buy industries at the beginning

[ferenc.kovacs]

I have some question that is important for the beginning of the game. Do you think it's a good idea to buy indutries just after the start, like wood, wool, cows, brewery, clothing? So to make some just at the start and at the start industries are very cheap (100'000 vs. 500'000 or more after one year)?

[Michael M]

If you have the money it´s a good idea. They will cost millions later.

[MrSkinny]

Owning industries means you control their rate of production. This can be helpful. But they will always be vastly less profitable than investment in freight and passenger trains. I tend to put all early money into building as much track and routes as possible. When you're not struggling with money, buying the industries that you need to control or replace at a premium won't be that big a deal.

[Silberlynx]

Industries need to run veeery long for you to actually get even with the buying price. It can be useful to control which wares get produced somewhere but in my experiecne in the early game you can make money much, much better simply focusing on trains.

It's true that they cost more later in the game but you will usually swin in money by then anyway.

[ewjax]

I started doing this on a recent scenario. I don't like waiting on the game to decide it needs to upgrade the factory level after starving me of that resource for a while, I want to be able to set it right away.

I did discover some down sides:
- as mentioned, even early and cheap, it still costs money you may not have
- yes you get total control of factory sizing, but statement of the obvious, you do miss out on the automatic aspect of factory sizing. So it forces you to micromanage a bit more.
- if you think "I don't want to micromanage, I have money to burn, so I'll just buy it, ramp it to level 5, and forget it" well that's fine, but the unintended immediate consequence = that factory suddenly will want a torrent of input goods, that you likely weren't supplying before. Even if you don't have a buyer for those goods, that factory will still go into overdrive mode trying to fill up its suddenly-larger internal storage bins. Example, I frequently put sawmills in as a 40k factory, and I totally shot myself in the foot by ramping that sawmill to level 5. The factory went from wanting about 3 wagons/week of lumber to over 15, and that quantity just totally overwhelmed my supply warehouse setup. I traffic jammed myself into next year trying to ramp it up to feed that warehouse, and totally broke my lovely warehouse city-growth setup, which normally will reliably take 3x or 4x cities to double-growth all the way to 100k without even hiccuping.

[Empty1958]

There is one other aspect of this. The cost to the owner to upgrade each step as opposed to buying it at that step.

If you don't have a need to control the factory or resource site and it is not part of a task list you might find the cost difference of now/later not that much.

[P.J]

I will say buy the less industries/business as possible as you will never recoup your investment unless you play for 10+ years. The business/industry part of RE2 is badly designed and not an option to make profits. It is only there a a money pit.
In other games like RT3 (and prior), you could make a fortune by controlling a product stack (ex: wood, plants, furniture, etc). Heck, you could even buy a few industry at the start, wait a couple of months and you ended up with more money then when you started!

[caseyas435943]

Originally posted by Michael M:

If you have the money it´s a good idea. They will cost millions later.

But later millions don't matter. Buy then you are making it faster than you can spend it. So money doesn't matter. You are making almost 500K a click of game play. So a 2 million coal mine is like 4 seconds of letting the game run. So what.

I laugh when guys spend 30 minutes building track so it doesn't have a bridge or tunnel costing 1 million when they have 20+ million in the bank. Build the track you'll get the money back in no time running the train(s).

Sure in the beginning you don't have the money you build them to save. But later on, why? Build it and move on. The cost easily get refunding running the train(s).

[joewagner501]

If you are going to buy industries (either raw material or actual industries) I would recommend you bankrupt them first. I do this all the time and is easy to do. Stop picking up their product or delivering the raw material they need. Their business will drop to nothing or close to it. Then you can swoop in and buy the business at a discount. It's how the robber barons of the past did it and its effective.

[Dray Prescot]

Depending on Character and Tech bonuses, it take about 100 weeks (with no bonuses), i.e. about 2 game years for a purchase of Industries or Resources to pay off their purchase price, or upgrade cost.

I do frequently build a new Industry in a newly available Slot after a City grows to 40k (and 90k) to make sure that the local Investors do not build the wrong Industry there, that I want to produce the right goods for my planned expansion of my rail network. Otherwise, they usually build the "wrong" Industry most of the time. Sometimes you need a particular Industry in a particular City to satisfy Task goals.

I love to build a Clothing Industry in the same City that already has a Cloth(Fabic) Industry, for instance.

I did try playing a Balkans Scenario using the Lady as my character, and did buy and build a lot of Industries, but it was a lot longer to finish the Scenario, but it was a much richer and productive Railway.

Buying an idle Resource site or Industry, can lower the price a lot, before you connect it to your rail network.

[Dray Prescot]

A good time to buy Industries is just before you (or any other AI Company) connect to their City by building a Station and Track there. Their prices usually rise after being connected and resources start being delivered to them and their production being consumed.

The same for Resource Sites.

[Darth Glorious]

I always buy corn and vegetables first. They are always in short supply in mid game.