Population and Slaves:
Your population is all your people that you have available to you. Typically the numbers are going to start very small, but will quickly grow throughout the course of the NES. The "civilized" zones such as your faction won't be the only survivors out there, and based on your faction traits and other stats, you'll be receiving a slow flow of immigrants and refugees from more wild territories. This will be included alongside "natural" growth as well.
Unlike previous NESes, the Population stat isn't a representation of a larger population or a base from which to create an army. Your Population IS your army. Therefore, it is very important to keep your people happy and loyal as well as provide them with state of the art weapons and good equipment for battle. You have absolute control over your people, send them wherever you choose. They live to serve your whims and the faction as a whole. As long as they stay loyal, that is.
Slaves tend to stay with the faction they are at, though not necessarily happily, simply because it's much safer there than out in the wild. (However, should slaves have the opportunity, some may escape.)
Food and Fields:
Food is arguable the most important aspect of the game, as your people cannot survive without food. Food is consumed in a ratio of 1 food: 1 population every turn. As such, the food stocks start off with will not last long. That is why there is a number of ways to produce food. Ever settlement has a base number of Fields associated to it. A Field is not necessarily an agricultural field, though generally will be, but merely a means to represent the amount of food a settlement can produce. (Can be a pasture, or fishery, or an actual farm field. Each field will have a terrain associated with it, and the amount of food produced will vary accordingly.
Terrain:
Grassland: 50 Spring 100 Summer 150 Autumn, 0 Winter
Coast: 45 Spring 95 Summer 145 Autumn, 0 Winter
Forests/Marsh: 40 Spring 90 Summer 140 Autumn, 0 Winter
Hills: 35 Spring 85 Summer 135 Autumn, 0 Winter
Mountains: 30 Spring 50 Summer 130 Autumn, 0 Winter
Should you run out of food, your population will starve, people will leave you, and your loyalty will fall. Heavily.
Military and Training:
These are the types of weapons that you can use or produce throughout the course of the opening NES. There are some others not listed here which you can eventually discover, and with time, produce for yourself. You can produce most of these using some of the scrap parts, which can be a very expensive, but rewarding enterprise. The list of goodies you can use to fight are in a below post. Lastly, if you don't have enough weapons for your whole population, it is assumed that they are using standard melee makeshift stuff, which is always the least effective tool.
Loyalty
The Loyalty of your population is loyalty towards the faction, not towards the ruler. A catastrophically low Loyalty number will result in civil war or even complete collapse if the ruler dies. Higher loyalty numbers make your soldiers more dedicated in combat and allow for a smoother transfer of power should your leader ever die. If your leader stays alive for a good long time, but has a low loyalty, people may "vote with their feet" by migrating to other factions or simply avoiding joining your faction in the first place.
Exploration and Scavenging
As frequently mentioned above a large amount of your time and energy would be best focused on sifting through the ruins of society. By sending out scouting parties you can locate promising ruins which could work well as a outpost or community. You could also find nice bits of salvage or caches of food. My recommendation is that you have at least one scouting party heading out somewhere every turn. Of course, there's always the small chance that they'll get hit by raiders or other factions, so make sure to give them some weapons to help them out. To Explore to Scavenge simply say in orders "Send __ people to Explore and/or Scavenge in _____ spot.
Outposts and Expansion
In this NES there is no "blobbing" across the map like giant amoebas. Instead, the civilizations of the post-apocalyptic future begin by uniting a variety of small towns and outposts. They usually begin as fortified positions or tribal communities but ultimately evolve into a part of a much larger nation. You can create outposts in one of two ways. If you know, based on independent research (i.e. Google Maps) that there's something worth claiming near your current position, go for it. You could also send out exploratory parties, and I will mention places of interest that you could colonize. Ultimately you will have to send part of your population to establish the new base, and hopefully they will reach their objective. There's always the chance they will be hit by raiders on the way, so once again, make sure they have weapons. Remember, it's not a proper settlement if there's no one living there.
Sending Orders:
Every turn, to do actions, you must send me orders. (This will be done via Email at
thomasberubegNES@gmail.com) Orders MUST be in the format for me to count them. They must have the TURN NUMBER and YOUR FACTION'S NAME in the title.
Next must come your current stats.
Only after that can your actions for the turn come in. Remember to be rather specific, but also keep in mind that your people also need to be at work getting food in. if you send your entire population out fighting, they wont be able to harvest the crops, and they will just rot in the fields. If you try to do too much, all of your actions will be much less effective.
, and have practically no job this summer, and so have found myself with alot more time than I know to do with. As such, I decided to run a NES, mostly to see if I could. I'll hopefully see this through the summer, and if possible, into Next Year. 
