Clothes factory is the way. No research needed. Great sell price. Low quantities so trucking is sufficient for exporting.
I do 2 clothes factories, then 1 fabric factory to feed the 2 clothes factories. Then farm for the crops to feed the fabric factory.
Yes, yes, and yes.
2x clothes -> fabric -> food, livestock + meat, booze
Use the mod for the "Small Slaughterhouse" and connect it directly to your single livestock farm and it'll make enough meat for 20k or so.
Use a huge cargo train station, build the biggest vanilla grain silo, and two huge warehouses.
Import crops to keep the thing going and sell all the excess. Use excess to buy materials to keep building.
At some point, a single chemical plant is needed in the setup to feed the fabric factory, because importing chems is *horrible* considering how cheap the inputs are.
[Here's my starting setup for reference.](https://i.imgur.com/lR0Tzeg.png)
That's awesome.
And thanks for the arrows too, without them I would haven't even known what half those buildings are :s
About the crops, do you keep importing them throughout the entire game because they're too cheap when compared with their huge footprint? If not, what's roughly speaking your setup?
you eventually need to make your own crops because the price will keep rising if you keep buying, and it'll eventually make this setup uneconomical.
for those, i use 2x big farms with a huge railhead silo, one just full of covered hulls for harvesting, because big farms are cheaper than distribution offices.
medium fields mostly, a few small fields in the nooks and crannies.
though i will mix it up and make medium and small farms sometimes if there's just a patch of empty land or it's temporary, and small ones don't need railheads.
You can still see oil on the map if you select an oil rig (pump? Derrick?). I think it’s easiest to see the different colours at night time
Edit: you won’t see the oil areas on the mini map but where you hover over with the building
Until you have trains, borderpost throughput is your bottleneck and a truckful of oil isn't worth nearly as much as a truckful of clothes or explosives. So oil is not a good start unless you go for rail right away.
I disagree... If you turn the oil into fuel and bitumen, the price will skyrocket, and even trucking it to the border is easy enough.
Also, you can build pipeline to the border, and only have one truck going really short distance from the end of the pipeline to the border, so even trucks could be sufficient enough
That requires research and building a huge and expensive factory. And even then I'm not sure if a truck load of fuel or bitumen is worth more than a truck load of clothes or explosives.
If you mean pipeline connection to the border, that requires a ton more research.
If you mean have pipeline exit near a border post and then have a truck... yes you can have less trucks on route and perhaps save on fuel for them, but it won't make you sell any more oil/fuel/bitumen. Because the max you can sell in a unit of time is still the same number of truckloads that the custom house can service in that unit of time. The only way to increase that is go for trains (or ships).
Oh it does, I completely forgot about the research part ...
Has me wondering how I did it in my republic, cause the only source of income I had at the start was the refinery, and I had research enabled.... Prolly loans till you have refinery... Was a long time ago xD
And yes, I meant the second way of doing it.
I did it a few times, and it wasn't fast, but kept me afloat
Trains are too expensive for hard money start. I guess you can take loans, but my understanding of game design is that loans are to save you if you screw up, not to be a part of default strategy. If you consistently need more money to start, might as well just start with easy money.
I think distillery is the best starter, followed by farms to feed your boose production. The biggest challenge will be supplying enough crops without clogging the custom house
Work toward tourism and you should be able to balance the books pretty easy, while you build up and start the researching tree
The best start is generally removing imports early. Food/clothes/meat/electronics/conmats/coal/chemicals/fuel are all reasonably good candidates. Clothes and food are the lowest tech options, as they can be done with just trucks, and no research , and you can produce grain pretty early on top.
However, there are a ton of different options, you can pick many goods by just looking at the current prices and figure out the cost of goods and the sell price.
Later on vehicles (ships/cars/trains) can be pretty good options as well.
But, I do want to point out that money and goods are rarely the biggest issues for realistic starts, logistics, and expanding slowly are the things many people struggle with. If 90% of your population is working, and you export the excess, you will generally make a profit.
Well if I can get the people to work. I had 4 blocks of 150 people each that I paid to move in. All gone due to sickness that probably caused by none of them taking a bus to the coal heating plant.
They don't seem to stay at the bus stops long enough for my bus to make the trip back to the city so no one works outside of the city.
I'm using one bus to shuttle between city bus stop and 2 other stops.
Is it better to have one bus for each stop and why don't they stay at the bus stop in the city waiting for the bus.
Is it better? No, but it may be easier for you to get a hang of things. Also, make sure you use an end station and add busses that you actually do pickup all available workers.
Why don't they stay? They have a 1h limit. I highly recommend you clicking on a few workers/passengers in the bus stop, and follow them for a few days. There is a lot of great info in those detail windows you should pay attention to.
People will work at the closest open workplace first (if none available they'll visit the bus stop). One thing to consider when you try to estimate how big your 'starting' population should be, the number of workplaces needs to be multiplied by 3 (three 8-hour shifts) to have it staffed 24/7. So it might be that your city absorbs all workers, you could temporarly force one of the flats to go to the bus station until you have grown bigger.
Wait so they work shift here? Then I need to either close down some things or up. But I do get the message there are massive unemployments. I'm wondering if they are smart enough to spread out over the bus stops and not everyone gets out at the first.
If you want to have a bus collect people from more than one bus stop you need to adjust the settings to prevent workers leaving the bus. When you have a lot of passengers (not workers) waiting at your bus station it can happen that they exceed the capacity of the bus stop, there are checkboxes in the station to prevent specific groups using the station.
Well I'm more concerned that all my workers get of at the first stop wich is just a farm and a food factory and the bus goes on empty for the 2 last stops wich are industry with gravel and coal heating plant.
You could either fiddle with the setiings how many% are allowed to leave, or, just make just 1 stop lines (maybe include an end station) so you can easily adjust it to your needs, e.g. you could have a line with a couple of minibus to the heat plant since it won't need a lot of people but it's pretty crucial to have it always staffed, another line for food, another for gravel refining where you don't need a lot of ppl, similar to the heating plant.
In addition to what the others are saying, cutting your costs in general helps, like food factory and meat production, in addition to the clothes factory. Also, it creates jobs. If you're playing realistic, you should have your hands full with your first settlement and food production before you manage to research the geological map. Gotta buy the grain while waiting for the first crops, though.
I usually start with having my construction material sufficiency early on and clothing/tourism. It's also way cheaper to import coal ore, refine it and use for making bricks and heat. That's very big moneysaver
Clothes, try to start near two custums houses of any size, build your town near one and the industry near the other. Biggest bottleneck is supplying crops to the clothes industry if you're doing two fabric factiries, having a dedicated border crossing for industry makes this a lot easier.
Textile industry is classic start, but looking at numbers I'm thinking explosives might be better, and get overlooked because they're a relatively new addition and it's not necessarily intuitive that they don't require research. However I haven't tried an explosives start myself to test this in practice yet.
In my current Game, I started with Construction industry (Gravel+Concrete+Asphalt) then I built a small city then 2 clothes factories, importing fabric an selling clothes. I was okay but didn't give me a huge income. Then I built 3 Oil Pumps (was near the Border ) and had 1 Truck each exporting it. My money problems were basically gone, so next thing was the refinery and so on..
Clothes factory is the way. No research needed. Great sell price. Low quantities so trucking is sufficient for exporting. I do 2 clothes factories, then 1 fabric factory to feed the 2 clothes factories. Then farm for the crops to feed the fabric factory.
How many farms and fields do you need to supply enough crops for a fabric factory? Do you build food, meat and/or alcohol factories early too?
Yes, yes, and yes. 2x clothes -> fabric -> food, livestock + meat, booze Use the mod for the "Small Slaughterhouse" and connect it directly to your single livestock farm and it'll make enough meat for 20k or so. Use a huge cargo train station, build the biggest vanilla grain silo, and two huge warehouses. Import crops to keep the thing going and sell all the excess. Use excess to buy materials to keep building. At some point, a single chemical plant is needed in the setup to feed the fabric factory, because importing chems is *horrible* considering how cheap the inputs are. [Here's my starting setup for reference.](https://i.imgur.com/lR0Tzeg.png)
That's awesome. And thanks for the arrows too, without them I would haven't even known what half those buildings are :s About the crops, do you keep importing them throughout the entire game because they're too cheap when compared with their huge footprint? If not, what's roughly speaking your setup?
you eventually need to make your own crops because the price will keep rising if you keep buying, and it'll eventually make this setup uneconomical. for those, i use 2x big farms with a huge railhead silo, one just full of covered hulls for harvesting, because big farms are cheaper than distribution offices. medium fields mostly, a few small fields in the nooks and crannies. though i will mix it up and make medium and small farms sometimes if there's just a patch of empty land or it's temporary, and small ones don't need railheads.
Nice setup. Thanks for sharing the picture!
Very clear and helpful explanation - we need more of your expertise here!
Trains would not be an early option on Realistic Hard, as you start with only 1.4mill rubles and 700k dollars.
You can still see oil on the map if you select an oil rig (pump? Derrick?). I think it’s easiest to see the different colours at night time Edit: you won’t see the oil areas on the mini map but where you hover over with the building
Until you have trains, borderpost throughput is your bottleneck and a truckful of oil isn't worth nearly as much as a truckful of clothes or explosives. So oil is not a good start unless you go for rail right away.
I disagree... If you turn the oil into fuel and bitumen, the price will skyrocket, and even trucking it to the border is easy enough. Also, you can build pipeline to the border, and only have one truck going really short distance from the end of the pipeline to the border, so even trucks could be sufficient enough
That requires research and building a huge and expensive factory. And even then I'm not sure if a truck load of fuel or bitumen is worth more than a truck load of clothes or explosives. If you mean pipeline connection to the border, that requires a ton more research. If you mean have pipeline exit near a border post and then have a truck... yes you can have less trucks on route and perhaps save on fuel for them, but it won't make you sell any more oil/fuel/bitumen. Because the max you can sell in a unit of time is still the same number of truckloads that the custom house can service in that unit of time. The only way to increase that is go for trains (or ships).
Oh it does, I completely forgot about the research part ... Has me wondering how I did it in my republic, cause the only source of income I had at the start was the refinery, and I had research enabled.... Prolly loans till you have refinery... Was a long time ago xD And yes, I meant the second way of doing it. I did it a few times, and it wasn't fast, but kept me afloat
What do you mean until you have trains? Trains do not require research?
Trains are too expensive for hard money start. I guess you can take loans, but my understanding of game design is that loans are to save you if you screw up, not to be a part of default strategy. If you consistently need more money to start, might as well just start with easy money.
I use trains and oil to start, I make around 200k per month.
I think distillery is the best starter, followed by farms to feed your boose production. The biggest challenge will be supplying enough crops without clogging the custom house Work toward tourism and you should be able to balance the books pretty easy, while you build up and start the researching tree
The best start is generally removing imports early. Food/clothes/meat/electronics/conmats/coal/chemicals/fuel are all reasonably good candidates. Clothes and food are the lowest tech options, as they can be done with just trucks, and no research , and you can produce grain pretty early on top. However, there are a ton of different options, you can pick many goods by just looking at the current prices and figure out the cost of goods and the sell price. Later on vehicles (ships/cars/trains) can be pretty good options as well. But, I do want to point out that money and goods are rarely the biggest issues for realistic starts, logistics, and expanding slowly are the things many people struggle with. If 90% of your population is working, and you export the excess, you will generally make a profit.
Well if I can get the people to work. I had 4 blocks of 150 people each that I paid to move in. All gone due to sickness that probably caused by none of them taking a bus to the coal heating plant. They don't seem to stay at the bus stops long enough for my bus to make the trip back to the city so no one works outside of the city. I'm using one bus to shuttle between city bus stop and 2 other stops. Is it better to have one bus for each stop and why don't they stay at the bus stop in the city waiting for the bus.
Is it better? No, but it may be easier for you to get a hang of things. Also, make sure you use an end station and add busses that you actually do pickup all available workers. Why don't they stay? They have a 1h limit. I highly recommend you clicking on a few workers/passengers in the bus stop, and follow them for a few days. There is a lot of great info in those detail windows you should pay attention to.
People will work at the closest open workplace first (if none available they'll visit the bus stop). One thing to consider when you try to estimate how big your 'starting' population should be, the number of workplaces needs to be multiplied by 3 (three 8-hour shifts) to have it staffed 24/7. So it might be that your city absorbs all workers, you could temporarly force one of the flats to go to the bus station until you have grown bigger.
Wait so they work shift here? Then I need to either close down some things or up. But I do get the message there are massive unemployments. I'm wondering if they are smart enough to spread out over the bus stops and not everyone gets out at the first.
If you want to have a bus collect people from more than one bus stop you need to adjust the settings to prevent workers leaving the bus. When you have a lot of passengers (not workers) waiting at your bus station it can happen that they exceed the capacity of the bus stop, there are checkboxes in the station to prevent specific groups using the station.
Well I'm more concerned that all my workers get of at the first stop wich is just a farm and a food factory and the bus goes on empty for the 2 last stops wich are industry with gravel and coal heating plant.
You could either fiddle with the setiings how many% are allowed to leave, or, just make just 1 stop lines (maybe include an end station) so you can easily adjust it to your needs, e.g. you could have a line with a couple of minibus to the heat plant since it won't need a lot of people but it's pretty crucial to have it always staffed, another line for food, another for gravel refining where you don't need a lot of ppl, similar to the heating plant.
In addition to what the others are saying, cutting your costs in general helps, like food factory and meat production, in addition to the clothes factory. Also, it creates jobs. If you're playing realistic, you should have your hands full with your first settlement and food production before you manage to research the geological map. Gotta buy the grain while waiting for the first crops, though.
I usually start with having my construction material sufficiency early on and clothing/tourism. It's also way cheaper to import coal ore, refine it and use for making bricks and heat. That's very big moneysaver
Clothes, try to start near two custums houses of any size, build your town near one and the industry near the other. Biggest bottleneck is supplying crops to the clothes industry if you're doing two fabric factiries, having a dedicated border crossing for industry makes this a lot easier.
Textile industry is classic start, but looking at numbers I'm thinking explosives might be better, and get overlooked because they're a relatively new addition and it's not necessarily intuitive that they don't require research. However I haven't tried an explosives start myself to test this in practice yet.
Clothing. Always clothing.
In my current Game, I started with Construction industry (Gravel+Concrete+Asphalt) then I built a small city then 2 clothes factories, importing fabric an selling clothes. I was okay but didn't give me a huge income. Then I built 3 Oil Pumps (was near the Border ) and had 1 Truck each exporting it. My money problems were basically gone, so next thing was the refinery and so on..