Crops

[Domestic Life]

Livestock, alcohol, and food factories require a huge amounts of crops to keep up with production. Unfortunately, fields take an unreasonable amount of time to produce any yields and the amounts are abysmal. I lose way more on trying to building straight farming areas than the crops they produce forcing me to always have to buy crops.

Has anyone actually built self-sufficient factories operating at max capacity without having to buy crops?

Seems like a MAJOR resource balance issue. I can't believe the devs have not identified and fixed this even in beta.

[tea_bush]

Publicado originalmente por ZILonaut:

Lucky if you have room to lay tracks to the stable ...

I don't have that save atm, but the layout was similar to this + roads

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2623866112

Publicado originalmente por ZILonaut:

But you bring them to export, not to the city to feed your people and become self sufficient.

That was long ago, before the game had loans. If you ran out of money, it was instant game over. So, establishing a steady source of income was much more critical than self sufficiency.

I was planning to add meat production later, but that didn't happen.

[Dave]

Farming crops is weird. In my opinion people get baited into a lot of misguided ideas.

Biggest thing that people do/say that's weird, is focusing single-mindedly on trying to get the most crops per aggrofarm building. Its not a particularly expensive building, and it doesnt simplify logistics because people normally use DO's instead of having all the crops flow thru the aggrofarm anyway. The aggrofarm building is basically just parking spots for vehicles.

What really matters is just vehicles, land area, and storage space and those are actually pretty hard to get wrong. Make sure you have enough vehicles to work the fields, and make sure you have enough fields to keep your vehicles busy, and make sure you have enough silos to never get full.

Its that simple. If you park your vehicles in multiple aggrofarms, or in one aggro farm and multiple distribution offices, it ultimately matters very little.

The more important thing to optimize, is how you deliver/store crops for your factories. I like to put my factories right next to the farm. The livestock and Fabric factories have enough connections that you can store the entire harvest in directly-attached grain silos. This is indisputably the most optimal setup for those industries.

Food and Alcohol factories don't have enough connections, so I unload crops into two clusters of silos. One cluster is directly attached to the factory, same as fabric/livestock and then the other cluster is attached to a road cargo station with 2 silos and 2 warehouses, or 3 silos and 1 warehouse. A couple of trucks go back and forth trading crops for food/alcohol. Can use math to set the load % on these trucks to make sure the silos drain at the same rate.

One farm is not enough crops to keep a food factory working at full blast all year long, but it doesnt matter. Food factories are cheap.

My PC could never handle a game with 200k population. But supporting a 40k or 50k population with your own crops is not rocket science. Simply build a food farm every time you build a heating plant, and youll never run out of food. One or two food farms per population center, and then one or two clothing/meat farms for the whole republic.

I think its really cool how much farmland is needed to support a population. Its realistic, and it fills out the map. If you don't stress about super-optimized farms, you can let other infrastructure slice off edges/corners of fields, and everything looks very natural and organic =)

[MG83]

Publicado originalmente por Julien Renard:

@MG83.
Two major remarks.
1. How much did you invest before you could even start farming at all, especially with seasons on?
You need an agrofarm, tractors, harvesters, DO and a lot of trucks to get your crops from the fields. Perhaps a train, some very big silos, etc. Plus you have to power it all, and all your trucks at the DOs use a lot of fuel. If your farming buildings are not close to a town, you'll need a firestation too to cover your farms, DOS, silos.
Of course, if you start with 10M Rubles...
2. Please explain me how you feed 200K people with your own farms (seasons on of course)? And I am not talking about clothes. How many fields, and where to put them on your map? BTW is your map the defaukt one, or a pool biliard?

1. alot.
2. check my screen shots of my methods
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2619926135

i also shared a save game in another post how in smaller number (over 50k). 200k citizen slows my pc to deadslow :>

[Julien Renard]

Publicado originalmente por MG83:

Publicado originalmente por Julien Renard:

@MG83.
...
How many fields, and where to put them on your map? BTW is your map the defaukt one, or a pool biliard?

1. alot.
2. check my screen shots of my methods

Yes, you visibly play on a pool biliard (ultra flat) and not on a natural looking map. That is really easy, everybody can do that!

[tea_bush]

Publicado originalmente por ZILonaut:

Is there in vanilla game a truck that can carry cattle?

Actually, they all can?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2624644187

Also cattle can be transported by cableways!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2624644440

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2624644312

[Mudkest]

Publicado originalmente por ZILonaut:

Is there in vanilla game a truck that can carry cattle? I only found a MOD with GAZ 51. Nothing newer.
That’s why i changed to export meat instead of cattle.

Covered hull trucks can load cattle

[ZILonaut]

But mostly it is not written in the trucks description.

[MG83]

Publicado originalmente por Julien Renard:

Publicado originalmente por MG83:

1. alot.
2. check my screen shots of my methods

Yes, you visibly play on a pool biliard (ultra flat) and not on a natural looking map. That is really easy, everybody can do that!

try to do it then.

check my post
https://steamcommunity.com/app/784150/discussions/0/2953789422413353836/

do better one and put it there as i did and lets compare how easy to do it.

[MG83]

Publicado originalmente por Julien Renard:

Publicado originalmente por MG83:

as long as you buy crops their price skyrocket after 30 year no matter what. if you buy little amounts it does not effect but when you try to feed 200k people it sure starts to effect. if you try to sell crop products and buy crops its ends in similar fashion.

When the price of basic resources rises, the end products from those resources rise too. Anyhow you look at the problem, you always make profit buying crops, transforming them into food and sell the surplus, even on the long run (first profit). Second profit: making your own food, you avoid importing it.

you have not mass produced anything sofar as i understand.

besides of game base inflation there is market inflation and deflation.

Explanation to dummies : when you start to sell gross tons of products their market price begins to get low. When you begin to buy grosstons of resources their prices beings to get high.

try this example : build 8x refinery. fully man them . buy oil sell bitumen and fuel. after 5 year you will sure begin to make net loss from that business due to price change.

what you buy and sell from market effects the items price.

[MG83]

Publicado originalmente por Domestic Life:

Seems like a MAJOR resource balance issue. I can't believe the devs have not identified and fixed this even in beta.

life is not in balance my friend. it has ups and downs :>

[Julien Renard]

Publicado originalmente por MG83:

Publicado originalmente por Julien Renard:

When the price of basic resources rises, the end products from those resources rise too. Anyhow you look at the problem, you always make profit buying crops, transforming them into food and sell the surplus, even on the long run (first profit). Second profit: making your own food, you avoid importing it.

you have not mass produced anything sofar as i understand.

besides of game base inflation there is market inflation and deflation.

Explanation to dummies : when you start to sell gross tons of products their market price begins to get low. When you begin to buy grosstons of resources their prices beings to get high.

try this example : build 8x refinery. fully man them . buy oil sell bitumen and fuel. after 5 year you will sure begin to make net loss from that business due to price change.

what you buy and sell from market effects the items price.

To be clear right from the start: NOBODY calls me a dummy OK?
I wrote earlier that I would not react to post with hostile reactions or which try to convince me that I am an idiot.
Instead of giving logical and verifyable data and facts, you call me a dummy and you teach me a lesson with lots of blabla, without showing any screenshot or evidence.
So, the "dummy" will react only one single time in this thread to present facts and evidence for what he writes. There will be no other posts from me.
I invite you to have a look at the following text, where I quote two of my own posts in other discussions, once on the price of fuel and bitumen, and once on crops and food prices.
First quote is about the oil production chain. When this is not mass production, I don't know what you would call it...
"My answer is very short and very clear. Except for the nuclear chain, the oil chain is ALWAYS one of the most profitable. As you can see in the screenshots hereunder, during the year 2002, I exported 52500 tons of fuel and 31400 tons of bitumen for a total price of more than 760 millions of rubles plus 269 millions of dollars.
For the non-believers, here is the mathematical proof of what I pretend (numbers of august 2003 ingame, so one year after the mentionned amounts of exports).
Price of one ton of oil, in Rubles: 6400 R.
Selling price of one ton of fuel: 10400 R.
Selling price of one ton of bitumen: 14900 R.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1682619607035251525/EE9CD18C11FA2885CC0B02487BAD5C479328573D/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1682619607035252591/0713922976BAA6AA300F771CA99394E054AB789F/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1682619607035252777/75AE1BB7A535F4921DB1405B9FF1C8A2F239394B/
Second quote is about the crops question.
"Here some screenshots to show that your inflation theory when importing crops is not entirely correct. In this save, I imported between 1 January 1980 and 19 august 1983 in total 90518 T of crops for a sum of 10.682.000 R.That gives you an average of 118 R per ton of crops. The final price of crops is 133 R/ ton. The final price is about 10% above the average. See screenshot 1.
In the second screenshot you can see the evolution of the food price in the same period. It has approximativelly the same curve as crops.
So, yes prices of crops rise in time, but selling price, and also BUYING price of food do the same.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1608303134002490674/022F88418F5C258A4E79B0F709CC0CA400A33079/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1608303134002493291/08E46067E32FAD616A04722CD32E4BDBBE6F5462/ "

[Dave]

Publicado originalmente por MG83:

Publicado originalmente por Julien Renard:

Yes, you visibly play on a pool biliard (ultra flat) and not on a natural looking map. That is really easy, everybody can do that!

try to do it then.

check my post
https://steamcommunity.com/app/784150/discussions/0/2953789422413353836/

do better one and put it there as i did and lets compare how easy to do it.

Your map is great, but he's not wrong that the terrain is EXTREMELY flat.

Farming is still worthwhile on rugged maps, but have to be a lot more flexible than on flat. In my opinion thats the answer for OP and @JulienRenard. If the map is rugged you need to be flexible about using medium/small fields and making every farm unique to fit in the space. And then make sure you build at least one farm for every heating plant, and you will have roughly enough crops.

[MG83]

"Your map is great, but he's not wrong that the terrain is EXTREMELY flat. "
thanks i hope it was useful for you to generate some ideas.

as project manager from my construction experience the issue of ground not being flat is all about budget.
Digging mountains into flat surface is pretty expensive that is why its not done most of the time .
There is another issue of "planning" most cities in world are not product of city designers but elected goverment s by majority and majority of people are electing "candy shop owners"
check what socrates thinks about democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJBzhcSWTk
therefore cities are grown like turmos without any proper systematical organisation.

Have you ever seen an electronic board that is not organised neat and not flat ? :>

If i see a mountain in a game i send 1000 buldozers to flatten it to do proper construction . if i dont have the bulldozers i would construct a factory to make bulldozers :> thats why i have flat map to avoid time waste on flattening:> you can also apply the principles to any map with elevation you will just require to do lots of micromanagement and flattening if you prefer.

[MG83]

Publicado originalmente por Julien Renard:

To be clear right from the start: NOBODY calls me a dummy OK?
I wrote earlier that I would not react to post with hostile reactions or which try to convince me that I am an idiot.

i did not call you anything but you just did to yourself . Dont blame me for that.

Your tests about the price mechanic is not big enough to effect the market.

All my posts are results of prior tests i have done . I am not sure but if you realised i have over 1500 hours of game play and % 80 of it is testing new builds designs systems market economy etc.

your oil numbers are low. as i explained. Try to make a game with 8x refinery man them fully. buying oil selling fuel bitumen. see your net profit after 5 10 year then talk about economic system of the game. i do not like to repeat myself.

[MG83]

Publicado originalmente por Domestic Life:

Seems like a MAJOR resource balance issue. I can't believe the devs have not identified and fixed this even in beta.

actually you are not correct.
in real life data aprox wheat production per Ha is around 5 ton.

Big fields in game are 4.8 ton lets say 5.

In reality 5 Ha field only produces 25 ton per year. in game it is over 200 ton.

There is no balance issue . fields are already over boosted to fit in game mechanics compared to real life data. But yes 1 field would not bu sufficient for 1 factory. That is why you should build hundreds of fields :>