Introduction to the basics of village management, such as what your buildings do, how to acquire new buildings, how to acquire more and better villagers and what buildings to invest into.
The Essential Basics
Manpower:
Manpower is the foundation of Taiwu village’s economy. It can be increased by getting more npc’s to join Taiwu village, or by building and upgrading the “Dorm” building. Manpower can be assigned to gather resources automatically from a tile, by doing so you receive the 1/2 of the displayed amount of the chosen resource every month, without diminishing the amount of the resource on the tile. Manpower is also needed in order to build, upgrade or remove buildings in the village. More manpower can be assigned in order to complete any build, upgrade or removal order faster, up to the limit of completing the order in a single month. It’s much more efficient to assign extra manpower to complete any job faster, but there is a limit of assigning 20 manpower to one project. I recommend keeping no more than 20 manpower in reserve to use for upgrading Taiwu village, with the remainder being used to gather resources.
Resources:
There are 7 resources that need to be managed in order to build, upgrade and maintain the buildings in Taiwu village. These resources can be collected yourself or obtained automatically by your villagers or as an output from your buildings. Of these 7 resources, 5 of them have a limit to the amount which can be stockpiled, based on the number and upgrade level of your “Storage” buildings in the village. Maintaining enough storage to handle about 10 months or more of your production in each resource is ideal.
Food:
Food is an important resource to invest into early on, as it is the primary resource consumed to construct and upgrade the “Dorm” building which increases your manpower, allowing you to harvest more resources automatically or to build and upgrade more buildings at once. The best tiles to gather food from are the farm tiles that can be found near cities and villages.
Wood:
Wood is a necessary resource for constructing many different buildings, and is used in large amounts for any buildings related to Carpentry. It is also consumed in large quantities whenever you need to craft or repair any wooden equipment. In regards to crafting, it can be useful to gather a portion of the wood needed for crafting yourself, as you can obtain crafting materials directly when doing so.
Ore:
Ore is needed in large quantities for any buildings related to Forging or Crafting (Metal equipment or Gem equipment). It is consumed in large quantities whenever you craft or repair metal or gem based equipment. Like any crafting resource, gathering a portion of it yourself can help with acquiring the necessary crafting materials. The best tiles to obtain ore are typically the “Stone Forest” tiles rather than mountains, although mountains are also a good source.
Textiles:
Textiles are needed in large quantities for buildings related to Weaving, as well as for other miscellaneous building types. They are also consumed in large quantities when crafting clothing or fabric based equipment, and as a crafting resource it can also be useful to gather a portion yourself for the same reasons as above. The best tiles to obtain textiles are textile farms located near towns, resembling hedge rows.
Herbs:
Herbs are needed in large quantities for Medical and Toxicology related buildings, as well as for crafting medicines and poisons. They are also consumed directly in order to heal your character on the overworld map. The best tiles to obtain herbs resemble a valley or a cliff.
Money:
Money is spent to construct or upgrade any buildings, in various amounts, with some buildings needing a great deal of money for each upgrade. You also need money in order to purchase the blueprint needed to construct a building, and the better buildings can be very expensive. The best way to obtain money passively for the village is to construct the various “Profit Buildings” that exist in each of the skill trees, ultimately choosing the ones that are most suitable for the natural resources present in the village. These profit buildings are easy to obtain early on, and the blueprints are very cheap, allowing you to quickly obtain a number of them to rake in a stable income.
Prestige:
Prestige is needed to construct or upgrade certain buildings, and is often very difficult to obtain in large amounts. You will often have to gather the needed prestige for your expansion yourself, as buildings which generate prestige passively are often very inefficient (with one exception).
The Starting Buildings
There are a few buildings which every player will have in their village, and these starting buildings are essential and very useful when upgraded.
The Village Center:
The building titled “Taiwu Village” in the center of the building map, this building has no upkeep, and upgrading it allows you to construct more buildings inside the village. The standard building limit is 11 buildings, and you gain 3 more every time you upgrade this building. It can be upgraded 19 times, allowing you to have 68 buildings in total, there are a few other ways to increase your building limit that aren’t covered here.
The Ancestral Hall:
This is the very first building you will construct through the story. It has no upkeep, and will produce a large amount of prestige for you once every year at the start of month 11. The amount of prestige it produces is increased by your character’s own reputation as well as the current upgrade level of the hall. This building is your best source of passive prestige income, but it also costs a large amount of prestige to upgrade it. It will be a long process to upgrade it to its maximum, but doing so will make your life much easier if you decide to invest into having a large number of buildings in Taiwu Village.
The Storage:
You will start the game with one of these buildings, and you can and should build a few more as your resource income increases. By having a large amount of available storage, you can collect resources passively over a large period of time without wasting any income, before spending a large amount all at once.
The Station:
You construct this building as a part of the story early on, it is a useful building for generating income, producing a modest amount of money and prestige.
Expanding your Economy
Once you’ve decided on an industry or two to focus on, you should prioritize increasing your character’s “Practice Level” for the chosen skills that represent that industry. For each skill book in your chosen industry, you will unlock access to a new type of building once your “Practice Level” reaches at least 75%. The very first book unlocks a building that will be essential to your economy. No matter which skill you choose, the first building to be unlocked will earn you money passively. For my example, I will be using smithing as the industry for Taiwu Village.
Once I have raised my skill enough and unlocked access to the Smithy, which is the money making building for smithing, I will travel to visit the cities and towns in the local area, looking for merchants. Some of the merchant npc’s in towns will represent the merchant’s guild which sells building blueprints, and you can buy blueprints from them. The building blueprints which you are looking for are the “Dorm” Building, the “Forge” building (or its equivalent if you chose a different skill), and the “Smithy” building (or its equivalent, as above). You will eventually want to collect and construct 4 dorms. You will need to gather together your initial resources to get the ball rolling, including a lot of food and ores (due to choosing smithing, you will need a different primary resource depending on your chosen industry).
Dorms:
The “Dorms” building provides manpower, which you will need in order to gather resources and to construct and upgrade many buildings, you’ll need up to 4 of these buildings in total to have an acceptable level of manpower. You need lots of food to construct and upgrade these buildings.
Building Placement:
Where you place your buildings is rather important, as many buildings can only be placed next to certain other buildings or next to certain resources. In my example, I am using smithing based buildings, so the resource deposit that I am paying the most attention to early on are the “Hills” tiles. I will attemt to place my “Forge” buildings on tiles that are directly diagonal to the “Hills” tiles, because there are certain buildings that are available later on for smithing that must be built adjacent to both a “Forge” and a “Hills”. I will place my “Smithy” buildings directly next to these forges that I build, but in the open spaces that are not adjacent to hills, in order to efficiently use the space. I will leave the spaces next to the hills open for now, and later I will fill those in the with powerful resource gathering buildings. You have a limited area that you can build in at the start, limited to 2 spaces away from your existing buildings, in order to expand towards some resource tiles, you will first need to build something else to expand your building area. I will often use my “Dorms” buildings in order to accomplish this, as they do not have to be adjacent to any other building, nor do they have any other buildings which must be adjacent to them.
Whenever you upgrade a building which produces money or prestige (excluding the Ancestral Hall) each upgrade level will improve its production by about 10% of the base value (that is to say, a level 10 building will almost double the production of a level 1 building). Since it takes many more resources and time to upgrade to a level 10 building than it takes to get two buildings, it is much more efficient early on to expand with many buildings. However, in order to do so you need a way to expand your population of villagers.
Villagers:
Your money making and resource gathering buildings will require you to assign villagers to them in order to produce. Your initial pool of npc’s is limited, and you’ll have to get more if you want to expand. There are two ways to do this quickly, one requires you to do it personally and the other will accumulate passively over time. You can personally get more villagers by wearing a particular clothing item (The white rarity fabric clothing) and “Getting to know” the npc’s living in the cities who have a rank of “green colored” or below. Once their “impression” of you reaches 100% through interaction (chatting, sparring, debating, becoming friends, etc.) you can invite them to join the village. Pick people who are skilled in the skills you need for your village. Alternatively, you can raise your skills in the second book of your chosen skill to 75%, which unlocks a building which will attract new villagers to Taiwu village, with the guarantee that they are talented in the skill relevant to the building (smithing in our case). This building is quite expensive, being at blue rarity in the merchant shops. It also takes a somewhat long time to attract a new villager, at about 15 to 20 turns per villager if you have a skilled worker running it. I recommend that you make at least one of these buildings to make your life easier for expanding the village.
Later on:
Eventually, you will have a stable economic base for the village, having 4 or so money producing buildings, a large amount of manpower to provide resources and at least one building that passively attracts new villagers. At this point you can start raising your skills higher to unlock the high tier resource production or support buildings to help you train your skills. There are two buildings which every player should make, regardless of their chosen industry.
Medicine:
Making the “Welfare Hospital” from the “Green Tier” medicine book will provide a passive prestige income, but more importantly it will heal the injuries of the villagers located at Taiwu village each month, healing more if the building is upgraded.
Toxicology:
Making the “Mad Medic” from the “Green Tier” toxicology book will likewise provide passive prestige income, but also heal any poisons suffered by the villagers located at Taiwu village, healing more if it is upgraded.
