Seeds of Chaos [v0.4.04 Dev] [Vénus Noire]

[Villages] To secure a stream of revenue, you’ll want to capture as many villages as you can as early as possible. Unfortunately, since you won’t have that many orcs early on, you won’t be able to make many gains in the first few weeks. You’ll want to savescum for the corrupt nobleman (the one that starts with a nobleman trying to whore out village girls to you for favors) event early on, as this allows you to capture a village without wasting soldiers. After you’ve captured three or four, switch to making trade agreements—these increase your weekly revenue more than captures, though you’ll want some captures under your belt to help trigger events.
* * * IMPORTANT * * * As of the last version I tried (0.2.43), a bug prevented most unique village capture events from registering successful captures/trade agreements. Only the corrupt nobleman event and the old ways event (the one that starts with Rowan stumbling on some villagers about to make a human sacrifice) seem to register as successful. The generic village capture/trade events (those that start with a choice on whether to capture the village, trade with it, etc.) will all register successfully. I recommend savescumming for these successful events each time you enter a village.
[Abbeys] To increase your research rate, you’ll want to capture as many abbeys as you can as early as possible. Thankfully, unlike villages, abbeys don’t deplete your military force, so the only thing preventing you from taking them all right away is distance. At this point in time, there’s little benefit to increasing your total weekly research over 20, as any research points over the total needed for a topic are wasted, so keep that in mind when deciding whether to make the trip to farflung abbeys.
* * * IMPORTANT * * * There are a couple of abbey events that don’t result in research bonuses. (Unlike villages, the narrative of those events leads me to believe this is intentional and not a bug.) I unfortunately can’t remember how these events begin, so make a save before entering an abbey, make another save after finishing it, and then end exploration early to check in the castle whether your research bonus has increased. (You can find this figure at the very bottom of the list of statistics you get when you click the scroll icon in the upper right corner of the castle screen.) If your research rate has increased, reload from your save after the abbey; if it hasn’t, reload from the save before the abbey and try for a different event.
[Mines] To increase your military strength, you’ll want to capture a couple of mines early on. You only really need about 10 iron/week max, and you can’t even benefit from more than 5 until you get the Forge Lvl2 (a fairly low priority), so don’t worry about getting too much too early. Mines are also less vital early on than villages, so focus on those first three village captures before sending your soldiers to become miners, nor is it worth the gold you need to hire workers. (The first mine you take is a freebie, though, and Jezera has that one staffed out of her own pocket, so grab the first one you see ASAP.) There’s only one unique mine capture event that doesn’t result in a successful increase in iron production rate, and this is definitely intentional based on the narrative (it starts with Rowan finding a message written in the goblin language). You can savescum around this if you like. Later on, after you’ve made your 3-4 village captures and have captured Raeve keep, feel free to capture as many mines as you like, as you’ll be getting new orcs faster than you can use them up at that point.
[Drider Eggs] You only really need to successfully capture one of these locations, and you can only do so after you build the breeding pit, so this is super low priority.

[Week 4] Week 4 is the first time you’ll have access to the castle, and starts you on an administrative choice right off the bat: whether to start construction on a building project (forge, tavern, or dark sanctum), or buy something from Cla-Min. You’ll want to start construction. My recommendation is the dark sanctum—this lets you start recruiting cubi sorcerers, which add to your overall military might directly (though I don’t recommend using them in village captures, they’re too valuable to waste), as well as indirectly (they give your orcs a multiplier to their military strength in the same way iron equipment does). They also increase your research rate by 0.5 per recruited cubi, which is critical for increasing research early, and you’ll need the dark sanctum to unlock the futa events, if you’re into that.
[Construction] You’ll want to start other building projects as your funds allow—keep in mind that you need 500 gold in the castle coffers by Week 22, though, so don’t overextend your finances. After the Dark Sanctum, I recommend the following projects in the following order:
[Research] There’s no especially fixed order to do these in, though some are definitely much higher priority than others. It’s worth noting that while the time to research is measured in “moves,” the number of turns you have to explore each week don’t really matter—research rate (called “Tech Rate” in the menu of statistics that pops up when you click the scroll icon in the upper right corner of the castle screen) is the stat that matters, and you should keep an eye on it to help decide which projects to prioritize. Major landmarks are 10/week (where you start), 13.5/week (enough to finish 40 move projects in 3 weeks), 15/week (enough to finish 60 move projects in 4 weeks), 17/week (enough to finish 50 move projects in 3 weeks), and 20/week (enough to finish 40 move projects in 2 weeks and 60 move projects in 3). Any higher than that is gravy, but unnecessary in the long run. Here’s a list of significant projects by rough priority, though you can switch most of the first several up as makes sense to you:
[Events] Most “ruler events” (events that randomly take place after the end of each week exploring) that you might want to savescum for depend on what sex scenes you’re looking to view, and that can more or less be pieced together from the google drive guide linked in the opening post of the thread. There are a few you might consider savescumming for early on to give yourself a headstart on funding building projects, though, as well as a couple you might want to avoid. Your best bet for savescumming these events with minimal frustration is to save on the black screen that appears when you’ve finished exploring that says “End of Week X.” The event that plays for that week is rolled immediately after that screen. Unfortunately, this holds true even when a scripted event (for instance, when you finish a building project and are introduced to the relevant NPCs) plays after that screen but before the randomly rolled ruler event, so weeks with scripted events are a bit more annoying to savescum.