When do city upgrades proc?

[DevHyfes]

I have had two cities prospering for awhile. One has 2 shops and the other had 3 at the start. The latter just hit status "Bloated".

I thought at some point a contract would pop up on the city (at least that's what I've seen in the "Let's Play"s I've watched). However, nothing has come up. One of the AI's cities just upgraded with the fireworks display, but my cities are just sitting there sucking in all of my products. The 3 shop city is at 250k, and I am supplying 2 goods to the HW store, 3 Goods to the farmer's market, and 2 goods to the construction site.

I could certainly invest in more industry, but I had wanted to see what shop I was going to get first. Is there some step I am missing?

[Cowskier]

Make sure to keep it at prospering and just be patient. If it gets to 'bloated' that means you are sending too many of one type of product into the settlement and it is suffering inflation

[DevHyfes]

That is odd- all of the stuff I am delivering is limited so that it only delivers the max amount demanded. So if they want 7 sugar per 15 days, I limit it to send max 7 to the site. I guess I need to go through the products again to see if I missed something.

[Cougarific]

I think "Bloated" just means that the town is ready to level up and waiting for you to either send them the products they're requesting or pay them to buy the stuff themselves.

The key to getting the town to level up is to simply supply as many of their demands as possible. Getting something to "Partially Supplied" is sufficient.

You're supplying 7 goods total, that should be plenty for the town to become "Prosperous" as an indication you're moving in the right direction - after that, patience.

There are population levels the town must hit to level up, but it's not a hard number. It can be anywhere within a certain range (e.g. 300-350k population).

(The "contract" to level up was an earlier version of the game, pre-release)

[Cougarific]

Originally posted by DevHyfes:

So if they want 7 sugar per 15 days, I limit it to send max 7 to the site.

I recommend against limiting the number you send. Just send them as much stuff as you can until you see "Fully Supplied" and the shop starts Storing items. You're only in danger of over-supplying the shop if the Stored bar gets about half-way filled.

At that point you can start scaling back your deliveries.

[DevHyfes]

What is the co

Originally posted by Cougarific:

I recommend against limiting the number you send. Just send them as much stuff as you can until you see "Fully Supplied" and the shop starts Storing items. You're only in danger of over-supplying the shop if the Stored bar gets about half-way filled.

At that point you can start scaling back your deliveries.

Why?

I mean, if the product can be delivered in the time between procs, then there is no difference, right? And if the product is sitting in your warehouse, it can be re-purposed to other areas for a contract or if you research something else to do with the surplus. I tend to keep within 1-2 production of demand anyways, but I would rather keep that buffer in my control (in my warehouse) rather than sitting in a store where I no longer have access to it.

Example: I was delivering copper to a HW store at 7 demand every 15 days. My copper mine produces 15 per 30 days (5 harvesters @ 1/10 days). So I have 1 surplus. Then a contract for wall panels pops up. I'll ultimately need another copper mine, but in the meanwhile I have 10 - 20 surplus copper that I can point to Copper Tubing used in wall panels. If I had been sending the max production to the shop, I would have to start editing my production and not have the stockpile to draw from.

In industrial process theory, surplus is considered "Work in Progress" (WIP). You want to minimize work in progress as much as possible. This game does not model those mechanics well, but it does approximate. As you follow a supply chain down from raw resource to the end consumer, each stage "locks" in the deliverable as WIP. Ideally, to me at least, you want your WIP as far up the chain (i.e. at the source of production) as possible. Each level down the chain basically comes with Opportunity Cost. That is, once you have delivered a good to a site, you can no longer do anything with that good that isn't down stream. While I can see one or two units of surplus being in a system for production hiccups, the flexibility of having products upstream seems to good to pass up.

Am I missing something?