Drawing areas on the map, filling a settlement from a template, and how the three kinds of area fit together.
Three kinds of area
Settlement: a village, town or city. Its residents share common knowledge, it has a Bounty Board, and its art
is the backdrop for outdoor conversations and fights in town.
District: a neighborhood inside a settlement, like the docks or the merchant quarter.
Region: a larger territory, like a kingdom or province, around one or more settlements.
Open Build mode (the toolbox) and choose Settlement.
Pick a mode:
Hexes: click whole hexes. They have to touch.
Draw: click points around any shape, then click near the first point to close it.
Choose Finish.
The Create Area box asks what it is:
Settlement, Region or District (only the types that fit where you drew are offered)
a name (up to 50 characters)
a type: Village, Town or City for settlements; Kingdom, Country, Province or Territory for regions;
Quarter, Ward, District or Zone for districts. Or type your own, like "free city" or "mining camp".
Choose Create.
A district has to be drawn inside a settlement. An area covering several hexes can be a settlement or a region.
Buildings already inside a new settlement become part of it. If your new area overlaps an existing settlement, you're
told which buildings will move.
How areas fit together
It's all automatic. There's nothing to link by hand.
A building belongs to the settlement it stands in, and to the smallest district around it.
A settlement belongs to the region its center falls inside.
Characters take their area knowledge from the building they're in.
Editing and deleting an area
In Build mode, double-click a settlement, district or region to edit its outline. For a region, double-click a
spot inside it that isn't part of a settlement. Drag points to reshape it, click between
points to add one, and right-click a point to remove it. Delete removes the area after you confirm.
Deleting a settlement or district doesn't delete its buildings. They're just no longer part of it.
To change an area's name, type or profile, open it in Atlas → World.
The Settlement Wizard
Creating a settlement opens the Settlement Wizard, with three ways to fill it.
Begin from a template
A complete settlement in about a minute: buildings, streets, and the people who live and work there, ready to talk
to. Every genre has three templates:
Genre
Small
Medium
Large
Medieval Fantasy
Village
Market Town
City Quarter
Victorian
Village
Market Town
City Quarter
Modern Day
Small Town
Town
City Neighborhood
Neon Future
Neon Block
District
Downtown Sector
Sci-Fi: Colony
Outpost
Colony Town
Capital District
Small templates hold 8 to 30 buildings, medium 14 to 40, and large 24 to 40.
Template. Choose one and how many buildings you want. What you get shows the mix of homes and other
places. If your settlement is too small for a template, you're told how many buildings it can fit.
Layout. See the buildings arranged on your map. Adjust the spread, spacing and scatter, shuffle for a new
arrangement, then Lock layout once everything fits.
Residents. Name your settlement and meet who lives there. Swap a building for a Different building, give
people New names, or Shuffle everyone.
Place the buildings.
What you get: buildings with their interiors, residents with portraits, shop stock and music, streets, and a
settlement profile, briefing and exterior picture. If the settlement already had a profile and briefing, the
template's replace them.
Good to know:
Templates are free. Every portrait and interior is already painted, so placing one costs no credits.
Art styles. Template art is painted in the Default model's five styles: Oil Painting, Modern Anime, Retro Anime,
Adult Animation and Comic Book. Worlds set to a premium model still get Default-model art for template buildings.
Language. Template names, descriptions and characters are written in English.
People and buildings. Template residents are all human, whatever your world's Peoples setting, and template
buildings don't have rooms. Add rooms, or edit anyone, afterwards.
Variety. The same building won't appear twice in one settlement. Across your world, unused buildings are chosen
first, and you'll see a note when a template starts repeating ones you already have.
Describe it
Write a line about the place, and the AI writes its profile: who runs it, what it trades, what people argue about. It
writes the profile only. No buildings or people are placed. On the free plan this uses one of your daily AI actions.
Fill it in by hand
Write the profile yourself. A banner offers a template if you change your mind.
Region and district wizards
Creating a region or district opens a smaller wizard: Describe it to have the AI write the profile, or fill it in
by hand.
Settlement art
Open the settlement in Atlas → World to write an exterior image prompt and generate its picture (the cost is
on the button). Describe the streets, materials and light, not people. The picture appears:
behind conversations with your party when you're in town but not inside a building