Survival Walkthrough

This flowchart and walkthrough will help you manage your cities for the first few games, even if you haven't read any of the other instructions.

Read Board Game Basics for a quick overview of action points and moving your pawn.

Starting the game

• Select a game from the left sidebar of the Ludopolis website.
• At the "Welcome!" window, click on the playing piece that you want. You can also click "show me how to play" to refresh your memory on the basics of the interface. Click "Let's play" to close the window.
• If you already have a city, skip ahead to the "Running your city" section.
• If you don't already have a city, explore the map for a place to start your first city. Ideally, you want a city location with lots of green grass or forests nearby. An easy way to choose a spot: click on your gems to bring up the menu, then click the "create a new city (with new settlers)" button. You will see the spots available for a new city. Bigger circles are usually better.

Running your city

1. Wait until you have a couple sunstones or emeralds. Some games have a "done button" to speed things along.

2. Once you have some gems, check the bottom of the city panel (right). Does it say "This city needs:"? If so, skip down to one of the "This city needs:" sections below.

3. If your city has available work , you might consider claiming more lands. Unless your city is desperate for more land, try to only claim lands up to about 3 spaces away. Look at the adjacent lands to decide which ones would be most useful to your city. Green lands are good for food, and other lands are good for building space.

4. If your city has a lot of available work and its culture is starting to climb, consider building extra housing or farmland.

5. If your city is growing well (at least 50,000 people) and has available work, consider building some extras to enhance trade, such as trading ships, a leatherworker, or a potter's cottage.

6. If you have other cities, move to them from time to time to see how they are changing. If all of your cities are doing well, consider starting another city, or exploring other people's cities.

Repeat from step 1..

This city needs: fewer lands to work

• Click on your city's lands and look for (1) how much work the land uses, and (2) how much you can afford to lose it — how much good is it doing for your city?
• Decide which land you need least. If you don't give up anything, then some of your outermost lands will stop producing. But if you give up one of your most useful lands, more people may move away, which will reduce the amount of work even more.
• Click on the land, then select the "unclaim" button. You will get some work back immediately.

This city needs: food

• If your city has available work and it hasn't claimed too much land already, look for lands adjacent to your city. Are there lands that produce at 10 food or more (such as forests, grasslands, seas), and that don't use too much work? If so, claim them. If not, then start another city nearby for the hungry people to move to.
• If your city is larger and your culture is at least 10, click on one of your steppes (dry grassland) and select build, then agriculture, and then root farm (a brown farm near the end of the list). If your culture is even higher and you have some grasslands or forests to spare, consider building one of the other farmlands such as a cabbage patch.

This city needs: defence

• Decide which lands you need least. Click on them, select build, then military, and then choose a wall or fort:
• If you have a lot of available work and rock and your culture is at least 10, build a fort or fortress. Otherwise, if your city has at least 4 rock, build a wall. Otherwise, build a palisade.
• If you have extra gems, you can buy your city extra time. Click on your action gems and choose "defend this city" to protect your city for one turn.

This city needs: housing

• Decide which land you need least. Click on the land, select build, then housing. Then choose cottages, wooden houses, brick houses, or stone houses:
• If your city is small and you have grassland or forests, you can build cottages on them. Cottages are too small to be effective for larger cities. Pick the largest cottage.
• If you have a lot of extra rock and at least 20 culture, choose stone houses. If you have a lot of extra brick, choose brick houses. Otherwise, choose wooden houses. If you have a large city, pick the highest level of housing (for example, ), otherwise, pick a medium level of housing (for example, ).

This city needs: public space

• Decide which land you need least. Click on the land, select build, then public space. If this is your first public space, build a plaza. If not, choose something else. Try not to have two of the same kind of public space in the same city.

This city needs: trade

• If there are no nearby cities to trade with, then start a new city. Building trading ships won't increase your trade if there is nobody to trade with.
• If your city has some water that is well away from the shore: Click on the open water, select build, then trade. Choose a schooner. If a schooner is not available in that menu, then find a water spot that is more open — open water on all four sides. You will need a source of wood to build the first stage of the schooner (the dory).
• If there is no open water accessible to your city: Decide which land you need least, click on the land, select build, then trade. Choose the smaller trader's house. You may also need to build a rock field (located in the "Building Materials" section of the build menu) if you have no source of rock — the Trader's House is built out of rock.