Hard mode early game tips?

[Reedtanguerra]

I'm playing hard mode, and it is legit HARD. I'm on my 4th attempt at the Plains map now, and I got off to a strong start by playing close attention to minimizing the amount of walking the beavers had to do, but I'm back to struggling as soon as I tried to expand off the starting location.

Generating consistent power is a nightmare with all the droughts and unreliable wind. Without solid power, making planks and metal blocks is slow, and I'm not getting to walling off reservoirs of fresh water fast enough to beat the longer and longer droughts. I have to be pivoting to focus on the wrong thing around cycle 4-5 after I build a rudimentary water bypass system to keep the badtide out of my valley. The early game building sequence appears to be brutally important just like Frostpunk (which I adore and play on the hardest difficulty too). If it's not beelining metal blocks for the sluice gates, what should I be doing? I built a new district near the metal and that was probably a mistake because it took a stupid number of extra beavers to get the district crossing logistics running

[stanley37861]

I normally play as Iron beavers. First thing is berry and wood. then 3 water, then a farm, then storage, I try to get it dam up before the water goes away. you normally have 3 dry before you get bad water so you have to have either enough food to keep everyone feed or have a bypass setup.

As far as power goes dont waste your time with water wheel. build beaver powered power. you have have to have one extra braver to run things. until you can get wind and battery setup done.

Now the most important part of this game. its not so much a city builder as it is a pop management sim. just keep your pop around 15 until you get your water setup the way you want it, i normally aim for cycle 10 but it can go either way. As long as you keep your pop at a manageable level the game became fairly easy. Yes you will have to shut things down and move people around until you get your setup ready but thats better then dieing off.

[Giliador]

Micro managing is the key, gather all berries and pause gatherer, plant food, once done pause untill grown. Focus on science to get the flood gate to deflect first bad tide, you can cheese it too, insted of using platforms use small warehouse, no need for wood storage, once wood gatherer is full just build another its free and hold 20 logs. There are easy hard maps and very hard hard map.

[luckysyno]

I assume you play Folktails. First things first water wheels are borderline useless in hard mode and a waste of ressources in the early game.
You don't need a lot of metal at the start, so building a remote scavanger flag for metal is enough. Your first research after the smelter should be windmills and gravity battery. Don't make the mistake of building some advanced structure to get a high capacity battery. Rather build something simple, 5 blocks of height is usually enough.
The problem on the plains map is that there is no easy way to wall off a large area to store water in. You need a lot of wood to get this done ;) The easiest way around this is a 3x3 pond created with levies and a fluid dump to irrigate your forrests and crops. Until you get your large dam build, that stores the water to survive the droughts, don't expand into a new district, don't add more industry than 2 sawmill, 1 gear factory and the smelter, stay below 40 beavers. Use haulers to transport goods to a remote location where you are constructing a building. Having builders haul ressources over long distances is very inefficient.

[Dutch Boy]

Be deliberate and don't waste time.
Badwater tides are better than droughts.
Make good use of "work camp districts" if you're playing on a larger map; districts that only fulfill one purpose and are temporary. Like gathering scrap metal, or building a dam or something that is too far flung and would take way too long to travel too.

[Reedtanguerra]

This is all excellent advice, and yes I am playing Folktails. Will the hauler beavers haul long distance to create a stockpile of logs way outside my starting district? I sort of assumed that they wouldn't go to red paths, but maybe I am misunderstanding the mechanics. My biggest problem on the Plains map is all three of the fresh water sources are pretty far away from the starting area, so I didn't think I could get out to one to build a rudimentary reservoir of fresh water with levees and floodgates

[EleventhStar]

if you can make it to cycle 4 on hard you should have all the skills you need to make it the rest of the way.

you don't need metal blocks quite that early. and manual beaver power generation is plenty go consistently make planks/gears.

a rudimentary reservoir is completely fine. just 2 deep is no problem, you can make it 4 high later no problem. it also doesn't have to be huge.

when in doubt, plant more trees. and remember not to expand your population faster than your storage can handle.

[nordstern]

If the map gives you the possibility you can go for water-wheels. But you must build and research the 1st closing ability of bad water (not the 2nd... this is for industrial usage) and have it open. So the bad water will flew the whole time and ignore the dry. With this you have a permanent source of energy from water.

If you build your basic economy, do everything to build up your water system. It must not perfect. Just enough to handle a slow growing population and some cycles. You can normaly not build with 15 beavers a dam and gate system for the rest of the game. The amount of ressources and ways to walk are to huge. And also you need metal for this normaly.

I would suggest you to cancel beers as soon as possible. From the aspect: harvest on time the beers are by far the worst source of food you can have. You can gather 0,25 food per day per bush. For example with breed its 1,8. I am not sure which it was, but with carrots you get nearly 4 times of food from the same space. So go as fast as possible to carrots.

Also normaly your mainproblem is not water... its food. Why? because after a dry or bad tide in the worst case you must replant your food and this means you can pump new water instant if the dry ends, but you must wait for new food another 3-x days. This is the reason why i storage gain, potatoes in great numbers. So if the plants are dead, my production can produce for another 10 days minimum.
Water is solved if you have a pump and fill a medium tank for the first cycles with no problems. For example with 15 beavers the tank reaches 10 days. If you build 2-3 tanks you are save till you increase the beavers. Food needs more planing in the future.

Maybe its a me problem, but if i lost a game, it was always because of food and not water or contamination. Contamination one time was really hard... but at the end it did not kill me.

[Reedtanguerra]

Eh, I built a sufficient enough dam system that I can keep my starting valley where my food and oak trees are green with water throughout the initial droughts and badtide (so thru cycle 4). I started hitting trouble when the droughts start extending beyond about 9 days. Without the sluices, the water pressure in a stream fed pond doesn't go above about 0.65. I don't have dynamite yet, which really means that I need water falling from a height into a rudimentary beaver-made reservoir to store any largish quantity of water.

[Reedtanguerra]

It just now occurs to me that I'm an idiot. There's a pretty largish natural pond downstream from the starting location. I bet I can dam a part of that off sufficiently quickly and change my dams to floodgates so I can reverse stream course and bring that water back into the valley from the other direction.

[EleventhStar]

check out the fluid dump.

and you should really prioritize a medium water storage or two, certainly with that many beavers.

[Reedtanguerra]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3370250543
Here's a screenshot from when I was in cycle 5. I'd started building a new district intended for metalworking by this point. So now my plan is to go back to my cycle 4 save, finish the badtide waterlock as that proved very effective, and then order my intrepid builder beavers back downstream to go get sick building me a reservoir in that downstream pool. I'd avoided it because there's a badwater source nearby emptying into it, so it's anywhere from partially to fully contaminated depending on the season.

[Guurt]

I recently finished the plains map on Hard. I failed once. In my opinion the map is really easy on Hard ONCE you can divert the bad tide.

If you don't divert the bad tide then this map is very hard.

There are two ways to do this.

One: immediately start building a diverting system in the two corners that feed into your main river that goes by your starting town. This is the most efficient, but you have to really just do that and focus on nothing else. Make some extra builders to get it done quickly.... you basically just do research and anything needed to do the diversion.

Two: simply build a wall across the plains so that when the bad water comes it floods into the empty lake bed and then floods across the plains, hits your wall and diverts into the bad water stream bed that is already there. This is simple. Eventually you tear down this wall once you have actually made diversions in the two corners.

It is possible to do both options before the first bad tide. This way you never suffer any negative consequences of bad tide.

The key for me was spending a few minutes looking at the map and visualizing the problems that bad tide was going to cause... then just remove those problems.

After bad tide is dealt with then this map is back to being an easy map.

[Mr. Me]

Gatherer flag, lumber flag, water pump, farm, inventor hut, storage ASAP. Get started on primary dam. Forester then stairs.
Ideally all done before the first drought. But the dam depending on width, usually doesn't get done in time.
Then I move on to setting up for diverting the first bad tide. Unlocking the appropriate floodgate (usually double), levees and platforms as needed. Sometimes I have to eat the first bad tide if the RNG hates me. But usually not. In the background getting basic well being things in place. Like housing, campsites, and rooftop pubs. The simple cheap things.

Important thing to note is population management as well. A low population works slow, but doesn't take up much water/food. While a larger population will have a harder time getting by on stockpiles, it can get things built faster.
I personally try to keep around 15-20 until I get things somewhat stabilized. Upwards of 30 is fine. Though if things go bad expect that population to crash.

After that, the world is your oyster. Set up your big water reserve and automated bad tide sluice system. GG. WP.

[g.peteri]

After plenty of thinking I just settled over to the small stream right after the start. Badtide seemed to be more manageabel there. Still early game but so far seems ok :)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3404432024

[cwh12]

Plains is a map with a lot of trees to begin with, and a lot of open land to build on.
All you have to do is cross the river within the first three cycles.
By beginning of cycle 4 you should have build a 3x3 water dump on the other side of the river, on the other side of the one tile hill.
Then you are safe from badtides.
Use the small stream for water wheels and industry.
Focus on improving water storage all the time.
And then you can do whatever you want from there.
I can show you a screen shot of my small village that can be expanded now in all directions.