Self sufficiency

[Tombo]

How many in-game years does it usually takes you to develop fully sufficient country? That doesn't need anything from the outside? Is it actually your goal? Or what is the goal in this game for you?

[Luca_K04]

I think this game need more "end-game" contents.
More challenges, events, policies, and stuff like these.

There's no goal in this game, it depend only to your gamestyle.
For me self-sufficiency has no sense, because it's simply not realistic XD
There are some maps in the workshop designed specifically to be not self-sufficient.

Anyway, you could reach self sufficiency in many less year with autobuild compared to use the construcion office and all its features.
The time in this game is relative.

[Tombo]

Originally posted by Wartburger:

When you define self-sufficiency as importing NOTHING from abroad, then it is impossible to achieve it. To produce everything yourself, you need a lot of workers. I don't know the absolute minimum to do that, but the limitatating factor is "crops". It is absolutely impossible to produce enough crops just to feed your population, let's not talk about the crops you need for the other resources.
Of course, you could calculate the absolute minimum of workers you would need. And what if you find out that this number is, let's say 10.000? Perhaps you could produce enough crops for those citizens, but are you building a republic? In Western Europe, that is a small town, not a country. Would you speak of a country with 30.000 people?
With the upcoming introduction of seasons, productivity of the fields will be reduced enormously, making it even more difficult to obtain self-sufficiency.
And yes, absolute self-sufficiency makes no sense. There is not a single country in the world that could achieve this goal.

And what do you define as your goal?

[Jeremiah Gottwald]

Originally posted by Tombo:

Is [self-sufficiency] actually your goal? Or what is the goal in this game for you?

No it is not.
I import tons of food, clothing, meat etc. Even I am probably independent on it and delivering stock to supermarkets.
It is like "we feature regional products in our supermarket" not like "we get everything from local producers"
It is somewhat unrealistic too because Food, Clothing, Meat and electronics are not specified. They are summaries like a group of items defined as Food etc.
So import of other regions are normal as well as exports from own regional produce.

For the 2nd question, I c&p:

"Personally I like to go rural and have some form of a big city as the regional government and bureaucracy. I like to produce different things at different places, manage to have the needed stuff where it has to be and in general have a pleasing look of what I have done.

It is a bit of every direction put in a pot, sturred up and served ice cold. :)

(Picture Link)

This is the perfect example what I want.
It is my startertown, featuring basic power, heating, most of building materials and some building materials."

Referring to my country:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2174289145

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2180643647

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2180643883

For visualisation of what I mean and I do.

[Tombo]

Originally posted by Wartburger:

Do I need a goal?

So what's the reason to play this game then?

[Jeremiah Gottwald]

Originally posted by Wartburger:

Do I need a reason to play a game? Do you need a goal or reason to play Cities Skylines?
My satisfaction in this game is to develop complex but efficient logistic systems, using import, export, autobuild and building with CO's. But, as I wrote above, self-sufficiency is not the objective.Every country has interactions of any kind with other countries, neighbours or not.

You answered your questions yourself.
The intention of doing something to achieve something is called motivation.
The achieved something is a goal.

Originally posted by Wartburger:

For what I am concerned, the moment the seasons are introduced in the stable branch, I will stop producing my own crops and just import them.
We all know somebody who was fighting windmills, but he was quickly desillusionned...

It is scenery, a seasonal reducer in import costs and it fills space.

[ko3lenok]

Originally posted by Wartburger:

To come back on the question of self-sufficiency, players who are smarter than me have already proven mathemathically that it is impossible because of the huge amounts of crops you need for that. And they did it before the introduction of seasons.
For what I am concerned, the moment the seasons are introduced in the stable branch, I will stop producing my own crops and just import them.
We all know somebody who was fighting windmills, but he was quickly desillusionned...

Who proved this and how? I have a country with about 30k population that became completely self sufficient in every resource, including vehicle manufacturing, by year 1980. It does take a lot of fields but not a crazy number. I have four large farms, with distribution offices picking up crops from the fields so that the farm buildings can be filled with tractors and harvesters. In fact, I'm exporting excess food and cloth, so self-sufficiency is an entirely realistic goal, and a pretty fun one at that. Everyone plays the game differently, some like having specific goals, some just enjoy building... Let's let everyone have fun the way they prefer :)

[gusgblaw]

The goal of the game is to generate nice screenshots. Period. Anyone who disagrees is a damn fool.

[Jeremiah Gottwald]

Originally posted by Wartburger:

What is the point of this controversy of absolutely wanting to impose to me setting up goals? Why just not accept that I play for fun, without any goal of whatever nature?

Originally posted by Wartburger:

My satisfaction in this game is to develop complex but efficient logistic systems, using import, export, autobuild and building with CO's.

So this isnt your motivation and goal then? What is it otherwise?
Why do you start this with "My" then?
You contradict yourself... That is what makes me mad about your comments...

[Jeremiah Gottwald]

Originally posted by gusgblaw:

The goal of the game is to generate nice screenshots. Period. Anyone who disagrees is a damn fool.

Exactly.

[BareJag]

Why does everything have to be absolute? Why does every question need an answer? Why can't things just be as it is? Why are not people allowed to have their own opinions, do things differently or be as they like? Quite often the journey beats the destination (the main reason I dislike flying, as I miss the journey). I don't mean just literary though. Working on a good solution is better and more enjoyable than finding it quickly, as long as it's not needed right now. Besides, its so much more satisfactory when its well done. Do you think I would spend 11-12 hours per day on my work if it where just for money or "chareer"? Or play this game with my own set of quite hard rules that nobody but I know? Who cares but me about my beautifully designed networks? I don't post screenshots. I once saw on YouTube someone finish the main quest in Morrowind on ten seconds from start. Someone seems to have missed a thing or two. In case some of you don't know, that's an old rolegame, predecessor to Skyrim.

[angry_bosmer]

Originally posted by Wartburger:

To come back on the question of self-sufficiency, players who are smarter than me have already proven mathemathically that it is impossible because of the huge amounts of crops you need for that. And they did it before the introduction of seasons.
For what I am concerned, the moment the seasons are introduced in the stable branch, I will stop producing my own crops and just import them.
We all know somebody who was fighting windmills, but he was quickly desillusionned...

You can absolutely produce enough crops to feed everyone. It'll depend on your map though what the upper limit of your space for farms, but there are plenty of flat maps where making enough crops is a trivial challenge.

I believe my best vanilla farm designs made on average 15-20 tons of crops a day... So a dozen or so should provide most nations. Some of the flatter maps can support upwards of 40, maybe 60 farms no problem.

[MrKrabs]

Guys, please. Cool it.
U got different ways of playing this game and have different opinions.
So let´s not chatter who is more right or wrong.
We share the same hobby, don´t we?

My objective is to run an undifiiend number of chains and logistics without babysitting.

Kind regards

[angry_bosmer]

Originally posted by MrKrabs:

Guys, please. Cool it.
U got different ways of playing this game and have different opinions.
So let´s not chatter who is more right or wrong.
We share the same hobby, don´t we?

My objective is to run an undifiiend number of chains and logistics without babysitting.

Kind regards

Mine is to export the most surplus possible. Gotta get them 1 billion rubles a year! I love seeing my GDP just grow exponentially.

[forzion]

Let me give my 2 cents into this discussion. I think it is possible to be self-sufficient. I tried it and slowly cut all my imports off and run only exports.

Now I am playing with seasons and I was able to collect about 1200 tons of crops with one farm from 3 big and 7 mediun fields in one harveat. That isequivalent of about 800 tons of food. But you need to create a syatem where you store your crops food etc to distribute them later.

The main problem is you need to micromanage a lot because automation would be over complicated.

But you can never achieve absolute independence because you need to have an emergency plan if something happen and for that reason you need to have basic auto import on all the time.

For example one stuck train can block your traffic which can block your firefighters then one of your power plan burnes down which disables trains in quarter of the map and other thknks and it can snowball fast.

Now what is the goal of the game? It is simple. The main goal is to play and have fun. That can be anything. Someone has fun watching his facilities burn down other playing with trains and someone else building cities. We are all different but we like to relax and forget the real world replacing it with alternative in-game reality where we are in control and we rule the world.

[angry_bosmer]

@Wartburger Oh if you were referring to the original map (bless its heart), you will absolutely struggle to farm in any meaningful way. Its a great showcase for the terrain abilities of the game's engine... not so much a good showcase for all the mechanics, namely farming. That said I DID manage to feed a population of 60k on that map AND produce all the other crop related industries. There wasn't a ton of good farmland left, but you could have probably squeezed out another 40k pops.

You will have to play on maps with a certain degree of flat areas to really be able to take advantage of the farming mechanic. Its actually decently authentic, country's have plains and flat areas... and they are very important for farming or building cities. Flat areas in this game are valuable. A good map design will limit the amount to a certain degree... but that's down to people making good level designs.