Settling – A Guide to Choosing Tiles to Settle At

Hopefully this guide will help make you all self-sufficient for choosing tiles to settle as you progress through the game, and I am hoping this will help you to better understand the World Map, and the world around you in general.

First thing, Food is King!  When choosing a location to settle, your first priority is finding adequate Food for future growth.

Basic Rules:

1.  Do not settle within 10 squares of another non-allied player without first gaining permission to do so.  Doing so is opening your city up for future removal from that location, as it is common courtesy to not settle within that distance.  This is a game of diplomacy, so think ahead before you move.
2. Do not settle in locations where there is a Occupying Army within a few squares, that is NOT holding a rare resource such as Rare Herbs/Minerals and/or Grapes.  An Occupying Army is often used to mark a location for settling ahead of time, and is often the deciding factor on who has claim of that location.

Why Are You Settling?

• There are two (2) groupings when it comes to settling your cities, those are Teleporting your Capital (Telandril’s Spell), and Settlers/Exodus.
• In the first situation, Teleporting, the square that you are landing on is far less important than the surrounding squares.  Here you will want to be looking for a ‘Food Dolmen’ (any square with 12+ Food) nearby the square you are planning to settle.
• In the second situation, Settler/Exodus, you want to be landing on a 7 Food tile, also with a nearby Food Dolmen for future sovereignty claims.

Why you NEED a 7 Food tile.

• Simply put, you need population to build new cities.  This increases with each new city you build.  Since Food directly correlates to Population at a 1:1 ratio, the more Food you can produce in a given city, the higher total Population that city can sustain.

Some Numbers To Think About:

Population necessary by City:

# Settlers Population

2nd     1          450

3rd      2          2,000

4th      3          5,000

5th      4          10,000

6th      5          20,000

7th      6          40,000

8th      7          75,000

9th      8          130,000

10th    9          233,550

Food Produced per Farmyard:

• Each Farmyard can produce 2,014 Food P/H, before calculating in Sovereignty bonuses and other boosts such as Spells.
  • 5 Food Plots can produce 10,070 Food P/H, before bonuses.
  • 7 Food Plots can produce 14,098 Food P/H, before bonuses.

So if you do some basic math you can see that if each of your cities is at max Food Production, with 7 Food Plots each, before bonuses, you get the following:

#         Food P/H

1st          14,098

2nd        28,196

3rd         42,294

4th         56,392

5th         70,490

6th         84,588

7th         98,686

8th         112,784 (Food Plots alone are no longer enough for your next town, you need bonuses.)

9th        126,882

• I won’t go any further into the numbers here in this guide, but you can see that you will need to maximize food production in order to reach your 8th, 9th and 10th cities.

Now, How Do You Go About Finding Squares to Settle?

• There’s two (2) basic ways to go about this; your first option is to simply scroll about the map, identifying desirable squares by sight, tile type, etc.  This is time consuming, and very tedious.  The second option is to download the browser addon “Illytools”  (Available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera as of this writing), and use the SweetSpot extension included.
• I use the Illytools option, as it speeds things up a lot and allows you to identify desirable squares that are readily marked on the map for you.
• Once you’re on the SweetSpot tab of IllyTools, click Enable SweetSpot.  This will bring up 3 tables.
• The first is Primary Target (Red Dots), I set this for finding ‘7 Food’ tiles to settle on.  I set the Minimum on each other resource to 1, and leave the max at 99.  I then set both the min/max on the Food portion to 7/7.
• The second is Secondary Target (Orange Dots), I set this for finding ‘Food Dolmen’ tiles, or rather tiles which have a Food value higher than 12 (you can set to any value you like, but this is a minimum I will choose).  I set the Minimum on each other resource to 0, and the leave the Maximum at 99.  I set the Food value here to Minimum at 12, and the Maximum to 22.
• The third is Tertiary Target (Blue Dots), I set this to find other desirable resource tiles, such as a high value Wood/Iron/Stone/Clay tile.  I set the desired type of resources Minimum to 10 and the Maximum I leave at 99. I set the Minimum for all other values to 0, and the Maximum at 99.
• There is a checkbox that will show the 10-Square radius around cities as well, make sure this is selected.
• Click “Find Sweet Spots”.
• On your map, you will now see some different things.
• You will see the dots, and around cities you will see large circles showing the 10 square radius you should not settle within.
• For Settlers/Exodus: Begin looking for Red Dots with Orange Dots within 2-3 squares of them.  These signify a good location for your future settlement.
• For Teleporting: Begin looking for Orange Dots.  Settle on a desirable square within 2-3 squares of these Orange Dots.
• Obviously, multiple Orange Dots within 2-3 squares of where you want to settle is better than just 1 dot.
• If you are planning on settling on a tile that only has 1 of a certain type of resource, consider setting the Tertiary Target numbers to look for that type of resource, and settle on a tile which has both Blue and Orange Dots nearby.

I think that covers the basics (if somewhat comprehensively) on what to look for when choosing a place to settle.

Thank you for your time!  Happy Hunting!