Tips for Beginners?

[Vin]

I've played this game for like almost 10 hours. Could you all give me tips or tutorial videos under 30 minutes? I've always lost in the 3rd year because of enemy army. I've always had less resources to create weapons for my own army. Also less treasury for mercenaries.

It's taking a long time to upgrade Burgage Plots to create blacksmith.

Also, how do I get more families as fast as I can at the beginning? Build more houses and keep my approval at at least 50%?

[Clovis Sangrail]

If the enemy army is kicking your ass, try the Rise to Prosperity scenario and learn to develop a prosperous town without the distraction of all the battle fanboi stuff.

And if you play on Relaxing, you get double supplies at the start, which lets you build dwellings for 6 families in March, which practically guarantees a new family in April.

Master the logistics of town building first, then go be bad-ass.

[Jabberwocky]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3354877685

Collection of guides: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1363080/discussions/0/4362376656109218457/

[FearFighter]

You start with only 5 families. You need to get that happiness number up. The correct build order on challenging (applies to easier difficulties) is granary, storehouse, hitching post (immediately order a second ox at your first hitching post), hunting camp, logging camp.

Next build the tannery, saw house, church, 6 burgage plots, stonecutters camp, manor, clay mine, roof tile factory, stone church upgrade.

You only have to have the market supplied with a good for it to count in your burgage plot upgrades. For example, if you have a firewood seller stocking the market via the woodcutters hut, and they max the stalls stock out, you can remove that worker from the woodcutters hut and the stall is still supplying the market til it runs out. You can use this to juggle your manpower around.

If you get your manor built quickly, you can tax people at 100% for one month. You need a minimum of 30 regional wealth to hire the cheapest mercenaries, and if you only buy one ox you should have this much regional wealth left over. Take it from your kindly folks!

Once you have a minimum of 30 personal wealth you can hire the local brigands. You can use them to beat up on a bandit camp. The payout for this is minimum 110 silver, which you can keep for your personal treasury to hire more mercenaries later (highly recommended), or send it back to your regional wealth (I do this with my second bandit camp's winnings).

Having this wealth in your treasury is a great way to defend yourself against the bandit raid or to expand to a second province.

A few things to keep in mind. When you build a "work chain", for example, berry harvester, it needs to be stored or the building will fill to max and you won't collect more berries. A granary will send a worker to the berry harvester building and empty it's storage enabling more production.

A longer work chain is: Logging, saw pit makes boards, storehouse stores the boards, and a trading outpost sells the boards for regional wealth.

Woodcutting huts don't consume logs, they can be placed independently of any other building and storehouses stock the firewood.

Last notable tip is farming: You want to plant the crops by the start of August or end of November. You want to harvest in July and August. You may have to use the "Force Harvest Button" to max out this cycle.

This means having the building built by June, so an April or May start on building it is appropriate.

[Didz]

I just watched a lot of the video Tutorials on YouTube to get a feel for how the game worked. Tacticats videos are usually very good.
https://youtu.be/zdzE_tVKrrI?si=Yrcf-_sVpsFwssYP

[BigPhatPancake]

-check region's fertility status (wheat/emmer, barley, flax)
-check region's rich resource (preferable berries or meat)
those 2 are key to start off well

-build church ASAP
-build logging/fueling
-build food production in first year - last the first winter
-build development points based on your region's strengths (see above first 2 points)

That's great to start off! Good luck with the rest :)

[Dan2312]

Start on relax mode, get a grip of the game, I still like to play on relax mode tbh, i just enjoy watching the peasants at work.

I just don't really see this game as another stronghold type game.