Foundation Survival Guide Maintained by Paul Burkey (burkey@bigfoot.com)

A Short Survival Guide
By Paul Burkey
(First Published in CU-Amiga Sep'98)

Introduction

The best way master Foundation is to study a few the common pitfalls that beginners often fall into. While Foundation owes a lot to previous strategy games there's still a great deal of original gameplay and concepts to master, so it is time to start learning. Ever since the release of Foundation I have been dealing with on-line support where players can email their queries, questions and problems. The many emails I've received so far have shown a growing pattern of common problems. I've been able to study save-files from numerous games and I've gathered this information to create a guide to avoiding these common traps.

Pace yourself

Aiming to complete a given Mission in the shortest time is something that tempts many players and of course there are times when this kind of urgency is allowable. Invariably this is not the case, especially for games that require a large amount of work such as destroying more than one enemy or reaching a long-term goal. If such a arduous task lies ahead of you and you approach it with haste, it will all too often result in a quick loss of power and you'll be left incapable of making further headway. Even in the simple Missions I would recommend a certain degree of pondering. You should spend time setting up basic food supplies and allow your population and your power to advance slowly. There's always a fine balance of food, resources, population and power in Foundation and it's all too easy to run short unexpectedly. A wise player will always find important tasks to deal with and will rarely find the need to exploit the game speed options. Increasing the speed will result in an uncontrollable game which is why it is recommended for short-term use only.

Avoid rapid growth

A common oversight that most beginners adopt is that of creating too many buildings too quickly. At the start of the game it's usually a good idea to build three or more basic buildings. These could include a Mine, Farmhouse, Foresters Hut, Pump House, Peasant Hut or a Laboratory. All these are important buildings but it's a good idea to choose a small number of initial buildings based on your basic game strategy. It may be important to advance your Technology swiftly and so a Laboratory would be a good starting building. You may be planning for a long drawn out game in which case the food buildings are a necessity. A final approach could be to start building up your resources for a large settlement in which case a Mine and a Foresters Hut would make an ideal starting point. From this point on it's wise to take some time to consider a slow and steady expansion of further buildings. If this gradual expansion method is not adopted there are a number of situations that could thwart the player. A common problem is the premature loss of building materials which will cause problems when expanding your settlement. Another trap to avoid is that of trading away a plentiful food supply in order to regain your restricted building materials. Unless this process is carried out with a great deal of care you will usually discover an ongoing decline of supplies. Another popular difficulty encountered during such a rapid building binge is a shortage of Peasants. You will soon observe the number of spare Peasants will drop and suddenly there are no more peasants in the Headquarters and no more workers to attend your new buildings. A good rule to follow is to maintain a level of ten spare Peasants in the Headquarters at all times. The best approach is to refine and optimize a small settlement and add additional buildings only when the current buildings are running smoothly.

Family planning

All too often there's an urge to expand the size of the settlement to hold a large number of people. The idea is to build a huge army of Peasants and slowly train them to become soldiers. This is of course a good strategy but more often than not it will be doomed. The problem is, people need food and drink. This must be created in the Farmhouses, Bakeries, Pump Houses and Fisheries. These buildings require workers and a network of distributers who will deliver the large supplies of food and drink. The number of buildings needed to supply all this food will require building materials to create them and supplies to repair them. A simple plan to create a large population will require a large network of buildings to support them. Eventually a problem will occur unless you manage to plan your network of buildings to a high standard. Common problems that may hinder your plans are a shortage of food to feed your people or a shortage of materials to repair the buildings. This will invariably cause havoc and a slow decline is inevitable. It's usually a good idea to maximize your buildings output by supplying the maximum number of workers and it's also a good idea to ensure there's a plentiful supply of spare Peasants in your Headquarters. Training soldiers is also a good idea but there's no point in building a large army of soldiers if they're not going to be used. Keeping a minimal army is much cheaper and it will cause only a small demand on your Food production.

Discharge your goods

Quite often players will notice a unexpected drop in population, the cause of which may not be obvious. Taking a close look at the Headquarters will reveal that food supplies are high so there are no obvious clues there. There may be an abundance of Food in the Headquarters but the surrounding buildings could be out of stock. You'll notice that building workers sometimes deliver goods direct to the nearest place of need. More often it's easier to deliver goods to a stores building (Headquarters) for it to be taken to a further destination by a spare Peasant. This allows the worker Peasant to get back to work while a Peasant in storage can carry the goods to a remote location. When looking for a serious problem you should first ensure that there are enough Peasants in storage to deal with these delivery jobs. The next thing to consider is the frequency of deliveries. An item is removed from a stores building approximately once every three seconds which means the Headquarters can supply twenty items each minute. If demand exceeds this rate then your distribution will go askew. The situation can be improved by altering the Transport Priority settings to define the order in which resources are delivered. The Food priorities can be raised above other resources allowing you to force the food out of the building before other supplies such as Gold or Oil. A more cunning option would be to build a second storage building such as a Warehouse or one of the specialized storage buildings such as a Food Store. This will effectively double your distribution rate allowing you to move supplies with greater efficiency.

Sewing your seeds

The positioning of buildings will play a big part in your overall performance. If buildings are not placed in strategic locations you will suffer a reduction in distribution speeds and your Peasants will spend more time delivering goods and less time working. The number of buildings which produce various output resources and require various input resources can make things complicated but there's always room for a little planning. First we will take a close look at a particular group of buildings which produce goods but require no actual input. These are the Farmhouse, Mine, Pump House, Fishery, Masons Hut and Foresters Hut. These buildings work well if they are positioned on the outskirts of your settlement. The resources produced by these buildings can then be transported towards the centre where the serious production work takes place. In the centre of the village you will need to produce plentiful supplies of Gold, Steel, Armour and Magic. The constant input from the surrounding buildings will help produce these important materials. The strategic positioning of buildings will reduce the workload of the Headquarters and provide short paths between each part of the production process which will ultimately provide you with Gold and Armour, the two most important end products. The buildings that produce Water, Fish, Wheat, Fruit and Vegetables will generally be positioned around the outskirts of the settlement feeding their produce into the centre. The Bakery, Brewery and Food Factory buildings all require input resources so it's a good idea to mix these buildings into the core of your settlement. An important use of the Warehouse is to effectively setup a second base with the aim to control a new section of the map. Choose the location of this second base carefully by selecting an area that has good mining potential and a good water supply. When choosing the location for this expansion you should also be considering a strategic passage towards the enemy who will soon become your last step to victory.