Any Tips for Beginner? This game is overwhelming for me

[Alwaysnoob]

Hi everyone,

I really love grand strategy games and have played several titles such as Crusader Kings 3, Victoria 3, Europa Universalis IV, and the Civilization series. I have a particular fondness for strategy games with deep economic details (I actually love Vic 3, even though I see many people dislike it). That's why I think Field Glory: Kingdoms has great potential.

However, I find this game very complicated compared to other grand strategy games I've played. I rarely use tutorials because I prefer to learn while playing, but in this game, the tutorials don't seem sufficient. Concepts like the benefits of food, stewardship, and piety are unclear to me during gameplay. While I enjoy the variety of buildings available, their benefits and mechanics seem overly complex. I also confuse how to upgrade building to next tier or how to increase building slot. So confusing. Or suddenly my manpower and gold decrease so much when waging war, when there are so much rebellion after conquer region and really confuse how to stop it.

Could anyone share some tips and tricks on how to better understand and manage these mechanics?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Sry for my bad english

P.S. I have only played for 30 turns, so maybe it's too soon for me to be asking.

[Patrus]

The game is indeed quite complex, reading manual may help.

Some general tips:

Resources:

food - increases speed of population growth
health - also increases speed of population growth, but more efficiently for larger populations, protects from plagues and negative events
infrastructure - for buildings
piety - income should be at least 4 per one population (if you have 10 population - you should have 40 piety income), otherwise you can get heresy, which decreases loyalty
stewardship - income should be at least 1 per population (otherwise you can get bandits) and at least 50% of gold income (otherwise you will lose gold), otherwise useful for loyalty (stewardship increases local authority up to 100, local authority increases region's loyalty), it's important especially in regions far away from your capital

For military: there are generally 3 types of units, you need to pay attention when recruiting them:
levies - cheap to recruit, expensive to maintain, generally weaker, good to recruit for short times, when you need them, and then you can disband them
standing units - expensive to recruit, cheap to maintain, generally stronger, good long-term as the core of your army
mercenaries - may be good, but very expensive

Building slots increase with population - if you have, let's say, 10 population, you have (normally, without modifiers) 10 building slots.

For money problems - you can sell your regional decisions (open regional decision menu at the top right and CTRL-right click a decision you don't want), it can be a good source of money at the beginning of the game.

When constructing buildings, they often produce resources that can be used by other buildings. If on the building panel it says, that for example it will increase income of other buildings, it may be more worth to build it.

Edit:
When you conquer a region, it will usually get some negative modifiers (like "just conquered", "under pacification", etc., you can see them on the region panel) that decrease loyalty and productivity. They pass after a few turns.
For that time it is generally better to keep an army in that region or nearby, because there may be a chance of rebels spawning (you can see chance of rebellion on the loyalty tooltip).
After some time, usually those modifiers are removed and loyalty increases.

[gregmannuk]

Early on concentrate on food and then infrastructure production. This will accelerate the production of other buildings and population and give you time to learn about the others. Early on Piety and Stewardship only matter if regions you own are not the same religion and/or culture.

The number of buildings slots is limited by population so when you can't build concentrate on food production. Some building are listed as "milestone building" and will then allow the later tire building for their area to become available. If the upgrade you want is not shown you can always use the Edict button to see if it can be selected by spending authority.

If you are getting a lot of rebellions look at the loyalty and revolt risk of your regions and their respective religion and culture. Some buildings increase loyalty. If the region is not the same religion that will have most impact so look to build piety producing buildings.

Have a look at the manual for areas you are struggling with. A lot of the mechanics are better explained there.

[norfolk.traveller]

The manual is really good, but I find it's most useful if you already have some idea of what's going on and use the manual to flesh out the details. The best guide I've found that got me a decent understanding of the basics is a Das Tactic preview. Here's a link if you're interested...
https://youtu.be/P6vXJWmWSow?si=G4jMDf6hvKgtOg_C

[jonandbeth]

That is a great and concise recap Patrus. That certainly helped me too. Appreciate it.

[Groogo]

Originally posted by norfolk.traveller:

The manual is really good, but I find it's most useful if you already have some idea of what's going on and use the manual to flesh out the details. The best guide I've found that got me a decent understanding of the basics is a Das Tactic preview. Here's a link if you're interested...
https://youtu.be/P6vXJWmWSow?si=G4jMDf6hvKgtOg_C

Thank you, I finally found a couple of hours to begin my game, I will start with this.

[archonsod]

Originally posted by Alwaysnoob:

Hi everyone,
I rarely use tutorials because I prefer to learn while playing, but in this game, the tutorials don't seem sufficient.

I think the key thing the tutorial tells you is what the little red question mark button does in the top right of most windows ;)

Concepts like the benefits of food, stewardship, and piety are unclear to me during gameplay.

They're actually fairly straightforward, in fact you probably already know what they do (under another name) given the games you've played.
Food prevents people from starving to death :) It also governs population growth - the more food you produce, the quicker your people reproduce (after which your food store resets, or at least drops to the percentage you're allowed to carry over if you've built any food storage buildings). It also helps to feed any armies you happen to have hanging around. There's not really much else to it, beyond noting that food is redistributed on the provincial level so even a town which is producing negative food won't necessarily starve to death if the neighbours have a surplus.
Stewardship boosts local authority. It's kind of a catch all for 'good things happen'. High local authority increases loyalty (and offsets penalties from distance to the capital and similar) which reduces the revolt risk and increases the chance of good events, like the people spontaneously deciding to help out on your building project, while decreasing the chance of bad events like banditry.
Piety is basically religion. The more you produce, the more you'll convert the local populace to your religion and the less likely they'll go off and worship suspicious cloven hoofed forest deities and upset the Pope. The main downside of course being the higher your piety production the more burny the local priesthood tend to get with heretics, lonely old women who read tea leaves and anyone who knows how to spell 'astrolabe'.

While I enjoy the variety of buildings available, their benefits and mechanics seem overly complex.

It's because it tries to give you as much information as possible on the building screen. They're actually fairly straightforward though. First thing to look at is the net income. This shows how much you're paying to keep the building, and what you're getting out of the building. Helpfully, you'll also see things like "including X <resource> from <good>" which lets you know the building is generating additional stuff because it's consuming a good. You can also see "Missing bonus of X <resource> from <good>" in which case the building could be giving you even more if it had access to the specified good. Some buildings will also list a "needs <good>", in which case you need access to that good for the building to even function, and if it's being fulfilled it'll either be 'local good' - i.e you produce it in the same province or 'imported from ...' if you're buying it from the neighbours, along with the cost (note even if you're using a local resource it'll have a cost). After which it'll tell you what the building does - e.g. piety bonus 10% means it'll give you a 10% bonus to piety production.
When looking to build a building these will usually be marked 'estimated' which just means that would be the result if the building was built *now*; i.e. if nothing changed between you selecting the building and it being completed. For buildings that provide a resource it'll helpfully tell you something like "X nearby would produce more", or in other words you have X buildings which could use that good to produce more stuff. If the building needs a specific resource you can also see "needs X, which can be imported from Y" which just means the required resource isn't available locally but can be acquired from another province or neighbour (via trade).
Note the goods are all tracked on the trade interface, so if you want a quick overview of what you're producing, using, importing and exporting it breaks it all down for you there.

I also confuse how to upgrade building to next tier or how to increase building slot.

Building slots are determined by your population, though some buildings also provide you with bonus slots. Not every building requires a slot though - those with a green border generally don't use a slot, while some like hamlets and fortifications are temporary (we'll come back to them), it's noted in the building picker how many slots a building takes, or if it evaporates at the end of turn.
Upgrades will appear as you unlock higher tiers of buildings, which usually requires a specific building. The craftsman hall for example unlocks more advanced industry buildings, including upgraded buildings. Key buildings are once again noted in the building picker, similarly if the building is an upgrade of an existing building it will tell you.
One of the quirkier bits it doesn't explain well is fortifications. Your region has a fortification level which, amongst other things, determines how well it can hold out in a siege. This operates slightly differently in that there's a number of temporary buildings, such as 'secluded hamlet' which when built provide a number of fortification points and then vanish. Once the fortification points hit or pass a specific threshold (noted on the tooltip if you hover over the fortification icon) you'll get a more permanent fortification such as a 'log stockade'.

So confusing. Or suddenly my manpower and gold decrease so much when waging war,

Can be a couple of things. First of all of course military units in the field need wages and reinforcements which hits the manpower and coffers. Second is trade; the neighbours are less inclined to sell you stuff when you declare war on them, so any bonus outputs, or for that matter buildings, dependent on goods you were buying from them will disappear, unless you have an alternative source.

[willgamer47]

Pin this thread?!!!

[Alwaysnoob]

thank you guys for answering really helpful

Originally posted by Patrus:

The game is indeed quite complex, reading manual may help.

Some general tips:

Resources:

food - increases speed of population growth
health - also increases speed of population growth, but more efficiently for larger populations, protects from plagues and negative events
infrastructure - for buildings
piety - income should be at least 4 per one population (if you have 10 population - you should have 40 piety income), otherwise you can get heresy, which decreases loyalty
stewardship - income should be at least 1 per population (otherwise you can get bandits) and at least 50% of gold income (otherwise you will lose gold), otherwise useful for loyalty (stewardship increases local authority up to 100, local authority increases region's loyalty), it's important especially in regions far away from your capital

For military: there are generally 3 types of units, you need to pay attention when recruiting them:
levies - cheap to recruit, expensive to maintain, generally weaker, good to recruit for short times, when you need them, and then you can disband them
standing units - expensive to recruit, cheap to maintain, generally stronger, good long-term as the core of your army
mercenaries - may be good, but very expensive

Building slots increase with population - if you have, let's say, 10 population, you have (normally, without modifiers) 10 building slots.

For money problems - you can sell your regional decisions (open regional decision menu at the top right and CTRL-right click a decision you don't want), it can be a good source of money at the beginning of the game.

When constructing buildings, they often produce resources that can be used by other buildings. If on the building panel it says, that for example it will increase income of other buildings, it may be more worth to build it.

Edit:
When you conquer a region, it will usually get some negative modifiers (like "just conquered", "under pacification", etc., you can see them on the region panel) that decrease loyalty and productivity. They pass after a few turns.
For that time it is generally better to keep an army in that region or nearby, because there may be a chance of rebels spawning (you can see chance of rebellion on the loyalty tooltip).
After some time, usually those modifiers are removed and loyalty increases.

really helpful tips, thanks
I know this one actually already given in tips, but still your summary make my brain easier to chew it

Originally posted by gregmannuk:

Early on concentrate on food and then infrastructure production. This will accelerate the production of other buildings and population and give you time to learn about the others. Early on Piety and Stewardship only matter if regions you own are not the same religion and/or culture.

The number of buildings slots is limited by population so when you can't build concentrate on food production. Some building are listed as "milestone building" and will then allow the later tire building for their area to become available. If the upgrade you want is not shown you can always use the Edict button to see if it can be selected by spending authority.

If you are getting a lot of rebellions look at the loyalty and revolt risk of your regions and their respective religion and culture. Some buildings increase loyalty. If the region is not the same religion that will have most impact so look to build piety producing buildings.

Have a look at the manual for areas you are struggling with. A lot of the mechanics are better explained there.

thank you so much
actually I am aware about loyalty indicator but confuse how to increase it asap (like how piety and steward affect loyalty)

Originally posted by norfolk.traveller:

The manual is really good, but I find it's most useful if you already have some idea of what's going on and use the manual to flesh out the details. The best guide I've found that got me a decent understanding of the basics is a Das Tactic preview. Here's a link if you're interested...
https://youtu.be/P6vXJWmWSow?si=G4jMDf6hvKgtOg_C

thanks

[Alwaysnoob]

Originally posted by archonsod:

They're actually fairly straightforward, in fact you probably already know what they do (under another name) given the games you've played.
Food prevents people from starving to death :) It also governs population growth - the more food you produce, the quicker your people reproduce (after which your food store resets, or at least drops to the percentage you're allowed to carry over if you've built any food storage buildings). It also helps to feed any armies you happen to have hanging around. There's not really much else to it, beyond noting that food is redistributed on the provincial level so even a town which is producing negative food won't necessarily starve to death if the neighbours have a surplus.

yeah of course I know food prevent people from starving, I am actually also aware food use for increase population, but actually still confuse how it affect troops supply (still not understand the mechanics) and also wonder if food traded between region/province or only stay in one region, especially supply region that lack of food

Originally posted by archonsod:

Stewardship boosts local authority. It's kind of a catch all for 'good things happen'. High local authority increases loyalty (and offsets penalties from distance to the capital and similar) which reduces the revolt risk and increases the chance of good events, like the people spontaneously deciding to help out on your building project, while decreasing the chance of bad events like banditry.
Piety is basically religion. The more you produce, the more you'll convert the local populace to your religion and the less likely they'll go off and worship suspicious cloven hoofed forest deities and upset the Pope. The main downside of course being the higher your piety production the more burny the local priesthood tend to get with heretics, lonely old women who read tea leaves and anyone who knows how to spell 'astrolabe'.

thank you, the mechanism of stewardship and piety actually pretty straightforward if I look again the tips. It looks like I confuse with ck3 stewardship and piety system.

Originally posted by archonsod:

It's because it tries to give you as much information as possible on the building screen. They're actually fairly straightforward though. First thing to look at is the net income. This shows how much you're paying to keep the building, and what you're getting out of the building. Helpfully, you'll also see things like "including X <resource> from <good>" which lets you know the building is generating additional stuff because it's consuming a good. You can also see "Missing bonus of X <resource> from <good>" in which case the building could be giving you even more if it had access to the specified good. Some buildings will also list a "needs <good>", in which case you need access to that good for the building to even function, and if it's being fulfilled it'll either be 'local good' - i.e you produce it in the same province or 'imported from ...' if you're buying it from the neighbours, along with the cost (note even if you're using a local resource it'll have a cost). After which it'll tell you what the building does - e.g. piety bonus 10% means it'll give you a 10% bonus to piety production.
When looking to build a building these will usually be marked 'estimated' which just means that would be the result if the building was built *now*; i.e. if nothing changed between you selecting the building and it being completed. For buildings that provide a resource it'll helpfully tell you something like "X nearby would produce more", or in other words you have X buildings which could use that good to produce more stuff. If the building needs a specific resource you can also see "needs X, which can be imported from Y" which just means the required resource isn't available locally but can be acquired from another province or neighbour (via trade).
Note the goods are all tracked on the trade interface, so if you want a quick overview of what you're producing, using, importing and exporting it breaks it all down for you there.

Building slots are determined by your population, though some buildings also provide you with bonus slots. Not every building requires a slot though - those with a green border generally don't use a slot, while some like hamlets and fortifications are temporary (we'll come back to them), it's noted in the building picker how many slots a building takes, or if it evaporates at the end of turn.
Upgrades will appear as you unlock higher tiers of buildings, which usually requires a specific building. The craftsman hall for example unlocks more advanced industry buildings, including upgraded buildings. Key buildings are once again noted in the building picker, similarly if the building is an upgrade of an existing building it will tell you.
One of the quirkier bits it doesn't explain well is fortifications. Your region has a fortification level which, amongst other things, determines how well it can hold out in a siege. This operates slightly differently in that there's a number of temporary buildings, such as 'secluded hamlet' which when built provide a number of fortification points and then vanish. Once the fortification points hit or pass a specific threshold (noted on the tooltip if you hover over the fortification icon) you'll get a more permanent fortification such as a 'log stockade'.

Can be a couple of things. First of all of course military units in the field need wages and reinforcements which hits the manpower and coffers. Second is trade; the neighbours are less inclined to sell you stuff when you declare war on them, so any bonus outputs, or for that matter buildings, dependent on goods you were buying from them will disappear, unless you have an alternative source.

thank you, really helpful. my problem now I can't disband troops given by vassal to me. And keep reducing my gold and manpower

[Mittens]

How do I increase my authority?

[bylandt11]

I've been playing Leon/Castille in the El Cid scenario and I'm winning my wars, but for the rest I have no idea what I'm doing.

For instance: despite my impressive military victories (destroyed Almoravids, conquered Zaragoza, ...) my authority seems to go down.

I'm beginning to think this game is work, which I get enough of in real life, not play.

Medieval rulers did not have to micromanage the building of a pig farm, a church bell or the number of craftsmen making shoes. The game loses itself in over-analysis of how medieval realms functioned. Tokens? Max demesne? Authority? Legacy? Stewardship? Civilisational tier? Ascending Duchy? Young unruly empire? Interesting as historical analysis, but not much fun playing.

I applaud the devs for their ambition, but I prefer elegant simplicity as the core of a good game. Still, I'm not giving up yet. I'm open to having my mind changed.

[Machiavelli]

Originally posted by bylandt11:

I've been playing Leon/Castille in the El Cid scenario and I'm winning my wars, but for the rest I have no idea what I'm doing.

For instance: despite my impressive military victories (destroyed Almoravids, conquered Zaragoza, ...) my authority seems to go down.

I'm beginning to think this game is work, which I get enough of in real life, not play.

Medieval rulers did not have to micromanage the building of a pig farm, a church bell or the number of craftsmen making shoes. The game loses itself in over-analysis of how medieval realms functioned. Tokens? Max demesne? Authority? Legacy? Stewardship? Civilisational tier? Ascending Duchy? Young unruly empire? Interesting as historical analysis, but not much fun playing.

I applaud the devs for their ambition, but I prefer elegant simplicity as the core of a good game. Still, I'm not giving up yet. I'm open to having my mind changed.

Nobody plays these niche strategy games for simplicity. If you want simple games go play CK3 or an RTS. Did you know there is an automated mode for provinces and independent vassals that manage regions? Prob not. Micromanagement is important for small realms. That's all.

It's okay to like simple games and there is a place for them. But why should this game be dumbed down? If you look at the history of AGEOD games, this game is quite consistent with their catalogue.

[Darthclimo]

Originally posted by bylandt11:

I've been playing Leon/Castille in the El Cid scenario and I'm winning my wars, but for the rest I have no idea what I'm doing.

For instance: despite my impressive military victories (destroyed Almoravids, conquered Zaragoza, ...) my authority seems to go down.

I'm beginning to think this game is work, which I get enough of in real life, not play.

Medieval rulers did not have to micromanage the building of a pig farm, a church bell or the number of craftsmen making shoes. The game loses itself in over-analysis of how medieval realms functioned. Tokens? Max demesne? Authority? Legacy? Stewardship? Civilisational tier? Ascending Duchy? Young unruly empire? Interesting as historical analysis, but not much fun playing.

I applaud the devs for their ambition, but I prefer elegant simplicity as the core of a good game. Still, I'm not giving up yet. I'm open to having my mind changed.

This attitude will be the death of the games I love. Play an 'X-ray vision Ubisoft fetch retch" if you prefer simplicity.

[archonsod]

Originally posted by Mittens:

How do I increase my authority?

Stewardship. Fortifications.

Originally posted by bylandt11:

For instance: despite my impressive military victories (destroyed Almoravids, conquered Zaragoza, ...) my authority seems to go down.

It will do, yes. There's a difference between a ruler who takes over a province and integrates it into their kingdom versus one who arrives, declares themselves in charge and is gone by next week. If your authority is plummeting it's a good indication you're over-reaching and need to consolidate.