The game is too slow.

[pippo_jedi]

hi,
after 234hr of play I have to say that I really enjoy the game in general but I think I'll stop playing for a while because it's too slow.
I really enjoy the realistic difficulty and I'm struggling to build my cities and everything... but I have to stare at the screen for hours on end to just try a new way to do things... I'm not complaining about the in game time it takes to build something, but the fact that the fast pace of the game is really really slow IRL.
I know there is a superfast pace but it does not work very well, or so I've read...

I don't know: if I'm doing something wrong please tell me.

[Delle(DK)]

i agree the game is very slow ( but i like it ) im +1000 houres into the game and tried and failed many times but i learned the game ;-)
But yes it take 6-8 houres to build your first 1500-2000 people city and an industry to make a profit. But that is not the worst i think. The worst is that you need so many buildings just to setup a small city.
I highly recommend anyone on realistic to buidl the first city next to the border to save money and having to transport things as little as possible ( to save money ) and you also can save money not buying so many vehicles in game start.

If you want to try new things and experiment i like to recommend to make a new game and select the most easy difficulty and then try setting up factorys and connecting things instant and then try it out in realistic late on.
its a complex and difficult game.

els one way to speed up things are to build open storage areas and fill them up with building materials.. and once filled then build one building at a time so you construction trucks have to drive a long way to get resources and people.
You want to dedicate a few trucks to transport stuff, and also unload workers and load them on construction busses.
And ofcourse its a very good idea to get a simple railroad line ( build a small trainconstruction office next to the border and then make a simple railroad track from there..
One simple cheap diesel train can replace +10 trucks and dont have to park in line at the border to load/unload either.

[Elessar_warrior]

Well, the best way to try a new way to do things is to play a republic without realistic. Whenever you feel you can build some things manual too.

[Polkovnik Berezin]

Generally speaking, you can use the time better if you don't pause as much and do planning as other things are happening. I like playing the game such that I do all the planning on pause and then watch construction take place and make sure vehicles and resources are being deployed properly, but I understand that it can feel like nothing is going on.

[bballjo]

What is slow is probably the biggest question... I'm assuming you're talking about construction...

Well, the slowest way to construct is just plan and let the CO figure out everything (long list of constrtions)
The fastest way to construct is to micromanage each construction, and only have 1 or 2 active (maybe 5) per construction office, and have an iron hand with your busses, assuming you have enough workers.

The difference can easily be years in construction time, so if you want to try something new to be faster, I would try this first.

Also, don't forget that every single difficulty setting only changes how fast you can do things (instantly to manually) so, playing realistic mode but wanting it to be faster kinda contradict a bit.

Besides micromanaging all construction, there are other speedups, like better resource placement, and availability, worker surplus, traffic alleviations...a lot you have control over.

[pippo_jedi]

Thanks everybody for the kind input,
I do a lot of planning but i don't give the order to build everything and i choose what to build and in what order... but to start a city it still takes a lot of time since the amount of starting vehicles and manpower is low. yes i build at the border... the suggestion to fill different
storages in order to avoid the bottleneck at the custom house is good, but i try to start at the corner if possible and buy different things from both types of customs in order to use both types of money... but still it takes forever for a truck to come and go to a place, it takes forever to build up things...
I want to play realistic not to play slow, i want to play realistic to play the complexity... I'm good if it takes me 4 hours of planning to lay out the first city and some productionm chains... but then to spend one entire afternoon to build half of it ... it's really too much for me as it is not engaging...

[Catsander]

Originally posted by bballjo:

What is slow is probably the biggest question... I'm assuming you're talking about construction...

To me planning is taking more time than anything else so it is not that much faster with realistic mode off for me. I can hardly start a test game to try something out without ending up planning whole neighborhoods lol

[Shrike]

Originally posted by pippo_jedi:

I want to play realistic not to play slow, i want to play realistic to play the complexity... I'm good if it takes me 4 hours of planning to lay out the first city and some productionm chains... but then to spend one entire afternoon to build half of it ... it's really too much for me as it is not engaging...

Then you don't want to play realistic mode. If you want the complexity you get all of that with regular Hard mode. You don't want to watch the construction take place, some people do. That's what realistic mode is. Skip the construction with money and use construction offices for maintenance.

[zyrbagan]

Hi, comrades!

I try to the realistic mod, but subject of this discussion is disappoint me. Are there any speed script, because 2x is very slow in beginning game.

Thx for answer!

[Catsander]

Originally posted by zyrbagan:

Hi, comrades!

I try to the realistic mod, but subject of this discussion is disappoint me. Are there any speed script, because 2x is very slow in beginning game.

Thx for answer!

Apparently higher speed messes with the simulation why it is not supported (even fast speed is not very good), but there is a way through the cheat menu to increase speed.

[Cpt_Beefheart]

Originally posted by zyrbagan:

Hi, comrades!

I try to the realistic mod, but subject of this discussion is disappoint me. Are there any speed script, because 2x is very slow in beginning game.

Thx for answer!

Truly while all that slower stuff is happening, you can spend literally hours planning your next steps. This is filling your pipeline of things for future you to do, and can perhaps contribute to less needing to pause for planning later. Maximise your use of slow time and make your republic proud! ...Alternatively, like me, spend way too much time flying around map and imagining future possibilities.

edit: how come the exclamation mark here looks like a solid line?

[zyrbagan]

Originally posted by Catsander:

Apparently higher speed messes with the simulation why it is not supported (even fast speed is not very good), but there is a way through the cheat menu to increase speed.

Cheat menu makes you want to press other buttons in it =)

Originally posted by Cpt_Beefheart:

Truly while all that slower stuff is happening, you can spend literally hours planning your next steps. This is filling your pipeline of things for future you to do, and can perhaps contribute to less needing to pause for planning later. Maximise your use of slow time and make your republic proud! ...Alternatively, like me, spend way too much time flying around map and imagining future possibilities.

A good idea, but construction companies don't have a queue, you can't move something forward, and there isn't enough priority for everything.

It's especially annoying like to build roads/paths to buildings before building them =)

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

Originally posted by Delle(DK):

If you want to try new things and experiment i like to recommend to make a new game and select the most easy difficulty and then try setting up factorys and connecting things instant and then try it out in realistic late on.
its a complex and difficult game.

Kinda trying to set up an island map like this - I already made a version and was just paying to build stuff at start, but there were quite a few terrain things I'd have done differently / smoothed / etc so I figured might as well just make the same island again and actually just started it with some dispersed industry and such for the sake of a smoother start to the actual gameplay. Because realistic itself doesn't totally favor island games yet, I kinda see setting up basic industries too as sort of necessary so if I ever DO get around to releasing it on Workshop, it maybe serves an option for Realistic players who otherwise don't want an island map set up with an annoying lore-decimating border-connection island part or something, haha.

[Stele]

Originally posted by Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero:

actually just started it with some dispersed industry and such for the sake of a smoother start to the actual gameplay. Because realistic itself doesn't totally favor island games yet, I kinda see setting up basic industries too as sort of necessary

You can set starting wear through clicking hundred times in cheat menu, making your starting infrastructure wasting resources and falling apart in few years if left in disrepair. It gives you that initial setup while still making game hard.

[zoeren]

I would argue: with this level of complexity the game has to be slow.

Otherwise I think you wouldn't be able to recover from certain situations.

In general I think the scale of time is fairly adequate. In this game I do have a perception of in-game time (probably because of winter and it's problems).
In other (city building) games I don't think about time that much. You popp dem buildings in a second, anyways

[Elessar_warrior]

Little suggestion for OP: maybe you can try to auto build only the basics and then you have a nice setup to speed up the manual building. Some players in the forum had the same concern you had and this has done the trick for them.