"Initially, you’re limited to 11 settlers, but if you reach 6 Charisma, you can assign a local leader to the Sanctuary, who will then raise happiness and unlock more options for your settlement."

*Facepalm* No, the amount of settlers you can have is 10 + your total charisma (max of 11 (10 stat + bobblehead)) for a range of 11 to 21. The local leader perk lets you do supply lines between settlements at 1 point and at 2 points, build shops.

You increase happiness through having enough food, water, shelter (they don't seem to like sleeping in the rain), beds, and defending them from attacks (build your defenses), and even higher with the help of shops.

You can't assign a local leader...you can assign a PROVISIONER to establish a supply line. Building walls is also a waste of time and resources. Starting out you should be more concerned about using those supplies to establish food, water, and shelter for beds. Some settlements are large and walling off the whole place does not add to your defense rating. You get many settlements in the game, and resources quickly become spread thin.

The turrets within the thumbnail also should not be on the ground; they will only get bashed by melee attackers and their fire is also more often interrupted by obstacles.
The guardpost there is also a waste of manpower as it is more beneficial to assign him to a farm or a shop, and let the turrets do the work (they provide much more of a defense bonus anyway and puts your settler out of the line of fire.)

Also one tip that I haven't seen anyone post: If you see the happiness going down within a settlement, and there is enough food, water, and beds for each villager -- along with a defense rating greater than the combined food and water total -- then chances are some of the newer villagers did not auto-assign themselves to a bed, and you have to do it for them the same way you would assign a villager to a task.

I would also recommend against building the best water purifier you can buy unless you need adhesive, because it will only require you to build MORE defenses to accommodate.

Just some tips nobody told me out of the dozen advice articles I read.

Creative?! 🤣🤣🤣

They need to look at Morrowind and see what the progression should have been from there instead of the regression we got with the next 2 games. They weren’t horrible games but they could have been so much more.

Fallout 4 just felt too streamlined and accessible to me, the perk system was not as fun as it was in Fallout 3, not saying Fallout 3 didn't have issues but 4 just felt like a complete step back.

So the part where you just sold the same games for the last 10 years while you focused on 76 and merch, was not a reset from the "creative" aspect eh? How very Todd of you.

I bought Fallout 4 (I loved Fallout 3) at launch and I couldn't bring myself to finish it or even get close to finishing it. It was soooo damned boring and bland. I played on a very hard difficulty and I had hundreds of stimpaks. One of the only games I've played for a while and not ended up finishing it. I hated it. Just flat out hated it.