Facilities

From Almansur Battlegrounds

Facilities are the infrastructures that can be build in each territory. In the beginning of the game you will have very few, and as you play you may upgrade them one level at the time up to level 5, depending on your Land type. Upgrading a facility costs time and resources, in values that are usually exponential per level for each facility, and that differ a bit from Land type to Land type. Some facilities also have different costs according to the terrain of the territory (displayed with a “difficulty” circule).

Below you will find a table containing the maximum level of each facility that each Land type may create:

Finally, the Land Type also affects the efficiency of the production facilities (multiplier to their usual production). Bellow you can find such information:

Only when the full time of the upgrading procedure as passed will the facility produce the effects of that level. At that time, it will also assume its running costs, which is a fixed amount of gold called facility maintenance that included salaries for its workers, private maintenance contracts, etc. Note that just about all values vary from facility to facility, both for the upgrading and maintenance costs.

Since the upgrading and downgrading procedures take time, even though the orders are given immediately, and you can see them under process, only as the game turns are processed will the actual works take place.

In Economy => Facilities you will have a list of the facilities your Land can build/upgrade (for example if iron mines are not listed it is because you currently do not have any territory rich in iron). If you leave the cursor on top of a picture for about one second you’ll see the facility’s name.

By clicking on the picture you will be able to see the list of locations where you can build such a facility. Such list will contain the information regarding the name of the facility, its location, current level (eventually with a hammer to indicate that it’s currently being upgraded or downgraded), the cost to upgrade it to the next level and the time to complete the possible upgrades and/or the ones currently under execution. For the production facilities, it will also show its current production.

One the left side there is a select box to allow you to select the facilities you wish to build or upgrade, and the total cost for the selected facilities is shown on the bottom next to the upgrade/downgrade/build button. You can also use these select boxes to select the facilities you wish to downgrade. If you downgrade a facility you will receive back some of the resources it costs to build, but no gold. Downgrading a facility is also done level per level, but at a faster pace.

Facilities are very important in the game. There are there types of facilities, production facilities, which are used to produce resources, military facilities, which have a military purpose/use, and infrastructures, which have an economical/populational impact. The complete list of facilities is as follows:

• Production facilities. These facilities all have a suitability display, to portrait for the player how good/rich a territory is in the relevant natural resource or adequate terrain, in the form of a circle divided in ten slices, where the more slices colored in green the better the territory is to produce the relevant resource, since the suitability as a direct linear impact on the facility’s productivity. Resource producing facilities work in two different ways. Farms produce resources without expending anything, because the reproduction/substitution cycle of the natural resources used is considered fast. Others transform a natural resource into a resource that can be used by the Land. When the natural resource is not present or fully exploited, the facility becomes useless. These are mines, stone quarries, stables, warg dumps and lumber mills (although this one is really hard to exhaust!). The list is as follows:

• • Mine - Iron. An iron mine is an extracting facility where iron ore is found, the iron extracted and purified. The facility produces Iron, which is vital to build a strong and well equipped army, so territories rich in this metal are also very important;

• • Stone Quarry. This facility is an open air pit from which stone is obtained by digging and cutting, and prepared for use. The facility produces stone, which is used mainly to build cities and fortifications. Usually mountains have a lot of it!

• • Mine - Gold. A gold mine is an extracting facility where gold ore is found, the gold extracted and purified. The facility produces Gold, which is, of course, extremely valuable, and territories where this precious metal can be found don’t abound, are those that exist are strategically important and should be well protected;

• • Lumber Mill. This facility cuts trees and prepares wood for use. So naturally a lumber mill will produce wood, which is a basic resource for just about anything, namely facility building and for most weapons parts;

• • Farm. This represents agricultural properties. They produce food, which is a simplification so that we don’t need to flood markets and stocks with a lot of different food resources, both vegetable and animal, produced at the farms all with the same generic purpose. The amount produced depends on roughness and arborization of the territory; note1

• • Stables. This facility is used to capture wild horses and train them. So it should only be built in territories with wild horses, in order to produce horses. The suitability will reflect a mix between how many wild horses a territory has, and how good it is for them to bread there. A full suitability display means that the territory has enough wild horses and they bread well enough there to sustain a level 5 facility for at least one year. Naturally, the suitability for this resource can vary over time, according to the wild horses reproduction rate and capture rate, and if the territory runs out of wild horses it will stop producing;

• • Warg dump. This can only be built by Orcs, and will only exist in fantasy scenarios where they are used. This facility is used to capture wild Wargs and train them. So it should only be built in territories with wild Wargs, in order to produce Wargs. The suitability will reflect a mix between how many wild Wargs a territory has, and how good it is for them to bread there, in the same manner as the stables do for wild horses;

• Military facilities:

• • Ironworks. This represents the level of blacksmiths in a territory, allowing for better armored troops. The higher the level the better armor your troops have, making them better protected against the enemy’s blows, and thus harder to kill. The number of casualties a military contingent receives in a battle or assault is decreased by 10% for each level of ironworks the troops have. When you recruit new soldiers, their equipment will depend upon the level of this facility present in the territory where you are recruiting. When you merge contingents with different levels of armor, the new contingent will have a weighted average of the previous ones. Ironworks level one are also required to recruit medium troops and level two to recruit heavy troops. Ironworks should be built in well defended territories, since well equipped troops give a significant advantage in the battle field.

• • Recruitment Center. A recruitment center centralizes the logistic procedures of recruitment, allowing the lord to recruit in its location men that are from nearby territories. At level 1 you may recruit from the adjacent locations (plus 6 territories), at level 3 you may recruit from the next ring of adjacent locations (plus 12 territories), at level 5 you may recruit from the third ring of territories (plus 18 territories). The recruitment using this facility will be immediate, regardless of the distance to the territory from which the population is being used. Usually when you recruit soldiers their starting experience is zero, but the recruitment center will slightly raise that starting value according to its level. Usually it is a good idea to create this facility in the same territories as your Ironworks are, since that way you will maximize the ability to recruit well armored troops.

• • Fortress. The fortress represents walls, towers, moats and other defensive structures protecting the most strategic location of the territory. Thereby, control of the fortification gives the owner automatic control of the territory (see Military => Assaulting Fortresses for details). The higher the level the better the protection for garrisoning armies, making assaults harder. Fortresses start with a garrison army, which is one that can not be moved, ordered or merged with others, where you can recruit more forces to defend the fortress, up to it’s size limit of 1500 soldiers plus 1000 times the level of the fortress. Each territory will show its difficulty to build a fortress, with a direct impact on its cost, which depends on the territories roughness. It will be easier, and consequently cheaper, to build fortress on flat lands, and harder, and consequently more expensive, to build them in a mountain. However, they will be more effective and thus harder to assault in mountainous terrain than in flat lands. The difficulty is presented by a colored circle, which goes from dark red, for the worst possible case, to solid green, for the easiest situation, passing trough tones of yellow for intermediate values. The decision on where to build them depends entirely on strategic considerations.

• Infrastructures:

• • City. A city represents a higher level of development within a territory. It means that part of the population is no longer just gathering resources, but that there are also services, that improve the revenue of the territory, and that there is a major populational agglomerate. The higher the level the better your income per capita will be, and the higher your population limit in the territory. This affects the reproduction rate of your populations, since the rate decreases as the total population approaches the territories limit (determined by the level of infrastructures it has), which means that large numbers of population require a high level of infrastructure. Each territory will show its difficulty to build a city, with a direct impact on its cost, which depends on the territories roughness. It will be easier, and consequently cheaper, to build cities on flat lands, and harder, and consequently more expensive, to build them in a mountain. The difficulty is presented by a colored circle, which goes from dark red, for the worst possible case, to solid green, for the easiest situation, passing trough tones of yellow for intermediate values. They should be built where the number of inhabitants is higher, in order to maximize its effects.

• • Encampment. This can only be built by Orcs. The Orc encampment is the pride of any Orc leader, a filthy place with open air sewers, crowded with Orcs. It helps their number grow pretty much in the same way as cities do for other Land types, and it also provides a slightly better income per capita. They should be built where the number of Orcs populations is higher, in order to maximize its effects.

• • Underground City. This can only be built by Dwarfs, which build their cities underground. It is expensive and time consuming during the construction period, but it will be easy to defend. They can only be built in mountains. Underground Cities will function as a fortress, allowing garrison orders and requiring an assault to conquer the territory, and a territory may have fortress and an Underground City, which will provide additional protection to the garrisoning armies. The tunneling will also make movement in the mountains faster. Finally, it also functions as an infrastructure for the local Dwarf populations, pretty much as cities for other Land types. Since it has a military value as well as an economic value, the decision of where they should be built results of a cross between economical considerations (where the higher the Dwarf population the better), and military/strategical ones. Naturally, for all stated effects, the higher the level the bigger the effect.

note1 The actual value of Food produced per day by a farm is calculated in the following manner:

Daily Farm production = Base Production X (1 - max (arborization - 0.2, 0) ) X Farm level

From Economy => Facilities you can also select the “Upgrades and Downgrades list”, where you may see all the facilities, of all types, that are currently upgrading and downgrading, their current level, how long will it take to reach the intended level and, for the production facilities, how much they will produce once upgraded. The check box on the left of the facilities allows you to cancel the current upgrade or downgrade. If you cancel an upgrade, you will receive back the resources, including gold, in the proportion of the work done. So for example if you just started an upgrade and no work was done yet (no turn processed), canceling you give you back all the resources the upgrade costs. If 90% of the work was already done, canceling it will give you 10% of the upgrade cost.

Below you will find a summary of the effects produced by the facility that have already been stated: