yeah, I am having the same problem. I had one very good game where I was able to get a great sivelation I think they lasted a long tome. THe other day I was playing. Everything was going fine, my people had plenty of food and energy. Then, the goblins chose that moment to come and burn down my tavern, and everyone started dying. I had about 40 something people total.

I'm afraid I disagree with several of roldwol's above points, though in fairness castaways is a game with lots of methods to success.

First thing to remember about the game, is that jobs are flexible, the more people assigned to one job, the faster you get things done, but also not all jobs are needed all the time. This is what makes castaways unique, playing adaptively.

Next thing to remember is that everyone does not have one job but two. Thus a carpenter will work as a wood cutter when there are no logs to cut into lumber, a baker will work as a peasant when there is no flour etc. Thus, by assigning jobs carefully you can make one person do extra work, for instance I don't find it's necessary to have a dedicated woodcutter until later in the game, sinse the carpenter will do the job too, ditto with miner smitth and metallurgist, (I usually asign just one smith and one metallurgist).

The other thing is peasants. peasants actually do the most work and the most diverse range of work, but this means you need lots of them, sinse they will be doing different tasks, for instance, once you build a mill and a bakery, they will start grinding flour, and once you build a textile mill they will start spinning cloth. so, always! try to have betwene a third and a half of your population peasants, even if you temporarily need to take people off resource collection due to people being ill. this is also why it's important to have a big population.

As far as building placement goes, your right in assigning building close together, however also remember that firstly the goblins come from the top and sides of the map, so you will want to build in the bottom center, also if you are close to the sea building the boat to end the mission will be far easier.

so at the start, the first thing you need built is an inn and a storehouse, thus assign everyone as builders so as to get the building done quickly. When you have an inn, assign a cook, and you can start serving meals, also assign fishermen or hunters. Fishermen give meat at a constant wrate, while hunters vary according to the forest level but also provide pelts, thus can give a lot at the start of the game, so pick your poison (I usually go for one of each which will serve for a long time).

Next, build your sawmill and quarry. At the start, you will just need one stone mason and one carpenter, because the carpenter will double as a woodcutter, also remember to make most of your population into builders while building then turn them back to peasants afterwards.

You only need a doctor when someone is injured, indeed sinse a doctor's secondary job is taylor, you don't want a doctor most of the time, however it is usefull to have a hospital to build one.

food wise, you don't actually need so many farms at all, and certainly not so many farmers, sinse one farm provides more food than one farmer can harvest. Vegitables are the easiest food to produce sinse the farmer can just harvest them with no preparation, so I'd recommend building a vegitable farm before starting on houses and getting your population up.

now, is when you need to diversify. build a mine because mining takes a long time, then  another house, then a smithy, then another house, then the makings of bread production.

Once you have a smithy and a mine, you should have some spare people, and  can assign a smith and a  metallurgist. As soon as you have weapons made, start assigning soldiers to train as knights. Knights are hugely more effective than soldiers, and  seven or eight knights can keep the goblins in check nicely, especially if you help them building guard towers towards the edges of the map.

After thisyou can  concentrate on growing your population and getting   cloth and    wine production up. Just remember in castsaways people count more than buildings, so if you need more food harvested, it's better to assign extra farmers than build more farms (go on a ratio of 2.5 farmers per farm and you should be  about right)

Also keep an eye on all your stocks and assign more people if they start dropping.Generally I finish mission 1 with a population of about 40 or so, ---- though once for a laugh i got my population up to around 100, and once when i was really trying hard I finished with a population of 24, though I believe it would be possible with less if you were pushing.

Just always always always! remember the game is   adaptable. you win in castaways by adpting to your current situation and  projects, not by making a set plan and sticking to it to the bitter end. Make sure you have no people  standing around idle, and your sure to get through.

As I said roelwelWell the above is just a general stratogy guide as to some of the things I do. I wasn't saying you couldn't! finish the first mission, just that I disagreed on some strategic points myself, for instance having a doctor strikes me as totally unnecessary when nobody is injured sinse the doctor will just be standing around idle and it's easy enough to take a peasant off duties to start doctoring when needed, also I would disagree one farmer per farm, sinse I've generally found that each farm produces more than one farmer alone can handle, it would also therefore strike me as less  needed to build that many farms, ---- in fact I personally only go with one farm of each type until my population is a lot larger, I also tend to leave wine production until later sinse at the start of the game the lumber is needed for other things, and I can't spare the extra people to be bar tenders and coopers and what not.

In the same way, unless you have a really pressing need for lumber, I've found having one stone mason and one carpenter most of the time will do, though i tend to assign a second mason when stone gets scarce later on.

As a general rule, the way i play the game tends to involve getting as many people working as possible, making the most of their primary and secondary jobs, and changing out those jobs when needed adaptively according to the circumstances, rather than trying to chuck as many people into a given job and leave them doing that.

Using this method I've completed the first mission on all difficulties with a variety of different perks and flaws, as well as the other missions on most difficulties (though missions 4 and 5 on normal or hard really are! hard), so it seems to work for me, ---- then again one of the great virtues of castaways is that it's such a flexible game and there are so many ways people can succeed.

What is the objective of Mission 1? I've got a pretty good civilization going, and nobody is starving, which is good! I have 7 knights, and they are fending off the goblins so far, but, there are so many goblins, lol. I have been meaning to start growing my population, so that I can have more workers.

@roelvdwol  I'm not sure wht you mean about using a doctor as a mother when not doctoring, sinse you have no control over who becomes pregnant, it can be any of your women (or with the hermaphrodite perk men), who are not knights or other military jobs.

@mordsith the aime in mission 1 is to build a ship and sale away. look at the ship description for information. The ship takes a lot of lumber, cloth and iron to build, and then it needs to be stocked with all types of  food and wine, so you need pretty much all the buildings to complete the mission, though I tend myself to reserve wine making and often cloth making until last sinse they are the most costly production lines to get running.

Just remember that you need a big enough population so that you have enough peasants to take items to the ship, and you should be fine,  and if the goblins look threatening, enable a couple more knights or build some  guard towers on the edges of the map nearer to the goblins so that the knights are closer and can go on more attack sorties against them.

@D&d,  the great  thing about  castaways, and why it's probably still!  my favourite stratogy game, is that the stratogy is  adaptive, you don't just have a plan and follow it, or assign  jobs and leave them, you need to be constantly  dynamic and on the watchh for new events or new projects your engaged in. This means that because the game is dynamic and adaptive as well as strategic, you can adapt, play and learn as  you go, and practice will actually improve even if you lose a game.

yeah, agreed
but to this day I admit I haven't been able to actually strategize through a mission, I've only been able to win by using the in game hidden code

So far, I've got 12ish knights, and they are just fighting with the goblins that keep coming up. My population is in the mid 30's, and so far, just stock-piling food, and such. I've been meaning to make the boat, though, I'll do that soon. Can anybody tell me how to get the PVP section of the game working? I'm not sure how that works online, exactly, and I'd like to play with and against others

Well, darn Something like that would be fun, especially with the diverse range of military units you can control so far

You can send other players reenforcements, even, but this is a pretty risky move, since you permanently lose those troops.

... the idea of building a ferry on water just occurred to me while reading this thread, hahaha. I'm not sure what it would do, though; maybe speed up shipping if there's water between the storehouse and the building that takes supplies?

I'm still amazed by the people who have built up thousands of units of food or lumber; are they cheating? Exploiting multiplayer to boost their economy? Just that skilled?
I've only had the patience to get my food in the 300-500 range (on everything but wine), and that's in the sandbox!

Well Cae, I've noticed the more people you have, the more food you have, (over   popultion obviously doesn't happen in castaways land!). .

When I tried for 150 population, i had close to 700 food, and even 200 barrels of wine, and that was in mission2 where I  basically left the yeti alone with about 2 yeti left and just kept  building instead  of  destroying them .

As to ferries and such,  we'll need to see what Aprone comes up with for another castaways I think, sinse colonizing different sttlements across water then building boats to have resources traded betwene them could be great, but we'll need the ability to build! different settlements first, still, as I've said before, the more complexity Aprone wants to add, the better I'll be pleased.

A rather different way around there Arjan, but interesting to here. i myself prefer dedicated peasants to builders, particularly because even when the builders are building you still want people spinning, carting resources around and the like, and I've rarely found peasants get idol sinse there are usually so many projects I have going on at once.

For hunting vs fishing, I tend to find fishing is constant where hunting will thin off in terms of meat, though as you said the butcher does help with that. that is why i usually have one fisherman, one hunter and one butcher (who serves as half a hunter), and I usually have more meat than I know what to do with.

Actually I'm sometimes quite surprised Aprone didn't include meat spoiling and the need to build a smoke house so that it could be dried and  preserved, though again maybe that would be included if he ever gets around to include seasons in the game, sinse then you would get more meat from farming and hunting in the spring and summer, and need to build up stocks for winter and autumn.

Also, seasonal changes would make fishing far more usefull sinse with the exception of some very stormy days, fishing could be pretty constant as a source of meat.

As regards mission 2, well combinations of troops work, and the more you send the better. usually I concentrate on sending lots of knights with the max number of soldiers and any rangers I can make, ---- though frequently I've found that five knights and five soldiers have been enough to wipe the yetti out completely.

I sometimes actually feel a little sorry for them .

the later missions are harder in terms of troop types, but it always does seem the yetti are   pretty wimpy and I usually end up wiping them out before I plan to (indeed I've had several occasions when I've not been able to try upgrade  tomes or other stuff because the yeti bight the bullet so early), then again I got the idea that the yetti were basically a weaker native race with more primative technology, and also from a game standpoint they do come in mission2.

In fact I  notice a major enemy increase in power betwene missions 2 and 3, and mission 3 got to be quite a struggle in some parts.

relations with other races could be fun, I particularly like the slave capturing in mission 5, (shame you can't build an arena and delight your  citizens with   gladiator combats!), .

Other races could be interesting in many ways though. I know in  dwarf fortress other people you met served different functions, from the pesky and very weak kobolds who attacked you, to tribes of goblins who would launch full scale invasions but could be  bought off, to human and elf traders who could be traded with, or even conquered if you had the dwarf power and resources.

Again though those sorts of  relations would probably take a  more built up framework in a game.