Start of game

[DHAAR]

I did not play this game for a long time. I remember you have build five houses before winter or everybody dies. Is it still like that? Is there a way to start the game without this sword hanging over your head?

[Anthracite]

It's nine houses, and no, but it's not that big of an issue. Just don't build your houses miles away from the camp and supplies and they'll all get done (or you might lose one family, but it's not the end of the game).

[kiska87]

There were always 9 families, so you need 9 houses. People won't die if they have no house in winter, they will just leave your town.

Unlike earlier versions of this game, you now have enough resources from the beginning to finish all 9 houses, without having to build a thatchery or smithy before the houses.

Even if you lose some families in winter, you can still get more as long as you have migration turned on (it's on by default) and you meet the requirements, which are at the very beginning: free houses, enough drinking water and food for sale.

I don't know which version you played back then, but now there are houses with private gardens, where their inhabitants can grow their own food. You can then buy their produces and sell them to other families at your market stall, which also means that you now have food for sale.

So you don't necessarily need to build a farm on year 1 or 2 if you want to produce food early in game.

These things make it easier now, but buildings take now a bit longer until they're finished.
It's still doable to finish all 9 houses before winter, but as I said, even if you lose some families, you can always get more.

[Bjørn]

There are also some start-up guides, for example this one.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3086265662

Game keeps changing and new things are added regularly (more or less), but that guide is quite recent.

Good luck! Game can be challenging until you know how things work, like most things in life

[DHAAR]

Thank you for the advise.

[Claybot]

The suggestion is to build 9 houses for the 9 families, if you don't get them done in time its not a big deal. I used to think it was but it isn't.

[vladuslav2410240]

на старті гри блимає курсор і чорний екран

[DHAAR]

This is ridicules. First game I started by building 2 houses with farms and 2 houses only. After the first three houses it ran out of wood. Now you can build nothing. Next game started like someone mentioned. Forester, Thachery and Clay pit. Then 2 houses with farms. next 2 without farms. Only one completed. Winter came. 20 People left. After a while another 2 left because there is no firewood. End up with one man building the fourth house. no one else available. Summer came. No immigration. It is like sitting and watching paint dry.

[wordchutney]

I'm sorry you're having so much trouble and frustration.

Originally posted by DHAAR:

This is ridicules. First game I started by building 2 houses with farms and 2 houses only. After the first three houses it ran out of wood. Now you can build nothing. Next game started like someone mentioned. Forester, Thachery and Clay pit. Then 2 houses with farms. next 2 without farms. Only one completed. Winter came. 20 People left. After a while another 2 left because there is no firewood. End up with one man building the fourth house. no one else available. Summer came. No immigration. It is like sitting and watching paint dry.

This has me scratching my head. Getting nine houses built before winter should be straightforward with the build order you mention. It's perplexing that you only completed the building of one house with garden and you didn't have firewood. You did hire two or three workers for the forestry after you built it? (In Ostriv you need to manage worker numbers manually.) How close together are your buildings? You don't want them to have to haul resources too far. That guide Bjorn pointed you to in his post should give you the idea how to successfully start the game and get your village up and running. Alternatively, you might post a few screenshots so we can get a better idea of what is going wrong.

[Claybot]

Basic setup
Forestry, clay pit, thatchery , 9 houses with gardens

Advanced for some
Forestry, clay pit, thatchery, Farm 1-2 fields, 9 houses with gardens

Mine
Forestry, Clay pit, thatchery, Farm 1-2 fields, 3 houses with gardens, trading post (sell iron), 3 sometimes 4 houses with gardens. 2 or 3 families move out. Build 2 or 3 more houses (total 9) 2-3 families move in turn off migration.

[Bjørn]

Originally posted by DHAAR:

This is ridicules. First game I started by building 2 houses with farms and 2 houses only. After the first three houses it ran out of wood. Now you can build nothing. Next game started like someone mentioned. Forester, Thachery and Clay pit. Then 2 houses with farms. next 2 without farms. Only one completed. Winter came. 20 People left. After a while another 2 left because there is no firewood. End up with one man building the fourth house. no one else available. Summer came. No immigration. It is like sitting and watching paint dry.

When you say 2 houses with farms, you don't build 2 farm buildings, right? Probably not, but just had to ask Normal houses and garden houses take the same amount of time to build, so it shouldn't matter for construction time either.

Anyway, I'm wondering which PC specs you have? Earlier there was a big difference for people on how long it would take to build the 9 houses. Some managed to finish them quite early (August, I think), while others ran out of time before they were built, and winter came.

It depended on the CPU, I believe, but I'm not sure if it ever was confirmed. The animations of the citizens didn't quite catch up with the game time, or something like that.

But it sounds like a lot of things go wrong with your game, so it is a bit of a mystery.

I build the forestry, clay pit, farm (with a few fields), thatchery and 9 houses by October or November usually. It depends on how far away the buildings are from the stockpiles and the cart parking and such.

Hope you get it sorted.

[kiska87]

Originally posted by DHAAR:

This is ridicules. First game I started by building 2 houses with farms and 2 houses only. After the first three houses it ran out of wood. Now you can build nothing. Next game started like someone mentioned. Forester, Thachery and Clay pit. Then 2 houses with farms. next 2 without farms. Only one completed. Winter came. 20 People left. After a while another 2 left because there is no firewood. End up with one man building the fourth house. no one else available. Summer came. No immigration. It is like sitting and watching paint dry.

Sorry, I didn't mention that you have enough resources except for wood and clay.
The first building must be the forestry, the second must be the clay pit.

After that, you can build a thatchery, but you don't have to, as the thatch in your camp storage should be enough for all 9 houses (I started several times and never ran out of thatch while building the nine houses. If you build a farm in between, you might need to build a thatchery afterwards, as you could then run short on thatch).

After the forestry and clay pit, you can then start right away with building all nine houses.
You can choose if you want to build all houses with private gardens, all without or a mix of both. If you build houses without gardens, you need to make sure that you have a farm ready for march next year at the latest, to provide food for you people (The food they have in their inventory will last until autumn next year). If you build all houses with gardens, you don't necessarily need a farm in the second year. If you choose a mix of both types of houses, I recommend to build the first 3-4 houses with gardens, as they will be ready in time for planting season.

In autumn, the families who live in houses with a private garden will start harvesting their vegetables. If you want to buy their produces, you need a granary/small granary with a worker, set to 'buy local produces'. You can check their house inventory which types of vegetables they produced to set it in your granary. Then you place a market stall and set it to sell these types of food (the ingame tutorial in the top left corner will tell you to do that anyway).

Here are some more tips:

- When starting a new game, immediately hit 'pause', take your time to choose a nice spot for your starter camp and plan out your first buildings (you can change the building order in the top right corner by drag & drop).

- Make sure to place all buildings close together, as long walking distances will consume too much time and carts will wear out too fast.

- Make sure that you have at least 2 workers at the forestry.

- Start producing charcoal early on. Your women will have nothing to do, so they can do this. The smithy will need charcoal, so it's good if you already have some in stock when the time has come.

- Keep an eye on your nail stock and build a smithy before you run out of nails. If I remember correctly, you start with 1600 nails. That should be enough for your first buildings, including the nine houses, but sooner or later, you will run out of nails.
I recommend to build a smithy after the nine houses and also start producing metal parts.

- Keep an eye on the condition of your carts. The builders will use the carts to transport the materials to the construction sites. Families, who move from their tent into their new home will also use a cart. Soon, your carts will wear out, so make sure you have a carpentry ready to repair the carts. I recommend to build the carpentry right after the smithy. You don't need a permanent worker there, just hire a men (only men can work there), wait until all carts are repaired and then fire him to hire him elsewhere.

- Build some benches near the houses, so that the workers can take a rest there after their workday

- If a construction site does not make any progress for a long time, select and check it.
It will tell you if something is missing or if there is a problem. Also, avoid having trees on your first construction sites. Foresters will need to clear the trees first, which will cause a delay on your construction site.

[DHAAR]

I did it this time. It seems that the lower the graphics setting, the faster they build. I started on Normal graphics setting, building forester, thatcher, clay pit and 2 houses without gardens. That was still to slow for me and I changed the settings to no water reflection, 30 fps, texture quality lower, shadow quality lower. Exit the game and load again. Then I build another 2 houses without gardens and 5 houses with gardens. They definitely build faster this time. That was finished by mid October.

[Grat Dalton]

Congrats on resolving issue.
- It would help if OP posted PC specs. & screenshot of starting area.
There was a debate about PC hardware below or at minimum specification causing year 1 building completion.

[Bjørn]

Nice that you sorted it out!

So the hardware is still relevant for construction time then, as Grat Dalton and I mentioned above.

Also at what speed you run the game at has an effect (running at especially 12x game speed increased build time for many).

Yevhen made a savegame available for download a while back, where the starting buildings are already planned for you, so you can just load the game and watch as they're built, and then compare the time of completion to others' results.

The savegame is still available, and although the game has received a lot of updates since then (it's from March 2021, when the world was friendlier and still relatively peaceful), it can probably still be used for testing, if anyone else is interested.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/773790/discussions/0/3110270484074425618/#c3111397019619841775


Here is a test I did using that save game a few years after it was posted, to see if it still worked (also posted in the thread I linked to above, the last post as of writing), so this is how it looks:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3127499661

[Nolakstorm]

Another thing you can do is check how many people you have. I have managed to get a max of 32 people to start on the map to where I have two in the forester and the rest of the men building. I set the women to the markets to make sure everyone has firewood