The Refugee to Regent Kingdom Building Challenge.

Introduction

You start as a nobody, a refugee fleeing your homeland. You know that others are coming behind you, and are counting on you to set up a new society, away from the oppression of the Kings and nobility in your homeland. From your first mud hut, expand slowly but surely, and recover the technology that you left behind. Conquer wood, stone, iron and diamonds, and incorporate them into your life and society. Build a city, then expand beyond that, and create your own kingdom. Rediscover magical secrets, unlock the power of the atom, or become the next Star Emperor.

The power is in your hands.

What is the Refugee to Regent Kingdom Building Challenge?

The Refugee to Regent Challenge is at first a city building challenge, and then a kingdom building challenge, designed to be able to scale from "I have a little time on my hands and could spend a week or two on this" to "Where did the last six months go?" It is the spiritual child of Iamchris27's City Construction Challenge , the inspiration for this challenge, and the complexity and reward of Gregtech.

At its core, the concept is very simple.

Advance through many stages, at each stage unlocking new materials and tools for use. Every stage you advance requires more and more Houses, Community Buildings, expansions to your Village Center/Town, City Hall/etc tools, food stockpiles, resource stockpiles, eventually additional towns and villages, and more.

The Challenge began as a simple City Construction Challenge port for the Direwolf20 Feed the Beast mod pack, and has expanded from there. It is not intended to be easy, nor short. What it is intended for is the uncreative, or those that have just gotten bored building all-in-one superbase #5,213 that looks amazing. It's intended to get you building again, and thinking about how you want things to go.

Difficulties

There are currently three difficulty settings available: Fast Track (for the impatient), Normal, and Hard. There are few, if any, that make the challenge any easier. This is intentional. Fast Track stages are referred to as the Minecraft element representing the stage, then tacking the word "Track" on the end. Hardcore does the same, except with "core." Examples are Woodtrack, Woodcore, Stonetrack, Stonecore, etc Normal difficulty are referred to by the Stage's main name. Ex: Wooden Settlement, Stone Hamlet--or just the last part--Settlement, Hamlet, etc.

Fast Track won't need a lot of space, compared to the others, but should still have a fairly decent area to expand into--at least several biomes worth of space.

Normal will need, at minimum, a few square kilometers. Trust me.

Hardcore. Well.....good luck.

This Challenge is intended to be played with vanilla Minecraft, or nearly any combination of mods that you can think of. Once, I had an "official mod pack," that was designed to try to balance the Technological and Magical packs, but working with config files got to be too much for me. There is no official mod pack, and probably never will be again. But I will try to keep the Challenge updated with some of the more popular mods, mod APIs, and mod packs (UE mods, FTB packs, etc).

Vanilla Minecraft Users:

The "Discovery" stage isn't really a full stage (more of an expansion), since it's there more for the benefit of the modded challenger than the vanilla. The Redstone stage kicks off magic/tech mods, so you won't have as much to do, unless you go hardcore into minecarts. The Vanilla Glowstone Expansion will have only slightly less than a modded challenge for you to do, because you're expanding into the Nether.

Scoring System:

Important Note on Scoring

For the immediate future, the Scoring system will not be iterated on, while the rest of the challenge is completed. Those interested in scoring themselves can continue to do so. For the Stages that have Scores/Scoring at the moment, for Hardcore difficulties you should try to do 75-85% of the Score available. /Note

There is a small scoring system set up within the Challenge, but this is more for bragging rights than anything. The bare essentials to advance will not score you any points, but being a good and benevolent (or just prolific) ruler/builder will score far more points. This is also for the uncreative who aren't good at designing buildings, but want to do well in other areas. The Scoring system takes the place of both the [Flavor] and [Challenge] tags.

A few examples of ways to score more points:

Points will not be balanced between the difficulties, so you can get the same amount of points in both Normal and Hardcore. Points will also only come in 1 or 2 at a time. Very occasionally will you see a +3 next to a challenge, mostly for things that are incredibly difficult. That said, points may come easier for certain mods than other mods, or even vanilla. The Scoring System is not intended to be balanced, and is not part of the Challenge itself. It's more of a Challenge Inception/Challenge Yo Dawg.

If there is a Point value for doing something, and another one for doing something more, the totals are not additive. You get the points for doing the most of the scoring item.
Example:

You wouldn't get three points for killing 2 Creepers, you'd get 2 Points instead of the Point for killing the first Creeper.
It's intended that for Normal Difficulty you go for at least half of the points, and for the Hardcore to go for 80-90% of the points.

The Rule of Cool

The rules as I lay out are intended to help you, the Challenger, to get the creative juices flowing. But if you come up against something and you just can't stand it, you can invoke the Rule of Cool to make it easier, harder, or just plain more interesting for yourself. An example would be to use a Testificate building as a replacement for your Hovel, you lazy, lazy challenger.

The 5 major development points:

  1. Wood Settlement: You get to use tools
  2. Iron Village: The use of ALL Metals is unlocked. No, you don't need to wait for the Gold stage to start using Gold. Limited use of Redstone, mainly Redstone Dust and some vanilla machines is available as well.
  3. Redstone Discovery: Tech mods begin to kick in
  4. Gold City: Diamonds are unlocked
  5. Glowstone Expansion: The Nether is unlocked.

The 7 Major Development Areas:

Residential
Where you and your population live
Technology
Generally speaking, automation and some form of energy transfer. Mainly for Tech mods.
Magic
Magic. TC3, Ars Magica, and End/Nether Portals, as well as any Magic mods you might have. Also Cubeaism.
Agricultural
Food (Farms), Trees (Arboriculture), Bees/Butterflies (Apiculture/Lepidopticulture), Livestock (Ranching), Pets (Kennels/Stables), and non-food plants (Plantation) that you> grow (Reeds/Sugar Cane, Cactus, Cotton, etc)
Fortification
Defense, Offense, and everything in between. Covers everything from walls and troops, to TNT cannons
Outlier

Other

You're not just going to be a Mayor. You're not just going to be a King. You're going to rule over an Empire, with quite a few cities paying Tribute to your Capital.

Transportation

Roads, Railcarts, and Nexuses oh my!

Commercial

A general catch-all, that includes everything not covered by something else, including buildings that will make for a more lived-in feel, like stores, eateries, museums, etc.

Other Challenges

It is also possible and even encouraged to take this challenge at the same time as other challenges. Some challenges not made by me that are recommended to be done at the same time as the Refugee to Regent Challenge are:

Current Refugee to Regent Stages: