Throughout the Course of the Challenge, you will be told to build one or more Outliers, often within the same Stage. This page is here to help you find inspiration for setting up your Outliers. The Lists I have here are not exhaustive.
But Basically, when you want to make an Outlier, figure out the following things (you only really need the Focus and the Location, the rest are to help with inspiration):
Name (Optional):
Primary Focus (See list below):
Location:
Theme (Technological/Magical/Egyptian/modern/steampunk/medieval/etc):
Color Palette:
Secondary Focus(es) (if applicable):
Tertiary Focus(es) (if applicable):
An Outlier is a community, or even one or two people that have decided to live near you. If you want, you can consider these Outliers hostile, but in that case they don't count as Outliers for moving forward. I do have plans to include rules for this eventuality, but I'm not there yet.
The reason that Outliers are established in this Challenge is because you are building a Kingdom, not just a City or a City-State. In some cases, your Capital may outsource jobs to Outliers to free up room for building more things (jobs in the Agricultural field are especially susceptible). Outliers provide resources to your Capital in exchange for your protection. Although at a certain point, the Outliers will begin defending themselves, and may even establish Outliers of their own!
That's really up to you. But I would recommend several hundred, if not one or two thousand blocks from the edge of your Capital (depending on what difficulty you are using). If you are only reading the stages as you progress, I recommend you read ahead--your Capital is going to get pretty big. Keep in mind what kind of Outlier you want to build, and look for landmarks that would make your Outliers distinct.
Generally, the various kinds of Outliers follow the same general types as there are individual Rule Subcategories:
Of course, in any kind of Outlier, you will generally need some Agriculture, some Fortification, some Transportation, some Residences, and some Commercial activity. This label merely says what the focus of the Outlier is. Of course, Outliers don't need to have only one focus, there can be several. For example, a Technological Agriculture Outlier that happens to be a Commercial trading post for the area.
If your Outlier does have multiple focuses, you should decide which is the Primary Focus, and concentrate on that for the first one or two stages. Once it has a solid base of population and its Primary Focus is well established, then it is time to obtain a Secondary Focus.
As an example, let's say that your Capital spawns an Agricultural Outlier. Agricultural jobs may or may not be outsourced to the Outlier, but it's a nice little Outlier. Demand for food grows, and the Outlier grows right along with it, sending food to the hungry mouths in the Capital. As the Outlier grows, it soon finds that it needs resources that the Capital can't spare, and that it doesn't have nearby. Or maybe it doesn't have sufficiently trained people in it.
So the Agrotopia spawns a Miner Outlier, to harvest supplies out of some nearby hills, in exchange for food from Agrotopia. Mineville does a good job, but finds that it needs more lumber for its tools/furnaces, while Agrotopia is mainly a food producer. Agrotopia spawns another Outlier some distance away in a forest, and Woodbury sends wood to Agrotopia as tribute, which it trades to Mineville in exchange for Mineville's output. At this point Agrotopia's Secondary Focus is essentially a Commercial Trading Post for its Outliers, even though its main focus is food. Let's say, Wheat, Carrots, and Potatoes. But some of Agrotopia's population wants to raise livestock, but the Farmers are claiming all the best room. In a huff, they leave, and found yet another Outlier, this one Primarily Focused on Ranching.
This is just one example of how you can organically grow your Outliers. Yes, you could just mine everything and send it to your Capital to be refined and made into real goods which you can then take yourself out there. But if you're looking for a story for your Outliers, and not just building them completely because you have to, you may have a bit more fun. Just think--This Outlier primarily does this--what will it need?
Another example? Your Capital sets up a Fort some distance away in a strategic location. They could rely completely on the Capital for supplies, but that takes a long time. So they set up a Farming Outlier not far away. This city was set up by the military, so everything is planned and built in grids. All the architecture is rough and right angles. Furniture is utilitarian. Your Military has enough to eat, but they need more supplies than the Capital is willing to give them. THEY set up a Mining Outlier. Now they have enough materials, and take a Secondary Focus in Commercial Weapon/Armorsmithing.
If you need some ideas for how to outfit your Outliers, here are a few suggestions by category:
Outliers begin their life at various stages, usually beginning as a Dirt Hovel, and grow at the same rate as you do. That is, They grow by one Outlier stage (see bottom-most section. Use the Table of Contents for easy navigation) per Stage that you progress. So if you start a Dirt Hovel Outlier in the Stone Hamlet Stage, when you progress to the Iron Village stage, the Outlier would become a Wooden Settlment Outlier, and then a Stone Hamlet Outlier when you progress to the Redstone Discovery stage. And so on and so forth. When they reach their Final Growth Stages, they do not need to expand, but do still need to send Tribute to the Capital.
Final Growth Stages by Difficulty:
At the end of every stage, every Outlier under your control (see Outlier Rebellion section) must send Tribute to the Capital. Generally, it is 10-25% of whatever it is they produce for the Capital. This is easier for some Outliers than others. Tribute is always rounded up, and calculated just before the Stage rolls over to the next Stage. Put another way, you must calculate your Tribute for a Stage, and write it down somewhere. As soon as this is done, you advance to the next Stage. Before you complete THAT Stage, you must finish building/sending the Tribute that you just wrote down.
Any Outlier that for whatever reason (RP or otherwise) you have decided is rebelling against you does NOT need to send tribute to the capital. Rebelling Outliers MUST be able to feed themselves, whether from within their own Outlier, or other Rebelling Outliers that are allied with them. Likewise, if an Outlier that is providing food for your Capital/Outlier goes into Rebellion, and there is no longer enough food to go around, the loyal Outliers and/or the Capital must take up the slack within a single stage.
If more than one Outlier rebels against the Capital, and they are allied together, one of the Outliers must be declared the Capital of the Rebellion, and from there progresses along the Stage structure as if it werer a player-controlled Capital, excepting that it skips Redstone Discovery/Glowstone Expansion. Rebel Capital's technology level, building materials, tool material level, magic ability, and/or Nether access is tied directly to the Player Capital. They may be either at the same technology level, lagging one stage behind, or even one stage ahead. Rebel Capitals/Kingdoms/Empires should never be more than one technology level above or below the Player(s) that they seceded from. That said, the technology level =/= their Stage levels.
I would like to go more in-depth with this feature, but at present I feel that I should flesh out the rest of this challenge before going back to this (very interesting) bit of fluff.
If Outliers begin their life too close to your Capital, or even other Outliers, they may be assimilated into each other. At this point, you may either consider them two cities (see cities like Fargo/Moorhead on the North Dakota/Minnesota border, or Minneapolis/St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota) or consider the Outlier absorbed into the encroaching city. This is normal, and perhaps even natural. I would recommend you try to avoid this, but if it happens, then it happens. There are a few special rules for this happenstance:
Criminal Outliers are spawned when a certain Bandit, Pirate, or other Criminal group reaches critical mass, and their Stronghold needs more than just the pirates to support itself. The first Criminal Outlier for each Criminal group is considered, for all intents and purposes, a Capital, even if they do follow the Outlier rules for growing. Criminal Outliers do not pay tribute to anyone but themselves. Criminal Capitals spawn Criminal Camps that hold 12 Criminals when they grow to the next Stage.
This is a special case for Criminals, because the Criminals start spawning Camps when they reach their Stronghold Stage, and then every stage after.
Note that when Criminal Capitals/Outliers BECOME Outliers and not just a Criminal base, they progress through Outlier stages at the same rate you and every other Outlier does.
So you know what kind of Outlier you want, and whether it has a Theme or not. I'm just going to spend a few paragraphs discussing something else. It's all well and good to have buildings, buildings everywhere, but eventually, you may start feeling like you've done it ALL before. So where do you go then? Well, my advice is to try something new! A new type of location, a new type of architecture, a new building palette. All of these will make your Outliers feel distinct. A few examples (not an exhaustive list):
If you want some variety, and a little bit of a challenge, pick 2 or 3 Outlier locations, find a place that has ALL of them, and build them one on top of each other, keeping every Outlier looking and feeling distinct. An Example would be:
Another Example:
Now, some of the Outliers may touch at certain points, but try to keep them looking and feeling distinct. How can you do that? With Themes.
I've touched on this before, briefly, but I'm going to go into a bit more detail here. Themes are reasonably intuitive. Basically, it's a set of building instructions that's standardized over the entire Outlier/Civilization. I would recommend that you find a Theme that works for you and try to employ elements from it across your entire Civilization, so that anyone that looks at it can tell that yes, that is part of your Civilization, even if that Outlier's Theme is different than the Capital/elsewhere.
How do you decide what kind of theme to use? There are a couple kinds of themes, namely color/texture Palettes and area/mod Themes. Palettes are essentially a few different colors/textures that you use for the entire Outlier/Civilization, and Themes are something like Steampunk / Modern / Magical / Technological / Rails / Evil / Good / Trees / Dirt / Stone / etc. The only limit to the number of Palettes/Themes is your imagination. Here are a few examples:
There is no rule that states that the Outliers must be built on top of the ground. They may be built in the air, under the water, underground, at bedrock, into Ravines, etc. Anywhere you can get to and feel like building an Outlier, go ahead and do so.
Each Outlier will have certain generic building requirements based on what size settlement (and difficulty) you want to build (and whether you're expanding it or having people abandon it or just want to start out big or small). These will roughly equate to the stage sizes in your main city, but will be a fraction of what is needed for your main city.
IE: Settlements, Hamlets, Villages, Cities, and Towns.
In most situations where the rules tell you to build a new Outlier next turn, you will be instructed to build a Hovel on that stage. This need not be elaborate (though it may be as elaborate as you wish). All it requires is a bed, a 2x3 interior, and an interior ceiling that is no more than 2 blocks high. Again, like your own Dirt/Clay Hovel in the beginning if a section of wall stretches for 4 or more blocks in a direction without direct links from a wall within those 4 blocks, you need a Log support, reaching from ground to ceiling.