Country Template: This is the template you can use when building your city.
City:
Race: (predominant race of the city)
Population: (this is equal to the amount of houses you create, minus the soldiers and police you hire.)
Soldiers: (this is equal to the amount of soldiers you hire. When hiring soldiers, subtract the number from your population)
Police: (this is equal to the amount of police you hire. When hiring soldiers, subtract the number from your population)
Farmland: (this is the number of people you can support with your farmland)
Facilities: (this is your various other buildings)
Tax Rate: (either 0, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, or 200%)
This formula can be used for all cities. Remember, Chocobos and Soldiers cost 1 gil per season, and you get 1 gil per every person that's part of your standard population every season.
All rulers have 5 million gil to spend on their new kingdom. People coming in as generals under them bring in 2.5 million gil.
Races: Each kingdom is generally composed of one major race, although kingdoms are not barred from being multi-racial.
Descriptions of all the races can be found here: Races of Final Fantasy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The races that will be used in this setting are: Humes, Dwarves, Moogles, Bangaa, Viera, Nu Mou, Elvaan, Tarutaru, Mithra, Galka, Burmecian, Qu, Ronso, Gaia (Red XIII's race)
Bangaa, Gaia and Burmecian tend to live in desert regions, Mithra and Viera live in forest regions, Nu Mou and Ronso tend to live in colder mountain areas, and Qu tend to live in the swamp regions. Everyone else shows up everywhere.
Other races may be made available on request.
Cities and Food:
All countries require cities. Housing for a citizen runs at 20 gil, and you can build housing in increments of 1,000 (so a city with enough houses for 1,000 people costs 20,000 gil). City sizes are as follows:
Town: 1,000-8,000 people
Cities: 9,000-12,000 people
Big Cities: 13,000-50,000 people
Metropolis: 51,000+ people
A capitol city must have at least 25,000 people in it (500,000 gil).
Population is important. Only normal citizens pay taxes and provide income.
Food production must also be set aside for citizens. This can be in the form of farmland or pastureland for livestock. Farmland costs 10 gil per person (10,000 gil per 1,000 people) and pastureland (with livestock) costs 15 gil per person (15,000 gil per 1,000 people). A good combination of both lends itself to a happier population. The processing facilities required for fish is the same as if you were buying farmland to sustain the same amount of people that fishing could.
Depending on where you place your farmland (brown land means the area is generally more fertile and able to produce higher crop yields, although crops can be theoretically be grown anywhere), you may need to set up roads. Caravan routes cost around 1,000 gil, although greater distances will cost more. PM myself or another co-coordinator for more information. In general, the populace will take care of their own caravans, so food will get distributed to the cities without intervention, although you can finance your own caravans for a variable price (again, PM myself or one of the co-coordinators for more information).
Military:
Military can be created by one of two means; conscription or recruiting. Recruiting soldiers from the general populace costs 2 gil. Light weapons and armor cost 1 gil, heavy weapons and armor cost 2 gil, and chocobos cost 1 gil and come with a 1 gil upkeep. Chocobo armor costs 2 gil.
Soldiers can also be conscripted, which waives the hiring cost but drastically decreases the happiness of your citizens. Either way, soldiers require a 1 gil upkeep.
Light weapons and armor are things like smaller swords, most wooden-hafted polearms (spears and such), axes, and the like. Light armor is anything up to chain jackets or limited plate. Heavy weapons require a large amount of steel, such as lances or Cloud-sized swords, and heavy armor involves encasing one’s body in steel. Generally, in straight-up combat heavier armor and weapons (especially when mounted on Chocobos) will win, but lighter armor and weapons are better for quicker maneuvers like hit-and-run. You can specify the armaments however you choose.
Please note, armor and weapons are purchased SEPARATELY. If you want heavy armor and weapons it costs 4 gold per soldier, light armor and light weapons cost 2. Light armor and heavy weapons or light weapons and heavy armor cost 3 per soldier.
You can also hire or conscript police to handle domestic patrols and issues. It’s usually a good idea to have at least 1 police officer per 100 citizens. Police officers cost 1 gil to hire, and cost ½ gil for upkeep (1 per 2 police, rounded down). More police officers mean a more orderly and law abiding society, while less police officers mean a more anarchic society. You can conscript police officers, but the level of corruption will be higher and the happiness of your people will be lower if you use appointed police. Police may be armed and can double as soldiers, but they aren’t as good as full-time military unless you pay 1 extra gil to train them. Armaments cost the same as for soldiers, but aren’t required for a general police force. Police may ride chocobos if you wish to finance it.
If you own chocobos, you need a place to stable them. Chocobo stables cost 10 gil per chocobo. Chocobo feeding is covered in their upkeep, and you aren’t required to devote more farmland to them.
Chocobo may also be bred, you can create a breeding stable for 10,000 gil that will improve the pedigree of chocobo (eventually producing different color chocobo) and produce more chocobo on its own. The stable will produce 100 new chocobo a season, and for every 10 gil you expand the facility by it will produce another 1 chocobo. Alternately, you can pay 1,000 gil to increase the breeding facilities so you can produce better chocobo.
When breeding for different chocobos, specify a certain trait (such as stamina, flight, speed, strength, or whatever) that you wish to breed into your chocobos. Eventually, you will begin to breed different color chocobos that have different attributes. Through proper breeding, someday you may even breed the legendary ultimate chocobo, the gold chocobo.
Chocobos live between 30 and 70 years, so as long as you treat them well you likely won't have to worry about them dying off too often outside of war.
Finally, you can hire NPCs two or less ranks below your own rank for 1,000 gil multiplied by the rank you're hiring them at. Use the character creation guidelines to pick their job. NPCs can be anything from generals to diplomats to assassins.
Police and Soldiers do NOT pay taxes. They cost you money to maintain.
You may also build Barracks. Without Barracks, soldiers retain their normal housing. Barracks cost 10 gil per soldier housed, and free up space in your civilian housing so that more people can move in.
Military Training Academies:
You can create a military training academy for 10,000 gil. Military Training Academies (or magic training academies, the pricing is the same) have the ability to convert rank-and-file soldiers into minor version of any PC job class available. Furthermore, these academies have the ability to research special techniques and spells for use by the minor jobs. The academy initially converts 10 soldiers per season, and it can convert an additional soldier for each 1,000 gil spent. Soldiers with PC classes may choose 1 rank 1 skill that they can use during combat, giving them a hefty strategic edge on the battlefield.
Fortifications:
Fortifications protect your city from invaders. A city wall costs 1/2 the price of the city structures (housing+all facilities).
You can also construct a castle. A basic keep is 10,000 gil, which provides a small degree of protection and a seat of power.
There are four sizes of keeps:
Small: 1,000
Medium: 3,000
Large: 7,000
Very Large: 15,000
A wall around a castle costs 1/4 of the price of the keep itself. Outer walls cost 1/2 and 3/4 the cost of the keep respectively.
Walls can also have towers on them, at the cost of 1,000 gil per tower.
Natural Resources:
Every kingdom will have some natural resources unique to only a few regions. These resources can be harvested and traded. In order to harvest them, there needs to be a sufficient amount of people living near the area where the resources are abundant. Furthermore, you need to build a facility to extract them. Facilities that can extract 10 lbs. of resources a season costs 1,000 gil and requires 100 people working them. Thus, you need a settlement of at least 100 people in addition to the facility in order to mine. Your capital can and probably will be built on some of the natural resources, so the population from the major city can be used without any difficulty.
Natural resources can be traded with other kingdoms. As the game progresses, there will be special structures and items that can only be made using special resources, so having a stock of resources is a good idea.
When you start building your country, you will receive a PM regarding the natural resources in your area. You can keep this secret or not at your prerogative.
Research:
There are currently two forms of major technology in this world: steam technology and magitechnology. Both can be used to build basic vehicles like airships, warships, and other more civilian-byproducts like sewage systems. You may build research academies within cities by paying 10,000 gil. The research academy will begin researching new technology based on your promptings (for example, you can have them research magitek armor or steam trains). You can also give your research facilities expansion by doubling the amount of money you spent on them. If you have different research facilities in other cities, you can research more than one thing at a time, but you are limited to one magitek and one steam research facility per city.
Research is based off points. A basic research facility will produce 1 point a season. Technology is based off levels, and each level of technology costs as many points as its level, so a 1st level tech will cost 1 point. Each time you double the amount of money spent on a research facility, you increase the points it produces by 1 per season. You can divide your points amongst different kinds of research however you desire. If two cities are researching the same thing together, the combined point total of the two research facilities is reduced by 1 per city, to represent the difficulty of sending information back and forth. The appropriate communication technology may be able to negate this. In the case of using multiple cities, the total value of the research centers are taken together, so you don't just add the points produced by a city to get your total, you derive points as normal based on the values of both research centers and subtract 1.
Research is designed to be open-ended. When planning research, be as specific as possible, the idea is to allow you to do pretty much anything you want, given enough time and resources. For more information, check the Technology Rules thread.
Mechanical Transportation
Two major forms of non-creature transportation are ships and airships. Airships are generally steam or magitek-powered, so they can only be built in cities that have research facilities for steam or magitek. A basic shipbuilding facility costs 10,000, and can build small ships that can carry a crew of 10. Airship facilities cost 100,000 and can build small airships that can carry a crew of 10. Each increase (10,000 for ships, 100,000 for airships) allows the construction of ships that can carry 10 additional crew. Upgraded facilities can either build larger ships or airships or several smaller ones (so, a 20-person ship or two 10-person ships). These ships can be used for anything from trade to war. The maximum capacity ships can be built every season, but you aren't required to do so if you don't have the space.
For both normal and airships, available passenger space equals twice the number of crew.
You also require docking space within the city. Docking space for a 10-person ship costs 1,000, docking space for a 10-person airship costs 10,000.
Factories:
Factories can produce researched material such as barriers, magitek armor, tanks, and the like. Each production level costs 10,000 gil. So a 30,000 gil Factory will produce 3 level 1 technology items, 1 level 1 and 1 level 2 technology items, or a single level 3 technology item a season.
Warehouses:
Warehouses can be used to store various goods such as natural resources, spare food, and various siege engines and other such inventions. Warehouses are bought in increments of 1,000 gil, and each 1,000 gil spent is another 100 square feet of storage space. Excess food to sustain one person for a season is 5 square feet. 10 lbs. of natural resources is between 1 and 5 square feet, depending on the density of the material (this will be covered when you are made aware of your natural resources).
Entertainment Venue:
If you wish, you can build a venue for entertainment. A venue must either be near enough a city that people can commute to it, or it must have enough houses for the staff to live there (priced as normal). Entertainment venues cost 5 gil for a 1 person capacity. Furthermore, used square feet (as in, square feet devoted to making some kind of an arena, racetrack, casino, whatever) cost 1 gil for 3 square feet. The more square feet you have devoted to a variety of games, the easier it is to attract people to play them. You do receive tax income if you have people living there permanently, and you will also receive a certain amount of income per season based on coordinator's call and various factors, but if you build and market a good venue you can make quite a bit of money.
Advertisement:
You can spend increments of 100 gil on advertising for any given thing (such as open housing, entertainment venues, or even joining the army). Advertisement will provide quicker results for whatever it is you're trying to sell, possibly even increasing your revenue, depending on how you spend it. More advertisement gives greater results, but a wise ruler will try to spend as little on advertisement as possible to receive the greatest gain from it.
Other Crap:
You can build various things to improve your citizen’s lot in life. Some things are probably a good idea, like a sewage system and a well/aqueduct/water delivery system. Other things aren’t as important, such as entertainment. The rule of thumb is whatever you can think of that your city might need, you can buy it. Assume that any facility you want to create costs 10 gil per citizen it services, and can only be bought in increments of 1,000 gil.
More will be added later as the game progresses. I'm trying to keep this simple for the initial launch, but more options are something I heartily endorse. If there's something you want to build that you are unsure of, PM myself or a co-coordinator and we'll discuss it and give you a price.
Concealing a City
If you want to conceal a city or base, double it's price, come up with a plausible concealed location, and PM myself or a coordinator the specs of your city so we can log it.
