What is the best "starting production"

[zahndred]

What do you think is best thing to start produce to generate money the first years of the game? I generally have struggle generating enough money at start

[Sirius Czech]

without resources and researches from a map:
- tourism
- hazmat imports and burning it (later sorting and recycling adds even more money)
- fabric + clothing production (even from imported crops)
- alcohol
- meat
- food

Most of these (except hazmat) will nicely come together as all you need are farms (quite a lot for full years production, but hey, you have a lot of terrain to play with anyway) and it will save you money for buying stuff for your citizens (and tourists). Attractions in the city also help with culture and substitution of activities you do not want to promote (religion if not having a church, alcohol if you want higher birthrates and healthier population).

Then it depends on your resource options and desires. Moneymakes (for expports) are
- nuclear fuel
- explosives (from oil->chemicals->explosives)
- bitumen and fuel (also helps reduce imports of this pricey thing)
- bauxite and aluminum
- steel and things from it (mech. components at least, also reduces cost of your buildings)
- vehicle production (best values are western vehicles sold to both west and east, worst are eastern vehicles sold to west, but you will not lose money anyway).

That´s your list.

[ling.speed]

Generally the further down the production chain the more value given product extracts from the workers. So stuff like turning fabric into clothes or chemicals into explosives.
Without research nuclear fuel is great too.

Oil takes a bit more startup but also can be good, at least for some while.
Food/alcohol can be quite nice source of export if you scale it up.

Tbh I feel like making money is less about increasing profits and more about using the capital you have more efficiently.

[esbenmf]

Clothes, low investment, low volume, high return.

[Fekin]

I normally start with a complex consisting of a main large warehouse that has a couple of rail lines included, then have a large bread factory, at least 2 clothes factories and at least 2 distilleries connected to the warehouse.

1 train brings in just crops from the nearest border for bread and alcohol and a smaller second train brings in only fabric for the clothes.
So my first industry complex feeds and clothes my starter population and sells the surplus for instant profit, while removing some of my initial imports of food and clothing.

I always sell all alcohol anyway and don't need to supply to my population so that's extra income as well.

Then, depending on the map and resource location, I may start coal production that gives bricks for construction, removing another bulk import AND gives me half of what I need for steel production later on after starting an iron mine.

Or oil, into fuel and bitumen, depends on the map.

[ling.speed]

Originally posted by Fekin:

I always sell all alcohol anyway and don't need to supply to my population so that's extra income as well.

Gonna go on a bit of a tangent, but im starting to believe this isnt good idea at all. Not selling alcohol reduces productivity and health, while (likely) contributing to increase in crime (or at least decrese in loyality).

Slavs have ages long experiance with alcohol being forbiden... part of the reason why they are soo good at making it. As far as i can see the "alcohol addiction" stat isnt really showing addiction, its showing how much was distributed... officially. We can still see alcohol health debuffs without single bottle in the republick and alcohol tooltop at 0%.

That said i'm still not sure about the details yet... but from what i managed to test alcohol is definitely worth its price even when imported.

[Silent_Shadow]

If you have good housing or radio/TV and enough attraction types to replace pub crawls, then alcohol isn't needed and can be ignored without a loss of productivity, but the cost to get to that point may be equal to several years or even decades of booze consumption.

[whisper]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

Not selling alcohol reduces productivity and health, while (likely) contributing to increase in crime (or at least decrese in loyality).

Wait. I thought alcohol reduced health, not increased it.

[ling.speed]

Originally posted by whisper:

Originally posted by ling.speed:

Not selling alcohol reduces productivity and health, while (likely) contributing to increase in crime (or at least decrese in loyality).

Wait. I thought alcohol reduced health, not increased it.

Yeah it decreases health. But by distributing it ourselves we have chance to regulate it to be more healthy... at least thats how im interpreting relatively short (~2year long) tests i tried recently. There could be no real effect tbh (it was only ~1-2% difference in favour of encouraged drinking, but it held long term), im half bating someone to make their own stab at the idea ~~

As far as i see it, actual alcohol preference seem to evolve very slowly over time even under strong TV propaganda. If i were to make i guess the effect of research of alcohol standards depends on the % of alcohol "addiction", making legal drinking possibly healthier.

[Silent_Shadow]

What reactions setting were you on? A harder setting scales all negative effects on citizens' stats as far as I can tell.

The presence of attractions and encouragement of other leisure activities also have a huge impact in determining how often the health debuff (and happiness buff) get applied, so even with a high alcohol addiction, citizens may not even be getting alcohol that often.

[ling.speed]

@Shadow
It was a sterile test. Hardest reactions to multiply the effects as you say. But disabled fires, globals, pollution etc. to keep variables down to minimum. It was the same group of people in all cases from one starting point. So if they rolled a weird preference at start it was consistent.
Over time different births or strokes were making some dents on the health numbers but they were returning to something looking like slighly different means between the tests but i was not writing it down.

ps: it could totally be down to luck still, but looking at the tooltips i didnt see any big swings.

[WPizzA]

Originally posted by zahndred:

What do you think is best thing to start produce to generate money the first years of the game? I generally have struggle generating enough money at start

I recommend oil production.
I always start like this now and you can earn very easily already with the first 4 oil extractors, very cheap to build and little maintenance.
make a good initial network with a tank that holds the oil

[Delle(DK)]

First of all in early game DO NOT build your city far from the border.. The closer to the border the better = lower prices, faster transport and lower transport cost.
It might not look like much but belive me it speed up start of the game allot when there are less waiting time and transport time.

Oil extraction.. In the first avaliable map you can build 5-6 oil pumps inbetween two borders
( to the norh east i think ) Just hold the oil well in your hand and move it across the terrain until it light up green. Then build a pipeline to the small border and an oil tank. Next build a truck oil loading building and buy 3-4 oil trucks and export the oil.
This will more or less finance your first city and materials to build it.
Also build a fire station and import 10 workers to work there.
Even though the oil pumping and oil selling will earn you an income for the rest of the game then you CANNOT wait with building your first city. The reason is after x years importing workers prices will go up allot so you are kind of forced to build a city within the first 1-3 years.

Els turism is a good "easy" way to make money.
Build a large hotel and then you just need to deliver food, alcohol, meat and then fill it with workers.

Another nice factory is the small electronics componments factory ( i think that is the name)
It can make things needed to repair your vehicles or you can export it and it make a nice profit and is easy to build.. Build a small warehouse nearby to feed it.
The issue is that some things become quite expensive as the game progress so keep an eye on the prices of example electronics, steel, chemicals ect so you can spot what industry you might should invest in to save money vs importing things.

In general you want to fill your hotel/factory ect with max workers to make it the most profitable.. If you only fill example a factory with 50% workers then you will often not make much of a profit.

In general i would say your first city need about 1300 people to provide enough workers for your factorys/hotel. Keep in mind if a hotel need 100 workers and they only work 8 houres a day then you need 300 workers pr day.
And then the other people are students, elderly and run all the buildings in the city ect.

you also want to build example the communist hq early in the game to make higher educated people ( and research logistics ) it take a few years before they spit em out, so you will need to import like 80-100 higher educated people for your first city.

A pro tip.. build a road to the west border then you can buy building resources there and deliver them to your storage.. spend the USD to buy stuff vs taking a loan.
Loans are not that good in start of the game on realistic mode and if you go above like 250.000 - 300.000 then it often can lead to game over.

els i like to recommend to build a small chemistry plant and produce your own chemicals
vs buying them.. You need it for water cleaning and clothing production and other things.
But all in all in this game the more you can produce your self the better.

[Novu]

Construction industry is the BEST.

After you have construction done you never have to worry about money again because money is irrelevant when you can build anything you want for free.

Stop thinking like a capitalist. You don't need money. Money is stupid and irreverent.

[Silent_Shadow]

Unless you need to import stuff like food, electronics, chemicals, or vehicles...

[WPizzA]

Originally posted by Sirius Czech:

without resources and researches from a map:
- tourism
- hazmat imports and burning it (later sorting and recycling adds even more money)
- fabric + clothing production (even from imported crops)
- alcohol
- meat
- food

Most of these (except hazmat) will nicely come together as all you need are farms (quite a lot for full years production, but hey, you have a lot of terrain to play with anyway) and it will save you money for buying stuff for your citizens (and tourists). Attractions in the city also help with culture and substitution of activities you do not want to promote (religion if not having a church, alcohol if you want higher birthrates and healthier population).

Then it depends on your resource options and desires. Moneymakes (for expports) are
- nuclear fuel
- explosives (from oil->chemicals->explosives)
- bitumen and fuel (also helps reduce imports of this pricey thing)
- bauxite and aluminum
- steel and things from it (mech. components at least, also reduces cost of your buildings)
- vehicle production (best values are western vehicles sold to both west and east, worst are eastern vehicles sold to west, but you will not lose money anyway).

That´s your list.

yes, and that's already enough ,after you build a nuclear fuel production network the profit becomes too much.
the game becomes too easy even in this mode...
it takes a lot of time but if you follow all the steps in order and do everything calmly it is not a problem

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