On The Edge Survivor

[Lord Dem]

Just finished it on Survivor. Boy what a ride. I've been trying 2 days to get the achievement but missed the very end all the time. You don't get the achievement if you get to the end and you fail btw I don't know why people say you get the achievement. You need to either save london or save the people who come to you. The research speed really is the killer for survivor and you never have enough steel (seriously the only scenario you have enough steel is New Home!)

Strategy wise the first days are the most critical after is just handling your resources. Some tips for people who want to beat it on Survivor for the first days

Day 1:
Allocate Workers on the Steelworks blocking the path and everyone else on wood piles and the 5 left one one of the wood ruins. I dismantled the long road and some parts near the beacon and near the stockpile. I build 7 tents, 1 medical post, 1 gathering post (at the ruins area) and 1 workshop. I removed 10 engineers from woodpiles and placed 5 on the woodshop and 5 on the medical post. (I tried doing it on the next day but people start dying if you don't do it the 1st night). I researched ASAP Brazers cause on Day 3 you need it otherwise you will end up with a horde of sick people you can't handle. I moved from the woodpile near the ruins people to the gathering post and then 5 from there on one steel ruin and the ones who were on the wood ruin moved them to steel ruin as well.

Day 2:
I prepared to build, Cookhouse, 2 gathering posts (one each near the coal piles to gather also wood), an extra medical post. Mid day the steelbarrier is cleared so you want to move those workers 10 on the wood pile you removed the engineers and 5 on a coal pile to gather a bit more. At night I moved everyone on gathering posts, the engineers on the new medical post, 5 workers in the cookhouse and the rest left on steel ruins.

Day 3:
Brazers gets researched and immediately start on Sawmill. You should have enough resources by now to build the administration office and depot. Build the road to the warehouse and by end of day you should have 20 workers free you can move to Warehouse. If you completed all tasks, you immediately want to ask for more raw food from New London otherwise you won't be able to make it until Hot Springs people will die.Brazers should be on otherwise people will get very sick very soon.

NOTE: - I turned off Brazers on -20 to save on coal. I managed to pull quite a few days before researching Coal Mine. You need Steam Coal Mine with the additions to be able to pull it through the scenario. You can locate 7 tents/houses within each brazer. No need to upgrade radius but efficiency and power you need to upgrade. Heaters need to be up to level 2 I didn't research to level 3 cause no time. In fact I couldn't reach the final tier of researches in my playthroughs on survival.

Day 4:
Build 2 tents for the children arriving and also allocate my Scouts and send them out. DO NOT GET MORE PEOPLE FROM SCOUTING UNTIL YOU GET TO HOT SPRINGS! When 24 hour shift is enabled wait until 18:00 to enable it on the Warehouse and have it at steel. At about 150 steel you want to swap to steam cores. Make sure you don't kill anyone otherwise you not be able to pass food laws. When you have HIGH favour from New London ask for More Raw Food. This will trigger either the soup or the saw dust (is RNG from what I understood) if you get Sawdust is better because of rations. Try and trigger this before you turn any incoming food into rations. If Sawmill is finished place 2, one near each set of trees. You just need 5 people on them.

Day 5:
New London will force you to enact extended shift. Make sure to allocate it on the Workshop and Warehouse. You don't need to trigger another 24 hour shift at this point and you should have enough steel and steam cores for your 1st shipment to get food back. At this point I just kept asking for coal instead of anything else when Favour was Average. Even when you are prompted for Discontent import Coal. If you have someone who died you will be forced to pass a law for the dead and again is RNG either Pit or Cemetary. Pit is better because of organ transplant you can enact later. If you manage to not ask for London to pass a law on someone dying you will be able to pass it yourself when you have freedom of the laws. At this point the path to Hot Springs opens and after recalling scouts to bring resources back you can send them immediately there. In the meantime try to fullfill at least 1 more order to New London. You don't need to fullfill anything else and just stockpile whatever you can from the warehouse.

I then on my return from Hot Springs picked up the survivros and then allocated them on various tasks to gather resources faster. You need the survivors to make the construction depots to send to the settlements.
I tried to time my depots to make the Safe Roads and then send them to the next settlement to settle. Don't try to upgrade all 3 settlements focus on just one and keep asking from the others when on Average Favour stuff you need. All besides Shipwreck can give you steel on Average. If you need to send a lot of workers to develop a settlement wait until Shipwreck is High Favour and ask them for a lot of workers they send you 15.

It is very hard to keep up with the supply/demand especially due to the fact that you can't research fast enough due to the timeline and requirements. I ended up having 3 workshops with extended shifts and 2 Infirmaries on my playthrough.

I could only get 2 of the settlements to loyal and one to friendly (the childrens' mine cause is the last I went for. Perhaps I should try going 2nd to that as it seems I could delay the coal production a bit more since they keep sending coal). Even though is trivial in Easy/Medium/Hard difficulty in Extreme and Survivor you really are pushed.

The loyal settlements send the necessities to New London at the end. Then I had to handle them myself.

Some more tips I did:

You just need 2 scouting teams. I always risked on the Tesla and the other areas. Sometimes failed sometimes worked.

When settlements are on Average request resources always unless you know you need something else. On High Mines give you a Lot Of Coal 300, Hot Springs gives you a Lot of Raw Food 60 and Shipwreck gives you a lot of workers 15 or Engineers 5.

With most efficiency upgrades on the Warehouse you can pull 3 steam cores on a 24 hour shift and fill steel to 300.

You will have one unavoidable death on the 2nd 24th hour shift wherever you put it. After that all 24 hour shifts are deathless.

You need both fighting arenas and public house and all subsidiaries to keep discontent down.

I will rerun it in the future to try and develop all settlements and perhaps try and go to the childrens mine first to see how it ends up because it seems you can sustain wood which is a gatherable resouce easier and you are pushed back at least 2 researches for coal mining which can be used at that point for infirmaries or other researches.

I highly recommend the challenge for people who want to perfect a run for it.

[Harris]

It's better to open with 2 med posts to handle all sick, then add the 3rd one with 3/3/4 eng. Later on it'd be up to 4 posts, possibly stopping research for a brief.

Once you get to infirmary sick is a non-issue. Early on you might have some of them dead, in my case because I didn't want to ask for radical instead of food law.

The real and arguably only struggle is food, you shouldn't get any more people until hot springs, and you should try randoming sawdust out of new london ASAP - that law is too powerful and balance-breaking this map, food becomes non-issue.

Other than that, I disagree with asking for coal ever, since that's the easiest resource to get. Ask for wood instead to avoid downtimes in your building/research and postpone the time you need to get to convicts.

For coal I went adv coal mine + 66% off brazier consumption, didn't even bother disconvering children's mine as not worth it. Had tons of coal so was able to heat every workplace with braziers and heaters maxed out. This in turn allowed me to have only 1 infirmary and with overcrowd that was all I ever needed for sick.

Only 1 inf with 5 eng in turn allowed me to have 4 workshops working at all times so research was very fast. Ended up with helping new london by using loyal hot springs and convicts and sending my steel, cores and coal as soon as it popped up.

Once you get past the early food situation and stabilize your heating (spend coal sparingly before steam mine) the scenario turns into a yawnfest.

[Lord Dem]

Originally posted by Harris:

It's better to open with 2 med posts to handle all sick, then add the 3rd one with 3/3/4 eng. Later on it'd be up to 4 posts, possibly stopping research for a brief.

Once you get to infirmary sick is a non-issue. Early on you might have some of them dead, in my case because I didn't want to ask for radical instead of food law.

The real and arguably only struggle is food, you shouldn't get any more people until hot springs, and you should try randoming sawdust out of new london ASAP - that law is too powerful and balance-breaking this map, food becomes non-issue.

Other than that, I disagree with asking for coal ever, since that's the easiest resource to get. Ask for wood instead to avoid downtimes in your building/research and postpone the time you need to get to convicts.

For coal I went adv coal mine + 66% off brazier consumption, didn't even bother disconvering children's mine as not worth it. Had tons of coal so was able to heat every workplace with braziers and heaters maxed out. This in turn allowed me to have only 1 infirmary and with overcrowd that was all I ever needed for sick.

Only 1 inf with 5 eng in turn allowed me to have 4 workshops working at all times so research was very fast. Ended up with helping new london by using loyal hot springs and convicts and sending my steel, cores and coal as soon as it popped up.

Once you get past the early food situation and stabilize your heating (spend coal sparingly before steam mine) the scenario turns into a yawnfest.

Well you have no issues having dead the only death I wanted to have was the person who dies from the 24 hour shift so that pushes the limits to a different variable.

I also found how to place the tents to place 7 with 1 brazier. I also planned my incoming of survivors from the scouting to when settlements wanted people to assist in tasks.

Wood hadn't been an issue for me since there is a lot of it resourcable from the get go. Coal though you need the Steam Coal Mine to be able to sustain the coal requirements with the heaters on. And it was priority to boost the output of the warehouse as well as reach the bunkhouses and infermaries asap. As such I think there is a way to play around the childrens' mine using it early game to focus the research elsewhere. I am travelling abroad for a few weeks so will be giving that a go when I come back but I loved finding all the nits and picks for it in my playthroughs.

[amordron]

You can place 8 really 9 tents not 7 with one if your trying as a note. You just have to stagger them slightly vs making them of the same road. It is possible to get 9 quite easy by stggering the roads if you don't mind taking the time to, 8 with no effort at all. Rather good value esp for first housing bay of 7 tents + 2 med posts or 7 tents + 2 for kids when they come. Have the med posts or kids tents in another node, toss it where a gathering post is also to heat that cheaper till it’s removed. Makes 3 braziers (1 for workplaces that you can fit two workshops cookhouse and coal mine all in one) all you need all game even with tossing the public house in one of the two housing ones.

Really a 10th should fit in but haven't been able to get a 10th ever as the middle row should be able to have 4 as no reason a centered brazer between 4 houses that hits the south 2 houses cant hit the north 2 when there equal distance and stretch type.