The Godfather Five Families Beginner’s Guide

The Godfather Five Families Beginner’s Guide by Pestilence

So you are an upstart Babbo eh? You want in on the family business? Well, in order to do that, you have to prove yourself first. Now, we, the Barzini’s have a certain way of doing things, and I would hate for this information to leak out to the other families, but these family secrets have been around for a very long time, so should a Corleone or a Cueno find out, well, as long as they are Sicilian’s I am okay with it. Capiche?

You will be appointed a Tutor when you first take a tour of your Neighborhood, that I have so graciously allowed you to control until you learn the ropes. Do a good job, maybe I let you keep it, do a bad job, and you will end up swimming with the fishes.

When your tutorial has completed, you are on your own. Perhaps you have a Crew to ask for help and advice or perhaps you think you know better than everyone else and go out on your own, whichever route you choose, your destiny is yours to fulfill. But, word of advice, sleep with one eye open at all times, not everyone is as nice as I am.

STARTING OUT:
You will need resources, and lots of them. AS you progress and control your neighborhood later on, you will find that cash and food are the easiest resources to gather, whereas Cement and Steel, not so much. You will want to start off by building several Cement and Steel mills to get you going. We like to eat, but I recommend only a couple nice Italian restaurants in your neighborhood, anything more than that turns into regret later on. SO build yourself a restaurant or two to compliment those steel and cement plants. Now you should have a small amount of resources steadily being produced for your future crew of gangsters..cough Ahem, I mean for your associates that will be doing your grunt work for you.

FIGHT FIGHT:
Hold on there Babbo, every new guy on the block wants to dive headfirst into breaking a few heads and usually do so without thinking or planning first. Let’s not be too hasty here. You will have time to build up a strong crew to go bash some heads in later, for now, why hurry? Relax a little, work on fortifying your estate, increasing your knowledge at the library, after all, an educated Babbo is better than one with a hollow skull. Do some research, use your resources wisely, increase your Logistics and your resource production first, this way you replace what you use at a faster rate, and once again, resources when you getting your feet wet are more important than having too many mouths to feed. Improve your Mansion, I have so graciously allowed you to live in for now, with each upgrade to your mansion, I will allot you a few more blocks of you neighborhood to build more improvements in. YOu will also want to start thinking about the future, perhaps add a couple Hideouts and an apartment or two to your neighborhood. You will need both of these once you start understanding what it takes to give men orders to do your dirty work for you. Apartments and Hide outs also make a nice little cash flow for you, as well as having some other very important factors. Apartments will raise your influence in the hood, without influence, no one will want to work for you, so build up those apartments, raise that influence and increase your cash flow all at the same time. Hideouts also have added benefits, you see, not only do they add to your cash flow, as we always ask for a little kickback from our minions using them, but the more hideouts you have, the faster your future crew can learn and be trained faster. More hideouts equal faster training time.

TIME FOR TRAINING A CREW:
Adding your own personal crew: By now you should be setting on a nice income of resources, not spectacular, but steady, and slow and steady wins the race. If you take a tour of your surrounding areas, you will see that there are many unorganized gangs roaming the various sectors. These gangs are miscreants not associated with any of the five families, and therefore it is our duty to kick them off our turf. Be forewarned though, kick one gang out, and not much later a new one will rise, so be careful, they may not be organized but they keep popping up all the time. SO, before you can oust those gang members, or take control of the cityscapes which will benefit your resource production, you need some men to work for you. Go into your hideouts and look for the TRAIN room, you will want to start off building some uneducated muscle, or as I like to call them, Thugs. Make a small amount of them to get started, but be careful you don’t recruit too many, as they can rapidly consume your resources leave you unable to move forward. A good early method is don’t recruit and train more thugs than 25-30% of your resources, make sure you keep enough to allow yourself the time and resources to research and continue upgrading your estate and neighborhood, always remembering to keep your resources producing ahead of your usage. A good start on Thugs is 50 to 100 for now, if you have plenty of resources, go ahead make 50 more or so. If not, don’t rush it, Thugs will come to your aid in hordes as your resources grow. YOu will also need to be looking at recruiting some couriers and Arsonist, the Arsonist is your first real troop. They are versatile and handy in all aspects of the world we live in. You can use them to take over cityscapes, defeat small time gangs and also take out any upstart Babbo’s from the opposing families should they give you any problems. Now, this is worth repeating, so I will do as such, do not bring in more troops than your resources can handle start slow and small, work up as you increase your resource production lines. The gangs, the other families, the cityscapes aren’t going anywhere, they will be there when you are ready to take them on, so no need to rush.

Okay there Babbo, I gave you some basic advice earlier, but let’s kick it up a notch, shall we? BAM! Let’s talk about your estate, what you can do with all that luxurious space you have been so graciously presented with.

IN all, you have room for Ten buildings in your estate, you will begin with your Mansion and Library already constructed, but as for the rest, well, you will need to start working on those as you have the resources and experience to do so.

Mansion: The mansion is your home: But, understand this, there is so much more to your humble abode than meets the eye. Should some of those arrogant, shall we say, other familes decide to attack, this is where you will have to determine whether you wish to fight back and defend your turf or slide that book shelf to the side and hide like a coward, allowing your enemies to come and take your valuable resources at their leisure. Capiche? Now, should you decide to stay on guard and defending, it is not without its risks. Should a more powerful opponent attack, you could very well lose more than just your resources, but you could be putting new help wanted signs outside your door. Defending could spell doom for your crew should they be overpowered. Sometimes, and you did not hear this from me, Jimmy Dimples, and if I ever hear you tell anyone I told you this, I have a nice pair of cement shoes in your size, BUT…..with that in mind, hiding may cost you some resources, however, your crew of henchmen will be safely out of harms way to fight back tomorrow. Resources are fairly easy to replace, good underlings, not so much. As you upgrade your mansion, another little bonus will be the added ability to expand your resource production by capitalizing on the addition of a few extra lots in your neighborhood that you can develop to your choosing, as well as being able to expand into neighboring areas, or what we call cityscapes to also boost your production. So as you can see, your mansion is not just a place to rest your lazy feet, but the true heart of your operation. Now follow me as we head over to the Library.

Library: AHhh, your Mansion may be the Heart of your operation, but this……THIS is the very SOUL of your operation. It is within these books that all of the years and experience of our forefathers from Sicily have so diligently scribed for you, me, and for generations to come to harness their lifetime of experience simply by doing a little research. It is here, you will gain knowledge and understanding that will allow you to become a force to be reckoned with. As you make improvements to this great library, I will be sure to send you some more books with far greater knowledge so that you can expand that peanut in your noggin you call a brain. Be sure to visit the library as often as you can, The pen may be mightier than the sword, but a Tommy Gun and knowing how to use it will obliterate a pen.

Shall we head outside? Good, follow me then.

What a beautiful courtyard you have here, now if we take look over there, those two buildings are your Garage and your Workshop, yeah I know, they are in shambles, but you will rebuild them when the time is right. Now, both of those buildings will help your men, those specialized in various attack abilities, can prosper greatly once you have those two buildings functional again. Now, before I explain who would prosper from what, I must change the subject for a few moments and explain to you the various positions within a Barzini crew. In total, there are two types of units at your disposal. Offensive and Defensive. Although Offensive is a misnomer, if you are getting attacked, everyone and everything is defensive. However, your defensive arsenal will never assist on an offensive attack you send out.

Defensive Units:
Barbed Wire: Your basic razor enhanced barbed wire to keep people off your walls and out of your estate.
Booby Traps: Perfect for protecting yourself against the unsuspecting trespasser.
Guard Dogs: Release the hounds!
Armed Guards: What the dogs don’t eat, the guards shoot.

Offensive Units:
Thugs: Your basic tough guy
Couriers: Hired help to carry home your loot.
Arsonist: These guys really know how to throw a party, a Molotov Cocktail party that is.
Bruisers: Much better than Thugs when it comes to getting past those pesky defensive units.
Trucks: When you want to carry more loot and carry it faster.
Demolitionist: Boom goes the dynamite
Hitmen: Close up and deadly
Tommy Gunners: Death from a distance
Enforcers: When you need something done and done right.
Professionals: Your enemies do NOT want to see these guys walking down their street.

Now, as i was saying, you see those two buildings over there? Well those two are your Garage and your Workshop. Now, your Tommy Gunners, Professionals and Enforcers will find the garage to their liking. As for the Work Shop? That is more suited to your Arsonist, Thugs, Bruisers, Demolitionist, Couriers and Hitmen. By improving these buildings, I am quite sure those minions I mentioned will have the access to learn and train faster. Now, if you look over here to the left of the garage, that Babbo is your warehouse, this is where you can stash your goods, the resources you will need to improve everything else. Be sure to improve this to protect those valuable resources, as we know how those Tattaglia’s can get with their grubby little paws wanting to take things not rightfully theirs, put it in that warehouse and not even the most thieving Tattaglia can get to it.

Shall we walk to those other structures? Good, come with me.

Armory: This building Babbo, is where you will store you equipment. What’s that? You are going to be difficult aren’t you? Equipment Babbo, equipment. Okay, do I have to spell it out for you? You will keep your “Equippable” items in the Armory. Now, you get these items from taking on “The Black Hand” gangs. As you accumulate these items, they are deposited into your armory. You will find you can establish your best cash business by selling these extra items from your armory. This is where the real money is Babbo. Don’t forget it, I will be expecting my cut.

Guest House: This here is your Guest house, this will be a valuable commodity to have. You see Babbo, should you need a little back-up, if you know what I mean, by improving these lodgings, you can allow more of your family members to come and stay, to help hmmm, how can I say this, yes, to help show those nosey neighbors, Like the Corleone’s some Barzini Hospitality. The more improvements you make, the more of your Crew members will find it comfortable.

Now Babbo, that is your courtyard in your Estate, which may I remind you was so graciously offered to you for you to get your feet wet without having to sleep on the streets. Wait…where you going? I may be done with the buildings out here, but I still have more to show you, let’s head out to the front gate, shall we?

Front Gate: The Front gate is where your ever vigilant guards will be able to alert you to any possible incursions into your estate, the more you improve your front gate with electronic sensors, motion detectors, hidden camera’s, you will know more and more about your possible trespassers. Knowledge is power.

Guard House: This is your guard house, you will need to improve this as well, better guardhouses tend to attract better guards. Keep that in mind when you gather the resources you need to improve your estate.

Wall: And finally, we come to your first defense, your perimeter wall. As with the Guard House, having a strong reinforced wall will attract more and much improved quality of guards to defend your abode. Also, keep in mind a few things about your wall, for one, because of zoning laws, you will not be able to improve your Mansion without a sufficiently improved wall Secondly, you will find, all defensive Troops can be both made and trained from within these very walls themselves. Don’t ask me how we train our defenders from a wall, it is a very ancient and well protected secret of the Barzini’s. There are four defensive units available for you as you make the needed improvements. The easiest is Barbed wire, once you know how to make barbed wire, your next defense should be booby traps, now that you have these in place, buy yourself some trained guard dogs and finally put some armed guards up on that wall to really deter anyone from impeding on your turf. Well, Babbo, that’s everything in your estate, I hope you learned something today. I will be back again tomorrow to teach you some more things, that you will find vital to your survival. Until next time, watch your back and sleep with one eye open.

Recap:

1. When you first start, level only your mansion, library and focus on building up your resource fields, mainly steel and cement. Food and cash are very easy to get, steel and cement not so much.
2. Do not make any troops at first, allow yourself the time to build up the resources needed to build and replace them first before you find yourself without troops and no resources to make more.
3. Research the things you need to increase your resources and construction times on your buildings before focusing on any of the other researches.
4. Strategy and planning are required to get a jump on those without either a strategic approach or a plan.
5. If you find yourself running out of one resource more than others, ex: you run out of steel before other resources, focus on building up your Steel Mills to account for this usage.
6. With recent changes to the game, I suggest at least 3 restaurants to keep a healthy food flow coming in when you are unable to farm any.
7. Once you have ample resources to build troops, focus on obtaining some cityscapes to further increase your resource production.
8. As you get items from gangs, don’t forget to equip them from your armory and sell the leftovers you don’t need for a great cash flow.
9. Protect your resources from thieves by leveling your warehouse.
10. Don’t be afraid to ask questions of your family members, Crew members or even those “other” family members for more guidance.

Well Babbo, I hope this guide will assist you on your way to becoming THE DON.

Capiche?

Salutations,

Jimmy Dimples
Barzini Family
The Untouchables (Crew)