Is placing everything on one "stage" good?

[Cavas]

I'm new to this game, is it good to place everything of one kind, like the crop stuff, on one layer where it yields the most, and then export it to other layers?

[Yogurt]

From my testing, exporting seems to be really expensive worker wise. I tried to send over 70 wheat over one elevator up and it costed something like 58 artisans! Seems better to try and grow most of the resources in the same area.

[Inanimate]

Yes, but it depends how far you are in your adventure.

You probably noticed that Peaks and Lowlands give the biggest agri/herding bonuses while Highlands boost honey. Depending on the map, this may make highlands the best settlement location, so keep that in mind to eventually migrate your populations there.

Money, while technically a limitation, does not drain while the game is paused, and there are various cheesy ways to keep your gold at the cap so the real bottleneck is your pop and tech level.

Since bottlenecks shift from POPS to LAND as you build, it is EVENTUALLY better to use the best land to generate your resources - don't forget that buildings with multiple outputs will output BOTH, it just might not be worth collecting all those resources if you don't have the transports.

That said, those bottlenecks will shift as the mountain gets filled in.
Most importantly, your costs will shift from Artisans+Artisans*X to Monk+Yak*X

This game claims it is all about reaching spiritual enlightenment through mountain climbing and supplying your people but it is ACTUALLY about adept Artisan and Yak control.

At the beginning, you need pops to run your buildings so exporting is expensive but land is not, so you can develop locally while stamping out whatever housing you need.

You will notice that getting to Tier 4 (Academy+Monastery) becomes the first big logistical challenge, it isn't easy finding space where you could combine a monk setup (even harder with walls even though they look nice).

In fact, to FUND this endeavor, you probably built a sprawling artisan district or two; at THIS point you probably noticed that your sprawling industry is eating land; T2 housing spam is no longer worth it, Yak buildings are too fat... however pop does not need export, so Lowlands become prioritized for Yaks.

At this point, you need to start consolidating your pop, feeding 3 settlements is significantly easier and CHEAPER than feeding 4 or more.

Transport costs scale based on amount of goods moved, so if you can reduce goods (wood to coal is 12 to 6, process wood before shipping) that helps GREATLY.

Artisan Carts scale pretty hard using MORE artisans, so when the Artisan costs 6+ 15 or so, it may be a good idea to adjust the logistics or replace with Yak transport, which costs a flat 12 monks and scales off Yak.

Manning your tech buildings and feeding your researchers probably wiped out your monk population, but at Tier 4 you should really consider Yak transport (3x3 building) because the new buildings will start eating up your artisans.

This means you can claw back artisans and use them to develop the higher tier industries instead of acting as couriers once you get the T2 Yak buildings, this opens up your Lowlands once again, which are probably running out as you scale Wheat, Milk, and Coal (lowest priority).

Good principles:
-Try to transport the "smallest" good; this usually means processed goods, minerals, and move them closer to the high volume goods if they are part of a chain.
-Using Lowlander transport is a fixed cost, sometimes you could use them to reduce the total amount of goods in a significant way.
-Keep transport distance small even across elevators; one big example would be farms that combine and the processing center: horizontal buildings can transport through themselves for free and then you COULD use workers to collect it all and then chain it to the Transporter.
-Scaling YAK is cheaper than scaling Artisans! T2 Yak is huge, clears up lots of Lowland, but T3 Yak Utopia means you can easily replace your most costly Artisan transports!

To illustrate, I was running out of Lowland space but needed ridiculous amounts of wheat for Tsampa and Beer, which was getting sent to the other side of the mountain at the cost of over 100 artisans or so;
1) I adjusted my farms so that they were in long strips, moving an entire Lowlander settlement to a new plateau, which allowed me a clean column where I could grab 15 farms with a single Splitter (Lowlander transport), and sent it up to an Artisan Transport that was next to the elevator.
2) I then moved the Tsampa mills and their Artisan Transport to the second level; I sent the Wheat through a Splitter which then fed all the Mills. This gave me more space to build Yaks. More importantly, instead of shipping the Wheat (18 per brewer!) all the way to Artisan Town to turn into beer, I decided to process it here, right after the elevator just like the Tsampa.
3) Since Artisan town no longer had a local brewery, I was also able to shift some snow-defense trees that only partially fed a Coal maker into the Lowlands, and cheaply exported coal which fed the MUCH closer brewery and eventually other industries.
4) This pretty much cut my artisan costs in half; eventually, I got T2 Yaks; this meant I could replace the Lowland Yak houses with Yak Farms, which provided Milk for Butter-goods and Cheese.
5) I then prioritized replacing the Wheat and Tsampa Transports with Yak Transport, reclaiming almost all of the Artisan cost.

The funny thing is, at that point I was actually low on Monks, so I had to make a small 3x4 grid to hit max tier. Since it was so small, artisan transports easily took care of it.

[Yogurt]

Originally posted by Inanimate:

Good principles:
-Try to transport the "smallest" good; this usually means processed goods, minerals, and move them closer to the high volume goods if they are part of a chain.

Good tip! I'm going to start incorporating this more into my builds.

The thing I really enjoy about this game is how the tech tree encourages this kind of natural rebuilding for effeciency.

[Inanimate]

Originally posted by Yogurt:

Originally posted by Inanimate:

The thing I really enjoy about this game is how the tech tree encourages this kind of natural rebuilding for effeciency.

I very much look forward to the next patch with the Move hotkey... hopefully they add in mass move as well.

[Cavas]

Thank you for your insanely detailed answer, I didn't realize that the game is so complicated.
The thing is, I built multiple mills and fields on the Lowlands, since they give way more there then on other layers. I wanted to export it to the monk layer then since they needed it, but only 2 tsampa were transported up there.
Is there anything I don't understand?

[Sakura]

Originally posted by Cavas:

Thank you for your insanely detailed answer, I didn't realize that the game is so complicated.
The thing is, I built multiple mills and fields on the Lowlands, since they give way more there then on other layers. I wanted to export it to the monk layer then since they needed it, but only 2 tsampa were transported up there.
Is there anything I don't understand?

the transport building will only move what the end distribution building is demanding.

[Cavas]

It doesn't for me, I'm putting 24 tsampa in and 2 are delivered to another food market, where they are still lacking it apparently

[Sakura]

if you need them to deliver it up the mountain instead of somewhere else first, you have to adjust the delivery priority. In the transport building's list of routes they're moving stuff to the uppermost is prioritised.

[Cavas]

It seems like it was a bug, after reconnecting everything it works correctly now

[R@DIO]

Originally posted by Inanimate:

Yes, but it depends how far you are in your adventure.

You probably noticed that Peaks and Lowlands give the biggest agri/herding bonuses while Highlands boost honey. Depending on the map, this may make highlands the best settlement location, so keep that in mind to eventually migrate your populations there.

You should add this as a gameplay guide since even if not structured is a very nice headsup for how the game develops and I think it can help new players.

[Inanimate]

Thanks, I was waiting for the next update with the move command, but when I have time I could organize some tips that are not dependent upon future features.

[pikupupu]

i made milk factory there xD everything is smoothly next to each other so not much transport or worker. Only when transport like cheese to the market.

[gRRRz]

Originally posted by Yogurt:

From my testing, exporting seems to be really expensive worker wise. I tried to send over 70 wheat over one elevator up and it costed something like 58 artisans! Seems better to try and grow most of the resources in the same area.

at some point it makes more sense to have specialized districts; specially since ressources are different depending on the stages you're at. Also there's an advanced monk building that uses less workers. food production should be local as much as possible. The most important ressource in the game is space. The most complicated chains of ressources will require quite a lot of transport anyway.