Each of the villagers in your town has a mind of their own and they decide what they do and how. You don't control the villagers. They control themselves. What you control is how many villagers there are and what occupations they have. Your challenge is to have the right number of villagers with the right balance of occupations to ensure your village grows and thrives and no villager is left behind.
The game has a 24 hour day/night cycle and a number of things happen each day:
- if a villager has an occupation, they will travel to their workplace and create items related to their occupation (e.g. food)
- at the end of their working day, they will travel to the market to sell their excess stock and buy things they need
- after bartering they will travel to their house (or random location on the map)
- they will eat if they have food
- they will heal if they are wounded
- they will pay taxes they owe (sales tax can be adjusted)
- they will draw from your treasury if they are hungry and broke (social security)
Each villager buys and sells items according to what they think they need and want and they will negotiate what they think is a fair price. There is no single universal or global price for items. Like a true economy, each villager has their own view on what each item costs. They will go to the marketplace and make bids on items and hope that villagers selling that item will accept the offer. If so, an exchange is made and the buyer has stock that they need. If the offer/ask negotiation succeeds then each villager adjusts their view on the worth of that item. Buyers might offer less next time and sellers might ask for more. If the offer/ask negotiation fails (e.g. buyer offers too little money) then the buyer will learn to offer more next time and perhaps the seller will tolerate less. The market will fluctuate as villagers buy and sell over a period of time and available stocks build and reduce. The graphs will show you how the economy is fairing and consider how balanced stock levels and prices are and what the economy needs most.
Monitor the welfare of the villagers and the economy and the town will flourish. Ignore these things and your village will struggle.
The game will start with a small number of villagers
Press keypad+ to add a new villager (right-side of keyboard)
Click a blue villager with mouse. The villager will turn red and have a circle around it.
Press 'keypad 5' to unselect all the villagers
Press 'f' to turn the villager into a FARMER
Press 'w' to turn the villager into a WOODSMAN
Press 'h' to turn the villager into a HEALER
Press 'b' to turn the villager into a BUILDER
Press 'g' to see a range of graphs to help you monitor the economy
Hold 'CTRL' key to see debug information for each villager
Press 'spacebar' to pause
Press 'o' for options
Press 's' to save the game
Press 'l' to load the game
Press arrow keys to pan. SHIFT + arrow for faster pan
Hold middle mouse button to pan
Scroll middle mouse wheel to zoom
Press 'keypad 5' to recentre camera and deselect all villagers