In this Foundation guide, learn about villager Service needs and Churches in your Medieval city.
What is Services in Foundation?
Your villagers have a Faith resource that contributes to their Happiness through Services. To fulfill the Services need they will visit a Church from time to time to pray.
Build a Church
To build a church you need to place the mandatory parts, 1 core, 1 door, and 1 bell tower.
Every church has a capacity for attendance, as your population grows you want to increase the size of the church to expand the capacity or build more churches. To increase the number of villagers attendance add core or extension pieces.
Core pieces allow for 20 capacity each, Extension pieces add 5 capacity each. Additional capacity can be added with the Edit Building (hammer icon) option when clicking on the church.
Church Monuments
There are four different church Monuments you can build in Foundation. You begin with access to the Rustic Church a small stone and thatch simple church with extensions and bell towers.
The Church is unlocked in the Clergy Estate [F5] when you have the appropriate Influence and Splendor. Gaining access to the Church starts a quest to build it and unlock a new Trade Route [F3].
The Church has a few style options, Stone, Blue, or Red.
Rustic Legacy Church is learned when your Bailiff studies an Unknown Blueprint. This church has two styles, a light and dark version.
Romanesque Church is also unlocked when your Bailiff learns an Unknown Blueprint.
How Many Churches Does Your Village Need?
If you receive the Insufficient Services or No Access to Services notifications it’s time to check the villager capacity of your churches. To calculate the capacity I calculate the number of all current population and make sure all existing churches can fulfill that number for Weekly Attendance. If the number is too low add extensions or new churches. (You don’t have to count Newcomers if they are not going to be promoted)
The capacity number is located on the Church info panel under Service – Weekly Attendance. Example: If the panel says 4/48 Weekly Attendance this means that church can hold a maximum of 48 villagers per week.
You will have to find a balance with the number of churches verses the maintenance cost. The larger you make your churches the more they cost per week in maintenance upkeep. Depending on your layout, it may be better to have more small churches. Maintenance cost is located in the upper left corner of your church info panel.
Where To Place Churches
Villagers like to visit churches for service when on free time, and they will travel to their houses to fulfill Happiness needs. Build your churches in areas where you have residential zones for best efficiency. As a bonus, Churches provide a boost to desirability for the area, which is helpful for housing.
Ringing the Bells
In the Church info panel you can set the Melody of your Bell Towers, the ring frequency and the type of bells. Your churches can have multiple Bell Towers, when you add more than one you can set different chime sounds. Each Bell Tower can be configured to change the pitch (ring sound), delay, how many times you want the bells to ring and even the tempo.
