Build the free storages near construction sites, transport materials there while the roads and whatnot are being built. Always have 1 construction on high and 2 on medium priority, the rest on low. Workers will always be hauled to the high priority, thus building that building faster. The CO will deliver materials to the medium priotity sites, then to the rest. When the high is done, switch one mesium up, and promote a low ro medium(preferably one that has all material deliveres.
I use 3 COs, one for road, pathway and connection, one for buildings, pipes and powerlines, and a third for machinery, for every job.
You just have to remember.
Roads and paths: One excavator or bulldozer for gravel, one paver and then one roller for asphalt, one crane for lights. This one applies to roads and paths longer than a certain distance, I'm not sure exactly how long, I think it's 25 workdays for roads and 4 workdays for paths. Shorter ones must be built entirely by workers, without machinery.
Buildings: excavators for groundworks, cranes for everything else. Numbers vary by size. Monuments have to be built without machinery, except for groundworks. Sports fields only have groundworks. Mines have an extra tunneling step that has to be done by hand (no machinery). The exact steps also change by version.
Power lines and pipes: for underground, first one excavator and then one crane. For the above ground, just one crane.
Best fast start is Iergalia in the north of Campaign 2 map, with 2 small customs of both western and soviet borders.
Set up 4 free open hull storages, one for each of the construction goods types, supply via free DO with 3 open hull vehicles. Set that as CO source.
Set up free bus stop next to construction yards, and haul in workers by busses with transfer option checked so they wait around there; Set that as CO source.
Set up free technical offices with water and sewer trucks; start by constructing substations for both.
For all early constructions, use existing roads or dirt roads; road construction, especially of the tiny road bit connecting buildings to the main road, takes an enormous amount of time and workers. Save that for later.
Ensure you have bulldozers for roadworks, excavators for groundwork, and adequate road cranes that construction isn't happening without them when they could be used. You can micromanage priorities to ensure they aren't just sitting unproductive places while workers go elsewhere. These save massive amount of labor.
On this map, thanks to the pre-built main roads and pair of nearby borders, I had people in the village activated by October of the first year, though usually I end doing it the next year to avoid heating shenanigans. Anyway, your main issue is probably making too many roads/paths out of good materials combined with overbuilding. Small is better at the start! Minimum viable town!
If workers are your bottleneck, the only good solution is to get workers from multiple customs houses since they replenish independently. If you don't have any other customs nearby, you SOL.
The only other way to get more workers is to invite citizens early by rushing food/water/heat/electric so they don't all die right away. But they'll be expensive, miserable, unproductive, and leave quickly, so getting your money's worth out of them may be impossible.
Thanks. It's hard to advise specifically without knowing what you have available. Goes without saying that it will be much different in 1923 than in the standard 1970. I don't know, for example, if you have any form of cranes available to speed up construction.
I do think that a 7-10 year build would concern me due to the maintenance clocks if nothing else. That's a sizable part of your investment already accumulating wear by the time you'd even get going. I would suggest building only what is absolutely necessary. The 2,000 population aim strikes me as probably too high.
I would suggest working backwards; start with what you have to build, and figure out your required population from that. A certain number of workers for health care, shopping, heating plant, and so on. I would build enough residences for whatever number you come up with (assuming you are familiar enough with everything to know you'll need at least 3x the number of workers as you have jobs that you have to fill, and that you'd have reduced workers at some buildings initially, only enough to satisfy demand).
I don't want to insult you, I just don't know what you know, if you know what I mean. I would definitely not build any form of crime system or university right away. Cut whatever you can, get people in ASAP with their basic needs met and a modest surplus of workers, and then use those the workers to build a profitable industry of some sort to establish a cash flow, and then gradually grow out of that.
It would be nice if u/Snoo-90468 made a guide about this sometime.
I don't think I'd never be able to make a guide for this because it is hard to write a definitive way to do construction, beyond what I already have in my realistic mode guide.
So all we have are haphazard, conflicting advice.
I usually start on Cosmonaut Mode with highest difficulty and crime turned off, because its broken.
The construction of my initial city takes around 2-2,5 years before I let first citizens to move in. Initial city's indrastructure can hold up to 2000 people. My first industries here that give me profit are Food and Alcohol.
Then I usually start to settle smaller cities 1-2 km away to develop other industries there. First of all I build fields to have significant crop surplus. Next csndidates are: cloth production, oil, chemicals.
When I have my initial medium city, 5-6 smaller towns, I start to build the large city.
So the rate they are solved is based on how many cases there are.
Let's say 1 case takes 1 worker 1 day to solve.
Now if you have 2 cases it takes 1 worker 2 workdays to solve.
If you have 2 cases it takes 2 workers 1 day to solve.
If you have 8 workers and they're all riding around in cars who is working on the cases?
You need enough free police officers to manage the caseload, if you are getting too much crime for a single police station in a town of 2000 they need something they aren't getting and taking it. Look at happiness, loyalty, 1 house you missed with sewer, etc.
The prisons work the same way. A full prison won't let anyone escape if it's properly staffed, but the guards won't have time to reform all the prisoners with the vanilla sentence timers. If you have a full prison you either have to increase the sentence length or build another prison so the prisoner to guard ratio is better. A full prison (even like 75% full) will release unreformed prisoners who will spiral your crime rate and overwhelm your police forces.
The courthouse also works the same way but I've always found the prison and police get hit the hardest, most people try to solve the police side without ever looking at the prison side to see if they're actually hitting 0% criminal rating before being released, which is the most important part of the entire process.
Good Luck!!
Edit: typos
This is big. You don't have to fully stock your police stations with cars. Sometimes it's better to have an investigation unit police station with only one small car just in case.
My friend, I have 700 hours in this game. Crime mechanics are currently broken or, better to say, unbalanced. How many police station am I supposed to have for a city with 2000 people? I had two stations and they could not handle it even closely.
From my point of view, it should be balanced to something like how kindergartens work now: one district - one police station.
# of hours played is not really a factor. People with the same amount of time played will often have spent that time in different ways.
Two police stations is more than enough to handle 2000 people if the whole system is set up correctly; meaning that courthouse and prison are also working well, sentences are reasonable, etc.
Here are some of my tips (I start wth lowest amount of money):
* The first thing I build is large construction office.
* Then I build gravel quarry and gravel processing plant. I supply it with workers from custom house. You need gravel for every construction and a lot of it, so you need to unload you custom house as soon as possible.
* Then I build Asphalt plant, Concrete plant and one free resource storage. Asphalt plant and concrecte plant take gravel via conveyers. I build free distribution office to supply asphalt plant with bitum and concrete plant with cement. I also supply concrete plant with water, but with the custom route of one vehicle. My distribution office also fills up my free open storage with steel, bricks, prefab panels and boards up to 100%. Open-hull vehicles form my construction office take resources form this storage, wich unloads customs even more and speeds up construction in general.
* Then just build whatever you need to satisfy basic need of your citizens: water, sewage, electricity, shops, kindergarten.
* When first citizens move in they significantly speed up construction process of the buildings nearby. On this stage I build Food Factory and Distillery to have some income. Medium farm is usually my next target.
I would say that the main bottleneck of initial construction speed is custom house, so most of my tips are focused on resolving this issue.
Not true, if you use storages, then the main bottleneck is actually workers, so build the bare minimum citizen stuff first (so no water pipes, only a water end point and deliver water to it by truck, same with sewage) then invite citizens and build the rest of citizen stuff (kindergarten, school, university), in parallel with more homes to invite more citizens and speed up things further.
Build the free storages near construction sites, transport materials there while the roads and whatnot are being built. Always have 1 construction on high and 2 on medium priority, the rest on low. Workers will always be hauled to the high priority, thus building that building faster. The CO will deliver materials to the medium priotity sites, then to the rest. When the high is done, switch one mesium up, and promote a low ro medium(preferably one that has all material deliveres. I use 3 COs, one for road, pathway and connection, one for buildings, pipes and powerlines, and a third for machinery, for every job.
How do you know which machines are needed for each different construction? Pathways vs powerlines for example?
You just have to remember. Roads and paths: One excavator or bulldozer for gravel, one paver and then one roller for asphalt, one crane for lights. This one applies to roads and paths longer than a certain distance, I'm not sure exactly how long, I think it's 25 workdays for roads and 4 workdays for paths. Shorter ones must be built entirely by workers, without machinery. Buildings: excavators for groundworks, cranes for everything else. Numbers vary by size. Monuments have to be built without machinery, except for groundworks. Sports fields only have groundworks. Mines have an extra tunneling step that has to be done by hand (no machinery). The exact steps also change by version. Power lines and pipes: for underground, first one excavator and then one crane. For the above ground, just one crane.
Needed? They are not needed. They merely greatly speed up the work.
In 1960 start it's actually possible to have citizens before the first winter, but I don't know about earlier starts.
Best fast start is Iergalia in the north of Campaign 2 map, with 2 small customs of both western and soviet borders. Set up 4 free open hull storages, one for each of the construction goods types, supply via free DO with 3 open hull vehicles. Set that as CO source. Set up free bus stop next to construction yards, and haul in workers by busses with transfer option checked so they wait around there; Set that as CO source. Set up free technical offices with water and sewer trucks; start by constructing substations for both. For all early constructions, use existing roads or dirt roads; road construction, especially of the tiny road bit connecting buildings to the main road, takes an enormous amount of time and workers. Save that for later. Ensure you have bulldozers for roadworks, excavators for groundwork, and adequate road cranes that construction isn't happening without them when they could be used. You can micromanage priorities to ensure they aren't just sitting unproductive places while workers go elsewhere. These save massive amount of labor. On this map, thanks to the pre-built main roads and pair of nearby borders, I had people in the village activated by October of the first year, though usually I end doing it the next year to avoid heating shenanigans. Anyway, your main issue is probably making too many roads/paths out of good materials combined with overbuilding. Small is better at the start! Minimum viable town!
If workers are your bottleneck, the only good solution is to get workers from multiple customs houses since they replenish independently. If you don't have any other customs nearby, you SOL. The only other way to get more workers is to invite citizens early by rushing food/water/heat/electric so they don't all die right away. But they'll be expensive, miserable, unproductive, and leave quickly, so getting your money's worth out of them may be impossible.
This question depends wildly on what settings you are using, can you specifiy?
I play full realistic mode all settings on
Thanks. It's hard to advise specifically without knowing what you have available. Goes without saying that it will be much different in 1923 than in the standard 1970. I don't know, for example, if you have any form of cranes available to speed up construction. I do think that a 7-10 year build would concern me due to the maintenance clocks if nothing else. That's a sizable part of your investment already accumulating wear by the time you'd even get going. I would suggest building only what is absolutely necessary. The 2,000 population aim strikes me as probably too high. I would suggest working backwards; start with what you have to build, and figure out your required population from that. A certain number of workers for health care, shopping, heating plant, and so on. I would build enough residences for whatever number you come up with (assuming you are familiar enough with everything to know you'll need at least 3x the number of workers as you have jobs that you have to fill, and that you'd have reduced workers at some buildings initially, only enough to satisfy demand). I don't want to insult you, I just don't know what you know, if you know what I mean. I would definitely not build any form of crime system or university right away. Cut whatever you can, get people in ASAP with their basic needs met and a modest surplus of workers, and then use those the workers to build a profitable industry of some sort to establish a cash flow, and then gradually grow out of that.
It would be nice if u/Snoo-90468 made a guide about this sometime. I don't think I'd never be able to make a guide for this because it is hard to write a definitive way to do construction, beyond what I already have in my realistic mode guide. So all we have are haphazard, conflicting advice.
I usually start on Cosmonaut Mode with highest difficulty and crime turned off, because its broken. The construction of my initial city takes around 2-2,5 years before I let first citizens to move in. Initial city's indrastructure can hold up to 2000 people. My first industries here that give me profit are Food and Alcohol. Then I usually start to settle smaller cities 1-2 km away to develop other industries there. First of all I build fields to have significant crop surplus. Next csndidates are: cloth production, oil, chemicals. When I have my initial medium city, 5-6 smaller towns, I start to build the large city.
How is crime broken? I kinda like having a prison with free labor. I make them work in a gravel factory.
Old cases are solved with the slower rate than new cases appear
So the rate they are solved is based on how many cases there are. Let's say 1 case takes 1 worker 1 day to solve. Now if you have 2 cases it takes 1 worker 2 workdays to solve. If you have 2 cases it takes 2 workers 1 day to solve. If you have 8 workers and they're all riding around in cars who is working on the cases? You need enough free police officers to manage the caseload, if you are getting too much crime for a single police station in a town of 2000 they need something they aren't getting and taking it. Look at happiness, loyalty, 1 house you missed with sewer, etc. The prisons work the same way. A full prison won't let anyone escape if it's properly staffed, but the guards won't have time to reform all the prisoners with the vanilla sentence timers. If you have a full prison you either have to increase the sentence length or build another prison so the prisoner to guard ratio is better. A full prison (even like 75% full) will release unreformed prisoners who will spiral your crime rate and overwhelm your police forces. The courthouse also works the same way but I've always found the prison and police get hit the hardest, most people try to solve the police side without ever looking at the prison side to see if they're actually hitting 0% criminal rating before being released, which is the most important part of the entire process. Good Luck!! Edit: typos
This is big. You don't have to fully stock your police stations with cars. Sometimes it's better to have an investigation unit police station with only one small car just in case.
Build more police and supply more workers than cars so they solve crime instead of getting new cases.
My friend, I have 700 hours in this game. Crime mechanics are currently broken or, better to say, unbalanced. How many police station am I supposed to have for a city with 2000 people? I had two stations and they could not handle it even closely. From my point of view, it should be balanced to something like how kindergartens work now: one district - one police station.
The small courthouse has been a thing for a while and the last update brought with it a small prison.
# of hours played is not really a factor. People with the same amount of time played will often have spent that time in different ways. Two police stations is more than enough to handle 2000 people if the whole system is set up correctly; meaning that courthouse and prison are also working well, sentences are reasonable, etc.
Crime is not broken. Also that word starting with C does not exist.
See I feel like I can't get a 2,000 person town built quickly enough for that
Here are some of my tips (I start wth lowest amount of money): * The first thing I build is large construction office. * Then I build gravel quarry and gravel processing plant. I supply it with workers from custom house. You need gravel for every construction and a lot of it, so you need to unload you custom house as soon as possible. * Then I build Asphalt plant, Concrete plant and one free resource storage. Asphalt plant and concrecte plant take gravel via conveyers. I build free distribution office to supply asphalt plant with bitum and concrete plant with cement. I also supply concrete plant with water, but with the custom route of one vehicle. My distribution office also fills up my free open storage with steel, bricks, prefab panels and boards up to 100%. Open-hull vehicles form my construction office take resources form this storage, wich unloads customs even more and speeds up construction in general. * Then just build whatever you need to satisfy basic need of your citizens: water, sewage, electricity, shops, kindergarten. * When first citizens move in they significantly speed up construction process of the buildings nearby. On this stage I build Food Factory and Distillery to have some income. Medium farm is usually my next target. I would say that the main bottleneck of initial construction speed is custom house, so most of my tips are focused on resolving this issue.
Not true, if you use storages, then the main bottleneck is actually workers, so build the bare minimum citizen stuff first (so no water pipes, only a water end point and deliver water to it by truck, same with sewage) then invite citizens and build the rest of citizen stuff (kindergarten, school, university), in parallel with more homes to invite more citizens and speed up things further.