How to tell how fast you should grow?

[Windy Winston]

I have three villagers, but I don't want to grow too fast. What is the best way to determine what your population should be in your tiny starting home area?

[Jumo747]

I see people liberating towns at day 32-45.... I am on day 85 myself and just got to the Belltower quest that lets you liberate the town but haven't done so yet,

basically I made sure to research ALL the Tier 1 things so the research table is empty and now I moved locations to a better spot and starting Tier 2 but Tier 2 takes forever so while im making my new Town im working on making better Weapons and armor for my Villagers WHILE i figure out how to better manage food and get the best food for them for when the fight comes.

I personally like the slow and steady pace as i get to enjoy the game and not beat it before i get to see all that is offered, if i cheesed all the fights and cleared the map without seeing all the Tiers etc ill never touch the game again as ill consider it "beaten"

[Windy Winston]

How do you tell what you need in regards to food vs population?

[Elidar]

You will inevitably get stuck on tiers 2/3, as you need certain professions to research, make, and advance in general. For example, in the very first town there are only two out of five or six required professions to continue growing your village and the rebellion respectively. Unless you put everything you have into bringing your reputation with other towns to a max and liberating them (old coins, quests, structures), you will have a hard time progressing.

Another thing you need to take into consideration is that the bandit and brigand raids (once you start liberating villages), will become more intense as time goes by. For example. right now my raid value is 10 and each defeated raid increases it by 1. Having guards walk around helps greatly to slow down the raid gauge to a minimum, but it's till there.

If you take too long, you might end up in a situation where your equipment and weapons just don't match the ones the enemies have (as well as the numbers), and you will be outgunned and outmanned. So while I am all for the slower approach, right now I understand that I desperately need a laborer and carpenter to research vital technologies and start crafting better gear and to do that, I need to liberate one or the other specific town that I don't have high reputation with. Plus they are far away from my main settlement. So...

In any case. play as you are most comfortable with, but don't forget that ultimately time plays against you.

[Elidar]

@DrJerky

Think this way. Each of your villagers requires 3 food items. If, for example, foragers and such can survive on berries and mushrooms, the ones you assign as companions and go to liberate villages and fight bandit/brigand camps need the best food you can get in each of the three slots to maximize their health and stamina. ideally, one of these foods should be stews to increase combat attributes by a percentage.

Taking that into consideration, food only lasts a certain amount of in-game time, so you have to either bring spares to make sure your guys are fed, of risk quick defeat in combat.

Generally you should allocate about 3-6 food items per day for one villager, depending on the quality and the duration of the food. This can be quite challenging when your population crosses a certain threshold, but the foragers/hunters should help a little with that. Alternatively buy lots of fish from fish merchants and smoke it. Smoked meats are more nutritious and last longer compared to the fried variants.

And of course once you get the pot up or even better the tavern, then you will be able to start cooking the really good stuff. But you will need salt and spices I presume. That's in addition to veggies and other ingredients, so set up a few farms to grow potatoes, beets, garlic, etc. Oh and have one farm fully dedicated for wheat and the other for flax, hemp, and cotton if you don't want to run out of crafting materials.

[Elidar]

P.S.: When I say each villager requires 3 food items, I mean ideally. They can function without food or with fewer food items equipped. Just makes them less happy.

[Windy Winston]

Originally posted by Elidar:

P.S.: When I say each villager requires 3 food items, I mean ideally. They can function without food or with fewer food items equipped. Just makes them less happy.

I think this is what I was looking for. It sounds like there is no risk of starvation, and mood is what matters?

[Kapitänleutnant Kerensky]

Personal choice - I am on Day 81, my town is T3 and I have a standing army of 25 or so folks with 2 civilians I do not plan on letting combat (laborer and innkeeper - since both are crap toons) and I have almost all the buildings/items researched (its the size issue that keeps me from having more buildings constructed) - the biggest and I mean BIGGEST problem is trying to restructure your T2 town to T3 because the devs decided that every little building needs to become a giant deadzone of space - I am having to juggle all of the buildings right now so that I can build a LG house then move strategic people into it, destroy their old house because I am trying to open up space for something else....its down right ridiculous....and personally I DO NOT SEE the reason for making T1 lets say 50sqm, then T2, 250sgm, and then T3 2500sqm its just dumb and it WASTES so much space and the moronic toons are constantly getting stuck in all of the dead spaces around the building too....

I would have designed the T1 as a block....no empty areas....T2 would have UPGRADED that block and if anything maybe slightly larger and then T3 I would have made a second floor to it but kept the original smaller footprint - you should see how large a large house footprint is....or the T3 warehouse....workshop....its insane

[Elidar]

Eh, if there';s absolutely nothing to eat from the stockpiles/barns, etc., they will forage berries and mushrooms on their own and only then start working. My lumberjacks are in a separate camp and that's what they do. Once I forgot to bring them food and saw that they foraged themselves. Since they are in no danger from bandits and such, I left them to their own devices, and they seem to be doing fine just on berries and mushrooms.

[Jumo747]

Originally posted by DrJerky:

Originally posted by Elidar:

P.S.: When I say each villager requires 3 food items, I mean ideally. They can function without food or with fewer food items equipped. Just makes them less happy.

I think this is what I was looking for. It sounds like there is no risk of starvation, and mood is what matters?

Well they wont work without food so there's that, whatever you ask them to do they stop and go look for food on their own which most of the time they find nothing for a long time until they get berrys or mushrooms or walk into a bandit camp and die lol

[Jumo747]

Originally posted by Elidar:

Eh, if there';s absolutely nothing to eat from the stockpiles/barns, etc., they will forage berries and mushrooms on their own and only then start working. My lumberjacks are in a separate camp and that's what they do. Once I forgot to bring them food and saw that they foraged themselves. Since they are in no danger from bandits and such, I left them to their own devices, and they seem to be doing fine just on berries and mushrooms.

Lmao i did this too and i went to see their stock fkrs had 250 roasted mushrooms and weren't sharing xD

[Elidar]

@Kapitänleutnant Kerensky Agreed. I was amazed by the size of the hunter's lodge... Why does it have to be bigger than the logging camp? It's not like they are hunting elephants there or dragging ballistae around...

[Kapitänleutnant Kerensky]

Originally posted by Elidar:

Eh, if there';s absolutely nothing to eat from the stockpiles/barns, etc., they will forage berries and mushrooms on their own and only then start working. My lumberjacks are in a separate camp and that's what they do. Once I forgot to bring them food and saw that they foraged themselves. Since they are in no danger from bandits and such, I left them to their own devices, and they seem to be doing fine just on berries and mushrooms.

OHH That actually may be a great idea - create a technical outpost but in reality its just different production areas with their own stuff


Lumber Camp
Houses
Food only for them

Gatherer Camp
Houses
Food only for them

Hmm....this would aleviate the issue with the toons running all over the main complex and normally not getting everything done....the main compound can be the smith/smelter/mine perhaps - Oh man, that has got me thinking now.....if the outpost flags are able to be placed fairly close this would have some good merit

I was considering creating separate war camps next to each liberated village with just a couple of big houses and a warehouse - those toons would only be guards and nothing else so that when the reclamation parties show up, I do not have to gather my main compound and walk them over.....I would have a contingent already on site ready to face off with whatever was coming.

[Elidar]

@Kapitänleutnant Kerensky, it's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's great for production; you can pretty much just outsource production or the gathering of different raw materials to those camps. This way, you can focus your main settlement on the important things, like growing enough food, producing quality weapons, etc.

Also, if you have guards in your settlement, you probably noticed that they wander off to every sign post you put up. A great way to get rid of this annoying wandering is to designate a separate 'outpost' just for the signposts. I did that, called it "signs" and assigned all the posts there. Now my guards diligently patrol only within the 'borders' of my main settlement and don't wander leagues away, then run out of food and get in random skirmishes with bandits on the roads. Even in the settlement, they run out of food and stop doing their jobs, but I hope the Devs will fix that and let them restock on grub every now and then.

The downside of separate outposts is you having to work as a delivery boy. Essentially, you have to dart between them when something is needed and transport the goods. I am not sure if there's an option to automate is though a sort of 'trade' window as with the liberated villages or perhaps I haven;t found it yet. But that's pretty much the only downside if you don't count the random raids and animal attacks. Yeah, raids. Outposts are also susceptible to bandit raids (perhaps brigands lateer in the game). I am not there yet, so can't say. So that's another downside. On the bright side, each outpost starts from difficulty 1, and if you have guards in your main settlement, the raid progress slows to a crawl, so it's worth having a couple of guys (or even just one) patrolling 24/7.

Anyway, I hope it helps.