Wild Walkers early game progression.

[Pious Heretic]

So every guide/tutorial I've run across makes a big deal out of starting in forests, and beefing up industry as much as possible. The problem I'm now encountering is that both my science and dust production are garbage. I build two or three improvements (usually relegated to Seed Storage and Mill Foundary - Husbandry basically breaks me) to cities and suddenly I'm running a dust deficit that ensures my population is pretty much stuck on producing this, to say nothing of the fact that I can't get enough science to make any serious progress through eras.

What starting stats are good for my first city? Roughly what should I be looking at by turns 20? 30?

I feel like there's something I'm missing in this game. I didn't have nearly this much trouble getting established with any faction I played in Endless Space.

[💜Sylaess]

Ideally you want to take advantage that you have good production early on to get buildings that generate science and dust. Overall in the long run you end up ahead even if you're only using public library and the initial dust thing. Make sure to expands lots and to take advantage of production.

Once you have 5 or 6 cities.. Their low yield of science adds up real fast into an actual science gain.. You need more cities.

[player1]

Interesting... This is pretty much the opposite problem that Vaulters have.

They progress in science too quickly compared to their industry, making them unable to build most of the expensive stuff, and making their units/settlers cost more, due to too quick progression to the follow up eras.

[Barefoot]

You do want forests, but not exclusively. Depending on how many anomalies you have (I play with Many, it's just more fun that way to me), I look for a starting city with at least 15 food (20 on Many), 10 Industry, 10 Dust, and at least a little science. If I don't get it, I restart. My reasoning is that I'm going to spend a lot of my time on each game, so I should get a capitol city I'm happy with.

It sounds like maybe you're focusing -exclusively- on forests? Anomalies are way, -way- more important than mundane terrain types, but ideally if all you can get is normal terrain, I'd say something like 3-4 forest or enchanted forest, with the rest plains. If you can't get anomalies, you must must must get a river. If you don't have anomalies or a river... it's garbage, restart.

You can always expand into forests later. You want balance for your city center and exploits.

Also, if you know you have Dust problems as Wild Walkers... then build Dust production buildings -before- food.

But... you shouldn't have problems with Wild Walkers. They're the economic powerhouse of the game. If your economy is stalling in any way, you needed a better start, or to research in a different order maybe, I dunno.

Edit: Also, the Husbandry center is worthless for your capitol city; all it adds is food per worker, not passive food, and your capitol is never going to focus on food. It'll have way too much to build throughout the game, and for me, almost always has all workers in industry the entire time, so you're literally throwing Dust down the drain if you build the Husbandry Center there.

Instead, use the Husbandry Center for a food-heavy city that's going to balance food and production workers, in order to be your settler factory. You should try to avoid building more than one or two settlers with your capitol, as every settler represents somewhere between 5-15 turns of growth stagnation (depending on whether or not you can afford to buy out production). You should have a city that specializes in settlers, that has great food and industry tiles, without needing to build many (if any) borroughs.

[Herasel]

Another way to increase your dust production is just to take advantage of the wild walker industry by training and selling units, especially during winter when things get really rough.
Also remember that wild walker heroes are the best governors in the entire game so take full advantage of them and their skills. WW heroes have the "Living walls" skill which reduces the city's upkeep by 90%.