Debt Spiral of Doom

[YellowJello]

I'll be the first to admit that I am not well versed in city builders and RTS titles. I dabbled with Tropico, Empire Earth, Black and White, and Total War, but never spent a substantial amount of time with any of them. I keep finding myself in a debt spiral that is happening so quickly that I can't dig myself out of it. The game doesn't give clear guidance on what exactly is happening and I don't know how to stop it. It keeps telling me I need to build more things but that causes the debt spiral to increase in speed.

[Chaosium]

At what stage of the game are you? Reasons may differ whether you're in worker tier or late game investors

[YellowJello]

Literally the beginning. I'm in chapter 2 or whatever.

[YellowJello]

It gives me crap about supply declining for one item, so I increase it, which causes me to go further in debt. It tells me I need more homes, so I build them, making the decline worse, which makes my debt worse. I don't get it.

[tony_weisse]

Building more homes is usually the solution to debt. Residents consume goods which generates taxes which is how you make money.

The tutorial is pretty aggressive about telling you to start supplying goods that you can actually wait on. Steel is expensive to produce, but you don’t get any income from producing it.

[Chaosium]

Hit Ctrl+A (or Q, not sure my keyboard isn't qwerty) to see the most important screen: what your people consume vs what you're producing. You just need to make sure that you're producing just enough, and not overproducing because then it's kinda wasted

This way you'll get to see if you have enough of one factory or not, and if that's the case, you can build more houses which will generate money, as long as your supply is stable

Beginning is always rough, you can expect to lose money until you provide fish+work clothes+pub to enough farmers, then you'll have a positive balance and you can catch a breath at this point

Edit: also yeah the campaign will tell you to go steelworks and weapon factory way, way too early, it's a death trap, those things cost an awful lot and generate zero profit. Delay that until you have a solid balance

[YellowJello]

Originally posted by tony_weisse:

Building more homes is usually the solution to debt. Residents consume goods which generates taxes which is how you make money.

The tutorial is pretty aggressive about telling you to start supplying goods that you can actually wait on. Steel is expensive to produce, but you don’t get any income from producing it.

Originally posted by Chaosium:

Hit Ctrl+A (or Q, not sure my keyboard isn't qwerty) to see the most important screen: what your people consume vs what you're producing. You just need to make sure that you're producing just enough, and not overproducing because then it's kinda wasted

This way you'll get to see if you have enough of one factory or not, and if that's the case, you can build more houses which will generate money

Beginning is always rough, you can expect to lose money until you provide fish+work clothes+pub to enough farmers, then you'll have a positive balance and you can catch a breath at this point

Thank you both for this. I fell into such a deep hole I figured it'd just be easier to restart since I was so close to the beginning of the game anyway. I'll be paying more attention to this moving forward.

[YellowJello]

So I restarted the game and got further, but again I've hit a wall. There is no supply or demand for anything. Everything is spiraling out of control, I don't have money to build houses, I've started tearing down expensive production buildings, but even still I end up losing money.

[girlaroundthecorner]

Originally posted by YellowJello:

So I restarted the game and got further, but again I've hit a wall. There is no supply or demand for anything. Everything is spiraling out of control, I don't have money to build houses, I've started tearing down expensive production buildings, but even still I end up losing money.

It took me about 10 or more goes to get it semi-right and I still make a lot of boo boos along the way. My suggestion is to watch Taka tutorials on YouTube. He got me through. Things like selling soap, ships and passive trade to make money. Steel is very expensive to produce and he suggested buying it from Sir Archibald when you need it in the beginning. All these types of tips worked for me but it can still be a balancing act. Good luck!

[Chuckawookie]

Originally posted by YellowJello:

So I restarted the game and got further, but again I've hit a wall. There is no supply or demand for anything. Everything is spiraling out of control, I don't have money to build houses, I've started tearing down expensive production buildings, but even still I end up losing money.

This game is a game about spinning plates. Once you start spinning one, you need to spin another to keep the first going and so on and on. The game does explain this but it can be easy to forget since it also keeps prompting you build X building (since it will supply a new need).

The most important building is the market. This is where your money actually comes from. You build houses to attract more people to your islands who then shop at the market for their basic needs. You then employ some of those workers to create those needs and send them to the market. However, the more of each tier of worker you have, the more needs they will require, eventually forcing you to head to the new world to satisfy them. If they're needs are unmet, they'll be unhappy and they will complain in the newspaper before leaving your island, making all other workers upset.

Supplying worker needs is the main gameplay loop. You should think ahead and plan housing districts or even blueprint mode them because a surplus of workers is what makes your economy strong. Each tier of worker provides much more income than the previous but also consume the previous needs plus a few unique ones so don't immediately upgrade your housing buildings. Try to get each island to specialize in something and ship that between your islands so each place has enough space for large housing districts.

But remember, you're spinning plates. Large housing districts require pubs, fire houses, police stations, churches, schools etc and you can click on those buildings to see your "coverage" highlighted in green. As you build, you need to also keep track of those or else the ensuing disaster will wreck all your hard work.

[Tankfriend]

Originally posted by YellowJello:

So I restarted the game and got further, but again I've hit a wall. There is no supply or demand for anything.

That's a misconception, I suspect. Goods are continuously used and produced based on timing, so there is *always* supply and demand.
The statistics screen tells you if supply meets demand (0), or if there is a shortage (negative value) or overproduction (positive value). In each case, though, supply and demand are happening.

A 0 or slight overproduction is what you should aim for for all the goods your population consumes directly, because excess production cannot necessarily be sold at profit (with few exceptions - selling soap at the prison island is an easy early moneymaker to help you out).

If you've balanced your economy that way and run a deficit, the only surefire way to get rid of it for good is to grow out of it, meaning you will have to increase population and consumer goods production to match until you get into the green.
Shutting down production, selling off ships etc. can only be a temporary stopgap until your tax income catches up.

Also seriously consider setting up major population (up to 1000 peasants and workers each) on every island you get your hands on that can produce the necessary goods by itself. These houses don't add the big money, individually, but it adds up quickly, and they're fast and cheap to build.

[Stensson]

like others have said building more homes is how you make money, it's usually the luxury/happiness needs that generate the most income so for farmers that would be schnapps, slap down like 3-4 woodcutters and lumber mills and start building homes and schnapps like it's nobody's business

this could help you build a small little self-sustainable island and lets you relax a bit more

the real money is however in the later tier residents, workers with beer is the first real somewhat substantial money maker I would say

PS. there's also quite a few "cheesy" money makers in the game which I don't personally use but which are actually intended by the devs, like buying goods from one AI trader and selling it to another for a higher price (like pocketwatches) - the margins are huge and you'll make more money than you'll ever know how to spend

[YellowJello]

How do I attract more workers though? I keep hitting a point where my homes aren't getting populated enough to upgrade to worker homes, then after a short while every building that requires workers will become short on workers.

[Chaosium]

If farmer homes aren't available for upgrading, it means their basic needs are not fully satisfied, so you must be short on either fish or work clothes

Remember that workers also consume farmer goods, but at a rate twice as fast per home, so if you upgrade a whole bunch of them at once you need to check that your production can follow

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by YellowJello:

How do I attract more workers though? I keep hitting a point where my homes aren't getting populated enough to upgrade to worker homes, then after a short while every building that requires workers will become short on workers.

This is the crux of the matter. Check your production tab regularly to see if demand is greater than production for any good and fix the problem immediately. If your market does not receive a steady supply of any good and the supply bar of the good is no longer full, people will start to leave if it's a necessity good. If it's a luxury good, they won't leave but your income will drop drastically if the supply of such goods no longer meets demand adequately.

Importantly, do not try to produce everything on your starting island. Even if you have the appropriate fertility to produce certain goods there, consider producing the good on another island. By spreading out production across different islands and setting up charter routes to supply your starting island, you not only lessen the burden of losing the previous tier's local workforce from upgrading residences there, but also help improve the attractiveness of your starting island. Using this strategy across 3 islands (including my starting one) in the early game up to supplying beer, I managed to gain almost +1,000 income with pop celebrations and around +500 without even before my first artisan.

[Tregon]

Originally posted by YellowJello:

How do I attract more workers though? I keep hitting a point where my homes aren't getting populated enough to upgrade to worker homes, then after a short while every building that requires workers will become short on workers.

Besides goods, people want access to certain services (market is first one you see) and services have limited range calculated in road cells.

If you build house too far from service building along the road, that desire is not fulfilled and it hurts your population. Remember to check how far your services reach along your roads.