What's a good pace to aim for?

[Mattrex]

Just recently picked up the game, and have completed my first full cycle on Settler. For the second cycle, I kicked it up to Pioneer, and of course individual settlements are a little slower as a result. My question is: what's a good "par time" for completing a settlement?

I expect it to differ by difficulty and prestige, of course, and for sealed forests to take longer, but I'm interested to know what to aim for as I began ramping up the difficulty.

By the end of my first cycle on Settler, I was completing settlements in about 4-5 years, though the sealed forest at the end took me 7, I think, because I was going in blind and had to figure out how to complete the seal in real time. I've done two runs since on Pioneer, both of which were 6 years. Both felt slow, and I had the feeling that I needed to step it up, but I don't have a good sense for what's reasonable yet.

I'd appreciate some perspective from more veteran players.

[Mmm]

If you care about optimal pace, you should treat everything below Prestige as tutorial and you can hardly get an answer how fast you should go in it. Just learn the game, or enjoy casual city building.

For P roughly 4-6 is great, 7-8 is normal, >9 is slowish.

Rushing is not fun for everyone and not necessary to win the game, more like self imposed challenge. Though it is a thing in Hand Trial (post/end game),

[Skallagrim]

A term commonly mentioned by experienced player is 1-seal-fragment-per-year toward the end game. The final seal requires gathering 105 seal fragments in 92 years. The fourth out of eight seal require 35 seals in 64 years, which is half the place. As you get better you will learn to finish your settlement faster.

As a quick reference, you get 2 seal fragments for beating a map on Pioneer, 5 fragments on Prestige 2, and 9 fragments on P20. If there is a negative map modifier, you can get a royal resupply that gives you 5 fragments and change the math.

Take as long as you need with seal forest. The pace math doesn't apply and you have no limit on how long it takes to beat it.

This is a screenshot of my most recent Queens Hand Trial, which is considered the final end game challenge. If you look at the bottom corner I have close to 10 years to spare.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3356089076

[Samseng Yik]

Settler difficulty is so bad, you should never even touch it.
It only give you false sense of "how chill is this game" and forgot the real gaming.

Always treat this is a roguelite.
Be adaptable and see what offered to you and pick what is most suitable to your current settlement.

Once you understand the game mechanic, "fragment per year" is the thing that test your skill.
P9 difficulty below is consider chill gaming by veteran unless stacked with dangerous modifier.

Your mindset will set to improve by this game.
Be flexible and pragmatic as long as it help you achieve victory

[vindicar]

Low diff player here. If you don't particularly care about rewards, Pioneer is comfy, as it's hard to lose there. Veteran requires some effort, but it's possible to win about as fast as on Pioneer, and rewards are about twice as much. Still working my way up to Viceroy and the Gold Seal.
For me, winning before year 6 is a good pace, though I only get there about half the time.

[Samseng Yik]

This is really good old memories call back few years ago.
Where veteran is my comfort zone, playing a round of viceroy exhaust me mentally.
Take several round to "get used to it".

Oh yes not everyone need to be hardcore.
For casual play finishing veteran seal is already kinda fine

[lethminite]

It depends how many citadel upgrades you've unlocked. They each add production speed, or more charges on nodes, etc.
Experienced players generally win ~year 5, but that's also with all those benefits. When I first started playing, I was finishing more like year 8.

I wouldn't worry too much about how fast you are finishing, so long as you are winning. Some people do start losing, because they are wasting lots of time, and need to stop playing sim city, and focus on win conditions, but so long as your impatience bar isn't full, you are doing fine.
I'd suggest just upping the difficulty every time you win, until you don't. Don't worry too much about getting the seal. If you get it, you get it, if you don't you don't.

[MadArtillery]

Honestly runs can vary quite a bit, citadels also make a difference, and difficulty makes matches longer, or shorter, one of the prestige halfs the impatience reduction for gaining a reputation which will light a fire under your ass. A map modifier for no orders at all will make things take longer, so much can be different player to player, run to run it's a hard question.



If you want to get a feel for what the game will feel like for the most part, hit prestige 1 to get the big rep requirement then try to hit your current range of time frames with probably around double what the lowest difficulty requires in reputation.

You will rapidly learn orders aren't how to win if you haven't already, especially as there simply won't be enough even if you somehow manage to hit them all. Hitting a species blue zone on their resolve bar and glade events are the real way to win.

[Kanjejou]

Personally im not a good player, so if im not going full force i uwually win year 8+
Doing my best i may win around year 5-6, but i dont enjoy playing so tight,

In the end if you play a "hard" game and win but feel no joy at the end, was it really worth it?

[Samseng Yik]

Getting out of comfort zone is never a comfortable feeling (of course).
It depend what is the goal of the activity.
If your aim is "to chill my mind after office hour" , do whatever you want.
If your aim is "willing to step further and explore different world" yes you need rise difficulty slightly.
Maybe Start Viceroy difficulty ONLY AFTER passive reach 12+

[arjensmit79]

You are currently just learning the game. Do not yet worry about how fast you win, just worry about winning at increasing difficulty levels. And how fast you ramp up the difficulty level until you have done the golden seal. After the golden seal you have the freedom to skip seals on your way to the adamantine seal. Skipping seals requires you to be fast in your settlements to some degeree. If you skip none, you should not have to worry about time all the way up to the final, adamantine seal.

Most players, when they reached P20 and the adamantine seal, will be spending 7-8 years per game. If you are not yet bored by the game, then is the time learn how to do it faster. Experienced players win P20 games in 4-5 years. Settler-Pioneer games can be won in 1-2 years.

Yesterday i wrote a post here on how to do seal games in 5-6 years.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1336490/discussions/0/4702413670015167382/

And i wrote one on reddit on how to do normal games in 4-5 years.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Against_the_Storm/comments/1gds0s9/comment/lu4n27f/

Note that they are actually rather similar.
You can read that and learn the "meta" for experienced players right now. Or you can consider that spoiler info and just keep trying stuff yourself for now.

[Mattrex]

One of the reasons I want to know what a good pace is is so that I don't develop bad habits while I'm learning the game. "Relax and go at your own pace" is all well and good, but if you can win lower difficulties by standing around with your thumb up your ass, it's tempting to carry that attitude forward, and then be forced to unlearn dozens of hours of habits when you hit something that kicks your ass.

I'd rather learn the good habits as I go, and part of that is winning efficiently, even on lower difficulties where it's completely unnecessary. Not that I'm trying to be sweaty or maximally mathematically optimal or anything, just "good enough".

But there's always a ticking clock in this game, both in an individual settlement and on the world map. So if I'm slow now, I'd rather figure that out now than later.

Judging from what I've read, 6-7 years per settlement seems fine for my skill level and where I am in the game, so I'm confident that I'm at least not doing anything egregiously bad.

[arjensmit79]

Well, if you want to get right into the optimal playstyle for fast wins, read those 2 posts i linked.

But as far as "bad habbits" go. Its kind of how the progression of this game goes. You start with a city builder mindset where you build beautiful towns to stand the test of time. (we all
did) The game gradually builds up in difficulty as new prestige modifiers nullify strategies you thought were working fine. And in the end, you are stripped of everything and what is left is a minimalistic pure focus on the victory condition.

[Mattrex]

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

Well, if you want to get right into the optimal playstyle for fast wins, read those 2 posts i linked.

But as far as "bad habbits" go. Its kind of how the progression of this game goes. You start with a city builder mindset where you build beautiful towns to stand the test of time. (we all
did) The game gradually builds up in difficulty as new prestige modifiers nullify strategies you thought were working fine. And in the end, you are stripped of everything and what is left is a minimalistic pure focus on the victory condition.

I read your posts. I'd been mostly ignoring service buildings up to this point, but I decided to try leaning into them on my next game. I got a good wine setup with a Cellar, berry farming, and a Tavern.

And, wow. Somewhere around the beginning of year 4, suddenly all three of my races were in blue resolve and I was getting +0.6 reputation per minute. I've never seen more than one race in blue resolve at a time before now. I wanted to build on this success by making a Bathhouse, but I barely had time to even build and staff it before I had already won the scenario. Year 4 win, just like that.