Townsmen: A Kingdom Rebuilt beginner's guide - Five top tips for getting started with your new town

• Townsment: A Kingdom Rebuilt brings the classic city builder back to mobile
• But, what if you've never touched a city builder in your life, or at least not played Townsmen?
• Well, then check out our top tips for getting started with Townsmen to ensure you're up to speed!

The name Townsmen will be instantly recognisable to long-time mobile fans because it is one of, if not the most iconic, city builders from the early days of the platform. And in Townsmen: A Kingdom Rebuilt, you'll be able to once more dive into the city-building classic with revamped visuals, controls, UI, and mechanics.

What if you're a complete newcomer to not just Townsmen, but city-building as a whole? Well, this is where we come in with our beginner's guide to Townsmen: A Kingdom Rebuilt, where we've gathered the top five tips for those just starting with their new settlement.

Tip #1 - Learn the basics

The first step is to understand the basics of the city-building genre. They are all about balancing the needs and desires of your villagers, here called townies, with income, resources and your own ambitions for growth. You'll want to make sure that not only are the basic necessities covered, but that they have access to things like entertainment, religion and socialising.

At its core, Townsmen is about gathering resources and growing exponentially, and pretty much everything that you do, including making sure your village's needs are met, will go towards that goal. This will range from the very basics such as wood, which can be turned into planks, stone, tools and food, all the way up to more advanced resources such as jewellery, clothes and weapons.

You'll also have long-term projects to work towards, whether that's buildings like the Merchants Guild or doing research to improve the efficiency of your town, the latter of which is going to be a major boon to its survival.

Tip #2 - Gain Prestige

Pretty much every city builder has what I would call a third resource. This is something that's not a necessity or a luxury. Instead, it's used for different functions. In the case of Townsmen: A Kingdom Rebuilt, this is called Prestige. It's used for a variety of functions. The most important of which is that it can rush or instantly complete the construction of different buildings.

Prestige isn’t vital. It’s nice to have, and its importance rises dramatically with time-sensitive construction. The example given in the tutorial, where your town lacks a firefighting tower and a fire has broken out, aptly demonstrates how useful Prestige can be in a pinch.

Tip #3 - Follow your quests

You may notice this guide doesn't cover every basic function in Townsmen: A Kingdom Rebuilt, and that's because, like many classic city builders, it actually has a very comprehensive tutorial mode. You can access it from the main menu, and it'll give you an overview of how to place buildings, reassign workers, and most importantly, complete quests. Quests are simple tasks that provide rewards, including resources and XP. The more you complete, the further you'll get.

The rewards you get from completing quests consist of resources, XP and other helpful stuff, so complete them whenever you can. You'll also find optional quests during other scenarios that can grant rewards. However, they won't necessarily progress the main storyline. Most importantly, quests aren't just for the tutorial, forming a core part of both the endless version of gameplay and scenarios.

Tip #4 - Know your menu and UI

If you don't like menus, then you will not like the city builder genre. One of the most important functions in Townsmen is your main UI and resource reports. These give you an overview of your resources, your townies' satisfaction, and all the other info and tooltips you need to succeed.

Learning to navigate these menus will be key for staying on top of all the information you need, Townsmen. Don't worry because this isn't quite a spreadsheet-style game in the vein of something like Paradox. You can intuit a lot of it, and it will help you keep your city working at maximum efficiency.

Certain features, such as the radius of buildings for their functions (the above shows firefighter towers), will also help you identify trouble spots, which might otherwise go unnoticed. 

Tip #5 - Decide if you want to buy

One of the key decisions in Townsmen isn't in the game itself, but whether or not you actually want to spend money on it. It's a classic city builder in many respects. However, the new version does give more options for what you can purchase.

Of course, the main tutorial series of levels is completely free to play; however, they do only really give you a snapshot of what you can expect. Fortunately, you do get about an hour of playtime in endless mode in order to take on one of the maps and see for yourself how it all works.

If you want my personal recommendation, if you're a newcomer to the city builder genre, you should probably go for the scenario pack. If you're experienced with city builders, then you'll probably find more value in Endless Mode, which is the same price, except it offers a variety of maps and open-ended gameplay. The Seaside Empire expansion also offers more content, although you'll probably want to know if you actually like the base game before you drop money on it.

And if you do find yourself getting a taste for city builders, why not take a look at our list of the best strategy games on Android to see some of our choice picks you can play right now?