How to easily move 12 goods through every city [With Diagram]

[Starwolf48]

I see a lot of posts complaining about the 6 good limitation in warehouses and people wishing they could move more different goods through their cities as they get bigger. I have heard suggestions of keeping warehouses outside of cities (and that works), but as an alternative, I thought I'd share my personal solution that I found works best.

It's a bit of overkill, but below is a diagram for my way of moving 12 goods through EVERY city by using two stations with warehouses back-to-back:

Click Here for Diagram [imgur.com]

Explaination:

Connect as many cities as practical in a direct line one after the other, with two stations in each. By using two stations, you have two 6-slot warehouses in each city and thus can move 12 goods. And by putting them back to back, you can arrange the tracks so that your trains never need to cross over.

To do this, turn the innermost 4 tracks on each side into two sets of parallel lines (so 4 sets total, 2 left, 2 right), and use waypoints to keep your trains limited to just one of those parallel sets. Waypoints ensure your express and freight don't mix. I also prefer to run point to point, so I have a different set of trains running between every single city rather than any longer multi-city through-lines.

Important: Make sure you have freight running on BOTH SIDES or both warehouses wont work. This will use 2 of the 4 inner pairs of track, and the other two can either be both express or one express and one extra freight if the goods on a side are in high demand.

As long as you have a parallel set of tracks running freight on each side, then both sides will move their 6 goods to every city independent of the other side. And if these freight tracks (and also your express tracks) are in the middle 4, then you still have 4 extra tracks on each side of every city to pick up that side's rural goods. This is why you should never need to cross over.

This setup still works when you are forced to branch off and connect a different line of cities. Just use the 4 outside rural lines on each side. One side simply needs to turn towards the new city and hook up, while the other side goes up and over the existing track with a bridge. I included that in the diagram.

Again, almost definitely overkill, but I find keeping up with goods to be much more difficult than making money. If you keep this setup well supplied with rural goods and run enough trains between each city, it will easily result in an entire line of 80-100K+ cities with minimal effort.

[gardlt]

Similar thing I'm trying in my current game:
Use a third station with another warehouse, and duplicate the goods in the two outside ones. Warehouses "communicate with each other:" you can pick up from a different station than you delivered to.

In my usage I don't put warehouses everywhere. I have them as hubs for minimum of 3 surrounding cities. Normally 4.

With this you can connect to 2 cities on either exit from the stations without cross-overs/bridges/tunnels. Think of making a theoretical X at each hub. X marks the hub city.

[MDLambert777]

I like that layout, it was very similar to what I had been working on in sandbox after getting through half the first scenario and having issues! thx for the diagram as well.

[jsb]

so there are 2 or 3 stations in each city in order to do this?

[Dray Prescot]

I would prefer to have one Station per City without a Warehouse and have it do all of the Express Trains and their double Track or even two double Tracks, so I can put another Station Expansion Building devoted to Mail and Passengers (2 total) in that Station.

The other Station per City could still have the Warehouse. Could we put 2 Warehouses in the SAME Station? (probably not, I would guess.)

I think it would be better to put the Warehouses in Rural Stations instead between the Cities. That way the Cities' 2 or 3 Industries just use the Cities' Internal Warehouses in addition to the 6 Goods coming from the Warehouses outside the Cities.


OR A different way to do it:

Personally I rather dislike losing time unloading Goods at a Warehouse just so I can then reload them on a different train. Instead ship all of the Goods direct via pairs of Cities: City A sends a pair or triple of Goods to City B and gets back it's pair or triple of Goods. Then City A does the same with City C, with City D, with City E and with City F.

Then City B sends it's pair or triple of Goods to City C and gets back it's pair or triple of Goods, and to City D, and to City E, and to City F, etc. etc.

So you end up with 6 times 5 divided by 2 = 15 different Freight Routes between Pairs of Cities (with 6 Cities), with NO Warehouses used AT ALL in the Cities for Manufactured Goods. So no lost time unloading to Warehouses just to reload.

If necessary add by pass freight tracks around each city for Freight Trains not stopping at that City.

6 Cities with 3 Industrial Sites each can handle 18 Manufactured Goods, which is the maximum number of Manufactured Goods in the Game, even in the latest time period.

or 6 Cities with 2 Industrial sites each can handle 12 Manufactured Goods. Which is enough for many games, with maybe a few Cities with 3 Industries, for more than 12 Manufactured Goods.

Another way to count the number of routes A links with B, C, D E, and F: 5 Routes
then B links with C, D, E, and F 4 Routes (since A is already taken care of),
then C adds 3 routes to D, E, and F, D adds 2 Routes to E and F, and E adds 1 Route to F:

Total 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 15 Routes linking pairs of Cities with 6 Cities total.

Every City will have a total of 5 Freight Routes for Manufactured Goods either starting/ending there or passing through without stopping. That is a reasonable amount of Goods freight train traffic for each City. If necessary add a 3rd or even 4th track for Freight at a City Station. Plus a double track with Station tracks for Resource deliveries, on both sides of the Station if needed. With some possible by pass tracks around the Cities.

Plus the Resource Train deliveries, the number of those Routes depends on the layout of the Resources, if any Rural Stations have 2 Resources, and which types they are, and which are needed at each City.

You can expand to a 2nd Station per City in really large and busy Cities, with one of those Cities handling only Freight, and the 2nd Station mostly Express Trains, with maybe some Freight Trains.


To me, Unloading at a Warehouse just so you can reload it on a different Train, cancels out Most or All of the time that the Warehouses are supposed to be saving you by using them. So the Warehouses do not give you much net gain (IF any at all) in efficiency of time used.

So why bother using Warehouses in Cities? They just cost you money and use up Station Expansion slots that could be put to other uses.

At most, I would use Warehouses at Rural Stations, I can see some value there, particularly for concentrating Resources into a smaller number of Source Rural Stations.

[Dray Prescot]

Additional Comments:

First an important lesson from 4 Track Signal Controlled Stations in RE 1, where all 4 tracks on one end of the Station can reach all 4 Tracks on the other end of the Station after going through the Station. You start having problems with one Train cutting across the tracks that another train wants to use, which forces it to wait. This was particularly true since Trains tried to use Track #1 closest to the Station first, even though they may have come in on Track #3 or #4 and/or are planning to leave on Track #3 or #4 on either end of the Station.

Even 2 Track Signal Controlled Stations in RE 1 had this problem in a small way, i.e. Trains blocking each other trying to enter and leave the Station.

This is roughly what should be happening in RE 2 with Gridirons and Stations, Trains crossing in front of other Trains and blocking them and forcing them to Wait. Also the more tracks in the Gridiron, the longer it is and the longer it takes each train to traverse it.

The wider the Gridiron, i.e. the more Tracks in it and the longer it is, the worse this problem will get. I would try to avoid having 4 track (or more) wide Gridirons because of this problem. At worst no more than 4 tracks in a Gridiron.

Either have Four 2 track wide Gridirons per City, each attached to it's own dedicated double track on both ends/sides of the Station,

OR have Two 3 track wide Gridirons and One 2 Track wide Gridirons on either end of the Station, with each Gridiron linking to a separate dedicated double track.

Next if you are going to have 2 Stations per City, One of them should be pure Freight, the Second Station will be Express, and probably some tracks for Resources and/or maybe some Manufactured Goods.

The Second or Express Station in each City does NOT have a Warehouse and uses its 2 Station Expansions devoted to Mail and Passengers.

Next, you do NOT need a Warehouse in the 1st Station of Every City. The Internal Warehouse of the City has it's Industrial Productions coming from within the City for Pickup by Trains,

Depending on if you if have 2 Industries per City, you can have 3 Cities feeding to/from a Warehouse in a 4th City for a total of 8 Goods in the Group (9 Goods if the Warehouse city has 3 Industries),

Or if you have 3 Industries per City, you can have 2 Cities feeding to/from a Warehouse in a 3rd City, for a total of 9 Goods in the Group.

You can have either 4 or 5, possibly 6, Tracks of the 1st (Freight) Station on the (in)side toward the 2nd Station that handle Manufactured Goods, the other 2 or 3 or 4 Tracks on the outside of the Station are for Resource Trains that do NOT normally use any slots in the Warehouse.

Both Stations have their backs toward the other Station in each City.

The 2nd Station, mostly Express, will have at least 4 and up to 6 tracks devoted to Mail and Passengers on the inside tracks closest to the first Station. The outer 2 to 4 Tracks are used mostly for Resource deliveries, although in some cases some additional Manufactured Goods would be possible.

This will get you an exchange of 8 (or possibly 9 with 3 Industries in the Warehouse City)) Manufactured Goods with 2 Industries per City per group of 4 Cities, or an exchange of 9 Manufactured Goods with 3 Industries per City in a group of 3 Cities.

If you need more than 8 or 9 Manufactured Goods in a City you can get them from another (2nd) group of Cities that also have a Warehouse, by sending a Train Route to the other group of Cities. Eventually with even more Cities and even more Goods to produce, you can add additional groups of 3 or 4 Cities, EACH with ONE Warehouse PER Group of Cities. Just be careful of how you pick which Industries go in each City, when you are going to need to exchange Manufactured Goods between Groups of Cities.

Meanwhile in some cases, depending on how they are arranged, you can group several Resource Stations into a Single Warehouse that ships to the Cities, or in other cases, individual Resource Stations ship direct to the Cities, from either side of the Cities and the tracks linking them.

IF you want to allow for 2 groups of Cities exchanging Manufactured Goods between each other group, put the Warehouse in each Group of Cities in the City closest to the other Group of Cities.

Also remember that a City does NOT need to get deliveries of ALL of the Resources
+ Goods it demands, it only needs more than 60% of the TOTAL number of CARLOADS of Consumer Goods (NOT Resources + Goods consumed/demanded by Industries) demanded to grow, so the most recent Industries added and their produced Goods, with the smallest demands, are not needed for a City to keep growing.

If you are supplying all or almost all of the Carloads of the Consumer Resources (Cattle will never count, for example, only Meat matters) demanded to a City, you can be missing a few Carloads of Manufactured Goods demanded and still get a growing City, and miss even more Carloads of Goods and still have a static city with no growth.

That is how Fullfillment of Demand calculations for Cities worked in RE 1, AND as far as I know, how it works in RE 2 (until contradicted by more information from the Game Masters).

see this thread for any possible changes on this subject:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1644320/discussions/1/3842179619564926694/

[jsb]

And so we have another set of workarounds for a bad dev job. Not critical of the post, just saying. Rest of post re cargo spot on.
I thought I would try the game again in a simple fashion with just some single track between 3 cities (with sidings.) Immediately ran into problems. I'll just wait and see if the devs do anything. Can't play the game as it is.
It is no fun nor is it relaxing to constantly find problems in the program that have to "be worked around."

[gardlt]

jsb, single tracks, with a separate platform for each train, work fine. 24 trains per city is actually quite a lot! Connecting the map like this for express is the monkey way to play and it's actually SUPER profitable. I was in a 2 player co-op game and we couldn't connect cities fast enough to spend the cash coming in + bonds.

I didn't seriously try to make sidings work, mainly because I haven't seen any economic challenge in this game. The connection bonuses boost you to $5M value in first weeks. And running the widespread single line express network early gives you heaps of earnings to then double up fully in the sections you want to grow.