Pick your nation : The Norse or the Japan

After the game start, you will allocate the basis, for me, below my starting allocation

Foods : 550
Wood : 350
Medicine : 110
Tools : 70
Stone : 0

Then pick your base at the Boreal biome, this is important so you can get the 50% bonus if you the fishing in the Boreal biome and near to the Tulip farm.


Start with set labour and worker as 5 each, you will need to adjust this accordingly.
Then build the Fishing at location at least 100% bonus effective, good location can give you 120-130%; at same time as your labour to clear wood and stone..

Build 1 fishing then 1 house so you can research the medicine herb (Untick the wood and coal so the house wont consume any wood & coal), some will die to cold, but dont worry about it much now. Continue building until you have 3 fishing, you can either continue building the house or the hunter.
(Remember to always ask the labour to clear the wood and stone) you can sell the stone, there will be wonder trader visit every year, they willl stop visiting once you have your own trading post/port.

By now you should have 3 Fishing, 1 hunter, 5-6 house (use your skill on the Fishing), maintain this until you can build the medicine farm; build farm with max 4 workers slot but only use 3 workers.
Maintain your total population not more than 24

Continue until you have 3 fishing with 3 workers.

For the few years, you will need to maintain the population.
If the total population drop too much, every year in the mid spring, you can choose to accept or reject 3 population.

Dont build the trading post yet, you still can depend on the wonder trader.

Also upgrade your base by spending $500, this allow you to buy wood and steal card.
Collect the steal card, you spend 100 and steal money for other..
Example, 1 steal card 100, then you steal money for 300, gain 200.
$200 is alot start, so continue collect the steal card.

Once you have enough money 2000+ buy tulip farm, this should generate quick money.
Then you can start building your own trading post/port, since you will have much of medicine herb and tulip to be exported.

Remember to monitor the happiness, if too low, they become lazy :D

If you reach to have tulip farm, it is pretty good and continue growing your population.
Farm Wheat for Norse and Rice for Japan (dont focus on fishing anymore, better to build tuna)

You will need starting buy stone tool manually, if you have too many farms.
This can be automated on you have trading company.

Just need to play hard at start as limited amount of resource

Now is leveling up the House

With tulip, the house will grow to level 2
Next is build cannabis and pottery ( I chose this as prefer the farm base and Pottery because there will be town card that give additional science )

Next build the Glassware, Coffee and Green tea(Japan) / Honey mead(Norse)
Last build the chocolate, book and fashion cloth.

Dont forget to build medicine as well

Once you have trading company, you can automate the trading (use the town card to reduce the fee)
You can start import all 20 kinds of food of 20each, this will improve the food happiness.


After playing for too long, I notice that it is hard to be self sufficient in the foods, tools, etc
So for me, the key is managing the population, foods and balance the other.

This is my list of properties

Build as much as possible trading partner at the start via land or port.
Focus on the land since you can build the land, for the port, juz build the port (dont upgrade to save the fee) - 1 port is 1 trade = 100

Start to Vassalise, once you can build the hotel first..
Invest $600 to have 50 diplomacy, then build 1 or 2 hotel..
After your vassalize them, you will spend fortune just to build hotel.
The hotel is for tourism happiness.

Once you vassalise, they will give you fee and it will grow the longer you play.
Jus think, if you have 10-15 vassal, give you 1000 per turn, it is 10-15k :)

Invest in Zoo and catch the boar, they will reduce 5% food consumption
The rest animal are juz for fun catching ( i bought panda using 200k :D )

The same for the museum, only the "Fullfilled life" is important for productivity
You can complete the museum in large map, you will find 4 location for artifacts, dig for 7x each.

<UPDATE> Large map is easier, you can find many vassal and trade partner.

What left is Impossible Army to defeat ( not sure how the AI build such huge army with 28unit x3 = 84 military slots)













My final score, it is pretty much done with 3m balance









Score using large map ( you can see how much $$ tax from vassal )