Centralised or Decentralised Industry

[RickiusMaximus]

When I started out I built my processing buildings right next to the raw materials - so food and alcohol next to farms, ore processing and powerplant next to coal mine etc. and then transport the workers out.

However, now I am thinking - would I have been wiser to build all of the industry next to my town and transport the raw materials to them? Making it much easier to manage the workers?

[megamonkey]

short answer, yes. efficient supply of workers is beneficial in general.
long answer is that it depends on the layout of the land, pollution levels and intended capacity of production, also the logistics of material supply is important to consider.
future expansion will be impacted if the logistics aren't planned effectively which comes back to the original intended production capacity. If the current setup is supplying enough for the current city then it's not a big deal that it isn't optimised.
there's plenty of land left for more industry to supply future settlements.
It's all about planning planning planning.

[Walta Gaming]

If you have pollution on you should never build industry next to residential areas. In general it is also much cheaper to transport workers as opposed to raw materials as well. Just keep in mind buses have a maximum distance before the workers teleport home (max travel time is 4 hours of worker time).

Some raw resorces can be efficent to transport by train / ship but the cheapest form of transportation is not needing any. Farms are an industry that I don't mind having away from production plants since trains move crops pretty well and I don't like cluttering up my farms with industries since it increases traffic. Power plants are ok to have seperate from coal processing plants as well because they don't use much coal. Just be sure to use a large storage to store the coal and a train to transport it in.

[Elessar_warrior]

I like to build super centralized industries. I plant it for max efficiency and for an intended output so i never need to touch it again.

[Delle(DK)]

personaly i have setup my start city to have 9000 people now and many of them work about 1000m away in my fabric, clothing factory, and food factory and ofcourse in all required buildings and universitys, hotels ect in my city. I do have a 3 appartment buildings next to my factory/heating plant simply to be safe that if the train transport fail then someone will always be able to reach my heating plant . i have tried so many times that something goes wrong and my people freeze to death before i notise it so now i have a little backup of people who always can walk to work no matter what and they can take the train as passengers when required. it actual work pretty well that the train deliver workers and then take the passengers with them back to the city so they can go shopping clothing and electronics ect. I know its not healthy for the few hundreds that live in the industry area BUT its okay to sacrifice a few for the greater good.


Els i am building a chemical plant about +5000m away at the oil field and my high speed trains can deliver people there in like 2,5-3 houres. Now that i think of it that might have been a logistic bad idea to place my refinery there since it would be better to build it near my city and then transport the oil to the plant via train.
Also its a bit far from the river so it gona be expensive to build the sewage pipes ;-(
Also i could have saved a long distance delivery of all construction materials that by the way took years, and i now also have to spend money on paying for trains to drive all the way with workers all the time.
All in all planning could have been better but i learn from it and will do things different next time and that is what i like about this game.

But els i plan to build more citys and other industry other places mostly since resources on my map is spread out and i have to make a train connection to all industry areas anyway.
And another good advice.. in start of the game it take to long and is to expensive to build electric train tracks.. i highly recommend to have diesel trains and the most cheap railroad to start with to get going, you can always upgrrade the track later on.

[Silent_Shadow]

Most industries require you to build them far away enough from residences to avoid death by pollution, so you might as well go an extra km or two to a resource and minimize the transportation needed to run it at 100% production.

Most of the time centralized industries will be more efficient than decentralized, as they can use more efficient transportation or facilities. The only upside to decentralized industry is that it doesn't require large flat spaces to build, so you can fit it anywhere.

[barry.zandstra]

There isn't really one answer to this question, it depends. If you are talking food, and you are farming your own crops, then I would say don't try to build the industry next to "the farm" because you will need many farms to feed your industry. Personally, I like to dedicate a number of farms to growing crops for food, and have a different set of farms growing animal fodder or chemical feedstock (yes I know they are all just "crops" in the game). If you are talking chemicals, then by all means, build your industry right next to the farms because you won't need quite as many, and you will want to put something big between the chemical park and your residential buildings because of the pollution. It might as well be the farms.

If you play with pollution enabled (and I would encourage everyone to do that) never build any industry near a residential building. If your people can walk to work in the factory from their home, it is way too close. Keep in mind that if you cluster several polluters, the pollution will spill over into a wider area than if there were fewer. So a single heating plant is fine at 600 to 700 m from the nearest housing, but if you build ten chemical plants that close to town there will be trouble.

Some have argued that moving goods is more expensive than moving workers, but this depends on your infrastructure and the type of goods/material. If you have proper conveyors and pipes, you can move your aggregates and your oil very cheaply and efficiently. If you are moving electronics, feel free to truck them clear across your republic. If you are moving food, on the other hand, maybe use trains instead and use trucks only for the last mile from the local warehouse to the shop.

When it comes to moving workers, a vanilla train station can only handle so many trains per day. I like to build residential districts that can house ~6000 workers. Two of those built next to each other with a large vanilla railway station in between seem to saturate the station, which in turn saturates a double track to the industrial zone. Of course, there are three working shifts in a day and some of the workers are employed in civic buildings in and around town, so I would say that about a good industrial zone requires no more than ~3000 workers to operate at 100% output. Any bigger and the commute will get needlessly complicated.

[MG83]

i use semi centralised industry.

Ie : steel plant is near iron processing plants and iron mine and it is connected to mechanical plant. And area is a distinctive zone.

chem plants are near oil fields and plastic plant is also in same area with wood cutting posts.

Food factories cow farms slaughterhouse and distillery another area.