It started when I was playing along the peaceful economic single-player campaign having a tranquil time completing my little castle. I was supposed to make a bunch of bread and weapons, so I knew that I would have to create an efficient castle to be able to complete my task in the time limit. I first tried building a solid base of wood and food production to allow the construction of an array of weapon/bread facilities. But I slightly miscalculated causing starvation to the point everyone abandoned my city and before I could recover fires broke out in the farms and destroyed any hope of repopulating in time. So I restarted, and this time made sure that I would have ample production of food early on. However when I built my iron mines I didn't accompany them with enough hauler oxen so my miners were carrying each ingot back to my stockpile individually.

So I restarted, and this time I was going to get it right. I built an efficient layout of early game farms, with a proper number of accompanying lumberjacks. I expanded to iron production and wheat farms early enough to get plenty of resources for weapon production. I even laid out a grid of wells to quench any fires that would start and fought off the occasional bandit raid without harm coming to my people. Soon I had a bustling little burb, but upon creating a few new buildings the scribe informed me that I had no new workers available and I needed to build a new hut. While I was building a few new houses, the scribe again popped up telling me that a fire had started in the baker's quarter. I had no worries since there were wells everywhere...until I realized that I hadn't put wells around my new baker shoppes. In a panic I watched as the new baker shoppes caught fire while the bakers were trying in vain to escape the flames. Soon my firemen were on top of things throwing pails of water on the problem, but the fire was spreading and jumping from building to building faster then the pails could be delivered. It took a long time before the firemen from the farms arrived to lend a hand dousing the final flames. I looked around my smoking castle and realized I had not lost a single building. Not one. My firemen had put out every building before it burned down. Then it dawned on me, none of my buildings were being worked. The fire had lasted so long that all of my workers had burned to death, and all my farmers, and all my miners, and anyone not carrying a bucket of water. But hope remained! I had a small remnant of food left in my granary to get going and maybe I could get my castle running again. And then a theif stole most of what was left.

So now I am restarting.

I love this game.

It started when I was playing along the peaceful economic single-player campaign having a tranquil time completing my little castle. I was supposed to make a bunch of bread and weapons, so I knew that I would have to create an efficient castle to be able to complete my task in the time limit. I first tried building a solid base of wood and food production to allow the construction of an array of weapon/bread facilities. But I slightly miscalculated causing starvation to the point everyone abandoned my city and before I could recover fires broke out in the farms and destroyed any hope of repopulating in time. So I restarted, and this time made sure that I would have ample production of food early on. However when I built my iron mines I didn't accompany them with enough hauler oxen so my miners were carrying each ingot back to my stockpile individually. So I restarted, and this time I was going to get it right. I built an efficient layout of early game farms, with a proper number of accompanying lumberjacks. I expanded to iron production and wheat farms early enough to get plenty of resources for weapon production. I even laid out a grid of wells to quench any fires that would start and fought off the occasional bandit raid without harm coming to my people. Soon I had a bustling little burb, but upon creating a few new buildings the scribe informed me that I had no new workers available and I needed to build a new hut. While I was building a few new houses, the scribe again popped up telling me that a fire had started in the baker's quarter. I had no worries since there were wells everywhere...until I realized that I hadn't put wells around my new baker shoppes. In a panic I watched as the new baker shoppes caught fire while the bakers were trying in vain to escape the flames. Soon my firemen were on top of things throwing pails of water on the problem, but the fire was spreading and jumping from building to building faster then the pails could be delivered. It took a long time before the firemen from the farms arrived to lend a hand dousing the final flames. I looked around my smoking castle and realized I had not lost a single building. Not one. My firemen had put out every building before it burned down. Then it dawned on me, none of my buildings were being worked. The fire had lasted so long that all of my workers had burned to death, and all my farmers, and all my miners, and anyone not carrying a bucket of water. But hope remained! I had a small remnant of food left in my granary to get going and maybe I could get my castle running again. And then a theif stole most of what was left. So now I am restarting. I love this game.