Newbie Tips

[Prometheus]

So this game has a bit of a learning curve. If you want to learn it all yourself here is your warning that I am going to ruin that. Otherwise if you want to ease some of the early frustration read on.

1. Make a port and sell your stuff. The game economy assumes you do a lot of this. The way the UI works on the port is the number you set there is the minimum amount of the resource that you keep on hand and refuse to sell.

So for example starting out you have max of 40 of any given resource. If you set the trade screen to 40 you'll never sell anything. If you set it to 20 the port will sell any amount above 20 you get of that resource.

2. Make more basic construction resources than you could use. Early on this is wood and brick. When you want to make something it sucks to have to wait, also see tip #1. Brick especially is a good cash cow early on.

3. Set office tax to maximum. Raising tax just means you get less office jobs per space but you get much more tax per space. Money can be tight early so this is a fair trade.

4. Do not buy spices early on. The game will probably pop up a "spices are low/missing" message. Right click it to dismiss it and let it die in obscurity. You do not need spices for early residents. In fact you can max out the happiness from resources without spices and its a heavy loss to buy them. So just don't do it.

5. Pay attention to upkeep costs before building certain things. The first time this will probably hit you is with the warehouse and research facility. The 2k upkeep on these two buildings is quite steep when they first become available.

[Dale Kent]

6. Carriers act as connectors. Example: Clay mine is on a road with a carrier. Carrier will collect clay and take back to carrier building. Far away, completely unconnected, a brick plant will receive clay from its local carrier building.

7. You don't control where the raw resources are, but you totally control where the processing plants go. Make an industrial area far away from residential with its own city carrier which, due to #6 above, works as long as each mining area has a local carrier.

8. Due to #6 above, garbage will magically be collected by a garbage collector and magically appear in a garbage dump far far away (as long as it's within range of a carrier).

[Prometheus]

9. Road upkeep scales up in cost VERY RAPIDLY with bigger roads. Even the very basic first upgrade from the 50 speed to 60 speed is double the upkeep.

[EMAPhil]

Originally posted by Promethian:

9. Road upkeep scales up in cost VERY RAPIDLY with bigger roads. Even the very basic first upgrade from the 50 speed to 60 speed is double the upkeep.

So far haven't felt need to upgrade roads. Traffic appears cosmetic.