A list of tips to achieve the three hard quest in a single party. It’s still under construction. If you have any tips or suggestions, feel free to share them in the comment section !
I try to classify information, to give it in a sort of path. If you don’t find an advice in the preamble, it is maybe further down into the guide. And past advice can be good for the rest of the game. Apply them wisely.
Preamble
A long road is in front of you, not really easy or fun to do since you can’t make money easily.
– You can’t trade for 2/3 of the game, no export, only import.
– You can’t promote Serfs, only make novices in the clergy or militians in the army (and more)
– You need to avoid and diminish the non-exclusivity penalty
– There is a desirability of lands to take in consideration
– You have no commoners, so, no tax collectors, no bailiff ! Meaning, you can’t change edicts, privileges when you made your choice. So, choose wisely.
Needs: Try to centralize. Your citizen have needs, those needs need to be fulfill near their place of work. If a serf live too far away from his place of work, just fire him and find another one. He will slow down your progress drastically.
Note: Be careful, you will maybe want to split your foundation into multiple villages, it also mean than, for every village, you need to build a market, a church, a well and all. Meaning rising up your maintenance fee. So, choose wisely. There is no wrong path to take, it’s just an economic strategy who need to be efficient.
Influence & Aspiration: Play with Aspiration of all three estates to get a minimum of rating and influence of +10 or +20. But look also into the unlock than you can get. If an estate have nothing than you like, don’t bother with it. I think particularly about the kingdom estate. It’s maybe the last interesting one to make grow.
Note: Mill or not Mill? You can’t collect tax from a Mill since you don’t have tax collectors. But you can produce flour. I will say than you need to have one, just to be able to produce 150 flour, just in case you get a mission about this. Be careful to not consume all your wheat, the wheat mission is more common than the flour mission.
Non-exclusivity penalty: Be careful to not get too much aspiration of one estate than is not necessary. For example, you can’t get commoners, so, building aspiration for labor with tavern is useless since you can only do the primary hall and not the other ones (Building labor aspiration with market items is enough for your starter needs). Building aspiration for the kingdom with shiny fortress will just be equivalent to shoot you in the knee, since it will slow down drastically your progress with the Clergy and the labor. Remember, you can’t get the three of them, at least not until you unlock some privileges.
Missions & buildings: Sometimes a coursier or a merchant from one of the three estate will come visit you. You can earn easy money with him, you just need to have unlock the building who can produce goods. Yes, you can’t get commoners and citizen but you can still unlock the first element of the production chain, like wheat or wool.
Note: My best advice is to always build all the buildings related to something you’ve just unlock. Example, it’s important to do everything you can do with herbs when you finished to build the monastery. Why ? Because even the clergy have quest related to herbs. Sometimes, they ask you for advice when they visit you. And, if you don’t have a refectory, herbs and stuff, some event choice can be inaccessible and you fail the event.
Store goods: Have always goods ready to be exchange with a coursier. You need a minimum of 150 of every goods you can produce (wheat, wool, …). Don’t forget the monastery garden to produce herbs and stuffs. Sometimes, the clergy estate come to ask for it.
Dedicated to the Clergy !
Your first and emergency source of money will be through Levy Mandate. At the beginning, it will be your only source of money. You will be stuck with that for a while sadly. When your Clergy will grow,
your balance will start to be positive and it will be easier. You will be able to start playing with happiness a little bit more.
After achieving the primary needs of your serfs, you will need to focus on the Clergy. You are looking to rise up aspiration, enough to unlock some building and privileges.
Clergy will be your main source of money, so, you need influence to get interesting missions from it. And also some visitors coming into your city. It will get you out of debt, allowing you to grow faster.
– Build aspiration to unlock the first parts of the church who give you aspiration.
– While building, you will need to not get too fancy about the parts. Focus on parts who give you aspiration at low cost. (Meaning, without using too much of material than you need to imports, like polished stone.)
– You can’t do it without importing tools, so, keep a budget to have tools. It’s the more important goods of the game. More important than food itself !
– Build some church to satisfy your serfs, but don’t get too fancy, you are looking about aspiration. Example, a wooden cross give the same amount of aspiration than a rustic one, so, don’t bother, apart if you can handle it.
Monastery: – You need enough place to build the monastery.
– Every parts of the building are important. Particularly the chapel and the hospitium
– The chapel need to be able to give service to 50+ citizens AND visitors. Visitors fill their service needs at the monastery.
– The Hospitium will be your first permanent source of money. It need to have a size of 45+ in average. (You can build multiple Hospitium if you want, it’s a sort of inn from the Clergy.) His visitors max number peek around this value.
Visitors, Hospitium & Needs – Visitors will sleep into your Hospitium. They come from every class of citizens, it can be soldiers, member of the Clergy, noble, rich and poor people. They have needs bind to their class.
– You need to be ready to fulfill their needs as soon as possible. For that, you need to unlock the different tiers of Market when they are available and than you can afford it. (Some visitors ask for luxury goods like herbs ! It is only available with a prosperity of 75)
– That also mean than your chapel need to be able to handle the flow of visitors (Look at max weekly attendance, you need to stay under the maximum at the end of the week). So, if it’s not working, make your chapel bigger or split the visitors into multiple monastery/Hospitium/Chapel.
– Don’t build too big, you will waste your income into a useless maintenance fee, look at how many visitors come into your city every weeks. Try to fulfill their needs. Take a look at the chapel. Be like a beehive, adapt your hive at the size of your colony !
This one is too big, i was young and naive.Privileges – You need to unlock a series of privileges, those privileges will allow you to drop down the non-exclusivity penalty. Allowing you to get more influence and rating from each estates. Allowing you to get more missions from a better quality.
– What i like to take is the dove seal. Devoted Folks + Fortified Village (labor), All faithful + Fortress Church (Clergy).
Prosperity – Since you have no money, every means necessary are good to rise the prosperity.
– Build, build, build. For Splendor.
– Unlock territories (if you can afford the territory upkeep)
– Unlock trade agreement (but don’t sell stuff !)
– Make your population grow (so, keep a good happiness, more your folks are happy, more everything go better for you)
Splendor : The common Splendor is the total of splendor from the three estate x 0.30. You can build Masterpieces to buff the value. But be careful of the non-exclusivity penalty.
Masterpiece are unlock randomly by estate. They give Estate Splendor, something you need to be careful about.
Wealth:
– Wealth is limited but possible. That’s why you need to be careful with fees. More you have fees, less you have Wealth. Your main source of Wealth is donations from the Hospitium. So, play around to get max of donations without too much upkeep.
– Try to get edict with diminish upkeep if possible. If you are not interested by something else. It is a hard choice because you can recover tools after finishing a building if you unlock an careful planning edict.
Beautification
– Don’t forget beautification, unlock the different decorative package. It is expensive, don’t get too fancy about it, look at how much it cost, the size of the item and how many beautification you will get for the money.
– Be careful, there is a cap, you can’t spam beautification. It’s linked to your population size. With 134 citizens, i can only go to 26. To get one point of beautification, you need 8 flowers. (8 x 0.20)
Good layouts
With those layouts, you should be ok with enough supplies. Be careful concerning food, more you have markets, more they take into your supplies. So, it mean than food layout are a little bit hazardous to propose, i’m not sure than it work at 100%. It depend of the market needs.
Also, production can be interrupt by needs. If your serfs pass their day trying to fullfil their needs, they don’t work properly. Meaning, if you see serf going back and forth between their house, the market and their place of work, you need to find a better worker for the location where you choose to build a workshop.
– Two lumber camp for one forester camp and one sawmill
– One stonecutter camp per stone tile. If you are in a hurry of stone, you can put two of them. From time to time, both will step on each other to get access to the stone tile. But it should be ok most of the time since workers have needs to fulfill and can’t be on the stone tile H24.
– Three Hunter’s hut for one or two butchery (Need to be very close to the woods where there is boars to increase efficiency). Normally, you should have more boar than you produce meat with one butchery. With two butchery, it should work. Maybe a forth hunter’s hut in case of issues.
– Three gathering hut for 5 bush of berries.
– One wheat farm + One wheat farm & one mill. (The first wheat farm produce wheat, the second supply the mill to produce flour)
– Three sheep farm with 5 sheep each. (Sheep farm are slow. If you want to secure 150 wools, it’s better to have a couple of sheep farm)
