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If you want a reliable source of currency, setting up oil pumps and then sending that sweet liquid gold out by train is usually a VERY good ROI, and also requires exactly zero workers. And now, even if you have fires enabled, you can attach a landing pad to a fire station and use a helicopter to put the fires out (though it should still be within a couple kilometers). I consider it kind of gamey, so I tend not to do it, but it's perfectly valid and acceptable. Alternately, you need to understand that your biggest limiting factor is going to be throughput at the border for import and export. Only one truck can enter or exit at a time, and the rate at which cargo is loaded and unloaded is relatively slow. While you can export bulk cargo, it's usually not worth the cost until you've got the infrastructure already in place to make it a minor source of additional income. What you need to do instead is find more valuable resources to export, since they'll take the same time per pound but you'll get much, much more value as you do. One thing that I've done as a starting industry is to make a clothing factory, import sufficient cloth to start running it, and export the clothes. The difference in price ends up being something like 2.3x, and the electricity cost is negligible. Two tons of textiles makes one ton of clothes, meaning that you're getting some additional rubles to reflect the capital investment and the labor that's put in, along with transport costs. There's other industries with other exchange rates, and if you're not trying to do a Cosmonaut playthrough then placing a factory near the border and auto importing the inputs at the factory can be very advantageous, especially for industries like alcohol that take a relatively large amount of wheat and distill it to a much smaller tonnage of more easily portable liquor. E: page snipe. I'm very excited that you can place buildings even closer to roads now 
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Oct 12, 2021 08:39
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Dig oil -> refine -> ship out all the bitumen, and enough fuel so your tanks don’t fill up (which would stop the bitumen production). Unless things have changed a lot, that’s a nearly instant way to print tons of money.
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Oct 12, 2021 13:17
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If you have a water border, transporting oil (and oil products) by ship is a great way to make cash.
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Oct 12, 2021 13:28
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Yeah because the game is mostly about infrastructure, large bodies of water that connect to the map edge are actually both a challenge and a resource because they provide you with a slow, but fairly cheap way to get resources out.
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Oct 12, 2021 13:40
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Thanks for all the advice on exports! I've knocked up a quick few hour city to get a handle on things, exporting lots of coal and not very much crude oil by train, but something about the magic imports still rubs me the wrong way. I've read about something called "cosmonaut mode" that supposedly removes the magic import stuff, is that accurate and am I slightly mad for thinking that's how I want to play the game? edit: some more reading and it seems like it's entirely a self inflicted way of doing things and no proper way to handle it in game? I saw in one of the reports for the community a few weeks back they were looking into the idea though.
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Oct 12, 2021 14:20
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LeFishy posted:Thanks for all the advice on exports! I've knocked up a quick few hour city to get a handle on things, exporting lots of coal and not very much crude oil by train, but something about the magic imports still rubs me the wrong way. I've read about something called "cosmonaut mode" that supposedly removes the magic import stuff, is that accurate and am I slightly mad for thinking that's how I want to play the game? Cosmonaut mode is the main way I have fun in this game so I don't think it makes you mad at all. It also depends what you mean by 'proper way,' since the entire game is set up so that you can do manual construction and imports at any time. There are currently no optional restrictions in the game to prevent you from automagically importing or constructing things, but I also kind of like that I can still instant-build little rail switches or tiny segments of walking path without crippling entire cities. I watched these videos when I wanted to start playing on hard mode and they helped me wrap my head around the basics of importing everything, if you haven't already seen them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b61y63f9KE e: LeFishy posted:Basically this is how I would start if I was feeling fancy: You've absolutely got the right of it here, start with dirt roads and build everything from gravel up by hand for bonus points! Generation Internet fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Oct 12, 2021 |
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Oct 12, 2021 14:59
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At over 900 hours in the game I still don't think I would turn on an enforced cosmonaut mode even though that's how I try to play now - simply because its a rotten pain in the rear end for things like "I built an entire complex and there's 20 very tiny roads that take a year to build" or because of poo poo like the way rail building works sometimes, and also like Gen. Internet said, tiny segments that prevent your entire city from breaking down because you had to change something. But absolutely, use manual stuff as much as possible. It's the most fun in the game to set everything up to be done manually and watch your ant farm go off and build/stockpile/etc.
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Oct 12, 2021 15:15
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Rail building is the worst part of the game, all the more so because it's almost so cool! I just wish they'd abstract the rail building vehicles being to move past each other and trains and ignore signals, even if it's a bit unrealistic, so that I didn't have to babysit them all the time.
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Oct 12, 2021 15:18
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Yeah the game gives you this very in depth system for resource acquisition, transport, supply etc, and constructing new things, you are supposed to engage with it. For a million fiddly little jobs that the game cannot combine into one bulk job, that's sensible to buy out, but for large structures yeah you should give it a go with your own construction and logistics system.
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Oct 12, 2021 15:19
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I still love how this game is the only city building game I know of that actually shows the spatial logic for why cities exist and grow in the first place.
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Oct 12, 2021 16:41
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Anime Store Adventure posted:At over 900 hours in the game I still don't think I would turn on an enforced cosmonaut mode even though that's how I try to play now - simply because its a rotten pain in the rear end for things like "I built an entire complex and there's 20 very tiny roads that take a year to build" or because of poo poo like the way rail building works sometimes, and also like Gen. Internet said, tiny segments that prevent your entire city from breaking down because you had to change something. I personally feel that using auto build for trivial things that the game cannot properly organize is fine, including gravel paths when it's correcting a mistake or tiny or something. Ostriv actually had a neat way to do this, of "Villagers walk the shortest path, and tramples the grass. The more people that walk an area, the more it turns into a dirt road." This is apparently called a "desire path", and some universities have been known to lay their pavement after the desire paths are formed. I really, really wish citizens weren't so dumb that they can ONLY take paths, but I can understand how that would be both expensive computationally, and also disturb The People's Feng Shui  I just wish I didn't have to hold the game's hand for things like this.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:30
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Minenfeld! posted:I still love how this game is the only city building game I know of that actually shows the spatial logic for why cities exist and grow in the first place. This is really I think what finally clicked for me and got this to change from a 20 hour "its a pretty fun game but kind of janky" game to a "woah I'm playing this forever" top tier game for me. (But also a super dead time at work during WFH helped.) The 'layer' and scope of what they chose to simulate hits a lot of weird things that make you really think about how stuff works and solve logistics and urban/industrial planning problems realistically, while also letting you brute force dumb solutions if you so choose. I think the freedom to really do something dumb (say, export coal with dump trucks) can make the game really hard for people who aren't already tuned to the sorts of problems the game presents you, but its important for the whole 'system' of a game. You'll figure out, "Oh, I really do need a train if I want to move coal efficiently. Well now I need rail infrastructure - For that I need to get through this space - but that space has a city, and the high traffic gets stopped by the coal trains - oops, now <x, y, z>" This either gets you to a spot of "I will never financially recover from this" and either restart or give up, or "woah let me try this again with what I've learned." And that hits my brain just right. It also makes you desperately want to make everyone move exclusively by foot or rail and abhor the road for anything but the occasional truck or bus.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:54
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Anime Store Adventure posted:It also makes you desperately want to make everyone move exclusively by foot or rail and abhor the road for anything but the occasional truck or bus. This is my city planning ethos, and why I am very upset the game doesn't have trams. Yes I know trolleybusses are, in every practical way, the same. They're not the same.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:55
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Log082 posted:This is my city planning ethos, and why I am very upset the game doesn't have trams. The game desperately needs a way to get light rail to work or heavy rail that can at all easily work near to intersections for cities to work with rail beyond inter-city rail. e: Also technically they do have rail vehicles that are explicitly trams, but since they're on the heavy rail with all the restrictions of placement of heavy rail, they're pretty useless imo.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:57
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Anime Store Adventure posted:The game desperately needs a way to get light rail to work or heavy rail that can at all easily work near to intersections for cities to work with rail beyond inter-city rail. In-city heavy rail would be also be acceptable. Every citizen gets their own train.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:58
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Me: Why is this game such a jerk about having road intersections so close to train crossings meanwhile, reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W75cvVMFzRo
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Oct 12, 2021 19:01
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I have yet to find a logistics game that will let me do street running without janky mods. And you better believe I want to do street running in my train systems.
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Oct 12, 2021 20:49
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I still wish there was a pedestrianized roadway, or at least if gravel roads were as good as paths/paved roads for pedestrians. A pedestrian road that was the size of a road and had like 120/125% walk speed but slow car speed would be nice. Or even no car speed perhaps, emergency vehicles only.
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Oct 12, 2021 20:55
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OwlFancier posted:I still wish there was a pedestrianized roadway, or at least if gravel roads were as good as paths/paved roads for pedestrians. Emergency vehicles will use ped paths, but I assume you're mostly concerned about the size for aesthetic purposes?
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Oct 12, 2021 20:56
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Well also so they will connect to road sized connectors, I am thinking basically essential vehicles only so delivery trucks, emergency services, and possibly access only for cars but not used as an actual road, and they should be bigger so that you have a choice between using them or ped paths and so that it keeps the root-and-branch structure of roads/paths. Higher walk speed extends the range that people will walk so you could use it to stretch out pedestrian pathability as well as to not have a giant pile of largely unused roads. Also I do actually live in a place that has a big pedestrianized center that used to be normal roads but they took out the tarmac and just paved the whole thing, they still have limited delivery access (and a very cool shopping center with an entire series of loading bays and service roads that run one floor up the building) but you can't just drive down it, it's IMO a quite nice design for a town center. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Oct 12, 2021 |
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Oct 12, 2021 20:58
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Today I learned that dirt roads slow to 8km/h when it rains!
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Oct 15, 2021 21:50
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Is that extra from what gravel or asphalt do? I thought it was a set X% applied to the base speed for modifiers like rain and unplowed. E. Also I'm way into the idea of an in-between size road between ped path conceptually but not sure how it fits in the puzzle of building road connectors. Because of that I think good ped malls with occasional delivery are better served with alternate road textures for side walks and roads combined with ground paint textures. zedprime fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Oct 16, 2021 |
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Oct 16, 2021 22:41
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I think it seems to be specifically a very harsh hit to dirt roads, because they normally have 35km/h, it makes sense I've just never noticed it before. I was also thinking tha a pedestrianized road could/should just be normal road sized, but with a focus on pedestrians rather than vehicles. Really it's the extra walk speed I want more than anything to stretch out access to vital services via major ped thoroughfares. Though in my new city with the beta update I am actually thinking car access is very important now because you really need them for government loyalty. It's very hard to keep it high enough to stop people just loving off out of the country.  I started with only 1 million in the bank so have been really struggling to make the place solvent, lots of loans and I am about 2.5 mil in the hole and taking more loans to pay off the previous loans, but I do have an oil refinery going off to the left there and the city has all the services now, building a big hotel complex near the beaches there and hopefully will be able to start running it as I expand down there. I have plenty of power from the hydro dam (first thing I bought and also producing a good chunk of my income with the excess) and I also want to hopefully get more of an export capability going for the farms which produce lots of crops. I still really struggle to get the harvest in without just throwing a giant pile of distro centers at the problem. Kind of wish there was a sort of reserve army of trucks you could call in for that but which could do other things the rest of the year. Also need to build more loading/storage because christ crops are hard to store. The low income also means I haven't been able to afford a train line so I have to do everything with mostly gravel roads. I'm kind of bottlenecked on viable industries cos there isn't much in this corner apart from a uranium deposit up the river, which I could perhaps build a spur out to but which I would struggle to staff in the winter. The refinery has lots of spare capacity but the actual oilfield is mostly in the water so i would need to build dock spurs out into it to collect it. Also have been fighting pretty severe labour shortages for the past few years as I tried to stabilize the loyalty. Seems like I might be stabilizing now though as the radio station is blasting out the communist manifesto on loop 24/7 and that seems to be slowly causing it to creep back up. Definitely the loyalty mechanics do add something, primarily because you really do want cars, even lovely little trabis will do in a pinch, because getting loyalty otherwise is quite hard and you still want your important institutions staffed by loyal people as I think that means they improve the loyalty of service users more? Like the radio station if I set it to only allow more loyal people it boosts loyalty more with the same broadcast settings. It acts kind of as a "consumer goods" need that you absolutely do have to fulfil but also adds some logistical elements where you need to make sure your key social services are provided with high loyalty staff. E: glorious people's 5 star hotel and entertainment complex for american pigdogs is coming along nicely. 
OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Oct 17, 2021 |
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Oct 17, 2021 01:21
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New update is out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOrNBG7sQlE quote:Update #8
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Oct 27, 2021 10:54
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I really need to get a new save off of the ground now but I've had so many games that I'm playing. I even got all my mods set up for an early start (1930's) and even picked the map, but after so many playthroughs those first few steps are so long and arduous.
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Oct 27, 2021 18:45
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The loyalty system seems ultimately pretty worthless, as if you are able to provide everything for everyone and put monuments up you'll be at 80%+ across your nation. For me it didn't really even give a reason to build cars, as I have way more people than I can ever house so that last 20% to prevent the negligible amount of escapes every month isn't even worth it. Crime is probably gonna be the same way, buy X and Y building and it won't be an issue beyond a small drain on manpower. I'm not really sure how you'd make it more interesting though.
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Oct 27, 2021 22:00
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Anime Store Adventure posted:I really need to get a new save off of the ground now but I've had so many games that I'm playing. I even got all my mods set up for an early start (1930's) and even picked the map, but after so many playthroughs those first few steps are so long and arduous. I feel this. By the time I get one of my starts off the ground there's a new patch and I want to start again anyways. Doesn't help that I've been using the generated maps so far, I think next time I'll have to find a nice hand-made map.
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Oct 28, 2021 14:17
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Do the generated maps look decent yet? I haven't looked in quite some time but I haven't heard any announcements either. The landscape really has a major effect on your layout and decisions and allows for much more organic looking layouts, I don't think I would enjoy playing on Endless Flat Plains With No Water.
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Oct 28, 2021 15:51
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I would definitely not suggest using random maps, as you say the map is basically the main determiner of how you play and they definitely need to be hand built with intent.
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Oct 28, 2021 15:52
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My impression from only playing random maps is that the tiny rivers and lakes mean that you'll never be able to use ships effectively. Watching some LPs it seems like exporting by ship is a big part of the late-game economy so I've been essentially locking myself out of that.
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Oct 28, 2021 16:00
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Generation Internet posted:My impression from only playing random maps is that the tiny rivers and lakes mean that you'll never be able to use ships effectively. Watching some LPs it seems like exporting by ship is a big part of the late-game economy so I've been essentially locking myself out of that. I would say that by the late game, exports are either to give yourself high scores for currency, or because you're on a map which doesn't have a specific resource (e.g. bauxite). Ship export is only reasonable in the mid game, after you're comfortable but need to export more. Remember, more juche!
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Oct 28, 2021 16:07
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I can put together a little collection of maps that I Like and thus Are Objectively Good for folks starting again. I am lucky enough to have one of those weird Free Vacations between jobs for a week or two with no real plans and I aught to do a Magnum Opus playthrough before I have to buckle down for a new job. That said, Arven posted:The loyalty system seems ultimately pretty worthless, as if you are able to provide everything for everyone and put monuments up you'll be at 80%+ across your nation. For me it didn't really even give a reason to build cars, as I have way more people than I can ever house so that last 20% to prevent the negligible amount of escapes every month isn't even worth it. This does kind of strike me as a problem, and I always suspected loyalty wouldn't really 'gel' well. Not that it really detracts much from the game for me - Just that I'm bummed its not somehow more exciting.
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Oct 29, 2021 05:02
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It's as good as any of the other systems, I think. Yes you can reach a stable state quite easily but you also can with all of the other services, loyalty at least is interesting in that you can use broadcast buildings and a core of loyal citizens to maintain it elsewhere. But fundamentally there is no real scarcity so there is no reason not to give everyone every amenity possible right from the start.
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Oct 29, 2021 05:25
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OwlFancier posted:It's as good as any of the other systems, I think. Yes you can reach a stable state quite easily but you also can with all of the other services, loyalty at least is interesting in that you can use broadcast buildings and a core of loyal citizens to maintain it elsewhere. Fair - that's actually a good assessment.
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Oct 29, 2021 05:48
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It's why I keep wishing there were more megaproject kinds of things, that need huge workforces and materials inputs and rare resources or expertise you could only produce in small amounts etc. For the basic subsistence fair enough that it is easy to stabilize, but I think the game would benefit from having some goals that are harder to reach.
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Oct 29, 2021 12:30
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I would fix it by quadrupling the amount of consumer goods, and everything but basic food would be optional but provide a boost to loyalty. A quarter of the goods would only be produced in the West and have to be imported. This could then be tied into the crime system, where the fewer goods you provide (especially western goods) the more crime you have representing black markets. Then use the world events system to create embargoes and supply chain issues that you have to plan for... and you've got more of an actual game.
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Oct 29, 2021 14:57
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The average player already has wonders. They are called domestic electronics and cars. No-low import versions of these involve more ploppables and player brain space than most city building wonders I can think of. Mods should help with people wanting more than that once there's a stable base to mod. The problem here is more being around for the early access trickle is that every new feature just seems like a tack on when handled individually when someone starting new or hasn't played EA in years has a boss battle on their hands with each successive difficulty switch.
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Oct 29, 2021 15:13
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zedprime posted:The average player already has wonders. They are called domestic electronics and cars. No-low import versions of these involve more ploppables and player brain space than most city building wonders I can think of. Yeah, cars and the infrastructure for them, especially to prevent gridlock, is a pretty big late game goal. Think about just how incredibly inefficient it is and how much space it takes, and start thinking about how you'd start handling that, along with the infrastructure for it. Think about the work involved to transport autos from your auto plant (s) to the various auto shops.
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Oct 29, 2021 23:31
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The really great thing about this game is that it has only further radicalised me about how loving stupid cars are and how trains are one of mankind's greatest creations.
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Oct 30, 2021 00:56
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Firos posted:The really great thing about this game is that it has only further radicalised me about how loving stupid cars are and how trains are one of mankind's greatest creations. Anyone who actually builds cars for their citizens is playing the game wrong.
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Oct 30, 2021 01:10
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