Fertilities
- On your first island you want it to be fertile for Hemp, wheat, cider and the optional slot should be saved for herbs. This will save buying wheat and herbs later, also saves having to find another island early. Note: When considering what production building to construct first on your new southern island:
- 2 Date plantations will support up to 30 nomad houses, same with milk, and should leave you with extra to sell.
- Once you have both, the next thing you will need to build is a Spice plantation. Make sure to have one of your trading ships routes collect the spice then send it to your northern warehouse to support citizens & Patricians.
 
New Land
- Eventually you will need to make new towns on other northern islands to access new raw materials, keep these towns small but just big enough to support the collection of raws. Your starting island is usually the greater of all your others.
- Your second home should be built in the south not long before patricians start moving in to your first land. Make sure to have a stock of Dates and Milk before adding nomad houses
 
Trade
- As soon as you get a ship, find the other settlers and start a trade route unless your starting options are set to "TRADE' stage. This will be your main source of income.
- Be sure to keep track of the materials your ship routes are trading as your stocks will fluctuate with the city's growth usage and sales via the warehouse. The amounts being transferred will have to be constantly adjusted.
 
Buying Goods
- When starting a new game, set your warehouse to buy +15 tools and +10 garments and +10 wood. Saves sailing and waiting for restock. Later in the game you will find that you may not be able to process a certain material on your island for lack of resources. In these cases you will need your warehouses set to buy these items.
- Leather Garments and Spice for Patricians (etc.) will be one of the main items you'll have to buy, more importantly the garments because the money spent making them, initially, will be greater than the cost of buying them, but they WILL be expensive to buy. Don’t build too fast or you will have too many Patricians with too great a needs therefore putting your income in the -1
 
Preparation
- Wheat, herbs, spice, Indigo (Southern region) and leather garments will be highly needed when your city grows. Either start growing it early or start buying it early, even if small amounts. Always be prepared.
 
Tricky Business
- Salt and brine do not sell unless you set the price fairly low. Know what sells and what don’t. Best sellers are (Tools, glass, iron, garments, coffee, beer, Indigo)
 
Trade Route Stock
- When you’re making a trade route and you set your ship to pick up 45 wood and 45 stone (e.g.) make sure you set it to sell 45 of both in one city then 45 of both in another city. This is because it won’t sell the full pile in the first city in most cases as they may have half their stock already full.
- When selling goods manually, there is no limit as to how much you can sell.
- Opening your current trade fleet tab it will show u how much money that particular route is making. This is solely based on IF you sell the whole lot.
- Leave at least one ship available for manual selling and quests.
 
Corsairs
- Corsairs are basically the same as the other civils except they will constantly demand large amounts of money in order to keep the peace.
 
Special Items
Special items are Adornments that can be equipped to a warehouse/ships 'use' slot and grants special traits. (e.g.) Special items for ships can increase storage, speed, firepower etc. Similar for warehouses, except some special items give a 'Levy' of a certain material which is very useful.
 
Levy, basically, gives you a certain amount of materials to you for free every time another vessel visits your warehouse. The amount is usually +5 of material each visit. Useful for when one of your stored materials is slowly running out and you don’t want to have to build a production facility to accommodate it.
- Use your starting rep points to buy 'upgrade' Adornments for your ships to increase speed, and storage. Optional items: Repair man, captain etc.
- Your first couple quests will give you enough points to buy 'Diplomatic Rank' scrolls from your northern neighbor. Take these to the Vizier in the south to increase rank with that nation.
- Save rep points for buying 'Fertility Items' so you can plant on otherwise unfertilized land.
- Once a fertility item has been equipped in a warehouse 'use' slot and activated, un-equipping the item will destroy it. This is not the case for other special items
- Special items (Adornments) are also given as quest rewards.
- Unwanted special items can be sold for Honor pts

Resources Running Dry?
Ore deposits, such as Iron, will eventually run dry. Don’t fret. Some deposits give the option to 'Replenish' for a hefty price. This option is found right next to where it shows how much ore is left in that deposit.
- Some deposits, such as stone, do not have this option.
 
Late Resources
Gold, coal and copper deposits are used WAY later in the game; don’t pick an island early just because it has these.
Gold, Coal and copper deposits can only be used via a special item.
 
Note: Coal/gold deposits can only be used if you have found an Academy of Wisdom or any other power building on your island in the south. These 'Special power buildings' will discover the special items needed in order to build on these deposits. These buildings need roads in order to access. You will need to support these buildings with raw materials so they can discover new techs for you.
 
These techs are 'special' items which are usually special buildings that keep the people amused such as Juggler/ fire breather tents and/or adornments for your warehouse's/ship's. They can also be production buildings.

Pre-Migration Prep
Before building on a new island, make sure you have FULL food and drink stored and even set it to buy, because if you leave an urgent need of a civilian unattended too long they will stop paying taxes and begin rioting.
 
AOI
- Make sure to notice the area of influence circle when placing a building or market house, improper placement will put your money in the red and greatly slow that city's productivity.
- It’s smart to have Market houses right next to your production buildings in order to keep up with the raws usage that keeps that certain facility running at 100%.
Note: Build farming facilities around your market houses but kept within the area of influence. Houses and facilities that are within the area of influence of the selected building are colored Green
 
Income
- Keeping your income constantly in the green is moderately hard to do early to mid game. It doesn’t usually matter as your trading fleets will be the main source of income. If you start going $-1000 then you're going to have a bad day.
- Best thing to do, keep your cities small enough to handle. Add houses slowly and maybe upgrade your hemp and wheat (etc) fields an extra crop every 8 or so houses to keep up with demand
 
Automatic Resource Usage
When your peasant houses upgrade to hamlets they use a small amount of resources in case you’re wondering where it’s disappearing to.
- House upgrade's use wood, garments (for the people), stone (Patrician and higher). Try not to build too many houses at one time or u will run out of resources when they decide to upgrade.
- Sometimes, your warehouse may also buy resources even though you haven’t set it to buy them. This may slowly feed your people the items they need for everyday activities.
 
Crops & Farming
Depending on the construction site, farms and crops are built to accommodate the surrounding area.
- If you’re unhappy with the crop setup around your production building you can demolish each one separately.
-Sometimes you can re-arrange and add more crops to your farm. Adding a crop is done by selecting the 'fence' picture just under the 'construction options tab', then placing the crop within the production building's area of influence.
- Hemp and herb facilities can have from 8 to 14 surrounding crops if arranged correctly.
Note: Building farms/crops in the south requires you to have green lands to grow on. Build a 'Noria' on southern lands before placing farms. The area of influence surrounding the noria is where the grass will grow over time, so make sure your farms are within that area. You may need several norias to create the required amount of grass.
 
For maximum area, build 3 Norias in the shape of a triangle using the Area of Influence as the boundary.
 
Norias will need to be refilled with water every so often at a cost. You will be notified when the water level is low.
 
Beggars
Beggars are very easy to handle. Building 1 beggar’s house will support up to 55 beggars.
- Letting beggars stay in your cities offer you more quests and rep.
 
The Market
Markets support the citizens surrounding them and are the town’s automatic source of income made by the people.
- By selecting the market you will have 2 extra Tabs. One will explain how many of each type of citizens are living in that town; the other explains your ascension rights.
Gaining Ascension rights from questing and civil advancement allows you to click on a house and upgrade it and also the type of civil living there.
Note: This cannot be done without having ascension. Will explain this more later.
 
Typically, you can play through a continuous game without ever having to use Ascension rights for any reason.
 
Quests
There are many types of quests offered. Most will come from your Occident & Orient leaders but others are found within your cities. When there are quests in your city they are found in buildings with an animated arrow pointing down at them.
 
Click on these buildings to have the option of activating that quest. These quests will appear over time.
 
Accepted/current quests are shown on the notification tab to the left side of the screen. By 'mouse pointing' over the quest icon, you can see the quest details and it will also highlight the objectives location on the map for a brief moment.
 
Quest Types
Finding Flotsam/People Involves using a ship to find lost/people goods at sea.
 
Escort Involves using one or several of your ships to escort trading vessels to a highlighted location on the map. Usually about half way through the escort, pirates of some sort will try to attack the trade ship. You will have to protect it.
 
Once you have completed the escort, a crate of flotsam will drop. You will need to pick this up and take it back as proof that the escort was successful.
 
Destroying Trade Ships Self explanatory, find the vessel highlighted on the map and destroy it. Take the flotsam back as proof
 
Find A Certain Person - These quests can be fun and frustrating. This quest involves having to find particular people in your city/cities (e.g.) 'Find 3 Knights and bring them to my warehouse'.
 
To find these people, 'mouse point' over the quest icon to show the location (rough area) of where to find them in your city. Go to this spot on the map, zoom in with the camera and "Visually" look for them. They look different from the everyday citizens but can be hard to spot.
 
The way to tell the difference is by finding a slightly purple 'Halo' around that particular person. The Halo can either shroud the person completely or just a piece of equipment they are holding.
 
Supply A Warehouse/Ship - You will need to gather some of set resources to the designated warehouse. You may have to deliver items to a damaged ship at sea.
 
Find Treasure - This quest involves using a ship to hunt for treasure on other islands. Before setting out, the quest requires you to have a certain number of materials to explore each island.
 
To find treasure, sail your ship to the designated island and have your ship close to the shore. A 'Treasure' icon will appear above the ship indicating that the island is currently being searched. You will see a man set out on foot looking. This process takes about 30 seconds, you will be notified when the hunt is over and if the treasure was found or not.
 
In the case that you have several islands to search for the treasure, bring extra materials in case you don’t find treasure on the first island. When found, take the treasure back to the designated warehouse.
 
Map Islands - Mapping islands is similar to treasure hunts as you will need materials on board to search each island. Mapping islands requires you visit every marked location then return the info.
 
Extensive Quests - These are rare or special quests that will come along over long periods of time or if you are highly favored by a neighboring country. Extensive quests require you to do several quests in succession and may be slightly more difficult to achieve but grant large rewards and extra special items.
 
Quest Rewards
Normal Rewards can range from Money, materials, special items or all of the above.
 
Grand Rewards Range from large amounts of money, materials, special items, ships or all of the above. Extensive quests items are usually super special.
 
Ascension Rights/Town Level
Ascension enables civilians to 'level up' once certain requirements are met. Constructing different buildings and supplying your people will gradually grant your people ascension.
- Without ascension, your people/towns will not level up to the next stage.
You have the option to turn off the Ascension rights to any city at anytime by clicking on that cities market and selecting the 'scroll' tab. When viewing in this tab, find the large 'scroll' symbol tab at the top and click it.
- Towns/cities that have ascension rights disabled will have a spinning scroll symbol above the markets.
- While Ascension is disabled, house that are ready to upgrade to the next stage have flashing arrows above them.
 
HINT: Let’s say your city has prospered. You have different classes of civilians and different buildings.
 
I found that if your town has grown enough to support itself (financial/Food) you can start using the 'demolish' tool to destroy all the minor class buildings leaving only the upper-class civilians on that settlement.
 
They can survive because their needs are supported by pre-made trade routes and warehouse materials at their current level, and you have deducted all the needs of the peasants from the town’s costs. Excellent for rebuilding misshaped towns and lowering costs without having to start again.
 
This works both ways, so if you prefer the peasants, destroy the Patricians.