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Guides

Victoria 3 Beginner Tips

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1. Utilize “Economy of Scale”

“Economy of Scale” in Victoria 3 is the bonus to Throughput (efficiency of turning Input Goods into Output Goods) based on building level. For example, when starting as Sweden the initial Logging Camps in Svealand are Level 8 and provide an additional 7% Throughput. This indicates that you should always try to concentrate production buildings in a single state when possible and permitted by population demand.

2. Freely import necessities

Providing your population with a steady flow of low-cost staple goods will be important to improving the Standard of Living. Increasing the Standard of Living will affect population growth as well as reduce the number of people becoming Radical. Additional trade routes to importing some of these necessities may help alleviate any crucial shortages you may have. However, some states will have bonuses for the production of some staple goods and you should always investigate if it would be better to build your own production industries instead.

3. Build Construction Offices Early

Many nations will start with a healthy money balance when you start the game – utilize that to build construction offices early on. In Victoria 3, there is a Credit system if you go into debt where you have some leeway for spending money on investing in your economy. As an example, Sweden starts with 2.22M credit that you can tap into if necessary prior to going into Default (which pauses all construction and negatively impacts Throughput). Building construction offices early will help kickstart your industries which will almost always pay itself off.

4. Avoid too many Construction Offices

Unfortunately, each construction office will increase your National Expenses quite significantly (to the tune of up to 5-6K/week). Early on it is definitely a good idea to invest in more construction offices (as mentioned above), however too many will cripple your economy in the long run. Once you are running a significant deficit, consider dismantling some offices to create a better weekly cash balance.

5. Use negative productivity Trade Routes

Frequently you may encounter scenarios where your production lines are running a shortage of specific Input Goods (often things like Tools or Iron etc.). Don’t be afraid to utilize trade routes to bring in the necessary goods to bring down the price. This allows the production buildings to run more cost-efficiently and sustain themselves without requiring subsidizing.

6. Build the industries regardless of Predicted Earnings

One mistake that is often made early on is that you may avoid all the buildings that tell you that you will lose money. For some reason, it gives you a negative, but for most resource/agriculture/manufacturing type buildings it will end up as a positive. Instead, base your decision to construct a certain building on what is most needed.

Keep in mind that you are building to benefit your entire Nation rather than individual building productivity. For each Logging Camp or Iron Mine that you build, you then reduce the cost of Input Goods for multiple other industries – which will then increase the overall profitability of your country.

7. Increase consumption tax

Increasing consumption tax on certain goods will be an efficient way to bankroll more Construction Offices or enable you to climb out of a severe deficit. As an example, an additional consumption tax on Services in Sweden would have generated approximately 3.83K revenue per week while only minimally impacting the Standard of Living.

8. Focus on the Resource/Agriculture industry early on

Creating a strong Resource/Agriculture industry early on will enable you to have consistent access to low-cost Input Goods for your other industries later on in the game as well as provide your population with a sustainable boost to their Standard of Living. Pay special attention to which buildings already exist in which states to maximize Economy of Scale as well as efficient boosting through using Decrees.

9. Specialize state production

As mentioned above, specific states will have boosts to certain industries – use that knowledge to maximize where to construct more buildings. It is also a good idea to “specialize” a state in a specific type of industry such as Agriculture vs. Resource vs. Manufacturing. This is more important in the early game when the limiting factor is more related to Construction Offices than the employable population. However, as your industry develops you may end up building other industries in your “specialized” states simply due to workforce limitations.

10. Use Decrees in specialized states

As mentioned above, when you specialize a state in a specific industry you can then utilize Decrees to maximize output. This will allow you to really maximize how much money you can make from each individual building that you construct. Combining Economy of Scale with this will set you on your way to optimizing your industry.

11. Build ports and clippers for convoys

Once you reach a certain stage in the game, you may find yourself requiring additional Convoys to sustain your trade routes. To do this, you will have to build additional Ports and either build or import Clippers.

Guides

New World Quality of Life Tips

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After multiple delay, New World is finally being released this coming week! This guide will go over several tips that will improve your quality of life and (hopefully) your enjoyment of the game.

1. Bind auto-run to a mouse key

For those of you with a mouse that has supplemental mouse keys, make sure to bind one of the easy-to-reach ones to the auto-run function. New World has a huge amount of walking/running involved and having a quick access function for movement helps with managing your key pressing usage. This function also makes your character to jump/climb automatically, which essentially covers most inconvenient movement. Utilizing this function will allow you to focus more on scanning the environment for raw materials and even open the map while running to better direct your travelling.

2. Equip large stacks of consumables to free up inventory space

If you are hauling water or meat then placing them into your consumables bar frees up your inventory space. This helps tremendously for Cooking and Arcana since you require a very high number of raw materials and will reduce the number of gathering trips required. This is also a good tip for early game since those items are also extremely cheap ways to recover health.

3, Craft/buy a leather satchel ASAP

Going from 200 to ~300 inventory space makes a huge difference in quality of life when you are trying to level up your Trade Skills. As soon as that slot opens, grind out 1000 faction points (may change on release – farm as much as you need) and purchase the inventory token. The time you spend on making a satchel will easily be made up by just a couple gathering trips. If you are playing right at the start, it is unlikely that anyone will be selling a satchel on the market for a reasonable price – chances are it is just easier for you to make it yourself.

As you make your way through the game, it is a good idea to have another token on hand for a second satchel. A second bag slot opens up mid-game and will further expand your inventory.

4. Prioritize the “Lucky” perk

Regardless of how far along your Crafting skills are, netting some rare materials will almost always be useful when gathering. Many of these items will give you a chance to choose which stats you want on your items and some will also be required for future crafting. Due to how sought after these are, you can always sell these to the Market for a nice profit as well. Other perks like increased material gain, increased Azoth, and increased XP are great as well, but Luck reduces bottlenecks in progression.

5. Use a minimum of Iron-grade tools

Iron-grade tools give you a great 25% boost in efficiency for very little work. On launch it will take you 10-15 minutes max to grind out the materials needed, and it will make your life much easier due to how much faster it may increase your gathering. If you are reading this guide later on, the iron-grade tools on the market will very likely be dirt cheap and available right away.

If you have access to Steel tools, I would highly recommend purchasing/crafting them as soon as possible as well since your efficiency almost doubles while using them.

6. Craft Town Board quest items before refining anything

Don’t be me and refine before you craft, only to have to go back outside and grind out more materials. At the moment, these items mostly require RAW materials – meaning you need iron ORE not iron ingots. Make it a habit to swing by the Forge prior to refining anything and you will save yourself a ton of pain and time.

7. Set markers on your map to guide your gathering route

Using the map marker function helps you direct where you need to go for your gathering trips. Resources like www.newworld-map.com are a great way to see where your desired resources are. Make quick notes on your map regarding their location and it will help guide your early gathering runs to be more efficient and save you some headache from going back and forth.

If you are travelling between towns, it is also a good idea to make a quick note of what resources are along the way so that you can make the most out of your time. Going off track occasionally helps with reducing the monotonous grinding of quests and adds a little flavour to your journey.

8. Items in town storage can be used for crafting

I typically dump all the materials I gathered into the storage as soon as I enter town. The reason for this is because everything you have in storage can be used for crafting inside of a town. Unfortunately, the crafted items actually end up in your bag rather than the storage. This sets up certain scenarios where you haven’t dumped your existing inventory and end up overweight due to new items using storage materials. Avoid this by routinely dumping materials first.

9. Pin recipes to keep track of required materials

There is currently no better way to keep track of your targeted gathering amounts. Pinning the recipes helps you keep track of which materials you need to target and how many you have on hand. This makes the process much easier compared to manually flipping back and forth between the inventory and Cooking Trade Skill page.

10. Visit the town cow and beehive for milk and honey

Most towns have cows and a beehive available for harvesting. This is basically a free way to get enough raw materials to craft your own supply of food. It takes a few hours to replenish (aka not a reliable mechanism), but is useful regardless especially if you’re only casually cooking. Every day you log in get into the routine of milking the cow and gathering honey and you will almost never run out of basic food items.

11. Self-cast by holding CTRL + ability

This helps with your aiming when you are in a tight spot and just need to hit something near you with your spells. Healers especially need to keep this in mind whenever you are somehow targeted and have to maintain your own health. Instead of having to do the usual placements, a quick CTRL + ability will greatly improve your reaction time.

12. Lock important items and use CTRL+S for quick salvaging

Always, always, always lock your important items. It is very easy to lose the “good” green weapon you have when you have 6 others that look exactly the same on your inventory screen. After you have secured your valuables, using CTRL + S for salvaging will save you a ton of time and headache. Instead of having to confirm that you indeed want to salvage the basic iron sword, you can just spam click on everything you want gone.

I also recommend salvaging essentially everything you don’t need since you do get repair parts and those become important when you need to repair your equipment. Early on you progress through equipment so fast it is unlikely you will need it unless you are hardcore PVP-ing and dying. Mid-game once gear progression slows down you will need this tip more.

13. Prone to avoid players, jump on a ledge to avoid animals

Keep this tip in mind when you are in a difficult position. Prone hides your name tag beyond a certain distance, and when you are prone in bushes/behind cover it makes you all but invisible. This can be a life-saving tip when you see PVP-ers coming your way and you really don’t have the support to fight them.

Likewise, avoid animals by jumping up on a ledge since they typically can’t follow you upwards. This tip especially applies in areas with alligators since they can be extremely tough to kill, but there typically are small boulders for you to jump on.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy the game! 🙂

Guides

New World Closed Beta Beginner Tips

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New World is hosting a Closed Beta until August 2nd that allows players to experience what the game looks like currently. Starting the game is relatively straightforward with the tutorial teaching you all of the basics of fighting, crafting, and gathering. However, there are several crucial tips that can make your life much, much easier.

1. Craft the Coarse Leather Satchel

The tutorial will provide you with a basic satchel that can improve your encumberance by a small amount. However, the first craftable leather satchel can increase your encumberance by 1000 – roughly translating to carrying 100 more item weight.

This will greatly improve how long you can harvest/gather raw materials for before having to go back to a settlement. With how long it takes to actually move around in this game, this will alleviate the headaches that you will end up facing. One other benefit is that using this satchel will ensure that you don’t run out of space from gathering random things on your way between settlements. You won’t have to throw out any materials just to make room for the iron deposit you just found.

2. Level “Harvesting” to 30

Regardless of which skill you want to dedicate time to in the future, levelling up Gathering to 30 allows you to collect from plants that provide Motes (and higher level versions of Motes). This plays a role in crafting gunpowder, lifestaff, firestaff, and many more. Keeping a healthy stockpile of motes is infinitely easier if you can just collect whichever ones you end up seeing when travelling between points. Gathering can be rapidly increased by gathering herbs and hemp.

3. Use wells in towns for Water

You don’t have to run all the way outside to the nearest stream for freshwater. All towns (as far as I know) have a well either inside it or just outside. This saves you a ton of valuable time if you are mass-crafting potions and need a reasonably close source. Using the town well will also remove the need for storage space dedicated to water.

4. Items placed into storage can still be used for crafting

Feel free to dump all of your gathered resources into the storage at your main settlement. Occasionally it will glitch and say that you don’t have a certain resource, but it is easily fixed by picking it up and putting it back again. It is a great quality of life measure that helps with improving item organization. Keep in mind that once you craft new items, the new items are now in your inventory. You will have to get into a habit of dumping everything as soon as you get back and making another trip to the storage before you leave again.

It is important to know that each settlement has its own unique storage. If you decide to move to a different city, you will have to bring all of your resources with you. One way to overcome this is to always set your “Inn” at the same city that you have all of your resources. Choose your city very carefully as well – usually one of the ones in the middle of the map are the most popular.

5. Craft Iron tools

Tier 2 tools are very easily accessible early game. These improved tools will speed up the gathering process much more than basic tools and there really is no reason not to craft them. Once you get to the first settlement, you can easily create a set of these tools just from resources you pick up on the way.

6. Push to level 20 before grinding Tradeskills

By the time you hit Level 20, you will have experienced enough of the game to know more about what you want to dedicate your time to. I initially really liked the magic in this game and spent half the day grinding out gathering and arcana only to realize that I enjoyed the sword/shield and smithing aspect much more. One other benefit is that Level 20 is when you unlock a second satchel spot. This increases your max weight to 300 (without other bonuses) and can help a ton with actually grinding.

At the same time, definitely explore as much as you can about the different available skills. Try out everything before you commit, but don’t feel the need to actually grind things out until later on in the game.

7. Join a Company

New World is definitely a group-based MMO that has amazing benefits for those who decide to party up. EXP is not currently split between team members, and having a group of people to play with helps you all progress extremely fast. Instead of killing mobs one-by-one, a group of you can take down multiple mobs at the same time. Many of the missions are also “Kill X amount of monsters” type quests, and landing a single hit on the mob will give you credit. Joining a Company is the easiest method for you to find a group of players to explore the game with.

8. Specialize Refining within the Company

Once you join a Company that you like, talk amongst yourselves and dedicate yourselves to specific refining roles. This tip is NOT meant to be restrictive – it just helps a ton with crafting and avoids frustrations. For context, the Auction House in game at the moment is not very well-populated with resources. To craft a Tier 3 Steel Sword, you need Tier 2 Leather, Tier 2 Wood and Tier 2 Ingots (Steel). If your company gets organized and splits up the trades, everyone will be able to craft whichever item they wish.

One added benefit is if you have a funneling agreement with a small group of Company members, you can each level up your respective refining skills much, much quicker.

9. Keep equipment that has bonuses to Trade Skills

In your journey you will find equipment that has certain bonuses like “increase chance of obtaining rare resource when logging by 2.5%”. Even if you do not think you need it now, having a full set of these bonuses in any Trade Skill will be very useful. Specifically for mining, it enables you to gather Gems that you can later refine and place into sockets. Without it, it is much more difficult to find these resources.

Another reason to keep them is that it is difficult to craft the ones you specifically want. Crafting an item with a specific perk requires you to add on an ingredient that has that trait. These items are obtained by gathering the related resources. It can take a long time to grind for the specific one you are looking for and it is much easier just to hang onto them as soon as you see them.

10. Scrap everything you don’t need

For beginners, the drops you get in the early game aren’t worth very much. You very likely won’t be able to sell them to other players and there currently is no way to sell them to an NPC. If you don’t need it (and it doesn’t have a Trade Skill boost as mentioned in Tip #9) then you should scrap it for materials. You will always need the extra resources it provides and will actually be of use to you rather than being thrown out.

11. Resources spawn in the same location

Once you find a useful resource, make a mental note of it or make a note of it on a PDF of the map. Alternatively, you can refer to this map here since it appears to have most of the resources annotated already. Crafting in New World requires using the previous tier as materials. For example, crafting a Steel ingot requires Iron ingots. This means that all of the basic resources like Iron and Oil will be in demand no matter where you are in the game. Making a note of where to find resources will be important to reducing wasted time.

12. Always have Food and Potions

It is incredibly easy to have food up 24/7 since you have the ability to set a camp virtually anywhere and there are turkeys all over the place. The basic boost to constitution and the constant heal from food is valuable to reducing downtime.

Having a supply of potions is likewise very simple once you collect a few herbs and some water. Potions can be used to quickly regain some health, but it does take some time to actually use. Unfortunately, if you are playing alone then it may be difficult to find a time in the middle of combat to chug a potion. However, if you are playing with a group then this minimizes your down time and enables your entire group to continue grinding.

13. Take it slow and enjoy the game

Try to take a step back and just enjoy the game for what it currently is. I personally really like the Trade Skills aspect of New World – I definitely spent more time crafting and gathering than I did actually doing quests. Every player will enjoy a slightly different aspect of the game, but do explore as much as you can before committing to a certain playstyle.

14. Resource size affects respawn timer and EXP efficiency

Larger resource nodes (i.e. large mountain of iron vs. small pile) take longer to respawn after you have gathered it. Most obvious example of this is for oil when you try to make an efficient run gathering all you can. The large oil nodes take a few minutes longer to respawn even though you mine the small node first. Keep this in mind when you are planning your gathering route in the area.

Gathering larger nodes will give you more of the resource per second, but the smaller nodes are better for leveling up the Trade skill in the first place. An example of this is when you are chopping wood – try logging the skinny trees and keep track of your EXP gain in a minute vs. logging large trees. You will notice that you end up gaining EXP faster, but will gain less wood. Keep this in mind in the early stages of the game when it is more important to level the skill up than it is to gather tons of wood for crafting.

15. Craft the highest tier possible for the most efficient EXP per material

It is pretty obvious that crafting higher tier products will give you more EXP. However, if you are not a big fan of gathering or spending gold on the basic resources, crafting ONLY highest tier products will give you the most EXP for the resources that you have. Gone are the days of spamming iron daggers in Skyrim. If you have the materials for it, always go for the higher tier item.

That being said, higher tiers require more specific resources that tend to be in short supply. For example, rugged leather requires tannins that you can really only farm from level 45 mobs and above. Otherwise you have to run around opening chests just to gather a few here and there. At least on my server in Everfall, tannins are almost always out of stock. Same thing goes for Oil at the moment due to the limited supply.

One way to get around this resource shortage is to simply ask to trade with someone in your Company that has a different Trade skill focus than you. Do keep in mind though that tannins and oil tend to be some of the most sought-after materials due to how they are needed in weaponcrafting.

16. Pick up town quests whenever you are grinding Trade skills

When you are grinding any of the gathering related Trade skills, picking up a few of the town quests will net you some EXP, standing, and gold. Most important of these is town standing since the bonuses that will provide will be much more useful. Other than benefits like reduced cost, faster gathering, more tokens for faction quests, and increased EXP gain, you will also need to be at level 15 standing in order to purchase a house.

Doing random town quests while you are out gathering does not take up that much extra time. Most of the ones that I have picked up are ones like “Hunt ____ Elk/Rabbit/Wolves” and I just complete them idly as I walk past. Specifically for wolves, they tend to walk around areas that you are gathering in and you usually have to fight them regardless. Town quests are a small bonus you get for doing what you usually do anyways.

17. raft armour sets that give bonuses to Trade skills

The bonuses from a full set of any of these traits can be huge for Trade skill efficiency. An example of this is that even just having 3 items with the “increase woodworking” trait improved my “extra resource” chance up to around 20%. When you refine 100 wood, you now get 20 extra. If you are focused on crafting in any way, getting a full set of these traits is an absolute must.

To actually obtain the items that you use to craft armour with these perks, you can either go to the auction house or you can gather more from related resources. For example, I have found a ton of the woodworking perk item just from logging constantly. These items can be applied to any type of armour when you craft – it is not limited to just leather or just cloth.

18. Save up vegetables and create food that boost Trade skills

Vegetables are fairly hard to farm in New World. Most of the ones I have seen come from the provision boxes that you see around the world. Some vegetables do exist in the wild and can be gathered consistently, but things like Broccoli mostly come from boxes. Whenever you encounter one, make sure to save what you find. The reason behind this is that the food items you can make can boost any of the Trade skills.

If you are not a big fan of cooking, you don’t necessarily have to go out of your way for them. However, even crafting the first tier food items can be helpful in things like resource gathering. It can speed up the process for you and help reduce the grind that is needed to level up refining or crafting trade skills.

19. Approach “open X boxes” quests systematically

These quests can get annoying once you have opened 4-5 of the boxes and can’t find the rest. One way to combat this is to approach the area systematically. Look on your map once you arrive and make a mental note of all of the buldings in the area. Comb through each one step by step so that you don’t end up missing any by the time you get to the end.

I am personally not a big fan of these types of quests and I really do hope the devs change up how it is done. However, until they change it this is one of the methods to reduce your frustration when questing.

Another alternative is to actually use this map that some people have developed that marks down all of the chests in the area. Whenever I have used it, it has always been enough for me to complete my quest. However, some people may not like having to alt-tab back and forth and the systematic approach might be better suited for them.

20. Join a group and do PVP faction quests

This is one of the best ways to level when you are in the level 25-30 range. Most of the quests are best completed with a group since they commonly consist of killing a certain number of things or opening a number of boxes. Having a group also helps prevent you from being jumped by enemies since you will have forced active PVP status.

The extra EXP from killing mobs is also a great bonus to the quests when you are in a group since all you need is one hit to get the reward. Opening chests is also a good way to gather useful resources that are needed to craft higher tier products. There are other ways to gain EXP effectively, but this is the most well-rounded method I can find. Some people like to spam corrupted breaches, but that can be difficult for you depending on your gear situation and on the level of breaches that are available.

21. Armour weight determines dodge distance

Wearing all heavy armour will turn your dodge into a tiny hop that barely travels any distance. Similarly, wearing all light armour gives you that long distance dodge that can get you away from your enemy more efficiently. You can monitor this by going into your inventory and highlighting the bar right next to your equipped armour and seeing which category you currently fit into. You can mix and match different types of armour and it is the final weight that matters the most.

Equipment sometimes have the perk that lowers the weight of the armour. This can be very valuable if you allocated very few points into constitution since it will give you a better escape mechanism. This is especially true for ranged weapons since being able to back away even for an instant is important to getting your shot off. Avoiding enemy interruptions of your attack is crucial and having lighter armour will allow you to dodge away to do so.

22. Pay attention to defence type

Many beginners fall into the trap of just choosing the gear that has the highest gear score. Unfortunately, this is how you end up dead when fighting against the wrong enemies. It is a good idea to mix and match armour types to make sure you have both physical and elemental defence.

This tip isn’t meant to tell you to avoid high gearscore items, but rather to pay attention to your overall blend of equipment. High score is better, but not if you end up one-dimensional with no elemental defence.

As long as you are mindful of this pitfall, don’t be too concerned about min-maxing anything. Most people end up with a mix of armour due to randomness of drops anyways, but do keep this in mind from time to time when you equip new items.

23. Re-speccing is free until Level 20

Use the early game to mess around with your stats and explore what type of character you want to build. It is completely free for your to try different things and different weapons.

It is also free to reset your weapon skills as well! There are two trees for every weapon and each have 3 unique skills you can try out. This allows you to customize your playstyle since you can use skills from both trees at once.

This is a great opportunity for you to try out crazy builds like going all Focus as an archer to spam triple shot or to adapt your build to your current situation. I’ve personally used this method to change all my points into constitution when I partied up with higher level friends just so that I can survive in the areas that they were grinding in. Take advantage of this and use it to improve your gameplay.

24. Use the player-made maps to track resources

There are a few different maps floating around that can be used to track almost all of the resources. The one I use is here and is great for finding resource nodes like oil and iron. This is also the same map mentioned in tip #6 since it has the function to find chests.

This can also be used to map out your gathering route to maximize your time efficiency. Instead of manually running around certain zones, this will allow you to directly go from node to node. I personally used this method when gathering Oil early on since it was very important at that point to avoid the mobs (specifically the alligator).

Bonus Tip: Alligator attacks can reach you even when running away – climb on obstacles to avoid them

For whatever reason, alligator attacks can catch up to you even when you are sprinting away. Very few early game mobs can do that, and the alligator is the most common one I have seen. If you have the misfortune of pissing one off, climb up onto obstacles. If you don’t have an unreachable obstacle nearby, climb over anything you can and force the alligator to take the long path around. If you try to sprint in a straight line, it will likely kill you if you don’t have enough physical armour.

The most problematic area I have seen this in is in the Marshes when gathering Oil. One wrong move and you end up slowly moving through water and the alligator eats you. Fortunately, there are these boulders here and there that you can climb up on. From that point, you can actually use your ranged weapons to kill the alligator and continue gathering your oil.

Reviews

Going Medieval Review (Early Access)

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If you’ve logged thousands of hours into RimWorld and Banished, Going Medieval is the perfect new game for you to try. It is an extremely promising new colony sim that just entered into Early Access – boasting a list of features reminiscent of RimWorld when it first came out. Yes, it is still very new and barebones, but the framework has the potential to become another behemoth in this genre.

This review will go over what the game does well and which areas it needs to improve prior to release. Overall, it is still a strong recommend if you enjoyed other colony sims.

Going Medieval is on sale for 25% off full price at Green Man Gaming until June 11th! If you are interested in starting the game, check out our Going Medieval Essential Tips!

Pro: 3D Building is Amazing

Having played other colony sims, the ability to create buildings in 3D is a great change in pace. There are a few kinks to be worked out, but the overall feeling even in Early Access is still fantastic.

Going Medieval is the game to play if you ever wanted to design your own functional village, build a castle from the ground up, and throw up walls/traps to protect your people. It even gives you the option to build a basement or underground rooms if you so wish – some players have actually opted to building their entire base underground!

As the game becomes more developed and more items/buildings are added, your customization will definitely improve. The devs will also hopefully add modding support at some point in game development and that will open the game up similar to how RimWorld has tons of new content in the workshop.

Con: Building System is Hard for Beginners

The system can be a little confusing when you first start out. The tutorial tips give you a brief overview of how to build and orientate yourself to the different levels, but actually constructing a building you the way you want will take time.

One aspect I struggled with in particular was accidentally placing walls/items on the wrong floor and accidentally cancelling/deleting the wrong part of the building when I was trying to fix the mistake. This alongside a slightly unclear camera POV makes the early building process lackluster. Once you get more practice, you should have no problems designing structures to your content – but occasionally something will screw up and leave you feeling dissatisfied.

Pro: Easy to Understand Research System

Very straightforward system of creating different types of books as currency and spending it on your research of choice. Although some people might not like this linear progression system, it makes sense to me from a freedom standpoint. Unlike other games where you are locked into a specific research topic, the system in Going Medieval will allow you to choose what you want to research as long as you have the books for it. This gives you more flexibility to build up resources and spend it once you identify what you need next.

It is also cool to see that even though you “spend” your books, they still exist as physical items that you have to store. It gets annoying though once you progress through the game and end up with stacks and stacks of books with no ability to store them on bookshelves.

Con: Poor Work Prioritization AI

The work prioritization system in Going Medieval is virtually an exact copy of games like RimWorld and Amazing Cultivation Simulator. Unfortunately, it does not quite work as well as you may think. For example, even if you prioritize your “doctor” to healing, your other villagers might still die from their wounds since they were not tended. Likewise, prioritizing cooking does not seem to really prioritize them to cooking. There were multiple instances where the cook would start chopping trees even though the cooking task was not finished and there were more than enough raw supplies available.

Forcing prioritization of tasks is also very micromanagement intensive. You have to select a villager and right click to manually force them to do a task. Having a more robust AI system and an easier method of forcing tasks will be crucial to providing players with a smooth gaming experience.

Pro: Excellent Raid Concept

I’ve encountered three types of raids so far: random raids, raids after you accept a new member, and attacks from wolves. The simple backstory behind why a raid occurs is an excellent system for storytelling purposes and I am excited to see what new scenarios will come in the future.

On the roadmap they describe diplomacy and a vassal system with other villages in the region. Raids backed by these systems will really improve that sense of immersion where you can roleplay as a medieval Lord fighting for land and glory.

Amazing Cultivation Simulator also has a similar faction and raid system where enemy factions will periodically send their disciples to invade your home. You can engage in some basic diplomacy, but most players just choose to fight the battles since it is a fun way to play the game.

Con: Cannot Move Furniture

Really big pet peeve of mine is not being able to adjust furniture in rooms. I like to design a very basic structure when starting the game, but moving everything around once I have a more permanent structure built. Going Medieval does NOT have any way to move furniture, meaning you either have to design your buildings very well right away, or you have to deconstruct and rebuild items where you want them.

Keep in mind that each time you deconstruct furniture you also lose part of the materials. For wood furniture it is no big deal, but rebuilding a kitchen early on can be problematic since iron ingots may be hard to come by.

Pro: Great Colony Sim for Beginners

Although building may be difficult for absolute beginners, overall the game is extremely forgiving. It is actually fairly difficult for your village to get wiped out – food is relatively easy to come by as long as you researched preserved food, and raids are low risk as long as you have 1 archer.

Many of the game concepts are also easy to get the hang of within an hour of starting such as planting crops, building roofing, setting storage areas, and setting up breweries/smokehouses.

Con/Neutral: Limited Combat

Lots of opportunities for the devs to expand on combat in the future, but at the moment it boils down to putting archers on roofs/hills and sending melee fighters to guard the stairs leading to the archers. Once archers start firing, you just have to manually select targets for your melee fighters to ensure that no one reaches your ranged troops.

Unfortunately, there is no “hold ground” command and you end up with a zerg rush towards the enemy the moment they are in range. I usually end up with injuries on the archers due to this whenever I get lazy and don’t manually set targets.

There is a lot of promise, however, since the siege concept shown in trailers could open up so many opportunities for squad-based combat. I have this down as a con currently but will realistically be a pro in the future after some development.

Neutral: Lack of End Game Content

As a brand new Early Access game I have little expectation for having a fully fleshed endgame. However, before buying you should be aware that the vast majority of intended features are not yet implemented. Take a look at the roadmap and see if you like what you see.

I personally already really enjoy this game, and the roadmap is extremely promising to me. It is not a guaranteed hit, and people should be careful for sure, but I am willing to take the risk based on what I can see so far.

Final Thoughts

Overall verdict for Going Medieval is a buy even in its Early Access form as long as you can overlook some of the bad quality of life aspects. It is definitely an enjoyable game despite not having all of its features quite fleshed out yet. Many of the planned future developments are also exciting to see since it seems to take a different direction than other colony sims.

Going Medieval is on sale for 25% off full price at Green Man Gaming until June 11th! If you are interested in starting the game, check out our Going Medieval Essential Tips!

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Going Medieval Essential Tips and Tricks

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Going Medieval is a brand new colony sim/base builder that gives you full freedom to manage a village, build a castle, and defend your people from invaders and wild animals.

If you enjoyed games such as RimWorld and Amazing Cultivation Simulator, you will have a blast with this one as well. This guide will go over several tips for an easier early game and to improve your quality of life!

Going Medieval is on sale for 25% off full price at Green Man Gaming until June 11th! Check out our review of Going Medieval if you haven’t purchased the game yet.

1. Re-roll until you have good Marksman, Research, Construction, Culinary, and Botany

Marksman 10 allows one of your starters to use the starting Bow which will be immensely useful for both hunting and fighting early Raiders. It makes a huge difference in providing an additional food source to improve food quality. The early Bow in the hands of a proficient 10+ Marksman on top of a hill/building will make defending early game a breeze.

Research in Going Medieval is how you unlock the vast majority of the game. To put things in perspective, you have no way of creating preserved food or ANY drinks until you research the relevant technologies. Having a decent researcher at the start of the game will allow you to progress at a much faster rate.

Construction, Culinary, and Botany are the most necessary basics in the early game that you will need to create your first house, plant your first field, and cook necessary food. Other skills can be increased later on and are relatively less significant to the survival of your village.

2. Harvest, not cut, Redcurrant Shrubs

The Redcurrant Shrubs that your map usually starts off with will endlessly provide you with food as long as you do not cut them down. Make sure to only use the “Harvest” function and it will support your village until you are able to plant your first crops. This will be especially important once you get your Brewery since the easiest way to create drinks is to use Redcurrant for Wine. Preserve the shrubs and it will pay off later on!

3. Dig Underground for Food Storage

As of Early Access Release, there are no methods to cool down food or create any sort of makeshift fridge. Only way to preserve food is to reduce temperature by storing materials underground. All you have to do is mine downwards, build a set of stairs, and mine downwards a second time in a square area. This is usually enough to lower the temperature by a few degrees and extend the longevity of your food and raw supplies.

4. Prioritize Researching Furniture, Brewing, and Preserved Food

Furniture research will quickly give you access to a better bed that can give your villagers improved sleep and will not have to be replaced later on – giving you better flexibility for your room decorations.

Brewing is an absolute necessity since there are no naturally occurring sources of hydration for your people. This means that they will have no way to alleviate thirst once you run out of your original supplies and give you a hefty mood debuff. Doing the research early will give you more time to build up your stores since the brewing process also takes quite a long time.

Finally, preserved food (through Smokehouses) is necessary for winter time in the majority of games since it is unlikely you will have enough raw supplies. Like with Breweries, Smokehouses take time to create preserved meat and an earlier start will set you up in a much more stable position going forward.

5. Build Multiple Breweries and Smokehouses

Breweries and Smokehouses take time to finish creating food/wine after being loaded with supplies by your villagers. Creating multiple of each is necessary to fill your storehouses in a timely fashion. I’ve found that 2 Breweries and 3-4 Smokehouses is typically enough to get 5-6 villagers through the winter. They are fairly easy to create and relatively low maintenance as well as being 100% worth the investment.

6. Create Both Shrines and a Backgammon Table

Easiest way to cover all of your bases and provide support for entertainment/religious needs is to create both Shrines and a Backgammon table early on. It is a quick and inexpensive way to ensure that you don’t get hit with any mood debuffs from a lack of necessities. Regardless of what your villagers religious preferences, both Shrines will be enough to cover everyone.

7. Use Beams to Create Roofs

Depending on how large you want to make your Castle/Mead Hall/Main Building, your roof may not be able to extend all the way across. From my few hours of playing, it seems that roofing only extends to a maximum of approximately 10 units. Over that distance, you can use a beam to create an intermediate place to end the roofing before starting the next segment. This will allow you to build a more uniform roof without having to set down large walls in the middle of your beautiful building.

Likewise, be aware that beams only extend 10 units – meaning that if you have a 11×11 square building, you will NOT be able to create a beam. Keep these two requirements in mind while you are planning out your building!

8. Build a Storage with Roof and Flooring

Non-food materials typically degrade due to being on the ground outdoors and from being uncovered. Make a quick shed by building 4 pillars with a roof and full flooring to extend the longevity of your items. It is not actually necessary to build out the full walls at this point in time – just the 4 corners is enough!

Later on when you have your workshop fully set up, you can extend the roof of the workshop and place a storage area underneath there as well if you do not want clutter in the workshop itself. This helps manage space more efficiently and gives you more options going forward.

9. Build a Watchtower for your Archers

Like briefly mentioned in Tip #1, having a good archer is a huge bonus to fending off invaders in the early game. Archers having the high ground gives a bonus to their accuracy and fighting abilities – on some maps you may have the opportunity to build your base on a mountain. In case you do not, it is worth investing in a Watchtower made up of a simple square building with stair access to the roof. This enables you to station an archer up there when invaders show up which will give you bonus attack power while your melee fighters keep them busy.

Alternatively, if you are focusing on building one large structure, you can extend the flooring on one of the levels and build barricades on the perimeter to create makeshift towers. This may require some more planning ahead but will be another option to protect your main base.

10. Always Accept New Members

Having additional people significantly increases your base building speed and most new assets will supplement your early group’s abilities. If you are afraid of a fight, follow the above tips and you should have no difficulty with handling the early invaders. One or two archers on your side on elevated buildings can effectively decimate the invasions before they even reach your melee troops.

Bonus QoL Tip: Constantly Use Q, E, X and Z When Building

This may just be an early access issue, but it can be incredibly easy to mess up your building placement especially when you are building on multiple floors. Making good use of the rotate and elevate buttons will significantly reduce your chances of making an error.

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Project Hospital Guide and Beginner Tips 2020

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Project Hospital is a medical management simulator that gives you the power to design your very own hospital and challenges you to overcome day-to-day obstacles. This guide will go over the starting tips for getting started!

See more game information on Steam here.

1. Build extra Emergency Department Doctor’s Offices

The requirements to start an Emergency Department is very low at just one doctor – but the progress rate from this one office is excruciatingly slow. Build at least 3-4 extra offices to increase capacity for more patients. It is virtually impossible to lose money investing in these offices and so definitely feel free to increase the capacity.

One thing to consider is the number of patients being sent to you currently. Take a look into the investor tab and see the number of patients you have currently – these will increase as you see more patients each day. Increase the number of doctors as needed whenever you see that you have a lot of people waiting in your waiting room throughout the day.

Finally, placing a few intern-level doctors in these offices will also be an easy way to make money since they are fully capable of handling low-difficulty cases.

2. Leave room between clinics for expansion

When more patients show up to your hospital you will end up needing to increase the capacity for each of your clinics. Placing them immediately side-by-side will only result in restricting or fracturing of your clinics.

As soon as you have a basic Emergency Department built, start planning out the rest of your hospital including advanced clinics, ICU, trauma, and staff facilities. Having this blueprint to go by allows you to expand your clinics later on.

General rule of thumb is that the emergency department, radiology, and medical labs will all need a lot of extra development later on due to the role they play in basic patient diagnosis. Radiology development specifically will be crucial due to how many patients need the advanced diagnostic capabilities.

3. Use Pre-Fabricated Rooms to start

These rooms are a great way to get started with the game. It essentially provides you with a modular way to build your hospital without needing to micro-manage the nitpicky details of which rooms require what equipment. Pre-fabricated rooms have everything your doctors and nurses need to diagnose and treat patients along with having a relatively decent aesthetic.

As you become more familiar with the game, you may want to start creating your own pre-fabs or even creating each room from scratch since that is the only way to really make the most out of the space you have. The only downside to this is that you have to really enjoy building things in tiny pieces.

Another benefit to pre-fabricated rooms is that it makes creating blueprints and designing your entire hospital much, much easier. All you have to do is plop down a few rooms/offices, take a look at the number of personnel you will have room for, and then you can have a decent gauge of how much space you need.

4. Build the bare minimum for Radiology and Medical Laboratories first

These departments can be extremely expensive to invest in right at the beginning of the game. Start off with building the basic machines only and invest in more machines later on once you get more notifications that patients are not being diagnosed properly.

As mentioned above regarding space, Radiology and Medical Laboratories are two of the busiest sections in the hospital due to the number of patients that need things like MRI or X-Rays. Make sure to leave lots of room in this area of the hospital for further expansion.

One final note is that these departments should be relatively central to the hospital and near elevators for quick access. These are some of the highest traffic areas and your hospital will benefit from the improved time efficiency.

5. Money comes from treatments, not examinations

Keep this in mind when you set your controls for how sure the doctors have to be of their diagnosis before beginning treatment. In some cases it may cost you a lot more money to get to 100% certainty diagnosis, but in some other cases a misdiagnosis will cause problems with patient satisfaction and hospital prestige.

The key is to hover over the symptoms the patient is experiencing and select the examination that overlaps amongst as many of the symptoms as possible. This ensures that your can make your diagnosis in as few examinations as possible. Depending on your settings, you can also hover over the different possible diagnosis and conduct examinations based on what the differential might be.

Also keep in mind that each doctor has their own ability to diagnose – hiring doctors with better skill will make things more efficient for you. These skills can also be trained once you have built your study room, see #10 for more information.

6. Focus on Insurance Contracts

Insurance contracts are the main method of receiving patients and focusing on their goals will increase how many patients you can receive each day. Focusing on this area will also be a good way for you to learn the game since they tend to advance in a fairly logical method.

Compared to non-insured patients, the insured patients will usually have a higher % boost to how much they pay the hospital – allowing you to expand more services. Developing your hospital in accordance to the contracts early on will help you establish a strong foundation for future progress.

7. Avoid hiring staff with negative perks

Things like having dirty footsteps or having increased needs can make your hospital very inefficient if you do not pay attention to your employees. Avoiding these individuals in the first place will make your life a lot easier compared to having to build new janitorial stations or offices to compensate for staff not working.

That being said, some staff members will also have a positive perk as well (ex. being better at diagnosis) that may offset this negative and so you do have to use your judgement. Ensure that any employee you hire with a negative trait has at least 1 positive trait along with great skill values to justify the hire.

8. Manual Diagnosis and Treatment improves accuracy and efficiency

Selecting manual diagnosis and treatment will place you directly in control of how your doctor examines and treats your patient. As mentioned above, spend time learning the different symptoms and which examination helps clarify the disease state. Moving your mouse over the explanations will help with minimizing resource wastage – especially with things like MRI and X-ray that may be needed by other doctors.

The faster you get to the final diagnosis (with fewest steps taken), the faster you get paid for treatments. Keep in mind that you will also be able to provide treatments for CURRENTLY experienced symptoms as well – meaning that if someone is in pain, you can immediately prescribe them analgesics without having to have the final diagnosis.

The danger with automatic diagnosis is that some unskilled interns may make mistakes and end up misdiagnosing/mistreating the patients. This usually results in patients returning to the hospital with worsening symptoms along with a hit to your hospital prestige. Be very careful when manually diagnosing since poor results can affect the entire hospital.

9. Pay attention to Skill percentage

A doctor’s skill with diagnosing and treating patients plays a huge role in how efficient they are at helping patients. Hiring doctors with great skills is usually more expensive, but definitely worth it for the efficiency and improved hospital prestige.

Most significant of the skills is the ability to diagnose – if the doctor has the ability to do a differential diagnosis then it can drastically reduce chances of a 50-50 situation. Essentially every skill matters in Project Hospital – including those of support staff such as Janitors. Hiring the correct healthcare providers plays a large role in improving prestige, patient satisfaction, and ultimately profit.

One final note is that you should constantly be sending a few of your doctors to study at a time. Over the course of a few days in-game time the improvements in skill will be drastic. See #10 for more information.

10. Build a study room after your first clinic

Usually once you have built your first specialized clinic your hospital will more or less be capable to sustaining several doctors at a time. This is usually a good time to build your study room for improving doctor skill.

One tactic I like to use is to build 1-2 small offices in the Emergency Department and hire fresh interns that are as young as possible. You want these doctors to be trained as your absolute best and hiring them while young ensures that you have lots of time to use them before they retire. As soon as they are hired, bookmark them and constantly send them to study in their basic diagnosis and general medicine skill levels. Over time these will be at a suitable skill for improving their experience very fast.

Even for other more experienced doctors the study room has its benefits. Often times you may have a great diagnostician, but someone who is also an average surgeon. Sending these individuals to develop their skill in surgery will be very beneficial to crafting the perfect team of physicians.

11. Hire a night shift right away

At the start of the game you typically won’t have anything more than the Emergency Department and maybe one specialty clinic. These are very easy to make money off of and setting up a night shift right away gives your doctors the ability to continue helping patients that show up.

Only having the bare minimum for the night shift is usually enough since traffic for the clinics dies down substantially. Once you have unlocked and built wards for hospitalized patients, then make sure you have sufficient nurses in the night shift to prevent complications from arising.

The most important department to have night shift for is Radiology and Medical Laboratories. These departments play a huge role in fast diagnosis and treatment – investing in extra technicians during the night is absolutely worth it.

12. Invest in more beds

Beds are filled up very quickly in Project Hospital. It is extremely important for you to build extra wards and rooms for hospitalized patients since procedures are one of the best methods for making a profit. The result of not having enough beds is that the patients are immediately transferred to another hospital once the doctor determines that hospitalization is required.

This also refers back to #2 where you want to leave lots of room for more beds in each of the clinics that you want to take hospitalized patients for. Having enough room for at least triple your initial number of patients is a good rule of thumb if you intend to continue building your hospital until late game.

Bonus Tip: Create your own Doctor!

Creating your own Doctor allows you to set age, customize appearance, and give 2 positive traits – all for the cost of $10,000. As soon as you create your doctor, you will also obtain access to a great insurance contract that gives you a percentage boost in profits. This absolutely justifies the $10,000 price tag since you will inevitably make it back with your new doctor.

I personally really enjoyed this part of the game since it gives you a bit of role-play potential if you select the doctor as player-controlled. You can end up diagnosing patients very efficiently and very quickly using this new doctor and help them improve their skills fast.

Conclusion

Project Hospital is one of the best medical management games out on the market – and by far the most realistic one. Getting started can be difficult even after finishing the tutorials and I hope that this guide and list of tips has helped you on your journey! 🙂

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Crusader Kings 3: How to Play Tall Guide and Tips

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Most players start Crusader Kings 3 with a big ol’ bucket of paint and try to completely cover the map in the colour of their nation as fast as possible. Due to the need to expand, it is often times very easy to overlook or even ignore the idea of taking a break to develop your Holdings.

An interesting playstyle from previous Paradox games is the idea of playing “Tall” instead of “Wide”. The overall gist is that you dedicate all of your efforts in building up a small number of Counties/Duchies to create a highly advanced core province that provides a ton of money and levies. The process to this involves strategically constructing buildings, improving development, maintaining land upon succession, and rapidly researching technology.

This guide today will go over some of the most important tips and tricks to playing Tall in Crusader Kings 3. See our other Crusader Kings 3 Guides for more information on how to get started if you are a new player.

1. Prioritize Gold and Development Buildings

Prioritizing gold at the start of the game helps speed up how fast you can construct buildings in your Counties. Generally you want to aim for the largest gold amount and work your way down the list of available buildings. Some are locked to certain terrain types (e.g. you won’t have farms in a mountainous terrain), but there will definitely be a few that offer some gold boost.

Increasing development is also crucial to playing Tall due to its impact on both income and on research speed. One of the ways to stay ahead of your enemies is to advance research fast enough to outpace their income and levy growth. The boosts you receive from development may not seem like much at the start of the game, but once you unlock higher levels of development you will begin to see your income rise substantially.

Another bonus to keep an eye out for is the decrease in construction cost and construction time. Since you are heavily investing into more buildings, having a reduction in time and cost can go a long way to speeding up growth.

2. Select a Core Duchy with many Holdings

The entire idea of playing Tall is to focus only on a few Counties at a time. One of the easiest options to accomplish this is to focus entirely on one Duchy at the start of the game. Typically each Duchy will have at least 2-3 Counties that will usually take up all of your gold.

Each Duchy gives you a spot for a special building that provides substantial bonuses. One of the buildings that is recommended is the one that increases holding tax by 10% in only that Duchy. Improving all the Counties in that one Duchy with the bonus will optimize your gold gain.

There is an argument for hanging onto Duchy Capital Counties instead of being all centered into one Duchy. Doing this and building all of the special buildings with Realm-Wide bonuses to your army can increase your fighting power by a ton – but also makes it less efficient with increasing gold gain. Overall, focusing on one single Duchy becomes more efficient with the Tall playstyle and allows you to expand faster.

Final thing to note is that you should choose a starting character that has lands with a large number of holding spots. This ultimately determines your long term growth cap and how much space you have to expand in before needing to capture another County. Increasing the density of holdings will make your Tall gameplay go a lot smoother.

3. Improve Development with Steward

Although stewards can be used to increase your gold income, they are much better used in improving development. I usually just stick my steward onto my capital County and let them continuously increase my development. It is a very slow process and there typically isn’t too much of a reason to switch them off.

Like mentioned above, improving Development is more beneficial due to the increase in research speed. Development’s effect on income is not nearly as good as directly receiving gold using your Steward, but the end goal is to out-tech your opponents.

4. Focus Education on Stewardship or Learning

Stewardship and Learning are the absolute most essential stats to aim for when you are playing Tall in Crusader Kings 3. Stewardship and Stewardship Lifestyle Traits increase your gold income by a ton and is very much needed to sustain your construction. Learning is needed to increase your research speed – which in turn will improve your income and further development.

Both are essential, but the early game should be focused on Stewardship. Depending on your starting character, you may or may not be the Cultural Head. If you are not the cultural head, the Learning and research focus will not be as useful as the extra gold.

Once you are the Cultural Head and have a income of at least 9-10 gold, it may be a good time to consider switching to a Learning focus for educating your Children.

An alternative method is to merely choose an Education Focus that suits your child the best. Choose the higher of the two stats and also take into account the childhood trait as well. Compatible traits will improve the final quality of education that the child receives.

5. Secure a good Steward

A good Steward can speed up your Development growth and can also greatly increase your gold gain if needed. Securing a good one can sometimes be a little bit more complicated. Hitting “C” and trying to find a Steward can be difficult – especially since the ones with highest Stewardship may not have an interest in joining your Court.

One of the easiest methods is to constantly monitor the Court tab for new visitors. If you are a Duke, you should begin to have a few visitors trickling in that have decent Stewardship stats. However, this does take a bit more time and there is no promise of actually obtaining a good Steward.

The other method is to marry one of your daughters to the potential Steward that you found on the character finder. Playing Tall typically means that you will not be doing much expanding for much of the early game. Securing alliances for power and war-time allies is less important in this situation. Instead, marrying for a good Steward has a direct impact on how fast your realm develops and should be the optimal choice.

6. Avoid more than 2-3 Heirs

Playing Tall means that you will not be focusing on expanding your realm as much as playing Wide. A result of this is that you end up with fewer new Counties and Duchies that can be granted to your other children.

With that in mind, succession planning becomes much, much more difficult to handle. You will want at most 3 children who are in line to inherit. Any less and you run the risk of your heir dying and ending the game, but any more than 3 will result in definite issues with losing your valuable core counties.

Most common way to avoid this is to divorce and re-marry to an older stat-based character once you have your 3 possible heirs. Alternatively, you can also seek out the Celibate trait to reduce fertility. However, this method carries more risk and you should usually go with the divorce method.

Once you have only 2-3 heirs, you can either manage your succession as per our Succession and Inheritance Guide or just disinherit them once you are close to dying. The prestige cost is relatively easy to sustain since you will only have to use that function 1-2 times.

7. Forbid Heir from becoming a Knight

Fewer children means you have to be extremely careful about keeping your heir alive. The most common way that your characters die is in battle if they show up as a Knight. Even if your heir has 5 Prowess and is unlikely to be sent off, still go through the process of Forbidding them from becoming a Knight.

Likewise, it may be tempting to let your Heir be a Knight if they have 20 Prowess, but the risk is definitely still there – especially if you end up fighting a losing battle. Keeping your heir alive is the most important objective.

8. Marry for high Stewardship and set to “Manage Domain”

Whenever you marry, your spouse shows up on your Council and gives you a bonus to your stats based on theirs. Marrying someone with very high Stewardship and setting them to “Manage Domain” can add fairly large amount of Stewardship to your existing character. Higher stewardship increases your regular gold income and also allows you to hold onto more domains.

Keep in mind that domains also include the number of castles you can hold (and temples if your religion allows). Even if you are playing Tall, a higher domain limit means you can directly hold onto even more castles/temples. More holdings means more taxes and faster growth.

9. Ask for Gold from Head of Faith

Like mentioned in our Beginner Tips, asking the Pope for Gold is one of the easiest early game money making methods. All you need is 250 piety and a decent opinion from the Pope and you will receive a healthy sum of gold (usually between 125-250ish).

The downside to this is that you do end up losing quite a bit of piety. However, playing Tall means that you really don’t need a lot of it since you won’t be waging many Holy Wars. Gold is infinitely more valuable to you in the early game and you should always ask for Gold whenever the option comes up.

10. Defend against Raids

This seems like a no-brainer, but you actually need to pay attention to your holdings if you are in an area that has raiders. The game does not pause nor slow down when you are getting raided and the results can be devastating.

Once your holding has been sieged down and looted, you get hit with a fat 50% reduction in income for several years AND a decrease in control. For someone playing Tall, losing even 1-2 holdings can be enough to cripple your growth for the next decade.

Always make sure to monitor your holdings when you set the game to higher speeds to make sure that you can raise your army in time to defend your land.

Another tip is to increase the fort level of your holding to give yourself more time. If you already constructed all of the gold buildings, it is a good idea to invest in the building that increases Fort level and provides increased garrison. Higher garrison count means the raiders need a much larger group to even begin the siege timer. Once you have started rapidly researching, the increase in garrison from these buildings can sometimes be enough to fend off the raiders altogether.

Protecting your assets is a much, much more important part of the game when you are playing Tall and should always be in the back of your mind.

11. Do not invest in Feudal Vassal Holdings

It is a complete waste of money and you won’t see any return on it. It takes several hundred gold for you to construct a building for your vassal – but the end result is they might pay you 0.1 more taxes (at 25% tax rate) if you are lucky. It would take you a ton more time to see any sort of return on this compared to if you saved up the money for your own holdings instead.

If you find that you are maxed out, then start working on another County to include in your core. There will always be better ways to spend your gold than to improve your feudal vassal holdings.

However, temple holdings can actually be a fairly decent investment if you have extra money. If you are in a Theocracy, the tax rate is approximately 50% for your Bishop as long as they have a good opinion of you. More on this will be discussed below.

12. Build Temples and Increase Bishop Opinion

Like mentioned above, Bishops give you 100% of levies and 50% of gold if their opinion of you is good. Temples have a higher max gold income than Castles and will not count towards your total Holding limit since they are held by the clergy.

With Castles you always run the risk of losing it to another child due to succession and will provide less gold at max. However, Temples will give you consistent income throughout the game and the Bishop can also improve the Temple on their own. As a long term strategy, building temples will pay off more and have less risk than creating Castle vassals.

Conclusion

Playing Tall in Crusader Kings 3 is a very satisfying experience once you are able to get it to work. The early game can be a little rough, but you will end up snowballing much harder once you have constructed a few buildings.

Thank you all for reading and I hope that this guide has been of some help for you!

See our other Crusader Kings 3 guides here for more information on how to start playing the game:

Crusader Kings 3 Beginner Tips

Crusader Kings 3 Succession and Inheritance Guide

Crusader Kings 3 Prestige and Piety Guide

Crusader Kings 3 Top 10 Tips for Starting as a Count

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Medieval Dynasty Beginner Tips and Guide

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Medieval Dynasty is a survival simulation game that places you in control of a character trying to survive in the middle ages. You have the opportunity to construct a village, manage a community, craft a variety of tools and weapons, and survive by hunting, fishing, or farming. This is a remarkably deep game with a ton of features to explore.

This beginner guide will provide you with tips on how to better survive the early game and enjoy more that the game has to offer.

1. Place your home near water

Placing your home near water is almost a necessity to succeed in the game. Early on you will not yet have a waterskin or any other method to carry water with you. This means that whenever your character becomes dehydrated, you have to make a run to the river before your character dies. Being next to the river means that you will have ready access to water whenever you need it.

Later on in the game fishing becomes a way to gather additional food. Being next to a river makes this infinitely easier to accomplish and to minimize your travel time.

One other benefit is that other villages tend to be by the river as well. Trading or doing quests with other villagers can give you substantial bonuses in the game and this close proximity will make your use of time more efficient.

2. Put early skill points into “Knowledge” to increase skill point gain

Some of the early perks are not quite as useful as the later ones. Investing the early points you obtain in each skill category into the “Knowledge” perk will improve your rate of skill point gain. This pays off later on when you are able to obtain more useful skills like having an additional 15 carrying weight.

One example of this is in the gathering tree where the early perks are essentially just increased gathering time. A simple increase of 2% in gathering speed will not make a substantially huge difference in how much time you spend in gathering. The largest bottleneck by far is the carrying weight since you fill up very quickly. Gaining more skill points faster brings you closer to this perk and you end up saving a ton more time in the long run.

3. Store materials inside of the box in your home

Maximum weight is the biggest bottleneck in this game. Once you start playing, you will quickly see that logging is a huge part of the early game. Unfortunately, your character struggles to carry more than 10-12 at a time and will greatly affect how fast you can build. The more over the limit you are, the slower your character travels. Anything in the red zone already limits your ability to sprint, and once you get past half of the red zone you are basically crawling.

Store materials in the box that you do not immediately need. This includes things like food, sticks, and even tools like wooden spears. It all adds up substantially and will affect your efficiency.

One way to maximize your time is to only bring with you the tool you need, a waterskin (if you have one), and enough food to last you through the day. Anything else can be left in your home since you will be coming back anyways.

4. Use the Crouch function when hunting

The most common animal you will likely hunt early on is the deer or rabbit. They spook easily and will run away very fast if you try to run up to them. The only way to get closer is to crouch and slowly move your way up. This can be a little tricky sometimes since there is no indicator of whether or not they can sense you.

Get into close enough range to accurately throw the spear, but don’t push too far ahead. Once you hit the animal once, you will likely have to sprint after it and repeat the crouch and advance tactic once more. The only exception is if you have good aim and manage to hit the head. For most animals, all it takes is one headshot to finish the hunt.

5. Craft multiple spears for hunting

Hunting an animal can be fairly difficult in this game. Aiming takes some practice to get used to and non-headshots will require you to attack them multiple times. In the early game, your only real option is to throw wooden spears 2-3 times.

Once you hit an animal, the spear typically stays lodged in and you will need more than 1 to complete your hunt. For this reason, I usually bring at least 4-5 spears whenever hunting in case I miss and need to chase down the target.

This will also be useful if you end up getting attacked by a bear or other larger animal. They will require more than 1-2 spears to take down and the extra ones you have will improve your chances of survival.

6. Keep at least 2 stones on you for crafting replacement tools

Stones are not always in great supply in this game depending on the area you are established in. Tools break fairly quickly when you are mass gathering for materials, and it can be a time drain looking around for more stones.

One way to overcome this is to always pick up stones until you have at least 2-3 on you. This way when your tools break you can easily replace them. The most common example of this is when you are logging and your stone axe breaks. The replacement will cost you two stones and several sticks that you can usually find lying around. Keeping the materials on you will minimize your downtime and ensure you can get your job done.

7. Always cook your meals (except mushrooms)

There is virtually no reason to have to eat raw meals except for the raw mushrooms that are safe to eat. The 20% chance of food poisoning is not worth it. Once you have constructed your first house, you will have a stone fireplace available for cooking your meals.

Any meat that you obtain through hunting or trapping should always be cooked to prevent disease. Another benefit to this is that the cooked meat provides more energy to you than raw meat.

8. Use Rabbit Traps for leather and food

Rabbit traps are one of the best tools you should construct in the early game. They will provide you with precious leather and food without you having to go out on hunting trips. Unfortunately, you can only set one trap until you advance, but maintaining this trap will go a long way to sustaining your character.

The leather can be very useful for crafting and the meat will provide you with sustenance if you are not able to hunt. It is an extremely easy way to obtain materials early on. Just make sure to check it at least twice a day since that is typically how often the trap triggers.

9. Craft a Waterskin to save time

Waterskins allow you to carry water with you and give you more time to do things in-land without having to go back to the river. It can be a very valuable tool to have on hand whenever you go on hunting trips. This is one of the early tools to aim for after you have built your first house since it will consistently be used throughout the game. See this guide here for a free waterskin if you do not want to craft it.

10. Complete Quests to increase Building Limit

Completing quests will allow you to construct more buildings. There is a limit to how many you can build depending on where you are at in the game. Constantly check the journal for the main questline and what objectives you still have to meet in order to progress to the next stage.

At the start of the game, you will likely have the objective of “Survive until the next season”. You should spend some time at this point to do quests with villagers in the nearby villages and to try flirting. The reasoning behind this is that the next main quest will require you to complete 3 quests from villagers and to successfully flirt once. Completing this objective earlier will help speed up your progress.

11. Shower before interacting with other villagers

You can get an opinion decrease if you attempt to talk to other villagers while dirty. This is especially important if you are trying to flirt and find a partner in the village. The bath takes 2 logs to build and should be no problem for you to use before making your way to the other villages.

12. Right-Click when holding the Hammer to switch modes

Right click to switch to other modes such as Repair. You will also want to periodically switch to this mode and walk around your village to find buildings that are in need of repair. Damaged buildings will not show up otherwise.

13. Make money from Stone Knives and Berries/Mushrooms

Stone Knives sell for quite a bit of money and will be one of your most consistent ways to obtain money throughout the year. Even though stone can be a little bit hard to find in large quantities, the money you make off of them is definitely worth the time.

Depending on the season, picking berries and mushrooms will also provide you with a great source of income. The berry bushes typically have a ton of berries available for you to pick, so make sure to dump everything else out of your inventory before going on your gathering trip. Just be mindful that unripe berries carry a chance to poison you and the benefits of eating them are not great.

Mushrooms are also useful as another source of food and you should consider picking them whenever you see them – even if you do not intend to sell them. Unlike berries, mushrooms are safe to eat and will not poison you.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading my Medieval Dynasty Beginners Guide and Tips! I hope that this guide has been of some help for you on your way and hope you enjoy the rest of the game 🙂

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The Rule of Land Pioneers Beginner Guide and Tips

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The Rule of Land: Pioneers is a new survival management game released on Steam. It is a side-scrolling game that emphasizes management over action, but still has elements of hunting and fighting. The game ultimately revolves around balancing your character’s needs (water, energy, mental, temperature) and ensuring that you have enough supplies to survive longer than your opponents.

This beginner guide will go over tips on how to manage the early game and improve your ability to survive. Keep in mind that the game is still in early access and will constantly be updated and balanced.

1. Always cook food

The bonfire is extremely easy to craft early on and there is no reason you should risk dysentery or food poisoning from eating raw food. All you have to do is provide fuel (usually wood) and an animal/vegetable you have collected. It is usually best to leave it there to cook and go out for more supplies to maximize your time efficiency.

2. Construct a Rainwater Catcher ASAP

Water can be hard to come by depending on your starting area. If you do not have ready access, building a Rainwater Catcher is a priority early on. You not only need it for hydrating your character directly, you will also need water to create stews and medications.

Keep in mind that you do not automatically receive water each day – you actually have to wait for it to rain. This means that an early set-up will improve your ability to generate water and avoid any situations where your character may die of dehydration.

3. Start in the City

The city is a fairly balanced start and the number of cars everywhere enables easy access to important materials. You can obtain anything from preserved food to even intact hides. It is a great place to start when first starting the game. Later on you may need materials from other areas, but that equipment is not necessary until later in the game.

The City is also a great place to be since it is fairly central in the map. You will have access to multiple other areas and sneaking in at night is easier due to the close distance.

4. Manually bring the Crowbar from the “Other” tab

Make sure you actually bring it with you to use on cars. Like mentioned above, if you start in the City you will benefit greatly from the crowbar and the access to cars it brings. The game can give you one at the start of the game so make sure you take advantage of it.

5. Don’t have to return to camp every night

There is no need for you to return to camp every night. It is more time efficient to completely fill your inventory prior to returning to minimize time wasted on travelling.

The time circle is not representative of the hours in the day. When it completely fills, it is dawn of the new day. Also use this to track how much time you have to poach from your opponents’ territory.

6. Use Anesthesia bullets for Intact Hide

Regular bullets will cause damage to the animal and give you broken hide instead. Bring anesthesia bullets to bring down the large animals to obtain this crucial material. You will also rarely need more than one bullet for each large animal assuming you manage to hit them. Use the sneak function and slowly make your way closer to the animal before shooting to improve your aim.

7. Build the better shelter and save Intact Hide to make it first

It is much easier to just create the better shelter as your first sleeping place. The benefits are definitely worth the extra few materials you need to construct the tent. Intact Hide can also be used for other important buildings and upgrades, however you definitely need a shelter earlier on.

Without a shelter your character has no option to sleep and recover mental. Constructing a shelter should be one of your top priorities as soon as you start the game to prevent any issues later on.

8. Pause the game using ESC

Going into your bag does not pause the game, and neither do many other actions. The only definitive way to pause the game is to hit ESC. Keep this in mind since the game is very time-dependent and you really want to maximize your efficiency early on.

9. Improve bag space to at least 45

Even just a few extra spaces can greatly improve how much material you can bring with you when you go for gathering runs. After crafting your shelter, priority for Intact Hides goes to increasing bag space.

This will also be relevant when you begin making poaching runs into opponent territory and having a bigger bag space enables you to steal more. Taking opponent animals away is one of the best methods to beat them and larger bag space means you can take more before returning.

10. Improve relationship with Trader

Improving your relationship with the trader enables you to request for specific resource types when they come in next time. This can be very valuable since your starting location may not always have the resources you need. It will also be useful in case you want to focus on certain resource types and obtaining the rest from the trader.

From what I have seen so far, the only way to improve the relationship consistently is to always accept the offer to trade even when you do not need to. Always accept the trade and the relationship will increase over time. It will take quite a few runs to get the level needed to request for specific types of materials, but it will be worth it.

Conclusion

The Rule of Land: Pioneers is a very promising survival management game and definitely worth the pickup. Even as an early access title, it already offers several hours worth of entertainment.

I hope that these tips have been useful and any questions or comments are welcome!

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Crusader Kings 3 Top 10 Tips for Starting as a Count

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Counts are the lowest tier character that you can currently play as in Crusader Kings 3. They usually occupy 1-2 Counties and have very limited resources at the start of the game. Playing as a Count can be a bit of a challenge especially if you start off as a vassal under a Duke or King. There are limited expansion options depending on your location and virtually every other neighbor will have similar military strength. This guide will go over how to best start your play through as a Count and give you tips on what to watch out for.

See our other Crusader Kings 3 Guides for more information on how to get started.

1. Establish Alliances through Marriages

When everyone else around you is just as strong, the quickest way to secure an advantage is to marry your children off to secure alliances. Look for the following when you are finding suitable candidates:

  • Sort by Alliance Power
  • Distance of Ally to you
  • Age of partner
  • Age of ally ruler
  • Possibility of Matrilineal marriage (if you are marrying off your daughter)

Sorting by alliance power gives you the most powerful allies you can arrange a marriage for. Distance of an ally matters since it could potentially take much longer for your ally to reach you if war breaks out. Partner and ally ruler age both matter because if the partner dies prior to the marriage, the alliance is broken. If the ally ruler dies at any point, the alliance is also broken. A matrilineal marriage is a lesser point, but would be nice to give you extra Dynasty Prestige if possible.

2. Check Ally War status before Declaring War

Even when you have a military advantage on the “Declare War” screen, keep in mind that it estimates your total alliance power against the enemy’s. Unfortunately, your ally could be embroiled in a war of their own and may not send troops right away even if you successfully call them to war. Prior to declaring a war, take a quick look at the allies you intend to call upon and see if they are currently fighting in their own battles.

Also keep in mind that when rulers die, the alliance is annulled. Always check to make sure your alliances are still valid before declaring war. This usually comes up when you are at the “Declare War” screen and you see the comparative military strength. If you suddenly notice that you and your enemy have similar strengths rather than having an advantage, check your alliances to see if any of them were broken.

3. You can Call Allies to War without adequate prestige

This may or may not be a bug that gets fixed later on. Currently, you can call your allies to war even when you don’t have enough prestige – you end up going into the negatives instead. This can be a lifesaver especially if you are struggling to defend against an invasion. Spending prestige and going into the negatives really isn’t a big deal compared to losing land.

As a Count, you likely will not have huge stores of prestige, but you also don’t have a large standing army either. It is definitely recommended to call allies over losing the little land you have left.

4. Prioritize Fabricating Claims on Counties in the same De Jure Duchy

Click on your current lands and see which nearby County falls under the same De Jure Duchy. Prioritize getting a claim on the ones that you can win a war over. Often times it will either be a powerful Duke or a King – avoid those ones and target other Counts and lesser Dukes. You have to examine their Troop strength and their alliances against your own to see if you can successfully defeat them.

Creating a Duchy has numerous benefits early on as Count:

  • Large bonus to Prestige
  • Enables building of Duchy Capital Buildings
  • Prevents realm fracturing
  • Improved prestige gain
  • Increased maximum number of holdings

5. Build Archer Men-at-Arms Regiments early

Most AI rulers currently spam Skirmishers early game and don’t generally get cavalry until later on. Bringing even a single unit of Archers can greatly improve your chances of winning battles. They are also one of the cheapest MAA regiments in the game and have the added bonus of attacking at an earlier stage in the battle.

I usually build at least 2 regiments once my gold can sustain it since the bonuses it gives against other Count and Dukes is too good to miss. Starting as a Count limits your options early on due to lack of funds and Archers are one of the best investments to improving your ability to grab land.

6. Invite Knights if you don’t have a full stack of 12 Prowess Knights

The Invite Knights decision costs you 150 Prestige – for most Counts that can be a fairly large sum that can be better spent elsewhere. However, Knights are one of the most important early game units due to their ability to take out dozens, if not hundreds of levies. Counts in the early game tend to only have a few hundred troops and you will likely be facing opponents at a similar strength. Bringing Knights that have at least 12 Prowess substantially improves your fighting capability.

12 Prowess is just a general rule of thumb I use since the Knights tend to be fairly useless and die quickly below 10. Having a full stack is well worth the 150 Prestige you spend to get there.

7. Always accept a Liege Council position

It can be difficult to get an council position offer from your liege, but always accept it if you get it. The bonuses can be extremely useful and vary based on the position you are offered. For example, the Chancellor position gives you increased prestige gain, increased vassal opinion, and increased diplomacy lifestyle experience gain. These benefits can be huge for a Count regardless of your intended playstyle. Increasing prestige gain by itself is a great benefit especially with how much you need to expand your territory.

8. Carefully manage Prestige use

It can be tempting to spend it all as soon as you start the game, but you will definitely want to be frugal with it early on. See our Prestige and Piety guide to learn how to gain and preserve Prestige.

Avoid changing realm authority laws and succession laws early on. The benefits they provide will likely not be relevant until much later on if you start as a Count. Saving approximately 150-200 prestige this way can effectively enable you to either Invite Knights, declare another war for territory, or call upon allies.

9. Truces are annulled when rulers die

When your opponent dies and the throne is passed to their heir, the truce between you is annulled. If you play as an intrigue-type character, scheming for murder is a way to quickly annul the truce and allow you to declare war for their land.

Truces can also be annulled through RNG by your Chancellor if they have high enough diplomacy. This isn’t a very reliable way to annul a truce however, and the best method is still to start a murder scheme.

10. Build only in your capital

Satisfying all of your potential heirs as a Count can be extremely difficult. You have limited territory expansion options, limited prestige for disinheriting heirs, and schemes tend to be more difficult unless you specifically specialize in intrigue. More often than not, you have to accept that much of your land may go to your other sons.

The capital is always passed down directly to your heir and you should focus all of your development and buildings in this single County to start. Playing Tall instead of playing Wide is very important to starting as a Count since this helps you retain most of your income and military strength. Focus most of your attention on maintaining good control and good development growth in your capital.

See our Succession and Inheritance Guide for more information on how to manage your realm.

Conclusion

Playing as a Count is one of the most difficult, yet satisfying, experiences in Crusader Kings 3. You will face challenges and limitations that Dukes and Kings rarely encounter. However, you get the immensely gratifying feeling of accomplishment when you are able to build an empire from just a singe County.

I hope that this guide has been of some help to you on your journey. Thank you for reading and happy conquering!

See our other Crusader Kings 3 guides here for more information on how to start playing the game:

Crusader Kings 3 Beginner Tips

Crusader Kings 3 Succession and Inheritance Guide

Crusader Kings 3 Prestige and Piety Guide

Crusader Kings 3 How to Play Tall Guide and Tips

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