Fall of Winterhome Survivor mode - not possible

[Spaz]

Since the latest update, the Fall of Winterhome in Survivor Mode CAN NOT be done.

I've watched other people's play throughs on YouTube and realized.. ohh they did it BEFORE the update.

Problems:
-You can no longer select Radical Treatment OR Preserve Life first choice WTF?!
-You may only select Moonshine, Organ Transplant or Purpose - church. WTF!?
-It takes too long to get to Over-crowding (which by time you get it, it's too late.)
-Starting resources have been cut back too much. not even half of what they were.l. WTF?!
-Coal production is broken. Even 2 Steam level Thumpers AND a Steam Coal mine cannot produce enough coal for sustained level 2 heating. WTF?!

So here's what happens.
- you cannot produce enough coal to turn up heating.
- everyone eventually becomes gravely ill and dies.
- each death wipes out your hope.
- you Fail.

This is game breaking, and makes getting the achievement pretty much impossible now.

[Tomato & Egg]

I finished Winterhome on survivor mode two days ago with my dreadnought having the 4th cabin built, short of around 1500 steel. The game is fully updated. I should have used emergency shift more often for my steel workers. The main mission is to evacuate people, and some are doomed to die in WInterhome. Of course I still try my best to prevent any unnecessary deaths, but anyway, around 80-100 will perish with Winterhome so I don't want to burden myself too much.

Phase 1 (Before you can research the repair station)
Remove the snow pit. That is basic.

Law Choice
As I said, overdrive+Level 1+Public House+New steam hubs can cause discontent to fall to around 80-90% and enables you to pass Radical Treatment at around 0800-1200. The law choices are rather limited before Phase 1: Radical Treatment--> Overcrowding --> House of Prayers --> Evening Gathering (or Shrines if you want output first) --> Church. Only after Phase 1 then you can pass soup. Faith Keepers must be ready before the first breakdown. Hope drops around 70-80% once the evacuation starts (assuming you speaks the truth). One may ask then why not get another law during this period? I would say, overcrowding must be passed before anything else. The sooner you get it the better.

Scouts
Demolition of all unnecessary streets. Normally I can recycle around 100 wood. After demolition there should be enough wood for a scout team. Send it to the weather station and take the 20 engineers immediately.

Health
Yes, it is almost impossible to finish with no deaths before evacuation.There are so many gravely ill people (like 19-21) once the game starts. Even by demolishing all unnecessary streets and buildings before 0800, you can only recycle around 130 wood, barely enough for 5 posts. The Medical system is simply overburdened. Because of the severity of the epidemic, care house is not an option as well. I remember having around 150 people in medical posts at least for the first week.

Build medical posts first even if you kick the people out of their crappy tents. Demolish some cold tents to build medical posts in the inner rings. Housing problem can be delayed until day 2.

Normally you need 3 engineers to have a working medical posts. Unless you have too few workshops, never fully staff the medical posts.

At extreme level people can still die while being treated in medical posts. Secondly, the three recuse locations are of course randomised (less random if most ruins are already cleared, you know where they will spawn on the remaining ruins ). The location may be just the one you are already clearing, or it spawns in a faraway location which is not possible to place a gathering post. If I can rescue them, good, (the 4 engineers are always welcomed) if failed, so be it.


Food
Since food becomes a major problem on day 2 (yes, day 2. Don't think about soup until you pass Phase 1), the research sequence is almost fixed to Flying Hunter --> Level 4 (or Steam Steelworks)--> Improved Flying Hunter -->Steam and Advanced Steelworks. After that, you can go for heaters or infirmaries.

Workshop
You should have 2 to 4 workshops for research. In any event, Flying hunter must be researched before the night of day 2 or else the people have to dig the bodies in the snow pit soon. I usually place the new workshops near the original sawmill. That spot can hold around 6-8 workshops.

Coal mine and Wall Drill
Get a coal mine and a wall drill. Don't let the steam cores sit idle. Even though there are so much wood, wood is never enough until you starts evacuation by day 15. Also, wood is need for converting tents into houses.

Housing problem
We all know the chunk of the discontent comes from no home and cold home. This problem can be delayed until around day 3 by then you should have cleared all ruins in the inner rings. Place the tents there.

I will leave it here because I am going to sleep. But trust me, Winterhome is doable at survivor mode. Just accept the deaths in the first weeks.

[Spaz]

I have tried so many combo approaches to this scenario. It has now officially been a week. I've tried over 50 approaches. None work.

omg ! TY ! some of the choices you made in research are quite different from what I've done. Yes I've taken multiple routes, but you offer some good info.

How in the hell did you clear the entire inner ring in 3 days?!

[Spaz]

ok. If I may ask.. what laws did you pass.. and in what order? I am clearly not doing something right here.

[Tomato & Egg]

Postat inițial de Spaz:

I have tried so many combo approaches to this scenario. It has now officially been a week. I've tried over 50 approaches. None work.

omg ! TY ! some of the choices you made in research are quite different from what I've done. Yes I've taken multiple routes, but you offer some good info.

How in the hell did you clear the entire inner ring in 3 days?!

Law choice
Like I said, Radical Treatment (Just wait a bit. You can pass it at around 0800-1200 on day 1)--> Overcrowding --> House of Prayers --> Evening Gathering (or Shrines if you want output first) --> Church. After so many tries this is the most optimised route.

I can see House of Healing can be very tempting. But in my run none of my patients ever got into those houses at all even at -70C. They can all sleep in infirmaries when the outside is -70C.


Demolition (Phase 1)
Assuming that you are willing to accept deaths, I did the following:
(Let's assume the outpost and the beacon is the north, then the wall drill will be southeast)
Send all children and workers to collect the ruins in the inner rings first.

After removing the snow pit, build a gathering post there. Also, once you have enough resources, build another gathering post one spot away (should be at the left side)

Demolish the hunter hunt, workshop, fighting arena and public house (after you signed the Radical Treatment law). The bunkerhouse near the fighting arena should also be demolished, and the tent next to the then workshop as well. They occupy too much space.

I usually build another gathering post in the inner ring as well, which means I have three gathering posts clearing the ruins before day 3. Normally, if nothing special happens, 90% of the ruins should disappear before the night of day 3 (the 10% accounts for sick leaves making the work slower).

No need to take down the gathering post you have just built. Instead get a coal thumper just outside the ring. In my experience, eventually you need 3 steam coal mines, 4 coal thumpers and 8 gathering posts to keep sufficient coal production. I had around 1000-2000 coal at the end of the scenario.

As for clearing ruins, honestly, I think the inner ring should be prioritised. Then the steelwork as well. I will relocate the steam hub near the original steelwork a bit so that it covers both the ruin and the steelwork.Others can be left aside once you have housed all people in the inner rings you can.

I usually build another sawmill near the wall drill to get extra wood for research and buildings.

Generator
The generator is always on at level 1 heating. I occasionally overdrive it to reduce discontent. Feel free to use overdrive until day 8. Then never use it from day 8 onwards.

Research choices
Flying Hunter or Steam Steelwork first. I prefer Flying hunter first. Food is a major problem on day 2. Like I said, I prefer building hunter huts before giving my people beds. On the night of day 2 I have around 2-4 flying hunters and 6 hunter hunts. They can still sleep on the floor but they can't eat coal to gain energy. On day 4, all of them should be flying hunters, and food is more than enough ever since.

Scout
Get the engineers from the weather station and return. They should arrive at around 0100-0300 on day 2. That means you can have 4 full workshop, or 6-7 medical posts (3 engineers per post). With overcrowding, it means you can handle around 150 patients, which should be enough. Then I send the scout to get back the engineers from the storm shelter and escort them.

After that,the scout will find steamcores using the Dreadnought routes. After they return, they will go to freshwater spring and the frozen forest. The last route is the rusting hulk (if you want more steel then rusting hulk first).

(Phase 2):
Law Choice:Once you have high enough hope and low discontent, the following laws can be adopted:
I usually go for soup first. The more food ration you have, the more often you can print hope in the temple. Also, it means you can evacuate hunters sooner (and more wood for housing and research)

Then Faith keepers. You always need them. They are your last line of defence.

Emergency shift and extended shift come later. I don't really use emergency shift until day 15 when I realised my steel production falls behind the schedule.

After the above laws have been passed, you can do whatever you like; organ transplant, care house, prosthetics, moonshine, public denounciation, protector of truth. That should be enough. If you want to send all children away then care houses and prosthetics first.

Research
(After Steam steel work, flying hunter, level 4, improved flying hunters) Advanced steelwork first. If you don't have two advanced steelworks on day 5 you will never get enough steel for a full dreadnought (I got 4 cabins only).

Some of the following research are almost compulsory:
-Steam Coal mine
-Medical posts and infirmaries
-Medical facilities insulation 1
-Full heater update with reduction of coal (heater 3 is a must because temperature drops to -70C. Infirmaries can still work if you have a heater 3 without other technologies. If your infirmaries cannot work it is over.)

The above technologies require no particular order. But I think full heater is preferred because it helps all working places.

I don't really rely on steam coal thumpers because I won't have sufficient manpower once evacuation starts. That is why you want steam coal mines.

Factory can come later if you want to get prostheses. I don't build any automatons. They are useless craps when the generator is down, and the generator will go down four times before the judgment day. Those steamcores can be better used for infirmaries and steam coal mine.

Housing
I also adopt the following choices: House Reduction Costs, Level 5, Medical facilities insulation 2 and House insulation. I started to replace all tents with houses by day 15. It is not a waste to have houses.

First, people don't get sick in house as easy as they are in tents, meaning higher production, lower pressure for medical posts, and in return, more engineers for research and repair.

Secondly, warm houses simply means less discontent. At least I have no discontent problem except on day 1 (which is pretty unavoidable). You can always recycle houses. You lost only 3 steel for each house, and you don't build more than 40 houses once evacuation starts, which means the loss of steel is only 120. It is a very good bargain.

Try to do this scenario at extreme first. I just managed to finish Winterhome at extreme with a fully upgraded dreadnought. If you can do so, survivor mode should not be that difficult (though you may have to accept that you don't have a full dreadnought unless you have a prefect run)

[Tomato & Egg]

Note: Just tried Winterhome again at survivor. I got the radical treatment law enacted at 0630.

[Shining Hector]

So in other words, git gud OP. Sounds like Winterhome Survivor post-patch is pretty much the same as before, that's pretty close to how I did it, too. Didn't think to dismantle housing for Gathering Posts, though, that's a nice touch. Really if all you care about is the cheevo, you don't need to expand the Dreadnought past the first level and just bail ASAP.

[Spaz]

Thank you very much. This is very helpful. I will definitely be trying your strategy out.
I always build that wall drill and coal mine right from the start as well.

06:30 am? how in the heck did u manage that?!
0.o

O.K. I will play around and see if I can figure it out.

[Spaz]

Postat inițial de Shining Hector:

Really if all you care about is the cheevo, you don't need to expand the Dreadnought past the first level and just bail ASAP.

LMAO .. he is waaaaay nicer than I am. I already got the Full Dreadnaught achievement so ..
All I intend to do is fuel that bad boy up, complete the first cabin and provisions and then.. load it up with my engineers and leave those sniveling *cough* behind. After being banished countless times while trying to get the FoWS, I really don't plan to be nice.

[Tomato & Egg]

Postat inițial de Spaz:

Thank you very much. This is very helpful. I will definitely be trying your strategy out.
I always build that wall drill and coal mine right from the start as well.

06:30 am? how in the heck did u manage that?!
0.o

O.K. I will play around and see if I can figure it out.

Before I start I will label the different stages as the followings:
Phase 1: Before Hope rises to 50% and Discontent drops to 25%
Phase 2: After clearing Phase 1 and before the Maintenance is complete. This should be done before day 11.
Phase 3: Building the evacuation centre and until the eventual breakdown
Phase 4: FInal Hours

I just have another Winterhome run on survivor mode. This time I managed to fully upgrade the dreadnought.

Phase 1
Well it is really just turning on the generator, staffing the public house and then to wait until 0630. Oh yes, I forgot to say this: staff the medical post as well with heater on. The earliest time I got the Radical Treatment Law enacted is 06:12. The Radical Treatment law can be passed at around 80-90% discontent.

I think by day 3 I have all the ruins cleared in the inner rings. By then, all workers should go to collect food except for the coal mines, saw mills, wall drill and steelworks. The children can do the rest.

I have 2 flying hunters on day 2, and 8 hunter huts. On day 4, they are all flying hunters. One fully staffed and upgraded flying hunter gives you around 35 food, meaning that I have 350 raw food per day until evacuation starts. That should be more than enough. I still had 270 raw food and 1500 food ration until the launch.

Revised Research Sequence
Alright, I have done the following this time:
(day 1)Flying Hunter --->
(day 2)Steelwork-->
(Day 3) Level 4-->
(Day 3 or 4)Improved Flying Hunter-->
(Day 4 or 5)Advanced Steelwork-->
Heater 2-->
Heater 3-->
Level 5-->
Repair Station -->
Repair Speed 1 -->
Repair Speed 2 -->
Housing Insulation--> (Day 13 Should be almost ready when the generator is down for the first time)
House Redesign-->
Advanced Steam Coal Mine --> (I don't do advanced steam coal mine first because I don't have steam cores at this point.)
Faster Outpost-->
Medical Posts Upgrade-->
Medical Insulation 1 -->
Heater Reduction-->
Infirmaries-->
Medical Insulation 2-->
Factory-->
Prosthesis Reduction Cost-->
Faster Prosthesis Production-->
Overdrive coupling-->
(Day 23) Generator Safety. Then the judgment day come.

I also passed Repair Speed 3 but I forget which day.

Unless you want to send all the children, no need to rush Factory and prosthesis. The two research slots can be used for more important technologies. Personally I want to send all children but the quest just props out at the very wrong time. If the quest appears after I can fit all the disabled with prosthesis I will definitely send all the kids off.

Repair Speed Upgrade is very helpful. Even though we are evacuating it is worth iincreasing the maintenance speed so that you can have less discontent (and use those discontent for steel production).

Last time I did not do Advanced Steam Coal Mine. This time I have two Advanced Mine and one Steam Mine. I eventually demolish the Steam Mine and use the two steamcores for infirmaries. Coal is no longer a problem once you have two Advanced Mines (80 coal per hour with shrines, 80 x 14 = 1120 cpd/mine) The consumption would be at most 2000 coal per day, which can reduced by shutting down extra heaters.

Wall drill is not really needed after day 15. The steamcore is for the factory.

Law Sequence (Phase 1)
Phase 1 Radical Treatment --> Overcrowding -->House of Prayers --> Shrines --> Evening Prayer --> Temple (or the Church)

Law Sequence (Phase 2)
Emergency Shift--> Extended Shift--> Soup --> Faith Keepers

Law Sequence (Phase 3)
By then you can change some of the orders. But I prefer the following:
Public Penance --> Moonshine --> Protector of Truth (to get discontent under control)--> Organ Transplant --> Care House--> Prosthesis --> Righteous Denounciation

With some luck, I managed to convince the people to stay on around day 20.

After the above have been enacted you can do whatever your like. I find discontent more difficult to manage because I spammed emergency shift for the steelwork, so I get the brothel and dueling law enacted as well. Field kitchen is also useful if you want to reduce the risk of getting ill.

The Final Hours
Remember, you can send a child to fix the generator, and then a steamcore, buying you 2 more days. I used the two more days to have just enough steel for the last cabin.

Conclusion
I think even at survivor mode you can still make some mistakes but the choice of law is pretty limited. I forget to send the scout at 0430. I was too busy and I only remember the scout at around 1100 on day 1, wasting 7 hours to get the weather station engineers back. Actually, on day 10 I forgot to switch off the overdrive, and I pushed a child into the generator core to save all of our asses. On day 21, one of the workers committed suicide for no apparent reasons.

Good luck. I hope it helps. I think getting the dreadnought fully upgraded on survivor mode is still doable by sacrificing some workers (dead because of working accidents in emergency shifts). Shred no tears. Those who can't run away are doomed to perish. Let them work till death. Definitely not a perfect run, but it is really absurd to prevent all unnecessary deaths.

[pazartesi_gorusuruz]

Man I am sittin here watching normal difficulty playthroughs of this scenario and crying xD Yall are discussing the survivor mode.. I really dislike the fact that the scenario pushes you to sacrifice people's lives. Like it's not possible at all to finish winterhome without killing anyone, which is definitely doable with all the other campaigns apparently.. I don't like being forced to make choices I don't want to, then it's not much of a choice really.

[Tomato & Egg]

I agree. On normal or hard it is entirely possible to prevent all unnecessary deaths but on survivor mode the initial wave of patients is overbearing. You only have 4 medical posts, and 40 patients with 19 gravely ill waiting outside. Very hard to prevent the gravely ill from dying with the initial set out. Also, if one wants to get a full dreadnought, multiple emergency shifts are necessary. We all know that from the second emergency shifts onwards people die in working accidents.

For me, I have to harden myself and sacrifice the people because in any event I cannot save everyone. At least 100 people will perish with the generator. Maybe this makes me feel less guilty.

[Shining Hector]

Yeah, it's definitely the darkest scenario. You can save 500 max, so somebody's going to die no matter what, though. My best was 400 evacuated on Survivor, it probably is impossible to finish the dreadnaught without emergency shift.

[snuggleform]

You're highly overexaggerating the issues. Post patch,I beat it on extreme with both faith and order (and I didn't even load saves) while maxing out the dreadnought, so the only difference between that and survivor is pausing which again isn't even an issue if you simply go into the build road mode (it pauses the game even on survivor).

You can/should get radical treatment first, and you can so within the first 10-20 seconds of the game by turning on the heat to level 1 (it's ok to use max range early on), override, put 1 worker into the pub house. I consistently do this like 10-20 times in a row and I've had to do it many times since the hardest part is early on. Overcrowding comes naturally within the next day or two after the cooldown period.

I never needed to use level 2 generator heating. Level 1 generator works fine. Research heaters/insulation, remove tents/bunkhouses that are not in a steam hub zone. Upgrade tents to bunkhouses with the generous amounts of resources you get from clearing the ruins. You are very stuck on the idea of requiring level 2 heating which as you say can be very expensive to maintain, but you simply don't need it. I stuck with level 1 heating and didn't have significant sick issues at all past the day 2-3 where you always have the usual issues until overcrowding really kicks in.

Make sure to remove the 3 steam hubs in the southeast of the map near the steelworks, they aren't helping much and they can drain your coal really fast for nothing early on.

My coal production was the two thumpers you start with with 2 gathering posts each, and I did research up to advanced coal mines eventually because manpower can be an issue trying to run more thumpers as you evacuate people.

I routinely ignore requests to heat homes because it can be too resource intensive to sustain the request for the days it requires, and I won just fine again maxing out the dreadnought.

Faith/order doesn't matter both are good. Foreman probably makes order overall but again I beat it with faith just fine as well.

laws: radical -> overcrowding -> 24 hr shifts -> extended shifts -> purpose tree, rush for the guard station/faith keeper so you can ignore a lot of requests without discontent penalties as well as silence the engineer if you decide to lie, then get the shrine/agitator for production bonuses. After that you eventually get prosthettics and added susbtance to food to reach your evac goals.

tech: I'm not sure which first tech is optimal but I tried a few versions; one time I went more/faster scouts to get the steam cores in faster, one time I started with faster gathering to clear the buildings faster, one time I started with better medical posts into fast infirmaries to clear out the initial sick wave better. I don't think it matters too much, but you should invest into resource generation (better wall drill/steelworks, coal mining) fairly early to keep the ball rolling

I don't think researching automatons is worth it because they can't refuel during the generator breakdown periods which is a serious issue.

I think it's worth it to have 2 tech shops early on doing research, and when things settle down a bit around day 5 maybe you can start alternating emergency shifts on them. By the end of the game (like day 23+) I literally researched everything I could have wanted. There's a LOT of useless techs for this scenario.

if you're going for full dreadnought you're probably going to have to use some 24 hour shifts on the steelworks on the last few days, and you should shift the coal outpost to steel outpost around day 9 at the latest

[pazartesi_gorusuruz]

Postat inițial de wsc150:

if you're going for full dreadnought you're probably going to have to use some 24 hour shifts on the steelworks on the last few days, and

So people have to die for sure? Is there no way of preparing the full machine without people dying xD That is my only question about this scenario. Cause I hate it if it is.

[PhoenixG]

Yesterday I just did it on survivor mode and was able to save 500 people and didn't use a single emergency shifts. I did exactly the same what I did on extreme mode Although I stuff less on the last minute and a bit more with wriggle room. (like boosting hope to 25% two times).

Instead rushing overcrowding, I rushed healing house. Focus on clearing the ruins on the coal mine, steelworks and the area north of the steelworks for space for the healing house.

I did went for automaton as they will produce more steel and no need for spamming emergency shifts. I put them on 2 advanced steelworks and 2 steam coal mine. When the generator goes down, wait till the automaton stop working before switching to manual labour.