Your population is how your kingdom gets work done. The more population you have, the faster you can get work done and the more different buildings you can have workers for.

Your current population is displayed in the bottom-left; it's a little hard to miss. Underneath your population count is the number of idle workers that don't have jobs. Underneath that count is the count of beds -- and, thus, the maximum number of citizens -- in your kingdom.

Your kingdom will gradually attract citizens based on the average Happiness of your kingdom, which will be discussed later.


You'll notice a "Job Priority" button in the bottom-left menu near the population information. This menu displays all of the jobs in your kingdom, in order of highest to lowest priority. You can drag each job around to reorder them. This is arguably one of the most important menus available and a well-managed priority menu can save and kingdom in crisis or propel you ahead of your neighboring kingdoms.


The happiness of your citizens must be considered while ruling any kingdom and this one is no different. The button directly to the right of the "Jobs Priority" button is the Happiness Button. This passively displays the average happiness of all of the citizens in your kingdom or outpost. Clicking it will add a color mask to each house at a gradient from Red to Yellow to Green, representing the individual happiness of each household; it will also display a gradient on the land showing the distribution of your happiness across your kingdom.

Your happiness will be hindered by plague infections, viking raids, food shortages, homelessness, etc., and is improved by good health, successful viking defenses or dragon kills, festivals, etc. Happiness also directly affects your population growth as, if your happiness is high, you'll attract more citizens to join you; however, if your happiness drops too low, citizens will leave your kingdom.


Next to the Happiness Button, we have the Health Button. This shows the health of your kingdom, based on how accessible each food type is to each citizen. Having low health will mean plagues will happen more often and will be more infectious; it will also give the citizens a lower life expectancy, while a high health will have the opposite effect.


As your kingdom progresses through the years, your buildings will degrade and, given enough time, be reduced to rubble. To prevent this, you can hire one or more Masons to repair buildings across your kingdom. Personally, this is never an issue before year 100, unless I've been attacked in excess.

A well-fed kingdom is a happy kingdom and in your kingdom, you have a few options with how to feed your citizens. These citizens in particular will eat 1 piece of food per year of a random type.

Make sure to keep an eye on the color of the tile you're farming on: Dark Green tiles mark Very Fertile land that will get a +1 bonus to all farming, Light Green is basic farming land and Yellow, barren, land cannot be farmed.


Wheat & Bread


Wheat is grown in a 1-tile farm, manned by a single worker. On very fertile land, a single wheat tile will provide 6 food, 7 with a Master Farmer. Farms are susceptible to flooding in the heavy rains if they're next to the coast. Each farm that is 2 or less tiles away from the coast will have a 25% chance to flood, and farms 3 tiles away have a 5% chance.

This wheat can be eaten as-is, or be given to a Baker to be made into bread. Specifically, it takes 1 wheat and 1 charcoal and converts it into 5 wheat-equivalent food (bread). One of these bakers, in my testing, will make an average of 25-30 bread per year, though this will depend on how quickly the workers can get resources to the bakery.


Apples

Orchards are a 2x2 farm, manned by 4 workers, that can produce 22 food per year. It is immune to flooding. Unlike wheat, however, it cannot be converted into a more delicious food. Proving once and for all that apples are perfect as-is.


Meats

Fish and Pork are the two meat foods for your kingdom. Both require a two-stage process and tools, which require Iron. The first stage is collecting the meat, via Fishing Huts or Swineherds. The second is cutting into portions and storing, which is done in the Fishmonger or the Butcher, respectively.


Wood

Wood is a basic resource, gathered by manually cutting down trees or via a Forester, which requires Stone. It is used in almost every construction task. While wood is easy to gather, the creatures in the forest might not like you encroaching on their territory.


Stone

Stone is another basic resource, gathered at a Quarry and it's used mostly in defense and advanced construction.


Charcoal

Charcoal is a luxury resource that is demanded from citizens who live in luxurious homes. It's also used by blacksmiths to make tools and armaments, as well as bakers to make bread. It's gathered at a charcoal maker using wood at a rate of 7-8 wood used per year.

Charcoal is unique as homes, despite desperately wanting the end product, get a happiness penalty from being next to charcoal makers.


Iron

Iron is a middle-late game resource used mostly to make tools, which improve your resource collection rate, and armaments, which can be used to train soldiers.

A good location, in my opinion, has 3 things:

• Central Position
  
• Close Proximity to Stone and Very Fertile Land
  
• Nearby Forest

Aside from just more, there isn't much that improves one good location over another.

Here's an example of a Bad Location:

This is bad because of its lack of access to stone, and the fact that it's on the edge of the island in an area that's difficult to expand from.

Here's a better location

This is a better location as it has access to multiple forests and usable stone, as well as a moderate amount of very fertile land. It's also near the center of the island, protecting it a bit more from raids.

My first step in every island is to build 2 roads and 2 hovels, since you start with 12 wood. This will ensure your population is housed as soon as possible and allow you to welcome in the first round of visitors, since your second hovel will be empty.

I then, typically, chop down part of a nearby forest and use the wood to build 2 more hovels behind the others such that the four hovels are in a square. This allows the group of them to be replaced by a Manor later on in the game. I'll almost always build another group of 4 hovels right after this.


It's important to always keep empty beds in your kingdom as you progress, to make the most use out of all incoming citizens. In this phase of the game, I will always try to keep 10-20 empty beds at all times, to allow me to switch my focus to other things before I have to expand housing again.


Gather Resources
One of my first goals in the early game is to establish a starting flow of basic resources into my stockpiles. First quarries, then foresters, all supported by stockpiles nearby. Charcoal makers will follow shortly, as we upgrade housing.


Expand Housing
Using this newly-made resource network, we'll start replacing hovels with Cottages, building up between 6 and 8 before you replace them with Manors. You should end this phase of the game with between 4 and 6 Manors as your only housing, to maximize tax revenue.

Fires
The last thing you want is your entire farmland or all of your hovels to be lost to fire. It can be a huge hit to your early expansion, especially with the already-limited access to resources. Luckily, this can be quickly remedied by building Wells early on.



The Plague
Occasionally, and depending on your health, the plague will hit your lands. When this happens, you'll need either Clinics or Hospitals, which will send out workers to cure the plague in the population. Any citizen that has the plague for too long will die.

The plague can also be caused by corpses not being buried fast enough, through either not enough space or too far of distance to the nearest Cemetery.



Vikings and Dragons
Every set number of years, depending on the difficulty, your kingdom will be attacked by Vikings and Dragons. This will require some defenses, which will require some gold. Gold is obtained by building a Treasure Room and taxing your citizens, at a happiness penalty.

The Vikings will come in ships from the edges of the map and try to take the gold in your Treasure Rooms before leaving back in their ships. The first raid from the vikings can be easily defeated by just the archers in your Keep; however, subsequent raids will require more defenses, mostly Archers.


Dragons, on the other hand, will be largely unaffected by arrows. In order to kill them, you'll need to build a Chamber of War and Ballista Towers. These Dragons will fly all over your kingdom and breathe fire onto your structures, with smaller Dragons launching only a single fireball and larger Dragons spraying entire lines of fire across your kingdom

AI

Depending on both the difficulty and proximity of the neighboring AI kingdom(s), you'll have to be keeping out for diplomats, and potentially military, though the latter will be rare in the early years.

This will mostly consist of you trying to maintain relationships with other kingdoms, each will ask different things of you. These things will consist of sending troops for the next Viking attack, sending supplies to help in construction, or paying tribute in gold. Failing to do enough of these will anger the AI and eventually spark war.



Wolves
When chopping trees and expanding into the forests, caves will be inhabited by Wolves, which will have a chance to attack and kill a citizen who enters its range, aside from Foresters. These can be dealt with by Archer / Ballista Towers or individual Archer or Swordman units.



Construction Requests
At certain population thresholds, and also recurring as these buildings fill up, your citizens will request certain buildings be constructed. These requests will give a flat penalty to happiness until fulfilled. These requests are

• 50, 150 Population - Build a Tavern
  
• 75, 225 Population - Build a Church / Library
  
• 350, 1000 Population - Build a Bath House
  
• 1200 Population - Build a Jousting Arena

The Witch's Hut is a unique structure that occasionally spawns on an island. It is inactive until the player knocks on The Witch's door, awakening her. After this, she will ask moderate sums of random resources once every few years, eventually providing very useful spells for a large sum of gold that do things like instantly kill all Vikings or immediately cure the plague.

Succeeding enough requests in a row will cause the witch and you to be 'Friends Forever' and she will no longer make requests.


An interesting interaction is, if you have Churches or Cathedrals, you will get a temporary penalty to Happiness if you use The Witch's magic, as the clergy doesn't approve of witchcraft.

Now that you're leading 100 people, you should have a basic flow of resources and gold. This is where you can start working on a few different things:

• Expand your kingdom with defenses and districts
  
• Starting early diplomacy and creating alliances
  
• Expanding your army

The Wall

The Wall is a style of defense focused entirely on Archer and Ballista towers, built atop a huge wall, surrounding all or most of your kingdom.

It's a very expensive method of defense; however, given a large enough wall, your kingdom can be virtually invincible. This method can turn Viking and Dragon attacks from a regular hit to your expansion into a regular, large, boost to Happiness across your entire kingdom.


Hybrid Defense
A much cheaper style of defense consists of a combination of defensive towers, mostly Ballista towers, and military units. One of the benefit of this method over the previous is that your defensive army can be used to protect allies from Vikings or attack enemies.


No-Tower Strategy
My favorite strategy so far, for its dynamic play and offense-defense balance, is a strategy reliant on only Archers, Swordmen, and Catapults. The benefit to a strategy like this is you're able to tackle any attack with only a limited number of units, rather than having to cover all of your bases with immovable towers. You're also able to get rid of all of the wolves perfectly safely with just a single Archer.

The downside of this method is Dragons are a much bigger threat as none of your units really have the capability to kill anything but the smallest of Dragons.

As your kingdom gets larger and larger, it becomes more necessary to plan how your resources will be transported and stored. A useful way of designing large areas is to use Districts. Simply put, districts are collections of buildings that use or store the same resources, made to reduce the amount each resource has to travel.

Housing District

The first, and most obvious district is the housing district, which typically consists of Manors, Taverns, Libraries, Hospitals, Markets, and other buildings used to maintain your population. These can be built near food storage, next to bodies of water, and basically anywhere else away from your Industrial District, that doesn't cover too much very fertile land.

When I have the opportunity, I often use the 700-population housing district by Magic Tuna


Industrial District

The Industrial District sits as a sort of opposite to the Housing District, with Foresters, Quarries, Mines, and Charcoal Makers, along with any other resource-creating buildings, aside from the Blacksmith, which we'll discuss later.

This district is usually far away from Housing Districts, as it'll contain most or all of the buildings that give Manors a Happiness penalty.


Farming District

The Farming District is another of the more obvious district and one of the only Districts that almost every player has already made at least once. It only consists of Farms, Orchards, Pig or Fish Industry buildings and their storage buildings.

This District is always going to be focused on the most fertile lands, and will have priority on land for all other Districts.


Military District

The Military District is a very useful District for harder difficulties, against more militaristic AIs. It consists of all of the Military Training buildings and will be kept near your industry, centralized in your kingdom. I typically put Blacksmiths near this District, so the distance my Armaments need to travel is as little as possible, allowing me to rapidly increase my army as I need.

While it might be less useful on lower difficulties, as early wars aren't as common, an early alliance can be the difference between a smooth early game and falling behind your neighbors. A cheap investment, consisting of only a Transport Ship, Hall of Diplomacy, and a single Diplomat, for an alliance or two is certainly worth considering.

In the opposite vein, an early war might be just what you need on lower difficulties to secure an island from a neighbor or even completely remove an AI from the game, taking their resources into your kingdom. Your military might will also be a benefit when dealing with Vikings.

Once you've reached this point, you and your neighbors will likely be running out of room to expand your kingdoms. This is where you have a choice for where you want your game to end: Do you want to get the highest relationship with everyone in your world? Or do you want to be the last kingdom standing?


Peace Talks
Going through the route of peace is the easiest option, but not without its complexities, especially if you're already at war. The simplest way to go about this is to pay off every other kingdom until you've allied with them. The way you go about getting this hefty sum of gold or resources is dependent on your citizens' Happiness and the resources on your island.


World Domination

Military conquest is the longer, more resource-intensive end goal for any particular world. It's more taxing on your citizen's Happiness and resources, and requires more planning than the previous goal.

As the years progress, it becomes harder and harder to completely conquer your neighboring kingdoms, which can almost require you to work with allies or Vikings/Dragons to attack your enemies simultaneously.

If you've decided to be the last kingdom standing, there are a couple different ways to go about this, depending on your current relationship with your victim.


The Standard War
If you have a relationship that's less than "Very Favorable" when you declare war, you'll be stuck with The Standard War, where both kingdoms and their allies load units up into Transport Ships and send them out to destroy the enemy's keep.

There really isn't too much in the way of complexity for this strategy, aside from making sure you focus defensive buildings and units, unless you can send your units directly to destroy their Keep, in which case you should focus that.

The most common size for attack forces using this method range from 20-45 Transport Ships' worth of units, though this will depend on how much aid I have from Vikings/Dragons or my allies.


The Assassination
However, if you're in a Very Favorable relationship with your victims, you can create a military alliance with them. Accepting this alliance will be the last thing their king or queen will do.

Now that you can freely place military units on your victim's island, your next goal is to completely surround their keep in units; I typically use 10-20 Transport Ships' worth of units, although you can likely get away with half of that.

Once your units are in place, you simply break the alliance, declare war, and attack their Keep immediately. If they don't have military units on their keep (maybe if they're being attacked by Vikings..?) they won't have time to respond before you've captured the island.

This is the Kingdom of Arboria, population ~2750 at the time of these images. This ongoing playthrough of mine has been interesting as it features a No Tower & No Wall style of play, relying entirely on your Swordmen, Archers, and Catapults to defend the kingdom.

Since these images were taken, I've used the Standard method to capture one island that I had been at war with since the start, with the help of two allies. These allies were very surprised when I simultaneously used the 'Assassination' method to capture their islands. This brought the population of my lands to about 6000, and I renamed my lands the Empire of Arboria.

This particular kingdom led me to discover the maximum unit capacity of 180 (60 each Archers, Swordmen, and Catapults, at a cost of ~2100 gold per year). It would take 60 Transport Ships to carry all of those units.

This style of play is my favorite so far, as it adds a dynamic element to defense in so far as you have to maneuver your troops according to where the threat is. It also adds the need to balance your offense and defense, as you can no longer send your entire force to an enemy; you must keep some troops at home, depending on how much of a threat the next raid is to you.

An advantage of this play style, which might be a bug fixed by the developers later on, is the AIs never ask for troops to help with the vikings: they'll only say you should consider making archer towers, which can give you a small favor increase, for free.

(Fun Fact: This Empire featured my highest Wood count at just over 100,000 wood)


More kingdoms to come... (very soon)

Work in Progress

Thank you for taking the time to read my guide, I hope it's helpful for new or experienced players alike. Let me know if there's anything I've forgotten or if there's any other strategies I haven't mentioned.