Mines and Quarries are surprisingly difficult to place on the map. If you wait too long, you will probably be annoyed with how difficult it is to fit a new mine or a new quarry into your existing town.

So, the best strategy would be to locate good placements for your mines and quarries before you begin a map. Remember: you can pause the construction of these buildings right away and ignore them for as long as you want. The game will remember your placement and you can begin construction years down the road. It doesn't cost any materials to specify a future placement if you pause it right away.

For a medium map, you will want about 2 of each. For a large map, probably 3-5 of each depending on your objective(s) for that town.

If you don't like the available locations for these two critical structures... START A NEW MAP. This is the huge advantage you get when trying to place these right from the start. You don't want to wait 50 or 75 years to realize that the random number generator gave you bad mine locations. It is easy to cancel these buildings if you decide against them later. There is no harm -- zero downside -- to putting a bunch of mines and quarries (paused of course) all around the outskirts of your town as the very first step. Just do it.

Important: Mines and Quarries (Iron and Stone) do NOT replenish over time. Trees grow back. Farms grow back. Cows breed again. But mines and quarries are once and done. Forever. Make sure your map has good locations for these two critical resources before investing too much time into that particular map. Maps are randomly generated... so make sure that you get a good one.

This tip might be the most controversial. I don't care. My strong advice is to start the game (when you are a new player) without natural disasters activated.

There is a lot to learn, a lot of fun to be had, and a lot of gameplay (plus a lot of achievements) in the normal process of building a town.

Save natural disasters for later. After you are familiar with the game and know the ins and outs of building a town, then you can add natural disasters to increase the difficulty and add more hours of gameplay.

Most of the complaints about this game stem from people adding natural disasters before they were ready.

You will grow attached to your town. You will love your town. You will get comfortable with your town. You definitely don't want your town to burn to the ground on your first successful playthrough.

Start off without natural disasters and enjoy the game. There is a rich depth to this game in the normal process of growing a town. Earn achievements and enjoy the game. Add disasters later when you no longer care if your town dies. :-)

Iron and stone are the two resources that don't replenish in your town.

Iron should flow into your town from a trader.

Stone should flow into your town from a trader.

The extention of this rule is that tools should also stay in your town. Trade to receive tools. Don't trade tools away.

Firewood is a great resource to trade away for everything you want. Trees grow back. Iron and stone do not.

Make sure that iron and stone are always coming INTO your town, and never going OUT of your town.

The foresters are important early, and they are important late game also.

Early, you want foresters to maintain the tree density (for gathering and hunting), and also to gather logs for various building and firewood activities.

Late game, you still need foresters to maintain tree growth.

However, it isn't important to maintain 100% tree density around a forester. You can easily build structures around these buildings as long as you maintain at least 25% tree density. Logs are a useful resource for the entire game.

Contrary to most guides, I will also suggest that you keep "planting" and "harvesting" ON for all foresters in your town at all times, in all stages of the game. It is a very rare situation where I have found the need to turn off one of these two modes. The safe bet is to always keep both actions turned on. Trying to micro-manage your foresters is a lot of work for very little payoff.

Fishing is useless.

But not really.

Don't make the mistake of fishing too early. Per villager, fishing will return a relatively small amount of food. However, keep in mind that water is otherwise useless in this game. Those tiles weren't doing anything for you anyway. So you might as well fish.

But, wait until you have nothing better to do. Also, you will need to fish to earn some achievements. So go ahead and fish, but not too early. Don't bet your town on fishing.

Perhaps [Gathering -> Hunting -> Farming -> Orchards -> Livestock -> Fishing] is a good model to keep in mind.

BUT: Fishing is so easy to do that you can interject it into that hierarchy anytime you have nothing better to do. Just make sure that you have nothing better to do!

At the beginning, you might need to build wooden houses to get your population up and running. That is fine. Wooden houses have their place.

But as soon as you can build stone houses you should only build stone houses from then on.

Upgrading wooden houses to stone houses is a pain in the neck. Don't rely on this mechanic. If you can afford to upgrade one wooden house, you can afford to only build stone houses from then on.

Stone houses have three primary benefits over wooden houses:

1. It takes less firewood to heat them
2. They don't burn as easily (if you have disasters enabled)
3. You pace yourself better on population growth

Honestly, after about 10 houses in your town: if you are building wooden houses you are growing your town too quickly.

In most games, population works for you. In this game, it works against you.

Most games: You build houses and increase your population... then, you build your army or advanced units and win the game.

This game: You build houses and die.

Ok, seriously; this game: You build all of the infrastructure you need, then... when you can afford to do so, you build another house to increase the population.

Don't ever forget that this game is backwards from other games. You build population SECOND in this game, after you can support it.

Nomads suck in this game. They are uneducated and increase your population (generally a bad thing) quickly.

Turn them away unless you have a very good reason to keep them.

[There is an achievement for accepting 200 nomads into a single town. That would be an example of a good reason to keep them. Changing your playstyle to something theoretically "less optimal" in order to have fun, to roleplay, or to snag an achievement is totally cool. Games should be fun.]

Update: I've been told that a game patch fixed this problem. It might be safe to forest near an orchard. It is probably still less than ideal (opportunity cost: the orchard will be cutting into your potential lumber real estate) but at least it won't be the crisis it used to be.

[[Older information: Many guides mention this but it bears repeating. You must plan your town so that orchards are in a separate location from foresters. They are incompatible because foresters will cut down your fruit trees.]]

Traders are awesome. But if you make the mistake of filling them up with goods that you want to trade out of your town, you won't have any space left to accept the goods coming into your town.

I agree that this is a bit silly, but I've been burned by this a few times

So, the best policy is to fill a trader about 50-70% full with firewood. Then, you can trade for whatever you want without pain and suffering.

Farm harvests are somewhat random. But, here is a good rule of thumb:

1 farmer can tend to a farm of about the size 8x8. 1 farmer can harvest about 500 units of food per year. This is just a round number and a rule of thumb, but it is close.

If you have bigger farms, add more farmers, but don't add too many.

It would be unusual for a single farm to require more than 4 farmers. Make sure that you are getting at least 500 units of food per farmer, or you might be wasting villagers. It might be a good idea to reduce the number of workers (on that particular farm) by 1 if you don't get this yield.

It is generally better to "underfarm" than to "overfarm". You can add more farmers later when your town grows. Humans are the most valuable resource in this game. Land is important, but not as important as people. Until the end-game, humans are the critical-path resource, so don't waste them over-farming your land.

Alcohol is awesome, in moderation.

Remember that alcohol production takes away grain from your food supply. I made the mistake of producing too much alcohol in my town and my villagers almost starved. The problem went away instantly when I "stopped" production on most of my taverns.

Alcohol makes your villagers happy in small doses. There is no need to overdo it.

Wheat is the best crop because it will feed your villagers and also can be used for alcohol (happiness) production.

Other crops seem to be ineligible for alcohol production.

Orchards can produce fruit for alcohol. But fields seem to be only able to produce wheat. (Beer, although the game doesn't specifically use the word 'beer'.)

It is tempting to produce beer (wheat ale), and cheery ale, and pumpkin ale, etc. Variety is good right? I thought so at first.

But: all alcohol gets grouped together into the same category. So you might as well produce a bunch of beer (wheat + tavern = ale).

I don't see any advantage to adding variety to alcohol production.

It seems that you need 10 of a given animal to split herds. This is confusing at first, but an important rule to learn.

Graveyards help your villagers maintain happiness. In my experience, this does seem to help quite a bit.

The individual graves seem to decompose after 20 years. This happens whether they are part of an active graveyard or not. Because graveyards can recycle themselves in this way, make sure to build enough for acceptable capacity and then let them take care of themselves.

Check back on them perioically to ensure that you aren't stuck at full capacity.

(Thank you to everyone who helped with feedback and information on this topic!)

The priority tool works very well and is very useful.

When you have multiple structures under construction and too few villagers to help out, the priority tool can be invaluable. Use it to tell your builders which building to work on NOW.

Town halls are useful... at about year 20. Before that they are too expensive to be valuable.

But for a mature town you will want to check production rates and ensure that you are producing more than you are consuming. Town halls become very useful in the mid-game.

Just don't build one too soon.

Oh, and you do NOT need to build your town hall in the center of the town. Feel free to build a town hall as far away from your useful area as possible. Politicians are overrated. Put them in their place by putting them out to pasture.

Just shove it as far away from your town as you can. Set a camera location if you really want to access it quickly. And don't use it to accept nomads. Nomads are useless.

Useful Tip: You can use the town hall to compare the number of families to the number of houses. This is a very useful and easy way to determine if you need more houses for town growth. Your population grows when you have more families moving into more homes and producing more children. Empty homes don't do anything for you in the immediate term. Families without houses don't reproduce. So... keeping these two numbers about the same is a good idea.

Roads can be very useful, but be careful. This isn't Sim City and we aren't trying to build a nice looking town with cobblestone everywhere. We are trying to survive in a harsh wildnerness.

Make friends with the trees and incorporate them into your villages. Foresters can still do their job even when you have a booming town. Just give them enough ground to work with.

And this is the main problem with roads: they consume tiles that could have otherwise been used for gathering, hunting, foresting, herbalism, etc.

But wait: roads help citizens travel faster and that is vital. Farmers moving back to their fields to plant a crop need to hustle to get there in time to plant.

Yes. Roads are vital. But use them precisely and for a purpose.

I recommend the following approach:

1. Start by placing your structures. Always keep the forest in mind and build your civilization as a bunch of interconnected settlements. Use that forest to your advantage and keep trees around in between buildings, and in patches here and there. Don't clearcut the map!

2. Build dirt roads to connect these main areas. Roads should be built in straight lines. Avoid diagonal roads, they are a hassle.

3. Don't be afraid to remove road tiles and let trees grow back if you notice areas that aren't traveled much.

4. Upgrade to stone roads later in the game. Stone is generally more useful for building stone houses than upgrading roads. Your citizen survival rate goes up greatly with stone houses... stone roads compete for the same resource and offer a smaller upgraded survival chance.

The goal of this game is to survive and thrive in a harsh wilderness environment. If you use roads to decorate every house and every building, you are stripping the land of precious forest tiles that might have helped you survive better unfinished.

It is my opinion that a lot of the struggles new players have relates to this idea: they are working against the forest rather than within the forest. What good does it do if your town looks beautiful but the people are cold and starving? :-)

If you hold down Shift you can build a diagonal road. It looks cool.

Don't ever do this.

Diagonal roads will only serve to bite you in the rear later in the game. You will hate your diagonal roads. I have never found a diagonal road useful. They just get in the way of building farms or pastures later in the game.

Note: it takes exactly the same amount of tiles to build a "square" road as a diagonal road. So you don't save any resources if you try to connect dots in a diagonal. This is because a diagonal road is really just a series of smaller straight roads. Up, right, up, right, up right ... instead of up, up, up, right, right, right. Same tiles. More hassle.

Build straight roads. Try to add roads after your structures are in place. Don't worry so much about roads. They are somewhat useful, but tend to get in the way of more useful things.

A better idea: put your big/useful structures down first. Then, add some roads to help your villagers move around faster. Dirt roads are usually sufficient until late game (and cheaper). Upgrade to stone roads only when you don't have something more useful to do with the stone. Stone is a precious resource in this game.

Don't use diagonal roads. Just don't do it. Nobody likes a showoff.

Tunnels are fun, and a lot easier to use than it might seem. Unfortunately, tunnels consume stone rather than produce stone. (It is a bit irritating and counterintuitive, I agree.)

However, I have found that I build tunnels in situations where they aren't really needed.

Make sure that you really need a tunnel before you build one. Your villagers can often walk around the mountain just fine. If you are unsure, just issue a build order, or a resource gather order to see if your villagers can navigate to the other side of the mountain without needing a tunnel.

Tunnels are expensive. They cost a lot of stone. They are cool, but make sure that you really need one before building one.

Summary: Try to avoid building tunnels unless you really need one.

When you get up and leave your computer, whether to eat dinner or to visit the restroom, it is tempting to pause the game.

I recommend an alternative.

Save your game (manual save, not auto-save) and then increase the game speed to 10x.

When you return to your computer you can look at the state of your town. Did everyone die? Did disaster befall your town? If so, no big deal. Reload from your save and resume playing. It is literally the same thing as-if you had paused the game.

But, did your town mature 5 more years and achieve greatness? Great. Continue playing. No harm no foul.

(This tip is especially useful if you are waiting for an achievement. If, by contrast, you are brand-new and learning the ropes then you probably want to set this tip aside for later.)

When you build a mine you have a choice: iron or coal.

Iron seems to be a much better choice.

The primary advantage of coal is that you can make steel tools that last twice as long as iron tools. However, these tools take twice the amount of non-renewable materials. Iron tools take wood and iron. Steel tools take wood, iron, and coal. If we ignore the wood (it is a renewable resource), the steel tools take twice the non-renewable resources to last twice as long.

So, it is essentially a wash. You are still mining twice the materials for twice the time. Two iron tools accomplishes the same job as one steel tool.

Therefore, it is my opinion that adding complexity to your mining operations for this non-gain is too complicated for new players. If you are advanced and enjoy the added complexity: great. But new players can safely ignore coal for a large portion of the game.

One more problem with coal: a lot of players get frustrated when their citizens burn coal (for warmth in the winter) rather than firewood. Yes, this is annoying. Wasting a valuable non-renewable resource instead of firewood which is an easy to make renewable resource to accomplish the exact same survival task. This isn't good.

But your citizens will never accidentally burn iron. And if you have two mines producing iron, this gives you even more of a really valuable resource that will give you the exact same tool longevity without any risk of accidentally disappearing because your villagers are dumb.

Also: you reduce the complexity and risk of assigning tasks to the various blacksmiths. It sucks to have one blacksmith producing steel tools and then run out of coal. Does he automatically downgrade to iron tools? No, he just wanders off to carry something. By contrast, assigning all blacksmiths to make iron tools seems to work very reliably.

And honestly, your villagers will re-acquire a new tool when the old one breaks almost immediately. Markets do a great job spreading these around. I honestly don't think steel tools are worth it unless you enjoy making them (for roleplaying/fun). Any actual increase in your town's survival or prosperity is probably mostly imagined.

But hey, that's just my opinion. :-)

Note: If the game ever changes the balance to increase the usefulness of steel tools, then this entire tip becomes null and void. For example: if steel tools were to increase the productivity of your villagers, then coal would all of a sudden become very useful. Likewise, if steel tools were to last 3 times longer than iron tools, this would once again make coal useful. In my humble opinion, coal is a useless resource as of version 1.0 because it offers no tangible advantage but comes with some annoying downsides.

You will want to build your first school very early in the life of your town.

Schools can support (teach) 20 students. Please monitor this. Educated workers are much better than non-educated ones. Schools also give you the benefit of seeing the progression from child->student->adult better. You can make better decisions, and your labor force will be more productive. You definitely want a 100% educated rate in your town.

This is also the primary reason why nomads suck and you should reject nomads. They don't have an education.

Keep up with your schools. You want your first school right away. As early as you can. Maybe not before you first Gatherers, but you definitely want it RIGHT AWAY.

You start this game with children. Kids. Small humans who don't know ♥♥♥♥. Do you really want to spend the next 50 years with an uneducated worthless adult on your hands? No, you don't. You will never regret the decison to build a school early, often, and right away. Build a school!

When you get to 15 students, you want to consider adding a second school. 35 and you should definitely be adding a 3rd. Teachers are worth it. For a medium to large town, 3-4 teachers are well worth the investment. Remember: these 3-4 humans almost DOUBLE your productivity for the rest of your humans. That is a NO BRAINER.

Always have schools. Always. Period.

Markets are very useful. You should definitely use markets. But do your houses need to (all of them) fall within a market circle of influence?

The answer is no.

If you are a die-hard roleplayer and need to format your town perfectly, then yes. Of course all houses should live inside the market zone.

But I have been watching my house inventory very carefully and the houses that live outside of the market zone tend to do just fine. Nobody starves or freezes to death if they life just outside that circle.

Markets are useful. You should definitely use them and plan your town around them. But don't be too paranoid. You don't need to demolish a house just because it resides outside of a market zone. It will probably do just fine.

Pastures are a great end-game (long-term) source of food.

The exception to this rule is playing on easy. If you start the game on easy, you will get a bunch of cattle right at the start. Build a pasture right away to capture this resource and make use of it. This is a good thing. Cows are awesome.

When deciding what to raise in a pasture, the following rule is generally true:

Cows -> Sheep -> Chickens

Cows give you food and leather. This is very useful for eating and clothes.

Sheep give you food and wool. This is useful for eating and warmer clothes.

Chickens give you food and eggs. This is useful for eating.

All are useful, but in general cows are the best. Add some sheep if your town gets big. Add some chickens if you get bored. Not all livestock are created equal.

Here is a tip that I wish I had used earlier:

When you first start building something drag the window for that building somewhere else on the screen. I like to drag it to the bottom. This pins the window in place and will keep it on your screen.

From here, you can easily monitor the construction progress. You will also remember to staff the building with workers when it completes.

Don't close these windows until they are properly staffed with workers. Use the pinned windows as reminders for things you need to take future action on.

(Simultaneously store 2000 fuel, 2000 wood, 500 stone, 500 iron, 200 tools, 200 coats, and 30000 food.)
This takes into account items stored at the traders. This is good, because you can "hide" items from your villagers when working toward this storage goal. It also means you can easily trade for that final item.

(Build a town with 3 churches, 5 boarding houses, 4 markets, 5 hospitals, 2 trading posts, 6 taverns, and a town hall.)
The easiest way to get this achievement is to start with a mature town and save your game. Then, build all of this "crap" and reload from your saved game after you earn the achievement. I don't know about you, but I didn't actually want 5 boarding houses and 5 hospitals in my town.

(Build a bridge that is at least 50 units long.)
Here is a reasonably fun map seed for this achievement: 890184729. I used a large map, valleys, easy starting conditions, mild weather, no disasters. There is a huge lake in the upper left corner and tons of stone and trees that you can clear-cut. Warning: you do need to set up some gatherers and wood cutters for firewood. The big bridge does take a a couple of years to build, so don't starve in the meantime. 10x game speed recommended for this one.

(Using a harsh climate and a small mountainous map, maintain a population of 50 people for 20 years.)
The population did count children and students. (I'm 99% sure.) I earned this after only 23 years or so, so it must have. Also, I had disasters turned off for this one, and it worked just fine.

There seems to be a bug with this one. 20 wells doesn't cut it. But some people have gotten the achievement and there is a rumor that it takes 40 wells instead of 20. So, if you want this one try to keep building wells until it registers.