Essential Early Game Tips
What should I build first to gather and store basic supplies?
Start with essential structures in this order: a granary, a storehouse, a logging camp, and a woodcutter. Postpone constructing burgage plots until these are in place. Do not upgrade the Homeless People’s Tents to a Worker’s Camp.
Should I focus on farming at the beginning?
Avoid farming initially, as it’s a massive undertaking. Rely on hunting/gathering and burgage plot extensions (Vegetable Plots, Chicken Coops) to sustain your town. Note fertile areas for later use.
When should I start building burgage plots and food production buildings?
A Hunting Camp is free to build, so provided there is a nearby herd of deer, you should build that as soon as your Granary is up and running. A Forager Hut will depend on how close your nearest source of berries is – slot it in as soon as you can, but you could also prioritize getting backyard extensions up and running instead.
How soon should I build a marketplace?
Establish a Marketplace when your Burgage Plots are populated to distribute goods to the people. Food, firewood, clothes, and other essentials will not be distributed without a Marketplace.
It’s important to note that Marketplaces have a fixed radius and that Burgage Plots fulfill their needs based on proximity. There are other factors as well, such as getting goods to the market, there being enough market stalls for a particular good, etc. Please consider these if you are having issues fulfilling the needs of your Burgage Plots.
Is it important to have a church and other amenities early on?
Assuming normal difficulty settings, a Church isn’t that important within your first year, and is only a requirement once you want to start upgrading Burgage Plots to Level 2. A Food Stall with diverse food types (e.g., berries, and meat) will boost village approval ratings initially, setting the stage for additional structures like a Tannery and advancing to level 2 Burgage Plots.
General Gameplay FAQs
Do you need empty houses for people to immigrate to your village?
Yes, empty houses are necessary for attracting new villagers. Note that if you upgraded your Homeless People’s Tents into a Worker’s Camp, your population won’t move out into empty burgage plots. This is a known issue, and we do not recommend upgrading the Homeless People’s Tents in your starting region.
Can you set a maximum production limit on items?
No, the game does not currently support setting maximum production limits, however Artisan extensions can be paused by selecting the building in question and pressing the pause button located at the top right corner of the Burgage Plot UI.
Why does my Ox keep running away?
Consider adding another Hitching Post or upgrading it to a Stable. Animals run away if there’s no place for them to stay.
What do Horses, Oxen, and Mules do?
Horses allow traders to move larger quantities of goods via carts. They are not used for anything else right now. Mules are used by the Pack Station to move goods between regions.
Oxen are used to haul around timber, and if you take the right development branch, can be used to plow a field.
What is the King’s Road, and how do I connect to it?
The King’s Road connects all regions. You need to build a road that ultimately connects to a pre-existing King’s Road. There is a known issue where sometimes it says you’re not connected, even when you are.
Retinue
You can get a Retinue when you build your Manor. It can be increased in size by building certain buildings via the Castle Planner. To increase the size of your retinue, you must first build a Garrison Tower in the Castle Planner, and then customize your retinue, spending Treasury to add individuals.
Trade
Once you’ve built a Trading Post, you can import and export items. You have to set up a “Trade Rule” on each individual item you want to buy or sell, this can be found on the far left of each individual item line, which will be set to “No Trade” by default. This is a drop-down menu that you can change.
Setting the Stockpile number will mean you will either be importing or exporting until your stockpile reaches the desired number using your Trade Rule to determine if this Trading Post will only import or export to reach the desired number, or do both to maintain it.
While ALL goods can have a dedicated Trade Route set-up (which means there is a dedicated merchant buying and selling that product) certain high-tier items (e.g Tools, Weapons) can ONLY be imported and exported once you’ve set up the corresponding Trade Route. This is done by clicking on the button on the far right of each individual item line, and requires Regional Wealth to set up.
Regional Wealth vs Personal Treasury
- Regional Wealth, found along the top info panel to the left of the settlement name, represents your population’s wealth.
- It is used to purchase backyard and artisan extensions for Burglary Plots, animals like Oxen, Sheep, etc., and to import goods at the Trading Post or Livestock Trading Post.
- It is generated via trade, as well as Level 2 or higher Burgage Plots
- The Treasury is found in the upper right and represents your character’s personal funds.
- It is used to hire mercenaries, as well as fund the settlement of other regions using Settlers Camps.
- It is generated via Tax and other Policies, as well as clearing out Bandit Camps.
- For Tax, you need to have regional wealth. No Regional Wealth = no tax income to your Treasury
How to make ale?
Grow barley, process it into malt at a Malthouse, and brew it into ale at a level 2 or higher burgage plot with a Brewery extension. Ale is used by the Tavern to satisfy the “Entertainment” requirement of higher tier Burgage Plots, but it does not make the Ale itself. You can also import barley and malt to process it into ale, or you can directly import ale as well.
This guide is excellent. Very beneficial. I was exporting leather for six in my own game before upgrading to level-2 houses. I made the mistake of thinking that I could turn that leather into shoes and earn even more money. After I unlocked the trade route, I discovered that shoes were only selling for $8, even though they require two pieces of leather to make, so I could have exported them for $12 (2×6).
Trade is essentially nonexistent because of a level 3 duplex burglary plot (i.e., 4 families) with an armorsmith upgrade that completely saturated the plate armor market and drove its price down to 1 gold, which is roughly the same as a week’s worth of bread for one person. For the price to have dropped so much, it must mean that everyone on the planet was wearing plate armor made in my town.
When that occurs, the goods will build up in your warehouses because no off-map merchant will purchase them. The one benefit of the circumstances was that I could purchase plate armor for my entourages for one gold piece at the global market rate.
For the price to stay constant, you essentially need other villages that you control to import as much of the goods as you export, but that is obviously a zero-sum game where no additional money enters your combined economies.
Simply put, I don’t understand trade. I owned 20 third-tier houses, a town of about 200 residents, etc. I made a great deal of leather goods, shoes, shields, bows, and wooden components, all of which I sold. I had no mercenaries, only 5% tax, and I was only bringing in 10 meat and 10 malt units. I was always so frugal with money, though. Sometimes I had more than $100, so I upgraded a few houses, bought some yalks, and that was it. I then had to wait months again before making any significant money. For example, I once had to wait two months to accumulate $25k in order to upgrade my house. I’m not sure how any of you manage to make so much money. Even though I was selling six or eight expensive items, I never had enough money to hire mercenary armies. (For example, I needed to have 10 bows in my stockpile, but I only had 934.
Trade goods will eventually lose value to zero if they are sold in large quantities, at which point traders will stop purchasing them. In your Trading Post’s “Trade” panel, this is indicated by a red double arrow pointing down next to the export price. Additionally, remember to allocate 1 development point to “Better Deals” in order to lower all import prices by 10 (or, in the case of meat, from 12 to 2).
I’ve discovered that your farmers are more efficient than the heavy plow. Nothing moves when the plow-wielding ox simply passes over the field.
Perhaps that is a large visual? It seems much faster to me, but at this point I’m not sure if that’s a bug in the gameplay.
I’ll check the user interface to see if the plowing progress is faster or slower than by hand. It might just be a visual bug.
You get an additional family at tiers two and three. You now get four families if you previously had two.
In reference to the housing discussion below, the answer is no, there isn’t space for an additional family when moving from tier 1 to tier 2 housing. To upgrade to two families, you must enlarge the plot to accommodate another residential building, but this can be accomplished at Tier 1.
I’m not sure how tier 3 houses operate because I haven’t built one yet.
Similar to level 1, level 2 houses only accommodate one family and only provide one gold income.
A house that has been upgraded can accommodate one additional family and start earning you one gold per turn for each family that resides there. 🙂
Two families may reside in Level 3 houses rather than just one (for Level 1 and 2).