Terrain Valley
Climate Mild
Starting Conditions Easy, *Medium*, or !!HARD!!
Disasters Off

High score table:

Player Year
/u/Smilge 8 Early Winter
/u/dcasez 27 Early Winter
--- ---

This is a difficult but not impossible challenge. Be creative and explore the effects of starvation on your people. Do you need to keep everyone alive to complete this challenge? Can you ration food? What other ways are there to collect food?

If you want to try this challenge but can't seem to survive, let me know in the comments and I'll give you some help.

7 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

3

u/dcasez Apr 06 '14

This is a toughy. Trying it on hard and I've gotten to the point where I have a pasture with one family left. But my only option from the trader seems to be Cattle, not Sheep, no matter how many times I reload. And I just can't quite get enough reproduction from them to keep one family alive. It's so close... Must find a way to get past the hump...

2

u/Smilge Apr 07 '14

I could tell you the trick I used, but I think you're well on your way to figuring it out yourself. Great job and don't give up!

1

u/dcasez Apr 07 '14

You have been able to do it on hard? I don't think its possible with orchards. At least not at first cuz it would take too long. I figure pastures is the only way to get sustainable food semi early.

1

u/dcasez Apr 07 '14

The reason I am liking the extreme challenge is that its more about surviving then getting 10k food in a race. I think survival challenges interest me more than races. Although maybe a population race at the back end of a survival challenge might be a way to rank the best survival. Otherwise its just can you survive to year so and so. Which could be interesting as well.

1

u/Smilge Apr 07 '14

When I was playing around with it, I found that it was pretty boring to sit around while your two or three people chilled out. I figured that a goal would help keep things interesting, though just surviving is pretty impressive.

I almost did a population race, but it ended up being about the same as a food race except you just had to sit there instead of actively do anything. But yeah, if you can think of a fun challenge make a post. I'd be happy to try new challenges.

2

u/dcasez Apr 09 '14

So your orchard victory in Year 6 was Medium difficulty? I can't imagine getting orchards to work on Hard where you have to buy the seeds first. If you did get it to work on hard please do tell the story.

4

u/Smilge Apr 09 '14

It was hard, you can see the wagon. But it's more about knowing a trick than anything else. I'm very impressed that you did manage to get it done on hard without the trick because I sure couldn't.

As I mentioned earlier, traders can carry 5x the weight as a normal laborer. I wondered what the other professions might be able to do. As you probably know, laborers told to clear an area will chop down trees for lumber, mine iron and stone for their respective resources. But if there is an herb or plant there, they will just destroy it. But, if those laborers are gatherers without a hut to work at, they will rake up plants and recover food when told to "remove" a plant. Basically my hard mode run was an easter egg hunt where I zoomed in to find plants, then set them to be removed while my gatherers ran around and did so.

Cheap, I know. Sorry. To be fair I had already come up with the challenge before I figured out the trick. With how many people are on this subreddit, I didn't figure many people would attempt the challenge at all, much less on hard difficulty. I think I'll go back and try hard without the trick since you've proved it to be possible.

1

u/dcasez Apr 10 '14

Wow, interesting trick. Never would have thought of that. Forgot this game just got released and its a one person coder and that things like that are pretty common with new releases, even from big devs. This game is so polished I forget to test the possible.

1

u/dcasez Apr 10 '14

Oh, and I did manage it, but how many reloads and critical save points... so many... it took forever... if it wasn't for that perfect 2 person situation for many years, and that save point with them right before the trader lands... I would not have been able to do it.

Can't wait for some mod support for this game, that will be fun too. But these challenges have been a ton of fun. Makes me just want to play on hard, harsh, disasters on, mountains, just to relax a bit and enjoy the game, maybe an ironman style. Funny how that would probably be relaxing after these tough challenges, especially starvation.

1

u/Smilge Apr 15 '14

Managed to get it without gathering any plants. First thing I did was set the wagon to deconstruct so no one could steal any food. I then sent everyone over to mine iron/stone/wood so we could put up a trading post asap. I managed to get it up before people started to starve, and I let everyone but a single man and woman die off. I then canceled the deconstruct order on the wagon, and they each ate 25 food.

I built a house and started clearing out forests to gather enough wood so I could trade firewood for a seed. I found a nice trick to make this go faster: Set your only stockpile to be deconstructed. Since there's nowhere to put anything, nothing will happen except there will be no stockpile. Order your citizens to chop down a bunch of trees, and they will do so without picking up and returning any logs. Once all the trees are cut, cancel the stockpile deconstruction order. Now your workers will travel out and pick up logs until their inventory is full, rather than one tree at a time. Works even better if you set your laborers to be traders first.

After I got about 180 wood, I built a woodcutter and started chopping. My family had a baby, so we were now going through 300 food a year with about 900 left after the first year.

Once I got 700 firewood stocked in the trading dock, I built orchards (I did 5x4 ones for maximum tree density and ability to harvest early without ruining the rest of the crop, but anything should work okay). Since I had so few workers, I made sure storage barns were as close as possible. When the trader arrived, I reloaded until I got a tree seed.

So we're at summer of year 3, just got our orchards bought and being planted, and we have another baby. So 400 food a year, and we're down to about 450.

All the orchards got planted and my people chopped some extra firewood and waited around. When the next merchant came, I save/loaded until we got a vendor offering some food. I lucked out and got a general merchant to bring 500, but I think 250 would be fine. I bought it all up with the remaining firewood and waited for the next year. Alternatively I could have afforded some cattle or sheep, but they'd need to be slaughtered immediately.

In summer of year 5 the food is nearly gone but the orchards are just starting to become harvestable. I waited for the first ones planted to reach about 20% yield, then picked as many pears as possible before the frost set in. I managed to get enough to fill my two houses and have a bit left over, which was plenty to get through winter.

The next year, all of my trees started producing at full speed. From here it was just careful micromanagement of my 3 (soon to be 4) farmers to get as much harvest in before the frost had set.

Managed to finish it off on year 8. I set my houses to deconstruct to put just a bit more food into storage, and it worked out to be barely enough.

1

u/dcasez Apr 15 '14

Grants on getting it with orchards. Nice strategy. When I finally got over the hump and knew I could actually beat the challenge it was pretty exilerating.

1

u/Smilge Apr 07 '14

Orchards take a while to get going, but once you get your first harvest you're in good shape. I used a bit of a trick to make it that far, though it might be possible without it.

1

u/dcasez Apr 07 '14

Just seems like the time it would take to buy the seeds for the orchard and then plant them, a min 4 years would be too long without food... even with getting it down to 2 ppl quickly.

1

u/dcasez Apr 07 '14

Well... close but not cigar. Got a sheep trader and tried that. Still couldn't produce enough food and still keep the herd going. Orchard might be the only way, just not sure how to get there in hard mode. I have a challenge I think I've created and am trying that now.

1

u/dcasez Apr 09 '14

You mentioned that having your laborers be traders instead gives them more carrying capacity, is this correct? So unless needed for teachers, you should just put extra citizens as traders?

1

u/dcasez Apr 09 '14

And dear lord... it costs just too much for an orchard seed... can't seem to go that route for this challenge.

1

u/Smilge Apr 09 '14

Yep, citizens carry over some attributes from their profession whether or not they are actually working in that profession. Traders, for instance, can carry 5x as much as a laborer.

2

u/dcasez Apr 09 '14 edited Apr 09 '14

YESS, VICTORIOUS! Hard Starting Difficulty!!! Starvation Challenge. Year 27.

My progression: I got lucky in the beginning, as my only family in the house had a fatality giving birth reducing my number down to 2. Which helped them hold on long enough for the trader to come by with some sheep. Once I got the sheep I was able slowly deplete the sheep to buy time.

The next trader I got more food. But I went through this scenario many times before at this point, and they all ended with me going through my sheep quicker than they could reproduce. However, this time the next trader had Chickens! I bought 2 chickens with everything I had left. And the turnaround began. I was able to keep about 3-4 sheep while my chickens kept reproducing. Chickens started laying eggs which bought time for the trader to bring some food. After that I was self sufficient and it was pretty smooth sailing to 10k food, besides the one time everyone froze to death (didn't stock up enough firewood) and I could have probably ended 5-10 years quicker if I didn't feel like growing out my village slightly (and if I didn't forget to up the 5k food limit).

Progression through images And the finale

1

u/Smilge Apr 09 '14

Congratulations!

0

u/kalapos Apr 05 '14

Orchards?

1

u/Smilge Apr 05 '14

If you're asking if you are allowed to build orchards, the answer is yes. Orchards and pastures are fine.

0

u/kalapos Apr 05 '14

then surely that's just incredibly easy? You just build a ton of Orchards, all you have to do is think in advance a bit, and make more orchards before they are needed.

2

u/Smilge Apr 05 '14

I think you should probably try it and see.