In Pax Autocratica, unlocking a facility takes almost nothing. You spend a handful of in-game credits, wait a few seconds for research to finish, and the building becomes available to place in your settlement. The real decision is order. You will eventually construct everything, but the buildings you set up in the first hours decide how fast your workforce grows, how long your expeditions last, and whether your base stalls when threats scale up.
Quick answer: Research and build in this order: Barracks (with spares), Prison Cell, Food Hall and Kitchen, Wood Harvester and Deep Mining Drill, then the Armor and Weapon Research Center.
Early build priority for a Pax Autocratica colony
Each of these facilities feeds the next. Housing lets you hold captured workers, prisons convert those captures into labor, food keeps everyone working, harvesters turn that labor into materials, and the research center turns materials into better gear. Build them out of order and one link breaks the chain.
| Facility | Main role | Why it comes first |
|---|---|---|
| Barracks | Houses workers | Provides beds and starter gear for expeditions |
| Prison Cell | Holds and converts enemies | Turns captures into new workers |
| Food Hall and Kitchen | Feeds workers | Keeps the hunger bar topped and boosts stats |
| Wood Harvester and Deep Mining Drill | Farms resources | Automates wood and mineral income |
| Armor and Weapon Research Center | Crafts gear | Enables longer expeditions and better equipment |
Barracks: build one, then build spares
Barracks are where your workers live, and this is almost certainly the first thing you place. A single Barracks holds up to two troops, so plan for more than one from the start. The early game is a numbers game around capturing enemies and putting them to work, and every new body needs a place to stay.
Building a Barracks also has a side benefit. IntelliExplorer hands you weapons and basic gear once it is up, which gives you enough to start running Expeditions. Keeping a couple of spare Barracks in reserve means you never have to pause recruitment because there is nowhere to house a new arrival.
Prison Cell: turn captured enemies into workers
Growing your workforce mostly means capturing enemies during expeditions and converting them at home. That conversion happens in Prison Cells. Without one, you have nowhere to hold or process a captured enemy, so this belongs right behind your first Barracks.
A Prison Cell opens up several interrogation options and can even refine captives into organic matter later on. One detail trips up new players. Captured prisoners land in your holding by default, and you have to manually move them into a cell before conversion can begin.
Food Hall and Kitchen: keep the hunger bar topped
The Food Hall stores the food you gather and keeps your workers’ hunger bar filled. As long as stock is available, workers eat automatically when they get hungry, and a fed colony is easier to steer through its important stats. You do need to check in from time to time and refill empty slots.
The Kitchen works as an extension of the Food Hall. It lets you cook dishes that grant stat boosts, and cooked food satiates workers more effectively than raw materials do. Pairing the two early keeps morale and productivity steady before you push into resource farming.
Note: Loyalty, fear, and morale all respond to how well your citizens are fed, so treat the Food Hall as a management tool, not just a supply dump.
Wood Harvester and Deep Mining Drill: automate materials
Once your workers are housed and fed, put them to work. The Deep Mining Drill and the Wood Harvester farm resources automatically, and both come with built-in inventory to hold what they produce. If you plan to leave them running for long stretches, add a storage building so their output does not cap out.
Upgrading either machine lets you assign more workers to it. Check each worker’s production stats before assigning roles, since matching the right worker to the right job increases how much you pull in per cycle.
Armor and Weapon Research Center: gear for rising threat levels
After a few expeditions, you will have collected blueprints and stockpiled enough resources to craft better equipment. That is the moment to bring up the Armor and Weapon Research Center. Stronger gear lets you stay out longer on the next run, which loops back into more captures and more materials.
Watch for duplicate blueprints. If you see multiple copies of the same armor, one of them will be a higher level than the rest, so craft that version first when your resources allow it. Prioritizing the higher-level piece keeps you ahead of the increasing threat levels you meet deeper into the Tyris System.
Follow this sequence and your colony snowballs the way the loop intends. Housing and prisons expand your labor pool, food keeps that labor productive, harvesters convert it into a steady material income, and the research center turns those materials into the gear that carries you through tougher expeditions. Everything else you unlock later slots in on top of a base that already runs itself. Pax Autocratica is available in Early Access on Steam.
