Any tips for what to build first?

[Flickaboo]

I restarted my game because I learned a few things from my first run, however I came to the 11th year before I even built the Trading Post and then the Raids started at 9 or 11 Raiders and I did not have an army to fight, nor a Palisades wall, because somehow I was not creating enough logs... I seems to constantly run out of logs... Currently I am contemplating of restarting again, due to some shortcomings and also one house that should have been upgraded NEVER refills their 1/2 food types! All houses around that house have done so, but this one seems stuck! Not sure why I can't make them restock on 2/2 food types.

There is no pointer that shows at what point I should build what building. Also apparently iron ingot cannot be created although I found Iron ore. So building Trading Post later on and can't store more gold now because I can't build the vault.

[Fekin]

I always build a clay pit and pottery workshop as early as I can, then a trade post to sell the pottery to earn money to buy iron from a trader to build the vault. Same for buying bricks etc

Pottery is always my early main income.

[Lokocz]

Don't worry about the first raids too much, with 1 market place surrounded by houses you should be ok to have 2 watchtowers near your storehouses, with hunters help you should repel them easily. Don;t forget to ring the bell at you town center and turn it off when the village is safe.
Keep gold in trading center and move it to global stores only if needed, makes life much easier. Build the vault when you can but don't worry about it too much, you will still store gold in the storehouse. As your village grows and so is the income - keep building healers, rat catchers, poo collectors and obviously soldiers and keep your income close to 0 or slightly negative but make sure you always have gold in your global store to pay the fees, make trading your main source of money. Later on this problem goes away as you won't be able to recruit as many soldiers as you could afford due to labor demands so eventually you will be getting money from taxes.
Don't build big crop fields, instead do 3 smaller ones, plan 3 different crops each year, on each field delayed by a year, start with flax as it's great source of income when turned into shirts.

3 fields of 10x5 size:
Field 1: Year 1:clover+flax, Year 2:clover+beans, Year 3: clover+maintenance+turnips
Field 2: Year 1:clover+maintenance+turnips, Year 2:clover+flax, Year 3: clover+beans
Field 3: Year 1:clover+beans, Year 2:clover+maintenance+turnips, Year 3: clover+flax

Later change beans to carrots.

Eventually you will learn which crops share diseases, like turnip/cabbage or carrot/buckwheat, avoid them on the same field. You won't have to worry about crop diseases anymore as next year they will go away.

Keep it similar for all other crop fields. Don't plant any grain until you get barn. Then plant rye+clover, clover+buckwheat and clover+beans (later change beans to peas+maintenance+peas) - same way as you did with flax earlier - they don't share diseases and you won't need any maintenance works. Simply once you plan it in, you can forget about it in each case. Just drop the poo on the fields every now and then - or use a mod to do it for you :)
Grain as a food source for villagers is not really worth it until you want to improve your desirability with bakeries. Barns are the way to go - meat+smokers + cheese later (don;t turn on the milking until you can make cheese - it will cause bloody cows to eat more.
Make sure all of your meat/fish is smoked. On top of the screen, keep checking how much meat/fish got wasted last year, if the quantity there seems like a lot to you, means you've got not enough smokers - build more. Set the smokers to process only 1 type of food - mostly meat, fishers are not as good as hunters in supplying food.

For logs, I personally build few work camps in different areas and keep only 1 worker in, so he doesn't chop the forest down too quickly and trees have a chance to re-grow, you will still have to change the work area every 2 or 3 years. If you got spare workers you can plant trees for 1 gold each but be aware this is very time consuming so do it only if you don't plan massive expansion anytime soon. Always buy logs from merchants if they have it.

Soap, shoes, clothes and food should be your main focus. And obviously clean water, make sure every single building has well close to it - trust me, I've seen my fishers/guardsmen drinking water from the lake and getting ill later :)
Healer can mitigate some of the damage caused by shortages of these but you still get your labor disabled for some time.

That should cover the start, at least that's all that comes to my mind.

[Matthew]

The first several years I am doing almost nothing other than prepping farm fields, chopping forests, and churning out lumber out of 2 saw pits. I immediately go up to 6 farm fields, about 50ish tiles in size. 5x10, 7x7, 6x8. It doesn't really matter which. Even 6x7 is okay.

Starting deer, 2 saw pits, and 6 farm fields is enough to power up to 100-150 population right away.

Village growth is largely limited by wood, as you found out. Keep putting laborers on wood until your surplus eventually surpasses your use. It is not overkill to have a third of your total population purely kept as laborers to keep harvesting wood and stone.

Place early towers around your storage and trading post.

Don't bother with fish. Peas and beans are the best vegetables. If you limit your villagers to only 2 food types from 2 food groups, they are more likely to stock both and upgrade houses easier. Smoked meats and legumes are the best.

[Furin]

Depending on how much deer is close to your starting area a couple of hunters will keep you going for a while. Hide coats make for a great early trade item, if you are lucky you can get some cheap bricks and immidiatly upgrade your market(t2), which significantly boosts your income (but it also needs bricks for repairs), allowing you to have more towers and such. Buy low, sell high nd don't do too many things at once and everything will be fine. Like Matthew said, have some workers, it's no use building every building if you don't have the workforce at the moment. So look whats available and plan accordingly.

For me one sawpit does the job just fine for up to 150ish people, build the stockade right next to it and limit it to wood and planks. Same for the chopping guys, make a dedicated chopping stockade with only firewood and wood. All the other stockades can be whatever, just never let them have water. But I also don't usually build fields that early on.

I just finished a game with a 1k city that never planted flax or made clothes. It's pretty easy to always trade for these in bulk, so postponing clothing is totally possible, plus you can make a profit on them when buying really cheap. That's around ten people you can use for something else in the beginning when workforce is tight.

[Flickaboo]

Originally posted by Furin:

For me one sawpit does the job just fine for up to 150ish people, build the stockade right next to it and limit it to wood and planks. Same for the chopping guys, make a dedicated chopping stockade with only firewood and wood. All the other stockades can be whatever, just never let them have water. But I also don't usually build fields that early on.

Thank you all for answering my question, I will make good use of all these hints and hopefully this time around I won't mess it up again! BTW. Furin I didn't even know I can dedicate the Stockade (Stockyard, I suppose) for certain items only! I had no idea, how do I do that???

Also does anyone here have a preferred Large Map seeds with all the resources I would need? Or some seed I can try out on a Large map? Would like to get some suggestions there as well.

[Furin]

If you click on the thing there is a build in "interface" where you can check and unckeck which type of resource is allowed to be stored there. (same with warehouses and root cellars, even markets)

Large map isn't necessarily better than medium, because the distance to all those resources is so big that your people will spend most of their time travelling. Anything farther away than 5ish screen sizes (from your town in any drection, maybe even less, if it takes more than a year to build it's usually pretty bad) becomes a real chore. Trading is always the best option for getting huge quantities of resources, so produce what you can do fast and efficient and trade it for the stuff that's a chore to get.

[Matthew]

You just check off items you don't want stored there, like any other storage facility. If the one next to your saw pits are the only ones allowed to stock wood, then all wood will be delivered there.

And ye you can get by with 1 saw pit, but I find that lumber usage stays relatively the same up to tier 3. Meaning 1 pit everything will take twice as long. For me, it ends up being the bottleneck, but I think I also rush up to tier 3 quite a bit faster than most people. You can always reduce the number of sawyers and you will need the 2nd pit eventually, so it isn't like it is ever a waste.

Also kind of hinted at, but you don't actually need every production chain yourself. Like Lok, I also go for flax early on. 2 of the tier 1 traders consistently buy out linen and flax never depletes, it is an infinite resource assuming you keep planting it.

But, I also rarely make my own bricks. I just buy them out from exporting other goods, like linen.

Raw materials are cheaper than finished goods, so you can also just buy out materials and turn them around for profit. I do this a lot for tallow. It is dirt cheap at the trader and assuming your forager is getting extra herbs you can make mass soap and sell it back to traders at a much higher cost.

[Furin]

When there's a sudden shortage of planks before the introduction of a furniture shop, remember that you can turn off automatic housing upgrades in the upper right of your screen, because the main use for planks is getting tier2 housing and the repair of it. That's a temp solution and when that happens it might be time to get another sawmill.

Also when you hit R you get the resource overview and you can see pretty easily what's in abundance and what is scarce, that let's you plan your next moves. (fe. no shoes but a lot of hides, time for another cobbler and so on and so forth).

Another reason to build the sawmill right next to the stockade is that the sawmill can burn, the stockade can't, so if you make a cross of sawmills with the stockade in the middle you won't loose multiple sawmills to fire, if the fire starts just when people go on winterbreak.

[Matthew]

I suppose I will also add here a tip. Certainly not needed but, an early purchase of 50 bricks from a trader is an insanely good investment. A tier 2 market doubles the amount of tax generated early on, which makes it much easier to build guard towers and get an early healer while maintaining a decent positive tax income.

[qwermoop]

In this game food needs are the most important. If you got food covered try growing to tier 2 as fast as possible, get clay + potter going and a market. After you get a bunch of money from selling the pottery you can practically buy whatever you need.

[Waiwai]

You need figure out a build order yourself.

Here is a build order example, which I normally used to get a settlement up:

1. Town center (this is a defence building after you trigger the alarm)
   
2. 4 houses and 1 water well
   
3. 1 firewood splitter
   
4. 4 more houses and 1 more water well
   
5. 2 hunter cabins, 2 fishing shacks and 2 smokehouses
   
6. 4 forager huts
   
7. 1 stockyard, 1 root cellar and 1 warehouse
   
8. Start to build your 1st and 2nd crop field if possible, 2 x 12 x 12 for example
   
9. 1 more firewood splitter
   
10. 1 saw pit
    
11. 1 fletcher building
    
12. 1 basket shop
    
13. 1 tannery and 1 cobbler shop
    
14. 6 more hunter cabins or fishing shacks and 3 smokehouses
    
15. 1 more firewood splitter
    
16. 1 compost yard
    
17. 1 graveyard at remote place
    
18. 1 market
    
19. Build houses until at least 24 houses surround the 1st market, plus more water well
    
20. Ready and start for tier 2 town center upgrade
    
21. 1 more stockyard, 1 more root cellar and 1 more warehouse
    
22. Start to build your 3rd and 4th crop field if possible, 2 x 12 x 12 for example
    
23. 1 more saw pit
    
24. 24 more houses and 1 more market, plus more water well
    
25. 1 more firewood splitter
    
26. 4 lookout towers
    
27. 1 healer's house
    
28. 1 or 2 schools
    
29. 1 wagon shop
    
30. Trade post
    
31. Many apiaries and 1 candle shop
    
32. Work camp, your choice
    
33. 1 more firewood splitter
    
34. 1 clay pit and 1 potter building
    
35. 1 weaver building

You should now have options to grow your economy by candle selling, pottery sellings and clothes sellings.

[grazr]

Originally posted by Flickaboo:

There is no pointer that shows at what point I should build what building.

There's no pointer because there's no real need to upgrade anything by a certain time.

You'll want Tier 2 TC to streamline wood production through work camps.
You'll want Tier 3 to turn sand into glass to preserve food and streamline your farms productivity.

But those are just significant conveniences. Your town will work at tier 1 for several decades, all be it with a lot of micromanagement hassle.

Your industry and villager needs are based on your TC tier, so you don't HAVE to build certain buildings UNTIL you upgrade your TC. Once you upgrade your TC, your housing will become eligible for upgrades which then brings in additional demands for stuff like candles and pottery. This means you can wait until you're ready to move into the next tier and not feel obligated to do so as soon as you hit the requirements. Moving into the next tier before you have a steady supply chain of tier 3 materials (iron/clay) can be problematic because your citizens will want stuff that requires them and obviously they wont have access to it and this will destroy/regress your economy/housing.

[Waiwai]

Originally posted by grazr:

Your industry and villager needs are based on your TC tier, so you don't HAVE to build certain buildings UNTIL you upgrade your TC. Once you upgrade your TC, your housing will become eligible for upgrades which then brings in additional demands for stuff like candles and pottery. This means you can wait until you're ready to move into the next tier and not feel obligated to do so as soon as you hit the requirements. Moving into the next tier before you have a steady supply chain of tier 3 materials (iron/clay) can be problematic because your citizens will want stuff that requires them and obviously they wont have access to it and this will destroy/regress your economy/housing.

PS: Shut down the auto-upgrade until other buildings and upgrades completed.

[buds]

Normsl difficulty:
1. TC then gather wood and around 5-10 stones. 10 stone node is good.
2. Start building 1st hunter cabin.
3. Start building forager shack
4. Build 1st shelter near the Town center for higher desirability after TC is finished.
5. Build 1st firewood splitter away from possible shelter expansion.
6. Build 1st well.
7. Build 2 more shelters
8. Build smokehouse closer to hunter cabin away from possible shelter expansion
9. Build your 1st stockyard closer to firewood splitter.
10. Build your 1st saw pit closer to stockyard.
11. Build a root cellar closer to where you plan on placing your market and storehouse.

Continue expansion and gathering and allocate more villagers to firewood splitter and laborers to get logs. Build 1 shelter at a time until you get 32 population.

12. I build tannery first because it only requires log and villagers are better protected from predators.
13. Then when planks are available I build cobbler shack.
14. Then build fletcher shop.
15. Build market
16. Build storehouse.
17. Build compost yard
18. Build your 1 to 3 5x5 farm at around year 2. Dont fence and attract more deer and let them eat your crops while your hunters are feasting on them. Your foragers will take care of the rest of food needed. Just plant crops that will give your field enough aggregate “impact on fertility”, plus 1% is fine and just allocate 1 worker. Make space for possible expansion on all sides. Plant greens and root crops only until your about to go to T2 then add flax on the rotation.
19. Build your graveyard so you can burry your deceased.

[Matthew]

Well since we are doing lists, mine is pretty close to buds.

1. Hunter lodge
2. Well
3. 6 houses to trigger immigration wave
4. Wood chopper
5. If applicable, forager shack but don't usually work until year 2
6. While several farms are plotted and beginning to fence, use extra labor to build storage, cellar, saw pit.
7. Market, compost, fletcher.
8. Go up to 20 houses total, 2nd saw pit, tower near storage.
9. As houses go to tier 2, add a couple more towers.
10. Everything else gets added when it makes sense. It can vary game to game depending on map.

Short term goal is luxury taxes through pottery/candles and a barn. After which I add another 20 houses and 10-12 towers total. Tier 3 town center usually around year 8 to 14. Depends heavily upon trader RNG, since it can take several years to get what you eventually need.