When and Where to build your town in Thea 2

[Gaven]

Hey guys eventho i know its very possible to play the game withotu ever settling for a new person could you give some tips where would be good spots for placing your town in thea 2? What do you guys normally go for?

[Lorska]

Villages generally slow you down a lot so you want at least one of two things:
1) have enough people to benefit from your flat bonuses
2) have access to at least one T3 resource

you can get lucky with terrain artefacts on the starter biome so that can be a very safe place to settle in.
beside that, shadow and ice biomes are feasible to settle in early too.

the problem with villages as is, is that the main (only) benefit comes from the great gathering and crafting bonuses. However excessive gathering slows you down a lot, so it can be more beneficial to just use it as a big storage and crafting hub mid-late game.

More generally the place you ideally want has:
2+ food sources, coal, 1+ T3, some varied T2

[XenoReaver]

The best time to split is gonna vary quite a bit from person to person.
Me personally...

I like to have at least 7 characters before I split for a village that way I have a 4/4 split. Four go off adventuring while the other four (3 characters + village demon) can start work on gathering, crafting, research and rituals.

For location that depends on if I'm looking for safety or production.
If I'm looking for safety then the village is going to be on the starter island and in that case I'm gonna try and get 2 different foods, 1 fuel and try to get one T3 material in the gathering range. More T2 and T3 materials help but the food, fuel and one resource matter most. If no T3 materials are available due to bad luck then I'll settle for any regular or improved T2 material.
If I'm looking for productivity then I'm going to look for a minimum 1 food, 1 fuel and 2 different T3 materials, preferably T3 materials that can be used for the same equipment to make decent T3 gear.
Refining resources into T4s and T5s is never a priority for me and i'll only do it if I can when I'm short the materials I need.

Which types of resources I'll go for vary greatly as I like to change my play style from game to game to keep things different.
But trying to get a coastal village spot is always a bonus as fish is probably the best food in the game as it can be gathered fully all year round and seaweed has a very low gather cost so even out of season you can still easily gather it.

If you want to use a particular type of equipment then plan accordingly when going to other islands for T3 mats.

Goblin island - purple island - bones
Ice demon island - white island - gems
Orc island - red island - stone
Elven island - green island - wood and leather
Dwarven island - light grey island - metal

[Gilmoy]

It's possible to play as pure nomad, and never make a village, even on 200% difficulty.
It's also possible to use 2 Cosmic Seeds to make 2 villages.
So you actually have a lot of flexibility. Play several playthroughs to explore them all
(But you're already doing that just to play each deity once.)

~~~~~~~~

Villages eventually give you massive bonuses to Gathering and Crafting, plus other benefits.
To make Gathering pay off, you must have some T3s worth gathering.
You can (shall) eventually upgrade your Idol to T4s, which gives you range-3 gathering.
So you want a site with good resources within radius 1, 2, and eventually 3.

+ food isn't terrible
+ you always want Coal
+ you really want some T3s

Don't try to compress T1s all the way to T4s or T5s. The compression rate grows exponentially, roughly as 8^T, and maxes out around 3,000:1 for T5 composites. You don't want to gather 3,000 T1s just to make 1 T5. It's far faster to kill red-12 sea lairs for 40-80 T5 loot per fight, and sail through narrow channels to fight 3-5 sea lairs per turn, every turn.

It follows that you should, at a minimum, explore your entire starting island, and finish all Terrain Artifacts to reveal their hidden tile resources, including a few T3s. Only then could you know where the best hex on your starting island is.

This also suggests that you defer your 1st village to another island.
That means you start in pure-nomad mode, search your starting island, make a Ship, sail, and explore some other islands until you reveal their T3s, all with 0 villages. It can be done. You might find a ridiculous site on another island, like 3 T3s in a triangle + 2 T3s, 2 Coal, 3 food within radius 3. Beware that other islands' wandering monsters are stronger, so they're more of a threat to randomly attack your village and wipe out your children.

In the pure-nomad phase, I strongly advocate the lightest-materials gambit.
That means tier T2(b): silver, elven wood, quartz, etc.
Tier T2(c) gives you slightly better essence bonus, but for about 2x the weight.
All gems are light, so you can use T2(b) topaz and T2(c) emerald(?) interchangeably.
Saving weight becomes a critical game concept, but it's manageable, and effective.

Disable Lorska's otherwise-excellent Lighter Jewellery mod, because it clowns the game.

~~~~~~~~

High Crafting makes the fumble% (of a trash item) go way down, to 1% - 3%.
Also, the exceptional% goes up, to 20% - 50%(!!).

To get full usage from this, you must commit to never save-scum your crafting results.
Shrug and accept all of your trash items. Be proud of them. Keep them like trophies.
Or promptly recycle them to recover a few materials, and try again later.
Then it does matter that your trash% goes down.
And every Exceptional item you make is truly earned.
The base game is elegantly balanced around that math.

~~~~~~~~

The only drawback of the pure-nomad game start is that ... you might get so good at it that you never find a good time to make a village After all, if you're already killing red-12 sea lairs to rake in hundreds of T4/T5 loot just to afford a T4 Idol, then it's too late for a village to make you stronger

In practice, I tried to use my starting Village as a materials dump + Crafting site.
My idea was that my A-team sails the ship, visits other islands, earns T5s, and brings them home, then sits in the Village and crafts a few T5 legendaries.

But ... I won so many T5 loot that the ship got full, and lost MPs.
I crafted a bigger T5 legendary Ship. Then it got full
I crafted T5 legendary weapons + armor on the new ship, just to lighten the load a bit.
Then the ship was crafting its own T5s so fast that there was no reason to ever go home.

Meanwhile, the Village was scampering like mice in a sweatshop just to make 0.13 of 1 T5 in 80+ turns. At that point, the pure-nomad Ship was more productive on its own than 10 Villages. This always happens, in all of my playthroughs.

Hence Villages in Thea 2 are fun, useful, and a decent skill to learn, but not critical.
Have some fun with them. Try any or all of the following:

A. 1st village fairly early, about 1/2 way through exploring your starting island
B. 1st village after exploring 100% of your starting island
C. 1st village on 2nd island
D. no village ever

They're all fun, in their own way. The best way to learn #A's benefits and drawbacks is to play #A a few times, slog through all of its details, and see for yourself. And so on.

[Gaven]

Thank you very much guys for the explanations!

[PL]

Do the people in the village gain experience when an expedition group out in the wild completes events, and also the other way around?

[XenoReaver]

Originally posted by PL:

Do the people in the village gain experience when an expedition group out in the wild completes events, and also the other way around?

No, not unless it's a global event but those are very, very rare.

[joane_jett]

The main things I look for when setting down my possibly only village is coal, after coal you look at the resources that will eventually be in your gathering range. Coal is required for refining resources and you want different types of resources around you. Think of the main categories, wood, stone, bone, hide, gem, and metal. The more of the categories near your coal seam the better.

note that normal wood is perfectly refinable to be turned into the better woods. Its a bonus if the types are not the basic form of their resource. Its extra bonus if its the better tier of one or two ingredients... An obsidian or diamond spot is worth its weight in gold.

Non-food resources are not enough, you want at least one type of food within reach at first and maybe a second or third as your range increases. The more food you can cook into other things will increase your village morale and make for more productive villagers.

All this being said, I do try to map a good portion before settling down. You may have settler's remorse when you find out that if you had gone over farther just a little more. Your village should be in the safe zone so if you come to the border of another biome you have gone too far. Always stay back a little ways from the other biomes until you become tougher.

Also depending on your mods or lack of them it changes settling down. If you can move your village later there is less remorse of finding a better spot.

Since the name of the game is refinement the coal is absolutely the prime point when settling.

[Rat]

build in food and wood supplies yes yes simple

[Heau]

I prefer to play Nomad because towns add like 1000 turns of grind to game.

But if I commit to a settlement, I will typically try to stretch for a biome split (I rarely play pure islands map style) where I can grab T3 from 2 biomes and coal by the time village is upgraded to max gathering range. One of those will always be either orc lands or elven lands because the best end game gear is about yellow essences (stone/wood) and I like leather for utility books. In the best of worlds, it'll be a split between the two.

When I do I'm typically far from powerful enough to maintain a roaming team and a two defense so there will be a lengthy stretch of spam next turn with everyone in town while offsprings grow to mount a town defense.

[qinlongfei]

If there's going to be a Thea 3, I actually want to see MuHa game embrace nomad play style more. With actual camp upgrade tree independent of a village upgrade tree. They already have different tiers of ships in Thea 2. I don't see why they can't just adapt the system, and have player craft different kind of camp tents/workshops similar to the ships that'll benefit a camp.

Because to me, the viability to not set shop and just roam the land is the feature that makes Thea 2 a more unique game.

[Leonardo Trapovich]

1.Have a wood resource nearby
2.Have a food resource nearby
3.Have any tier 2 resource nearby, so you can craft some fun stuff easily.

[DG]

If you're playing with a winter start, try to survive through the winter and then explore to find the best village site on your island (or a site which isn't going to be bettered by much). The best site is going to usually have a tier 3 resource, a food supply, and some other materials to gather within range. The island exploration is not any waste of time at all. In fact, once you build the village you're then rather tied to defending it, reducing your ability to roam.

You get a big slowdown in encounters (experience, research, loot) while sitting and building in a village. This can specifically leave children without experience and poorly developed. The village benefits don't really kick in until later until the village is filled out. Your people tend to need a robust set of equipment before sailing to other realms so that's an incentive to settle before that (near a tier 3 resource).

If you've started with only one or two people then getting a house demon can be a big incentive to settle earlier rather than later.