Foundation

TIPS

Foundation is a strategy game based in a fantasy world full of magic and war. You control a race of people brought together from different times in history. The aim is to be victorious over your enemies by taking over the land.

GENERAL

REPRODUCTION: Reproduction occurs in any building that contains Maidens and Male units. The ratio of female births against male births depends on the number of females (Maidens) in storage.

For example:
1 females left: 1:0 female/male ratio
2 females left: 1:1 female/male ratio
3 females left: 1:2 female/male ratio

20 females left: 1:19 female/male ratio

The birthrate is twice as high in the peasant huts compared to the HQ. The birthrate is higher if there are more males in a building (up to about 10). Maidens can give birth at any age.

Maidens will only give birth if both their morale and energy is above 40%. After a birth the father and mother of the child will lose 10% energy and gain 10% morale and the new born will take the fathers surname. The new born will have the same energy/morale levels as the mother at the time of birth.

The fact that both mother and father lose 10% energy for each new born means approx 1 unit of food is needed to recover that energy loss. This means a population growth of 50 will require 50 items of food to keep balance and general food usage will rise by approx 15 items of food per year.

LIFE SPAN: If kept healthy, people live to around 60-75 years. If they are unhealthy they will probably not live to 60 years. And, if morale is low, it is likely that they will start committing suicide. Health problems are more serious above the age of 50.

FOOD: Food increases the amount of energy a person has. Each person eats the same amount of food, and loses about 5% energy each year. Once the energy level of a person drops below 80%, they will look for food to eat. The choice of food is random and is made from the menu of a particular building. If the chosen food is not there, the person will go without food for another year and morale will suffer. This means that a building with only half the food items available will force the occupants to go without food quite often. So it is best to try and keep all food items in stock in a building although it is not necessary to provide all food items all of the time.

THE POWER OF FOOD: Most types of food will give a person 20% extra energy. Eating food will also raise morale by 5%. In some buildings the power of food is as follows:

If a person drinks Wine you can add an extra 10% to the morale figures above and subtract 10% from the energy figures above. So for example drinking Wine in the Church will give a person 10% energy and 30% morale. Drinking Wine in a regular building e.g. Headquarters, will give a person 10% Health and 15% morale.

TRAVELLING SPEED:
Peasants/Maidens/Wizards generally walk at speed 2
Guards and Knights walk at speed 3
Black Knights walk at speed 4

The percentage of energy and morale will affect these speeds but as an example, the Black Knight will walk twice as fast as a Peasant.

RELATIVE STRENGTH:
All people in Foundation have Attack and Shield power. If you divide the Attack Power of the attacker by the Shield Power of the defender you can work out approximate damage levels. Here is a table showing the Attack and Shield powers:

(Extra attack points are added for extra experience levels of soldiers but the values are lowered as energy and morale are lowered.)

Now for a few examples of typical attacks:

Peasant attacks Guard - 04/2 = 02 hit points
Guard attacks Peasant - 10/1 = 10 hit points
Knight attacks Peasant - 14/1 = 14 hit points

The above figures even out a little when morale and energy levels are brought into the calculation but generally a Peasant has about 30% of the attack power of a Guard and a Black Knight should kill a Peasants in less than 5 hits.

GAMEPLAY

Try and keep your people INSIDE a building. If they are outside, they will lose health because they have no food to eat.

Try to keep your population level UNDER CONTROL. A population of around 200-250 will be the most efficient level for most circumstances. If you have too many peasants, you will need more food and more water and more peasants to get the food and water. So keep the population DOWN and you will find you can comfortably supply everyone with what they need.

Do not overuse the speed-time functions. You can do productive work almost all of the time. Speeding up time while you are doing housework enables the enemies to become stronger, faster. Be wary of this feature.

If you are running short of peasants, check your wood levels. If you have enough wood to get by, reduce the number of WORKERS in the foresters hut to one or two. This will reduce the number of foresters required and you will end up with extra peasants to send elsewhere

When you are getting ready to attack an enemy building, send 6 or 7 maidens in first to draw the guards away. Then when the guards come out, send the maidens away from the building and the guards will follow them. Your soldiers and peasants now have an easier time to attack the building.

Maidens can produce offspring in ANY building as long as they have food, water and a mate. They do it faster in peasant huts, but by keeping some in other buildings you assure that those buildings get replacement workers even if there are no spares in the castle and also you increase the morale of the workers in that building so they stay healthier and don't want to kill themselves. Happy workers are good workers as long as they are also healthy and well fed. That's all maidens do but these functions are totally critical to your society. Keep maidens in every building if you can, but especially in your most important buildings. Put maidens where the men are in other words. Your men will thank you by living and working better and your tribe will increase faster. Just make sure everybody has food and water, and preferably, all the foods they like.

MISSION TYPES

FAST/SMART STRATEGY: (0-2 years, Mostly rescue missions)
On rescue-missions (I think the first prison can be done with this), find a safe path and guide your people that way, normally it includes finding no-mans land or walking along the border. (Usually takes a couple of attempts before it works.)

Fast Strike: (4-8 years, A few rescue, prison-breaks, destroy enemy something, the latter can/must sometimes be played long)
Build 2 or 3 barracks, trade iron/wood/stone/ore/coal/oil for gold and armour and make all your peasants into soldiers, then go for the target. On later rescues you'll need to take a few strategic buildings to get your people home. On later prison breaks you MUST make a secure path to the prison as you must get almost all the men home safe. (This type takes a first attempt where you only send your knights out to locate the target(s), then restart and build the army).

LONG AND TOUGH: (+40 years, Destroy one/all enemy)
Start by building a farm, a peasant hut and some water supply. The next step is to find what you can easily produce. If you are near water, you can make some water pumps and trade water for what you need, if you're near mountains build mines. Try and produce as many things as possible yourself. However, it's often a waste to build masons and foresters as they run out, rather use your men and resources on mines, water and food, that last forever, then trade for wood.

Always have spare men in your HQ to do transports, 2-3 is enough most times. Be sure to construct peasant huts as you go along, a base ready for battle should have at least 5 peasant huts with plenty of supply. Don't build warehouses unless you REALLY need them, due to bugs in the game they usually gives more trouble than good.

If you have more than one mine, then only set ONE to producing oil for your labs, don't produce oil if you don't have any labs. Same for farms, only produce grain if you have a bakery or brewery.

Build a lab early on and make sure it's filled with scientists, you'll need the torch command to make a good battle.

Barracks can usually wait until year 20, the soldiers you have from the start is enough to guard until that time.

Don't put guards in houses built away from the enemy, they'll serve much better in the HQ if you get attacked.

If you choose to build an armoury early in the game, you should only put 2 people at work there, more will use you your iron-supply. When you build barracks you don't need to have 5 people in them from the start, 2 is enough until you begin preparations for battle.

Don't start a battle until you know how to torch the enemy, then set off with a good bunch of soldiers and 3-7 peasants, have the soldiers distract the enemy and send in your peasants and burn everything. It's important to burn down barracks, refinery, armoury and farms belonging to the enemy, it might also be good to burn the water supply. When you torch, remember to keep torching a building until it's destroyed. Every time a peasant has torched a building and he leaves it, quickly select him and ask him to do it again, now he will walk into the building (the guards won't attack him) and wait until a wizard appears and puts out the fire, then he'll torch again, keep doing it as long as the building stands (Don't worry, the peasant won't die when the building drops.)

When the primary supply of the enemy is knocked out, go on and burn the rest of his houses. When that's done send the peasants and soldiers home to relax a bit, wait 1 or 2 years and make the attack on the enemy HQ. Repeat for all enemy as needed.