Alpha 50A Building Buildings (and Modules)

Yep, the foreign office (and the trade depot to some extent) are pretty much exploit machines right now and will need some serious balance.

 

That and the food drop that scales, if that is still in (I never checked it).

I actually expected it would take some effort or bribing etc to maintain bandit standing but uh... yeah. Watch this (or rather that) space, I guess.

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I'll point out that one alternative to making guns (if you have none to start with, for example) is to be friendly with bandits and hope the fishpeople/armies/traders kill a bunch and then you just loot their guns. Or worse yet, come to think of it, just walk into their camps and "forage" their tents for guns...


The trade UI wuld be perfect for being extorted by bandits. Like they demand 1000 worth of stuff -or else-. Larger your colony or smaller your military, the number goes up. (Might have to give food a small value so you can pay them with that as well). Food isn't a trade good, so of course you can't sell it to traders but bandits will take your food if you give in to them currently, though you probably wouldn't as you can "turn off" the bandits.

 

version 50

Barbershop



If you have some extra bricks you can build this now. It's only really useful for healing people, so if you aren't fighting it is something you can leave for later (or until you actually had a fight).




You just need one chair. Carpentry workshop does this.




That's all you need. The barber will see very little use, when you get notifications about people looking for a barber, then put a single overseer in (check all other jobs are disabled) and then after a day or so take them out. Nothing big.

 

version 49-A

First Bunkhouse

It's a good idea to get your house laid down on, oh day 2. It'll be day 4 perhaps before you'll have a decent number of cots in them. While this is a big priority (due to "Felt Tired" leading to strikes) actually you can live for a while without cots.

You are likely to make your house from a Lower Class Bunkhouse, for example:



I tend to make my houses in the form of a 4x3N (here, it is a 4x9), one of these long ones will hold 3N (ie: 9) beds. Due to how decor works, I don't really like using 4x6. A 4x12 may work well for you if you had some starting resources already.

I recommend checking who is doing the "gathering materials" part of the building and assigning some lower-class to them so you have multiple people hauling stone and logs.




Luckily your carpentry can pre-build the cots and (extra) planks you will need while the actual bunkhouse is being built. I do not recommend just jamming in an order for 9 cots at the top, keep your minimum order of say 20 planks and put the big order below that.

This is because of decor, specifically:

• Putting all your cots in at once will tank the quality of the house
• Decor needs planks (see below) to build
• There's something odd with the way the AI is assigned to build windows/cots

So you'll want to put in say 3 cots (send your quality to -3, "Uncomfortable") then add decor + cots slowly until you have enough cots (1 cot for 2 to 3 colonists).

Then decor up to Wonderful (+6 quality) then add more decor + cots until your bunkhouse is full. You'll get something like the above, a "Bunkhouse of Hellish Pleasure". It's very good for happiness.






These decor are built on site. You can put hangers right on top of windows with no problem. Or just line the walls with windows until you reach Wonderful, whatever works for you.

You do want to have +6 quality at the end of the day. Putting it all together, that's:

• 9 cots => 18 planks
• 15 windows/sign hangers => 15 planks

Your carpentry thus needs to do "Make Planks" 17 times and "Make Cot" 9 times. It'll take you a couple of days to fully fill up and decor-up your bunkhouse. But it will be worth it.

When I make a second house later, it might be 4x15 or 4x18, fairly massive, but that's for later.

 

version 50

Trade Depot





This is another 2x2 wonder, just add a door, nothing else is needed.




Traders regularly appear from any faction which is not hostile to you. (Fishpeople can't trade anymore, I think) Now the interesting thing is that traders appear on a map edge, walk to your colony's Trade Depot, and then afterwards walk off the edge of the map.




The human traders are hostile to fishpeople, bandits and obeleskians. If the map is full of fishpeople and bandits, the traders will frequently end up fighting them with mixed results. You may get "arrival" notifications about traders who never make it to the colony. Be satisfied in the thought they probably took down something in the process of dying.

Also, traders can provide line-of-sight, like the military squads can. So they will clear and explore the map for you!




Colonists don't really care if the area outside your colony is filled with dead traders or fishpeople or bandits. In fact they only respond negatively to the unburied bodies of colonists, I think.

The outside of my colony tends to have tons of skeletons about...

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Some early trades.





Trade can be really useful, but early on it is fairly random and opportunistic in terms of what is most worth buying and using to pay for it.

Sales fodder: Glass Bottles and Panes are my usual currency. Also, extra bricks, and random ores (you need tons of ores to get serious stuff).
Buying side: Depends. Logs are my usual grab-me since starting desert games. Stone may be useful. Besides that, stuff you find useful, just go ahead...




Later on you will have some things in abundance to sell. Take a look at the stacks of Lacquered Planks (240 each), Glass Bottles (60 each) and Glass Panes (150 each, I haven't converted them all to Glass Bottles but these jobs are pretty good at providing trade value for purchases as well as production values for gaining more overseers.






Break up larger trades to avoid crashing. That 5070 trade definitely crashes. Too many bottles at once I guess...




Another trick is once you have a wall, put the trade depot at the opening. This lets you use the traders for a bit of defense sometimes...

 

version 50

Naturalist's Office





Another 2x2 wonder, just add a door, nothing else is needed.

You don't need this early on, as for mineral deposits, either look at the surface nodes, or just "minesweep" which we covered in the section on mines.

Yes, you can dissect fishpeople... if so then assign someone, have them dissect and unassign them afterwards. I prefer to butcher or just let them lie there like some twisted scenery.

The naturalist's real job is to go and survey 5 golden pips. Not because you don't know what is under them, but to unlock a research job for the lab to do (a mining one). The mining tech upgrade doesn't need this anymore, so I guess there's really no reason to build natualist...

 

version 49-A

Metalworks



This building I usually build next to the stockpile which is in front of my main iron mine. So this wouldn't be rebuilt.




Showing the "complete" set up first. You see it will provide space for the workbench, smithy and 3 stone smelters + 1 charcoal kiln (or maybe 5 smelters...) It will be very crammed, but there's enough open walls to allow you to put windows+hangers to keep quality nice and high.

You could do a smaller more focused 3x3 with the workbench, smithy and 2 stone smelters. Because of how the coal mining works, you can currently (and possibly in the future too) avoid having to make charcoal. Note that there's no small stone charcoal kiln anymore.





You are likely to start off with just a workbench and a single smelter. Currently adding a second one isn't very critical. Even if you pump your mine full of people, the smelting isn't too huge of a job because...




Smelting uses a lot of ore...




A very important module, your first 2 ingots will go into this Smithing Forge. In the next section we will go over what our metalworks will produce with it...


But just in case, let us discuss charcoal.





This is made in the ceramics workshop. In 48-C you don't really need it, but I made space in my 3x5 for it (there's no way to fit it in a 3x3).




This is what a 3x3 would look like.

 

version 49-A

Getting Some Weapons



Pistols. The first goal is to have 4 pistols. I started my colony with 1 (the NCO's) so I will build 3 more. This needs a smithing forge (mentioned already in Metalworks post).

These are good enough to cover you when fending off fishpeople.




Next will be 1 musket. Which I want to use the workaround to get into the NCO's hands. The squad is then 1 NCO(musket) +4 soldiers (pistols).

This is a bit more complicated, as it needs you to process iron ingots into parts (for a total of 4 ingots for the musket).






After this (4 pistols, 1 musket) is a good point to start shooting bandit attackers. One trick is to replace anyone who dies immediately, hopefully your NCO will stay back a bit with their longer-range musket.

• Once you get a rifle, that should go on your NCO.
• if you have more rifles available, that and the musket can go on your regular soldiers (use workaround to get the pistols off them)
• When you want to start a second squad, put the longest range weapon you can on the NCO (Rifle: 18, Musket: 15) and spread about all the other weapons.
• Upgrading to carbines is at your own discretion, I find that I just like picking up dead weapons and equipping them (or replacing stuff with them) works
  well. Even if you only have 1 rifle, 1 musket, and then 8 soldiers with pistols/blunderbusses it is quite powerful.
• Also intimidation seems to just work of the number of NCOs+redcoats, so if you have 7 of these, you can just intimidate away potentially painful fights like 5 or 6 bandits and swarm easier ones.
• If bandits are neutral, you can loot their tents for weapons
• You can also loot weapons off dead bandits (in their camp) if they have been killed by other people. Neutral with bandits is best, but if you think everyone is already dead send army to check and then Claim the weapons...

 

version 49-A

Laboratory



Though you can make a lab using only one lacquered plank, in this case I am building a larger one. A 3x3 is a nice size, because it lets you fit in...




3 chalkboards! Produce these at your carpentry workshop.




Slot your chalkboards into the building as above, and bask in the Science!

There's only a limited number of things to research, and thus the points you need to put in are quite finite. Put one overseer and 2 lower-class and just knock out all the research jobs.




Your main areas are going to be:

• Agriculture (do this first)
  • 3 different "labor enhancing" farming techs: 5% each
    --Top Priority
  • Unlocking Bamboo
    --This is one of the less important ones
  • Unlocking Opium
    --Unnecessary, save for last
  • Unlocking Pumpkins
    --Slated for future versions, currently you cannot access Pumpkin at all
    --Pumpkin is better than Cabbage for making Farmers' Stew)
• Mining (do this after military)
  • 3 different "labor enhancing" mining techs: 5% each
    --One of these needs your naturalist to do some work (see Naturalist's Office)
    --Good to get after military techs are done
  • 1 "labor enhancing" smelting tech
    --Not very important
    --Generally if one smelter isn't enough, it won't be enough with or without this
    --Two smelters will be more than enough, let alone three...
• Military
  • Defense Buff
    --I consider this the first one to get
    --It's mostly because your initial pistols mean you are at a range disadvantage vs Rifle bandits
    --Also, it helps protect NCO from death a bit
  • Attack Buff
    --I get this one next
    --This is great in general, but once you have a bunch of rifles, trained NCO and redcoats it can make short work of bandits
  • Training Speed
    --Grab this after the above two
    --Even if you are full on soldiers, you never know when one might have to be replaced

After all the researches have been done, you can unassign your scientists, nothing left for them to do.

 

version 49-A

Chemistry Workshop



While your metalworks is doing all the metal stuff, the small branch of tech starts from the Chemistry Workshop.

A simple 3x2 will do.





You will need a single Chemistry Workbench from your carpentry workshop (and this needs a glass bottle made in the ceramics workshop).




Just slot the workbench in, and you're good to go. This is useful, but will not be heavily used... except for making trade goods I guess.




Each "Lacquer Planks" should produce 2 Lacquered Planks (not 1), just put a small order, you will want at least 2 (needed to build the lab, you can't click the button without it).

By the way, a Lacquered Plank is worth 240 in trade, and in production is equivalent to the production of an Iron Oven (tier 3 => 8 points) when it comes to progressing to your next overseer.

But don't go overboard as you will want planks for many things, while the Lacquered ones aren't needed much.

 

version 50

Mines (& Minesweeping)



You will need at least a 3x2, however I go with a 3x3 because I want to fit in 2 mineshafts for a particular "look".




The mineshaft modules are built in the carpentry. Nothing special about them except...




Each module is large, taking up 3x1 inside the building and another 3x3 outside. So make sure there's enough flat land where you want to put your mines down.

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Now let's talk about Minesweeping. The game will tell you exactly the shares of things which a mineshaft module will provide. Currently, it will be:

• 4 shares: Golden-pip specific stuff
• 1 share_: Clay
• 1 share_: Sand
• 2 shares: Coal

So the above is a coal pip.

If you don't know what a pip is (maybe because there's no surface nodes), don't worry, you can just put down a 3x1 mine and mineshaft module and the game will tell you what is there (then cancel the building, of course).

A few other examples:



An iron ore pip. Which you can tell by the surface nodes...




A non-pip mine.




I tend to use this setup as I do plan around fitting in more modules (with a 3x7 you can put 5 modules) though currently the miners can all work a single module.


You can see the stockpile right in front. After putting this fix (ver 50) the miners will use it appropriately. My industrial set up basically goes around this pair of stockpiles. The metalworks which we will build (uses ore and coal), and a later rebuild of the ceramics workshop (uses the clay and sand) are all nearby for maximum efficiency.

 

version 49-A

"Middle-Class" House



The main thing is to start thinking about adding more beds. I prefer to start using the Practical Bed (which overseers prefer to Cots). Make sure your Carpentry capacity is high, you will need to make a lot of planks and then use them for the beds.

Of course, besides the bed, making sure the building is at top quality is good as well. That's really all you need. You will also need another building most likely (as most of the layouts so far won't have room for anything else).


So go wild on the layouts!




The "longhouse" which is like the Bunkhouses, it is a 4x3N which holds 3N beds (here 4x15). The ornate doors and middle-class windows are of course optional.


You could go with other ways... be creative.




This one is 13x13 but could be reduced to 12x12, holds 32 beds. It does, however give you a very tall pyramid roof.

I also planned a 9x9 that would hold 18 beds (it's just 2 short "longhouses" facing one another, except instead of many doors there's a walking path down the middle.


The big number is 50 beds. Very happy overseers might work 6 shifts a day, so 50 beds means even if you had 100 people all working 6 shifts, they can each sleep on one of their 2 off shifts.


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This will take up a lot of planks and take a while, generally you don't need ALL the beds in it at once, so do it slowly while working on other projects.

Due to the way sleeping works, there doesn't seem to be a way to keep overseers sleeping in the Practical Beds (they might use cots...) or the lower-class in cots if there are Practical Beds. So later on do remove the Bunkhouse.

 

version 49-A

Restaurant Kitchen

In my colony (for fun I guess) I built a large fully-equipped kitchen. There's no reason for it really, what you need is just:



Build this in the Carpentry and jam it somewhere, this unlocks your important Farmers' Stew. But you don't even need this for the far superior Refined Food Recipe that the Republique gives you.




However, I do like my:

• Iron Ovens
  --Faster than stone, but it doesn't matter much as the overseer is probably Expert anyway
  --Repairs with bricks rather than stone
  --Has bug where it spews smoke far too much and lags your game occasionally.
• More than 5 ovens
  --So your workers can use a spare while a broken one is being repaired
• Still
  --Lets you turn the beer/chicha into stronger stuff
  --The memory for drinking is 55 happiness instead of 40, and conversion is 1:1
  
• Hanging pots
  --From the Metalworks
  --Unlocks some higher recipes that you don't need
• Workbench
  --Unlocks some recipes you really don't need

 

version 50

Overview: Tech Tree

If you've played Age of Empires (Or Rise of Nations etc etc) you may be familar with the way the tech tree there is broken into various sections.

While I was wondering the Clockwork Empires version, I found it matches somewhat well...

In the below, CW = Carpentry Workshop, not the Ceramics or Chemistry Works

Raw Age

• 1. Barracks (Logs, Stone)
  
• 2. Carpentry Workshop (Logs, Stone)
  • Carpentry Workbench (Logs)
    Converts Logs => Planks
    Makes many modules

Plank Age

• 3. Kitchen (Planks, Stone)
  • Stone Oven (Planks, Stone)
    Useful for all types of food
    Needs Stone to repair
  • Wooden Brewing Vat (Planks @ CW)
    Useful for Basic Drinks
    Needs Plank to repair
  • Spice Racks (Plank @ CW)
    Unlocks some recipes
• 4. Lower-Class Bunkhouse (Logs, Stone)
  • Cots\Beds (Planks @ CW)
    Recommend 1 per 2 colonists
  • Decor (Plank)
    Recommend decoring to the max quality - "Wonderful"
• 5. Mine (Planks, Stone)
  • Mineshaft Module (Planks @ CW)
    You only need 1
• 6. Ceramics Workshop
  • Stone Ceramics Kiln (Planks, Stone)
    Makes Bricks and Glass stuff
  • Ceramics Workbench (Planks @ CW)
    Mostly needed for the Stone Smelting Crucible
• 7. Trade Depot (Planks, Stone)

Brick Age

• 8. Foreign Office (Planks, Bricks, Stone)
  • Standing Desks (Plank @ CW)
    Need one per worker
• 9. Metalworks (Planks, Bricks, Stone)
  • Stone Smelting Crucible (Planks, Stone @ Ceramics)
  • Workbench
  • Iron Ingots
  • Smithing Forge (Bricks, Iron Ingot @ Metalworks)
  • Weapons
• 10. Chemist Works
  • Chemistry Workbench (Planks @ CW)
    Lacquers Planks, you need lacquer (get it from the trees or traders)
• ?? Middle-Class House (Planks, Bricks)
• ?? Barbershop (Planks, Bricks)
  • Simple Chair (Plank @ CW)

Lacquer Age

• 11. Lab (Lacquered Planks, Bricks)
  • Chalkboard (Planks @ CW)
• 12. Naturalist's Office (Planks, Stone)
  
• 13. Chapel (Lacquered Planks, Bricks, Stone)
  I don't recommend building this, honestly
  • Altar (Various @ Ceramics)
  • Chairs (Planks @ CW)

Age of Bugs

• ?? Public House
  It is broken, people never seem to get drinks (but drinks go into the vat never to be seen again)
  • Booze Vat (Planks @ CW)
  • Chairs (Planks @ CW)

A few things to note:

• The Carpentry Workshop is really important, a lot of things are built there, and a lot of things need planks, which also comes from there. I recommend having at least 2 carpentry workbenches, you will not need both constantly staffed, but if you are not running your overseer constantly (or when you want to make a lot of cots/beds fast) it will be useful. Early on, it should always be planking if not making something else. The "Make Planks" is an important venue of Production Points for getting overseers.
• Ceramics workshop only need to make a few bricks, but Glass Panes & Bottles are amazing Production Point and Trade Value generators
• Same as above for the Chemistry Works with the Lacquered Planks, you only need like 2, but they are amazing PP/TV.