What's the secret for a good self sustaining economy?

[VoiD]

Just wondering where what I'm doing wrong, I've tried a few starts setting up basic services, Gathering food, hunting, manually collecting food & stone, then setting up a carpentry workshop, getting some clay, eateries, lavatories, then population starts growing, I try to fish, make a few farms along the rivers, create some ranches but then the population gets stuck around 300~500 people, mostly tilapians (main race) and some humans for research and some cretonians for farming (I think the other races can cause issues)

Then my food production is seems insuficient, my industry needs more people, I can't quite get to smelting iron most of the time as it needs more people, and more people needs even more food, I've tried importing stuff but anything I produce is worth basically nothing and even raw goods like cotton is way too expensive, so I stale for a few hours and try again.

[madrigal]

I think 100% self sustaining isn't really feasible. Research, research and specialization and more research seem to be the way to go with the newest version. Prices are wildly different depending on your map. My first map, clothes cost 6 at first. On a different map they cost 80 at the start. With two barter bonuses and some time, now they cost 13. Raw materials cost more than finished products, so doing every industry just isn't going to work. Ore cost 149 and metal cost 40 on my map, so doing smelting makes less than no sense. I can sell fish for 22, which is pretty good compared to everything else. The livestock sell price is stupid good, so I'm doubling down on pastures and husbandry. I worry if I sell too much the price will drop. The economy is really dynamic and prices change. It's a big challenge to keep up. I'm nowhere near 500 pops so I congratulate you on getting that far.

Right now I have about 20% of my pops doing research. It feels like a lot, but that's what I did with the old version and it seems to pay off. It will be interesting to see how this scales with larger population.

[Bloody10th]

Just speaking from my own ~37 hours of experience so far in version 63 beta branch + stable. Bit of a long post but it should get you through the early game phase woes reliably.

On average map + starting tile generations, you'll probably have to specialize in what you produce and use that as your main source of income. But honestly, whether you decide to specialize fast or want to be somewhat self-sufficient up to maybe ~500-600 pop before going hard on your main industry(s) (which is my preference for now as Dondorians)--take however much time it requires to roll a good starting tile. Seriously. 1 hour getting a good starting tile will save you who knows how many hours later on.

Take into account what your chosen race is good at or how you're going to split your races in your population for various industries, make sure they all synergize as best as possible, and then roll your world map and pick north/central/south based on the main climate type you'll need. Then, scan that entire map for your highest probability of the best possible starting tile, making sure it has high levels of fertility, forest, stone, coastal area, etc. whatever you want. Pick that tile, and even if it takes an hour re-rolling it, roll it until you get the layout and resource node saturation you want, or as close as possible. Check those resource nodes by right click-scanning them to see if they have good density, because that'll give you a better worker-to-output ratio, and through the early phases of the game that extra efficiency will save you lots of headaches and make it easier to export higher amounts of goods using less workers.

I think a good starting tile alone will easily get you over 500 pop at 80-90% self-sufficiency, probably only needing to import 1-2 items regularly (for me one of them is usually clothes since I'm generally in a cold climate), and then at 500+ you'll probably need to start importing food sometimes, depending on how good your setup is. Don't neglect producing rations if you can do it, and a point into the spoilage tech will also help boost how long your food lasts. If you run a lot of mines, you'll absolutely need atleast 1 point in workplace safety or accidents will kill your people off to the point of crashing your city. Whether you should put a 2nd point in it or push towards a hospital first (for some defense vs. plagues and everything else, not just workplace injuries), I haven't decided yet.

Aside from that, it's just about playing enough to learn what order you need to prioritize certain researches as your main race/mixture. Basically you need to juggle between getting a new tech that'll boost your happiness to increase your population numbers, or getting a new tech that boosts your economy to get more income. When you'll need to go for something like a hospital, stuff like that. Tech timings are important.

By 300+ pop you need to start training troops or raids will absolutely demolish any money you're making. And the number of enemies + their gear and training, etc. will steadily climb as you get farther into the game, keep "milestone" hard saves and just learn by playing as you progress. Then you'll figure out how to scale population boosts vs. military boosts vs. economy and so on.

Also, never use auto-resolve for fights unless it pretty much says you'll have a flawless victory. I had 25 full-time training, fully geared troops, and auto-resolve told me 41 enemies of poor equipment and training would completely wipe my army. I controlled the battle manually, well to the point of just holding a tight defensive formation and letting them charge in, then counter-charging, and completely destroyed them without losing a single man. So, yeah. Hope this helps.

[Albatross]

Like in real life a self sustained economy is close to impossible. You benefit from economies of scale and should take advantage of that. Import what your people are not good at producing and export what you are good at.

[VoiD]

Thanks guys, that makes sense, so the approach was incorrect, I wasn't aware the economy was dynamic either, so I'll pay closer attention to the prices and try to find something worth exporting this time.