Newbie questions

Any help is truly appreciated

hi. thanks for reading this. i have several questions from my first few hours.

1) something happened and there is fire all over the map. how do i put it out?

2) why can't i build certain things in all cities? for instance temple of essence among other things.

3) having a high population in a city does what to help it?

4) why are there so little crystals? i have 6 cities and just 1 crystal mine.

5) i don't understand how to declare war. i try chatting with people by clicking their empire name on top right, but i have to actually click on their unit to get the "declare war" dialogue. i can't seem to just attack their city (if i'm at peace with them).

6) runs really laggy. i have a i7 dell lattitude, 4 gb ram, nvidia nvs 3100M graphics.

thanks again!

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Hi, hope you're enjoying the game. In answer to your questions:

1) Not sure if you can put them out, I've only had that event happen to me once and I didn't try

2) When your villages grow into cities you choose whether to make them fortresses (good for training troops), conclaves (good for magic and research) and towns (good for food and gold). A lot of buildings can only be built in one or the other. So from memory you can only build Temple of Essence in Conclave.

3) The main advantage of a high population is that when you go up a level you increase the zone it controls and you get a bonus building. You also need population to build pioneers. There are also some spells which affect population, e.g. sacrifice populaton for mana.

4) Crystal is quite scarce, this is by design. You may want to build an outpost next to a crystal mine even if it's a long way from your cities.

5) Left click an empire name to talk to them. Declare war should be one of the options on the first screen.

6) Not sure what to say about lag; check drivers are up to date, run on smaller maps and turn detail down, I guess.

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1) sounds like an event. don't know if you actually have to do something. i guess the fire will go away after a while (try save & reload if it doesn't, some spell effects tend to linger on the map even though they should be cleared after a while)

2) some buildings require certain city specalizations. for example, only towns can build Well/Inn/Festival, and only conclaves can build Sage/Cloister/Libary etc. the Cleric/Shrine/Temple of Essence line is only available in cities that have Essence (the blue tile yield that also lets you use enchantments on the city)

3) the city level ups are triggered at certain preset population capstones. city level ups increase the base resource production of the city (gold/research/production - increase is based on the level and type of city; for example, a level 2 conclaves gets an additional +3 base research, then another +3 a level 3 etc.); at level two, you pick the specialization that unlocks specific buildings for that type of settlement, and at level 3/4/5 you can pick one of 3 extra buildings that make the city more efficient (for example, a fortress at level 3 can pick a building that gives every trained unit +1HP/level, or a building that gives every unit trained in there the "charge" trait for free, or a building that gives every trained unit the "impulsive" trait for free)

4) resources are randomized. when you set up the game world, there is (among many others) a setting for resource density. higher settings will increase the chance that you get some more nodes. that being said, crystal is supposed to be rather rare i think. you need that stuff for magic weapons and accessories which will be a significant upgrade over units with just mundane, metal (or production) based items from the warfare tech tree.

5) in the diplomacy window there should be the option "I declare war!". this option will be greyed out if you have a non agression pact or one side pays tribute to the other. you have to wait until those treaties expire. You can't just attack their cities - a formal declaration of war is required before you can attack them.

6) make sure your drivers are always up to date; if that's not the problem, I can't really help with this. works all right on my machine.

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some additions and corrections:

2) as merlinme said, some buildings can only be built in certain city types, you can always see the required city type for a building in the research tree when you hover over the building icon, "Base Town", "Base Fortress", "Base Conclave". If there is no specific mention of a city type, you can build it everywhere.

Specifically about the Temple of Essence: It is not restricted to a Conclave, you can build it everywhere if your city has at least one blue essence tile and you have completed all the prerequisite buildings. But you can only build one for your entire faction, as indicated when you hover over the building in the research tree, there are other buildings that you can only build once for your faction, as well as buildings that can only be build once in the world, so called "World Achievement". In addition, this specific building is only available to Kingdom factions, not to Empire factions. There are several buildings that are exclusive to one of each ideology, just the same as life magic is exclusive to Kingdoms and death magic is exlusive to Empires.

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thank you tremendously for taking your time out to reply. it clears it up!

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