Foundation Foundation

Just the Basics. How to get started, the things you might not know or realise.

Guide To Basics

Build your Manor with the doorway facing you, so you'll see the envoy.
Trade panel. Set everything except food to sell over 80 units from the start. Will keep you afloat early on.
Two or more stone cutters or gatherers can use the same resource.
Houses are built on zoned land only. Zone around churches, placing wells and decorative trees to improve the ground for better buildings.
Try to build a residential core with businesses on the outer edges.
Villagers love water.
Click a villager and see their wants. Follow one who has a red stat and see how far they need to go to fix it.
Build Granaries and Warehouses near the locations of resources and then buildings that process them nearby (woodcutters > warehouse > carpenter).

Size of Church equals how many people can enter.
Settlers will travel to church, the radius lines when you build aren't hard and fast areas of capture.
Start with rustic churches but once you get Churches build them so they cover the same area and then demolish the rustic one.
Extensions are expensive, simply building multiple new churches.

Have a warehouse or granary stock an item (e.g. wood) and make sure it it set to the green tick for that item.
Open the Trade panel.
Unlock at least one trade route.
Open the Trading Resources tab.
Put a number against a product (e.g. 80 Wood).
Click the green up arrow to buy from traders (when they pass) wood until you have 80 wood in a storehouse either from them or your own gathering.
Click the red down arrow to sell anything above 80 wood to traders.

Add decorations (esp things like barrels that have no monthly cost) to add Labour Splendour.
Add Manor banners and toparary for Labour Splendour.
Build churches for Clergy Splendour.
Build a fort and add banners to it and the area around for Kingdom Splendour.

Start by concentrating on berries, then fish (if you are coastal), then bread, then cheese.
Fishermen will fish stocks that are in uncontrolled territories if they are near by.
Don't forget to add markets and new stalls for new foods.
If you dont promote settlers they will only desire berries and fish.
Use trade to sell excess high level food (cheese+).
Wheat never gets to Granaries, they go direct to the Mill.

Build a fort.
Add decorations and (10) training dummies.
Add settlers and import swords if you arent already making them.
Give each a sword in the army panel.
Let them all train until they are maxed out.
Click on an easy mission.
Add all settlers to the expedition.
Send them off.
There will be 2 popups later asking if you want to let them carry on fighting.
As long as the odds are average or above say yes.
They will bring back goods and be wounded.
Let them return to full strength and backfill casualties.
Attempt higher difficulties.
Look for improved weapons and swap out your swords for them.
Take on an extreme mission for a blueprint to study in your manor with a study extension.

Always have the resource panel open so you can stockpile (and turn it off once done) and to spot food shortages happening.
In most games I find the tipping point is 100 settlers. At this point things get twitchy and recessions and cockups hit hard and fast.
Open the villager and workplace list's often to look for over immigration and use to ensure critical jobs are assigned first.
Turn off immigration in the village information window to avoid recession.
Watch the estate manager panel to see what you need to level up and get bonuses for.
Settlers need markets to get fed, as you add food types (and luxuries) you'll need to add a stall to sell it.
Place a forester in one area off to the side of your village and have 2 woodcutters, 2 charcoal, Warehouse makers for a good supply.
You can forest over any resource and not interfere with gathering of berries or stones.
Don't over promote settlers. They dont really care if they are higher status but will demand more if they are. Only promote people in batches of 4, to get to the bonus levels in the Estate Manager.

When you build or buy territory always note the upkeep cost.. those gold taxes can hit you hard.
Wheat farms tend to fail (only partly planting the zoned area) once you have 3 and nothing seems to fix them apart from time. They will eventually come back.
When people leave due to unhappiness mouse over Global Happiness icon and rectify needs one at a time. Add churches, up food production, add decorative trees to increase housing density.
Back fill important jobs. If the leaver is a Forager/Fisherman/Farmer/Market Tender backfill with luxury jobs or those you have plenty of stock in (stone/logs).
If you play methodically: build and expand an industry every in game month or so you'll avoid big spikes in unhappiness and recovery is easier.
You can recover from almost any cockup. The fancy people will leave so just focus on your core industries (food, wood, stone) and get them working again.

Source: https://gameplay.tips/guides/7475-foundation.html