Foundation — Walkthrough

Cheat Codes:
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Submitted by: David  K.

Unlocking a Trade Route

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Unlocking a Trade Route is quite simple. Once you have the required resources, for 
example 20 Planks for the first Trading Route and 20 Bread Loaves for the second 
click on the respective “Unlock trade route for X” button and your new Trading 
Route is ready to use!

Where do I find my save games?

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You can find your save games under: 
%UserProfile%\Documents\Polymorph Games\Foundation\Save Game

How to Not Starve Late Game (Efficiency Guide)

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Written by mearowene

Many players have posted frustration with their cities collapsing in upon themselves 
once they reach certain population marks. Several of these players have posted 
screenshots of their towns and I have seen a lot of the same issues with them. I 
am here to explain a few things that make this so. I am not a dev, but I have 
played for many hour and have quickly come to discover many of these things while 
playing on stream. 

This guide is going to take a few things for granted. We are going to assume that 
you know most of the basics of the game, and instead we are going to focus on 
players who are having issues with expanding their economies.

-=Rule 0
So first and foremost, I want to make this very clear; Distance matters. The exact 
level of how much it matters is unknown to me, but I do know this; it matters a ton. 
While your villagers are travelling from point A to point B (Usually from house to 
a market, job, or well) you are getting no use out of them. They do not fulfill 
their needs while walking, and they sure as hell do not produce food or other 
resources for you. This is the basic principle throughout this guide.

Needs: I have suspicion that villagers will also leave work when certain needs 
exceed a certain level. With needs slowly rising over time, this means a wheat farmer 
that takes several minutes to get to his job is likely to plant one bushel of wheat 
before leaving work to go back home.

-=Market
The good news is your market tenders do not need to be at their stall to sell their 
goods. The bad news, is like everything else, distance matters. Try building several 
market stalls all over your city. It is kind of a pain, but very doable. In the 
screen shots, you can see I have a market set up in about a 1-1 ratio. (hex-market) 
This enables me to play the game where markets make sense from a city building point 
of view, but they are efficient enough for buyers to come buy their merchandise 
without ruining my economy. Since market tenders do not need to be at their stall 
to sell, I do not worry too much about them having to travel long distances to 
retrieve their goods from food places. It is still a good idea to make sure a food 
production facility is not too far away.

-=Job Placement
In its current state, the game is garbage at placing villagers into jobs. Note 
that if you click a job place it has an ellipses button in the top right hand corner 
of the job’s window. If you click that button, it will display the closest villagers 
to that job, as well as the villager’s current job. If you click a villager here, 
it instantly assigns them to that workplace. While also not perfect, this will give 
you a very quick way to see if there are any unemployed villagers nearby. If not, 
I recommend prioritizing. Most people complain that food is impossible to maintain 
at a high level, so maybe you take some of those stonecutters or woodcutters off 
their jobs and turn them into foragers? Try to remember that the further away a 
villager lives from their job, the longer they spend doing nothing for themselves 
or your economy.

-=Building Placement
I have already touched a bit on houses being far away from jobs, but as you may 
guess it is a little more complex than just that. Housing districts need to be 
close to jobs, but jobs that require other jobs (Wheat farm - mill - baker) should 
ideally be close to each other as well. This is for the same reason as why houses 
should be close to jobs: The more your villagers walk, the less they get done. You 
can see examples of this in my screenshots. Note how my farms are in the middle of 
a cluster of mills and bakeries and my sheep farms are next to weavers which are 
next to tailors. This allows your workers who are processing or finishing goods to 
walk 5 meters from their job to get the resources they need to do their own part 
of the process. Mind you, villagers also need to walk to their work site (Lumberjack-
Trees) So try to place work buildings for primary resources as close to the gather 
point as possible. You should also make every hex as self sufficient as possible. 
For some resources (like clothes and luxuries) it is not as important to have every 
single hex capable of making them, but as far as primary villager needs (like food) 
ALWAYS make sure that hex has some capability of providing that. On a water map, 
this means probably berries (if available) bread and fish. Of course not all 
resources are available in all hexes, but always minimize the amount of hexes 
between any given resource. This is especially true for food. 

-=Warehouses
During my streams, and online, I see people saying ALL the time that more warehouses 
are needed. Warehouses should serve only two functions in your economy; trade and 
storage. This is especially important to remember early game (sub 300 vils) because 
warehouses take up space and possibly villagers. (labor) When you do place warehouses, 
if they are for trade, do NOT put any labor in them. Traders from outside your city 
will come and drop off the goods. From there, the laborers of various buildings will 
come get what they need. Transporters, from what I can tell, do not deliver materials 
to be processed at buildings, they only take goods from buildings to be stored. 
This can of course be used to your advantage, by making a warehouse for primary 
resources (like wheat) next to a processing building (like a mill). I still do not 
recommend this though, and will go over why in the next section.

-=How to Expand
When you decide to start expanding for whatever reason, keep some things in mind. 
Are there any houses in your previous area that have not upgraded in density? If 
so, disable density upgrades for it. The reason for this is new villagers will 
move into older houses if you do not, which means some of your immigrants will 
live very far away from the new jobs being created in your new area. For this 
reason, I also recommend making sure every single villager has a job before expanding. 
This allows you to use the "assign available villager” button without worrying too 
much that your villagers are walking for minutes to get to work. I would also build 
a market and a housing district and wait for people to move in BEFORE assigning jobs 
in your new expanded area. This means only people who have moved in to your new 
area will be working in your new area. Of course there may be some overlap, but try 
to minimize that. People should ideally live work and shop all in the same hex.

-=Builders
Rotate builders in your economy. It is kind of a pain, but how much good is the 
builder that needs to walk several minutes to pick up resources going to do when 
he also needs to walk another several minutes to drop off the materials? Rotating 
builders based on the zone you are currently expanding is a good way to get around 
this. 

-=Late Game - Excess
Once you start breaking into larger numbers of villagers, it is a very good idea 
to start building excess wherever and whenever you can. You will find that once 
you have so many villagers (IF your layout is time/labor efficient) you will have 
more villagers than you need. Use the villagers to stockpile resources starting 
with primary and working your way up. Buildings will be more efficient in the 
presence of excess. Excess allows your villagers to carry large quantities of 
primary or secondary resources instead of trying to pick up 1-2 at a time. I usually 
only worry about stupid amount of excess towards the 300+ villager mark. This is 
because I build my towns to look at least somewhat realistic and due to this, 
inefficiencies are bound to add up by that point. Having excess helps cut back on 
that to a noticeable degree. Excess can also help make your economy more resilient 
towards fluctuations. (which will happen).

-=Basic Things to Never Forget
Make sure every housing district has a well. Also, bakeries should be built with 
a well next to them. Make sure you assign your berry bushes as an extraction zone.
 I know it sounds stupid, but I forget to assign it all the time and then honestly 
wonder why nobody is gathering from the bushes. 

On maps with rivers or small lakes, if you build on both sides of the water, build 
plenty of bridges. The pathing in this game is not too terrible, so give your 
villagers options so they can be more efficient. 

Some buildings can be built to be taller. I actually had a viewer on my stream 
tell me this, it never occured to me that when I placed a building, the up and down 
arrows meant I could actually increase it’s height. In some cases doing this will 
increase a building’s splendor contribution, and in other cases it increases 
capacity. In ALL cases though, it does increase the upkeep cost.

Get at least one bailiff. You can have more than one, but I have not tested to 
see if the effects stack. Some effects are different from each other, so to be 
safe I usually get 2 bailiffs, a market and a happiness bailiff. 

Build a tax office in every housing district. You do not have to actually build a 
proper manor to place a tax office (or most other "Lord’s Manor” add ons). Like 
any other job, try to make sure the tax collector lives close by.

The Fish Trade

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Written by YellowKnight

-=Introduction=-
Please note: all credit goes to YellowKnight !

* There are many resources in the game, ranging from berries, to clothes, and stone.
* Fish is a food that is usually obtained in the early game. It usually serves as a 
  “counterweight” to berries, another early-game food. Fish can be found on beach 
  regions, and are usually quite common, they are obtained via fishing huts.

-=The Fish Trade=-
* Fish are quite easy to obtain, they can be harvested even if you don’t own the 
  tiles they are on, can provide a bunch of the resource quickly, and serve as a food.
* Selling these can provide a decent amount of income, while not straining your supply 
  too much.
* For example, in my village, fish accounts for ~17.6% of my income, which added 100 
  coins to my treasury (Every fish sold for 1 coin). Fish also accounts for a majority 
  of consumed food.
* Note: These reasons are why I think fish are a great resource to have, they’re simple 
  to obtain, can be harvested quickly, provide your villagers with food, and can provide 
  a sizeable amount of money.

How to Trade

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First, you need to unlock trading. It is triggered through a quest or event where 
you have to send 20 wooden planks (not logs) to NORTHBURY.

After that you can trade with at least this city. Later you can unlock other cities 
through goods or influence.

-=To trade, follow the following steps=-
* Choose a good to trade. Look at the Trade Partners tab (F3) and see, what e.g. 
  Northbury sells and buys:
* The first line, GREEN arrow, are goods, which this city is selling to you, the second 
  line, RED arrow, which they buy from you. (Green = positive, you stock increases; 
  Red = negative, you stock decreases)
* In this case they obviously buy e.g. wooden planks at 1 gold/plank
* Build a warehouse and let it at least store in one slot you desired good: wooden planks
* Be sure, that this warehouse has at least one worker
* Open the Trading Tab by pressing F4
* Look for the good you wanna trade. In our case: wooden planks.
* Here you see buttons like “store/hold back” and “favourite”, you see how many wooden 
  planks you have and in the second column, which is called “trades”, so on the right 
  you see two buttons:
* One arrow UP and one arrow DOWN
* If it is GREY, yon cant trade this direction
* If it is YELLOWISH, you can trade it and press the button
* To sell this item, press the arrow DOWN – it will turn RED; to buy this item, press 
  the arrow UP and it will turn GREEN.
* Next move to the right and adjust the number there. By default there is a ZERO.
* For selling goods: This number represents you MINIMAL stock of this good. So a 100 would 
  lead to selling everything except you LAST 100 pieces of goods (so you always have a backup)
* For buying goods: This number represents you MAXIMAL stock of this good UNTIL you will buy. 
  So a 50 leads to as many transactions as possible until you have 50 in stock.
* If you are unsure, just point on it and wait for the tooltip or press H for HELP and search 
  for “Trade”

-=Hints=-
* For goods you cant store in warehouses you obviously need a granary.
* Be sure that the trader can reach your city and at least one entracne to the warehouse/granary 
  is not blocked
* The trader will show up every week or so.
* Its capacity to buy and sell from and to you depends on the level of the route
* Be sure, that you have either enough gold or enough goods above your set limit that your 
  trades can actually happen
* The trader has the icon/logo of the city above his head.