In the current iteration of the game I found that beating Nightmare difficulty is entirely possible with the right build and can be done reliably.

Here is how to do it.

• you will be using the caravan extensively, there are several money making professions in the game that can be supplied entirely from the caravan
  
  
• you will be limiting the number of clans, remaining at the 12 max clans you start with until you get food stable
  
  
• you will actively prune some clans by killing them off especially if they have bad traits
  
  
• aim for the brick maker with coal from the caravan - this is the most efficient and reliable source of stone for the necessary 2 stone ranches
  
  
• forage any animals until there is just 1 left, you need the 1 cause you will be placing a permanent stone ranch on it as soon as you can

Here are my notes for the game is a google spreadsheet format, I will referring to them often during this guide. They contain extensive lists for most of the game's systems and I recommend them warmly.

At the Gates Notes[docs.google.com]

There is a lot of info in this document and not all if obvious or explained in this guide so do not hesitate to get in touch if you find something in there you are interested in and not clear on.


- your goal is to get to a sustainable butcher, that is the most efficient food generation

- for money you want a steel weaponsmith, this profession can be sustained entirely off the highest tier caravan buying steel and provides the highest treasure profit.

In my most recent game I had the first stone ranch down in September 402.

So with the above 2 ranchers in stone pens, 1 butcher and 1 steel weaponsmith you are both food stable and rich and ready to push towards training knights.

Start off with 2 gatherers/reapers and 2 hunters. If you have the opportunity you can do a fisherman, this is only useful at this very early stage as fish are not reliable past this.

During the summer gather or reap summer only plants (wheat, barley, fruit trees, olive groves). Berries and honey can be gathered during the winter so save them.

Depending on what you see around you, do an explorer if need be and look for the following: A good settlement spot for your first winter, the ideal spot is next to a winter gathering place and an animal herd. This is so you can continue food production uninterrupted using the +2 supplies inside your control zone and avoid having to camp. When the cold sets in retrain any reapers to gatherers and continue gathering food, you will likely have to place your 2 gatherers and 2 hunters each on the same spot.


Make use of the high profit/ high efficiency professions to build wealth and upgrade the caravan. Refer to the "eff" section in the notes sheet to see a list of profit calculations for most professions.

Please note that you can fully support 2 weavers with caravan materials (buying flax and wool). Aim for your first weaver early. If you can spare the animals you can do a trapper foraging for parchment, this is by far the most profitable tier3 profession but it competes with your hunters for food.

Farming and trading posts are not worth it. Too inefficient by comparison for both food and treasure. The only farmer that may be useful at some point is a flax farmer to sustain higher level cloth.

Actively prune some of your clans especially if they have bad traits by running them into barbarians or having them die over 10 turns out of supply in winter. Get some exploration out of them before they expire.

Get one or two potters up, they cost cheap 10 timber to train and they boost your gatherers/reapers. Do not upgrade them, you will be switching off from your gatherers as soon as stone ranches are up.

Do not enhance clan limit past 12 before you get your butcher up.

Around the end of the first winter barbarians will start moving out, train up one more hunter to make 3 and group them up in an army and take out the barbarian camps in your immediate vicinity for treasure and safety. If need be do the 5 weapons power upgrade for the hunters. This is also a good opportunity to kill off some of your unwanted clans by having them die as hunters after they have served their purpose.

No need to research any upgrades or production multipliers at this point, just core professions.

As soon as you have the spare treasure buy animals from the caravan if they are available and get a meat cutter up to supplement your food income.


Your first tier 5 profession should be the brick maker. By this point your other wealth generation professions should provide enough treasure to sustain the caravan upgrades and buying coal. Put any spare treasure into stone blocks. You want stone ranches down as soon as possible.

Do your best to not get into any conflicts early on either by staying far away from neighbours or through diplomacy. This is your most vulnerable time just before your food becomes stable.

If you do get into a war do not try to fight it, enemy warriors will get to your fixed buildings including your settlement and pillage them then usually go away. Repair and continue, you should be able to handle the resource loss.

Once you have 2 stone ranches down you can breathe easy, the hard part is over.

As soon as your food consumption demands it upgrade your meat cutter to a butcher.

Train a lore keeper and upgrade to tinkerer to tech up faster.

Enhance your treasure generation with some other high yield professions. A second weaver is a good bet, a board maker, an oil presser. All of these can be run entirely from buying supplies from the caravan and turn a good profit. A parchment maker with an extra rancher is most profitable at this tier.

Get a weaponsmith out, it is not particularly high yield but this is your investment for the future as they will turn into your super profitable steel weaponsmith. Try to get one with good traits that boost production and make them happy by siding with them in a feud or granting a desire if you can.

With spare treasure start buying up a stock of steel. This is because the steel weaponsmith you are aiming for consumes slightly more steel per year than the caravan can supply so a bit of a steel stock will give that burst of treasure generation to get you comfortably to end game.

Once your butcher is up feel free to increase your clan limit, refer to the "formulas" section of the notes there you will find a simple food calculator so you can plan how many clans you can support.

Note that a clan will grow to 30 families max.
Note that despite the game description, more families has no impact on resource generation. It does however have an impact on power so if you are going to train Knights they ideally should be old clans with 30 families.


Your first tier 7 profession should be the steel weaponsmith. Once this is up your purchasing power skyrockets and you can tech rush knights to GG.

You can greatly enhance meat production with meat curers, you can buy the salt from the caravan if you don't find a mine nearby.

Set up an iron mine if you find a deposit and you can then sustain a steel armorsmith as well for all the treasure you could ever need.


I hope you found this guide helpful and that it will enhance the fun you will have with the game :)

• if you have an enemy army parked on your settlement after they pillaged it and they won't leave you can actually pack up your settlement and move it from under them
  
  
• the galley can only hold one unit at a time but it can also hold your settlement so have any clans you want join your settlement first then transport them all
  
  
• by hovering the mouse over a resource on the left hand side panel the tooltip that pops up has a button to "Stop converting to food" this functionality is essential if for example you want to run alcohol production year round you need to stockpile wheat or barley. Same with all potential foods.
  
  
• the diplomacy is pretty basic and you can often abuse it by being defiant in every interaction and therefore raising your global reputation which in turns raises your leverage with everyone including the faction you just pissed off
  
  
• contact with AI clans or the Romans is initiated based on distance from their borders, if you keep well away from them you can often not initiate diplomatic contact with them therefore they will not be able to declare war on you.
  
  
• alliances are not really implemented, the only benefit from an alliance is that they will not declare war on you, they will still get upset by you trespassing but they remain allied
  
  
• you can find a rare "mineral springs" tile on the map that heals any unit in it to full
  
  
• retraining a warrior (changing profession in any way) restores it to full health
  
  
• the game does not mention this but building a path with a surveyor through any tile makes it take 1/3 of a move point to traverse, this includes streams and marshes
  
  
• the AI does not know how to use Galleys so being on an island if you clear it of barbarians you are completely safe
  
  
• clans and Romans always have the same faction colour, defer to the "dipl" section of the notes for the colour list
  
  
• after you capture an enemy clan settlement you have to keep a warrior on it else it will revert back to enemy control and move away then start generating units again
  
  
• if you pillage enemy clan structures and roman forts the AI never rebuilds them and you cannot later take them over forever leaving them under enemy control, if you however capture them you get the structure under your control along with the clan with the "captured malus resource generation X0.5" and after 5 turns you can abandon it if you want and later kill the clan or use them
  
  
• some things you can do with captured or upset clans since the resource malus does not affect it much:
  • explorer
    
  • surveyor
    
  • galley
    
  • any multiplier profession ex Potter applies it's full bonus irrespective of resource malus or bonus
    
  • miner - can sustain most industries just fine with 50% resources especially if upgraded, you usually run a large raw material surplus from any mine
    
  • logger - the same as the miner you usually run a large timber surplus
    
  • wood ranchers as they enclose the same amout of animals, do not use them as stone ranchers cause the malus does apply to new animal generation
    
  • warrior with 50% morale is still useful
  
  
• a clan can only ever have 1 desire so you can use this to your advantage for key professions to force the desire to appear and then satisfy it to get the happiness bonus - for example let's say I get a dabbler as one of my starter clans, I may purposefully train it as a gatherer to serve me in the very early game and trigger it's desire to be a metalsmith, later I grant this desire and train the clan as my happy weaponsmith with the intention of upgrading it to a happy steel weaponsmith
  
  
• if a clan's 2 separate traits overlap then the "never" trait takes precedence - for example if a clan is both Ascetic (never feuds) and Agressive (rarely feuds) then the Ascetic "never" trait takes precedence and the clan will never feud. The same logic goes for brawls and theft.
  
  
• having an explorer inside an army will make it ignore forest and hill penalties effectively inheriting the explorer's traits
  
  
• attacking with an army with units inside that refuse to attack (trait like craven, low morale or profession like explorer) the units who cannot attack do not actually contribute to the attack
  
  
• when attacked your army looses mostly morale while the attacker looses mostly health and vice versa when you attack - the key is that an army that reaches 0 morale takes massive damage so when you attack you want to break enemy morale
  
  
• i found no reason to ever declare a kingdom as I found settlement mobility very useful even late game (see galley tip) and the extra fame seems useless as one high tier fame producer will quickly max out my clan limit