In Going Medieval settlers are the greatest resource in your colony. Without settlers you will have noone to tend the fields, build or do anything. Apart from the settlers which found your colony, you are able to grow your count and recruit more settlers as the story goes on. This guide will show you some of the ways to get more settlers and build up a thriving colony in Going Medieval.
How to Get More Settlers
There are two main ways that you can get a lot of colonists in Going Medieval:
- Through random events taking place throughout the game
- By starting with a larger group of settlers when setting up the game
As you can imagine, if you’ve already started a game, only the first method will apply to you. There is no way to recruit any of the raiders which may attack your colony or buy any more colonists in the game.
How to Start The Game With More Settlers
If you are starting a new game you can start with more settlers than usual. To do this, start the game as usual. It does not matter which difficulty you choose for your game. Now, once you are at the menu where you select your starting conditions you will see there are three options:
- A New Life
- Lone Wolf
- Add New
The one we are interested in here is the Add New. When you select the Add New option you can create your own custom starting conditions. Among other settings, here you can decide how many settlers you are going to start with. To start with, give your new start a name. This is the name that appears in the menu above with A New Life and Lone Wolf. The description and narrative don’t really matter for now. You can hover over the small book icon to read how these affect the game. The one we are really interested in is the Number of Settlers value.
As you can see above I’ve changed the amount of starting settlers to 5. You can change this number to whatever you wish. Be advised that very large numbers are likely to cause performance issues. That is all there is to it. Now, when you select this scenario and move to the next screen you will start with the number to settlers that you decided.
Getting More Settlers Through Events
The way that you can naturally get settlers in Going Medieval is through recruit events. These events will happen at random while you are playing Going Medieval. Whenever one of these events happens, you will see a message appear on the screen. Here, you will see a little about what is happening in this event and you can make a decision. There are a couple of events where you can get more settlers. Some of these will have their own challenges. You can decide to take the settler in, but there is sometimes a cost to this. Some example of this include:
- Taking in a starving Settler: One of the events entails a starving hungry settler appearing at your colony. You can decide whether to take them into your colony, or keep them out. If you decide to let them in, they will immediately join the colony but they will be starving hungry and need food soon! This is one of the best ways to get a colonists.
- A Settlers is Attacked By Cannibals: Another event where you can get more settlers is an attack. In this event, you will be informed that someone is fleeing from one of the hostile groupd on the world map. They have come across your settlement and are asking from help. If you decide to accept this person, you will have to fight off a group of raiders in a few days following the message. The settler who joins the group will also have some type of injury. Even if you choose to take this settler in, the raiders will once again ask you to hand them over when they start the raid. If you give the settler over, they will not raid your colony but your settlers will receive a large penalty to their mood.
Recruiting Prisoners and More in Future Updates
Going Medieval is in early access. That means that not all the features are fully included in the game yet. As the game is still in early access I’m sure there will be more methods of obtaining settlers added to the game. For example, the official roadmap for Going Medieval has been revealed in a post on the steam news.
As you can see there are systems in the roadmap which would suggest being able to recruit more settlers. Perhaps you will be able to capture and recruit hostile characters as you can in Rimworld and other titles. Perhaps your colony’s religious influence will bring devoted Oak Brethren followers to your colony. I guess we will have to wait and see when these features are added in future updates to the game.