Got any tips for newbie?

[KongHarald]

Good day, comrades.
What's the first steps I should do when I start a game? What should be my focus eraly in the game.
What should I not do in the early stages of the game?

[RyanFireball]

Play the Tutorials.
R/Tom

[KongHarald]

Originally posted by RyanFireball:

Play the Tutorials.
R/Tom

Thank you, I'll do that

[Egodeus]

Do not start in realistic mode, you will only be asking for trouble and frustration.

Start on the easy settings, with all the optional rules turned off, learn how the different industries work, and how to use warehouses, road/rail cargo stations, railroads, and especially how those do not work, since there are many ways of making things that would seem to work, but don't and extensive remodelling in realistic mode is hell, especially if it is caused by you not understanding some part of the mechanics beforehand, and not just because you made a decision that turned out to be wrong.

After you get the hang of how the mechanics themselves work, start a new game, again on the easy settings, but not with unlimited money, so you can see how to turn a profit and what the results of different industries are. I would also suggest turning on electricity and education from the beginning, since they are pretty easy to understand. Here the idea is to use auto-build in the beginning, but as soon as you get the construction industries going, to turn to using your own Construction Offices entirely. Then start turning on more of the systems one at a time once you've gotten used to the previous rules and how they change what you need to do. Make sure you always leave lot's of space anywhere you build so you can fit future heating exchangers/gas stations/police stations, what have you into your plans without having to demolish too much.

Once you're comfortable with all of the rules (or most, I personally don't like yet how the water/sewage system works, so I play with it turned off), start a new game in realistic mode, but with the largest amount of money. You will fail, your republic will fail, and your citizens will starve, freeze to death, or escape to the west. You will learn, you will try again, this time remembering that the heating plant needs to be ready and operational before you invite citizens. You will run out of money, you will learn to build at least some profitable industries in the beginning of the game. Perhaps the third time will be the one to succeed.

[KongHarald]

Originally posted by Egodeus:

Do not start in realistic mode, you will only be asking for trouble and frustration.

Start on the easy settings, with all the optional rules turned off, learn how the different industries work, and how to use warehouses, road/rail cargo stations, railroads, and especially how those do not work, since there are many ways of making things that would seem to work, but don't and extensive remodelling in realistic mode is hell, especially if it is caused by you not understanding some part of the mechanics beforehand, and not just because you made a decision that turned out to be wrong.

After you get the hang of how the mechanics themselves work, start a new game, again on the easy settings, but not with unlimited money, so you can see how to turn a profit and what the results of different industries are. I would also suggest turning on electricity and education from the beginning, since they are pretty easy to understand. Here the idea is to use auto-build in the beginning, but as soon as you get the construction industries going, to turn to using your own Construction Offices entirely. Then start turning on more of the systems one at a time once you've gotten used to the previous rules and how they change what you need to do. Make sure you always leave lot's of space anywhere you build so you can fit future heating exchangers/gas stations/police stations, what have you into your plans without having to demolish too much.

Once you're comfortable with all of the rules (or most, I personally don't like yet how the water/sewage system works, so I play with it turned off), start a new game in realistic mode, but with the largest amount of money. You will fail, your republic will fail, and your citizens will starve, freeze to death, or escape to the west. You will learn, you will try again, this time remembering that the heating plant needs to be ready and operational before you invite citizens. You will run out of money, you will learn to build at least some profitable industries in the beginning of the game. Perhaps the third time will be the one to succeed.

Thank you so much, this is much appreciated

[Delle(DK)]

as the player above write, do not start in realistic mode ( hard )
Do the tutorials to learn the game mechanics and how to do things.
This is a very complex game and even after hundreds of houres played you will learn new things now and then.

Also do not build to compact.
It a good idea you have enough room inbetween buildings so you can build a walkway or some trash cans, water substation, sewage ect.

AND super pro tip.. The MOST important in the game is that your heating plant that make heat for your city ALWAYS have people, if the city run out of heat = game over.
I highly recommend to build 2 heating plants and run 1 heating pipe from each plant to a heating pumping station.. that way even if there are no workers in one of the plants then the other can help provide heat.
And another good tip for theating plants.. Make two bus stops and pickup workers from each and drive them to the heating plant bus stop ( and send 50-50% people to each )
Reason you want to bus pickup stops in your city and two bus lines are if something happen such as the bus breaking down or no workers then the other can provide workes as well.
So think of it as a backup system.
Also build your heating plant about 800m away from the nearest house in your city.
It pollute allot.

another tip regarding sewage.
I highly recommend to place your first city not so far from a river or the ocean, or a lake.
You want to dump your sewage into the water.

Do the water tutorial if there is any, you need to build things like this
water source - water pump - water cleaning - water pump - city
Or said with other words everytime you have a building it need a pump
( water need to have a purity of +98% els people get sick. )

Regarding sewage, then it can be tricky.. but remember that ♥♥♥♥ run downhill.
At the bottom tool line to the right there is a chessboard kind of icon.. Click it and you can find a mesuring tape.. with this in your hand you can mesure the height of the terrain.
Use this to figure out where to start your sewage system and where to end it.
If you try to connect a sewage pipe to the nework and it wont work, then its properbly since there is a height problem. ( think of it as a fail safe system, it wont allow you do make something that wont work ).

Finaly its important you have a constant electricty for all buildings.. if the light is flighting then people might not shop 100% food and that can result in other issues.

Finaly when starting a new game you want to make a city of about 1000-13000 people so that is about 6 big residential appartment buildings.
You need all them to run your city, heating, water ect.. but also to make example 1 fabric factory and 1 clothing factory = income

Avoid borring more than 300.000 rubler els you will break your neck.

And enjoy this facinating but hard game..

final tip... try to make dedicated road, train lines for passengers and other for resources.
it is important your passengers can go to work and dont get stuck in traffic ;-)

The tarmac walkway can allow your people to walk 450m... that is allot. ;-)

pro tip.. you can rotate your buildings with R and T i think and mirrow the building.. this make it more easy to place buildings where the connection point in the direction you like and you can lower raise bridges and other stuff with Q and E i think.

[KongHarald]

Originally posted by Delle(DK):

as the player above write, do not start in realistic mode ( hard )
Do the tutorials to learn the game mechanics and how to do things.
This is a very complex game and even after hundreds of houres played you will learn new things now and then.

Also do not build to compact.
It a good idea you have enough room inbetween buildings so you can build a walkway or some trash cans, water substation, sewage ect.

AND super pro tip.. The MOST important in the game is that your heating plant that make heat for your city ALWAYS have people, if the city run out of heat = game over.
I highly recommend to build 2 heating plants and run 1 heating pipe from each plant to a heating pumping station.. that way even if there are no workers in one of the plants then the other can help provide heat.
And another good tip for theating plants.. Make two bus stops and pickup workers from each and drive them to the heating plant bus stop ( and send 50-50% people to each )
Reason you want to bus pickup stops in your city and two bus lines are if something happen such as the bus breaking down or no workers then the other can provide workes as well.
So think of it as a backup system.
Also build your heating plant about 800m away from the nearest house in your city.
It pollute allot.

another tip regarding sewage.
I highly recommend to place your first city not so far from a river or the ocean, or a lake.
You want to dump your sewage into the water.

Do the water tutorial if there is any, you need to build things like this
water source - water pump - water cleaning - water pump - city
Or said with other words everytime you have a building it need a pump
( water need to have a purity of +98% els people get sick. )

Regarding sewage, then it can be tricky.. but remember that ♥♥♥♥ run downhill.
At the bottom tool line to the right there is a chessboard kind of icon.. Click it and you can find a mesuring tape.. with this in your hand you can mesure the height of the terrain.
Use this to figure out where to start your sewage system and where to end it.
If you try to connect a sewage pipe to the nework and it wont work, then its properbly since there is a height problem. ( think of it as a fail safe system, it wont allow you do make something that wont work ).

Finaly its important you have a constant electricty for all buildings.. if the light is flighting then people might not shop 100% food and that can result in other issues.

Finaly when starting a new game you want to make a city of about 1000-13000 people so that is about 6 big residential appartment buildings.
You need all them to run your city, heating, water ect.. but also to make example 1 fabric factory and 1 clothing factory = income

Avoid borring more than 300.000 rubler els you will break your neck.

And enjoy this facinating but hard game..

final tip... try to make dedicated road, train lines for passengers and other for resources.
it is important your passengers can go to work and dont get stuck in traffic ;-)

The tarmac walkway can allow your people to walk 450m... that is allot. ;-)

pro tip.. you can rotate your buildings with R and T i think and mirrow the building.. this make it more easy to place buildings where the connection point in the direction you like and you can lower raise bridges and other stuff with Q and E i think.

Thank you, it sure is a complex game. I played a couple of tutorials and it killed my spirit and took my energy. I'm sure it's a great game but I don't have this kind of time to put into it. I guess I was expecting and wanting Cities Skyline with a communist twist LOL.

[ling.speed]

Tutorials are old dry, the new campagins are much better for that, (they are the actual tutorial). So definitely "dont do the tutorials" haha.

As for tips... You can start own playthrough after first campagin on i think medium. 2nd campagin explores most of the mechanics (so like hard difficulty).

When starting out you dont need to start from the ground - either with construction industry or gathering and processing raw materials (like crops of coal). You can run a republic for a long time as a value adding economy. Like buying fabrics and turning them into clothes to sell (and worker use).

Also while redundancy of everything isnt required, when building anything try to think "how will things go if this thing stops working" or "how am i going to get rid of this later" and.

Lastly make sure you understand and employ distribution offices (needs research if enabled). Making lines for everything will get tedious, DO gives automation.

The game can be played like CS on lower difficulties, but its heart is in logistics and planning. So take your time, the game isnt "hard" stats wise (easy to make money), whats hard is getting to know how everything works.

[nekys]

Arm yourself with plenty of patience and works of Lenin comrade!

[KongHarald]

Thank you guys for the replies, it's much appreciated. I haven't given up quite yet, I'll have another go on sunday when I've got peace a quiet around me.
Cheers

[Speculatius]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

You can run a republic for a long time as a value adding economy. Like buying fabrics and turning them into clothes to sell (and worker use).

I recommend to check the numbers before. How much is the raw material to buy for 1 ton of <endproduct>, what are the "transaction costs" to fetch the raw material from and drive the product to the border etc.

Some products won't bring you a profit at all, some products work close to the border only.

[failsafe]

People are saying not to start on realistic. I did exactly this and I'm enjoying my game. From my perspective any other mode than realistic is waste of time. But I agree that difficulty is really high in this mode - mostly because every mistake made may be lethal. What I also did was finding a nice play of the game on youtube - on realistic mode of course. I didnt play tutorial, just tried to mimic what person on youtube did. After few hours of watching youtube (and doing same in the game) I restarted everything and that is it. Im still stupid, I still do a lot of mistakes, but at least I understand enough to actually advance things and move step by step forward. Great fun!

[Mesa]

cancel your weekend plans

[KongHarald]

Originally posted by Mesa:

cancel your weekend plans

[nekys]

Realistic mode is nt that hard, you just have to wait...a lot..but it is rewarding.
But first i would suggest you try in non realistic, so you can get a feel and what works and what not. Experiment with configurations of power, waste, sewage, logistics etc and then go realistic. It is absolutely no fun to wait for several minutes for something to be built only to find out it does not work that way

[MachaQueso]

Originally posted by failsafe:

People are saying not to start on realistic. I did exactly this and I'm enjoying my game. From my perspective any other mode than realistic is waste of time. But I agree that difficulty is really high in this mode - mostly because every mistake made may be lethal. What I also did was finding a nice play of the game on youtube - on realistic mode of course. I didnt play tutorial, just tried to mimic what person on youtube did. After few hours of watching youtube (and doing same in the game) I restarted everything and that is it. Im still stupid, I still do a lot of mistakes, but at least I understand enough to actually advance things and move step by step forward. Great fun!

I would rephrase the "don't start in realistic" to "only start in realistic if you are a very patient guy, can deal with frustration and failing miserably". Firing up this game and selecting realistic mode on your first play through borders in masochism.