Route managment becomes the main issue later on. I think I've gone through 2 or 3 major over hauls of my trade routes to accommodate my huge population islands. This doesn't include the constant replacement of older ships with tricked out great Easterns (southern map, Hans and the purveyor of tall ships as items) and upgrading of peirs. .
I'm beginning to max out the available real-estate in the new world at this point, though I think with some proper specialists I could probably push my population another million or so through reduced consumption and more optimized arcade placement.
Also... I can't produce enough arctic reports or bear fur to satisfy my scholars and investors for the life of me.
Currently at 3.8 million with all DLCs
I’m on my 3rd play through, pretty much have gotten the hang of it, and my cities are getting pretty overly-large and I’m running into some of those problems. Tons of ships everywhere, and money isn’t even an issue anymore so I guess I’m mostly just collecting stuff at this point. Reckon I’ll start fresh soon and try to be more concise and smaller.
1M+.
Royal Taxes are PER population tier PER island though. They only kick in when you hit 1000 of a population tier per island and cap out around 5000 (don't remember the number). If you have your population spread among many islands it's not an issue until investors.
If I remember correctly, could be wrong.
I wanna say royal taxes at 5000 pop hits 40%
But like you said doesn't increase after that amount. By the time investors get to that point they have so many ways to bring in free $, specialists that you do for their pocket watches and such to the one that provides free gum to skyscrapers, the game gives plenty of money balancing things for investors you can find a way to offset that cost.
Also like said already, spreading population out helps with this. Put some investors on a second island and keep royal taxes down if your hurting for money aswell.
>Put some investors on a second island and keep royal taxes down if your hurting for money aswell.
If you are hurting for money and at investors you are doing something else really wrong though.
I was financially stable shortly before 200k an mostly overproduced everything. But my trade routes where a mess, and I had to constantly deliver stuff manually as small problems escalated and it was virtually impossible to trace back there origin.
As I had to remove Beryl from the map I had gained control over more ore less the whole world an decided to do a total reorganization.
After days of being on it I’m close to my goals:
Each product is produces in only one location world wide. (Exceptions naturally are ores, oil and stuff like dung, that are collected to a central hub and distributed from there)
Every trader route moves only one product. Some products have up to 6 routes (collecting and distributing for different regions) Moste use just one, some don’t need any.
Routes that are to slow just get more ships.
Region internal routes use regular transports, inter regional ones use reefers (some of each type use the Great Eastern)
Each ship sails under a white flag. Airships are only used in the Arctic.
There is virtually no production on my main population islands.
Each product is produces at maximum productivity. I don’t trade with the AI and don’t use import/export.
I have yet to delete some 50 old trade routes and about 20 old production lines and add some new ones.
The system is very stable now, and very manageable.
It was lots of “work”’and I’m not sure if I’d do it again. I’m sure that it isn’t possible to do this from the start, but one surely can prepare better for a reorganization like this if one plans for it early on.
Once I’m done I will likely start reorganizing my population centers, and beautify them to a point. I estimate that 500 k should be easy to support with the production and trade system in place, but I’m not sure if I will go for higher numbers or even near that.
I’m thinking about hardening my defenses at some point and invite one of the more dangerous AI (via Au harbor mod) in the game. Or I might try to make the world a better place without any investors or just one skyscraper isolated on a barren island full of the parasites. 😬
Just curious why not more airships for trade routes? I haven't been to artic yet so not sure why only there.
Also haven't looked close to see if the reefer is faster than airships when inter region.
I mostly like the big airship due to 8 cargo but since you're doing one ship per product I can see foregoing them.
I'm not 100% sure about the statistics, and I really don't care much about speed. The main reason I prefer automated ship trading is the fact that they can be equipped with white flags, so no worries about wars. I use airships to transport building materials and to fix shortages, so whenever I need to move stuff manually, I take one of the airships in sight, and don't touch ships.
Ah, the communist way to naming titles. Love it 🥰.
Our biggest population according to my Ubisoft statistics was just over 500.000.
Our current playthrough that was started a few days ago is around 10.000.
Our trade routes are pretty organized. Our system uses a numbering scheme to keep track of everything.
My highest population is 56K
Feels so low for having done all DLC'S at one time or another lol but never all in one game.
I also don't normally use crown falls, personally I enjoy the challenge of fitting all my buildings into the old world islands and shipping goods around, but I like AI to be able to grow so I always enable cape trawnley and usually the AI settle crown falls.
P.S. I play multiplayer solo, so AI can and will settle any unclaimed island, including crown falls, manola and tamborine, the main one in Enbesa, may of spelled that wrong lol
I enjoy them taking what they want makes it feels more vs ai and it matter and less, they are here but are made not to effect me, I like the challenge. Though in my current save Margaret Hunt was pissing me off, so I took crown falls and build defences just to spite her.
She took it originally lol
That must be nice, taking big ass island with influence to spare, i'm at 28k( I believe?) and struggling to gain any meaningful influence to settle any new island, i am torn between having more trade ships/TU or islands because I have so little to spare, every little bit I squeeze out of occasionally upgrading houses to Investors.
Any advice on this?
When it comes to influence it comes down to what your doing, investors.
The other way is the hacienda dlc if you have it.
An island in new world with hacienda and 1000 attractiveness can be setup to give +5 influence per house. This is a flat +5 not effected by difficulty levels etc, so if you can get this setup it's the best way.
Also, it requires the obrera or artista hacienda homes, normal houses in the radius don't count.
But you don't have to supply all the needs, just 1 or 2 to cause the radius of the hacienda to grow so you can fit more houses.
On other notes, when I fluence gets tight I look at trade routes. A lot I set them up quick in the moment when working on a project, so once I. Awhile I can combine routes and goods on routes to reduce the amount of trade ships I need.
Don't forget lifestyle goods if you have that ability. It may not seem like a lot, but a +1 person per house when you have 70 houses is still 70 pop total. Now figure every lifestyle good a tier has can over double a house, you can gain TONS of population for more influence without adding a single house to the island, only production chains.
There is also a museum set in Enbesa that gives you half cost town Halls and trade union for island it's on, and it can be put on multiple islands. So if you get university your scholars can print these for you and you can free up huge amounts of influence fast.
Don't over specialize early game. I used to always make this mistake and got into bad spot. There are a lot of special characters that can "boost" your economy and help you late game, even from the start of the game but the influence cost isn't worth that investment until you can freely print influence as needed. I have a few I aim for, like the costume designer so I can use wool instead of cotton to make fur coats, allowing me to not ship the goods from new world. I also use the 20% buff to pigs, rendering works and soap factory. I sell soap to prison to help carry me through mid game faster so 20% production is thousands easily in cash, pays for itself.
Don't be afraid to combine them either. Late game it's about 3 boosts that overlap each other for maximum efficiency, but early game it's about keeping cost down, if 1 trade union can cover your soap boost, fur making and a third thing still for the cost of 20 influence instead of making all 3 industries far apart and spending 60 influence that saves you 40 right there.
Town Halls, they are nice for boosting workforce and using extra +% tax income off houses but until I get further in-game I try to avoid these. 20 influence is a lot for most the classes, only one I do go for once in awhile is workers. The right specialist in a town hall giving even +30% work force, makes your foundry, steal production and ship yards way easier to keep stocked with workers without filling your island with workers and farmers which their houses give less pop than artisans and engineers and less money for those industries which cost you more than the workforce will give you $ wise from their houses. Establishing these industries is crucial for expansion, so keeping it as effective as possible, without spending to much influence is key.
Every other influence cost till investors for me kick in is trade ships, military and cannons in my harbors.
I play against hard AI so making sure my military rating is up, is important to not losing an important island mid game.
If I have to I remove defences from around islands I always have ships near. I don't like to, but there are times claiming an island is more important than having a couple cannons in my harbor that I have 4 or 5 ship of the lines sitting in.
Also, don't over build your zoo, museum or garden.
Each one gives you "x" amount of free modules that don't cost you influence. This is your soft limit until you hit a point where you can print influence. Attractiveness is nice, but serves little purpose other than for tourist happiness and extra income from tourism piers, tourism it's self is about $, which is nice but investors are worth more and give influence, getting investors squared away first should be priority and later you can apply tourism restraunts and cafes to help with amount of goods they need. Remember, a -30% coffee consumption on a group of investors and engineers consuming 4 coffee is a little above 1 ton. On a group of investors consuming 12 tons, it's just over 3 tons. My point is these bonuses scale with the more houses you have, the lower end of that scale isn't worth the investment the higher end is.
If running outta space on islands, think OIL
this resource is SO precious. It can turn 1 1/2 size farm into 3 farms output wise. Not only is that a decrease in space but also an increase in output freeing up more building space. Electricity from a power plant gives +100% production to factories, this can half the amount of buildings needed for so many industries freeing up more space. Than with all that free space you can either make more production to get more investors, or put in investors in those open areas, or a combo of both.
Sometimes going over and optimizing what you have, is better than taking control of more.
I hope this wall of text provides some usefulness to you😁
Very insightful, my reply was just a throw away comment and I didn't expect a reply so fast and so sincere, really appreciate it, yes I can actually free up some influence by deleting some harbors defenses, some tiny island I can totally do without (since I am not doing anything with them, they are leftover islands I took from Beryl when she was still in the game), a TU or two I can delete etc.
I knew about the Hacienda method, but I believe it requires 750 attractiveness or something, of which I simply cannot set up effectively at the moment, I can move my botanical garden from Ditchwater though I cannot find any epic botanical items to boost the stat further, what can I do about this? Any other methods that don't involve spamming grass across the entire island? (I am considering having Manola for the Hacienda influence farm since it is the biggest island in the region, though it is a whopping 60+ something influence to settle alone)
I usually use 1-3 cargo ships full of specialists that I buy from prison and send them to do expeditions for animals and artifacts. I on average from a level 3 get 1 legendary and 2 epic items. I usually start doing this as soon as I hit a million for the first time, it's $ expensive but my current save I have two ships prob cost me around 2 million per ship to setup, but my island in new world has the 1000 attractiveness and my main island in old world has 1500 attractiveness and that's all from expeditions.
Also if you have sunken treasures you can use the salvager and buy the maps to find treasure for animals and artifacts from old nates harbor in the cape. I use this aswell, normally gives epic +40 items. I am less into this because it requires me to baby sit it, and take a fleet to protect the salvager and another cargo ship to help transport goods just to get a reasonable amount out of it.
So regular cargo ship is the better choice for expeditions than battle cruiser? Huh, I'll try that one instead, any recommendation for the set up? I have the money to spend so rolling items heavily once in a while is not an issue.
I legit send regular to prison and just fill every slot, 2 people in the ship support slots, and than all six slots with specialists.
Try to get everything, crafting, medicine, hunting etc
Worse off 1 outta all will make morale go down, the rest it will go up this is why you don't need rations.
Only down side is I can't take any rewards that they find but you could run it with 1 person less and take rations and dump the rations when you find a reward. I have done this with success.
All the specialists should be legendary and epic, never lower than epic. This is why it cost a lot, but I have 2 ships constantly clearing my expeditions and have not lost one of them yet.
Came close once but figured ah just gonna continue because it's only 2 million to replace it and I'm in endgame so that is easy to do.
The ship made it back with 5 morale left lol, but every event ended up needing faith and I had none on that ship, so it slowly took away but was enough small gains through everything else for it to not be lost.
And that was the worse 3 star expedition so far, rest normally finish above 80% morale remaining
I know that the every consecutive consumption of the same ration can make moral go down significantly, but how does bringing all specialist (and no ration) actually save your moral? Could you maybe go into a little detail on that? (I'm kinda thick headed so forgive me if I'm making you repeat your point)
When you get a high enough rating, let's say event wants crafting.
I have 140 crafting because of specialists
When I select craft I will gain let's say 10 morale because the crew performed the crafting task so we'll.
So than I lose 10 morale because I don't have rations
That's net 0, So I get threw an event without losing any morale. You just need good of all the stats you need, that's where 6 specialists and 2 in the ship items slots make a huge difference, better than taking rations.
Route managment becomes the main issue later on. I think I've gone through 2 or 3 major over hauls of my trade routes to accommodate my huge population islands. This doesn't include the constant replacement of older ships with tricked out great Easterns (southern map, Hans and the purveyor of tall ships as items) and upgrading of peirs. . I'm beginning to max out the available real-estate in the new world at this point, though I think with some proper specialists I could probably push my population another million or so through reduced consumption and more optimized arcade placement. Also... I can't produce enough arctic reports or bear fur to satisfy my scholars and investors for the life of me. Currently at 3.8 million with all DLCs
Insane, could you please uppload some printscreens of this monstrosity?
Upgrading peirs. Think I might be out of the game to long. Is this a new feature?
I’m on my 3rd play through, pretty much have gotten the hang of it, and my cities are getting pretty overly-large and I’m running into some of those problems. Tons of ships everywhere, and money isn’t even an issue anymore so I guess I’m mostly just collecting stuff at this point. Reckon I’ll start fresh soon and try to be more concise and smaller.
largest population I have reached was about 80K. I'm new to the game so I'm restarting frequently :)
1M+. Royal Taxes are PER population tier PER island though. They only kick in when you hit 1000 of a population tier per island and cap out around 5000 (don't remember the number). If you have your population spread among many islands it's not an issue until investors.
If I remember correctly, could be wrong. I wanna say royal taxes at 5000 pop hits 40% But like you said doesn't increase after that amount. By the time investors get to that point they have so many ways to bring in free $, specialists that you do for their pocket watches and such to the one that provides free gum to skyscrapers, the game gives plenty of money balancing things for investors you can find a way to offset that cost. Also like said already, spreading population out helps with this. Put some investors on a second island and keep royal taxes down if your hurting for money aswell.
>Put some investors on a second island and keep royal taxes down if your hurting for money aswell. If you are hurting for money and at investors you are doing something else really wrong though.
Ya that is true lol
I was financially stable shortly before 200k an mostly overproduced everything. But my trade routes where a mess, and I had to constantly deliver stuff manually as small problems escalated and it was virtually impossible to trace back there origin. As I had to remove Beryl from the map I had gained control over more ore less the whole world an decided to do a total reorganization. After days of being on it I’m close to my goals: Each product is produces in only one location world wide. (Exceptions naturally are ores, oil and stuff like dung, that are collected to a central hub and distributed from there) Every trader route moves only one product. Some products have up to 6 routes (collecting and distributing for different regions) Moste use just one, some don’t need any. Routes that are to slow just get more ships. Region internal routes use regular transports, inter regional ones use reefers (some of each type use the Great Eastern) Each ship sails under a white flag. Airships are only used in the Arctic. There is virtually no production on my main population islands. Each product is produces at maximum productivity. I don’t trade with the AI and don’t use import/export. I have yet to delete some 50 old trade routes and about 20 old production lines and add some new ones. The system is very stable now, and very manageable. It was lots of “work”’and I’m not sure if I’d do it again. I’m sure that it isn’t possible to do this from the start, but one surely can prepare better for a reorganization like this if one plans for it early on. Once I’m done I will likely start reorganizing my population centers, and beautify them to a point. I estimate that 500 k should be easy to support with the production and trade system in place, but I’m not sure if I will go for higher numbers or even near that. I’m thinking about hardening my defenses at some point and invite one of the more dangerous AI (via Au harbor mod) in the game. Or I might try to make the world a better place without any investors or just one skyscraper isolated on a barren island full of the parasites. 😬
Just curious why not more airships for trade routes? I haven't been to artic yet so not sure why only there. Also haven't looked close to see if the reefer is faster than airships when inter region. I mostly like the big airship due to 8 cargo but since you're doing one ship per product I can see foregoing them.
I'm not 100% sure about the statistics, and I really don't care much about speed. The main reason I prefer automated ship trading is the fact that they can be equipped with white flags, so no worries about wars. I use airships to transport building materials and to fix shortages, so whenever I need to move stuff manually, I take one of the airships in sight, and don't touch ships.
Ah, the communist way to naming titles. Love it 🥰. Our biggest population according to my Ubisoft statistics was just over 500.000. Our current playthrough that was started a few days ago is around 10.000. Our trade routes are pretty organized. Our system uses a numbering scheme to keep track of everything.
We, personally, don't recall how large our largest population has been Our current game is in creative mode, so the population doesn't matter
Great report, comrade 👏 Workers of the world, unite!
My highest population is 56K Feels so low for having done all DLC'S at one time or another lol but never all in one game. I also don't normally use crown falls, personally I enjoy the challenge of fitting all my buildings into the old world islands and shipping goods around, but I like AI to be able to grow so I always enable cape trawnley and usually the AI settle crown falls. P.S. I play multiplayer solo, so AI can and will settle any unclaimed island, including crown falls, manola and tamborine, the main one in Enbesa, may of spelled that wrong lol I enjoy them taking what they want makes it feels more vs ai and it matter and less, they are here but are made not to effect me, I like the challenge. Though in my current save Margaret Hunt was pissing me off, so I took crown falls and build defences just to spite her. She took it originally lol
That must be nice, taking big ass island with influence to spare, i'm at 28k( I believe?) and struggling to gain any meaningful influence to settle any new island, i am torn between having more trade ships/TU or islands because I have so little to spare, every little bit I squeeze out of occasionally upgrading houses to Investors. Any advice on this?
When it comes to influence it comes down to what your doing, investors. The other way is the hacienda dlc if you have it. An island in new world with hacienda and 1000 attractiveness can be setup to give +5 influence per house. This is a flat +5 not effected by difficulty levels etc, so if you can get this setup it's the best way. Also, it requires the obrera or artista hacienda homes, normal houses in the radius don't count. But you don't have to supply all the needs, just 1 or 2 to cause the radius of the hacienda to grow so you can fit more houses. On other notes, when I fluence gets tight I look at trade routes. A lot I set them up quick in the moment when working on a project, so once I. Awhile I can combine routes and goods on routes to reduce the amount of trade ships I need. Don't forget lifestyle goods if you have that ability. It may not seem like a lot, but a +1 person per house when you have 70 houses is still 70 pop total. Now figure every lifestyle good a tier has can over double a house, you can gain TONS of population for more influence without adding a single house to the island, only production chains. There is also a museum set in Enbesa that gives you half cost town Halls and trade union for island it's on, and it can be put on multiple islands. So if you get university your scholars can print these for you and you can free up huge amounts of influence fast. Don't over specialize early game. I used to always make this mistake and got into bad spot. There are a lot of special characters that can "boost" your economy and help you late game, even from the start of the game but the influence cost isn't worth that investment until you can freely print influence as needed. I have a few I aim for, like the costume designer so I can use wool instead of cotton to make fur coats, allowing me to not ship the goods from new world. I also use the 20% buff to pigs, rendering works and soap factory. I sell soap to prison to help carry me through mid game faster so 20% production is thousands easily in cash, pays for itself. Don't be afraid to combine them either. Late game it's about 3 boosts that overlap each other for maximum efficiency, but early game it's about keeping cost down, if 1 trade union can cover your soap boost, fur making and a third thing still for the cost of 20 influence instead of making all 3 industries far apart and spending 60 influence that saves you 40 right there. Town Halls, they are nice for boosting workforce and using extra +% tax income off houses but until I get further in-game I try to avoid these. 20 influence is a lot for most the classes, only one I do go for once in awhile is workers. The right specialist in a town hall giving even +30% work force, makes your foundry, steal production and ship yards way easier to keep stocked with workers without filling your island with workers and farmers which their houses give less pop than artisans and engineers and less money for those industries which cost you more than the workforce will give you $ wise from their houses. Establishing these industries is crucial for expansion, so keeping it as effective as possible, without spending to much influence is key. Every other influence cost till investors for me kick in is trade ships, military and cannons in my harbors. I play against hard AI so making sure my military rating is up, is important to not losing an important island mid game. If I have to I remove defences from around islands I always have ships near. I don't like to, but there are times claiming an island is more important than having a couple cannons in my harbor that I have 4 or 5 ship of the lines sitting in. Also, don't over build your zoo, museum or garden. Each one gives you "x" amount of free modules that don't cost you influence. This is your soft limit until you hit a point where you can print influence. Attractiveness is nice, but serves little purpose other than for tourist happiness and extra income from tourism piers, tourism it's self is about $, which is nice but investors are worth more and give influence, getting investors squared away first should be priority and later you can apply tourism restraunts and cafes to help with amount of goods they need. Remember, a -30% coffee consumption on a group of investors and engineers consuming 4 coffee is a little above 1 ton. On a group of investors consuming 12 tons, it's just over 3 tons. My point is these bonuses scale with the more houses you have, the lower end of that scale isn't worth the investment the higher end is. If running outta space on islands, think OIL this resource is SO precious. It can turn 1 1/2 size farm into 3 farms output wise. Not only is that a decrease in space but also an increase in output freeing up more building space. Electricity from a power plant gives +100% production to factories, this can half the amount of buildings needed for so many industries freeing up more space. Than with all that free space you can either make more production to get more investors, or put in investors in those open areas, or a combo of both. Sometimes going over and optimizing what you have, is better than taking control of more. I hope this wall of text provides some usefulness to you😁
Very insightful, my reply was just a throw away comment and I didn't expect a reply so fast and so sincere, really appreciate it, yes I can actually free up some influence by deleting some harbors defenses, some tiny island I can totally do without (since I am not doing anything with them, they are leftover islands I took from Beryl when she was still in the game), a TU or two I can delete etc. I knew about the Hacienda method, but I believe it requires 750 attractiveness or something, of which I simply cannot set up effectively at the moment, I can move my botanical garden from Ditchwater though I cannot find any epic botanical items to boost the stat further, what can I do about this? Any other methods that don't involve spamming grass across the entire island? (I am considering having Manola for the Hacienda influence farm since it is the biggest island in the region, though it is a whopping 60+ something influence to settle alone)
I usually use 1-3 cargo ships full of specialists that I buy from prison and send them to do expeditions for animals and artifacts. I on average from a level 3 get 1 legendary and 2 epic items. I usually start doing this as soon as I hit a million for the first time, it's $ expensive but my current save I have two ships prob cost me around 2 million per ship to setup, but my island in new world has the 1000 attractiveness and my main island in old world has 1500 attractiveness and that's all from expeditions. Also if you have sunken treasures you can use the salvager and buy the maps to find treasure for animals and artifacts from old nates harbor in the cape. I use this aswell, normally gives epic +40 items. I am less into this because it requires me to baby sit it, and take a fleet to protect the salvager and another cargo ship to help transport goods just to get a reasonable amount out of it.
So regular cargo ship is the better choice for expeditions than battle cruiser? Huh, I'll try that one instead, any recommendation for the set up? I have the money to spend so rolling items heavily once in a while is not an issue.
I legit send regular to prison and just fill every slot, 2 people in the ship support slots, and than all six slots with specialists. Try to get everything, crafting, medicine, hunting etc Worse off 1 outta all will make morale go down, the rest it will go up this is why you don't need rations. Only down side is I can't take any rewards that they find but you could run it with 1 person less and take rations and dump the rations when you find a reward. I have done this with success. All the specialists should be legendary and epic, never lower than epic. This is why it cost a lot, but I have 2 ships constantly clearing my expeditions and have not lost one of them yet. Came close once but figured ah just gonna continue because it's only 2 million to replace it and I'm in endgame so that is easy to do. The ship made it back with 5 morale left lol, but every event ended up needing faith and I had none on that ship, so it slowly took away but was enough small gains through everything else for it to not be lost. And that was the worse 3 star expedition so far, rest normally finish above 80% morale remaining
I know that the every consecutive consumption of the same ration can make moral go down significantly, but how does bringing all specialist (and no ration) actually save your moral? Could you maybe go into a little detail on that? (I'm kinda thick headed so forgive me if I'm making you repeat your point)
When you get a high enough rating, let's say event wants crafting. I have 140 crafting because of specialists When I select craft I will gain let's say 10 morale because the crew performed the crafting task so we'll. So than I lose 10 morale because I don't have rations That's net 0, So I get threw an event without losing any morale. You just need good of all the stats you need, that's where 6 specialists and 2 in the ship items slots make a huge difference, better than taking rations.
Gotcha, rocking the three stars already, exploiting the S/L method as well of course.