1 Place badly, on purpose
In most city builders the first hour is spent agonising over layout, because moving a building later means demolishing it. Overthrown removes that entirely: if you dislike where you put something, you pick it up and toss it somewhere else.
The right response is to stop planning and start building. A settlement that exists and is badly arranged is far more useful than a perfect plan you have not built, because only a working settlement tells you what it actually needs.
2 Gathering with the crown
Resource gathering is described as fun and easy thanks to the power of the crown, and the two examples given point in opposite directions.
| Approach | When it suits |
|---|---|
| Throw whole trees at the sawmill | Trees are near the town and the mill is placed well |
| Carry the sawmill through the forest | The good timber is far away and you want it all at once |
The second is the one new players never think of, because no other builder allows it. Running through the forest with the sawmill so it absorbs trees along the way turns a supply run into a single trip.
Once you accept that production buildings are portable, the question changes from where should this go to where should this be right now.
3 Hand the routine to citizens
After deciding which buildings go where, you manage your citizens to automate everything from there. That sentence describes the whole progression arc of the game in miniature.
Early on you do most things personally because there are few people. As your fame grows more will flock to your banner, and each new arrival is a task you can stop doing yourself.
So the useful question after every wave of new citizens is which repetitive job you are still doing by hand. Your own time is best spent on the things only the crown can do.
4 Food before everything
The seasons section of the store is blunt: manage resources and stockpile enough food to last the winter. That is a hard deadline rather than a soft pressure, and it is the most common way a first kingdom fails.
Farming has a delay built into it, because crops need time to grow and you have to guard them while they do. A stockpile therefore has to be started well before you feel any shortage.
A reasonable rule for a first run is to treat the first visible sign of the season turning as far too late, and to have the granary filling from the moment the farms produce anything at all.
5 Defending farmland
You are told to guard your farmlands and your peasants from hungry mutants while waiting for crops to grow. Both halves of that matter, and the second is easy to forget.
Villagers can be eaten, and the game offers the example of running across a lake at high speed to rescue them in time. Losing people is worse than losing a harvest, because people are what automate the kingdom.
Placement helps here too. Farms far from where you usually stand are farms you cannot reach in time, so early fields belong near the centre of your attention rather than in the most fertile corner of the map.
6 Fame is a difficulty setting
As your fame grows, more will flock to your banner, and so will those who have come to overthrow you. Growth therefore brings both the labour you wanted and the attackers you did not.
That makes expansion a decision rather than an obvious good. A kingdom that grows faster than its defences is a kingdom that attracts a raid it cannot absorb, which is exactly what the title of the game promises.
Keeping people happy sits alongside this, because unhappy citizens desert you for the outlaws. Losing a villager to a mutant costs you a worker. Losing one to unhappiness costs you a worker and gives the enemy one.
Build first and rearrange later, since every building is portable, with polluting workshops as the one placement you should get right immediately. Carry the sawmill to distant timber instead of hauling logs home, hand each repetitive job to a new citizen as your fame attracts them, and start the winter stockpile long before you feel short. Keep farms and peasants within reach so you can rescue them, and remember that growth summons attackers as reliably as it summons workers.
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