How to win faster

[Evo]

Hello everyone.

I really like this game, which embrace the best part of city builders for me.
I'm still maxing the citadel and have just beaten prestige 15. I've done the gold seal and on my way to the next. My usual game is a win between year 9 and 11.

So my question is : How to win faster ?

I understand the importance of playing fast to stack seal fragments.
I embark with something to open caches (stone or brawling stuff), food and if i can afford it a camp or a farm. I like taking extra people too for headstart.
My gameplan is to open the nearest dangerous glade ASAP while building my first encampment. I usually go for 2 woodcutters. I try to secure the food with porridge or jerky (depending on ressources and races) while maintaining the resolve in the green. then in try to complete 1 or 2 orders for early reputation and building plan. Then i try to combine resolve, orders and event to reach the 18 rep goal.
I do watch for little ineficiencies as much as possible.

What advices could you give me to speedrun my games ?

Thanks for reading !

[Cubey]

From a whole cycle perspective: don't be afraid to use lower difficulties, especially early in the cycle where you don't have many settlements to trade with yet. Clearing a Veteran map with a negative modifier will offer you more seal fragments than a Prestige 10 map with no modifier, and will almost certainly be faster too. Generally speaking your seal's forest difficulty is a good benchmark of how difficult your runs should be - Prestige 15 is too much for the Golden Seal for example.

Now for individual runs:
The best orders to choose aren't the ones with best rewards, but the ones that are easiest to clear. An order you can't complete is just deadweight.
I almost never open caches, unless it's an emergency or they have something I need to complete an order. I prefer sending them home instead for reputation and amber.
Don't forget about favoring a species, especially when they're just under the resolve threshold. Not that useful earlygame since rep from blue resolve scales with population, but absolutely crucial if you need to squeeze just that one last reputation point.
Don't overextend: if your current glades have enough resources to carry the game, there's no need to open new ones.
Most important - it's good to stay flexible but when a gameplan starts to crystallize, commit to it. If you see there's enough caches to win if you send them back home, focus on that and ignore resolve or orders. Likewise if resolve is high and you see you'll earn enough rep that way, you can ignore events and caches.

[mostly willing]

pop is king. get as much pop as possible when embarking and in the first 2-3 years from orders, newcomers, encampments. labor is the bottleneck for achieving everything you want. simply focusing on pop early can shave off 1-2 years

you don't mention anything about trading. trading is strong and pretty much always worthwhile. you want to get to lvl 1 standing in trade routes as soon as possible - routes are way better from then on

get used to stockpiling your resolve boosts (aka resolve parties) - everything that doesn't put you over the blue threshold is wasted. it's way better to consumption control services and extra complex food one year and farm some rep next year than spend 2 years just under the blue threshold
on a related note, prioritize species according to their rep generation ability - humans are garbage and should be neglected until late game. harpies and foxes are incredibly strong. dinos are good for some early rep, but fall off hard. beavers are the hardest to put in the blue, but they have the lowest decadence of all species

[That Fish Guy]

Cubey, I've never thought about increasing the difficulty as the cycle progresses, but having a lack of trade partners does justify easier difficulties, I appreciate your opinion on that!

I completely agree with a most willing son, population trumps everything.

[bethnichols14]

Start with as many villagers as possible, and boost that early game population; this can save years!
Embrace harpies; put one in the hearth if you don't have a fox.
Always favor perks that boost resolve (lowering hostility is a different problem than speed).
Favor to get into reputation territory; if you have a choice, favor the species with more pop.
Allow yourself to have a messy map.
Utilize small warehouses.
Haulers help the production cycle tremendously.
Take reputation points from events whenever you can.

[Beowulf]

Originally posted by That Fish Guy:

Cubey, I've never thought about increasing the difficulty as the cycle progresses, but having a lack of trade partners does justify easier difficulties, I appreciate your opinion on that!

I completely agree with a most willing son, population trumps everything.

One thing I will note is to keep a eye on how many fragments you will get on completion. If you can't reliable win fast on prestige 15 than doing it at prestige 11 will get you the same fragments without losing out on the blueprints. Same goes for prestige 6 that gives you the same as 10.

[Samseng Yik]

It is very hard to point out exactly how to win faster, due to a lot of random nature we need to face.
The only thing I can advice is mindset

1) Open dangerous glade aggressively.
At this point after win P15, I am aware you should already know real resource come from where, and how to open glade for winning. You also notice already dangerous glade give good resource, while also maybe provide ruin, reputation point from event.
So how to do this aggressively? You also aware some glade events resolution will increase hostility which is big no no is storm .......
The answer is, open a dangerous glade each year as minimum (unless you have a lot things to work in current settlement toward victory), if storm modifier don't have open glade give global resolve penalty. Try open dangerous glade around 40% of the storm.
So you have around 10 minutes to solve the event before reaching the next storm (1 season is 4 minute)

2) Never have idle worker.
Everyone contributing to everything every second. If you have more than 3 idle worker during non storm season, you are a fail manager.
Key things to aware : You will never really need more than 35 workers for your settlement and winning. Unless you try to do order with insane population or special achievement.
Having over population will only drown "typical city builder gamer" with distraction of building more house and idiotic satisfaction of how the settlement grow big and nice.
THIS IS NOT THE FOCUS OF THE GAME. Also, having more population end up give you more hostility, which make your people harder to generate reputation (slower win) and eat more food.
When your people eat more food, then you think "hey now I got extra manpower to make food, it is better than less population right" , this will be another idiotic mindset because you created a problem and solve it instead of avoiding the problem all together (don't forget hostility).
Your production should focus only at things require to survive, things require to win, things require to build.

3) Never waste anything, such as Trader Stock and Queen Impatience.
I always watch broadcast in this game at the broadcast section. I seen a lot idiot "playing nice and moral" by not attacking trader EVEN FOOD AND BUILD MATERIAL IS NEAR 0.
Hoohoo, such nice Viceroy, surely the queen will like you more?
Nah the queen only care victory and efficiency, this is why the envoy also can provide you cornerstone related to cannibalism and shady deal.
Remember the previous point, less Hostility mean easier to generate reputation and easier to avoid storm modifier.
Please comment back immediately, at P15, what is the value of the very 1st trader you get in year 2 (or year 1 if you rush it) ?
What ? You just let them slip away without getting "value" from them? Then you are a manager who never aware "unspent resource is wasted resource".
Why not just click the button, attack trader and rob it. Then in exchange maybe you get around 80 of building material, 50-100 fuel, hundred of food, other materials, random 2 blueprint or cornerstone.
You worry about the death of 3 villager and 4 impatience?
Nah, 3 villager is only worth around 2 embark point. Try rob 1 time, and see the total resource you get net how much embark point. The resource you gain, will give you better confidence toward glade events and alleviate maybe food/fuel/material issue. Whatever you don't need or excess, just dump to trade route.
Impatience? They are hostility reduction. If you play aggressive and win the game fast, you don't need a lot trader arrival anyway. Plus you also don't need spent amber buy stuff from trader, maybe use it in reroll blueprint 1st ? Next trader arrive around year 4, so by that time you should have quite some amber to "make it useful".

4) Do not provide service if cannot generate reputation.
Especially in storm, "using service for resolve to avoid people leaving" is just noob trap for people play the game for many years (high hostility).
True correct win fast style, is only enable the service when the storm left 20% duration. Save resource and generate profit.

5) Difficulty vs fragment/year
Don't need to max difficulty every settlement. But make sure you playing hardest difficulty to unlock next difficulty when you are under beneficial modifier.
P20 Adaman seal will really test your speed

[hardy_conrad]

I really need to start attacking the traders... Been just about barely hanging in there on prestige 10 but yikes. Very obviously no room for messing around / idle workers even on that difficulty so I'm sure the next step will be something else.

[Samseng Yik]

People always talk about how useful to buy thing from trader.
But I am happier when trader delivery free stuff into my settlement.
That said, I recommend 1 rob max per settlement, unless you really reduced the impatience back to 0.
Spend amber and buying tons of stuff on year 4 is very useful.
You can also just call them come for another rob (it get funnier it is the same exact trader coming again)

[Samseng Yik]

Originally posted by hardy_conrad:

I really need to start attacking the traders... Been just about barely hanging in there on prestige 10 but yikes. Very obviously no room for messing around / idle workers even on that difficulty so I'm sure the next step will be something else.

P10 is the major game changer for most of the people.
If you never love the trade route, you mostly forced to accept the fact.
"Buying thing" become very huge resource cost

How good is robbing kickstarting on year 2 .
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3143284617

My finishing year, I consider year 7 finish is a stain of record.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3155240177

[Evo]

Thx for all those responses.
I do use trade routes as much as possible to secure amber, which helps me buy cornerstones, building plan, materials and services/food if i can use it to win some reputation.
I have tried a few time to rob the trader. Wasn't always sucessful with it but i agree that the first trader is mostly wasted. I use him to solve the first glade event if i need stuff.
I agree i should put more emphasis on recruiting pop at the beginning, and not go over a few dozen, cause it breaks the optimisation.

Do you guys use rain water extentively ? I'm trying to use it more as i mostly ignored it unless i got a drizzle geyser for food production.

[Jezoskoczek]

As general advice, this game is about scaling exponentially, faster than the negative mechanics that scale linearly (queen's impatience per minute, hostility per year).

Observe resources that scale into X times more value than they costed to get, *fast*. Prioritize getting them and putting them to work that will make them scale.

The best scaling resource is definitely villagers. They should definitely be prioritized in early and maybe even mid game.

Then there are some other things. Like mentioned above, traders come for free and if you rob them they can give you great value for a price *instantly*, in a click. Water engines are easy to organise and drastically boost your production, multiplying scaling of almost everything you do. Caches on the map are incredibly strong, giving tons of resources for low cost and in a very short time. Cornerstones can boost you significantly if you get some that give high value fast, especially those related to villagers coming in are usually great.

On the other hand there are things that don't scale at all. For example early resolve/reputation is completely worthless IMO. It delays you from better scaling things and gives only a mitigation of queens hostility, the thing that you're supposed to outscale anyway, so it should be safe to completely ignore. And moreover this increases hostility, which can also delay you further through storm debuffs.

Ignore early resolve, ignore impatience. It's even advisable to not take the rewards for orders as long as you don't need them, this way you'll still have your RP later, but keep the hostility lower for the time being.

[Samseng Yik]

I always like to use rain water, but only if I have geyser.
There are many recipe related to "Water" is what I love too, even I don't use rain engine.

Example, pour some water into 4 grain ? voila become 10 porridge.

[mostly willing]

Originally posted by Evo:

Do you guys use rain water extentively ? I'm trying to use it more as i mostly ignored it unless i got a drizzle geyser for food production.

drizzle geysers are the strongest, but all of them are good. clearance rainwater is kinda hard to make use of in some games, but you always have at least the makeshift post. you should make use of rainwater whenever possible

[HouseOfTheRat]

Yep, rainwater is a big boost to almost everything, and of course it helps a lot with speed. Don't feel pressured to minmax every mechanic though, every map is different. Take advantage of what works best in a situation. You will learn with experience.

[el Darkness]

I value highly Drizzle water geyser, then storm water I can often utilize, clearance sometimes I can use, sometimes it is worthless to me. Very rarely I will collect rain water with rain collectors but geysers I tend to use almost always.