Yeah, I have to admit I'm a bit lost myself. It's hard to tell when a resource is going to be close enough to a town to use, and when it's not. Half the time I end up with a town stuck at hamlet or village level because it can't build a farm/orchard/whatever even though the resource is inside the red circle...

I won a game today, but I have no idea how.

If a resource isn't right next to the town yet, right now you have to "snake" upgrades to it. What you do is build a building on the side where the resource is. Once that is done, you can build another building to the side of that, and work your way over to the resource.

There was a developer suggestion about making this easier, but right now that is how you do it. Welcome to beta.

I tried snaking houses out to things, but it doesn't seem to work. I built right up against the side of a wheat field and it still wouldn't let me build a farm there.

Also I seem to win half the games I play just by not dying. The enemy sovereigns seem to get themselves killed while creeping.

did you research the ability to build a farm?

do you have enough gold?

do you have enough "tiles" left? (the level of your city determines how many tiles it can support, if you maxed it out you need to either level the city, or demolish something. It is possible to build tiles that will prevent the city from leveling at all, and require demolishing and building something else, like huts, to allow the city to level up).

I have noticed something similar with shards... made me place another city... due to a bug where each city multiplies your upkeep instead of adding to it that means you quickly bankrupt yourself

man i found this easy to get into and play but it crashs a bit and some auto saves fail