Overview
Tips and strategy to survive for long years with a population of over 1000
Setup
First of all this guide is aiming to anyone that wants to create cities that have more than 1000 pop, and make it to last longer and even increase to 1500 or even 2000 pop. The images I am using on this guide is of a city with 1600 pop that is going for over 130 years.
– Use the large map
– Disable disaster
Reason to disable disaster is that the well doesnt work properly and there is already enough challenge on this mission. If the well is ever fixed or reliable, enable disaster.
Next step.. get to 1000 pop… and read the rest of the guide.
Housing
You dont have to rush to get houses up, actually you need to plan it carefully, because that might be your death sentence in 20 years time.
So.. build only stone houses… ever.. even from the start of your city, it will take a bit longer to increase the population at start, but it will help a lot later on.
I usually dont have more than 8 houses queued to be build at any time, too mamy houses can lead to starvation.
Herbalist
Herbalists have 2 jobs at the game, that is really important to look at them from different point of views.
The first job is to gather herbs, that will be hard to do, because your city will be big, you will not have much room to your herbalists to gather plenty of herbs and if you run out of herbs you will have a big problem, if your population dont get constant herbs they get sick, lower theis health bar, they might die.
The second is that the sick people need to go to the herbalist to get cured, so if you have just 1 herbalist in your city, the person might die of frozen or starvation just to get to the herbalist house. So, plan to have a few (like 10) herbalists houses spread around.
About herbs, that is a resource that you will want to buy from the traders, it is cheap and come in great amount (usually 700) on the boats. Easily to keep the stock up, so the herbalists will only exists to cure people, not to gather resources.
1 herbalist to each house is enough, so 10 houses and 10 herbalists, and buy herbs from traders.
Hospital
Hospitals are really important, if you have disable disasters, the other thing that might wipe a huge chunk of people from your city are diseases. (I have lost 250 pop in 1 single disease when I didnt had hospitals)
On a city of 1500 pop plan to have 4-6 hospitals, that is enough to keep diseases under controls. Spread around the buildings, because the sick people have to go to them to get better.
Cemetery
Cemetery on cities that have over 1000 pop is broken, dont even try to keep up building cemeteries because you will never have enough lots to all the dead people.
My advise, ignore it, dont build even 1.
Why ignore, you will need land area, lots of land area, and graveyards can eat sooo much area that is better not to use it at all.
You will have a small hit on hapiness, your overall hapiness might be 4 or 4,5 stars, never 5.
Well
The only reason that well exist is to use on fires, so if you have disasters off, you dont need to build any at all.
So far the well is not reliable, you might have 5 wells around a house and the fire might spread and destroy your whole city.
Chapel
First of all you need to know that chapel dont need to be near your population, you can build it anywhere on the map that it will get fill up. Like us.. the people in the game dont go to the church!!
Church affects happiness, that is it.
Each chapel supports 200 pop, so with a pop of 1500 you will need 8 churches. I myself stop building them when I had 5 of them, all filled up. If you have resources and spare lands, go ahead and build as many as you want, it will not affect your game.
Trading Post
Trading posts are really .. really.. important!
First tip, have plenty of them, trading posts are independents from each other, you can have all your trading posts with boats at the same time.
On my city I have 11 trading posts, 8 are shown in the image below.
Small tip, the trading boats are linked to a single trading post, so if you configure a boat to bring some items, you will see that happening on the same trading post.
Huge tip, you dont have to make/craft/built everything in your city. By far, the best item to use as a trade item is cloth, make your economy around it. (I will discuss this further in another topic)
Always buy Stones, Iron and tools! Depending on your city design, you can buy Herbs, Logs and Fuel (firewood). Not so often, and if you have lots of cloths, buy coal.
Sometimes I even buy food if I have too many clothes to trade.
Automate your trade post, like the image below.
Stockpile
If you are clearing a new area to expand, first thing you want to build is a stockpile.
Important: stockpiles arent build by builders, once you place it on the land, and if there arent any rocks or trees, it is ready to be used.
So, you are going to a distant place to clear a lot of trees and rocks, find a place clean and build a small Stockpile, it will speed up a lot the work.
You will want lots an lots stockpiles close to your trading posts, you will be buying logs, fuels, stones and iron, all of that need to be stocked in stockpiles, so dont place them away.
Build small stockpiles close to your markets or when you are expanding, soon they will be almost empty.
Another place that you will want small stockpiles is close to your foresters and wood cutters.
Tip: you know that small place between your houses, or close to a mountain that nothing fits there? Well.. you can place stockpiles, they fit on a 2×2 space and are free to build.
Boarding House
So, that was one of the last building that I try out, I was so afraid that it would destroy my city that I didnt want to touch that.
But be not afrad!! Your normal citizens will never ever move to a boarding house, that being said, you will not put in risk your city by building one.
The only people that will move to a boarding house are nomads, and after they find a new house to live they dont go back to the boarding house.
Place the boarding house away, its a temporary house to the nomads that you accept.
Town Hall
Build one when you have spare resources, its pretty good to know the details of your city.
This is another building that you can place anywhere you want.
You will only get nomads after you have a town hall.
Pay close attetion to your inventory, watch out if you are putting too much effort in a type of food and you dont have too many of that item stored. There is a really important filter on this screen “display”, take a look on itens stored in houses, usually there are lots of firewoods stored in houses, that is good.
