Galefury's Island sizes

## Island Sizes

These are some notes about how to split the various goods needed to support merchants and paragons and keep them happy across islands and what sizes are needed.

The sizes are for 1000 merchants and 1000 paragons, which is a good amount for building the palace. I ended up keeping my old main island and some supporting islands and had a few more merchants there, the extra money did come in handy. Merchants work well in 5x5 blocks of 600 with a Medicus in the middle and supporting buildings around the edges. A full 9x5 paragon block works out to 1020 paragons and 125 merchants (or of course more paragons instead of merchants if you want). If you want to keep more than 1000 merchants you need to up the size of all the islands making merchant goods.

Following these recommendations requires 11 islands, and there will be very little leftover space on most islands (depending of course on how the mountains end up). So expect to need at least another two islands for additional things like troops, ships and building materials (clay, marble or iron). Choose an appropriate amount of mountains for the number of deposits you want, usually you are going to want to reduce the mountains a bit and just explore a new island if you get too few deposits. I would go with at least mountain size 4 though. To compensate for bad distribution between metal and coal or gems either spread out your explorations so you know if you need more of some resource, or put the required resources on more islands preemptively. Another way is to up the size by one step and skip coal deposits, or ship around ore or coal between islands.

Note that you can always use more space for additional mountains and deposits, horses, production buildings, or making coal. So if I say "could be smaller" you should carefully weigh the additional conquering effort against the benefits of having that space available. I certainly ended up using it all.

I use the following format:

* Island Size and Purpose (Fertilities and Deposits) --> Whether it worked out okay for me

#### Main Island

* 24 Living, Potatoes (Potatoes, no mountains) --> I used 22, it is slightly too small. Maybe 24, maybe larger. Can also put clay and/or saltpeter here.

#### Merchant and shared goods

* 22 Bread (Wheat, no mountains) --> Works
* 22 Cigars (Tobacco) --> I took 24 + gold + coal, making some rings there but not all, ok fit
* 26 Clothes (Cotton) --> I put goblets here (gold + gems). Works, but close fit, I have to ship in coal
* 28 Beer (Wheat, Hops, no mountains) --> I took size 26 and it was too small. One solution would be a bigger bread island and shipping in some of the malt from there, maybe one 26 and one 24.
* 26 Meat (Salt, no Coal) --> Works, somewhat close fit
* 20 Linseed Oil (Linseed) --> Did 22 + gold, coal, clay, it works, making the rest of the rings here. Supports four Medicus.

#### Paragon goods

* 24 Garment and Books (Indigo, Silk) --> good size
* 22 Candelabra (Linseed, Honey, Copper) --> could be smaller
* 22 Feasts (Potato, Honey, Lobsters) --> could be smaller
* 22 Wine (Grapes, Iron, Coal) --> could be smaller

#### Required deposits

* 6 Gold mines, 3 Coal mines (or 6 charcoal makers), 12 Smelters and Smiths for Rings
* 5 Gold mines, 2 Coal mines (or 4 charcoal makers), 4 Gemstone mines for Goblets --> Skip coal
* A few horses somewhere (2 farms per Tiltyard, so 2 farms)

Note that you also need iron and gold to make some of the building materials for the palace, and iron is just needed for lots of things in general, so it's good to run a little surplus on those. You also need saltpeter for cannons and the palace, so in the end you need all types of fertilities and deposits. Also you are going to want to use some linseed to make ropes for ships (about 150-250 galleons needed, plus some faster ships for manual transports). And of course you also need lots of marble and clay! Put clay or saltpeter on islands without mountains, marble or iron on islands with mountains where you don't need something else.