Illyriad Sovereignty Simple Guide

Illyriad Sovereignty Simple Guide by Mara Zira

There are already several excellent guides on Sovereignty, including a more technical and complete guide and an explanation as to why Sovereignty is so useful. My guide is meant to help people who aren’t ready to claim Sovereignty yet, but who want to understand how it will affect their future. Please note that I haven’t actually claimed Sovereignty yet, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

What’s Sovereignty Good For?
Sovereignty allows you to claim up to 20 squares around your city as yours. If you have a Sovereignty claim on a square, it (1) prevents someone else from settling there, (2) helps in the defense of your city, and (3) can increase the resource production rates in your city.

Unless you’re worried that a new city will pop up right next to yours or you have an enemy sending armies or hostile diplomatic units at your city, then there’s no need to claim Sovereignty until you’ve upgraded your food plots (or other relevant buildings) in your city to level 20. In any case, you can’t claim Sovereignty until you’ve upgraded your Storehouse to level 15, researched Bureaucracy, Pioneering, Inventory Management, Sovereignty, and at least Landholding and Serfs as well as Militia, Stratagem, and Occupy Territory. Plus you need at least 1 military unit.

Where Should I Claim Sovereignty?
It costs the least to claim the squares immediately around your city to a depth of two squares, so it’s good to settle at least 5 squares away from the nearest cities. However, the location of good resources or other considerations might create a need to claim squares further away. You choose which squares you want to claim–there aren’t certain squares that you have to claim.

How Much Will Sovereignty Cost Me?
You can claim Sovereignty at 5 different levels. The higher the level, the greater the benefit. For a basic Sovereignty claim:

A square 1 square away (directly N, S, E, or W) of your city will cost:
Level I: 10 research points & 100 gold per hour
Level II: 20 research points & 200 gold per hour
Level III: 30 research points & 300 gold per hour
Level IV: 40 research points & 400 gold per hour
Level: V: 50 research points & 500 gold per hour

A square 1.41 away (directly NE, NW, SE, SW) of your city will cost:
Level I: 14.1 research points & 141 gold per hour
Level II: 28.2 research points & 282 gold per hour
Level III: 42.3 research points & 423 gold per hour
Level IV: 56.4 research points & 564 gold per hour
Level: V: 70.5 research points & 705 gold per hour

A square 2 away from your city (2 squares directly N, S, E, or W) will cost:
Level I: 20 research points & 200 gold per hour
Level II: 40 research points & 400 gold per hour
Level III: 60 research points & 600 gold per hour
Level IV: 80 research points & 800 gold per hour
Level: V: 100 research points & 1000 gold per hour

A square 2.23 away from your city (2 squares away & 1 square to the side) will cost:
Level I: 22.3 research points & 223 gold per hour
Level II: 44.6 research points & 446 gold per hour
Level III: 66.9 research points & 669 gold per hour
Level IV: 89.2 research points & 89.2 gold per hour
Level: V: 111.5 research points & 1,115 gold per hour

These are the cheapest 20 squares to claim. To get all 20 squares to level V Sovereignty would cost 1,774 research points and 17,740 gold every hour.

If your Library is upgraded to level 20 (which is as high as it can go), it produces 1,013 research points per hour. If you have the Allembine Research Discovery (from completing the Human Statue Mystery), you will produce an additional 100 research points every hour. The environmental bonus appears to average about a 2.5% bonus to your research points. If your taxes are at 0% to 25%, you gain a research bonus depending on your tax rate. (And a tax rate above 25% will decrease your research point output per hour). Of course, you can always pay real money and do a 20% Prestige bonus to your research point output. So you may achieve 1,419 or even 1,641 research points every hour.

So, basically, it’s not really workable to raise all 20 Sovereignty squares to level V, even if you use this best configuration. When picking a site for your city, keep in mind the above costs. If your city is one square east of a “food 10” square and one square north of a “food 7” square (a total of a 17% bonus to your food output if you do a Sovereignty level V claim on them and build a Farmstead level V on each) will cost you 100 research points & 1000 gold per hour. If they’re both 2 squares away, then it’ll cost twice as much for the same benefit.

Do I Need All 20 Sovereignty Squares?
No. You don’t even need to level them up to level V claims. But Sovereignty will help you grow your city to a high enough population level that you can build 10 cities (which is the current maximum per player). You need a total of 233,550 population in 9 cities before you can settle a 10th city. That’s 25,950 population per city.

If your city has 7 farms at level 20, the flourmill at level 20, the spell Nature’s Bounty cast on the city, and a 25% tax rate, then you’ll still need a 36% bonus to your food output to support that level of population. You can import food to your city or achieve this some other way, but claiming Sovereignty on the squares directly around your city will easily give you this bonus.

If your city has 5 farms under the same conditions, you’ll need a 109.6% bonus to your food output. If the squares around your city only have a “food 5,” then you would need 21.9 squares at level V Sovereignty with level V Farmsteads to achieve this…but that isn’t possible. If you have good food levels on the squares around your city, it is possible but not easy.

If you like using Prestige, the 20% farm production bonus would help. An easier possibility is to build all of your other cities on “food 7” squares, build higher populations in those cities (up to a maximum of 26,985 population, at present), and maintain a lower population (about 17,670 population) in your capital city, which is stuck with only 5 farms. Or you can ship food to that city, or have someone raze it (after you have at least two cities) so you can settle all of your cities on “food 7” squares.

If you don’t care about getting 10 cities, then you’ll mainly use Sovereignty for the possible Production bonuses, for security, and to increase your food output so you can also increase your taxes.

Anything Else?
A rumored future update to the game may introduce a new building that will decrease the costs of Sovereignty. The drawback is that we won’t get more plots for new buildings: you’ll have to make this building instead of a different one. But if you like Sovereignty, it’ll be worth it.