Did you research the more advanced buildings ? A production of 2/turn sounds like the very first buildings you can research, the latter ones should be a lot more efficient. Also bear in mind that not all domains are created equal, depending on the game some will scale more quickly than others and you should focus your resources towards it.

Which page of the Prophecy are you at ? And what is the threat of each domain ?

You can also produce heat/cold ahead of time for the mandatory summer and winter events (which are always +1 threat when the season turns). This helps manage them.

You can't do this for Fall or Spring when the temp changes, but at least in spring the threat drops by 1.

You win 'village for ants' with research. Check out this other thread with tips where I suggest rushing scriptoriums (https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/638510/discussions/0/4635988779091466958/).

You can get them going at the end of Spring if you are experienced at the game.

I rush scriptoriums and I get plenty of research.

The problem I am having is just the sheer number of pips needed to dedicate to the high tier heat and cold production.

i can have an excellent production of food with one farmer and one miller, which doubles as having a couple fancy bread to break a possible protest. Farmers also do a lot of other useful tasks.

A knifemaster makes paper to power my scriptoriums, produces high level of hope, stops protests, and makes fluff if I've rolled rabbits.

Even just a stone tier healer's tower with one healer and medicinal herbs produces an impressive amount of health. And, even more importantly, medicinal herbs are gatherable by anyone.


The cloakmaker, the first halfway decent heat maker, requires feather or leather, which cannot be gathered by a generic pip, only a hunter, which is not an otherwise helpful job since I've found farming and bread way more efficient and I basically have to have a farmer anyway. Its run by an artisan which is advanced tools and therefor not good for job hopping, and his other tasks are not helpful for a low pip run, like books. Because I cant in good conscience dedicate some of my few pips to being bourgeoisie.

Higher than that and it gets worse. Again, not in production, in the number of pips required to keep the engine running. I found it impossible to have one artisan keep up on making blankets and using them in the tier 2 cloackmaker.

Cold is even worse. You need two pips dedicated to being a watcher for even the best 'generic' cold maker. And its still nowhere near enough.

The best would be the bathhouse since it makes hot and cold but the number of pips if found necessary to keep a towel engine running is ridiculous

hot/cold are the only ones I just cant figure out an efficient pip engine for. I understand upgrades and usually use these items fine when I can have a few pips dedicated to the task.

I would suggest using watchers with large campfires for the first winter and the tier 3 cold production for second spring and summer. Remember that you don't have to run the building continuously through the event. You can either pre-make heat for the winter or stop making cold mid event during the spring. Even though you need two of them watchers take one turn and no resources to train so it fine to switch into and out of them. For second winter and the apocalypse I advise cutting research once you have enough to build towels and bathhouses. Again you don't have to produce and consume towels at the same time. You also probably won't need many towels before the apocalypse unless you have temperature as the main domain in which case it should be possible for you to cheapskate another domain.

The artisan is a good mid/late game profession. It powers the cloakmaker (one fabric into 20 heat), in some buildings it makes the fabric you need for the cloakmaker, and when it is not doing that it is a much better papermaker than the knifemaster. Takes a bunch of tech, but you can still get it early: I have a paused run with 10-pip Matus, I'm in the first Fall and I have an artisan making paper.

Instead of thinking "the number of pips I need to keep this engine running is ridiculous", you need to have 1 or 2 pips moving through the different parts of the engine, stockpiling the inputs then moving on to the next stages.

You probably want some bougie pips at the end. Maybe not the scholar, but the ones that produce brick and the various protections are usually worth it. The best bougie food takes about 0.6 pip actions to make per food, compared to ~0.1 for the best regular food. Means a bougie action costs about 1.6 actions (incl food) compared to 1.1 for regular pips. If the bougie action produces more than 50% compared to the comparable pip action, you want the bougie.

Originally posted by piglet:

I would suggest using watchers with large campfires for the first winter and the tier 3 cold production for second spring and summer. Remember that you don't have to run the building continuously through the event. You can either pre-make heat for the winter or stop making cold mid event during the spring. Even though you need two of them watchers take one turn and no resources to train so it fine to switch into and out of them. For second winter and the apocalypse I advise cutting research once you have enough to build towels and bathhouses. Again you don't have to produce and consume towels at the same time. You also probably won't need many towels before the apocalypse unless you have temperature as the main domain in which case it should be possible for you to cheapskate another domain.

I pre make for every domain but I keep not having time between the season change and the first temperature check so I wind up having to try and overcome rather than maintain. And Im not sure how to tell which is the "main domain" I've never noticed, but it sure seems to frequently be higher than the others so maybe I'm getting unlucky.

I might have to pause my Ant Village attempts and try one of the other challenges because hot damn I can't figure why I am so bad at this one in particular. Unless I find out I'm just bad at all of the challenges.

Somethings to note are that season changes are ALWAYS followed by event after and that protection carries over within one temperature domain but if they are switching it resets. The other thing to know is the threat decreases by one in 2nd spring.