In the past, I started a thread asking folks how they start their colonies, providing my own sequence as an example... The game has changed a bit since the last time I posed the quation, so I thought it bore repeating... Here is how my colonies tend to start: 1 land flattening. Usually three or four jobs to get it done faster. Also a mining job for a cluster of stone and a couple wood jobs. 2 once i have a good clearing I drop the first stockpile. 3 Carp shop, 4 x 7, two squares from the stockpile, spanning the full side, with two benches side by side on one of the short walks. Nearly every non housing building I make is this size. Once complete, I assign an overseer with a laborer to the shop. 4 naturalist office 5. Kitchen 6 barracks 7 laborer's house, 5x9 holding 5 cots and a carpet 8. Ceramic shop
No farms? Personally I don't bother with flattening the land unless creating a district or planning in advance for a wheat field. Looks more natural to me and also no waiting. Here's my order. There are fluctuations, but this is what usually ends up happening. 0. Setting up work crews (one hauler/builder, two gatherers, rest waiting for workshop) 1. One order for each gathering job: forage, cut wood, mine 2. One farm and one carpentry (6-10 tiles) designations 3. Kitchen usually bigger, room for future brewing 4. Bunkhouse (used to be barracks, but no longer, due to cot limitations) 5. Barracks 6. Trade office As upkeep is being taken up, I will continue with my old order of construction 7. Middle class housing (3 people: one hauling crew, two clerks) 8. Two Foreign Offices 9. Second bunkhouse (four labourers for clerical staff) 10. Second middle class housing (2 people: mining, ceramics) and Bunkhouse (to staff the mine) 11. Mine (I build small mines with one to three mine shafts) and ceramics opened at the same time 12. Third middle class housing (2 people: to replace people with scientific and clerical skills) 13. Church 14. Laboratory 15. Third bunkhouse 16. Fourth middle class housing (3 people: a replacement for second NCO and a smith, a miner) 17. Metal workshop 18. Brewing modules and better ovens and a leyden weapon locker 19. Second mine 20. Second farm (wheat field) 21. Public house and fourth bunkhouse Other buildings I build for completion's sake. I find no use for the barbershop and training office.
No farm to start... With a hunting naturalist, I can generate the food required for that first several days with sausages and fungus stew. I place my first two laborers with the carp shop and barracks. I want more laborers to speed up the farming.
Interesting. I see the rationale. Especially since foraging and hunting raw produce can be made into four meals instead of one. And it also frees up the labourers, yes. I will definitely try this out the next time I play.
I usually go overseer heavy from the start, so I can continue flattening/gathering while I build up my tech. Basically rush for brick + mine and start spamming middle class houses. This lets me flatten large areas of land and gather up lots of food and wood. Then I build up my tech really fast, so I can place my buildings exactly where I want them, and plan them out defensively. (Congratulations Nicholas! You should receive the invitation to the secret society shortly!)
I dunno. I like hanging out with Sid Meier, but I could do without having to kiss this creepy skull they keep passing around.
My build order currently keeping to my old habit of never pushing forward to what I still consider non-key buildings until in-game weeks have gone by: Flatten land and place (Typically flattening takes up a metric fuckton of work activity spanning the next 4-5 days) Max size stockpile Farm of whatever yields foodstuff. Directly next to the stockpile. Set up resource gathering orders for: 20+ trees - Which sadly now means I'm forced to place several 'stamps' which means workcrew management hell. 3 stone nodes - Which again thanks to the new stamp system frequently means at the same time I'm forced to also create orders to mine 2-3 clay/iron/gold/whatever that is sat in the same area as the stone I want.... again workcrew management hell. Place carpentry workshop minimum of 4x7 with a 2x3 outcrop to serve as the entrance at least 4 tiles distance from the main stockpile. Place out the decorations I'll eventually want in the carpentry as I place the key modules. Enjoy the icon spam for 'Missing module' that results. Make sure carpentry has a minimum of 4 workbenches. Place a 4x4 or 5x5 stockpile that accepts raw resources, construction materials and produced goods only on either side of the carpentry. Drop everything and deal with micromanaging any additional non-desired resource collection work that has been picked up thanks to the lovely stamp system, so that one of my few workcrews aren't being tied up digging up clay or such nonsense. Once Carpentry is built with at least three benches, set up standing orders for 30 planks, 15 repair chests and 5 bric-a-brac in that priority order. After the first half dozen repair chests are being churned out, plan out the kitchen. Keeping it super small with just 2 ovens and 1 workbench and its entrance leading right on top of the main town centre stockpile. Place out decorations I'll eventually want in the kitchen as I place the key modules. Enjoy the additional icon spam for 'Missing module' that adds on to the existing eye assault. Build barracks, assign least useful workcrew to it. Start to use the 4th bench in the carpentry as a lowest priority decoration buffer table. Once the 3 standing orders are filled then the limited workcrews will produce 1 piece which then uses up bric-a-brac which gets replaced which uses planks, which resets the production loop. Once Kitchen is finished set the first oven to standing order for 15 middle class food. Set 2nd oven to 20 low class food. Build first lower class house. Edit: Forgot my mine. I tend to build my first mine at the same time as the lower class house. From there on out, it's all varied depending what's going on but pretty common to feel forced to immediately have to build a ceramics workshop to make bricks and make middle class homes just so I can have some general workcrews now that more than 50% of my existing force are tied up with singular duties. When I make a new industrial workshop I place it next to the previous workshops 4x4 or 5x5 stockpile and then create a new one on the other side of the next workshop that also only accepts raw resources, construction materials and produced goods eventually having it all looping around the primary stockpile, farm and kitchen area to make an enclosed town square. Miscellaneous buildings as they slowly get added then form a second outer perimeter. Also typically I never bother with buildings like the trade office, foreign office or pub (as in I never build them unless I am 2-3 months into a colony and start getting bored). With the change to naturalists depending on how farming and foraging is going I may build a naturalist office after my 2nd middle class home but typically the colonist AI for naturalists is derpy enough and prone to getting itself killed that I tend to consider hunting a low priority source of food now.
The trade office can be very usefull, as can the foreign office. The pub is also really good for recovery from disasters. I like the stamp system, actually. Makes sense in my head. Just stamp as needed, not all at once. And if you do all at once, disable jobs for the other workcrews. If it bothers you, move middle class housing higher on the list. Or maybe the devs will add a stamp size option. And yes, I agree that missing module icon gets annoying. If only there was a build furniture option for workshops...
Not really a solution there to the actual problem cause. Ideally as it seems we're stuck with 'Stamps 'r us' for most non-building elements now would be to take a little inspiration from Unclaimed World. Where they also tackle things through zone areas (though ones that are defined by the player), once the zone is defined it pools everything in that region and presents it in a list of options from patroling that zone to surveying and gathering and then the player can go to to the gathering tab and for each resource in the list adjust the slider to create gather tasks for the exact amount.... so if you dragged a 40x40 zone and within that area was 200 stone, 700 clay, 2,000 branches and various berries/fibres, you can then adjust the sliders to create a job which has individual gather tasks for 10 stone, 30 clay and 5 branches within that area and colonists just have at it. Translating the system over to Clockwork Empires so it's slightly more appropriate, I would see retaining each 'stamp' for individual actions (mining, chopping etc), and when you place the stamp it then detects what types of objects of that related task are in the zone and the player can then pick between creating a new job that has a task to harvest from all applicable objects or alternatively to create a job that has tasks only to harvest from objects of a specific type. At least then you don't have a system that slaps the player with forced inefficiencies in what is probably the most vital aspect of any early to mid colony (manpower management) just because they needed stone and the only stone nearby was also in the same stamp radius as 6 clay nodes. The problem (if anything) with the previous system from a usability standpoint was that the distinction between jobs and tasks weren't made perfectly clear to new players... occasionally you'd find people new to the game drag out wide areas and issue a singular chop tree job made up of 40+ tasks and not realise that only one workcrew can adopt a specific job at a time... but for the most part that was a clarity issue, not a mechanical one. The stamp system as it stands however is not only significantly less new player friendly but has also removed experienced players ability to manage things properly and really brought the experience of performing basic actions down to something pretty convoluted. Because now not only do you have the problem of clumps of multiple types of nodes forcing your stamps to create additional tasks in your single job to gather resources you don't even want and having to micromanage specific tasks to make sure you don't end up several days backlogged unable to make progress in a early colony due to low raw resource availability thanks to your colonists being given orders to mine/harvest things you never wanted in the first place. But also, if you end up in biomes where certain resources are sparse and widely spread about thanks to how the stamp system now FORCES you to have to make a individual job for each limited stamp region. The end result is if you need 60 wood just to get your colony started the sparsity of trees means you then have to create 3-4 isolated jobs to chop down 6-7 trees and each job is going to be a tied up workcrew...... that is unless you then dive into the workcrew list and juggle crew orders to stop certain crews from taking the multiple jobs you were forced to create just to chop down a half dozen trees... and keep having to re-evaluate and juggle assigned duties just to get something as straight forward as "Get some damn wood and stone" to happen without delaying your colony by half a week or more. Some ability to explicitly control what tasks are created by the stamp system on a resource level would at least resolve issues with the first problem. Sadly the 2nd issue is something seeded right into the core of a predefined stamp region system and I can't really see anything solving that problem other than a total re-write of how jobs and tasks exist in the game.... or removing stamps and having user defined regions back. But at least tackling one of the major issues with the system would be a positive step forward.
Well, Naturalists, if you think about it, should be most likely to die. Wandering about, looking at flowers and not noticing clever bandits or lurking fish people until its too late.
What are some optimal layouts for common buildings like the lower and middle class housing? I'm trying to figure out the best footprint to just meet the needs of the goals for each building, so i use the smallest building i can to fit each item.
4x7 lower class building. 3 cots spaced in a 3x5 space, then a door facing town center, 1 shrine and 7 small clothes lines. With 2 windows, this building exactly reaches the goals for the building.
I've become so lazy about decor that I only make rugs and carpets because they happen to be at the bottom of the carpentry workbench list, and I can quickly scroll down to access them. Yes, they mean a bigger building footprint, and less bricabrac efficiency, but it's worth it for me. I love when the artist makes me new things. It's a nice surprise decor item I don't have to build myself.
Decor wise, whilst I throw in stuff just for looks, if you're going purely for net benefit then 4x7 buildings with a 3x2 entrance extension works quite well. Door goes in the middle, two wall shrines either side of the door and the extension creates an extrusion you can add 2 chairs, pillars, pots or something 1 space away from the shrines. Then catch up the rest of the quality with as many rugs as you need. That way you're fitting all your functionality modules in the main space and aren't sacrificing any of it for decor. Don't have housing examples, but it's a layout setup I reuse for most buildings like: Alternating between 4x7 and 5x7 depending on what tickles my fancy.
I put the shrine in, to help with happiness and quality. they seem to be able to go into any building, and praying gives +3 happiness and hopefully helps to keep the crazy away. @Tikigod what is the purpose of the door extension? I've never seen a pile up of people at the doorway.
