Introduction

Who doesn’t love delicious, delicious economic exploitation of undeveloped lands and native cultures?

In Wizards & Warlords the economy is one of the primary focuses of the gameplay, and the economy depends largely on the construction and defense of Resource Sites which exploit a tile for a particular resource yield depending on the tile terrain and features. Many of the specifics change regularly due to the incredible work ethic and vision of the developer, Valravn Games, so Boilerplate Disclaimer: This guide may or may not be updated at any given time. Life is hard and there’s a lot going on that may draw me away from upkeeping this reference. The following sections will be structured by potential site and will contain a brief overview of costs, skill relevance, and the yields of that site on all available hex types. For quick reference, simply go to the section of the desired hex upgrade, and you can find the best possible sites for it. I will also include sections on the different resource deposits and what to expect from them at the end of the guide.

What this guide is

This guide is a reference list of economic outputs intended to simplify the search for the ‘best’ spot to put Resource Sites in your sprawling and complex empire.

What this guide is not

This guide is not a walkthrough or strategic guide, though I may include small tips in the specific sections if they are relevant.

Leaders and Hex conditions

All sites have ‘compatible’ leader types, as well as modifiers from hex conditions such as Primal, Hallowed, or Demon Tainted, that are documented in the guide published here on steam by the developer. Please reference that guide for these specific effects.

Wizards and Warlords – Reference Manual: (WIP)

Resource Sites: Universal

All sites have a base construction time of 12 turns divided by the number of workers a*signed. The maximum workers working on a site construction is 4, so the fastest you can build any site is 3 turns.

Upgrading a site requires workers with specific skills, which will be mentioned in the site specific sections of the guide, and goes faster or slower based on the total relevant skill level of a*signed workers at the site. Upgrades always add +1 worker slot and +5% yield to the site.

Completed Sites yield resources whether you staff them or not, but will yield at minimum +10% more per worker a*signed, and will yield far more if the worker is well suited to the Site. Staffing bonuses stack additively, not multiplicatively.

Damaged Sites (usually the result of Beasts spending multiple turns in their hex) yield a progressively lower % of their base yield, but repair automatically when the offending Beasts are removed.

All sites except Shrines benefit from the Seafaring skill at a rate of 5% per level when they are adjacent to oceans.

Resource Sites: Farms

Description

The good old trusty farm is the building block of civilization, going back to circa 4000 BCE. In W&W they are a consistent source of food and minor gold income once you hit food cap.

Costs

Farms cost 550 Gold and 50 Lumber. If you build them in Magma Plains, the gold price is doubled to 1100 and an extra 40 iron is required, for a total of 1100 Gold, 50 Lumber, and 40 Iron.

Construction and Upgrades

Farms do not require specific skills to construct or staff, but can only be upgraded by workers with Agriculture skill >= the current level of the Farm.

Skills and Traits

Farms benefit from the Agriculture skill at +25% per level, the Domestic skill at +5% per level, the Herbalism skill at +1 herb per level, and from Cultural Traits such as Master Farmer (+25%), Pact with Nature(+5%), and Industrious(+5%). As usual, Agriculture and Domestic do not stack.

Resource Sites: Hunters’ Lodge

Description

The Hunters’ Lodge is a cheap resource site dedicated to food and furs with some special bonuses when applied to particular resource deposits. More on that in the Resource Deposits sections later. The important thing to understand about the Lodge is that its two base yields are diametrically opposed. More food from a hex almost always means less furs, and vice versa. They also hold the distinction of being possible to build in every terrain type, though some of the terrains yield so little that they are not going to ever be cost effective within the time span of a game.

Costs

The Hunters’ Lodge costs 400 Gold and 40 Lumber. This is particularly notable because it is within the limits of the turn 1 starting resources.

Construction and Upgrades

Hunters’ Lodges do not require specific skills to construct or staff, but can only be upgraded by workers with Hunting skill >= the level of the Lodge.

Skills and Traits

Lodges benefit from the Hunting skill at +25% per level and the Herbalism skill at +1 herb per level. They also benefit from Cultural Traits such as Master Hunters (+25%), Ferocious (+5%), Hardy Forager (+10%), Pact with Nature (+25%), and Stealthy (+5%).

Resource Sites: Quarry

Description

The Quarry is the poor Wizard’s Mine, most commonly used to get Granite when there are no other options for resource production. Given the low price point of Granite and the relatively low yield per Quarry, the basic Quarry is usually a ‘last resort’ for a Wizard with no better options for Resource Sites. That said, it benefits greatly from skilled labor, which is plentiful, and when placed on particular spots can yield the rare resource Obsidian, which can not be easily found elsewhere. They are also compatible with most terrain types, though, as usual, some have a paltry yield that will never be cost effective.

Costs

Quarries cost 500 Gold and 50 Lumber, which is within the range of the starting resources, but they usually have a longer payout window than the other turn 1 Site, Hunters’ Lodges. When placed on Magma Plains, the price goes up to 1100 Gold, 50 Lumber, and 40 Iron.

Construction and Upgrades

Constructing a Quarry requires no special skills, but Quarries can only be upgraded by workers with Construction skill >= the current level of the Quarry.

Skills and Traits

Quarries benefit from the skills Labor at +50% per level and Engineering at +10% per level. They also benefit from Cultural Traits such as Master Miners (+25%), Subterranean (+20%), Slavery (+5%), and Master Builders (+10%). Given the extremely high benefit of the Labor skill in Quarries vs. anywhere else, it is usually best to a*sign workers with a high Labor value to Quarries that yield rare resources such as Marble or Obsidian.

Resource Sites: Mine

Description

Mines are the biggest money makers and the most productive source of rare resources of all Resource Sites. However, they can only be built on a Rare Resource Deposit. This means that you will never build a ‘basic’ mine, and as such this section will be left without a yields table. However, an important thing to be aware of is that the AI Independent Realms sometimes do construct mines adjacent to large cities where no resource deposit is present. These mines seem to randomize what resource they will yield at the time of construction, and if they are destroyed, the tile will re-roll its resource type when the next mine is built.

Costs

Mines cost 1200 Gold and 40 Lumber except on Magma Plains, where they cost 1800 Gold, 40 Lumber, and 40 Iron.

Construction and Upgrades

Constructing or staffing a mine requires workers with Mining or Prospecting unless your wizard has attained mastery level 2 in Earth magic, in which case all workers are unlocked for construction tasks but not for staffing, which still requires Mining or Prospecting. Upgrading mines requires Prospecting skill >= the current level of the Mine.

Skills and Traits

Mines benefit from the Mining skill at +25% per level, the Prospecting skill at +10% per level, and the Engineering skill at +5% per level. They also benefit from Cultural Traits such as Master Miners (+20%), Subterranean (+20%), and Industrious (+10%) as well as some others that I don’t have concrete numbers for.

Resource Sites: Logging Camp

Description

The Logging Camp is a mid-range Resource Site that is a gatekeeper for upgrades to other Sites and Towns due to its provision of the universally needed Lumber resource. As might be expected, Logging Camps yield more in heavily forested tiles, less in sparser tiles, and cannot be built at all in tiles without trees. They tend to compete with Hunters’ Lodges for spots in temperate or frozen climates, but do well in tropical ones. They are also somewhat less impacted by skilled labor than other sites, making staffing less desirable overall.

Costs

Logging Camps cost 1000 Gold.

Construction and Upgrades

Logging Camps require no specific skills to construct or staff, but upgrades require a worker with Labor skill >= the current level of the Logging Camp.

Skills and Traits

Logging Camps benefit from the Engineering skill at +15% per level, Labor skill at +5% per level, and Herbalism skill at +1 Herb per level. They also benefit from Cultural Traits such as Master Builders (+5%), Industrious (+5%), and Pact with Nature (+25%).

Resource Sites: Fishing Village

Description

The humble Fishing Village is a bit of an outlier in that it doesn’t care what tile it’s built on, just that it be next to at least 1 ocean. As such, the yields table will be omitted from this section in favor of a small text description. Fishing Villages are a cheap way to get a small food economy going, and also yield a small number of trade goods which can be converted directly into gold through the global market. Fishing Villages tend to have a very low yield, but are also very easy to build in large numbers and are agnostic of the terrain on which they are built, making them a great choice for spare workers who have no other important tasks to perform. Unique among all Sites, Fishing Villages can benefit from multiple resource deposits at the same time, due to their dependence on adjacent tiles instead of their own tile. More on that in the Resource Deposits: Animal section ahead.

Costs

Fishing Villages cost 250 Gold and 10 Lumber, making them the cheapest Site currently implemented.

Skills and Traits

Fishing Villages benefit from the skills Hunting at +2% per level and Domestic at +5% per level. Seafaring does not grant additional benefits greater than it would to any other site, so it gives the usual +5% per level. They also benefit from Racial Traits such as Master Seafarers (+10%) and Pact with Nature (+5%) but in general rely very little on a persistent staff of skilled labor due to the extremely low impact of skill levels and traits on their yield.

Construction and Upgrades

Currently, construction seems to be bugged and will allow all workers to be a*signed during the initial construction of Fishing Villages, but only workers with Seafaring 1+ or Hunting 2+ can be a*signed to the construction or as staff after the initial confirmation window closes. This is probably the desired behavior for initial construction as well, so expect Seafaring 1+ or Hunting 2+ to be required in the future. Upgrading Fishing Villages requires a worker with Seafaring skill >= the current level of the Fishing Village.

Yields

Fishing Villages yield Food and Trade Goods based on number of adjacent ocean tiles. The first tile gives 10 Food and 1 Trade Good, and then each subsequent tile gives an additional .8 food. Each adjacent Bounty of the Sea seems to add roughly 50 Food and 5 Trade Goods.

Resource Sites: Vineyard

Description

Vineyards are the grown up brother of Farms, occupying similar hexes and receiving benefits from similar skills. Instead of producing Food, they produce Wine, which sells for a great deal more than Food, but is currently only directly used for building Taverns as far as I know. When dealing with the Farm vs Vineyard question, you can roughly equivocate between 20 Food and 1 Wine, with the caveat that food is directly used by more sources such as upgrading outposts to towns and upkeeping trained units. Vineyards are extremely picky about where they can be built. They seem to require 2 or more adjacent hill tiles if you want to build them on a non-hill tile. Some tile types are always excluded, even with adjacent hills.

Costs

Vineyards cost 1000 Gold and 50 Lumber.

Skills and Traits

Vineyards benefit from the Agriculture skill at +25% per level. Notably, they do NOT benefit from Herbalism, unlike Farms or Fae Gardens, or Domestic (unless the total bonus from Domestic exceeds that of Agriculture, which might not be mathematically possible in this case). This is due to the fact that Domestic does not stack with Agriculture, and all workers on Vineyards will always have Agriculture, which provides a 5x greater bonus per level. They benefit quite a bit from relevant Cultural Traits such as Master Farmers (+10%), Pact with Nature (+15%), Drunkards (+20%), and Epicurean (+25%)

Construction and Upgrades

Vineyards require workers with the Agriculture skill to construct or staff.

Resource Sites: Fae Gardens

Description

Fae Gardens are predominantly the domain of Wizards with the Fae race selected at start. Everybody else must invest quite a bit of time in unlocking them through research, except for Celestials, Undead, and Demons who are forever barred from constructing them. That said, they are actually pretty awesome and definitely worth the investment. The Fae Gardens can be built on most tile types and yields Herbs and Faerie Dust while also being able to interact with some resource deposits, see the sections on Resource Deposits later on. These Gardens are one of the only sources of Faerie Dust for non-Fae Wizards, which is required for the use of the awesome Faerie Dust golem power source among other things.

Costs

Fae Gardens cost 2000 Gold and 10 Herbs

Construction and Upgrades

Fae Gardens do not require specific skills to construct or staff. They do require Herbalism >= the current level of the Fae Gardens to upgrade, however.

Skills and Traits

Fae Gardens benefit from the skills Agriculture at +10% per level, Domestic at +5% per level, Hunting at +5% per level, and Herbalism at +20% per level in addition to the usual +1 Herb. As usual, Agriculture and Domestic do not stack. They also benefit from Cultural Traits that relate to magic or nature, such as a relevant Elemental Affinity: X or Magic: X (+10%), Pact with Nature (+10%), Master Farmers (+5%), and Druidic (+5%)
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Resource Sites: Shrine

Description

I debated whether Shrines should be included here, but they are technically a Site that you can build on a hex that yields a resource, so I decided to include them even though their mechanics are quite simple. Shrines eat a bunch of resources, some quite expensive, and give you a fixed income of 1 influence and 1 Mana per turn which cannot be improved upon or decreased except by the destruction of the shrine.

Costs

Shrines cost 2000 Gold, 100 Lumber, 50 Granite, and 20 Marble.

Construction and Upgrades

Shrines require the a*signment of a Religious type follower for the duration of their construction. They will accept any type of worker for construction, but cannot be staffed after completion. You may only build 1 Shrine in a given province.

Skills and Traits

The only important thing to mention is that the Shrine will be dedicated to the Deity of the Follower a*signed as Religious Leader during the construction. This is important if you’re seeking the favor of a particular deity.

Resource Deposits: Overview

Resource Deposits in W&W are modifiers to particular tiles to represent the presence of a rare resource or terrain condition that can be harvested through the creation of relevant Resource Sites on or (rarely) adjacent to the hex containing the Deposit. They tend to be extremely important for the development of a good economy, and sometimes provide resources that would otherwise be extremely difficult to acquire in bulk through the global market. Unfortunately, they have rather variable ‘yield’ parameters that depend on the Site Type and the Terrain of the tile where the Deposit spawned. You can see the base yield of the various Deposits when developed into a given Resource Site in the following sections. As a general rule of thumb, mineral deposits are climate agnostic, meaning that all variants of a given terrain (hills vs arid hills, for example) should give the same yield.

A few Deposit types grant Mastery progress per turn when you control the province they are located in.

The tables in the following sections are currently incomplete. I will fill in missing values as I encounter the resources in the wild.

Resource Deposits: Adamantite Ore

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

Resource Deposits: Bone Fields

Mastery Bonuses: None

All Resource Sites and Terrain types yield 1 additional bone, except Hunters’ Lodges which will always yield 2 additional bone

Resource Deposits: Bounty of the Sea

Mastery Bonuses: None

Adjacent fishing villages receive approximately +50 Food and +5 Trade Goods per adjacent Bounty of the Sea. Adjacent Cities gain +20 food production.

Resource Deposits: Coal Deposits

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

Resource Deposits: Copper Ore

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

Resource Deposits: Fertile Soil

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Sites: Farms, Vineyards, Fae Gardens, Logging Camp

Fertile Soil doubles Food output of Farms and increases wine yield by approximately 63% (or possibly just by a flat 1.5, will update when I can test this) for a Vineyard. Fae Garden numbers coming soon. Cities adjacent to a Fertile Soil Deposit (even across province borders, though this messes with the tooltip) will receive +1 Growth, making their population grow faster.

Resource Deposits: Gem Lode

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

Resource Deposits: Geyser

Mastery Bonuses: Water (1.27)
Relevant Sites: Farms, Fae Gardens

Geysers are primarily useful for their Mastery benefits, but do give +12.5 Food to Farms. Fae Gardens numbers coming soon.

Resource Deposits: Gold Ore

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Site: Mine

Resource Deposits: Insect Hives

Mastery Bonuses: Beasts
Relevant Sites: Farms, Hunters’ Lodge, Fae Gardens

Insect Hives add +5 Chitin and +2.5 Ichor to their Site, doubled for Hunters’ Lodges, on all terrain types. Need to confirm numbers for Fae Gardens still.

Resource Deposits: Iron Ore

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

Resource Deposits: Jade Deposit

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

Resource Deposits: Marble Deposits

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Quarry

Marble replaces Granite instead of being added to the base yield of the Quarry.

Resource Deposits: Mithril Ore

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

Resource Deposits: Platinum Ore

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

Resource Deposits: Primordial Trees

Mastery Bonuses: Life
Relevant Sites: Logging Camp, Hunters’ Lodge, Fae Gardens

Primordial Trees give some pretty hefty bonuses to settlements in the same province. The dominant culture of the settlement must have Druidic or Magic: Life as a Cultural Trait to receive the full range of benefits, but everybody gets a base lumber production of 20

Resource Deposits: Salt Deposits

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

Resource Deposits: Silkworms

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Sites: Farms, Fae Gardens

Resource Deposits: Silver Ore

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

Resource Deposits: Spices

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Sites: Farms, Hunters’ Lodge, Fae Gardens

Spices state that they grant a harvest of spices to adjacent settlements, but don’t seem to actually do that at this time.

Resource Deposits: Volcano

Mastery Bonuses: Fire
Relevant Resource Sites: Quarry

Volcanoes, like Magma Plains, give +1 Obsidian to Mines and Quarries in adjacent hexes. A recent patch note also mentioned that they will boost adjacent mine yield, but I haven’t been able to confirm this yet. Obsidian replaces Granite for Quarry yield on the Volcano tile, but is added to the Granite (or Marble) yield on adjacent tiles.

Resource Deposits: Wyrdstone Deposits

Mastery Bonuses: None
Relevant Resource Sites: Mine

This is all that we can say about Wizards and Warlords – Resource Sites and You: Becoming the wealthiest Wizard of all time for now. I hope this post helped you. If there is anything that we should add, please let us know via comment below. See you soon!