Settlements

Prior to Eco 10, there was a single global government, and laws and decisions it made affected everyone globally. No longer. With this update, the world starts with no governments, and you must band together with your fellow Citizens to create them.

Homesteads

Each Citizen begins with the ability to create their own homestead. This is essentially a Tier-0 settlement, population 1. It allows a Citizen to claim a small amount of property around them, with no other government’s laws or taxes able to apply them. While this gives you total freedom to do as you wish (pollute up a storm if you like), it comes at a cost, because you’re limited in how much land you can claim. There’s only so much land that can be managed by a singular person. Although, someone from a town can give you claim papers to counter this, but you are still restricted from all actual things settlements can do.

Towns

To take the next step up and start claiming more land and create laws and taxes, a Town must be formed. To do so, you’ll need to find fellow Citizens who wish to create a Town with you, a minimum of 3. You’ll need to build a Town hall on new property to form the center of the Town, and you’ll need to ratify a Town Constitution which the majority of the initial Citizens agree to.

Setting up Towns

Written by Discord User CapSup

Very important to know is that you need 3 people with their homestead claim stake inside the sphere of influence of the town. To see this, place down the Town Foundation and go to the "Authorization" tab when pressing E and press "Open Deed", then press "Edit". In this view, you can see the borders of the settlement influence. If anyone has their homestead outside this radius, they cannot become a citizen until you increase the influence with Culture. And you need at least 3 inside, to form the town! So to start the town:

• Build an, at least, T2 or higher building with at least 48 m3 of space,
• Get a hold of a Town Foundation and place it down inside,

Configuring the town name & color

• Configure the name and color in the Foundation tab,
• Make sure you fill out the Advertisement text,

Setting up the constitution

• Press E on the town town foundation and go to the Constitution tab,
• If you want only you, the mayor, to be able to do any "executive actions", as it is called, then setup only an Article like the first picture.,
• Else, if you want everyone to be able to do executive actions, then set the Executors to Citizens of your town.,
• Else, if you want the mayor to do any executive action and citizens to only propose elections, then set Proposers to Citizens of your town and the Election Process to your election process.,

Get your 3 citizens

You need at least two others, plus you, to go to the Town Foundation and go to the Citizens tab to join the town. As you place the Town Foundation, you are automatically considered one of the three citizens.

Ratifying the constitution,

This step requires 3 citizens to join the Draft of the town first.

• Once they're joined, go to the Constitution tab and press the "Start Ratification Process",
• Press the Vote button and make you press the "Start Election" button. See picture #2.,
• This starts a democratic vote for all citizens, that needs all to vote 'yes' before you can continue,
• Voting in the election can be done by pressing the "Vote" button in the same place as the Start Election button,

Founding the town,

• Once you have ratified the constitution, you can go to the Foundation tab and now press 'Found town'

Countries

Eventually, Towns will start to feel cramped as they reach their max level of influence or push up against neighbor’s influence. The next step, once the required tech tier is reached, Citizens can start a Country. The process of forming a Country is similar to founding a Town, with the difference that instead of requiring a base number of Citizens to start, they require a base number of Towns. This means that in order to form a Country, you must get at least 2 Towns to agree and ratify a Constitution. You additionally must have a minimum amount of Culture to form a Country . Getting Citizens agree enough to start a Town is enough of a diplomatic challenge, but getting multiple Towns to agree to form a Country is a huge achievement.

The country has a separate government, which is not part of the member Town’s governments; rather, it lies atop those town governments. Both governments will continue to exist, with their own influence radiuses, and their laws and taxes only impacting their influenced land. This means that within a Country’s influence, you may have many Towns with different laws, and a set of federal laws/taxes that apply throughout.

Federations

The final tier of settlements is a Federation, which is akin to a United-Nations-like collection of countries. A Federation must have a minimum of 2 member countries ratify its constitution, and if getting several Towns full of Citizens to agree to form a Country is a huge achievement, getting several Countries, full of Towns full of Citizens to agree requires some superhuman diplomacy.

Once formed, the influence of a Federation can become large enough to cover the entire globe. At this advanced stage of a world, the ability to enforce laws globally may be critical to survival, preventing rogue Towns/countries from polluting and destroying the common resources shared among the many societies of the planet.

However, for those settlements that just won’t listen to reason, there is a way to enforce agreement once diplomacy fails.

Sources

[1] Discord User CapSup: https://discord.com/channels/254025510651297802/469297188909088789/1440383705100325006