When you start a new game your villagers have few needs and wants. A single type of food to eat and fresh water to drink is all they need.

To provide food you start with the easiest solution. Collecting berries from bushes, while to get water all you need is a well.

But before you can get to those you first want to set up basic resource gathering of materials necessary for construction. This means wood and stone. Each of these two basic resources are abundant at your starting location.

But to get to those you need to choose a place for your first village center. As explained you need berry bushes, stone and trees for wood. So, place your village center at a location which has all three starting resources.

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Now you assign builders and construct a stonecutter camp right next to some rocks and a lumber camp next to trees. Both of these need a villager working there and resources to be marked for collection.

Then send builders to construct a well as it provides the basic needs for water.

With all this done and resources being gathered it’s best to construct a gathering hut right on top of berry bushes. Also, don’t forget to assign a villager there and mark the berries for collection.

Those berries need a place to be stored and kept so your next construction project is the granary. Once completed you have to set one of the storage windows to receive berries and give the building a villager who will do the task of transportation.

For villagers to actually get the berries and eat them, they have to retrieve them from a market stall, so that is your next construction project. Once finished a market food stall needs to be selected and set up to sell berries and a villager assigned as the shopkeeper.

Now it’s time to refine your gathered resources into something more useful and valuable. Construct a sawmill next to the lumber camp, this will let the villagers working in the sawmill collect the raw resources much faster and process them.

With the first production chains in place and your villagers' needs for water and food satisfied, it's time to give them some homes to live at. You first step here is to use the paintbrush to designate some residential areas for villagers to build homes at.

A good tip here is to place these homes close to the workplaces like the sawmill so that they will spend very little time going to and coming back from work. A strategic place for the market is at this path so that villagers can pick up needed goods on the way back from work.

As you start production of these more advanced resources you need a place to store them. Which is why you will construct a warehouse next but to be able to construct it you have to build, finish and make operational the lord manor.

If you have stockpiled enough stone, send builders to construct your first church! This building is necessary happiness and villagers upgrade from newcomers to serfs. You can place it at the center of the village and close to their homes.

To unlock even more buildings for construction you have to earn Splendor points. Since there are three kinds of Splendor, Clergy, Kingdom and Labor you need to earn points in all three. This is done by adding additional items to the market to earn Labor Splendor, completing quests to help the king to earn Kingdom Splendor and completing quests and choosing to help the church to get Clergy Splendor. There are more ways of earning additional points but this is enough for you to get started.

As you earn gold, by collecting taxes from trade, selling your goods to traders or doing missions you will want to spend this gold to gain access to new territories. These are right next to your existing ones and you want to expand into them by following the same pattern of setting up basic resource collection, production and making villagers happy with goods and church visits.

As you collect even more Splendor, unlock new buildings and construct them you will produce more goods and food varieties allowing you to upgrade your villagers into even more advanced
but also more demanding classes. A good tip here is to only give them more goods and food once you have stockpiled a good amount at the local warehouses.

And that is it, I hope you will be able to make a proper start after following these steps. If you have any questions or advice for the fellow players leave them in the comments section below.