Resources and Deposits

The five

Goods you can hold

All five travel from city to city, sit in a store, and can be carried off in a raid. Grapes are the odd one out: they go not into a building but into your people's mood. More in Population and Happiness.

Building prices are paid in these goods too. At high levels every building asks for Iron and Marble; if your island has neither, you reach those levels through a second city or by trade. A price must fit in the store all at once: Storage and Protected Stock.

Where resources come from

The island. Every island has three deposits: one of wood, one of stone, and one that yields the island's special resource. A deposit produces only through the workers standing on it; no workers, no output.

Your city extracts nothing by itself, and it can work only the deposits of its own island. You click a deposit on the island view and decide how many of your idle citizens to send there. More than one player can work the same deposit: an island is shared by the cities on it.

The special resource

The third deposit changes from island to island: Marble, Iron or Grapes. That is why islands are not interchangeable, and settling one is how you reach its special resource. It is the first thing to look at when founding a colony. How a colony is founded: Palace and Governor's Residence.

The special goods have one more use: the island's altar. Marble, iron and grapes can be given to it, and as the altar rises the god's effect grows in the cities that serve the island's god (The island's altar).

Players are what grow a deposit

A deposit belongs to the island, and every city on it shares the same one. You raise its level by donating. Whichever deposit it is, the donation is paid in wood, out of the store of one of your cities on that island. While a paid-for deposit grows to its next level, the island map shows that level and the time left over the site, for everybody with a city on the island.

A higher level deepens the deposit: every city may send more workers to it, and a full deposit produces more. At the first levels each worker also produces more than before; as the deposit deepens the work gets harder, each worker brings up less, and the same amount takes more hands. The gain does not stay with the donor; everybody on the island benefits, and when the deposit reaches a new level everyone with a city on the island finds it in Activity, with the new limit and who made the last donation. When the donations for a level are complete, the deposit does not grow at once: it starts to expand and reaches the new level after a while. The wait is short at the first levels and longer at each one after. While it expands the deposit takes no donations, and whatever would go past the level stays in your store. Until it reaches the new level, the island produces at the old one. A deposit has a last level: once it gets there it takes no more donations, and whatever would go past it stays in your store.

Every city has its own places at a deposit, and that is the only limit on workers: one city can send only so many workers to a deposit, but however many the other cities on the island employ takes nothing from that number. As the deposit's level rises, every city's places grow with it.

So even on a crowded island everyone can fill their own places: the first cities to arrive cannot take a deposit for themselves and shut the later ones out. Growing the deposit still pays everybody; donate together with your neighbours and every city on the island puts more workers to work, each of them producing more.

Clicking a deposit

Click a deposit on the island view and you see its level, what one worker extracts per hour, how many workers from every city are working it now, how many places your city has there, what the next level costs in donations, how long the deposit will take to expand once that is paid, and, while it expands, how long is left. Assigning workers and donating both happen here. Only players with a city on the island see these details: click a deposit on another island and you are told only what it is.

Who works a deposit is no secret to the islanders. The window lists every player with a city on the island, one by one: under each player's name their cities on the island are listed one below the other, each with the number of workers it has at this deposit. It also shows how much each player has donated to this deposit in total. A player who has donated to it still appears even when they no longer have a city on the island.

The slider you choose your workers with stops at the smaller of two limits: your city's own places at this deposit and your idle citizens. However many workers your neighbours have there, you can always fill your own places.

Archipelagos

Islands are not scattered one by one across the sea: they stand in archipelagos of three, with open water between them. Two islands of the same archipelago are always closer to each other than to the nearest island of any other. Every archipelago holds all three special resources: one Marble island, one Grape island, one Iron island. An archipelago is therefore a neighbourhood that can stand on its own: found your second city in your own archipelago and the resource you lack is a short voyage away, while reaching into another archipelago means a longer road across open sea. When the island count does not divide by three, the last archipelago is left with one or two.

A world holds many archipelagos, and every island has a limited number of city places: a full island takes no more cities. How many islands and how many city places a world holds differs from world to world.

When you first join a world your city is not put down in empty water but near the players already there: the point is that you have neighbours. No island takes an unlimited number of them, though. Once an island holds as many newcomers as it comfortably should, the islands beside it are preferred; when every island nearby has reached that number, the search moves on to the nearest suitable island. Crowding is only half the reason: the other half is that your island should still have room for your own colonies. Nothing is reserved; an empty city place is open to everybody, and your neighbours may colonise it as readily as you. While one city place remains anywhere in the world, the world is not closed. None of this ever moves a city that has already been founded.

Hovering an island on the map marks the other islands of its archipelago: with a ring, and in words under the label. On a touchscreen there is no hovering, so the map carries an Archipelagos button in its corner. Press it once and every island says which archipelago it is in, and keeps saying so until you switch it off. The click is unchanged either way: the island still opens. Archipelagos have no names, only numbers, and they are not borders: the marker only shows which islands stand together. On an older world built before archipelagos existed there is neither button nor marker, because those islands genuinely are not grouped.

You do not have to find an island by eye: type part of its name, or an archipelago's number, in the box at the top left of the map; the / key or Ctrl+K takes you to the box. Capitals, Turkish letters and accents do not matter: typing isik finds Işık too. Names that begin with what you typed come first, and your own islands always go ahead of the rest. Choosing a result takes the map there and a ring lights briefly around the island; choose an archipelago and the whole of it fits the screen, with each island saying which archipelago it is in. Search finds islands and archipelagos only, not player or city names. In the browser game the box sits over the map; in the app it sits above the list on the world page, and choosing an archipelago narrows the list to its islands.

Pirate Cove

Out at sea off every island, a little way from its shore, a pirate cove stands on an islet of its own. The cove is not a city site; nobody can found a city there.

If you have a city on the island, you can raid the cove with your galleys. The cove is yours: its level and its store belong to you alone, and other players’ raids on the island do not change them. Its store holds plenty of every resource, most of all the ones the island does not produce: a way to reach the other resources without founding a colony. The pirates come to you too; what they plunder is kept in this store and is won back by raiding the cove. The rules: Pirate Cove, Pirate Raids.

When the pirates hold a deposit

If the pirates hold a deposit on your island, nothing is produced there for as long as the blockade lasts. Your workers stay where they are and are still paid; the lost output is not given back. The moment the blockade begins, the workers at the deposit are trapped inside; until you break it or it ends you can neither withdraw them nor send more in. The hour between the warning and the start is the time to pull them out. You see the blockade beside the deposit on the Economy page and over it in the island view, and you can break it before its time is up (Pirate Raids). If the deposit is a Wine one, no grapes reach the cellar, and when the stock runs out satisfaction falls (Population and Happiness).

How much am I producing?

The city view shows your hourly output. It comes from how many workers you sent, how much one worker brings up at the deposit's level, the speed of the world, and the research that raises production. While Government Chaos lasts, production drops.

Output is a rate per worker: twice the workers, roughly twice the resource. But what you produce does not pile up forever: once the store is full, production goes to waste while your workers' wages go on being paid. More in Storage and Protected Stock.