Combolands: Roguelike Citybuilder can look a little confusing when you first start playing. The tutorial does a pretty good job of explaining the basics, but if you skipped through parts of it or just want a better understanding of how everything works, there are a few important things worth knowing.
The game is built around placing buildings, creating combinations, and finding ways to turn simple interactions into much larger scoring engines. What looks like a small bonus early in a run can eventually become the foundation for your entire strategy.
In this guide, I’ll go over the basic interface, explain how the map and buildings work, and share some of the strategies I have found useful with the early guilds and Neutral buildings.
I’m still experimenting with different combinations myself, especially after the game’s changes, but these are the basics that should help you get started and understand what you should be looking for during a run.
Combolands Roguelike Citybuilder Beginner Guide – Map
When you first look at the game interface, there is quite a lot happening on the screen.
Let’s break down the important sections.
The Timeline
At the top middle of the screen, you will find the timeline.
Every time you place a building, one week passes.
The black lines show when your next due date is approaching, while the bar fills with a green progression line as weeks pass.
On the right side of the bar, you will see a clock with a number next to it.
This number represents the extra weeks you have available. The game uses these whenever you fail to automatically complete a milestone in time.
Overlays
Under the timeline, you will find the overlay options.
These let you display different information across the map, including:
- How many points each building scored during the previous week.
- The maximum possible score for a building.
- The current score multiplier on a building.
You can also highlight a specific type of building on the map.
This can be extremely useful when planning larger combinations and trying to figure out exactly where you should place your next building.
Consumables
In the top-right corner, you will find your consumables.
At the beginning of the game, you only have Gold, but eventually you can unlock additional resources and items.
These include things such as:
- Blueprints
- Potions
- Votes
- Rerolls
- Removes
- Building bans or similar removal options that prevent a building from appearing in your choices again
Blueprints are particularly useful because they give you a copy of a building that you can place without it costing you time.
Population, Milestone, and Remaining Weeks
In the bottom-left corner, you can see your main progress information.
This includes:
- Your current score, called Population.
- Your current goal, called a Milestone.
- The number of weeks you have remaining to reach that goal.
This is the information you will constantly be watching throughout a run.
Your Building Choices
At the bottom middle of the screen are your current building choices.
You can only choose one building each turn.
Very early in the game, you also unlock the ability to Skip, meaning you are not forced to select one of the available buildings every turn.
Skipping can become important when none of your current choices fit the strategy you are trying to build.
The Compendium
In the bottom-right corner, you will find the Compendium.
This lets you see all of the buildings you currently have access to and that may appear during your run.
Question marks represent buildings that you have not unlocked yet, so they will not appear in your available choices.
You can also choose to view only the guilds you are currently using for that run or look through all available guilds.
Understanding the Map
Every game uses a randomly generated map.
Once you unlock multiple guilds, you can preview the map before choosing which guilds you want to bring into a run.
This is important because map generation can heavily influence which strategies will work well.
For example, if a map has very little water, choosing the Fishing Guild probably isn’t going to be a great idea.
Tiles
The map is made up of squares, which I’ll call tiles.
A tile can have two things associated with it:
- Terrain
- A building
Terrain Types
The terrain can look slightly different depending on the generated map, but the main types are fairly easy to identify.
Ground
Ground usually looks like grass.
In many maps, it is bright green and covers most of the playable area.
Sand
Tiles that are completely sandy are Sand terrain.
Cliff
Cliffs form the border between Sand and Ground.
Ocean
Tiles completely covered in water are Ocean tiles.
Shoreline
The tiles between the Ocean and the land are Shoreline tiles.
Buildings
Buildings are anything placed on top of the terrain.
This includes obvious structures, but also things such as:
- Trees
- Flowers
- Herbs
- Rocks
All of these count as buildings.
When you hover over a building, you can see information about it.
For buildings already placed on the map, you will initially see the basic information. You can right-click to see additional details in the bottom-right area of your screen.
When you are choosing between buildings, the additional information is displayed automatically.
Understanding Building Information
Let’s use the Picker’s Hut as an example.
When looking at its preview, you can see several different pieces of information.
Building Name
The first thing displayed is the building’s name.
In this example, it is Picker’s Hut.
Building Types
Next, you can see its types:
- Agriculture
- Common
These categories can matter for other buildings and effects.
Triggers
Triggers tell you when a building will generate points.
For Picker’s Hut, the trigger is when any Berry Bush is within range.
Building Effect
The effect explains what happens when the building triggers.
Picker’s Hut gives +20 Population for every Berry Bush in range and transforms those Berry Bushes into Empty Bushes.
Terrain Requirements
You can also see which terrain the building can be placed on.
Picker’s Hut can be created on:
- Ground
Tags
Finally, the building has tags.
Picker’s Hut has:
- Healing
- Training
These tags are important because other buildings can interact with or trigger buildings based on their tags.
Additional Building Definitions
The bottom-right information section also explains other buildings mentioned in the description.
For example, Picker’s Hut mentions:
- Berry Bush
- Empty Bush
The description explains that Berry Bushes transform into Empty Bushes when triggered by Picker’s Hut.
Empty Bushes can eventually grow and transform again after four weeks.
There are also several general terms you need to understand.
What Does In Range Mean?
When something says In Range, you will see a yellow checkered highlight.
This highlight matches the range pattern shown when you are placing the building.
Buildings within range can also be highlighted to make the interaction easier to understand.
For example, Berry Bushes affected by Picker’s Hut can be highlighted in green and display the +20 bonus above them.
There is another important restriction as well.
Identical buildings cannot be placed within range of themselves.
So if you place a Picker’s Hut somewhere, you cannot place another Picker’s Hut inside its yellow range area or anywhere that would cause the new building’s range to overlap incorrectly.
What Does Adjacent Mean?
Adjacent is similar to In Range, but it uses a blue checkered highlight.
Normally, without any modifiers, Adjacent refers to the nine tiles touching the tile where the building is located.
However, there are several ways to increase or modify adjacency later in the game.
Because of that, the blue highlight can be very useful when planning combinations.
What Does Transform Mean?
Transform simply means that a building changes from one state into another.
Most transformations are now clearly explained in building descriptions.
Whenever something changes into another building or state, that counts as a transformation.
One-Time Triggers vs Ongoing Triggers
Not every building works the same way.
Some buildings trigger repeatedly and contribute to your ongoing Population generation.
Others only trigger once when you place them.
A Frontier building, for example, might give you 30 points per Herb immediately when placed.
That can be a strong early boost, but it doesn’t improve your long-term scoring engine in the same way as a building that keeps triggering.
However, there are ways to activate buildings again.
For example, the Herb Garden can trigger adjacent buildings with the Healing tag when it is placed.
This is where combinations start becoming important.
Strategy Basics
My first recommendation is simple:
Unlock the Store as soon as you can.
Once you understand the basic buildings, getting 40 coins during a run isn’t too difficult.
This is especially important because you cannot spend those coins until you unlock the Store anyway.
Every combination of guilds can create a different strategy.
There are also some very cheesy late-game strategies involving Neutral buildings.
Let’s go through the early guilds and some of the strategies you can start experimenting with.
Neutral Buildings
Neutral buildings are always available during your runs.
Some of them are among the best buildings in the game.
You might not have all of them unlocked when you first start playing, but they are worth understanding because many later strategies become much stronger once you have access to them.
I’m starting with Railroads because I think they are important to an enormous number of strategies.
Railroad
Railroads are rare, but they are incredibly powerful.
Any building adjacent to a Railroad also becomes adjacent to every other building connected around that Railroad.
You receive four Railroad pieces at a time.
Because of that, you need to either leave space available and plan around them or be prepared to remove existing buildings later.
Railroads are the foundation for some extremely strong combinations.
Well
The Well causes all adjacent crops to grow in one week.
This works extremely well with anything that transforms or harvests crops.
Combine it with a Railroad, and you can create a very effective engine.
Lamppost
Lamppost reduces the cooldown of adjacent buildings by 1.
With Railroads connecting your buildings, you can reduce trigger times across a much larger setup.
Getting important buildings down to a one-turn trigger cycle can be incredibly strong.
Scaffolding
Scaffolding gives +1 Mult to whatever is built on top of it.
This can be an excellent boost if you have enough turns available to set up your strategy properly.
Sewer
Sewer can be useful if you need to remove a large number of non-Neutral buildings.
Personally, I don’t use it very often, but it can be useful in runs where you need to completely reorganize your map.
Town Bell
Town Bell gives adjacent buildings +1 Range.
This is great for buildings that calculate their points based on what they can reach.
It becomes even stronger when you have placed important buildings close together and then connect them through Railroads and multiple Town Bells.
Eventually, those ranges can start overlapping in ways that dramatically improve your scoring.
Wall
Wall requires planning from the very beginning if you want to build around it.
It doesn’t do anything until buildings are completely enclosed inside the Wall.
That takes a long time to achieve.
If you’re planning to use Walls, I recommend creating an interior Wall around your most important point-generating buildings.
Then expand gradually.
Fully complete one enclosed section before starting another.
Trying to build everything at once can make the setup much harder to manage.
Plateau
Plateau allows you to place five Ground spaces.
Before unlocking the Fishing Guild, this is particularly useful because it lets you expand your playable area into the Ocean.
For some later guilds, the fact that these tiles count as Infrastructure can also be useful.
Conduit
When triggered, Conduit triggers up to two buildings within range.
Its range is large, and with a few Lampposts, you can potentially get it covering almost the entire map.
Connect it to a Railroad and a Way Station, and you can start creating a very powerful trigger engine.
Plaza
Plaza lets you ignore range placement restrictions for adjacent buildings.
This is great for range-focused strategies where you benefit from having more buildings overlapping.
And honestly, that applies to a lot of builds.
Way Station
Way Station triggers one adjacent building every five weeks and also counts as a Railroad.
When you build other Neutral buildings adjacent to it, its cooldown is reduced.
That means you can trigger your other buildings much more frequently while expanding your railway network.
Eventually, you can potentially get important triggers happening every other turn.
Post Office
Whenever the building directly below the Post Office triggers, the building directly above it will also trigger.
You can use this for a controlled trigger chain.
Or, place a Conduit above it and potentially trigger two random buildings instead.
With Railroads and Lampposts involved, you can create setups where connected buildings are essentially triggering every turn.
Agriculture Guild Strategies
Agriculture has several strategies you can start working with immediately.
Personally, I found Agriculture to be one of the most reliable guilds in the game.
I haven’t played as much after the later changes and difficulty adjustments, but it remains one of my favorite options.
Honey, Honey, Honey
Apiaries are the core of this strategy.
They have a huge range, and all three of the starting Agriculture Heirlooms can improve them.
The very first Heirloom you unlock is also particularly good for this type of build.
For this setup, you generally want a mixture of:
- Apiaries
- Flowers
- Gardener’s Cottages that spread Flowers
- Sunflower Fields
The goal is to build around the large range and interactions created by your Apiaries.
Sunflower Strategy
I generally love using Sunflowers.
Sunflowers count several useful early-game buildings, including:
- Berry Bushes
- Herb Gardens
- Orchards
- Wheat Fields
This means you can start placing those buildings early and know they can continue helping your income later.
Picker’s Hut is particularly good during the early game, so you don’t have to feel like those early placements are being wasted.
Frontier Guild Strategies
The Frontier Guild mostly focuses on Nature, particularly Trees, while also having some interactions with Medicine.
Campfires
Campfires are excellent.
You don’t get the Heirloom that buffs them early, but they are still useful because you can build over their Ash without needing a Remove.
The basic trade-off is essentially:
You lose access to that location for five turns, but gain +1 Mult to all adjacent buildings.
That can be extremely valuable when placed around important scoring buildings.
Herbs Strategy
Long term, at least until you unlock more Neutral options, Herbs don’t seem like a strategy that will carry you all the way through the late game by themselves.
However, they can be very useful early for generating a solid amount of points.
Your Herbalist only scores when:
- You place it.
- You place an Herb Garden next to it.
Assuming you don’t remove any Herb Gardens, that gives you a maximum of nine triggers.
However, there is an important bonus.
You receive a Reroll every time you play an Herb Garden.
That can be a lifesaver during a run.
Once you unlock Railroads, you can start chaining adjacency and triggering multiple buildings more easily.
With the first Heirloom, Life Herb, providing a +0.3 Mult bonus whenever you trigger more than one building, this strategy may be able to ramp much faster.
Add Shamans that trigger when you place an Herb Garden, and you can start building something much more interesting.
Forest Management Strategy
Forest Management focuses on creating, maintaining, and using Forests.
Some important buildings include:
- Hunting Lodge — Scores every three weeks based on Forests in range.
- Forester — Creates a Forest within range.
- Woodcutter — Removes a Forest within range for 80 points.
- Stone Lantern — Gives points whenever Nature is created adjacent.
Prayer Flags can make Trees count as Frontier buildings.
If you can also get one or two Groves, Shamans can help retrigger your setup.
This gives you several ways to create and repeatedly benefit from Forest interactions.
Martial Guild Strategies
Martial is heavily focused around removing buildings.
I would generally only choose this guild when the map has a decent amount of Sand because many Martial buildings require it.
Archery Strategy
Archery Range gives points for every Woodworking or Husbandry building.
This works nicely with Frontier buildings.
Some useful Frontier buildings include:
- Hunting Lodge
- Forester
- Woodcutter
- Trapper’s Lodge
- Watch Tower
Combining these guilds can give your Archery Range plenty of buildings to score from.
Sparring Dummy Strategy
Sparring Dummy triggers all Training-tagged buildings within range and also gives you a Remove token.
Some currently available buildings that count include:
Martial Buildings
- Barracks
- Training Ring
- Archery Range
- Jousting Arena
Frontier Buildings
- Herbalist
This creates an interesting interaction with Guard Tower.
Guard Tower triggers when a building within range is removed, causing an adjacent building to trigger.
So you can place a Sparring Dummy, get all of those Training triggers, then remove the Dummy on the next turn and place another one.
Then repeat the process.
I like placing a couple of Lampposts nearby to increase the range.
And if you connect Guard Tower to a Railroad, the strategy can become even more effective.
Healing Strategy
Healing works especially well alongside the Sparring Dummy strategy.
Field Hospital buffs adjacent Healing and Training buildings.
With Railroads connecting your setup, that can potentially affect a very large number of buildings.
There is one thing you need to keep in mind, though.
Railroads cannot be built on Sand.
So if you’re combining Martial strategies with Railroads and Healing buildings, you will need careful planning or use Plateaus to create usable Ground tiles.
Combolands becomes much easier to understand once you stop looking at buildings as individual point generators.
The strongest strategies come from finding interactions and building engines where one placement triggers, buffs, transforms, or connects several other buildings.
Neutral buildings, especially Railroads, can completely change how your guild strategies work.
Agriculture gives you reliable early and long-term scoring options, Frontier offers strong Nature and Forest combinations, while Martial opens up strategies built around removals and repeated triggers.
My biggest advice when starting out is to experiment.
Look at the map before choosing your guilds, pay attention to terrain requirements, and don’t be afraid to skip a building choice when it doesn’t help your current strategy.
The more you play, the more you’ll start recognizing combinations that can turn a simple group of buildings into a massive scoring engine.