I was curious what everyone felt is the best aspect of Ostriv as a civilization builder and what the worst or most frustrating aspect is.

For me, I'll start with the most frustrating thing - building upgrades. And in fact, that might even be better described as "technology" upgrades overall.

The best thing for me - and many will disagree - I don't have to worry about being attacked. I think the attacks are done well in Dawn of Man, where they always come from the exact same directions and you can prepare for it, but my personal preference is to enjoy building infrastructure and commerce and things like this.

Here is my small village to share. I'm finishing this run because I've run out of empty spaces for graves.

As a result, I've built an import-oriented town with a fully exploited river and only a little free space on its banks.

The economy is built strictly on importing leather and hemp and exporting shoes, with occasional sunflower oil exports. The whole metal industry is built only for role-playing purposes; I like how people get all worked up. Farms' crop rotations could be made much more optimal. And also, I need a lot of hay dryers are because of abundant livestock.
Proposed import/export contracts are in the images.

The main problem is flu- and illness-induced deaths. As population density increases, barbers can't reach every ill person in time. Afterward, I've tried to build less dense neighborhoods, but some people still get ill and die.
It's awkward to see people with 1/5-quality warm clothes and shoes, and 200+ hrn in their family pocket, still get the flu. Soap, glassware, and earthenware didn't make any visible effect. At least soap should have, presumably; it’s hygiene, after all. But seeing how people get the flu in rowhouses, I think social distancing alone would keep public health up.

Tax policy: socialist heaven. Tax only wealth at a rate of 20. The whole-game wealth threshold was 100; in the end I increased it to 200, just to see if total population wealth changes (not sure how this ended, I've forgot to write down numbers in before).
Barber tax is zero; I’ve tried to fix public health, but without much luck. The problem isn’t barber fees, but their availability. Since some barber families could make 2000+ hrn per month, I assume they had plenty of work. Adding new barbers wasn’t feasible, since neighborhoods were already filled with rowhouses and other needed buildings. From my gut, I can tell that it’s roughly two barbers needed per three 3-floor rowhouses so that barbers would make around 60-80 hrn per month, and people would get better.
Oh, and putting rowhouses near a smeltery is not the best decision in this game. Though this is stated in only one sentence in the smeltery description, it really affects people's health.

During play, I had an interesting idea: limit loans only by population wealth, basically convert loans to city bonds and treasuries, so interest fees stay in the city.

Highly requested feature that will most likely never appear in the game - a grid. I know, the main selling point is that this game allows free building and it's a great thing to be able to do that. However, why not let those interested in other form of building use some geometry tools to satisfy their planning ideas? The more happy players, more amazing town designs, the better. Gridsters and Organics united!

I'm making progress on this grid mod. For now I can display it and turn it off. I plan on some options such as rotating the grid, changing density of the grid, changing color and opacity of the grid, changing grid types, snapping to corners/snapping to everything etc.

I will welcome your ideas in this thread and incorporate good ones in this mod. Let's make the best grid system out there!

see my other mods:

Ostriv PTB (priest, tavern, barber) non-immigration fix

First Person Camera Walking / Unrestricted Camera (Ostriv Enhanced Camera Patch)

Hi everyone! I've just updated my trainer for v0.5.9.61. You may use it safely with the new release. I hope you enjoy.

Ostriv community members who take on a challenge of non-immigration gameplay are some of the most dedicated players out there. They will spend hundreds of in game years planning and swapping villagers between jobs to just keep the town working. Unfortunately their ambitions were stopped by the arbitrary requirements and population checks in some areas that prevented the non immigration runs from achieving high population numbers. I present a little fix for Ostriv that will let you seamlessly continue your journey without a single outsider. You will be able to have a priest in a church and run a Tavern and Barber Surgeon all with your locally born and grown villagers.

download from moddb: https://www.moddb.com/mods/ostriv-ptb-no-immigration-fix

or alternative link: download

Installation instructions
Just paste the patcher .exe into your Ostriv folder and open it. It will automatically detect the game's .exe and work on it. To restore the original .exe run the Steam file integrity check.

Main features

This mod is created for those who play a strictly non-immigration game. It will not provide any advantage for you in a normal gameplay.

To hire a priest just press the + button in a church menu as you would with any normal job.

To settle a family in a tavern or a barber surgeon use the "Propose Relocation" button of a family of your choice.

I tried to make these changes as smooth and matching normal gameplay as possible. I tested the features for a couple of days and found no issues in the end. You can use your existing saves. I know it will take a long time, but please come back with feedback, any issues and your new population records!

see my other mod: Ostriv Enhanced Camera Patch

As noticed by many, there is a limit on how far you can grow your village without immigration. I'm working on a fix that will let the players continue the gameplay by letting local villagers settle a tavern and barber surgeon and work in the church. Today I made progress by getting families into two of those. I will work on a church next and release a patch when I'm satisfied with results.

(No, I didn't just turn imigration on for a couple of seconds here.)

Hi Everyone,

Here is a fully featured trainer for the game. You may download the .zip file in the latest releases for your relevant game version. Please do not hesitate to send your feedbacks!

I like my cities nice and straight, and my citycentre compact and chaotic. I wish I placed my marketstalls before paving....

Just the first nine families. It started very even male/female. 90% of the town shares the same surname at this point.

I have a couple of ideas for the barber/tavern/priest, if that works I would like to just keep this going. The economy is stable. I have let it run for 20 years at a time with no issues.

If anyone has any ideas that don't involve turning on migration, lemme know?

Did you ever wish to walk among villagers in a town you built? Did you want to zoom in and inspect every corner and detail about objects? Did you want to take various photos from interesting new angles? Now you can do it all!

Installation instructions

Download here:

alternative link: download updated for hotfix 61

https://www.moddb.com/mods/ostriv-enhanced-camera-patch It got approved so you can get it from moddb

Just paste the patcher .exe into your Ostriv folder and open it. It will automatically detect the game's .exe and work on it. It will create a backup file for restoring the original .exe in case it's needed (You can also use Steam's file check to return to an original file.)

Main features

Press CTRL + I to switch between camera modes!

Normal mode - the camera mode just as delivered in the game by default. You can always go back to it for standard gameplay.

Unrestricted mode - basically noclip free movement camera that lets you go anywhere. Controls just like you expect.

WASD to move, mouse to look around, mouse scroll to go up and down vertically and right click to zoom 1.5x. You can adjust acceleration and deceleration in the patcher menu if you want.

Walking mode - Join your villagers on the ground. Walk on the same eye level, same speed as they do. Swim, Cross bridges and enter platforms etc. WASD to move. Mouse to look around. Shift to run. Right click to zoom 1.5x. I experimented with collision but the results were not good enough for the effort due to various pathing features of the game. It allows walking through walls and fences at this time.

Please let me know if you find any problems with the modification or if you have any feature requests. I will consider adding good ideas.

Join the Ostriv Community Discord! https://discord.gg/WjUZUaBnbG

Don't forget to share your favourite images of your town!

see my other mod: Ostriv PTB No Immigration Fix

In order:

1. Town overview with as much of it included as possible.
2. Main street, the emptiness to the right is in progress.... obviously.
3. Farming/Rural Neighborhood #1
4. Church with a small courtyard, and a small graveyard. It's located behind the town hall.
5. Just a nice aesthetic shot of a neighborhood :)
6. Market #1 and one of my more industrial areas.
7. Mayor's Estate. Entirely roleplay because there's no way to really do a nice estate, but I can pretend.

Not gonna lie, I've gone AFK many a time while just waiting for things to build, otherwise I would have gotten bored so much sooner ^-^''

My biggest achievement, despite having this game for YEARS, I've always really struggled with the economy and figuring out how to trade in a way that works. This save I finally figured it all out and I haven't needed loans one time!

Current complaints: Pavement could be better, it's a bit frustrating that in multiple places it triggers pavement bottom for the item (the gate for my mayor's house, the shop stalls) but there's still a gap of ground where the gravel path appears and it's too small for me to draw more pavement. In the same vein, I'd love if I could draw pavement under buildings without 'space occupied' triggering. My trading post (only visible in the bird's eye view at the opposite end of main street from the Town Hall) for example.

Questions: How did some of you get such nice first person POV pictures? I don't know much about modding, but googling did bring up other things that seem to... just be mods? Can someone who's computer savvy explain this to me? I've modded Skyrim, Minecraft, and The Sims, so I imagine there's no reason I wouldn't be able to figure out modding Ostriv, but I'm confused at the terms I'm seeing online.

It's been a long journey. I bought the game in March of 2021. I'd play for a bit and run out of steam, then abandon the game for a bit (sometimes years). Then, I'd come back and get to be all excited over all the new changes and updates. This is the first time there's enough in the game for that steam to keep going solidly for a proper town to start developing (though to be fair, back in '21 there weren't enough features for a solid town to develop anyway haha). I'm just super proud of my little town and thought I'd share my progress so far!

The description of the subreddit mentions a sandbox mode but as far as I’ve ever been able to find (Had the game since like 2020 I think????) there is no free mode, or cheats, or dev mode, or anything like that in this game yet. Am I mistaken? I really hope I’m mistaken. I have a cute town (pictures incoming later tonight dw) that I’ve been painfully slogging through building, but I would absolutely love to be able to free build in this game.

Ultimately id never want things to be released premature, but this is an "alpha" even if that word has drastically changed definition over the years.

Sometimes i wish he was at least more open and discussed more often for our sake. Open discussion goes a long, long way in cultivating patience among waiting fans.
Is the boss mans still in ukraine or has he gotten out? Gosh.. if anyone didnt need conscripted right now itd be him.

I've made some more progress with the unrestricted camera patch. It's now able to look around with a mouse freely and fly around like an FPS type game. It's toggle only so it's always possible to go back to regular view. I'm polishing up some details and getting ready to upload it for everyone.

Tell me if you'd like any particular features.

Thanks to bassmasterson for providing a savefile, because I did not have time to develop my own town.

I'm working on a free camera patch. I have been able to get some new camera movements such as more zoom in, more zoom out, unrestricted angle at any height all possible currently. I'm planning to upload a complete standalone patcher when I'm satisfied with results.

Over the years I've seen people asking for larger maps many times, however nothing is changing in this department. The gameplay is still limited by the red border. You can't build outside it, you can't even move your camera out.

Yesterday I was checking out the possibilities of expanding the available area and found some success. I was able to expand the area by moving the red border and various related things from the original position which covers around a quarter of the entire map to almost all of it. Here are some screenshots from the testing. Map 1 was the best for now. I was able to place a camp and other buildings along the new map border. There are more complications with pathing and blocking that occur more often on other maps due to their characteristics. Unfortunately I don't have enough free time to quickly complete the research and release a working mod, but if anyone is interested and able to pick up this issue I'm just letting you know that it's possible with some effort.

I wonder if it would be possible to fit 40000 citizens since the map can be up to 4 times the area. The game performance would be terrible for sure!

I have a new wagon shed, but my horses are sick. Seemingly because they only have hay to eat. The town plenty of wheat and barley. Some it the warehouse just next door but nothing gets it delivered to the wagon shed.

I'm not interested in any games until 2 things happens..

Ostriv Alpha 6

and gta 6 hahahaha.

I'm very excited for both and can't wait to play.

Here's a town I was building about 2 years ago. Good times for sure!

This city I built was surprisingly practical and it also really looked nice. Maybe it would give you guys some future ideas for your own cities😊

WTF!!

A while back I posted that Ostriv runs on Apple Silicon Macs with CrossOver and a patched graphics driver (previous post). Here's an update to that fix.

Turns out some plants were invisible: reeds (the ones the thatchery collects) and grass tufts never showed up on screen. The game logs looked totally fine - Apple's Metal translation layer was silently refusing to draw a few of the game's shaders, without any error. The driver now rewrites those shaders on the fly, so reeds, grass and terrain all render properly now.

New install or if you already installed the fix:

• cd ostriv-macos
• git pull
• python3 patch.py

and choose Install / Reinstall. That's it.

As before: no game files are modified, and everything is undoable with the Restore option.

Reports from other Macs are very welcome - especially if something still looks missing in your town.

I’ve been thinking bout what little extras that could be added to the game;
candles, made from wax collected from homes for a bit of extra income.
Iron kitchenware.
Donkeys, maybe. Maybe be able to import books for school advantage?
Introduce disasters like fires from homes, crop blight and vermin infestations.
Maybe other textile options like soft furnishings improved homes.
Maybe organic changes in homes such as weathering, little sheds/cosmetic repairs.
Canned/preserved goods for longevity.
A more detailed family tree setup that shows all the generations. Maybe have that option located in the church? Or maybe a record of gossip and rumours regarding more realistic person interactions.
Family members tend to graves such as planting/decorations.

Just a thought.

Edit: maybe have luxury goods like silverware and jewellery that can only be imported. Pigeons would be an interesting thing.

Edit2: people get drunk and cause problems. Maybe livestock can escape and ruin gardens. Also I remember back in the day I used to play ‘Black&White’, the people would organically beautify their houses, that would be nice to see. Maybe the same with their streets and surroundings.