Problems with "Better Red Than Dead"

[ulrichreich]

Hello together,

I'm stuck at the above mission. On my fifth playthrough I finally managed to raise the happiness to 45 by demolishing / deactivating everything on the secondary islands.
Unfortunately I still have problems reaching the required 50k.

My current setup is the following: 2 Tobacco Plantations + 1 Cigar factory (from the mission setup), 4 Sugar Plantations + 1 Rum destillery, 2 Logging Camps.

I've got 2 Embassies with reputation > 100 and request financial aid each time it's available.

For raids I use both pirate cove and garrison on permanent treasure hunt.

The year is now 1980 and the soil degradation is now down to around 40% and the plantations cease to produce enough to support the factories so the balance is now down from around 30k to +/-10k.

Regards

[Kunovega]

https://youtu.be/VXJsWNMfmG4?si=TFaBWJWASa_07uaD
https://youtu.be/t24TAxQwbNo?si=zfFzkKmBJsYb4V_P
https://youtu.be/CCVM34CcjHA?si=On9DsHohYt6Mx5Xb

[ulrichreich]

Oh, cool - someone who likes XCOM too.
Thank you for the links. I'll have a look.

[joeball123]

If you're going to use monoculture for plantations, you really ought to place some manure spreaders nearby to counteract soil degredation - my experience is that ~1 spreader on "widespread spray" per plantation is enough, as long as your teamsters are keeping them stocked up; "concentrated spray" might do better, but the area-of-effect reduction makes it a bit of a pain to work with. Be aware that ranches need to be on "pasture prohibition" to produce manure to feed the spreaders (cattle ranches have an upgrade that allows them to produce manure on the default work mode, but I'd still recommend going for "pasture prohibition" on them due to soil degredation), and that you should probably keep at least some of the ranches that produce the manure for your manure spreaders away from the plantations so that if your teamsters do fall behind on stocking the manure spreaders you don't end up killing your manure production.

Having said that, I'd say that multiculture should be better here, especially since you don't seem to be investing particularly heavily in cigar and rum production. There's more than enough open space in the initial agricultural area to get six or eight plantations in a double row on either side of a road, which gives you two tobacco plantations for the cigar factory + two sugar plantations for the rum distillery + two to four plantations for other crops, all in close enough proximity that multiculture should work out to a net-neutral or even net-positive modifier to efficiency (if you need an additional crop, I'd recommend cotton since one plantation is more or less enough to keep a textile mill busy; rubber, coffee, and cocoa are still just cash crops in the World Wars era, at least without DLC industries, and even when you get to the Cold War only cocoa can be processed without investing in a power plant). You'll need to spend a bit of the starting capital rearranging the initial plantations into a more optimal layout for multiculture, but it'll work out better in the long run.


As far as other things go:
- Raw materials are generally not very worthwhile, so if you want to have logging camps then I'd strongly recommend having at least one Sawmill, and preferably also a Shipyard for each Sawmill.
- Running all of your plantations (and ranches) at minimum budget and issuing Agricultural Subsidies may be worthwhile, especially if you're pushing your populace Communist; the base bonus from Agricultural Subsidies is enough to offset the efficiency penalty for setting the minimum budget and becomes net-positive once Agricultural Subsidies levels up, plus the edict makes the Communists like you more.
- The Bank, Ministry, and Opera House (and arguably also the College, the Customs Office, and the Immigration Office) that the scenario starts you with are fairly expensive buildings which probably aren't actually doing that much for you, so you may want to consider demolishing/pausing them to reduce expenses and shift the workforce into more blue collar jobs.

[ulrichreich]

I finally did it late this night.
Took a look at the first 15 Minutes of the 2:51h guide - this helped me to get over the first stage and transition to the Cold War Era. From that point it was a walk in the park.

I was running several different plantations on Multi Culture with a manure spreader settled in the center. So the difference to Mono Culture was a mere 10%.

Also demolishing the Ministry and the Customs Office took a lot of pressure from the balance.

As soon as I transitioned to the Cold War Era I build a Steel Mill and a Power Plant.
Together with some Nickel Mines I could soon build a Weapons Factory - afterwards the balance was safe.

Thanks to both of you for your help. I would not have managed without it.

Regards.

[joeball123]

Originally posted by ulrichreich:

I was running several different plantations on Multi Culture with a manure spreader settled in the center. So the difference to Mono Culture was a mere 10%.

I'd have to check again to be certain, but I'm pretty sure that Manure Spreaders only counteract soil degredation and as a result are useless if you're running Multiculture on all of your plantations and Pasture Prohibition on all of your ranches. Their value lies in making Monoculture plantations / Humane Exploitation ranches sustainable, not in boosting Multiculture plantations and Pasture Prohibition ranches.

Regardless, congratulations on completing the scenario, and glad I could be of assistance.