More chickens! More food! More resources! A major setback in Banished

I’ve been enjoying Banished ever since I bought it in the Steam sale. This is turning out to be one of my favorite games. However, I’ve started to suffer a major setback! Just the other day I had a nice surplus of food, but now my citizens seem to be going through food like they have parasites. (Perhaps they do, is that part of the game?) I had 3 storage barns full of food and now everything is gone. All the fish, the venison, the roots, herbs and potatoes are all gone. I’m now getting a steady stream of death notices that my people have died from starvation. The cemetery is full and people are constantly foraging for food, so much so, no work is getting done.

I’m trying to stem the tide, but I don’t know if I’ll make it in time. I have 2 fisheries running and trying to build a third. I just bought some more chickens from the merchant to make an even bigger pasture than my first one. The merchant didn’t have any foodstuffs so I can’t fix the starvation problem that way. I’m not sure what caused my decline, but it’s coming at me pretty hard. As I’m sure you know, even the loss of one person is a big deal, so losing 5 or so is pretty major. It’s not like losing a couple hundred like I’ve read from some other people, but my village is small this is a big loss.

I have some fear this might be the end of my village. I thought once I had the quarry and mine going I would be able to leap ahead in resources and build more houses to increase my population. I was even debating the Town Hall to let in nomads. Looks like those plans have to be abandoned with the intent to just make it through the next couple of years.

If you have an action plan, throw it on out there. I think we’re coming up on desperate times.