Tutorial

This tutorial provides players with some ideas when starting out. Throne of the Stars is a sandbox game so there is no "right way" to do things and the environment you find yourself in may require a different approach.

Hopefully, this will point you in the right direction initially and let you consider the many options available.

Your Home Estate
The first area to focus on is likely to be your home estate and how to make the most of it from the start.

Economy
Depending on the region you start in and thus the rents coming in from your lands, you may begin the game running a small deficit every chronum. So its probably a good idea to sort out your income to match or exceed the sovereigns you pay in wages. There are a number of different ways to do this but here are two obvious ways to start out with:


 * Claiming Lands: Obtaining more land for your estate has the obvious benefit of giving you room to expand your estate but also it brings in more rent directly for having more lands. It may even increase the rent gained from each land you control as supply of unclaimed lands drops within the region. Its often the quickest way to increase your revenues at the start and thus a good investment for your starting sovereigns. Issuing a "Claim Lands " order with your Baron is a sensible first order. Be aware, land purchases take some time to pay for themselves in rent.


 * Selling Trade Goods: Your estate will produce a number of trade goods and these will normally sit in your inventory until you decide what to do with them. Your workers like all workers will only buy goods from the world market to meet their needs so its important to start selling these goods. Having an adult character in your estate sell 4 trade goods you produce as standing "Sell Item " orders is a way to automate this process as your character will replenish the action points (AP) he uses to do this every chronum. When deciding what price to sell the goods you may consider the existing market on the world, how much wages you pay your workers, how many you produce and what each worker needs every chronum for maximum morale. If in doubt,£0.33 is not a bad starting figure for common, cheap essential goods as its a third of what you are paying your workers at the start.

You should find meeting the existing wage bill relatively simple but should probably keep an eye on any Tribune's automated recruitment of workers or soldiers. If you have more than you think you will need, you can sell them on the world market.

Taxation is something to think about a bit later on when you have a sense of how much spare cash your population  has available. If trade good prices are cheap, your workers will save the cash for a rainy day or for when your taxmen comes calling at the start of the year. A population with the means to deal with shortages in the supply of goods will have a more stable morale and thus your overall production. Another way to control the prosperity of your workers is adjusting their wages.

These kind of decisions are best left to later when you have a clear idea on the economics. The default zero level taxation and set wages will be fine initially.

Expansion
Building up your home estate is a good short-term goal. You may want to increase trade goods production to meet the needs of your own population or expand production by building workshops or the buildings that produce the raw materials you need to make new items.

To do this, you will need modules. Some may be available on the world market. You may also produce them yourself. Don't forget buildings that are expanded or built also need the appropriate workers. You may be able to recruit some through your existing town hall or find them on the world market.

Artisans need academies to train and you may find slaves limited to what is on the world market at least initially. More slaves will only be produced through population's failing to pay taxes or through army's capturing estates.

Beyond resource and workshop production, you may have a look at some of the utility buildings that open up different game areas. Churches particularly can be a worthwhile investment especially if you are early in setting them up on your world. They allow you to have members of your house join the clergy and be elected as deacons, bishops or archbishops (see The Church for more information).

Production
There's two ways you can produce items:


 * The Produce Item order can only be used by the Lord of an estate and it allows him to build new items without using a workshop's limited production. It does cost your Lord some AP to do this but can be a good way to speed up things early on or quickly make a needed item without waiting for the workshop to produce them.


 * Workshops are the main way to produce items and are managed by a Steward who can add items to their production queues or alter the existing queue as needed. Each workshop can only create a limited mass of items each update as long as there is a Steward for the estate!

At the beginning, its a good idea to review the ores you produce and see which of the building modules you are likely to need. Then put your starting workshops to use by producing the items automatically for you. Use your Baron / Lord when you want to produce a big item that would take your workshops a long time to produce.

Getting your workshops working and not become idle is usually a good idea, so don't be afraid of queuing up production for a number of chronums in advance. You can always alter the queue if you change your mind about a specific item in the queue or clear it entirely (warning: any production on items not finished when you clear the queue will be wasted).

Your Starting Ships
You begin the game with two ships but only one of them is likely to be a priority to use. As each ship needs at least a captain to do anything, you will have to decide whether your starting characters can be better used elsewhere.

Your Corvette is a small but nicely kitted out warship with some items that are restricted and thus not immediately replaceable unless you happen to start on a world with the requisite world project. Whilst its unlikely you will have to use it in anger to begin with, its useful if you need to move a character from one world to another (e.g. an emissary sent to another estate to arrange a marriage or other diplomatic deal).

The Courier is a larger cargo ship that makes an excellent starting trade ship. It can also serve to train one or more of your characters in the various naval skills. Its not a bad idea to get it up and about, buying items from other worlds that may be in short supply on your own and selling them on the market. Likewise, if you have goods that would be better sold in other worlds, you can ship them off easily. Be mindful that the Courier is not armed and only has light armour plating as a defense.

It is likely to be a while before you can produce your own ships so some care with your existing ships is recommended. However, they are powerful assets that can be immediately useful even with that proviso.

Your Household
Its vitally important to look after your household - the host of characters under your command - and plan for their future. There are several things you should be doing straight away:


 * Appointments - getting your characters into positions within your house is necessary to do anything in this game. At a minimum, you should ensure you have a Steward for your Estate. A Tribune is important if you want to automatically recruit workers and troops. A Chancellor is only important if you want to collect taxes from the populace. Each starship needs a Captain and each army needs a Legate but you might also consider whether a character would be useful as crew onboard a ship as the best skill amongst captain and crew is used. Also consider having a suitable character to act as an Emissary, who can send the younger members of your house to be apprentices or arrange diplomatic treaties with other player houses.


 * Train Skills - if you have a character in an appropriate job to a skill they posses or could learn, you should set them to train that skill right away. Training skills takes time on the job so the sooner you start the better.

Marriages
The long-term survival of your house requires planning for future heirs as soon as you can find the right partner to marry your characters.

Ancient Houses are the easiest way to find a spouse. Fertile young women are a much sought after commodity so you will have to search for the right one and make the proposal with an unmarried adult male character of your house.

Alternatively, getting in touch with other player houses and arranging marriages can take more effort but also lead to potential for other deal-making. It also gives the bride's house the opportunity to hold a wedding and earn honour for themselves and their guests.

Female characters move to the estate of their husbands but remain part of their parent's house, acting as an emissary whilst they are there. You can order them to move back home or to another estate whenever you wish without breaking the marriage.

Marriages are until death of either partner and wives will obtain titles matching his husband's noble rank and thus honour for her house in marrying well.

When choosing a potential spouse, be sure to check for any negative traits and seek out positive traits that may passed down to the children. Children are born into their father's house.

It also a good idea when deciding which of your unmarried men to find wives, to prioritize the ones that have positive traits.

New Characters
Once characters are married, they have a chance of giving birth to new characters. The chances vary by age of the potential mother, season and parental traits. Male characters may have bastard children if they are lustful or serving in the military (Legate, Knight) or navy (Captain or Lieutenant). Bastards cannot inherit so are primarily just useful for the duration of their own lives, not as a means of securing the future of your house.

Children are very vulnerable in their infancy and somewhat at risk until the age of 14 when illness and the like can cut their lives short. If you have a character with the heal skill, be sure to try to help any sick children so they can grow up.

Once a character reaches the age of 14, they may given an apprenticeship to prepare them for adulthood. This is done by an Emissary offering them to a suitable lord, lady, captain or knight. The type of apprenticeship you arrange for them will determine the type of random skill they start with when they are adults: Squires for military skills, ensigns for naval skills,.wards of a military or civil skill and lady-in-waiting for a civil or ecclesiastical skill.

Major Characters
You may only have seven major characters at any one time so choose with care who you will promote to be a major character within your house. Early on you probably want to get all your adult characters as majors and train them in multiple skills. However, if you only plan on training a character in one skill, there is no need to make them a major character.

Beyond the Basics
After you have structured your estate's economy and have it growing, put your starting ships to good use and started planning the future of your household, you may wish to proceed to consider some of these other areas of the game.

Diplomacy
It is a wise Baron that looks to his neighbouring surroundings and the political landscape with a view of finding his own place in the great schemes of the noble houses.

The first thing you should probably check out is the identity of your home region's Earl. If it is an ancient house, it means you are in a place where no player house has risen to capture their old estate and claim the title of Earl for himself. You may wish to set that as a goal for the future for yourself.

If you are situated in a region with other estates of player houses, especially if one of those inhabitants has risen to the rank of Earl or higher, its a good idea to send them a diplomatic message and work out how you will interact with them going forward.

At game start, you will have no means to threaten another house and if another house is already Earl, they have a proven track record of conquest, having at a minimum taken out the ancient house that once held their titles. The swearing of an oath of allegiance or seeking an alliance with a more powerful house is a tried-and-tested way to ensure your own house's immediate survival.

Making deals with other houses and working together is one way to advance your own house faster than you might be able achieve on your own.

The Church
The Church provides several useful services that will determine your future prosperity:


 * Clergy membership for your characters can mean elevation to ecclesiastical power centers and at the very least, an opportunity to train skills that can be a tangible benefit to your house.


 * Alms are the regional distribution of church tithes to provide for the welfare of the population. They can be a nice side benefit of tithing which increases your house's piety.


 * Faith Projects are grand endeavours by the Church on each world which can unlock advanced technologies. The Archbishop of the world alone can order projects built with the global funds received from tithes across all the regions.

Advancing through the Church hierarchy and becoming a more pious house can offer an alternative or supplemant a feudal or military strategy.

Ship Building
To build your own starships, you will need to have the production to support your ambition. Hulls and ship section items are expensive to produce, even when they are not restricted so as to require an expensive world project to be in place first. It will take some planning and preparation to get to the stage where you can build your own ships.

Once you have built the ore and workshop production in place to make building the parts feasible, you will need a shipyards building.

You can define your starship configurations using any of the available starship types. This allows building ships to a particular specification or for a specific purpose. Ships have a fixed starship type which determines how many and what type of hulls go into their construction.

Once you start a ship building project by issuing the Build Starship order, you can assemble the hulls with any character in your estate. However, having a trained shipwright can speed up the process.

The configuration lets you define which sections will be installed immediately once the ship is assembled. However, you must have the items in your estate at time of completion for them to be installed. A ships sections can be uninstalled and new sections installed after a ship is built so its purpose and design can evolve with new ideas or new technologies.

New Estates
There are only two ways to obtain another estate:


 * Obtain Land from another noble house through diplomacy (willing or through force of arms) and thus create a new estate for the land in that region. Only the side seeking an alliance, a peace treaty, a truce or offering themselves as a vassal may offer lands (or an entire estate) as part of a diplomatic offer.


 * Capture an Estate from another house the hard way by sending an army to do the job. Once the estate falls in ground combat, your Baron becomes Lord of the estate.

This means that to expand into other regions or worlds you will either have to cooperate or overcoming another noble house.

Newly captured or established estates are lorded by your house's Baron until such time as he gives away the Lordship to another character. You don't have to do this but most Lord actions require the character be present at the estate in question so its usually a good idea to have one of your house become a lord of the new estate.

Each estate needs its own Steward or Tribune but your house only needs one Chancellor across all its estates.