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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

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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Guides

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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Guides

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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Crusader Kings 3 Succession and Inheritance Tips

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Now that you have built your kingdom/empire, how do you ensure it stays together? In Crusader Kings 2, the default would be to change succession to Primogeniture and raise a good heir. Unfortunately we don’t have that luxury in Crusader Kings 3. The Innovation necessary to set that succession law doesn’t even appear until 1200AD and you still need to advance your culture far enough to unlock it.

This guide will go over some basic tips of how to manage your titles upon you current character’s death. Much of it can be difficult to understand at first, but it becomes much more clear once you get the hang of it.

This guide pertains to Partition and Confederate Partition Succession Laws

See our Piety and Prestige Guide here, our Beginner Tips guide here, and our Top 10 Tips for Starting as a Count here.

1. Check the “Title Loss on Succession” tab for heirs you still need to land

This section will essentially be your “homepage” for all things succession related. It will tell you which heirs do not currently have enough land and will begin taking your current Counties away from your primary heir. The worst thing that can happen is to see your entire list of counties going to your random heirs instead of your primary – leaving you with extremely weak military and financial capabilities. Constantly check back to this page to see where your succession is at.

2. Each heir requires a Duchy and a County (typically)

For any ruler that is a Duke or above, the general rule of thumb is that each possible heir will need a duchy and a county to be satisfied. There are exceptions to this rule, but keep this in mind when you are landing your children. The reasoning behind this is that in Partition and Confederate Partition Law, each child receives an “equal” amount of land. If you are Duke or above, you will have a Duchy title that is passed to your eldest son (or child if you have equal laws). Your other children will also want the same to be “equal” and will require a Duchy as well to stay happy.

For Kings and above, you typically will only have one Kingdom to give to your primary heir. The other children will usually still be satisfied with a duchy and county if you land them prior to dying. The more counties and duchies you have, the more lands the children will require to stay satisfied.

In my runs, I typically start off with this general rule of thumb and add more lands as I go to satisfy the other heirs. This method ensures that my primary heir receives the best counties at the heart of the lands that I have spent time and gold developing.

3. Grant newly conquered lands to other heirs

Constantly check back to the “Title Loss on Succession” tab every time you obtain more counties and duchies to pass some titles off. If you are very successful in conquering lands, you will usually end up above the holdings limit and the duchy limit. My default is to just work my way down this list of heirs and grant a duchy and a county to each one until they are no longer there.

These lands will typically be much worse off compared to your original holdings since they are usually a different culture, lower development level, and lower control. Instead of reserving these ones for your primary heir, give them to your other children to satisfy their land requirements.

Giving these lands to your children rather than your vassals also has benefits of keeping the lands within the family. They are easier to call upon in wars and typically have a higher opinion of you.

4. Splintering the realm is not always a bad thing

If you aren’t able to create a Kingdom by the time you finish your first character, you will end up with a splintered realm due to other children being the same rank as your primary heir. This in itself is not a bad thing since the new realms are usually much weaker than the one your primary heir inherits. Your new character also has claims on the old lands that you had and can start a war to get them back.

It is usually a good idea to immediately declare war on your siblings right after you start the new character since their counties are typically weaker at the start. In most of my games, I haven’t encountered many difficulties with this method of gaining land back. However, it is a bit of a pain having to do this each time and it eats up valuable time that could be spent conquering new lands.

Worst case scenario, your splintered realm remains splintered and you now have another independent Duke in your Dynasty. This actually adds more Dynasty prestige according to the current calculations – allowing you to obtain powerful Dynasty perks faster.

5. Counties are the most important titles

If all you have is your single capital County, you likely won’t be able to defend your entire Kingdom/Empire. With how Levies and Taxes work, your Counties are the absolute most important titles in Crusader Kings 3. Your vassals may be able to provide you with these resources, but things can quickly go sideways once they start joining factions. The Faction Strength is based off of a percentage of your own strength and it is infinitely harder to maintain control when you only have 2-3 thousand men at your command.

Prioritize 2-3 highly valuable counties (in addition to the capital) to be passed down to every single character you play. Give away as much as you need to in order to satisfy your other heirs before you die so that these core Counties remain in your direct command.

This will make your life a ton easier when putting down rebels and fighting your other siblings for control. The larger you expand, the more careful you have to be in ensuring that you stay in command of your powerful base of operations.

6. Partition is better than Confederate Partition at preventing realm splintering

In Confederate Partition, if your child has enough land then they will automatically create a higher tier title to match yours. For example, one of my sons can have the Duchy of Brittany and enough lands to create the Kingdom of Brittany. Upon my death he will automatically create that Kingdom and split off from the Kingdom of France under Confederate Partition. In Partition, this would not happen since titles are not automatically created.

Going with Partition instead is almost exactly the same succession law except for not creating new titles. If you are at a Kingdom level, then it is worth considering changing the law to avoid having another Kingdom to deal with. Like mentioned in Tip #4, it isn’t always a bad thing but it can get tiresome having to constantly fight after each inheritance.

The downside to this is if you do not have enough Gold to create a Duchy title and you are only a Duke, your heir will take the County and remain a vassal. This can be a big problem since you can’t just go to war with them as in Tip #4, and you end up losing that County for good. Make sure to avoid this by either rushing to the Kingdom stage or by managing your Gold properly to ensure titles are granted appropriately before your death.

7. Send your other sons to War as Knights

Unethical and very disturbing, but you can get rid of your other unwanted heirs by “Forcing” the Knight status and sending a small group of them to fight a much larger enemy. Crusader Kings 3 is ruthless at killing off Knights with poor Prowess and your sons are no different. You also don’t get any penalties from this method other than increasing stress due to your children dying.

The biggest downside to this method is that you are placing all of your eggs in one basket. If your primary heir dies, it is game over for you. If you ever want to consider doing this, then make sure to “Forbid” your primary heir from being a Knight.

8. Avoid Disinheriting, Murdering or Imprisoning your other heirs

The penalty for Disinheriting is far too high for this to be a manageable method of controlling succession. You lose a ton of prestige each time you do it and if you have 5-6 viable heirs you will be in a huge amount of prestige trouble.

If you have the sadistic trait, the intrigue option of “Murder” then becomes available to use on your children. However, if you get found out then the Kinslayer penalty for most cultures can be fairly harsh. Repeat this process for another 4-5 other children and it quickly becomes an issue. Like mentioned above in Tip #7, having your children die is a very risky choice since it can quickly result in a game over if your primary heir dies.

Imprisoning and executing is another method to remove heirs from your dynasty. This incurs a huge amount of tyranny to accomplish for anything more than 1-2 heirs. Like above, this runs into issues of being a Kinslayer and increases the potential risk of a game over.

9. Grant Titles to the heir of your heir

If there are no other ways to resolve your current succession issues, granting titles to the heir of your heir enables you to use those Counties at a later point in the game. You can’t grant everything to your son due to the succession law, but it still works for your grandson. One other benefit to this is if your grandson dies, typically the titles transfer back to either you or your heir according to their succession law.

Keep in mind that this method is typically a last-resort since the Counties you are granting are far more useful if they are directly controlled by you. Only do this if you know your character is about to die and no other tip on this list is going to work.

10. Make sure your son’s marriage type is NOT matrilineal

This is a little bit off-topic, but it should still be mentioned in case any new players are reading this. All of the marriages you arrange for your sons should NOT have the matrilineal option ticked since that means any of their children will be of a different dynasty. It is usually safest to arrange for a marriage even when they are children to secure alliances and to ensure that the children still belong to your dynasty. Once they are adults they can marry other people on their own unless you restrict their marriage freedom.

Conclusion

Succession laws are vastly different in Crusader Kings 3 than they are in Crusader Kings 2. It is one of the biggest adjustments to make, but once you get used to it the story of your characters become much more interesting. I hope that this guide has helped you with organizing your realm and ensuring your lands stay strong!

Thank you all for reading and happy conquering 🙂

See our Piety and Prestige Guide here, our Beginner Tips guide here, and our Top 10 Tips for Starting as a Count here.

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Software Inc Top 10 Tips for Beginners

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Software Inc is a business management simulation game that revolves around the idea of building a successful software corporation. It is a fantastic tycoon game that incorporates many features that bring out the best of the genre. There are constant updates continuously coming out that add further depth to the game, and this set of tips is meant to help beginners get started.

Tip #1: Start on Easy with NO LOANS

It is natural as gamers to immediately want to jump to medium or above difficulty settings, but do that in this game and you will most likely start with a terrible impression. Starting on easy does two major things that I am aware of: it gives your starting character higher starting stats and makes cash flow faster into your bank. Additionally, starting with no loans gives you much more time to get your first product out since your starting guy does not have a salary. This sets the game up to be a little bit more forgiving for your first playthrough.

Tip #2: Increase your starting Programmer and Designer skills

Adjust the beginning slider so that designing and programming is at a higher ratio than the other few options. When beginning the game, it is recommended to start off with a smaller product suitable for a one-man team. Having a solid designing and programming skill helps you get the product out faster and increases the overall quality of your work.

Leadership, Marketing, and Artist are all very important, but at the beginning, it is all about survival. These other skills can be easily developed later on and can be complemented by staff you hire while you’re still learning. Let’s break down why:

Leadership:

  • Not too much to say here, this really only comes into play when you have a team and your character is designated as the leader. Team leads essentially just have meetings with their group and that increases everyone’s efficiency. Later on when you have the opportunity to get leaders trained with the HR Function, leaders become more important in automating the simple human resource tasks for you. As for the beginning, don’t worry about it too much.

Marketing:

  • Some people might argue that having a high marketing stat to begin with would benefit your first product, but I disagree. The amount of quality you lose by adjusting this to a higher value is not providing you with a better start at all. Marketing takes money to do well and that is capital you do not have at the beginning. Focus on this for later on products when it isn’t a do or die situation.

Artist:

  • Depending on your product, you may actually need to adjust this one as well. However, if you decide to go with the simple products that do not use graphical interfaces, programming and designing are the core. If you decide to go ham on your first product and add in all the graphical designs, then increase this stat to just below the designer and programmer stat.

Tip #3: Set your specialization to 2D or Audio

There are many, many possible products you can choose to get started with, but I have found through dozens of playthroughs and testing that choosing the 2D Editor or Audio Tool to begin with makes it a lot easier to progress in the game.

There are three major reasons for this:

  • These two products require the least diverse specialization at the start of the game (only need the 2D or Audio specialization to effectively make either product)
  • It is usually easier to create a higher quality product with just one person
  • Marketing is not necessary to ensure this first product succeeds
  • These three reasons are essentially linked in the sense that a one-man team will not have the proper specializations at the start of the game to cover complicated products like Operating Systems, and this resulting lower quality product is not going to *succeed without excessive marketing. These issues are resolved by starting with the 2D Editor and Audio Tool options.

Tip #4: Ride Solo

At the start you really do not have enough capital to spend on another programmer or developer. Hiring more employees would essentially bankrupt you before you get halfway through the Alpha stage. Your starting developer (if starting on Easy) should have the capabilities to finish a Good or even Great quality product on their own provided they are given enough time.

This is where the significance of this tip comes in:

With no additional staff, your only cost would be your rent and your utilities. This should be around $700 at the beginning, which should last you for much longer than you need to develop a simple 2D Editor or Audio Tool. As compared to the ~$2000 for just one more additional rookie developer, going solo is a no-brainer.

Tip #5: Expand SLOWLY

Regardless of how your first product sale goes, it is a good idea to get into the habit of expanding slowly. I’ve had so many games end prematurely because I expanded fast right after a decent first sale, and ended up making much less on subsequent products. Look into what product that you would like to “main” and hire programmers/designers/artists with those specialties.

On Easy, it isn’t too hard to maintain a good cash flow, but higher difficulties make it hard to sustain higher salaries effectively. Get into the good practice of tightly controlling all your expenses including servers, staff, heating, rent, and salaries.

Tip #6: Get a dedicated Marketing Team

Managing multiple production lines can get confusing late game, and having a dedicated Marketing team to refer all marketing tasks to makes it easier. You can start with just 1-2 marketers at the beginning attached to your core team, but once you want to get your brand name out there, you should set the team up on its own. Usually, a team of 1 Lead and 9-10 Marketers is enough for you to get your marketing to Prominent pretty easily.

Additionally, the Marketing team can also be given marketing contracts to fulfill – essentially paying for themselves. There will be a daily marketing amount that your team has to fulfill, but I have found that as long as you fulfill around 70% of it your client will remain happy. One consideration for this is that you could be marketing for a competitor’s product and that may affect your own sales, but realistically if your product is good enough this won’t matter too much. You could just take contracts for other types of products as well if you are worried.

Tip #7: Utilize the Project function

Once you have a decent cash cushion, it may be beneficial for you to set up an additional team that is managed through the automatic Project function. In my previous post, I went over how the project management function in this game can essentially set you up for passive income. It is especially useful if you set up your project for something straightforward and with little variance like 2D Editors or Audio Tools. This lets you hire exclusively for the product and the end result is a higher quality sale.

Going back to the previous point, having a dedicated Marketing team also means you can set up multiple projects and have all of their marketing needs met by a single team. I have played numerous games where the marketing level for my Audio Tools and 2D Editors reached Widespread with little effort on my part.

Tip #8: Start your own Server

Gotta love passive income. Hosting contracts can be a very lucrative way to sustain your operations and entering into distribution deals with other companies can give you a hefty sum each month. Additionally, you would end up paying someone else to host your games if you decide to not do it yourself.

1. Buy 3-4 servers and link them. (Can do this by right-clicking one server, selecting “select all in room”, then select the “link” function) 2. Hire a receptionist and set up the reception (this lets contracts show up on the “Contracts” tab) 3. Accept any Hosting deals above ~0.35/mb to maximize profits. 4. Go to the “Distribution” tab and click “Open Online Distribution Platform” 5. Go to the companies tab and find one with a decent number of fans and medium company worth. (Do not go for the higher end companies yet!!) 6. Offer to sell their products on your online distribution platform. Note: Not going for the larger companies right now is a good idea because they tend to give you a smaller cut and your servers may not be able to sustain their usage. However, it is a good idea to get started as soon as you can since you can re-negotiate your cut each month. Having a longer relationship gives you a better chance to ask for a larger cut. Becoming the sole online distributor also allows you to constantly negotiate for larger and larger cuts as well.

Tip #9: Train new Programmers in a Support Team

A great way to get a solid, well-trained team of programmers is to first set them up as a Support team. What you need to do is hire a bunch of low salary programmers and a lead that have “Amazing” or “Great” compatibility or higher. Next, assign them all of the support tasks for all of your products and see if they can cope with the workload. If you can, then you can get another amazing source of passive income. Get those contracts and start seeing this team pay for itself!!

Over time you will see your support team gain specialization based off of the products they are supporting as well as an increase in their overall programming skill. When you are developing a new product, you can assign them to the programming phase to help increase quality. It just comes down to how much work they have and if they are able to keep up with their support workload.

Tip #10: Send people to training

Training your idle employees!! It may be a little micro-managing, but it certainly helps to cover all of your specializations over time. Another option is to first train all of your Leads with the “HR” skill so that they can do it for you. One option I found that worked well was setting the number of employees gone at once to 2, then setting the number of months to 3, and then setting the time delay to 0. When you have a full team, this setting lets you have enough members to get the product moving while still having some people gone for training.

If your style of play is just one team that covers all specializations, you may want to consider upping the number of employees to around 3-4 employees at once and moving the number of months up to 6. This will considerably slow down product development, but it will give you a better-trained team faster. This method is usually for late game when you have a cash cushion.

Conclusion

Software Inc is an absolutely fantastic game once you really get into it. Use these tips as a way to get started and figure out your own way to enjoy this masterpiece. Keep in mind that this game is still in Alpha though, there will be updates that change the way this game should be played.

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Crusader Kings 3 Prestige and Piety Guide

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Crusader Kings 3 is a medieval strategy RPG game that uses a “Prestige” and “Piety” system. These are rare forms of currency that you accrue throughout your game and have a variety of uses. Careful management of these resources will allow you to expand your lands, obtain riches, and give you bonuses to many aspects of your gameplay. This guide will go over the basics of what the resources can commonly be used for and how to increase your prestige and piety.

If you are new to Crusader Kings 3, check out our Beginner Tips guide here for more information on overcoming early challenges. Our Succession and Inheritance Tips are also available here if you are having difficulty adjusting to the forced Partition system.

What is Prestige?

Prestige is a measure of how famous your character is and is spent on declaring wars, increasing Realm Authority, changing succession laws, and inviting Knights/Claimants to your Court. Many of the realm expansion methods in Crusader Kings 3 comes down to making a claim on territory and declaring a war for it. Often times you will end up spending a ton of prestige on this feature alone and you should always be ready to take advantage of opportunities to take more land. Increasing Realm Authority is important to maintaining control over your already-obtained lands. High authority will prevent lands from being inherited outside your realm and will also allow you to change succession laws to ones that enable you to pass more fiefs to your direct heir. Finally, the “Decision” option to invite more Knights is invaluable to strengthening your army. A few decent Knights especially for Counts and Dukes can be a game changer when fighting against a similarly sized opponent.

Once you have accrued enough Prestige throughout your lifetime, your Level of Fame will also improve all the way from “Established” to “The Living Legend”. Each Level of Fame provides you with increased Secular Opinion (opinion from anyone that is not clergy) and increased number of Knights. The opinion boost at max level is +30 and it gives you another 4 Knight slots that you can hire for. This bonus can be a great way to ensure your vassals still tolerate you and Knights themselves are fantastic in Wars. When you are able to hire Knights at Prowess 12 or above, they can each take out 50-60 men with ease.

With all of these features in mind, having a good supply of Prestige is extremely important to both expanding and maintaining control over your Realm.

What is Piety?

Piety is a representation of the virtue of your Character in Crusader Kings 3. It dictates how the religious members of your faith view your character and can be used for founding Holy Orders, asking the Pope for funds (if Christian), declaring Holy Wars, creating your own faith, reforming your religion, consecrating your Bloodline, requesting Divorces, and improving the opinions of your clergy. The most useful of these is the ability to ask the Pope for funds as a Christian – for 250 piety you can receive several hundred gold. This is a very useful boost in the early game when you are more likely to be spending gold on things like Knights, Men-at-Arms, or even for bribes. One of the best features of Crusader Kings 3 is the ability to create your own Faith that is tailored to your specific playstyle. There are many different tenets to select from and is a whole new topic in itself – just know that you will need a lot of piety to do so and it will take a long time to accrue enough.

Similar to Prestige, Piety also has Levels of Devotion ranging from “Dutiful” to “Religious Icon”. However, earning Piety is a little bit more difficult and it is rare to reach the last level. Fortunately, the only real bonus from these ranks is improvements to clergy opinion and you don’t really have to worry too much about leveling it up.

Piety is arguably less important than Prestige when it comes to day-to-day bonuses that you consistently use. However, if you want to dabble with religion and conversions, you definitely have to start building up your Piety as soon as you can since it is more difficult to obtain. It will take quite some time for you to get enough to play around with some of the more interesting religious features.

How to obtain Prestige in Crusader Kings 3

Call Hunts

Calling hunts is the most straightforward method of increasing your prestige in a short period of time. Hit F8 or go to your Decisions tab and you can select the “Call Hunt” function. The cost of calling a hunt differs based on your rank, but for Dukes it costs around 67 gold. This cost in itself isn’t too bad when you consider that you can receive several hundred prestige from the single hunt. Calling for Hunts has a 5 year cool down period.

Hold Feasts

Feasts usually give you 150 Prestige upon finishing and occasionally will give you more depending on the random events that come up. Just be aware that some of these events will occasionally cost you Prestige as well, so be extra careful about which option you click. It can be found in the same way as “Call Hunts” above in the Decisions tab. Holding a feast costs around 100 gold for Dukes and increases beyond that for Kings and Emperors. Similar to “Call Hunts”, there is a 5 year cool down period for holding feasts.

Select the “Majesty Focus” in the Diplomacy Lifestyle Tree

This lifestyle provides you with +1 Prestige per month. This might not sound like a lot, but many other variables only give +0.3-0.5 Prestige per month. For example, the Duke of Bavaria in the 1066 start only has +2.65 Prestige per month to start off with and this is already including the “Ambitious” trait that gives another +1 Prestige per month. Of the various ways to build up Prestige, selecting this Lifestyle is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways. There are also numerous useful perks in the Diplomacy tree that you should definitely take advantage of like the “Forced Vassalization” Casus Belli.

Create Titles

Creating titles will cost you a fair chunk of gold, but will also provide you with a ton of Prestige once you do. For example, creating the Duchy of Moravia costs you 250 gold and gives you 300 Prestige while creating the Kingdom of Bohemia costs you 500 gold and gives you 400 Prestige. If you are already set on creating these titles, the Prestige you obtain from them is usually enough to give you the Prestige needed to start another war.

Be careful to not create too many Duchies since holding onto more than 2 will make your vassals like you less. There is also a risk of these higher titles being lost upon succession since Primogeniture does not exist until 1200AD.

One other method (which is a little unethical) is to grant Duchy titles to vassals where you actually hold the Counties. Once it is granted, the vassal will likely dissolve the title since they hold no De Jure fiefs – allowing you to re-create the Duchy for more Prestige. This method costs quite a bit of money, but you can essentially print Prestige as you see fit. It can also be seen as slightly gaming the system and can take the fun out of your current play through.

Join Ally Wars and Contribute

When you join an Ally War and actually contribute, you will get a split of the Prestige according to the War details. Click on the specific War you are in, go to the “Enforce Demands” tab and scroll down until you see the part that says “Allies share _____ Prestige based on their contributions”. You will actually have to contribute to the total War score for the Prestige to be allocated to you even if you are the only Ally called to war. Also be aware that if you join the War but do not contribute, there will also be an opinion penalty from your Ally.

Raid (if available)

Tribal governments have the ability to raid for loot and you will also gain Prestige for each successful gold you bring back. All you have to do is siege down an enemy settlement and cross back into your own borders with your loot for it to go into your stockpile. If you are attacked on your way and lose, you will also end up losing your gold.

The Raiding option is really only available to Tribal governments and not for Feudal governments. If your goal is to gather more Prestige, also be aware that many of the Men-at-Arms for Tribal governments cost Prestige for both hiring and upkeep. There are other better ways to gain Prestige, but this method is almost required for the Tribal players to keep up with costs.

Set your Chancellor to “Foreign Affairs”

The Chancellor will add to your monthly Prestige gain depending on their Diplomacy Skill. Someone with only 10 Diplomacy will only generate around 0.5 Prestige per month, while a Chancellor with 20 Diplomacy will give you 1 Prestige per month. Like mentioned above, the monthly Prestige gain in Crusader Kings 3 is actually fairly low – these bonuses of +1 per month do end up adding up quite a bit.

Avoid calling every Ally to War if you don’t need them

Even when you do everything right and tried all of the tips here you can still run out of Prestige. In those cases, we have to work on preserving the Prestige you already have by reducing the amount you really need to use. The most important method is to avoid calling every single ally you have to war when you don’t need them since each ally requires a significant amount of Prestige.

Examine your troop count and compare it to your opponent and their allies. If you already have more Levies, Knights and Man-at-Arms than their entire Alliance altogether, chances are you don’t need to call in your King and Duke allies into battle. Don’t hesitate to spend enough Prestige to guarantee victory, but definitely do your due diligence in investigating how necessary they really is.

How to obtain Piety in Crusader Kings 3

Go on a Pilgrimage

This is an option in the “Decisions” tree that will send your character off on a Pilgrimage to any of your religion’s holy sites. The further away the site, the larger the Piety gain. Be aware that this method costs a lot of gold – which potentially makes it not an option for Counts and Dukes. For example, a trip to Jerusalem might be considered to be “Very Long” and cost you 187 gold. During the trip, there will be several events that pop up that give you options to obtain Piety. Some have costs attached to it and others might give you undesirable modifiers like “Ill”.

At the end of the Pilgrimage, you usually receive a large sum of Piety plus the “Pilgrim” trait that gives you +10% Piety per month. Some tenets like the “Armed Pilgrimages” tenet will give you an additional +2% Monthly Piety Per Knight. With 10 knights, this is a 20% boost! In the example above with Very Long trips, the Jerusalem journey that I sent my character on generated 625 Piety at the end of it.

One last point to consider is that there is a 15 year cool down for Pilgrimages. If you have the means to do so, going on a Pilgrimage as soon as possible will be beneficial if you intend to use a lot of it later on.

Select the “Theology Focus” in the Learning Lifestyle Tree

With how difficult it is to accrue any decent amount of Piety, the +1 Piety per month is a fairly large boost that should be considered for any ruler you intend to use to wage Holy Wars or reform faiths. The perks in the Learning tree are also great for reducing Piety costs and certain perks like Theologian and Prophet also give boosts to monthly Piety gain.

However, don’t pursue this option if you have a ruler that has decent stats in other trees since the additional monthly Lifestyle experience can be much more useful if used properly elsewhere.

Seek Indulgences from the Pope

You can buy Piety from the Pope with gold through the “Seek Indulgences” option that pops up when you right-click the Pope. The cost for this option is usually around 200-300 gold for anyone Duke and above. The higher your rank the more gold you need to pay. Unfortunately, it appears that regardless of the amount of gold you pay, you only end up receiving 100 Piety in return.

With how useful gold is and how difficult it is to obtain for early game characters, this is typically an option for Kings and Emperors. This option is essentially a reverse option for when you ask the Pope for money except you gain opinion instead. Our Beginner’s Tips guide also mentioned using Piety as a method for gaining gold early. This is actually one of the main reasons to gather Piety early game if you have no intention of reforming your faith or declaring holy wars.

Set your Priest to “Religious Relations”

Similar to how Chancellors work, a Priest set to “Religious Relations” will provide you with monthly Piety gain. It appears to operate on the same scale used for Prestige gain where a Priest with 10 Learning generates +0.5 Piety per month and a Priest with 20 Learning generates +1 Piety per month. With how much more difficult it is to generate Piety than Prestige, this is one of the more desirable settings to leave your Priest on whenever possible.

As mentioned in our Beginner Tips guide, the Priest is one of the best ways to fabricate Claims and expand territory. You will end up having to make a choice between building your realm versus building up Piety. I typically find it most useful to focus on claims earlier in the game and Piety later on once I have established a decent base of operations.

Educate Children and select Traits that are Virtuous

Changing traits for your adult characters is extremely difficult and very RNG reliant in Crusader Kings 3. However, you can set your character as the Educator for your heir and other children and you can decide which traits they get when the menus pop up. There is still a certain degree of RNG since they might not always hit the ones that are considered to be Virtuous by your religion, but this gives you some level of control over how it is done.

You can also set the primary focus for your heir to be Learning, but keep in mind that this should only really be done if they innately have a high Learning value. Forcing your child into an education that does not suit their abilities will be detrimental to how well they function as adults. See Tip #14 on our Beginner’s guide for more information about adapting to your character’s traits.

Improve Learning in random events

There are occasionally random events that pop up if you select the Learning Lifestyle Tree that can give you additional Learning points. The higher your Learning, the more Piety you gain per month. Each point your character has in Learning gives an additional +0.1 Piety per month. An average character that has around 12 Learning will have 1.2 Piety per month, but someone who has really focused on Learning and has 25 will receive 2.5 Piety per month. This is a substantial boost to how much you receive each month and can definitely be useful in the long term.

Conclusion

Crusader Kings 3 treats Prestige and Piety as much rarer forms of Currency compared to Crusader Kings 2. They can be immensely valuable in most aspects of gameplay and can be difficult to obtain when you need it most. Hopefully this guide has helped some of you with overcoming the challenges you have faced when you ran out of these resources!

Read our Crusader Kings 3 Beginners Guide here if you are just starting out in the game. Our Succession and Inheritance Tips are also available here if you are having difficulty adjusting to the forced Partition system.

Thank you all for reading and please comment below if you have any other tips or suggestions! Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates on our guides and reviews 🙂