The Minecraft Logs #16: Chaotic Town Expansion

Confession time: I almost decided to restart my game again. The main reason is that I was highly dissatisfied with the way my colony was being developed as well as the hilly area I decided to settle in. My reasoning was that now that I had a more experience with MineColonies, if I were to restart I could lay out the town in a much better way.

The other reason were some mods that I discovered recently that made it very tempting. They were ChoiceTheorem’s Overhauled Village, Towns and Towers – Structure Add-ons and Integrated Dungeons and Structures. The first one replaces vanilla villages, the second add new ones to different biomes plus some other structures and the last one adds new elaborated crafted structures and dungeons in the world that also incorporate features from other mods like Quark and Create.

But as I thought about it I figured out if I stop being so stubborn and change around where I planned to put some of these buildings it might not be too bad. Also no matter where I end up with it will be pretty much impossible to find large sections of flat terrain thanks to how the world generation works in 1.18.

As for the mods I decided to just install them anyway. Since I barely explored the overworld it should be easy enough to find a new chunk with those structures.

And sure enough, when I had to go out looking for some new villages to get some beetroots I saw one of the mods doing its work:

Granted, the mods don’t do miracles: the new structures look very cool but they are still at the whims of Minecraft’s terrain generator. That means there are still some villager houses showing up in weird places like floating over a chasm or inside a cave.

Back to the subject of the post… One of the reasons I was so hung up on restarting is because I was having trouble figuring out where to place a barracks. Ideally I wanted to place it by the middle of the colony but I couldn’t figure a good spot for it due to MineColonie’s border system not allowing me to build there.

Unfortunately the raiders and pirates didn’t care about my woes and their attacks just became increasingly hard for me to handle by myself. I could have built a bunch more towers to help solve the problem but that wasn’t very practical either.

So I decided to build on the edge of the town, on the beach, a place that I didn’t have any plans for. It is still not fully staffed and I already lost a few guards to raids. But it has helped already.

I also built a sawmill which helped a LOT in decreasing my work load since so many of these buildings use some kind of wood item.

It also made me notice that I really need to build a second courier hut as there was a delay in delivering items. So I built one underground near, where my mines are and where I eventually built my smeltery, blacksmith and mechanic hut.

For some reason I thought that placing it near areas where they do a lot of deliveries/retrievals would speed up their work. But apparently that is not the case. Which makes me wonder what is even the point of the Courier Huts.

As it is now, you need to build a Courier Hut to be able to hire a courier first. Then you can hire that courier in the Warehouse you want them working in. Besides that the only other function for a Courier Hut is to determine how many stacks they can carry. It doesn’t do anything beyond those two functions.

Which leads me to question the need for a Courier Hut at all. Why not simply integrate all that into the Warehouse?

It just feels like a waste to have those empty buildings in the colony taking over precious space.

After that I built a bunch of buildings. Besides the aforementioned smeltery, blacksmith and mechanic hut, I also built, in no particular order: a fletcher hut, a farm, a graveyard, a school, another guard tower, another house and a composter hut.

If I had any sense I would have built a stone smeltery and a stonemason hut as those are the other materials that are required the most and would help a lot to lower my work in developing the colony.

I also tried to upgrade to level 3 most of my buildings to speed up production as well as to be able to get more colonists.

Amidst this frenzy of building I accidentally discovered that you can craft and place down a building even if you haven’t researched it yet. You just can’t order to build it until it is actually unlocked by the university research.

This can help a lot in planning the layout of the town. However it is still impossible to plan everything from the start as you are still restricted by the colony’s borders.

Even with that I am still making some pretty terrible decisions. Case in point I thought about building a house in my excavated cave/tunnel system for Courier #2 and Builder #2 to live in.

The only problem is unlike the stone version of their respective buildings the stone house has actually two floors. Which made things awkward. I thought it would be fine if I just dug down a giant hole in the ground to fit the building in. It is not like I would see it that much…

Yeah, turns out that was a horrible idea because I was constantly visiting the second Builder’s Hut and seeing that house.

Fortunately MineColonies has a system to deconstruct the building, allowing you to pick it up and order it to be rebuilt, with whatever level it had, in another spot. I did just that and moved it over to the beach, next to the University. Now it is housing the researchers while the builder and courier got another house in another spot of the town.

Then I thought about using the now empty space to build my storage and machinery area. Only to discover not much later that the hospital, at level 3, has a basement that just happened to take a good chunk of the space I was planning to use!

It also intersects a little with the second builder’s hut so I will have to deconstruct that and move it away.

I still think I can use this underground area though. The farm fields are above it and a little to the side and those can’t be upgraded so no surprises for me there! :p

Besides sorting that mess out my next priorities are to build another courier’s hut, a stone smeltery, a stonemason hut, a shepherd hut, a cowhand’s hut, a chicken farm and a library. Maybe a plantation too so they can produce their own paper.

If I can get those done then the vast majority of my colonies production needs will be covered. Of course, along the way I will need to add some more houses and guard towers too.

Another important step is to prettify and light up the place. Right now it looks like someone build a bunch of random buildings in the middle of the wilderness.

I also should try to build a sort of a “subway” system with mine tracks since I got the research done for the colonists to use it. That should also help my couriers do their deliveries.

Here is a map of the map right now. The place marked with a “K” is a keep added by Valhelsia Structures. The building bellow it, on the same side of the river, is also a blacksmith also added by that mod.

Current Colony Progress:

• Town Hall – Level 3
• 2x Builder’s Hut – Level 3
• Warehouse – Level 3
• 2x Courier’s Hut – Level 3
• 4x House – Level 3
• Tavern – Level 2
• Fisher’s Hut – Level 3
• Forester’s Hut – Level 3
• Mine – Level 3
• Restaurant – Level 2
• University – Level 2
• Hospital – Level 3
• Quarry – Deconstructed
• 4x Guard Towers – Level 3
• Farm – Level 3
• 4x Farm Field
• Sawmill – Level 3
• Barracks with 3 towers – Level 3
• Smeltery – Level 3
• Blacksmith – Level 3
• Mechanic – Level 3
• Fletcher – Level 1
• School – Level 2
• Graveyard – Level 3
• Composter – Level 3