Hi and welcome to my guide. This is my first time writing a Steam guide so I hope it comes across as succinct and fully comprehensible. The two achievements I listed Infrastructure and Integrated Development are two that I didn't meet on my first game back and are ones unattainable once the time is up. I wasn't aware of the requirements for Infrastructure while for Integrated Development I was three years beyond the time limit. After starting up a new game with more experience, I was able to efficiently achieve both of these and am willing to put together some tips for anyone else wanting to do the same thing.

(Note: if this guide doesn't have a star rating it means 25 players haven't rated it yet)

Settlement Survivor is a city-builder game that allows for each new game to be different by way of terrain and resource point generation. Before selecting a favorable layout, two other considerations need to be chosen. You can either pick Peaceful, meaning no combat, or Combat, meaning attacks from wild beasts and bandits (and that's it) will attack your settlers and buildings. The first time I attempted these I chose the Combat setting and ultimately regretted choosing it as I never took care of the bandit camp, and every 2.5 years I'd have to allocate laborers to man watchtowers to shoot incoming beasts and it took away a lot of time. I did the same thing for bandits raids, just manned watchtowers. It took time away from the settlement's production. I put in an effort to form reservists but that again just took abled laborers away from me when I needed them

So, I'd recommend playing on Peaceful mode as not much is being missing out upon.

Size of the map somewhat matters. Both medium and large are good. Small will feel too small. Mountains are also an important consideration. Leave the amount of mountains on default (least amount) as the next step up adds many more and the space will feel too limited.

Building near water and a mountain are also important as necessary buildings will need to be built nearby to process other goods. Try and favor straighter rivers and mountains as the grid-like nature of buildings require part of them to be within water or within a mountain.

Here's the seed I used (seed 6508435):

I'd weigh hunting points and seed points high. They could provide a solution for getting textile material later such as alpaca fur, or leather, or cotton, or geese.

Fertile soil locations or grassland locations could weigh high also, but they disappear after 10 years so keep that in mind. You can create your own boosted area with a composting or mill structure though.

The gold and jade points may be nice to build near but at that point in the game you'll likely have already attained both achievements.

I wouldn't weigh fishing points highly. A great majority of your food will come from agriculture, not fishing. A marginal amount can come from fishing, seed/herb collecting, or hunting, so it adds up. One or multiple fishing points will never be enough to sustain your population. You could still build a fishing dock if you're near one though. Keep in mind that docks close to each other have lower outputs.

This one is easy to achieve, but easy to miss if you're unaware of it's requirements. Simply direct your laborers to gather all the trees, rocks, and plants in a large rectangle around your marketplace. While they work, you can slow down or pause game time and plan the future of your town. I choose to go in a '+' direction. Also, get your builders started on 6-8 houses. After you get a good sense of where you want your settlement to develop towards you can put down dirt roads along with the tailor, smithy, and chopping house. Your laborers will collect sufficient materials to complete everything by the end of your first year.

Some of your laborers can also be assigned as builders to speed the process up. If your map has a seed point somewhere and your laborers have finished gathering in the immediate area, you should send them to collect plants in that area and gain a new seed. They will disappear after a while and you will have wanted to collect them before they go away. This is the best moment to do this as going forward you will start to assign your laborers to operate buildings and they will become unable to gather plants. You could get these laborers back, but it puts a bump in your production.

This achievement is all about getting to tech level 100 as fast as you can. The steps you take to develop your settlement are myriad and will be different from other players. I'll present where I put my tech points as milestones for you to gauge where you could be at in relation to achieving this goal. The amount of tech experience you will need per level scales linearly from ~1000 exp at lvl 1 to ~300,000 at lvl 100. You will need 40-60 research institutes/academies with a majority of them being research academies. You will also need to need to manage your population promptly as gaining laborers is limited. Children will not work. You can only get more laborers from 1) children growing up after some years, or 2) accepting immigrants. So make sure to build housing and a town hall to accept immigrants before the first group arrives. Keep in mind whenever you grow your population you have to scale up your agriculture and water gathering.

For the first 6 tech points, I put mine in:

• Reservoir
  
• Mining
  
• Sand Mining
  
• Sawmill
  
• Reed
  
• Research Institute

These are all important and necessary buildings we need to have. In the end I needed ~6 reservoirs, ~4-5 sand pits (clay)/1-2 (sand), 2-3 sawmills, and 6-8 reed huts. We need a lot water and timber to make paper. We need a lot of clay to make bricks, We need consistently running sawmills to make planks. I chose mining (copper ore) first since I ran out of that material before stone. If you are low on either stone or copper then send your laborers out into the map to gather more. Prioritize building a mine or quarry to start getting a consistent supply before either is near running out.

By year 5 I received my first group of immigrants (yr 2.5 thereabout), and my hunters found buffalo. My next 4 tech points went into:

• Quarry
  
• School Expansion
  
• Heating
  
• Cutstone

You will want to set up an additional mine for coal as your settlers will soon be cold and you've got to solve that problem. A boiler will help so that they don't need to rely on the marketplace to have coal or domestic fuel for them to take. Consider the locations of a church, doctor, latrine, boiler, and bathhouse as these will provide their service to houses within it's range, and houses can only be built with the area of a marketplace.


By year 10 I built a forest farm to supply the necessary amount of timber to be turned into planks. I also built 1 research institute to help with the next few tech levels. Other aspects of my settlement were also upscaled to support the increasing population.

My next 8 tech points went into:

• Compost
  
• Apiary, Grove, Nursery (didn't have seeds), Forest Farm
  
• Education Efficiency (this will help children graduate faster*)
  
• Warehouse, Durable Storage Yard

By year 15 I had my paper mills and knitting buildings down. I also put tech points into construction so I could put down buildings to make steel and bricks.


Between year 15 and 20 a lot of stuff happened quickly. I built 10 research institutes and 12 research academies. I allowed paper to be used in all of them to boost the amount of tech exp I was getting.

It's also important to try and build a Palace of Justice if you can. It will unlock edicts which will noticeably help in certain areas. I also built one or two offices of edict. My choices them were:

• Reservoir
  
• Quarry output -1 day
  
• Movement speed % on dirt roads
  
• Profession growth % increase

Change one of your paper mills/factories to switch to ink. Begin to do remodels of your key production buildings. Add more workers, increase efficiency, ectetera. Upscale your bricks/refined fuel/reservoirs/steel/planks/schools when you need to. Make sure you have a good supply of tools and clothing for your population. You'll likely have taken care of this sooner. I stuck with rough clothing the whole time. Build a trading post if you have leeway for it. You can trade to get money and maybe buy more seeds. You can also order animals at your trade port. Both are expensive though.

Also, seriously consider building another marketplace with a significant amount of houses for your growing population. You'll need 40-60 research academies which means one person needs to be staffed in each so that's where they'll live.

By year 20 I was at tech level 53.


After year 20 you need to focus on reaching that 40-60 research academy range. Any material your're lacking in, you've got to upscale. Maybe it's another compost/forest farms for timber. Maybe its more forges for steel, or more smithies for steel tools. You will most likely have to upgrade your mine and quarry both once in this time. Any books you get can be used in your school/boarding school/academy to give your learned population slight boons.

Make sure you're planting high yield crops as well. I planted rice because it gave the most. Peas are also good. If you find flax or cotton you can plant some fields of those to process them into rough clothes for your people. Make sure you're harvesting everything before the temperature drops and the crops planted die.

Sometimes you will run out of laborers to staff buildings and you'll either have to wait for more immigrants to arrive or take laborers from other buildings.



I was able to get to tech lvl 100 by month 7,yr 26. I had 10 R institutes, 63 R academies, 1 school, 1 B school, 1 academy. I unboosted my R institutes from using paper and set all my R academies to use paper. I suppose it's possible to set it up so you're producing books that your R academies can use, but I didn't want to go that far in preparation. Books give a lot more tech exp.


!!! Important !!!
I didn't received my steam achievement until the turn of the next year. So when the game time change to 1,27 I got it, but not right when I got tech lvl 100.

If you found my tips or perspective helpful, then I'm glad. Hopefully you'll be able to acquire these two achievements and move on to getting the other achievements. Thanks for reading!


I acknowledge the content creator oVioletValkyriex for helping explain the various functions of supply chain and logistics.

https://www.youtube.com/@oVioletValkyriex