Best Place to build a town

[Corey]

Hello

So I know this has come up on several other forums but I was just wondering with the new prospecting function added to the game what people have found to be the best places to build that are defensible and that have resources?

Thank you

[BigD145]

For balance, no one location is supposed to be best for all things.

[Corey]

I found a good spot ill try to post pics when i can.

[Aereto]

Best locations tend to be areas that have the highest changes in elevation over the smallest area occupied, as buildings do not appreciate slopes, and making ramps to make places accessible is hit/miss-ish.

That's only prospecting/building-wise. Then there's locations that have better strategic/tactical defensive planning.

[Potocobe]

There is a kind of narrow plateau near Blackscratch in the SW at the bottom of the map. There are good ores at the top of the plateau. Good bio and water at the foot of it and limited access if you wall it up properly. It's a good spot to try and get all industries going in one town. Too bad it is so close to Black Scratch but that allowed me to trade building mats over and over in both directions to keep supplies up. Also it's a good spot to train heavy armor wearers for strength. Just load up a guy in armor and a backpack full of steel and send them off to Blackscratch from the top of your mountain. Sell it all and load up on building mats and send them back. Farming was still kind of broken last time I played so really you don't need it much yet.

[Roque]

The best place is the one that you feel comfortable building, and is high enough so you can watch in all directions where enemy platoons might come from, and trust me, they will come, also its important that you settle near cities, both for resupply, loot and commodity trade, and general safety, I often choose to build my characters before trying to build settlements, but its also important to prospect, there some places that have unique resources and will make you prosperous.

I often settle in mountains, because I tend to be a weapons/armor smith, and mountains tend to have more mineral resources, and having a birds eye view of your location, to show any coming in bandits, they generate some squads just to crash your base, it's best also, before anything, build up your character, before moving out cities, buy properties in cities, place the tech research, the city has enough power to supply your buildings ,when you've done your basic researches, start gathering people, train them, and then gather enough materials to build walls on a desired plot, after you've placed other essentials such as mine/processor, walls are important, just having one is enough to disencourage most bandit platoons.

Also, be artistic, do not place everything just to have it, expand your dominion when needed, if there is another area that has the resources you want, relocate if necessary, build outside your walls, might not be the safest choice, but when bandits come just for resources, sometimes its best give them what they want, than risk a losing battle where someone on your side could die, once though, you have turrets, upgraded turrets, you'd care little for raiding parties as the turrets can nail some of them, pretty deadly.

It's worth to be industrious, but you can also be a fearless warrior, just build a safe wall, a big house, put beds in it, place some necessary items as a medikit bench, a forge to fuel your warriors and then just go out and kill some bandits, or risk, and raid the cannibals.

[Corey]

I Found a wide gorge north of Bark that backs onto a complete drop off with one way in and one way out. It has all resources in a good supply. Very defensible but kind of a long walk to sell stuff. Also I only get attack by bandits like once per hour not even.

Best I have found but it has its weaknesses.

[Roque]

I Found a wide gorge north of Bark that backs onto a complete drop off with one way in and one way out. It has all resources in a good supply. Very defensible but kind of a long walk to sell stuff. Also I only get attack by bandits like once per hour not even.

Best I have found but it has its weaknesses.

Everything has its good and bad side, which is why I always choose to level up my characters before doing anything, I buy properties in towns, and clutter it with what I'm currently needing, you can be a successful trader on your own, make enough cats, buy property, buy mats, place objects, construct them, research everything by yourself, you'll have more control, once you do, you can be self sufficient easily, make enough cats, recruit good henchmen, warriors initially, start building up your deck/roster, your faction/chapter members, squaddies, train them, give them especialities, hunt some bandits when needed, buy more properties in Town, or Towns if you travel a lot, always loot battlefields, when you are comfortable enough, you have enough resources, decent people at your service, building towns can be quite easy.


Thats my recommendation.

But that raw, freedom seekers, is an unbeatable experience, a bunch of squatters trying to survive in that pitiless desert, desperately seeking a place to call home, feels unique, the fact that you're going to be ambushed, raided, try to survive at all costs, wave after wave, gathering whats left in order to continue, feels real, though, this is just the beginning, suppose it will be a lot harder in the future.

[Snowpig]

there are several good spots south and south-east of clownsteady, mainly there the "desert"-maptiles border the "central" maptiles. Just one thing to consider: Stones are very important, Water/Fertility are nice if you want to be self-sustained. Ore is almost irelevant since you will build a furnace and (later) automated ore mines.

TL-DR: Stone > Water/Fertility > Ore

[WCG]

I buy properties in towns, and clutter it with what I'm currently needing,

Newbie, here. (I've been playing for 14 hours, but there's a lot I don't understand.) How do you buy properties in towns? I've never seen that option anywhere.

Also, this thread talks about prospecting, and my characters seem to start with that job assignment, but how does it work? If my characters have been "prospecting" as they move around, they've never actually discovered anything, as far as I know.

I have a long way to go before I even think of building my own town, and I'm not sure why I'd even need a property in a town. (What I really need are merchants and companions, but bandits seem to be wiping them out before I even get to a town.) Eventually, yes, I can see how useful that would be. And since I'm traveling around anyway, I try to keep my eyes open for a good spot to build. If I'm supposed to be "prospecting" as I go, I don't know how.

Help, please?

[Butta]

Newbie, here. (I've been playing for 14 hours, but there's a lot I don't understand.) How do you buy properties in towns? I've never seen that option anywhere.

Click the door of the building you want. You will see the option in the lower left.

Also, this thread talks about prospecting, and my characters seem to start with that job assignment, but how does it work? If my characters have been "prospecting" as they move around, they've never actually discovered anything, as far as I know.

In the lower right there is a "Prospecting" button that you actually have to click. It is not an already assigned job, if that is what you thought It will show you the amount of ressources in the vicinity.

[WCG]

It is not an already assigned job, if that is what you thought

Heh, heh. Yes, that's exactly what I thought! Thanks for the info.

PS. Oh, and my other problem is that I was right-clicking on the doors. Turns out I needed to left-click. Duh! Thanks again.

[Kekspar]

One of my all time favorite areas to build a town is the plateaus to the south of catan. Very spacious. Completely flat and easily defended. Some of te plateaus may seem inaccessible, but you can use walls and ramps to construct a passage to the top. As a bonus there is an average of 55-61% on stone there and one of the higher plateaus goes up to 71% stone. A short trip to catan is nice although it is a long walk to anywhere else.

[WCG]

East of Telbooze a ways, there's one broad pass over the mountains. I'm building a town south of that. There's 90 stone, if I remember correctly, and a very big area of 80 iron ore. There's also a deep, dead-end canyon with good water and fertile sand just to the north/northwest of my starting location, with only one way in or out.

My initial camp was easily defended, as there aren't many ways enemies can get to it. As I expand west into the bigger area of iron ore, I'll need to put up more walls, but just a few kept me safe at the start.

It also seems to make sense for a town. It's a long way from other settlements (so trading isn't convenient), but in addition to that pass over the mountains to the north, there's a clear, easy path to Bark in the southeast.

I must say that I like being out on my own, though being close to an existing town would be convenient for some things. I've got about 40 followers already, though, so I've got the labor I need and the resources I need to build pretty much anything.

[vpb]

Iron and stone tend to be at higher elevations and fertility and water at lower elevations, so find somewhere with more than 50% of each. Iron seems to be the hardest to find.

It's better to have lower efficiency and be able to wall it all off. Being high/close enough to another town to see it helps with trade because you can set the slowest member of a squad to go there and set everyone else to follow or bodyguard and not have to deal with navigation.

It isn't necessary to wall everything in, you can have mines and farms outside of town. Work your farms and mines with fighters so they can take care of things when bandits come.

If you build a re-cycling smelter and work your farms with fighters the local bandits will deliver plenty of metal to you .

[Keryyn]

Hi,

I'm using the easy prospection perk because i wasn't really fond of having to build everything far away, it messed up buildings on mountain slopes and prevented me from building good looking outpost ... And good-looking is goood ... for roleplay ! :O

So i built my base in the valley right in the middle of the mountains between the three settlements traders edge, the police HQ (which is wrongly named mercenary base actually ...) and porth south.

The place is nice because of its central location. I get a decent 48% for stone and iron and a nice 70% for fertility, water is around 50 too. With enough people in my faction i now have a very effective production line with a little of everything.

Also it has rocks and flora making it one of the better looking area of the world. It has many ways out and in through the mountains so it's not hard to get access, then the ground is pretty flat so any base building here is really easy.

Even with the normal prospection settings it makes a nice place to build at least a military outpost (lots of iron near that place). I get attacked once in a while by bandits then by dogs if i dont clear up bodies or they were just around the base.

However, a year ago i think i played and make my own base on the plateau near catan, i was really disappointed to see the addition of a slave trader outpost right where i wanted to settle once again ... Not only that, but there is right near their location another set of plateau where i was planning on building a nice frotress, there is a large sand path that goes up to the top and its very defensible and ... nice-looking xD ! Really a shame, to the point i kinda wish i will be abble to remove the slave traders, or at least drastically reduce settlement border zones so i can build more closer ...

[Emperor StarFoth]

I settle out in the desert (black area of the map)
Land is flat, but you need to find a spot woth water and fertility.
Stone and ore are no problem because there's tons of that in the desert.

Bandits are frequent, but I have the Fox Scouts (my military squads) that handle that and a squad of merchant to sell all them weapons.

Gonna get recycling/weapon melting soon so I can make more modern weapons and just rely on selling my fabrics when public sales is buffered/fixed. So being in the desert where bandits are fairly frequent is good, but logistics are a nightmare. Lots of building flatland makes up for it though, so I'm self sufficient with the exception of recruitment and blueprints.

[Loengrinn]

I browsed online for hours in regards to this, and I've built in 3 different locations and had varying results. Here's what I've found in my experience so far:

ELEVATION:
Stone is at high elevations, Iron tends to be at high elevations by actual mountain ranges.
Water and fertility are at lower elevations but I haven't really found a consistent way of telling what a good area would be without actually prospecting it first.

Natural walls:
My first base was literally south of Bark, there's a nice canyon that has only one way in/out. It's fairly wide, so walls and a gate are necessary very early on to keep out bandits, but once that wall is up you're completely safe. I only ever got attacked until those walls went up, and then it was quiet. This site has nice stone essentially anywhere you look, and there's good iron deposits by the back near the mountains. Water and fertility are at 10 as far around as I could find, but since food and water aren't really implimented yet, this works nicely as a starting base for researching and making gear. I managed to get all the way to the final tier of research with this base and only left because of the shops bug that deleted the shop keepers.

Proximity:
You'll want to be close to one, if not several towns. I have yet to have trade caravans come by, but I have yet to do anything that would have them come in and buy from me anyways, as that's limited to bread, water and rum and I haven't done much in that regard. There's very open and flat land between Catan, Brink and Trader's Edge, but I would recommend that as a secondary or tertiary base, as you'd have to build your own walls all around. The plateaus by Catan are nice as well, give you a lot of easily defended places, but the lack of fertility and water in that area is why I left my first base, so again, good starting area but not the best. I have yet to explore the area between Brink, Telbooze and Clownsteady, but it looks to be much of the same as the first area I mentioned.

Ideal Spot:
The single best place I've found is actually by Trader's Edge. South of it. There's a valley that's formed by the mountains. I went to the Eastern side of that area and found a huge expanse that I walled off easily (the walls are bugged and can't actually be constructed, but they work how they're supposed to even without actually being built). Close to the mountains are great iron and stone deposits, though the incline makes building a giant pain in the butt, it's doable, and they have high yields (both at 90, just have to move the building around to find those spots). And within the area I walled off is 80 water and 100 fertility in a huge swath, so farms are easily maintainable and protected.

Oddly enough, starting low level tech bases is significantly easier. A stone mine at the highest level takes 50 building materials, which is 2 full traders packs, and that's just to mine the stone (a processor is another 35 to turn that stone into building materials, and it takes 2 and a half generators to power them to full effeciency). I may at some point start this anew, but as I spent literal days with this team (21 guys now, 2 squads of pure fighters that are in the mid 20s with both combat, and my 2 vets are almost to 40s with combat stats and 30s and 40s with strength, toughness and dexterity stats, my Guardian being able to take on whole teams of bandits alone and come out on top [if not a little bloodied] every time) and so I was loathe to start from the beginning.

I know I wrote a lot, but it's all good info (besides the little bit of bragging ) and I hope this helps those of you taking this route.

I do plan on playing different groups and starting over from the beginning once I get bored of my current teams, so if I learn anything new I'll post what I've got.

[philthymcnasty]

South of traders edge was my favorite spot. I was the retired captain beginning, so i would raid the holy empire towns from there.

Then some import bug set the diplomacy to 0, and it was no fun, so i built a base north to attack cannibals.