How are your 1.0 realistic mode starts going? Just for fun thread

[Dukiedushie]

Not seeking advice or another thread reference, just seeing how everyone is doing out there and sharing ideas and strategies that may help each other out. We all think inside our own boxes in this single player game, and reading threads like this brought my attention to using clothing factories early on to get low choke point at custom house cash flow going as we all know is a thing to consider in realistic game modes. I am an early access player who recently came out of a +1 year retirement to get ready for the full release. My personal strategy has been this:

1. Make a ring road around the map, dirt at first, find oil, build 6 perm construction yards, start developing the field while moving the temp yards to the next oil spot, rinse repeat until most oil fields within 1KM of the border are exploited. No pop, no city, this creates USD and RUB cash flows, which when I build a city allows me to buy vehicles in one currency if building resource and import demand in another currency makes money tight. I also connect the ring road with bridges, allowing this vehicle cross purchase to hit my entire map. I can also develop anywhere on the border of the map down the line, as construction yards are everywhere. Optionally I do sometimes build a bus stop, fire station and repair shop on isolated areas so the vics and fires wont destroy a revenue pocket.

2. Find a spot for the city, shell it out but dont build. This will include a shelled industrial complex that will direct connect from a huge grain silo to a food factory, fab factory (2x cloth factories down the line) and 2 alcohol factories. Once I have this layout planned I build a huge farming complex next to it. Before my first pop comes to my country I will have 2 revenue sources, oil from across the map and crops, once my pop grows to fill these factories I will not have to worry about importing oil to the refinery or crops to the various factories stated above. Basically at this point all I have to do is change direction of the raw resources. Again, this reduces bottle necks on the border, as some may have found out building this raw resource infrastructure while pop and pop demand grows on the border can lead to food shortages, sewage back up etc.

3. The population is finally invited. Often I try to lay out water pipes and sewage pipes before building the city and pulling in the pop, bottle neck again, once citizen demand starts it does not stop. My main goal with the pop initially is research, and you guessed it, fuel refinery and pipelines. With pipelines I can begin to automate the export of isolated oil pumps, and those oil trucks will get repaired and be ready for fuel distribution across the parameter road. I usually build a gas station connected to a fuel storage tank and set it to 10%, now fuel is no longer being imported and if I expand at a different point of the map I have free gas and construction yards ready to go.

4. At this point I expand most other industry, food, alcohol and cloths at first to meet demand, then electric and maybe steel if it is easy to get to at first. I try to work basic construction along the way, cant mention everything, the post is getting long already... With that said this was as far as I got in my warm up round, Ill post my progress with some screenshots as I go through my 1.0 round. Some other notes, I only play with initial 500 or so pop invite, no further adds, this is a me-ism in game as I find managing that pop to grow and retain more fun than flushing new citizens in after a die off or run away spree.

-My few questions, with this slow start method would exporting quarried stone provide any profit, even if small? I am talking on border gravel pits with minimal movement to ship. It wouldn't be a money maker like exporting uranium, but any positive cashflow is a profit after fuel, trucks, construction and repairs are considered.

-Also, any pointers on getting trains in the mix on realistic. I struggled with this, this play through I plan on building a train construction yard with a B-line to the large custom house to get better rail construction vehicles early on. I made the mistake of building rail construction deeper in the map and it really went nowhere after years of gameplay using the disassembled rail construction crapper and hoping I would hit the border eventually with the railroad I was laying.

-Finally, any pointers on getting construction going deep in the map on a realistic mode no pop start? After a KM it seems like I struggle. I tend to have a good city on the border, but I may want to do an island map or internal start realistic/hard down the line. Curious what successful players that love a painful grind may have on that one?

[KonigTiger]

I like your strat. I finally got pop on the map after 4 years in game and now my customs house is jammed. Also didnt plan out rail line paths so thinking about restarting

[Oz]

almost stable by 1973, setting up steel and steel town

[MrKrabs]

I'm super slow. I really take my time.
My actual map "Salmon Valley" is where I'm playing and do my Let's play videos.
I don't go for efficiency but for functionality and eye candyness.
I often use the fisher house and /or the lighthouse and sell fish (meat)
despite it is a bit cheaty.

I started 1960 and I'm in 2014 now. I would like to start fresh especially that would give me the chance to clean out my mod folder.
But on the other hand I felt in love with my current republic.

Next time I will definitely do an early start again. I use to start 1917.

This time I did clothes for the first time as a second form of income and I'm impressed how profitable it is.

So my strategy is to build rather small to prevent having to many imports.

[Gunn]

I'm still learning, but refuse to learn on anything less than "Realistic" That being said I'm struggling. Everything requires concrete, asphalt, and gravel, but all I can manage to stock up with is gravel.

[Krougal]

I've tried various things and tutorials, and have learned plenty of ways to not play.
I finally found a strategy where I didn't go bankrupt within 3 years from Tr0mp who is a youtuber. But man, he is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy and it is hard to follow his vids, like he does a tutorial series but from 1 episode to another it is a different savegame and/or map and it has driven me insane trying to follow along. At any rate, I'm thankful for his vids, I have learned a lot.

I need a solid plan or I don't accomplish anything, and especially in this game I feel like you need to plan everything out ahead of time, which is pretty hard when you have no clue what you are doing.

As to OP's question. No, after having done it, I really don't think it is worth trying to export the surplus construction materials. The little bit of money is not worth the traffic it causes (doubly so for slow ass dumpers), and probably not even worth it when you include fuel.

Importing cement and bitumen, with local gravel and making asphalt and concrete is worthwhile. Again I haven't ran numbers but even if it barely breaks even, it is still worth it for the reduction in traffic around the customs house. In realistic customs is your lifeline.

@Gunn you can't stockup on asphalt or concrete since like in the real world, they need to be used within hours. A 1000 ton storage fed by the plant and feeding asphalt, concrete and truck loader keeps up for me generally. I've been able to run it with a single excavator small quarry, 2 dedicated fast dumpers. I do keep a couple of my original feeder dumpers on import duty at 10% in case it runs low, but I also frequently have it over full (I had them exporting at 80% too).

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by Krougal:

Importing cement and bitumen, with local gravel and making asphalt and concrete is worthwhile. Again I haven't ran numbers but even if it barely breaks even, it is still worth it for the reduction in traffic around the customs house. In realistic customs is your lifeline.

For savings, I think you need to use several thousand tons of material before you break even on any construction industry, at least with imports.

[Krougal]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Originally posted by Krougal:

Importing cement and bitumen, with local gravel and making asphalt and concrete is worthwhile. Again I haven't ran numbers but even if it barely breaks even, it is still worth it for the reduction in traffic around the customs house. In realistic customs is your lifeline.

For savings, I think you need to use several thousand tons of material before you break even on any construction industry, at least with imports.

Oh, yeah. I consider the infrastructure a write-off, I haven't even taken it into account on anything here or tried to do any kind of ROI.

[Delle(DK)]

i tried a new strategy on the "campaign map".. near one of the borders there are oil and if i build 6-8 oil pumps a tank and a oil refill harbour then i can earn like 300.000 pr year exporting oil without even building a city.. I just import a few workers to man a fire station and they cost like 25-30.000 pr year.
I then save money and invest money in other infrastructurure and a small city where i research turism and the largest hotel.. And the hotel i earn lime 25-30.000 pr month
( this require example a 1000 people city and a heating plant, water, sewage ect) but the oil industry payed for building the city and i took 0 loans.
I also import some vehicles and resources from the west border again to not take any loan.
All in all its going good.
( tip regarding exporting oil.. the first few years its good, but after some time the prices get terrible so after gutess 5-7 years you should really have some other industry up and running to earn money.. In general its good to have several industrys like oil, clothing, turists

other methods i used in other games was builidng a city and warehouse, 1 fabric and 2 clothing factorys this also earn a nice profit but require like [phone] people city

another negative thing.. if you build a coal power plant, be aware that coal will not always be cheap, so if you go down that path then plan to have a coal mine els like 300t of coal will cost lyou like 15.000 after 10 years into the game, and you need allot every month for heating and power plant.. so think about it. ( + the coal power plant require like 200tons of steel it gona cost you a fortune to build, so maybe importing power is better the first 15 years or so.

[Fekin]

After more than 2 years away from the game, I'm basically having to learn everything again watching YouTube vids to get to grips with the basics again, then I'll start again adding in some things not selected like crime and punishment, waste etc.

[Risuga]

Kept starting over until I learned how to get my first workers in and satisfied in under 2 months. Use those workers to build out additional houses and services quickly, as well as first industry (clothes and/or food generally, with imported supplies) for early income. 2k population in a year or two covers construction, services, a factory or two, research and education.

Exporting stone (or gravel), along with other free/low worker cost resources, is actually extremely profitable on a per worker basis, for obvious reasons. The problem is the volume of output usually require additional infrastructure (rails generally). Trucks are prohibitive in terms of customs house traffic and fuel costs. If you've got a source near a customs house though, a short dedicated single line rail is not too costly. Oil is a special case that doesn't need workers, where trucks work perfectly fine for a few pumpjacks.

For building deep into the map, you'll want to be established at the border first. At least get gravel roads to the construction site. Use some free storages (or not - proper gravel storage with truck loading is a significant advantage) near where you want to build - you'll want storages for gravel, steel, bricks, planks, and prefabs. Cement and asphalt will be bottlenecks, as they can't be stored, so have a lot of trucks for those or build production nearby/on site.

On an island you'll still want to start your first town near the dock. You'll want it to help build the infrastructure to get inland efficiently. Same idea for the trains. You start from the customs house and build inwards. Get a better track builder than the AGMu asap, it's only really useful to get the first connection between your rail CO and the custom house (make it short!).

[ROBINO]

i can't get any achievements in my play-through because of settings

how can i fix this?