What is your strategy?

[el Darkness]

Hi guys I am mostly curious, how do you play the game?
For some reason I struggle to get games last below 9 years, only when I got strong positive mod (i.e. no Hostility for opening Glades) I managed to go 7 years on P5. I do not think I am bad at the game, I beat P7 and I yet have to lose a game (though P6 with ghosts Glade came pretty close to be a fail), but all of my games are so dang long...

I am mostly capable of stabilising my situation and enduring the hostility until the point my followers with high resolve start whispering to the Queens ear how awesome I am and that she should be proud of me.

Of course completing orders do help and on rare occasions I will be lucky enough to be able to reliably open Chests, but that is quite rare.

Recently I started opening 1-3 Dangerous Glades in the late 1st year / early 2nd year depending on how difficult they were. That was also the point at which I started choosing my Cornerstones, Orders and Blueprints (with few exceptions). But I did not notice it make huge impact on the length of my runs.

Earlier I mostly was hunting Blueprints to improve making building materials (Bricks, Fabrics, Planks) as one of highest priorities. 2 out of 3 was enough, even if they had only 1star rating, in which case they did other nice things (like Kiln). Some farm like building, maybe also a Ranch (this last I belive was a trap). On my way I was also trying to get some complex food or Services along the way.

I tried to give explanation of what I do, but it si difficult since every game is different. Different Blueprints, different Cornerstones, different Orders...

[Narandia]

Originally posted by el Darkness:

I tried to give explanation of what I do, but it si difficult since every game is different. Different Blueprints, different Cornerstones, different Orders...

Yeah you hit the nail on the head there, there isn't really an ideal strategy you can go for every time.
Personally, I still try to get at least one blueprint to help with building materials, though I'm not dead set on the best options. On biomes without coal deposits, a Kiln is acceptable for bricks etc. I also try to cover one farm or advanced gathering camp early on (usually pick one of either type as embark bonus and then get the other as blueprint option, as well as something to get at least one type of complex food production going. Usually Flour, or a Butcher for Jerky and Skewers. Services are much less of a priority because of the extra requirement step, but after a few years I do go for the service buildings on their own, if I get the option for something with strong passive bonuses (Clan Hall, Monastery, Forum, Bath House and Market).

I should say my personal preference in playstyle isn't all that much faster than what you're describing, but its not like the game punishes you for playing things more slowly. Sure its easier to win the influence ranking per cycle with more settlements, but eventually those extra resources stop even mattering.

Most I can recommend to speed your games up is to try to go for tool production, as sending cache rewards back to the citadel is a big part of winning games quickly. Only take the rewards yourself if you really need some of the resources or if they have a good perk to nab early on. Also start doing trade routes asap so you can get extra perks and/or blueprints from traders. Don't hesitate to call a trader early once you got some amber saved up, the impatience cost is easily negated through those caches.

[dande48]

Basic strategy for me is this:

1. If Kiln becomes available, take it. Switch all wood recipes over to charcoal and marrow if possible. Don't fuel your shrine with wood unless absolutely necessary.

2. Get the best plank building you can ASAP. Then aim for something with cloth.

3. First goal is to build up housing and a park for +2 global resolve.

4. Always favor your best species, if it doesn't dip the others below 1 or their reputation threshold is met.

5. Get the trading post up ASAP. Produce provisions and get those trade routes up ASAP. Trade off most anything you can (via trade routes, not traders), excepting what's required for orders and 4-6 unused gears.

6. Get the Clan Hall, even if you aren't producing wine. The increase to trader speed +resolve for trade goods sold is GOLDEN. Other service buildings also churn out some great bonuses, so don't wait to get them.

7. Always aim for complex food over regular food. Those secret recipe corner stones for 10 bonus beef jerky/skewers when you produce 10 pies / pickled goods will give you more food than your citizen can consume, and keep their resolve topped off.

[Nordil(Hun)]

If you can get the trade hub cornersone also opt for it.
So far on P20 it was for me the only way to finish a game before year 7.
You get +1 point for every 60 gold. Sometimes with crappy orders is your only way to get your points up at the start before you can have your folks's resolve boom.

[hellatze]

Originally posted by dande313:

Basic strategy for me is this:

1. If Kiln becomes available, take it. Switch all wood recipes over to charcoal and marrow if possible. Don't fuel your shrine with wood unless absolutely necessary.

2. Get the best plank building you can ASAP. Then aim for something with cloth.

3. First goal is to build up housing and a park for +2 global resolve.

4. Always favor your best species, if it doesn't dip the others below 1 or their reputation threshold is met.

5. Get the trading post up ASAP. Produce provisions and get those trade routes up ASAP. Trade off most anything you can (via trade routes, not traders), excepting what's required for orders and 4-6 unused gears.

6. Get the Clan Hall, even if you aren't producing wine. The increase to trader speed +resolve for trade goods sold is GOLDEN. Other service buildings also churn out some great bonuses, so don't wait to get them.

7. Always aim for complex food over regular food. Those secret recipe corner stones for 10 bonus beef jerky/skewers when you produce 10 pies / pickled goods will give you more food than your citizen can consume, and keep their resolve topped off.

i think you meant guild hall.

clan hall is for lizard harvester

[goodolarchie™]

The synergies with the drizzle boons heavily influence the "optimal win paths", as do things like races and fertile soil availability. Like any game in this genre... you play the map!

However as the game gains momentum/completion through EA (and more players) I suspect the "Tier list" videos will come out (there are some, but they are old, and obviously the game will continue to get tweaked) by regular P20 players. That will result in "99% of the time you have to take _________" type strategies for cornerstones and plans that pop early.

For me with blueprints the closest things to automatic are Kiln & Lumbermill (the caveat will always be if there's some crazy cornerstone/drizzle combo). This is true regardless of beavers or biome, though they can certainly help. And if you get any kind of chopping combo (the best being Woodcutter's Prayer and Flame Amulets, with this combo as restocking fuel is trivially easy), this scaffolds nearly any strategy as you have storm hostility mitigation, early game building growth (especially with beavers and lizards), very early complex food, and a key resource for dangerous/forbidden glades.

Carpenter, Provisioner and Weaver are close seconds, and are automatic accepts on certain maps.

[roshok]

The only thing that I do in 99% of the games is to build 3 woodcutters and then relax for a while :D

[el Darkness]

Originally posted by hardstylePATZE:

The only thing that I do in 99% of the games is to build 3 woodcutters and then relax for a while :D

Yeah, I also tend to start with 3 Woodcutter Camps, 2 is often not enough, either they can't keep up with wood consumption, or they are not enough to let you expand quickly.

After that I follow one of the 2 guidelines for a game (Please note I have only P7 beaten so far)
1) I wait before actually picking any Blueprints, Orders and Cornerstone until I open one Dangerous Glade, two if the first one is easy. So far it worked nicely. Meat Specialization available to choose? And I found 9 nodes of meat? Taken! So basically I open 1-3 Glades early (I embark with additional Oil to deal with Events) and see how it rolls, without a specific plan, trying to use newly discovered resources to good use. I upgrade the Hearth along, build Crude Workstation and Post (I do not remember it's name in english, the one that makes Packs) and place to greet wandering Traders (I also forgot the name). Also lots of roads.

2) I choose bonuses more quickly. I tend to go for 2 buildings that will help with Bricks, Planks, Fabrics. If I have 2 of these covered I will not fret over third one. If later I see building with higher star rating for given material, I may be willing to take it if it offers more than 1 star increase in recipe (1 star increase is just not enough). I also try to have something to reduce possible problems with food and fuel, though that leaves me with little else. This way I try to get stuff that will be unversally useful. Probably I will have built same buildings as in the example above, along with some newly unlocked.

There are some similarities, it is difficult to not build a Crude Workstation at all, but approach is a bit different. I would be very interested to hear what is working on higher levels. Also I am a bit concerned about advancing at the moment. Increased Even work time seems problematic, and then nerfed trading? That's nasty. But I would like to know how are you guys working around these difficulties. What is good for trading? I guess stuff I can get nearly infinite of, but that is time consuming. Building Packs (from Crude Workstation)? Trade Goods? Luxury Goods? Provision Packs? Sorry if I use confusing names here, not playing english version. :)

[RonEmpire]

Strategy is simple for me. Building materials with 6 Points and food with 2. In some situations I will take amber for 2 and people for 1.

I try to get lizard whenever possible. Aiming for a lizard harpy human combo.

Playing on Prestige 20.
I have over a 95-97% win rate using this method. I've streamed every single game on twitch and my vods are on youtube so you can see the results.

Trader shows up at drizzle so buy amber if need it to break thru large glades hopefully before he leaves so you buy things to solve with. Opening early in drizzle gives you time to solve before storm.

[DG]

I'm clearly not thinking in the same way as some other people as I think about strategy differently. P20. Year 1 would be setting up with the option to open a glade on year 2, trader available. From there I'd open glades to find food security, keeping control of hostility, and looking for some advancement on blueprints. After a few years, with a few cornerstones accumulated, I'd then try to get an idea of settlement scope, either expanding or static, plan for hearth placement, and try to eliminate the settlement weaknesses in fuel, food, resolve, etc. With the settlement secured and more cornerstones and blueprints coming through, move towards ways of resolve and reputation generation. Deliver it through the end game.

In amongst that there are all sorts of mini strategies, whether it's small or large blight generation, trade route focus or not, speciality housing or not, tools or not, desired races, key resource management, etc.

[Washingtub]

Something that can make luxury trade packs, buy every luxury item from vendor, have 120+ amber worth of trade (70+ packs) every time vendor comes. After the 3rd vendor I can usually clean them out entirely as well as buy any useful buffs.

Always kiln, almost always ranch, almost always forest hut (blue bars better than making copper for tools but sometimes you get enough from trees ), spam tools and send caches to the capital for ez win.

[shingshing7475]

wood,food,trade,every game is the same,zzzzzzzzzzzz

[RonEmpire]

Originally posted by shingshing7475:

wood,food,trade,every game is the same,zzzzzzzzzzzz

do more modifiers and queen's hand trial mode. maybe try bandit camp. :)

[Carighan]

Originally posted by dande48:

2. Get the best plank building you can ASAP. Then aim for something with cloth.

Yeah, definitely. If I got Humans and Harpies I might opt for cloth first as I can get them both happy easily that way and a lot of the orders include fulfilling the need for clothing or producing clothing. At least it feels like it shows up "too often".

[arjensmit79]

Some pointers
Do you embark with stones ? Opening 2 medium boxes gives you so much.

Also embark with lots of food and always extra people.

Do you try to produce trade goods (packs of trade or luxuries) ? If not, do so.

Ignore production of non-plank building materials. Buy them instead.

Do you build encampments every 8 people you get ? The amount of hostility/resolve that gives is huge, so make it a priority.

Think about value. Your original source of everything is worker time. Make the most of it. Don't be producing bricks and fabric in that crude workstation. Better spend your time producing something valuable and trading for those brings and fabric. Take a moment to calculate how much value per minute your workers are generating at their jobs. You don't need to continuously do this for every task every game, but regularly do it and you will get to know what is and what isn't worthy.

Indeed open 2+ glades at the start of year 2 and bring all your choises together at that moment.

Getting more people has very high priority until you have 24-30 ish. As said, workertime is your base resource. Get more of it. So open those camps, complete those orders that reward people etc.

Tools don't need a production chain. Just the tools recipe if you get it is fine. Find or buy some stacks of bars to produce just a few dozen of tools.

Timeline
Year 1: cut lots of wood, make some provisions and a tradepost, build your encampment. Micro manage starvation if you want to go that far.

Year 2: Make a plan, solve those glade events, do some easy orders, build second encampment. Open boxes. Buy building materials. You probably can live off the food that comes from boxes, orders and glade events this entire year.

Year 3: Stabilize. Get production going of raw food into 1 advanced food liked by most of your people. Fix whats left to fix from your year 2 mess (maybe delayed events, maybe your encampment wasnt finished). Do more orders to get more blueprints. You are mostly looking for service buildings now that offer services liked by your races, or that are monastry, tavern, guild hall. Start planning your third encampment.

Year 4: Bulid your third encampment. Get some service buildings up and ready. Try to produce trade/lux packs and/or tools if you can.
You now should have a stable settlement. Most of your people should be rather happy with 6 global resolve from hearths, -90 hostility from hearths, 3 global resolve from housing. Some resolve from your advanced food. And maybe some global resolve from monastry/tavern/guild hall. If you're lucky even from some artifacts or totems from glade events. Your harpies/foxes/lizards are probably already in the blue and producing your first reputation points (besides orders) in year 4. Humans and beavers have some way to go. Start buying some service goods and more advanced foods from tradersl, but don't turn them on in the service buildings yet. and disable the consumption of the advanced foods. Until 2-3 minutes into the storm.
Self producing extra advanced foods or coats is or even service goods is of course not bad, but entirely optional and only to be done if you actually have the manpower to do so.

Year 5: The advanced foods and services you turned on midway the year 4 storm have kicked in by the time the storm ends and year 5 starts. Having all races in the blue will generate probably about 0.5 - 0.7 rep per minute. Try to keep this going for 7-8 minutes for around 4-5 reputation points. Buy more goods from traders during this year. Turn off what you can turn off 1-2 minutes before the storm starts and turn it back on 1-2 before the storm ends again. (but of course make sure you remain resolve positive during the storm, using your most plentiful goods)

Year 6: Push resolve even harder now. If you have tools, open some glades (ignore the event you will win this year) and send the boxes to the queen to speed up things even more. Use the money to buy even more stuff from traders. Call in traders not only to buy their stuff, but also to keep impatience up for hostility reduction.

During the year 5 and 6 push, be careful accepting people as they may upset your resolve (they come in with base resolve until they have consumed the goods and they may push you into a higher hostility level)

Of course this is a general guideline. Sometimes things go faster and a year 5 win is possible, sometimes it will be slower and a year 7 win is the best you can get. Also of course the turning on and off consumptions is something to do with great care. You dont want to waste stuff nor do you want people to leave during the storm. Just remember it takes 2 minutes to see the full effects of them. (so no use trying to push people into the blue when its already clearance)

[Nordil(Hun)]

Necro:)

It is one of those rare times when i noticed it:P