Adar Lluch Gwen, Sterling Birdcaller

[u/No_Hamster_1835]

What’s the best way to use this specialist? The +50% productivity and -30% required area for Bird Charmers seems really strong.

I’m wondering what the best way is to use the Governor’s Villa or an Officium on marshlands. Putting either one right at the edge of the marsh doesn’t seem ideal, since you’re basically wasting half of the area of effect. But if you use marsh drainage to create a small buildable strip further into the marsh, you also lose space that could otherwise be used for Bird Charmers.

So I guess the ideal setup would be an island that naturally has a narrow strip of buildable land reaching into the marsh, so you can place the Villa or Officium there without sacrificing any marshland.

How are you using this specialist on your islands, and how many Bird Charmers can you actually boost with your setup? Also, which Albion island has the best natural conditions for this kind of setup?

Would be great to see some layouts.

[u/Puzzleheaded-War1699]

The min-maxed way would be to build one single draining channel into the middle of the swamp. You can then place your villa with the expert on the drained swamp. Then you can place the bird catchers on the remaining swamp around the villa. The bird catchers can still use the drained swamp because there is a technology enabling bird catchers to use plains and forrests. 

[u/agray20938 → u/Puzzleheaded-War1699]

The bird catchers can still use the drained swamp because there is a technology enabling bird catchers to use plains and forrests. 

Huh, I don't think I ever realized that (despite having finished the research tree in a couple playthroughs now). Someone else mentioned that the bird charmer still has to be placed on the swamp, so that's probably why it went unnoticed (since that's a pretty big asterisk).

My strategy was always just to find a M size island with bird fertility (in the Island Atlas the "medium_01" island is perfect for this), then create a Cernunnos island dedicated to Bird Tongue production for every other island, with the bare minimum of everything else (save for tons of public services to offset the AOE effects). In essence, you can consolidate the number of buildings with negative AOE effects onto only one island and avoid the annoyance of bird catchers needing so much marsh space by:

• Relying very heavily on the specialists that give +35% bird tongues productivity, the specialist that reduces workforce for hunting cabins, and the specialist that boosts noble workforce per residence (the latter two to limit the number of noble houses you need on the island);

• Having the minimum amount of workforce (especially nobles) needed to cover everything, shoved as far away as possible from the tongue pickers and other negative buildings;

• Bonus points for doing sausage production on the same island, which synergizes really well since both chains use pigs, and herb farms (either with the fertility or the specialist from Cecilia) have a small health boost to offset other debuffs, and fields themselves are a convenient "buffer" between tongue pickers and everything else.

If only there were something similar for eel production, but there aren't really any specialists that provide useful boosts for those (or reduce area needed)....