Black and White Village Life Spawned by: Ian Jacobs April 16, 2007 .-=\/=-..-=\/=-..-=\/=-..-=\/=-..-=\/=-..-=\/=-..-=\/=-. Table of Contents I. Introduction i.Legal Stuff ii.What does it all mean? iii.Version History II. The Basics i.The Villager Desires A.What is Villager Desire? B.Desires a.Wood b.Food c.Expansion d.Offspring e.Mercy f.Protection g.Civic Buildings h.Rest ii.Village Buildings A.Housing B.Civic Buildings C.Village Center D.Village Store E.Temple iii.Wants VS Needs A. Determining Wants VS Needs III. In Depth Coverage of the Flags i.Fixing the Desires A.Food a.Good b.Evil B.Wood a.Good b.Evil C.Expansion a.Good b.Evil D.Offspring a.Good b.Evil E.Mercy a.Good b.Evil F.Protection a.Good b.Evil G.Civic Buildings a.Good b.Evil H.Rest a.Good b.Evil IV. Do's and Don'ts of Village Management i.Do's ii.Don'ts V. Strategies i.General A.Self-Management B.Breeding C.Village Structure D.General Rules ii.Taking over towns, The Good way iii.Taking over towns, The Evil way VI. The Creature i.My Creature, My Village, and Me A.Training B.Miracles C.What can my creature do for me? D.When is my creature ready to be my work horse? E.Last Words VII. Final Words/ Contact Info .-=/\=-..-=/\=-..-=/\=-..-=/\=-..-=/\=-..-=/\=-..-=/\=-. I. Introduction i. Legal This guide was written by Ian Jacobs. It may be published if proper credit is given to it's creator, Ian Jacobs. That's it... nothing more at this time. ii. What does it all mean? Well let's see, you are here because you want to know about villages, and to make great ones. You want to know about desire flags, how to fix them, and how to make your creature help you, in your village, of course. This guide goes from the basics of what your villagers want, and need, as well as distinguishing between the two. Furthermore, what to and not to do when your villagers want stuff. Some strategies for making an efficent, working village. And finally, how to make your creature into the work horse of your town, those fingers to get tired after some time... This guide will cover both good, and evil styles of play. Yes, I know this game is very old, but I still think it is one of the greatest games ever. iii. Version History 1.1 Updated 4/26/07 Added a couple more strategies and fixed some errors in table of contents. .-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-. II. The Basics ii. Villager Desires A. What is Villager Desire? We have all seen them, the little flags that appear around the village store, occasionally at our worship sites. We read what they are, hear the villager scream out they usual stuff, yet we don't quite get it. Sometimes they want food, but I see food in the store, sometimes they don't want wood even though it is empty! Villager Desire is what your villagers want at the time, or need. They may not want wood, since the don't need it. Or they want more food because, well, they just plain want it! Villagers want and need things constantly. VILLAGERS ARE NEVER HAPPY, YOU CANNOT OBTAIN A PERFECTLY HAPPY VILLAGE! Get that thought out of you head now and never, ever, ever, ever ever ever let it come back! B. The Desires This is a quick list of the different desires your villagers will have, and what cuases them. a. Wood Your villagers want wood in the village store so that they can build buildings, or put wood in your Workshop. It is caused by lack of wood in your village store. (Duh, that's why these are the basics) At times you may see a completely empty wood storage and no desire flag. This is O.K. It just means that you have nothing going on in your village that requires wood. b. Food Each villager eats it's own helping of food, if you have more villagers than you do servings, or you people (as I have observed) have to walk a long way to get to food will want more food. (People get hungry as they travel) Your people will feed themselves, as in they walk to the village store, get some food, and eat it. This should never be empty! c. Expansion This means housing, and it really isn't that big of a problem as long as you are constantly building houses for your people. When this goes up, be prepared to start working on some of the other desire flags. Building need wood, builders need food, etc. d. Offspring WARNING! VILLAGERS BREED LIKE RABBITS! This is the most common and the most annoying desire. This desire is the root of all evil! Example, Villagers want offspring, more off offspring means more food and more buildings, more buildings require more wood, more builders need more food, more food means they want more offspring. It is perfectly O.K. to have a Breeding flag up, it mean's your villagers are essentially happy (so long as no other flags are up). e. Mercy Your villagers are frightened of you, or your creature, because you did something evil to them, like burning the creche. Frickaseed baby... not bad! f. Protection Your villagers are frightened of another god or creature. Not much else. g. Civic Buildings You don't have a Creche, Workshop, or Cemetary, just build these early to get them out of the way. This is the easiest to take care of h. Rest (Worship site only) Too many villagers are worshiping at your temple, or the ones that are there are low on health. ii. Village Buildings A list of all the village buildings you will find in the games, the same goes for every tribe. A. Housing Your Villagers need a place to live, housing provides that. It is, or at least should be, the most common type of building in any village. The two types of housing is large (Two scafold) and small (On scafold). Large buildings can give either 3 or 4 adult spots, depending on size, where as small buildings will ALWAYS give you two adult spots. "Spots" can be viewed by "tapping" on any house. B. Civic Buildings There are only three types of civic buildings. The Workshop, where scafolds are made, the Creche, basicallya daycare, and the Cemetary, duh. Every village should have a Creche and Cemetary, but the Workshop is suggested. Also a building that isn't really classified under anything, but since it affects your village I will put it here, The Wonderer. It gives you special powers or changes the attributes of your village based on which wonderer you choose. C. Village Center This basically IS the village itself, all the miracles are listed there as well as the totem. You can create these by placing 5 or more scafolds down in a somewhat remote location. Remote location being away from all other towns. This is the heart of any town. D. Village Store All your villages desires are listed here. Your village's food supply and wood stock are also located here. You can leash your creature here so that it will fufill the town's needs and wants. E. That huge building of great importance, oh I mean the temple! The temple is essentailly you! It reflects your alignment by either having towering spikes, or slim curves. Your creature's pen as well as the villages worship sites are located here. Inside the temple is your creature cave, and other rooms like that. iii. Wants VS Needs Want: something desired, or demanded. Need: necessity arising from the circumstances of a situation or case. A. Determining Wants VS Needs Wants are easily defined by situations, thus giving you a basic understanding and flexibiliy to determine on your own the difference between the two. Situation A: Wood Desire is high, as well as Expansion Desire. There is little to no wood left in storage. Want: Wood Need: Expansion The villagers want wood to supply their need for expansion Situation B: Wood Desire is high, and there are many buildings under construction. The Offspring flag is also up. Want: Offspring (This is always a want, and never a necesity EXCEPT when your village has but one or two villagers.) Need: Wood The villagers want offspring to fill in the new homes, but need wood to build them. So as you see, each desire flag yields a new desire. An easy way to prioritize the falgs is through the Want VS Need system. .-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-. III. In Depth Coverage of the Flags The sction will cover the different ways to "fix" the flags. It covers both the good and Evil ways to fix the flags. i. Fixing the Desires A. Food a. Good Cast the Food miracle on your village store. Another option is to use your creature to feed the people. b. Evil: The only evil way that comes to mind is to steal from other villages, or from your villages themselves. Yes taking food from the fields IS EVIL! To bad you can't fill the village store with children! B. Wood a. Good Cast the wood miracle, or water trees for the villagers. b. Evil Can you really be evil with this, besides once again, stealing wood. C. Expansion a. Good Build homes for the homeless, keep the village store up with food and wood, and you should be set. b. Evil KILL KILL KILL! Who needs those worthless EXTRA followers anyway! D. Offspring a. Good Be carful here, one man can impregnate an ENTIRE village, so it's best to have one female breeder per 20 people. That way you keep a constant supply of offspring, but not to many. If you are DESPRATLY low then mabye one or two men will do the trick. It's not a good idea to let your creature do this for you, but under no circumstance slap him for it! All you need to do is pick up the new disciple and shake him about! b. Evil They want offspring? They won't after you destroy all the extra housing space. Burn the houses and watch the villagers squirm. E. Mercy a. Good Try to be nicer to them, cast some healing miracles, water some plants, be nice! b. Evil You're evil... WHO CARES IF THEY WANT MERCY!? F. Protection a. Good Spirtual shields, physical shields do the trick, also try helping them rebuild what was lost in the attack. b. Evil Ditto but without the rebuilding part, that's to nice for you. G. Civic Buildings a. Good Give them their damn civic buildings, they do nothing but help! b. Evil Ditto. H. Rest a. Good Lower the totem about 5% to 10% depending on how badly they need rest, cast a few healing miracles around the worshipers and mabye even make a teleport to your distant villages. b. Evil Roast 'em. Who needs tired worshipers? Fresh meat is your game! Just kill em off to make room for the new meat. .-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-. IV. Do's and Don'ts of Village Managment i. The Do's 1. Do keep the food desire low. 2. Do keep the wood desire low. 3. Do encourage villagers to work by creating diciples. 4. Do try to be ever-expanding, a village at rest gets you no more influence over the land. 5. Do make room for your creature to move around. 6. Do encourage your creature to always help villagers, even if you are evil. (An evil creature can be both annoying and destructive) 7. Do try to make your villages self-sustaining. ii. The Don'ts 1. Don't let villagers "Chill out." Assign them to be disciples like fisherman, or farmers. Something that will require constant work on their part. 2. Don't overbreed, overbreeding is the source of all other desires! 3. Don't kill your entire village. 4. Don't allow your creature to eat villagers, unless you really really want that. (Sadistic SoB) 5. Don't do everything! You can spend hours micromanaging your villages only to find out that you raised a load of LAZY VILLAGERS! 6. Don't make too many houses at once! Remember, houses need wood, wood requires trees! If you can't supply the wood to each house you make (Around 1660 or one wood miracle) then do not build it. It creates a need for your villagers to chop down every tree on the map! 7. Don't let your creature do everything, it's good to have him around but he could be doing soooooo much more in other villages! .-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-. V. Strategies This section is about some basic to advanced strategies to creating your villages. i.General (Your town) A. Self mangement. Your villagers can be reasonably self-reliant. If done correctly this strategy can help you to stop micro-managing all of your towns. Start of with the following rule for food, 1 field can feed 5 people, if you want it to be really self-suffiecent and have a lot of wood to burn, or 1 field can feed 10 people if you don't have that much wood. Fields are built at the workshop for 4 scafolds. Next look for any fish farms in the area and set disciples to work there. Food is really the only thing you want your people to be self-suffcient on. Wood cutters tend to overkill forest in a heartbeat. In the story mode, when you are more than likely paying attention to other things, A good way to get your town to be self managing and have alot of influence is by creating a agricultural type of town. Around your village center just try to fit all your civic buildings, with the exception of the graveyard. This will help you in later lands, trust me. On the outskirts of the town center use this rule, 1 field for every small house, 2 fields for every medium house (3 or 4 villager spots) and 3 fields for every large house (5 spots) this creates a cool loking town, make the villagers self-suffciant as well as helping you to spread out and increase your influence. This won't work as well in the skirmish mode since players have a limited amount of space to utilize. B. Breeding Breeders can be a plague! Over breeding is the WORST thing that can happen to any village. A general rule of thumb for me is 1 female breeder per 10 people. This way the population can grow exponentially but still under control. If you are having trouble keeping up with the rate of breeding, simply take out breeder diciples. I have never seen two non-breeder diciples mate. If, like on land 3, you need alot of people, then make 1 male breeder diciple per 25 people. In a village where there isn't anyone, like one you just took the evil way, you can't really start a village without 1 male and 3 females. Make the one male a breeder disciple and the women what ever you need. Then put the man around the village store or food supply to ensure that he is constantly breeding. Don't let your creature create breeders since he tends to get out of hand and goes on a breeder frenzy. It's best to handle such matters with your godly hand! C. Village Structure If you notice how villages are laid out in the skirmish maps, then you will see that they have a group of houses around a few farms and mabye a few around the village store. I find this to be extremely effective. Building houses into what I call "neighborhoods" or groups of houses, and then centralizing them on important resources such as flocks, farms, fish farms, trees, and forests can be a great way break apart the village into sectors, fireflys I see escpecially like houses around trees. Make "roads" through your village. Between each line of houses should be a strip of green grass, if there isn't than more then likely your creature cannot fit through! Accesibility is key here since, when trained properly, the creature can be your best friend in village management. Always expand toward your opponent! That way your influence is getting ever closer to his villages, as well as those nuetral ones in between. Keep all your civic buildings close toghether, when they are closer then the interaction between all of them is much easier. Two workshops spaced close thoghether can provide you with a quick way to mass produce buildings and fields, so long as you supply them well. It seems like there is a glitch where if you take scaffolding from one workshop and put it into another, all scaffolds that are already being made into buildings are cleared. Thus making room for more scaffolds in their place. D. General Rules Killing villagers is bad. Killing houses is bad, setting fire to fields can be extremly bad as these are hard to put out. If you need to impress a town with fireballs, throw them OVER not IN the town. Always leave space and keep desire low, remember, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A HAPPY VILLAGE, so don't waste your time trying like I did. Don't be fooled by that bliss moment when you think you have a happy village, it will only stay that way for a minite. ii. Taking over towns, The Good way. Start by sending your creature into the town,make sure he knows all the good miracles. Then impress them useing Flying Flock, or one of the other big miracles. Satisfy their desires, or have your creature do it. Leash the creature to the Village Center and he will entertain the villagers, leash him to the village store and he will satisgy their desires. Throw artifacts, in the village and do other nice things for them until they believe in you. iii. Taking over towns, The Evil way. Take your creature, have him destroy a few homes, burn any civic buildings they have, throw villagers about, and eat villagers, they will believe in you in no time. Alternativly, kill everyone, then send in a missionary. Town is yours. .-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-. V. The Creature Ah yes, the creature, the almighty being that is your creature, your greatest ally, or worst enemy. This creature teaching is made to make a village work horse, not a fighter, or evil creature. i. My Creature, My Village, and Me A. Training Train your creature not to eat villagers, but to tuck them in at night, pick them up and cuddle them, make them happy, and perform for them. Teach him to use the totem, and when it's appropriate. Teach him to fish, take food from fields and use village store. Teach him to poop on trees, or fields if you can. Let him learn how to feed himself and when rest is O.K. Teach him to eat whatever, as long as it's not villagers. After he has learned these basics, teach him how to throw trees into the village store when he is on the wood desire flag. Next teach him to throw full grown animals into the village store when on the food flag. DO NOT teach him to take food from the field, otherwise he will turn out more evil, since stealing is wrong. B.Miracles Start him off with the water miracle. Leash him to the food desire with the learning leash, and then water fields. Leash him to the wood desire flag and teach him to water trees. Next teach him to cast the food and wood miracles, these are important for him to learn since they give a good deal of resources. Continue to reinforce these lessons until he will do them on his own. A good test is to put him on the learning leash, leash him to a food or wood desire flag, and watch what he does. If he feeds the villagers when on the wood flag, then you need to teach him to put wood in the village store instead of food when on that flag. Or if he sits down, then you need to slap him right away, then show him what to do. NEVER should your creature be idle! After learning these basic concepts, teach him more advanced like miracle forest, and miracle heal. These will help to impress later villages. C. What can my Creature do for me? Your creature can satisfy desire of your villagers with relative smarts, depending on how extensivly you train him. He can act as just big babysitter, or and active member of society based on what personality traits you bestow upon him. If trained right, your creature can the most vital member of any village. D. When is my creature ready to be my work horse? Here is a quick checklist of things your creature must know. 1.Water miracle, and when, where, and what to use it on. 2.Food Miracle, again, when and where. 3.Wood Miracle, ditto. 4.Healthy (from villager point of view) eating habits. 5.Not to roam around. Leash that big fella up. 6.Your Creature MUST knowhow to help the villagers out, and when to do it. E. Last Words Your creature should never be allowed to sit down, ever. He must know how to please the villagers. He must know how to do basic villager tasks, like food and wood. He should be an overall good guy. .-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-..-=#=-. VII. Final Words I created this guide because I hadn't seen many comprehensive guides on village life. I will attempt to update regularly as new information. You can contact me at [email protected] with any questions, comments, ridicule, or new information. All e-mails will be answered as long as they have a purpose!