Ultimate Guide to Lethis

An advanced guide to production chains, population numbers, taxes, workforce, export, unhappiness and optimizing as many factors as possible in your perfect city.

The Basics

The chart itself, or the links to it, are slightly further down below.


Despite being an "ultimate guide", these charts are written by and for an audience who already know what they're doing within a game. Build a loop, put certain buildings down, expect certain taxes, etc.
If you need a guide that helps a true beginner out, I can reccomend Sok4R's excellent beginner's guide:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=506184947


That said, even with some knowledge of Lethis, the chart can be a little dense, so I just thought to leave a few notes here to help people out.


On the Captain of Industry Chart

This guide was completed and posted BEFORE the devs made quite a few changes to the prices of goods. Since then, the devs also announced they shan't be updating/improving their game anymore and truth be told, this has also dented my enthousiasm for updating the chart.
This means, the majority of the Captain of Industry chart is now outdated... but only when it comes to the least important stuff: profits.

You see, even now the income that can be made with industry, pales in comparison to the income that can be made with simple taxes. Industry is still important to support your city with food and goods, but once that is done, taxes will already bring in so much cash that building up further industry for profits almost redundant.

That's not to say that further industry isn't absolutely vital for another reason however. Geting money isn't the challenge of this game. The challenge instead, is knowing what to do with the excess workers that comes with a healthy taxbase. You see, while plenty of high level houses might give you all the income from tax you'll ever need, it will also come with more workers than you'll know what to do with and those workers want jobs to keep them happy. And because you need a city hall to collect taxes and your workers will burn down the city hall when they're unemployed and unhappy, knowing how to keep your workers happy then become's the game's greatest challenge.

So while my chart might be outdated when it comes to Industry income, it doesn't really matter. My chart is still relevant when it comes to the amount of people that industry can employ and THAT is the most important thing you can worry about.

Advanced industry for trade is a matter of decreasing unemployement, not increasing profits. The chart still helps you to do that. When you hear of unhappiness because of unemployement of your city, just look at the chart and see what employs people. You'll thank me when your city hall is left standing.


On the Chains:

I appreciate the pictures are a little small, so let me spell it out for you:

Bread chain: 2 Wheat farms, 1 Mill, 2 Bakeries
Meat chain: 2 Wheat farms, 1 Ranch
Potato/Pumpkin chain: 3 fields
Fish chain: 2 Fisheries
Alcohol chain (beer): 2 Barley Fields, 1 Brewery
Alcohol chain (absinth): 2 Fea Hunters, 1 Distillery
Utensil chain: 1 copper mine, 1 utensil factory
Garment chain: 2 Barley Fields, 1 Worm Farm, 1 Weavery
Jewellery chain: 1 Gold mine, 1 Jeweler
Automaton chain: 3 Iron mines, 1.5 Steam extractor, 3 Smelteries, 10 Automaton factories.


Special note: In my experience, it doesn't really matter where you place your Fea hunter dens, as long as the distances aren't too extreme.
If the hunter picks the nearest fea field and gets home early, this does not translate in more fea production. The hunter will simply stay home longer. Conversely, if the hunter picks a distant field and takes a while, he's more likely to go straight out again and keep up production.
The hunters are designed to balance out (reasonable) distance to the fields with their output.
2 hunter dens (placed reasonably near fea fields) are always enough for 1 distillery. Guides or people claiming you should herd your hunters into doing what you want, are a bit redundant.


On Consumption:

- Food, is consumed by people. This is why the chart speaks of feeding people when talking food.
- Goods, are consumed by houses. This is why the chart speaks of maintaining houses when talking goods.
- Herbs for the Herbalist, or Steam for the spas, or even robutts for the wealthy, can be seen as consumed by the roads that the herbalist or spa-bot walks upon. This is why the chart speaks of maintaining neighbourhoods and speaks of neither people nor houses when talking herbs, or steam, or automatons. Neither the people or the houses that the herbalist or spabot passes actually consume it. A herbalist/spa placed upon a completely empty stretch of land, will still consume herbs, so what a "neighbourhood" is, is completely left to your definition. It's actually the herbalist/spa-bot walker that will consume the herb/steam whenever they leave their building. How frequent this consumption is, depends on how long the road is and how long the herbalist is out there. For a very short route, the herbalist/spa-bot will walk more frequently and consumption will then be higher.

In reality, it doesn't matter how many houses or people are along a "neighbourhood".


On Tiles and neighbourhood size:

Notice that in my "optimal examples", I tell you how many tiles a neighbourhood can have maximum, for both the rich and the poor. I always assume you're building in loops. For herbs, I even tell you that having less than 44 tiles will either run a herb surplus or not.

The reason for all of this is the section above. Steam and herbs are consumed by the length of a neighbourhood when build in a loop.

By the way, the maximum amount of houses you can fit in a single loop, is 50, with a lot of tweaking entrances/exits of the walkers who do the shortest distances.

However, if you're like me and are really fond of nice, round numbers, it won't matter much. Neighbourhoods of 25, 30, 40 and 50 are the most natural that go well with managable amounts of food. Any other number that isn't a multiplication of these, will set you up with minor surplusses or deficits, so why not make neighbourhoods that are exactly that?


On (Free) Workforce:

I've calculated for you all, how much workforce is yielded per house. However, I've also calculated how much workforce is required to maintain the houses that yield the workers.

To put it simply, when you look at my "optimal examples", workfore is a matter of gross yield at first and an 'after costs' calculation in the end.

I state that 2 neighbourhoods of 25 lvl 10 houses yield 2000 people and 740 workers. However, many of those 740 workers will already be busy manning the maintenance stations, exorcists, wells and other buildings making sure those same houses don't burn down or devolve.

This is what I mean with "After Civic Services". 176 workers (88 for each of the two neighbourhoods), out of 740 are busy maintaining their own neighbourhood and only 564 workers are "free" to do something else.

However, those houses need herbs, food and goods to be maintained as well! This is the reason why I'm detracting another 162 workers as I expect them to be busy working the fields, fisheries, alcohol and utensil industries. The reason why I put up an question mark however, is because some food/good industries are more efficient than others. 3 Pumpkin fields and 2 fisheries to feed those 2 neighbourhoods, cost just 66 workers (30+36). Bread and meat cost 78 workers (38+40), bringing the total, together with Alcohol and Utensils, up to 156 or 168 respectively

On average though, all food chains cost 36 workers, so the number slightly below the exclamation mark is a average estimation of how many workers it will cost you if you diversify.

After all of this, Out of 740 gross workforce, 402 "Free Workforce" remains for you to spend as you please / need to employ to keep them from tearing city hall down.

Ultimate Guide to Lethis

The Ultimate (optimization) Guide to Lethis.

Unless otherwise specified, guide assumes yearly amounts, with high wages, low taxes, representatives on all the routes in question and play on hard mode.. (Hard mode changes the amount of workforce needed on certain buildings.) With these worst-case factors, anything else you tweak in settings will only be for the best, although playing on normal or easy mode might cause more unemployment.

I assume you're putting your housing neighbourhoods down in loops. If not, goods and food consumption will still work, but you might run into trouble with herb/steam/automaton consumption as these are defined in "amount of neighbourhoods served" and I'm assuming a neighbourhood is build like a loop.

For the JPEG browser version:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/693906573067040658/D4DE60277EAA4E33DD8B84579DBFB6C4538C184C/

For a high quality version, copy the three lines below into your browser's adress bar:

goo.gl
/photos
/H1bmyTzMzzPSuD1P9

The possibility to download the High Quality png file is with the three dots in the upper right corner after accessing the photo.

[pelletgrrl]

@skirlasvoud You may not see this due to time since last comment…. But, if you do, do you have an updated link for the high res image of the infographic you posted? The one you shared in the main post is broken. TYIA!

[Shotgunbill]

thanks for the info

[SjmSon]

good.

[secataur]

Good, I have my answer. Though, this particular example definitively creates a deficit for me. Why, I don't know, but it does. Anyway, cheers!, and thank you!

[Skirlasvoud]

@Secataur Yes. I do not expect that layout to ever need more than just the one herbalist and greenhouse. Had it been longer, you would have had surplus medicinal herbs. Had it been shorter, you would have had a deficit of medicinal herbs.

If I'm mistaken... then yes, they changed it.

I'm sure you could create a longer road though and the herbalist would still walk it.

[secataur]

I think I understand the general principle, but we're definitively talking past each other. With max 44, do you mean something like this: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1100223958

[Skirlasvoud]

Look at the steam instake of the wealthy estates. I explain it a bit better there.
56 road tiles take 428,6 steam. Longer road tiles take less, shorter road tiles take more.

44 road tiles is optimum for a single neighbourhood because that way, there is no medicinal herb surplus. If you can do more, than you'll have a surplus. If you do less, you'll have a shortage.

[Skirlasvoud]

@Secataur

Good of you to check secataur!

I blame myself for making this obtuse, but the "max 44" or "max 64" road tiles, doesn't refer to the range of the herbalist. It refers to how long the road tiles can be, for them to be supported by a herbalist and a greenhouse.

A single greenhouse and herbalist can support 44 road tiles. However, 2 greenhouses and 2 herbalists are required for LESS than that.

It's caused by the herbalist. It doesn't matter how many houses there are along the route, whenever he leaves his house, he'll take a constant amount of herbs with him. When his route is just 10 tiles long, that means he'll consume A LOT OF HERBS. When his route is a maximum of 44 road tiles, he can be supplied by just one greenhouse. Anything shorter than that and he'll take more.

In fact, using a trick with the well, you can squeeze 22 house-sized objects into a loop. The longer the better!

[secataur]

Doing some tests myself, I'm not getting 44 tiles for the herbalist. I'm getting 46-52 tiles, depending on game speed. This is curiously different, has this been changed by a patch? To clarify, with 44 tiles I understand a loop where the loop itself consists of 44 road tiles. The interior would for example be a 14x6 rectangle, with exactly enough room for 21 house-sized objects.

[Tonoki]

Thanks for your comment on my screen =)
Your guide is awesome !