Tunnel Web Spider Achievement

[Duff]

Anyone that has completed this achievement have any tips? I'm currently at 15/30 settlements founded but I'm really starting to struggle with the population requirements. At 25 total cities I need to 2.6 million for the next settlement to unlock. Starting to struggle a bit with some of the basic goods like wheat, logs, and fish since you don't seem to unlock more of those as you go deeper into the outback.

[Akira Nagasaki]

yeah, same problem to me... is it neccessary to do this with 1 save? or all free game matches in australia together?

[Maxim]

My first thought is - what are your weak strategies, and did those strategies give the kind of cash needed to purchase settlements AND increase their output levels to what you have to have in the end.. but do it early enough to prevent excessive price increases??

[gardlt]

I would assume that you need to make it in a single game.

Here's an idea for a "safe" strat. Concentrate on actually growing previously opened settlements. If you reach 90k in each one, the third slot can provide a new cargo that will allow the city to remain stable when you divert some supplies for new settlements. Don't forget about Museums at 60k.

Then in select/ideal locations with easy resource access push the population higher. Getting seafood to open settlements deep in the outback is one of the bigger logistic challenges.


Alternate would be to push 8 or so ideal cities to high population 250k+. Growth is percentage based so a bigger city "growing" will add population faster than a small one. With a couple warehouses 250k+ isn't taxing logistics.

some of the existing cities have access problems due to terrain. Some towns in the north New South Wales/Queensland coast area may be promising. I would also look to the west of Victoria as Seafood access is possible there without facing steep grades. You just need to develop those settlements first.

A good test of skills.

[Duff]

The population requirements keep getting larger. I've tracked it over the last few and it went 1.923mil -> 2.252mil ->2.631mil. So even though 2.252mil only unlocked 1 settlement I have to increase overall pop by 378k to get to the next point. I'm already needing to average over 100k per city on the map to move on and to one of the points, some of the towns aren't in very good positions.

[Akira Nagasaki]

same to me, the max i can go to is about 2.3 mio. inhabitants. each more than 100k and one city have more than 260k.

if it is really neccessary to have all 30 founded settlements in one savegame, than i guess, that we have to have more than 5 or 6 mio inhabitants in total, and that would mean, 150k or more for each city!

I've tested it. to build 30 settlements in total isn't counting. I assume, it is really needed to have this in 1 savegame!

The developers should change this achievement to 15 settlements in one match or 30 settlements in several matches. its just impossible.

i give up...

[Duff]

I just don't know that this one is possible. To go from 15 settlements to 16 I have to increase total population by about 379k. Assuming that that number stays constant for the rest of the settlements (I don't think it will), you'd have to have a total population of over 8 million with 39 cities. That means literally every city on the map has to have over 200k pop.

I can build some big cities with some good, efficient clusters but building every single city up that high is a massive challenge.

[Akira Nagasaki]

yeah, i just assumed. the developers should change this achievement. if it will not be changed, noone can achieve it.

[Bladnir]

Has someone made any significant progress towards this achievement?


From the few numbers gathered here it appears to be exponential growth, up to 17% for every new settlement. If that was true, it might be possible that 40 cities (ie. 30 new settlements) need over 20M total population, so more than 500k per city on average. Which I dare say is (near?) impossible.

Yeah, this needs addressing by the devs, at the very least acknowledging whether this is intended or not. It feels like an oversight.

[OriginXL]

Same problem.
I have tried more than 10 times since it is the only achievement that I did not get so far, the best I can do is about 4M population (18 newly found settlements and average 150k in each city). I think the achievement is impossible to get right now since the number of rural industries is not enough to support such a large population.
I give up now, hope that there can be some help on this achievement.

[SuperTron]

I also struggle with the Web Spider achievement. Now I have built 21 settlements and reached 6 million population.

But now I have canceled it. There is always a step forward and a step back ...
In the end, 750k additional population was required for a new settlement. That is definitely too much and not possible. Something has to be changed here.

[t.schmidt]

I'm right now at 25 new settlements with a total amount of almost 10M population. That is more than australia used to have in 1950 and it is before 1930. So I do think it's almost impossible to crack. Although I haven't tried all ages yet. Any hints from the Programmers?

And the only way it got me that far, was building a big warehouse next to every big city station. But now every new settlements "costs" more than 1.3M of new population and increasing every step of the way. An extrapolation would mean that at least 18 million people would have to live in Australia before 1930 to have the achievement recognized. Every city is at least 250K and some even bigger (up to 1.79M in "my" Capital). I started the freegame 1830 to 1850 und kept playing (now 1862) . Hopefully I can move forward in time even further. I keep on trying.

[gardlt]

The numbers for settlement unlock can be found in the editor if you "create" a down under map. The number needed is 17M or to be exact: 17017052.

You are on the right path. The 1830-1930 time period has most cargoes = highest consumption. It's the worst one to use.

The 1830 and 1850 periods have the same output/economy. 1224 loads per month with all resources at level 5. I prefer 1850, because legacy techs are available. Those boost your engine speeds. I think it's enough to equalize the map loco speed factor difference of 5:3. But I could be wrong on this. In any case, this doesn't matter unless you hit the loco limit. I know it's 1,200+, I forgot the exact number.

The 1830 and 1850 periods have 20 cargoes consumed by each city. But Coal and Concrete are half volume. This means an effective 19 cargoes. The 1870 and 1890 periods have 20 actual because Rail-O-Mite is double volume. 1910 has 21 because Autos are double volume.

Cargoes have a standard consumption defined as: 100,000 inhabitants will consume 1.0 load per week.

The 5 staples: Grain, Seafood, Beer, Meat, Logs; have a double standard consumption rate, but this also decays as the city gets larger. In super large cities, their consumption can fall almost completely, I have seen 0.1. This means a larger city is more efficient: less loads per inhabitant.

The staples are always relatively abundantly supplied. But the most efficient large cities barely want them. The question is how best to maximize the use of the staples?

Without complex math to find x "ideal" city sizes, one option is to find the point that the consumption of standard cargoes and staples is equal. This is somewhere near 500k inhabitants. This simplifies our decisions a fair bit. We can then say that for growth with Museum we need > 19/2. 9 cargoes are needed. For a stable city, just above 40%, we can drop that back to 19*.35= 6.65. Round up to 7. I don't know if this can be cut to 6, but if there is a slight delay in supply that could cause population to shrink. Coal and Concrete do provide a 6.5 setting that can possibly be used. I will use the "safe" 7 for my following calculations.


At 500k, the staples can be used to support 22 cities. 2 normal cargoes are needed for stability, 5+2 = 7. That is 11M population.

According to my calculation there are 323 carloads per week remaining, that includes maximize Paper production since it has 1:2 conversion. I'm taking into account the Logs needed to utilize the Iron, Coal the Clay, etc..

If used in one Super city we get the higher efficiency as the staple demand drops off. At 5M+ their consumption is hardly worth mentioning. This allows a safe math with "16" relative strength cargoes. For stable we need only 5 cargoes. 323 loads are able to support a city of 6.5M inhabitants.

Doing a large city at about 6.5M, then 500k at 21* more using staples is 6.5M + (10.5M) = 17M, this is enough. *It's obviously impossible to grow the last one.

There is also the option to try 6 cargoes in the 500k cities. It should be stable as long as good supply is very reliable. With Museum it's 42%.

That's without considering the most powerful tool: Promoters. Using one in a 6.5M city will give you at least another million. It's not stable, but that's not the point.


Addition: In regards to resource unlock, I didn't look super carefully, but I saw a path to have all by settlement #23 (7.2 M).

In my opinion, this achievement is a perfect end to this game. A challenge for near perfect resource utilization which was always the core mechanic here. Well done Gaming Minds!

PS. I have started an attempt. I'm not building maintenance since it's not needed with standard game rules, just replace when water notice comes up. This means I have near 0 breakdowns also. It is possible to stockpile cargo in warehouses. This reserve could be used for spurts of growth, with normal deliveries enough for stable. Not sure I recommend this tactic, and I'm playing 50% speed Trainiac to help avoid this temptation. I'm confident of success as long as I can stay below the loco limit. I just don't have much time to play right now.

[chaney]

Great post!

[gardlt]

Got it.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2135592780


Pretty much followed the plan from my analysis above. My super cities were Roma and Deniliquin. Thanks to a couple of promoters, I ended up pushing these higher than planned, and had to sacrifice wood resources to keep them stable. 8.6M combined.

I think it makes sense to pick clusters of 3 cities for basic resource consumption. 530-550k is the point at which basic resources are consumed equally with the standard cargoes. Because of wood shortages, in practice I had two cities around 500k and one smaller one. Once I maxxed out local Meat production, further growth stagnated. Grain supply was also strained except in the northeast.

I developed 3 clusters:
Adelaide-Peterborough-Pinnaro
Milparinka-Broken Hill-White Cliffs
Dimboola-Bendigo-Ballarat

Was working on my 4th: Albury-Wagga Wagga-Junee, when I reached 16M overall population. If the game had continued, my plan was for two further clusters: Dubbo-Newcastle-Sydney and Toowoomba-Brisbane-Grafton.

But as it went, not long after reaching 16M I got a Promoter after a 4 year drought. Used her in Roma for an easy 1M+ temporary population boost to hit 17M for the 30th settlement unlock. When I clicked confirm for the 30th settlement I received the steam achievement.


Few details:
1850 era
Industrialist
No AI
Realistic tracks
No territories
Trainiac Mode, 50% speed
$3M start cash
70% income
200% bridges/tunnels
300% service costs
Full refunds - eliminated breakdowns by replacing rather than maintaining
Extensive use of warehouses

A great challenge on a nice map. I'm leaning towards it getting my vote as "the best map." Only let down was having to use nasty pass-through solutions in low traffic areas. Was doing this to try to avoid a newly introduced bug. However, the bug still managed to show up a couple times with other setups. Although, nothing compared to what I would have faced normally.


Few pictures:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2135597672


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2135591419


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2135591266


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2135592387


Bonus:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2135595835

[chaney]

Congrats - outstanding achievement and telling of the tale!