How To Play

[Jawaka]

Is it just me or does this game give you zero instruction or guidance as to what you should be doing when you first start playing the game for the first time. I feel like i'm just clicking on anything/everything just to see if the game responds with an affirmation that yeah, maybe I should be doing that.

[TripSin]

The game starts you out in a tutorial trying to direct you and get you used to the flow of the game. Try to hover your mouse over *everything*. This will bring up tooltips with information for you to read. Also, press escape and go to the Encyclopedia and read those pages for more information. The first encyclopedia page, for example, will tell you about some of the hotkeys you can use. The overlays are very important to use. Also, go through the keybinds to see what keybinds are available, which keys are doing what, and chang them to your preference.

The very general gist is you need to gain enough reputation (bottom left bar) to win and move on without getting full impatience (bottom right bar). If you're really not getting it, probably worth to watch a let's play or something of someone plaything through a settlement.

[Urza]

the reality is there's just a lot to learn, and then when you think you learned everything, you find out you were doing it all wrong
(the game isnt actually that hard, there's just a huge knowledge gap)

The tutorial is....... sorta helpful, but almost in the same way that a guide on how to use a keyboard would be useful, its not going to be the whole picture.

[Urza]

Originally posted by sweetcorn:

Yeah... as much as I love the game, it takes a long long time to understand it without reading every little thing. I would suggest watching a let's play of it first, maybe one with narration.

I suggest the opposite
faceslam it
whats the worst that can happen, you lose?
the game's fun is in the climb and the learning curve, if someone just gives you the winning formula from the getgo they're cheating you out of a lot of what you paid for, thats just skipping to the end

[el Darkness]

I would personally advise to explore the game, but if you feel that you need external help, then I guess you can watch people play on youtube/twitch. Ron Empire had many vids about AtS, on the other hand he plays highest difficulty, so maybe it is not the best to start with his vids?

[Gwynvyd]

I´m confused. Aren´t you playing the same game I am? The assignments giving rewards are the instructions. I'm over 25 hours and still learning which is why I'm still engaged as well. Did you skip the start? Is there way to skip this?

[kory]

I found the tutorial to be excellent, giving every single step in how to lay the game, almost to the point of being tedious, but I like the detail.

[Monsieur blap]

Originally posted by Urza:

Originally posted by sweetcorn:

Yeah... as much as I love the game, it takes a long long time to understand it without reading every little thing. I would suggest watching a let's play of it first, maybe one with narration.

I suggest the opposite
faceslam it
whats the worst that can happen, you lose?
the game's fun is in the climb and the learning curve, if someone just gives you the winning formula from the getgo they're cheating you out of a lot of what you paid for, thats just skipping to the end

From my limited time playing it there seems to be no winning formula though. Every time you get a blueprint there are choices to be made where you may need to revise your plans. Same goes for orders.

The game is definitely fun.

[Neon Noodles]

Originally posted by Jawaka:

...I feel like i'm just clicking on anything/everything just to see if the game responds with an affirmation that yeah, maybe I should be doing that.

I did this at first as well. Coming off of games like Banished, Settlement Survival and Kingdoms and Castles, I figured that this would just kind of work out, you know? Set up resource gathering, make production, upgrade, rinse and repeat.

It is kind of like that, but its also a lot more complex. You aren't always going to have the resources you need, and worse, you won't always have, or use, the blueprints you end up choosing early on, which can tilt the game rapidly towards a loss. You have to carefully manage your settlement's happiness alongside their survival while keeping the impatience in mind and always moving reputation forward.

As you progress, you'll have to sacrifice some things for others, and I think the favored species mechanic is the easiest example to show that. At first, I thought it was just to satisfy "keep _ at _ happiness" quests but its also useful in preventing your entire settlement from leaving during storms. You may lose 2\3rds, but you won't lose 3\3.

Anyway, its got a long learning curve. You start off trying to reach the glowing marks on the big map, but if you always playing settlements on easy you won't ever have enough points to activate them so you'll restart a lot until you can move up to normal\hard\etc. My advice is to not rush it, do the tutorials if that's helpful to you, and just be ready to lose maps a lot. If it helps, every success will grant you points that can help you progress back in the main city through upgrades that will slow impatience, grant access to greater starting equipment, etc. so its really a long haul type game.

Cheers!

[Pinstar]

What the game really needs to teach you is how to use a building in tutorial 1. Then in tutorial 2, set you up to lean heavily on that building again except OOPS... you didn't get that building's blueprint.... Then set the goal of getting a race up to X resolve, letting the player figure out either an alternative way to get that good produced, or to give up entirely on that good and get a different good produced because they got the good blueprint for it.

[IamMokume]

OP, yes, I feel some things in the tutorial could be better explained, especially how the actual game will flow, with the double uncertainty of blueprints and orders determining the direction of development.
I remember at the very start, I couldn't get my first building on the map because it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out how to select it from the pop-up menu, so you're not alone at feeling a bit lost.

[Special Ed Forces]

Originally posted by Monsieur blap:

Originally posted by Urza:

I suggest the opposite
faceslam it
whats the worst that can happen, you lose?
the game's fun is in the climb and the learning curve, if someone just gives you the winning formula from the getgo they're cheating you out of a lot of what you paid for, thats just skipping to the end

From my limited time playing it there seems to be no winning formula though. Every time you get a blueprint there are choices to be made where you may need to revise your plans. Same goes for orders.

The game is definitely fun.

I mean, that's the point... Some maps you won't be able to follow a formula because you won't have the same resource nodes. If you hit escape when you start the map you can see the resources nodes and the status of fertile soil. That should help curve you in a certain way and to avoid some blueprints that would be useless since you won't be getting those resources to use.

Like if it's a heavy meat, eggs, insects map I won't spec into herbalist stuff or wine/ale. I'll focus on making the things I need to keep food up and trade goods flowing.

[jotwebe]

I've found it useful to wait with unlocking blueprints until I've opened a grove or two, maybe seen what choices I have for the second corner stone - unless there's no-brainers in the list, of course. First year my population will be pretty busy running two woodcutter camps, setting up housing and producing the first building materials, anyway,

Can't say I found the tutorial confusing - it was pretty detailed and informative. I did find the many recipes and their variations a bit overwhelming at first.

[Sverr]

My biggest to struggle at the moment is learning the use for each resource (what I can make\cook out of them) and rememberig what resourses each biomes have. That's something the game doesn't teach you since there's a lot to learn. Apart from that AoT provides enough tooltips, descriptions and hints for everything so I don't thing it does a bad job explaining stuff.

Speaking of "what you should be doing". You have to figure it out yourself since there are plenty of ways to win each map. YOu need to understand what you are working with and figure out how to win with the resourses you have.

Do you want to (can you) fulfill all orders?
Do you want to (can you) get a truckton of reputation through high resolve?
Do you want to (can you) get your reputation by sending al cashes to the citadel and complete the glades for reputation when you can?

The game can't choose your path for you. And it specifically tells you during the tutorial that there is always a way. And that's the main feature of the genre.

[Special Ed Forces]

Originally posted by Sverr:

My biggest to struggle at the moment is learning the use for each resource (what I can make\cook out of them) and rememberig what resourses each biomes have. That's something the game doesn't teach you since there's a lot to learn. Apart from that AoT provides enough tooltips, descriptions and hints for everything so I don't thing it does a bad job explaining stuff.

Speaking of "what you should be doing". You have to figure it out yourself since there are plenty of ways to win each map. YOu need to understand what you are working with and figure out how to win with the resourses you have.

Do you want to (can you) fulfill all orders?
Do you want to (can you) get a truckton of reputation through high resolve?
Do you want to (can you) get your reputation by sending al cashes to the citadel and complete the glades for reputation when you can?

The game can't choose your path for you. And it specifically tells you during the tutorial that there is always a way. And that's the main feature of the genre.

I said it earlier but you can hit escape in a biome and it shows you what resources to expect and how much fertile soil there is (None, average, abundant) to know if you should spec into farming with cornerstones and blueprints.

Hit space bar, pause the game and use the recipe section. It is very useful and it shows you exactly what recipes that resource can be used in and if you have the building for it already, it will also show you that building. There's a lot of small things built in to help until you can memorize things.

I'll typically not choose any blueprints until I open my first dangerous glade to know where I'm going with the whole situation. Saves time and resources.