Pax Autocratica Base Building — Layout, Workloads, Chains

Three modes, three number keys

Mode	Key	Use
Construction mode	`1`	Place new structures.
Relocation mode	`2`	Move something you placed badly. Cheaper than rebuilding.
Destruction mode	`3`	Remove structures.

All of this happens in first person, standing in your colony, which is the reason layout mistakes feel worse here than in a top-down builder — you have to walk through them.

Read the placement panel before you commit

At placement the game shows you three things people routinely skip:

Construction workload — the labour cost. High-workload buildings will occupy your constructors for a long time.
Building size — an explicit footprint in metres. The Execution Gallows is 10m × 10m × 15m.
Required materials — with a have/need ratio per material.

Building placement showing the Execution Gallows with construction quantity, workload, footprint and three material requirements — Everything you need to decide is on this panel: quantity, workload, footprint, and the three materials with have/need ratios. Official screenshot © Multiverse

The chains that must not break

Buildings are grouped by the job type that staffs them. These are the ten job categories:

Mining Logging Gathering Planting Breeding Cooking Research Production Construction Hauling

Chain	Sequence	Breaks when
Food	Greenhouse / Animal Farm → Kitchen → fed population	Nobody is assigned to the Kitchen. The alert points there, not at the farm.
Ore	Deep Drill Tower / Titanite Mine → Ore Refinery → materials	Refinery is unstaffed and raw ore piles up unusable.
Wood	Tendril Tree → Wood Harvest Plant → materials	Same shape as ore.
Weapons	materials → Weapon Research Center → blueprints crafted	You only built one. The game explicitly suggests building several to run different items in parallel.
Armor	materials → Armor Workshop → gear	Competing for the same materials as weapons.
Research	citizens → Command Center / Victory Square → points/day	Research staff got pulled onto an expedition.

The Assign Work screen showing colony buildings grouped by job category with filled slot counts — The Assign Work list is also your chain audit. Every building shows its category and how many slots are staffed. Official screenshot © Multiverse

Full list on the building database.

Build several of the same thing

The Crafting screen states it outright: "Build multiple Weapon Research Center buildings to craft different items, and combine multiple crafting modes to create an automated production line."

That is the closest thing this game has to a factory-automation layer, and it is easy to miss because nothing stops you running a single workshop forever. Two refineries and two weapon centres change the pace of the mid game more than any single upgrade.

Frequently asked

How do you move a building in Pax Autocratica?

Relocation mode, bound to key 2. Construction is 1 and Destruction is 3.

What is construction workload?

The labour cost of a structure, shown at placement. The Execution Gallows, for example, lists a workload of 114 alongside its material costs.

What should I build first?

The food pair — a Greenhouse or Animal Farm plus a Kitchen — with citizens assigned to both. See the beginner guide.

Base building and layout