The resolve engine
How villager resolve rises and falls, when villagers walk out, and how resolve turns into reputation.
The Resolve bar is shared by each species, while individual villagers carry the effects that determine its target. Each species has its own initial Resolve and a base maximum of 50. Break intervals and hunger tolerance are separate mechanics. An unfed break adds hunger stacks, eating clears them, and a villager dies when its stacks exceed its species’ tolerance. Effects can change the number of stacks added and the break interval.
| Species | Starts at | Caps at | Base break interval | Hunger stacks tolerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human | 15 | 50 | 120s | 6 |
| Beaver | 10 | 50 | 120s | 6 |
| Frog | 10 | 50 | 150s | 8 |
| Lizard | 5 | 50 | 100s | 12 |
| Bat | 5 | 50 | 100s | 4 |
| Fox | 5 | 50 | 120s | 3 |
| Harpy | 5 | 50 | 100s | 4 |
What moves it
Every villager carries a list of active resolve effects. Met needs push their species up. Hostility, an unlit hearth and the penalty for favouring somebody else push it down. The species average of those effects sets a target.
Resolve moves toward its target rather than jumping to it. The gap determines the change. The species share the same base upward rate, but have different base downward rates. Lizards and bats resist a drop most, while frogs sit between them and the faster-falling humans, beavers, foxes and harpies. Effects can alter the decline rate.
When villagers leave
A species starts leaving once its resolve reaches zero. A timer then runs for 60 seconds, and the deeper the resolve goes the faster that timer moves.
| Resolve | Timer speed |
|---|---|
| down to -15 | normal |
| -15 to -25 | twice as fast |
| below -25 | three times as fast |
When the timer fills, the villager with the weakest personal resolve is the one who walks out. Pulling resolve back above zero stops the timer, but the progress it already made only resets after a full minute out of the leaving state. Resolve below 5 is the warning band the game colours red.
Favouring
Favouring one species adds a bonus to it and a penalty to every other species you have. It stops on its own when the favoured species has nobody left or is the only species in the settlement, and there is a 60 second cooldown before you can switch again.
Resolve into reputation
A species begins generating Reputation when its rounded Resolve reaches its current threshold and it has enough villagers. The base thresholds are 15 for lizards, foxes and harpies, 12 for bats, 25 for frogs, and 30 for beavers and humans. Reputation already earned by that species raises its threshold. The rate uses its Resolve, population and species-specific coefficients, with effects applied and a per-species cap; it is not simply one tenth of Resolve. Resolve by species lists those figures side by side.
Reputation is one of the two ways a settlement ends. The other is the Queen's impatience, covered in Citadel and Prestige.