Food0
Farms0
Fishing piers0
Holy sites0
Fields worn out0
Starved0
Pioneer parties0
Moved into town0
Fled hunger0
Abandoned0 empty · 0 fallen
Doorstep paths0
Overgrown roads0 px
Huts0
Houses0
Wanderers sent0
Paths0 px
Streets0 px
Landmarks0 halls · 0 statues
Days0
Map—
Towns
None yet. About 12 huts in one spot, at least 90 px from any other town, found a town; a town that falls below 7 homes loses its name.
Click land to drop settlers (1 px each, shades of yellow). Every new island has its own shape (one island, a bay, twin isles, a long isle or an archipelago) with lakes and rivers, and its own climate: temperate green isles; boreal isles of forest, rocky highland and countless lakes, with little open grass to farm and towns with Norse names; or arid isles of open desert, where people can build anywhere but farm only the green oases around the water, and towns take Arabic names. Towns that grow up by the sea or a lake become ports or lakeside towns with a fishing pier; each pier lands fish that feed 5 of the town's people, and as a waterside town grows (about 20, 45 and 80 homes) it builds more along its shore, up to 4. Beside their first huts and every road they clear farmland on grassland or meadow; fields follow the road, and each ripe crop pixel feeds 2 people. Fields need farmers: a field nobody has come out to work for about 800 days stops ripening and feeds no one, and one left untended for about 4,000 days is given up and grows back as grassland. Every harvest tires the soil: after about 16 harvests a pixel feeds only 1, after 32 nothing, and a spent field is given up as cracked dried mud that takes a very long time (generations) to green back into fresh, farmable grassland. Fields can also be ploughed over meadow and over old paths that have faded from disuse, and a town with no open land left will fell woodland for new fields, so the island recovers in waves. A town fills the open lots in its grid before it ploughs new land: until about 80% of its lots are built on it only plants enough to feed the people it has (pulling in settlers from the countryside to fill the gaps), and only once it is dense does it plant ahead for growth. Each field feeds only the town it is closest to, and that town's people eat only from their own fields. Children are only born while their town has food to spare, people who go hungry flee: to the nearest town if it has food to spare, and otherwise out onto farmable land nearby, where they build a hut and live as settlers, farming for themselves (they stay hungry until their own fields come in, and starve if they never do). Anyone who has fled won't uproot again for about 2,000 days. Only those who can't get away in time starve, and anyone on the road for more than about 1,000 days without settling runs out of food and dies there. A home stays lived in only while a well-trodden road runs right beside it and at least 10 people come to it or walk past it every few hundred days; otherwise it is abandoned (greyed). It stands empty for a long time, and only falls down if no one returns. Huts in or within about 12 px of a town follow that same rule. Out in the open country, huts are much hardier: just 3 visitors keep it in use with no worn road needed, but once a hut is given up it falls within about 80 days. But a hut with nothing to farm around it (no field, grassland, meadow or woodland within about 24 px, say out in the desert or among spent mud) is given up after 2 checks (about 80 days) and falls 2 checks later. Settlers left with no home nearby move into an empty hut close by, build one if there's land to farm, or otherwise set out for better land; travellers only settle where there is something to farm, and move into an existing homestead if it has room. Roads nobody walks fade too: streets slowly pale back to paths, and long-forgotten paths grow over, a stage lighter than before: forest comes back as grassland, grassland as meadow. Landmarks fade the same way: if the streets around a town hall go quiet it decays to a bare plaza, and an unused plaza or statue square decays to a path. Crowds build huts, linked by paths that darken with every footstep until they become worn town streets. About 12 huts in one spot, well away from other towns, found a town; inside its limits everyone is a brick-red citizen and keeps to the roads. Citizens plan their errands along the streets, and any home without a street to its door gets a short path laid to it. Whenever a town has room (empty homes or space to spare), settlers from the surrounding countryside travel in to become citizens, filling the empty homes first. Out in the country people build rough brown huts; on a town's lots they build formal townhouses (dark timber roof, lighter timber front). Every town has its own lobed, irregular outline, so its grid grows into a unique shape. A town's grid can grow wide, and once it does, the blocks around its centre are kept open for civic buildings: a green ringed by 8 blocks becomes the town hall, then in a town of 40+ homes a temple whose blessing makes the town's families grow a little faster, then a few statue squares. Halls, temples and squares are kept up only by the town's own citizens walking their streets; passing wanderers don't count. A temple left deserted falls to ruins; if a new town later grows up beside them, they are consecrated as a holy site, a paved court around a black-and-gold shrine whose offerings feed 100 of that town's people. Homes beside it are rebuilt as 3 × 2 alabaster temples, and the town's name turns red. Once a town with a hall is fairly built up, full blocks are rebuilt as amber houses, starting at the centre and working outward. Established towns also send small pioneer parties (3-6 settlers) out to join the biggest cluster of country settlers within reach (away from other towns), helping it grow into a new town; if there is no such cluster they strike out onto the open frontier. Wanderers and pioneers pick their spot carefully: beside a shore, lake or river and on open grassland or meadow first, and in forest only when nothing better is in reach. Only when there is nowhere left to build does a family set out as cyan wanderers, laying a country road to a homestead far out on the frontier. Click a ship or caravan to pause and see what it carries. Travellers setting out from the same place fall in behind one another along a single road rather than fanning out across the land. A pier (or port) lasts only while a road links it to the worn streets of the town that uses it; cut off, it is torn down. Drag to pan, scroll to zoom.