Red Islands

[soldyne]

has anyone finished the second Hard map, Red Islands? I have been trying for a few hours now and I just can't get enough income to counter the "free" bread I need to distribute to the public. my best so far is 16% distribution, but I was operating at a loss.

I start with posters and then expand into newspaper. If I let the game run with just that, I can make about 1.2 mil in profit in a year which should be more than enough to cover the operating expenses of the food industry.

any suggestions on strategy would be welcome.

[soldyne]

still looking for help on this one. does anyone play the campaign maps at all?

[Deathifier]

Hi soldyne,

The approach I used was to produce furniture and to concentrate that furniture production at Hampton.

With careful positioning you can have the raw materials arrive at a port just across from the existing Logging Harbour 2, be processed and then delivered to the same or another storage area slightly further down, and then be processed into final goods that are stored in range of both of the shops (replace the hardware store with a furniture store) and also the port on the lower side.

It does result in demolition of almost everything you start with (i.e. everything except Logging Camp 2 and Long Isle Harbour) however it is far a more efficient use of the starting capital than trying to make the existing setup work.

You can keep the sawmill at Logging Harbour 2 to start with however I found moving wooden board production to Hampton later on made it easier to deal with the need to move logging camps around and/or to have multiple logging camps running at once.

When Hampton was saturated with all 4 furniture products I then started shipping the goods to Red Sund by ship.
The goods would arrive at a port just above and to the left of Red Sund and then be sent by rail to Red Sund and Red Creek.

At that point there was enough income to start setting up the bread production.
This involved a lot of farms (setup quite near the middle of the map) supplying wheat to a group of 4 food factories (built in a block for adjacency bonus) and then shipped out to the existing ports and railed to their final destinations.

This way I found that transport costs were minimised at the start (just a boat or two on a short hop) and the infrastructure setup for revenue generation can also be used to distribute bread with only one additional rail line to Norton needed.

To fully saturate bread demand I did need to rail in some wheat because the number of farms grew far beyond what could fit around a single coastal storage area.

Also remember to increase the price of bread at each shop to maximum so that you can meet demand with lower volume and get closer to break even on bread sales.

You may also find this post useful for a similar approach that uses more of the initial infrastructure:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/271360/discussions/0/527274088399602129/

All the best with the scenario - it is one of the tricker ones :)

- Deathifier

[soldyne]

excellent, and detailed. thank you sir. I will certainly try your approach and let you know how it goes.

[hs]

Extremely helpful reply by Deathifier. Alternatively, after struggling with this map, was able to finish it using most of original infrastructure (finished with around 44% bread and $5m cash) and 3 chains.

1 furniture chain (Logging Harbour 1 to Sawmill Station to Red Mill and Red Sund)
1 furniture chain (Logging Harbour 2 to Hampton)
1 bread chain (west of Logging Harbour 1 to all cities)

beginning: focused on getting 2 furniture factories in both chains (at Sawmill Station & Logging Harbour 2) and having 2 furniture stores in each of the 3 biggest cities. established harbour directly across from Logging Harbour 2, as Deathifier recommended

early middle: started building bread industry (ending up with 22 wheat farms and 5 factories) and expanding rail to allow trains to loop

late middle: added a few local chicken farms

end: distributed bread by ship to Hampton and Norton and Sawmill Station with a ton of trains delivering mix of furniture and bread

note: key factor was heavy furniture emphasis on chairs and picture frames due to superior value from perspective of boards needed v. price.
note: might have only deleted Long Island Harbour, its warehouse, and the Hardware Stores, deciding early to have Hampton be end of line of one chain and to not get into Hardware at all.

[Жак Фреско]

you can calculate that the wrapper gives the most profit of all the products. the second place is sledge. i also did newspapers and garden houses