warehouse space?

[unseen4ce]

It seems I have 13000 units of goods to store in some towns. Yes I need to move it but my production has just begun. I imagine I may need 30 warehouses for all my businesses in some towns. Yet 30 warehouses is a lot of space, probably half a town.

What am I doing wrong. It seems annoying to have to build so many warehouses yet my warehouse cost is through the roof lol

[Insomnia]

either set up trade routes to have the recources moved around have it sell it directly to the town for a price

[Darinthal]

Each Warehouse holds 1000 goods. I tend to build around 10 per feeder city I own and set up my Stock Levels for those goods to what I want to carry. At my main Base of action I normally build around 30. 30 buildings is not that many when you look at what is available for building on. Normally there are about 200 - 300.

When you click on a warehouse you can hire an Steward. When you have hired a steward you can then set your stock levels of what you want to keep from being sold to market and what you want to hold from being put onto your fleets for shipping.

It takes a while to work out how these work correctly but you will ge there.

[unseen4ce]

I decided not to sell to the town because I thought I could make more money on trade routes. I think I may set up a sotrage city, have production centres and different bases as mentioned above.

200-300? ...I'll have to have another look. Didnt look like there was that many.

[Darinthal]

A warehouse takes up one Hex space per warehouse. Farms take up a Minimum of 2 and Maximum of 5. Otehr manufacturing facilities take up one Hex as do Residences. Each Residence can house enough workers for 1 manufacturing Facility/Farm (First 2 Hex Space then 1 per every second and subsequnt hex space that farm takes up). So if you do as I do and build large manufcturing facilities.
You place your farms to max the size then a few days game time into the build of the farm build the residences to accomodate all the required workers for that facility. Businesses take longer to build than Residences, Then as soon as the facility and residences are built drop sailors into the city to be employed by the business.
If I have a reasonable surplus of cash I normally will build 30 warehouses in my main city and 10-20 in each of my feeder cities and only sell to the town if I get to the stage of spending cash to house my stock. I set the max levels of the stock to just come up to below the max warehouse space. So all my manufacturing shouldn't overwhelm my warehouse and it is all ready to ship out. Then I grab my supply fleet of 10-20 Trade Flutes load it up manually and drop it all off at my central warehouse (also manually). Then I build any more warehouses I need to accomodate all my stock (I still havent managed to get Centralise Resources to work effectively)

I may end up with 4 Main centres so I can set up embassies and trade to all the different factions.

I also make sure that all the cities I own that have critical manufacturing facilities (Wood, Bricks, Metal, Tools and any primary resources I need to make my opther businesses work) have Lvl 8+ in defences. I know that lvl 7 will defeat any AI attacks but I like to make sure of some things.

[Dray Prescot]

But you have to employ like 75% of the employees before you can get enough control of a city to be able to build up it's military defenses. (I think that is correct). It is hard to do and will take a fair amount of time per city (You have to own over 75% of the production buildings).

[Darinthal]

To take control of a city through Economic means yes, 75% and city must be prosporous. However if you take a city by force you control it and can do what you want with the defences.

I like to scout out the cities (I use randomize resources to make the game interesting and different every time I start a new game) and find a city that fulfills all my needs as a main city and as soon as I am able to I take that city for my own (War with the country the city belongs to, grab a Letter of Marque from the opposing country, Plant a Single Pinnace Fleet in the city to check on Military Convoys in the city, Plant my Combat Fleet outside the city, then attack as soon as the city hs none or very few Military Fleets in port to minimse reputation loss)

[filmstudy21]

I think there are only 3 reasons to have warehouses when you analyze:

1. You need 1 per city to have the ability to look at the city at any time and automate trading there with a steward. This is particularly useful for doing a full mission sweep.
2. You may want to buy 3 warehouses as your first 3 builds, because they are cheap and allow you to quickly get your building permit.
3. Warehouses are the best and cheapest way to effectively by the deed to any plot of land and hoard it. Even if you don't use the warehouse, you cheaply keep all other merchants from building on the land and can develop or complete the city at your own pace later.

Otherwise, warehouses are a complete waste for storage value. Why? Because you can make much more money by using that same piece of land for production than for reducing storage costs. Example:

--You have a town with a 10,000 overhang of goods relative to storage space (which will cost you 1,000 per day).
--You are trying to decide whether or not to build 2 additional warehouses versus 1 business and 1 house.
--If you buy 2 warehouses you save 200 gold per day.
--If you buy a business and a house, you create 200 in lowest-price value added per day (example: 6 wood/bricks/grain = 200 = 4 fruit/cotton/hemp = value of manufactured good versus inputs for anything else with a minor reduction for cacao/coffee) and also approximately 200 in rental income. That rental income has a fairly narrow range, but the value added from the business can be up to 400 in a normal game.
--You might say "But farms take 25% more land", which is true but still makes the comparison of value 1600 (1 farmhouse + 4 farms + 4 houses) versus 900 at the very worst for a fully-developed farm with supporting housing.

If you want to run your business as efficiently/profitably as possible, you'll ultimately outsource all of your storage needs other than the first 1000 per city.