I wasn’t sure who our neighbors were yet, but I did know that I wanted to make sure to grab the priority tiles I had in mind before they could. That was why I opened up the world map to check on the new region and to make future settlement plans first.

Those were all new colors. That meant it was a region belonging to a type we hadn’t seen yet. I couldn’t really guess what it was going to be going by the colors, either, but there was a different, even easier way to tell.

All I had to do was look to the east where the fog of war was lifted from.

Despite being three regions away from where we were, I could still see the tall mountain formation of the new region looming in the distance.

Those grey tiles must have been the mountains themselves. As for the tile that our unit was standing on, I checked on the one nearest one with a feature.

“So, it’s a hilly biome, but doesn’t have that same marker as before for the other hills. Maybe there’s a difference between hills that can be on any tile, and hills that are part of a biome,” I said to myself, though Enna was there and listening, before moving on to the next tile. The next one to get my interest was that tile right in the middle of the new region with a feature, and it looked to have a sort of grey-blue color to it.

Giant spiders that made webs out of water? Those didn’t exactly sound the most pleasant. That aside, the canyon stretched from one end of the mountains to the other. I wondered if it connected to a river in whatever would be the next region over, or maybe the ocean.

I was curious about something, though.

Now, if I tried to move any of my units over the ocean tiles or lava lake tiles, no movement would be allowed. The system wouldn’t let me queue the order, presumably due to them being ground units and not naval units.

What I wanted to know was if the canyon’s water was shallow enough to send ground units through.

Surely enough… it wasn’t.

Now, time to move onto the grey tiles surrounding the region, which I had a pretty safe assumption about what they would be.

“Mountain Lords, huh?” I asked out loud. “They sound like powerful, strong beasts. But if their danger rating is severe, and those black crabs were only high, then they’re even farther out of our league. Still… if we could manage to get ourselves some crabs and whatever these supposed lords of the mountains are, then we might be able to fill out our forces with powerful beasts. Though, I doubt they could be customized and will probably fall off in strength as we get better technology.”

I wasn’t even sure if they could be tamed in the “game,” so I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it for the moment. Instead, I focused on the more important thing that I learned: the mountains were impassible due to their 0% movement speed.

We found our first, real strategic position.

This new region could only be entered on land from the west. Naval, or presumably flying, units would be required to enter from the east.

Unfortunately, our capital wasn’t there, and it wouldn’t exactly be a great region for settling a new settlement due to the lack of food anyways.

The area I really wanted to try and settle was to the north in the plains.

I wanted that that group of three tiles to the north. Well, the more northern one of the two to the north. The one higher up had a tile that would be incredible for us.

There were only two Sleeping Hills tiles, but one would give thirteen science and the other would give three. Then I’d be able to get two more tiles with features if I settled the empty Sleeping Hills tile.

More happiness would always be appreciated. Especially if we were going to try expanding more.

I still hadn’t confirmed it yet, though I was about to, but I suspected that Grazing Fields would increase the chance for creature tiles to spawn up there in the same way that I believed the Big Game feature did.

So, we’d potentially get a creature tile, happiness, and a ton of science and food. Settling where I wanted there would bring the settlement: forty-two food, four labor, sixteen science, and ten happiness. The labor would be the real killer, but that could be compensated for by focusing on labor buildings and tile modifiers that further boost it to be staffed by the quickly growing population.

There was also the Peaceful Wilds rare variant biome just west of it that we could expand to.

I really wanted to get that immediate boost of sixteen science, though, and the settlement could be dedicated to summoning new population units faster than anywhere else.

It would also be a good idea to bring the Volcano Hound hunters back over to us so that they could group up with the Settler unit and escort them north. Plus they would get to use that [Track] skill to find any creatures along the way.

So, that was the plan.

Now to investigate that potential new threat at our border.