Personal best results hard/no oil.

[Rockrnger]

What’s everyone’s best results without using oil on the hardest difficulty?

I have managed a full clothing and food chain and an imported coal PowerPlant before the low margins make it just a matter of waiting for the money to buy steel.

[JonBolds]

My best result has been from starting by building a coal mine and refinery, then a power plant, then a small town next to them with full services for the workers. I then connect the plant to the border and export the huge excess of power for a steady stream of income. From there, I got construction up and running on imports but using local labor, then go to a steel refinery.

[Xordus]

I started my first experience with this game on hard, so it was pretty rough. I'm still on the playthough, though only through dogged determination.

I started with coal and produced/sold power. Then started a Brick business to make use of all that excess coal. Then I started using those bricks to build with and got asphalt/concrete running with purchased raw materials, and eventually brought all of that to bear on building a farm/food industry. That was when I first started making any money since I had way too many citizens and food was expensive. That money came just in time to finally build a University since I was about 11 years in and had almost no educated citizens left.

After that I built an oil field and realized how much damn money I could have been making the whole time! I'm 16 years in now and going strong but I'm glad I did it this way. I faced some real budget problems and a lack of workers due to education, serious issues, but this city feels EARNED.

[Taleric]

Originally posted by Xordus:

I started my first experience with this game on hard, so it was pretty rough. I'm still on the playthough, though only through dogged determination.

I started with coal and produced/sold power. Then started a Brick business to make use of all that excess coal. Then I started using those bricks to build with and got asphalt/concrete running with purchased raw materials, and eventually brought all of that to bear on building a farm/food industry. That was when I first started making any money since I had way too many citizens and food was expensive. That money came just in time to finally build a University since I was about 11 years in and had almost no educated citizens left.

After that I built an oil field and realized how much damn money I could have been making the whole time! I'm 16 years in now and going strong but I'm glad I did it this way. I faced some real budget problems and a lack of workers due to education, serious issues, but this city feels EARNED.

This is an excellent play experiance. I wish games had a default that focused restricted to this experiance, incredibly for-filling.

[SBGaming]

My latest attempt on Hard settings, I spent hours laying out a Construction oriented town, a farming village, a place to manufacture clothing, a gravel quarry, a Coal Mining Town, a town to Process Coal and Gravel and produce Power with Coal, and an Oil Refining town.

I ran road and track connecting all these towns, ran power lines, and prepared to actually have time tick forward.

I bankrupted myself because I realized I was spending so much importing the things that my Republic needed, and didn't actually have anything to export because I was trying to do the manual construction game from the beginning. Steam tells me I have 86 hours in this game :)

Anyone know if there's a way to get a financial bailout?

[Jolie Rouge]

Originally posted by SBGaming:

My latest attempt on Hard settings, I spent hours laying out a Construction oriented town, a farming village, a place to manufacture clothing, a gravel quarry, a Coal Mining Town, a town to Process Coal and Gravel and produce Power with Coal, and an Oil Refining town.

I ran road and track connecting all these towns, ran power lines, and prepared to actually have time tick forward.

I bankrupted myself because I realized I was spending so much importing the things that my Republic needed, and didn't actually have anything to export because I was trying to do the manual construction game from the beginning. Steam tells me I have 86 hours in this game :)

Anyone know if there's a way to get a financial bailout?

C+H+E in sync, then M (or Ctrl+M, not sure about this one).

[codepants]

Why no oil?

@SBGaming, I've found it's better to build one industry at a time, once that's working, do the next, etc. That way you don't ruin yourself with import costs. Start with power, then do food, then construction and the various construction resources.

This won't count because of your no oil restriction, but I have a 6k pop city that is self-sufficient except for steel, electronics, and clothes. I have 5m rubles left (spent all my $ first, saving rubles for vehicles, and intentionally put next to ruble border so I make rubles on export) and am halfway through construction of iron mine, etc. Have coal and steel mill, just waiting for that iron... I spend r100k on steel each year but still making a profit selling power, oil, food, and mechanical components. Once I'm set with steel I should be only importing about r20k of goods each year.

I would bet that without oil I'd be at 3m rubles or so and still able to get steel production up and running before I run out, but I guess we'll never know.

[gjvanderwolf]

It is inspiring to know that even on hard mode there is a possibility to get the society up and running in a sustainable way. I myself am still able to bankrupt myself on all currencies with export going on 'Easy'

[codepants]

Now making an average of 100k rubles each year. Just importing electronics and clothes. Building a town to handle those chains.

What's your strategy been? What are your major imports and exports early game? Maybe we can help.

[SeniLiX]

Started out with a heavy focus on Iron mining and exporting around 5.000 ton per month to get my economy running.
Helped along by a power plant where I import the coal needed and then export 90% of the power generated.

I set a personal rule for myself to build as much by myself as I possibly can. This means I have a concrete and asphalt plant + various storage facilities built near the border which imports everything I need. Everything is then transported by truck to my construction sites.

Last night I finally finished building a steel mill and my economy got a healthy boost, but my coal import has skyrocketed.

Next up: Build a coal mine and supply the steel mill by rail.

Playing on hard is IMO the best experience ever in this game. I'm really enjoying it :D

[Rockrnger]

No oil because right now if you are min maxing there Isn’t any reason to build anything else.

[Fellini]

Game is pretty easy even on "full hard" settings. It only takes time to understand how all this broken mechanics work.
You can go to twitch.tv, search for my channel /fellinibaka, or for /franzbake, to see, what can be achieved easily on hard-mode. The only one, it's on russian :D

For now I only import refined Iron (cause I started in a corner of map, where closest iron is like 5km's away), oil->bitumen\fuel (but already building refinery), cement (already half-builded cement-plant), electronics and electronic components (I'm lazy to build plant yet) and meat (already planned and building meat-factory though). Everything else is generated inside the Republic.
In FranzBake's republic everything is already created, with no exported resources needed. Except for Iron, iirc, he still not finished Iron-gathering town.

[gjvanderwolf]

Originally posted by Fellini:

Game is pretty easy even on "full hard" settings. It only takes time to understand how all this broken mechanics work.
You can go to twitch.tv, search for my channel /fellinibaka, or for /franzbake, to see, what can be achieved easily on hard-mode. The only one, it's on russian :D

For now I only import refined Iron (cause I started in a corner of map, where closest iron is like 5km's away), oil->bitumen\fuel (but already building refinery), cement (already half-builded cement-plant), electronics and electronic components (I'm lazy to build plant yet) and meat (already planned and building meat-factory though). Everything else is generated inside the Republic.
In FranzBake's republic everything is already created, with no exported resources needed. Except for Iron, iirc, he still not finished Iron-gathering town.

Well, I applaud you for your cleverness to figure it out. I am a bit slower. The fact that you are able to get it done within the current game structure at 'full hard' proofs that the game is structurely sound. Which means for me that I need to gain more skill in setting up my societies.