- To get new Romestead citizens, locate survivors scattered across the map in camps, ruins, or cages.
- Ensure you have available housing (Lumber Yard, Leatherworker, Insula) before recruiting.
- Offer food or water to survivors to gain their loyalty and recruit them.
- Assign professions to citizens to automate tasks and boost your settlement's productivity.
- Maintain citizen happiness by providing food, shelter, and decorative amenities to prevent them from leaving.
Finding and Recruiting New Romestead Citizens
Recruiting citizens is a crucial step in building your thriving Roman settlement in Romestead. These non-player characters (NPCs) are essential for automating tasks, boosting production, and defending your town. Understanding where to find them and how to successfully recruit them is key to your early and mid-game progression.
Survivors, who can become your citizens, are found scattered throughout the world. They might be wandering in the wilderness, residing in small camps, outposts, or sometimes even captured in cages within ruins. While they aren't "super rare," they also aren't found everywhere, making active exploration a necessary part of your recruitment strategy. Many dungeons will also have a survivor waiting at the end, offering a reward for your efforts.
Video Highlights:
- Citizens are key to optimizing your camp by assigning them useful functions.
- Every survivor has a latent ability that turns them into a productive worker.
- Recruiting a carpenter can revolutionize gameplay by automating building tasks.
Once you locate a survivor, you'll typically need to interact with them and offer them food or water to secure their loyalty. This initial offering is a small investment for the long-term benefits they bring to your town. Prioritize exploring areas north of the spawn point, as survivors often hide near fallen logs there.
Always carry some extra food and water when venturing out to explore. You never know when you'll stumble upon a potential new citizen who needs a little convincing to join your cause.
Preparing Your Settlement for New Arrivals
Before you can recruit a new citizen, your settlement must be prepared to house them. Citizens require both a place to eat and a place to sleep. Failing to provide these basic needs will lead to unhappiness and, eventually, citizens leaving your town. This makes planning your expansion and building infrastructure paramount.
Different crafting buildings offer varying housing capacities. For instance, a Lumber Yard or Leatherworker building will house one citizen, while an Insula, a more advanced residential building, can house three. As your citizen count grows, you'll need to expand your housing options accordingly.
Housing Capacity Overview
| Building Type | Citizens Housed | Primary Function | Materials Required (Early Game) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lumber Yard | 1 | Wood processing | Wood, Stone |
| Leatherworker | 1 | Leather crafting | Wood, Stone, Animal Hides |
| Insula | 3 | Residential | Stone, Clay, Wood (more advanced) |
| Farmstead | 1 (Farmer) | Food production | Wood, Stone, Wheat |
| Blacksmith | 1 (Blacksmith) | Metalworking | Stone, Wood, Ore |
If you attempt to recruit a survivor without a free spot in an appropriate building, you will be unable to add them to your town. Always check your available housing before initiating recruitment.
Keeping Your Citizens Fed and Happy
Recruiting citizens is only the first step; maintaining their happiness and well-being is crucial for their productivity and loyalty. Citizens who are not well-fed will become unhappy, leading to negative penalties to their stats and potentially causing them to leave your town.
The most critical aspect of citizen well-being is food. Food in your backpack does not feed citizens; it must be stored in dedicated Food Storage buildings. Farmers will initially dump harvests into the farmstead's internal storage, which you must manually transfer to the general food storage for citizens to access. This is a common reason why citizens might leave early on. Build food storage early and deposit food after every haul.
Citizen Needs Checklist
Ensuring Citizen Well-being:
- Provide a free spot in a building for housing.
- Build Food Storage and keep it stocked with varied provisions.
- Manually move farmstead harvests to general Food Storage.
- Monitor citizen happiness and stress levels regularly.
- Invest in decorations and leisure areas to boost morale.
Open your town report every morning to see what happened overnight and if any citizens are experiencing issues. This allows you to quickly address problems like low food or high stress.
Understanding Citizen Stats and Traits
Each citizen you recruit in Romestead comes with slightly different stats and may possess unique positive or negative traits. These attributes directly impact their effectiveness in various roles and their overall contribution to your settlement. Understanding these stats allows you to assign citizens to professions where they will be most productive.
Key Citizen Stats
| Stat | Description | Impact on Gameplay |
|---|---|---|
| Loyalty | How loyal the citizen is to your cause. | Higher loyalty provides bonuses to other stats and prevents citizens from leaving. |
| Hunger | Affects the citizen's happiness. | Unmet hunger leads to unhappiness and stat penalties. |
| Happiness | The overall mood of the citizen. | Affects both Efficiency and Expertise; happy citizens work faster and produce better results. |
| Food Cost | How much food the citizen consumes. | Higher food cost means you need to produce more food to keep them fed. |
| Efficiency | Determines how fast the citizen can perform work orders. | Crucial for high-volume tasks like logging, mining, or crafting. |
| Expertise | Increases the chance for extra improvements and enchants. | Important for producing high-quality items and unlocking advanced crafting options. |
| Experience Gain | How quickly the citizen gains experience in a job skill. | Faster leveling in their assigned profession, leading to improved performance. |
| Loyalty Gain | How quickly loyalty increases for the citizen. | Important for retaining citizens, especially those with initial low loyalty or negative traits. |
Positive and Negative Traits
Citizens can also come with traits that further modify their stats. For example, an "Excited" trait grants +3 Happiness, while a "Focused" trait gives +30% Experience Gain. Conversely, a "Disloyal" trait can severely reduce Loyalty Gain by 50%, making it harder to keep that citizen.
| Trait Type | Name | Stat Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Positive | Excited | +3 Happiness |
| Positive | Focused | +30% Experience Gain |
| Negative | Disloyal | -50% Loyalty Gain |
| Negative | Gluttonous | Increased Food Cost |
| Negative | Lazy | -20% Efficiency |
When choosing which survivors to recruit, consider their inherent stats and traits. A citizen with high efficiency might be perfect for a lumber mill, while one with high expertise could excel as a blacksmith.
Optimizing Citizen Roles and Happiness
Once recruited, assigning citizens to appropriate professions is vital for your settlement's growth. A carpenter, for instance, can build walls and structures while you're out exploring, saving hours of manual labor. Similarly, assigning a smith to your blacksmith furnace will automate metal production. This specialization is what transforms your camp into a productive city.
Beyond basic needs, citizens' happiness is influenced by their living environment. Building central plazas with fountains, adding leisure areas with benches and trees, and placing varied decorations around houses can significantly boost morale. A happy citizen is a productive and loyal citizen. Ensure varied dishes are produced in kitchens and that basic food stocks never run out, as well-fed citizens work with more dedication.
Strategies for High Citizen Morale
| Aspect | Action | Benefit |
|---|---|---|
| Food Provision | Ensure constant supply of varied dishes in Food Storage. | Prevents hunger, boosts happiness, increases loyalty. |
| Housing Quality | Provide adequate and aesthetically pleasing homes. | Reduces stress, improves overall mood. |
| Leisure & Decor | Build plazas, fountains, benches, and decorative items. | Significantly reduces stress, enhances happiness, creates a "lived-in" feel. |
| Job Assignment | Match citizen traits and stats to suitable professions. | Maximizes efficiency and expertise, leading to higher productivity. |
| Regular Monitoring | Check town reports daily for citizen complaints or issues. | Allows for quick intervention, preventing unhappiness spirals. |
Investing time in building beautiful plazas and adding decorations not only makes your town look better but also directly contributes to citizen happiness and productivity, making your Romestead truly thrive.
FAQ
Q: Where can I find new Romestead citizens?
Survivors, who become citizens, are scattered across the world in camps, outposts, ruins, or sometimes captured in cages. Exploring the wilderness, especially areas north of the spawn point, and clearing dungeons are good ways to find them.
Q: What do I need before recruiting a citizen?
Before recruiting, you must have a free housing spot in a building. Crafting buildings like the Lumber Yard or Leatherworker house one citizen, while an Insula can house three. You also need food or water to offer them.
Q: Why are my Romestead citizens unhappy or leaving?
Citizens become unhappy and may leave if their basic needs are not met. The most common reasons are lack of food (food must be in Food Storage, not your backpack or farmstead's internal storage) and inadequate housing. Stress from poor living conditions or lack of amenities can also lead to unhappiness.
Q: How do I make my Romestead citizens more productive?
Assign citizens to professions that match their stats and traits. Keep them well-fed with varied dishes, provide good housing, and enhance their living environment with decorations, plazas, and leisure areas to boost their happiness and reduce stress.