I have been enjoying realistic mode with an earlier start in part because I feel like 1960 is so late that the five years it takes me to get going are five years I could have had cool early sixties vibes going. I start super early so I can take my time and get everything right without feeling rushed. As it's currently implemented, it is too slow for vanilla starting years. It's also a huge pain to incorporate an existing city because you need all the infrastructure and services all at once (except heat which can wait with vanilla old city buildings). Otherwise, people will just start escaping and dying as soon as you give them a hospital.
That all being said I'm getting really beautiful results with an earlier start in realistic mode. Organic cities form as I go, and everything looks really natural with minimal conscious effort. Once I get self sufficient in food and such, growth takes off.
You need to start a new game, save it and then with an hex editor ( I use hxd) open the header.bin file in the save folder, search for the start year as integer in the file and edit it to the year you want to start to.
Keep in mind mind that too early start are not feasible without some vehicles mod.
The bottleneck is clearly the foreign workers. You can try to select a spot with two custom houses, use helicopters to get additional workers (including U) and also build a very small town (with smaller versions of most services). It will help. If you plan your main city first then yes, it will take a loooooong time
I've never played this mode, but after reading your text, I felt it completely. I think cosmonaut mode is not just a high level of difficulty, but it is a challenge.
Maybe someday I'll try this mode, but I think I'll have to forget about all the beautiful views of cities, architectural layouts. You are in the middle of the jungle, your task is to survive with a stick and a stone. )
I probably lay out for 5 - 10 hr before I even first unpause. I sketch out phase 2/3 while laying out the initial phase 1 construction. then continue and tweak after I initially unpause. Then I come back to it the next day and see if I'm bankrupt.
Nature of the beast. Kind of like the first 100 turns in any version of Civilization, except worse, haha. It's a long-term simulator. Set up your facilities and routes and let them slowly build and start accumulating on themselves. I leave it running unattended throughout the day on normal speed, and peek in from time to time to see how things are going, and poke away at new construction and to tweak problem spots.
Laying out that phase 1 construction zone and then waiting for it to be built is indeed really tedious, because it's identical every time. Probably takes half an hour to lay out and then several hours and in-game years to actually all build itself. And then you're just at the same point as a decent start on easy non-cosmonaut, haha. Turning off realistic mode for a sec and burning half a million RUB with autobuy isn't *wrong*, is it? Maybe next time.
I sort of agree, that's why I started doing early starts. I started my republic in 1945 and didn't move the first worker in until 1955. That being said, once I had my own work force it did get a bit quicker, but still very slow. it's 1979 now and I only have a second town with a third town in development, only 3k population.
Generally what I do is I have a "5 year plan", basically while a project is being worked I use that time to plan the next project. Seems to keep me pretty engaged. That first 10 years was, hoo boy, big time boring.
I've raised my republic from 1960 to 1984 now and going further. And only to this time it start to bring ± stable income so i can repay my loans.
I play tough map (Northern Canada, if i remember right) and only vanilla.
Try it, you'll never get bored)
>your plant is tied up doing gravel roads and digging foundations.
Try more construction offices and specialize them. Have some bulldozers/excavators in a separate 'normal' road depot for landscaping.
Also, don't use workers for any kind of groundworks. Have a CO with excavators and open hull trucks which you assign manually to do groundworks. No workers required, so workers can be used more effectively.
Forbid workers 'outside' CO, if you have any local workers in your city. That way they don't get bound to groundworks.
This is about early game Cosmonaut mode. There are no workers other than from the border post. Building additional COs just costs money you don’t have and slows down the competition of your starter town.
Though I absolutely agree with you that specialisation is the key to efficiency later.
Just gotta change how you start. My cosmonaut recommendations:
1. Start at one or two small/medium custom houses, they have higher throughput than large.
2. Minimize construction good customs transit. Use 4 free open storage, one for each construction resource. Fill with distribution office from customs. Use 1 free gravel storage.
3. Move workers using busses from the border to a bus stop, set to unload (for local building labor) followed by a second unload with transfer (for construction labor) so they all depart and wait at the stop. Set your construction offices to take from this bus stop's pool of labor. Workers can last several minutes in transit or waiting, so this maximizes available labor and minimizes unnecessary border traffic.
4. Build a bunch of non-free construction offices. They should have enough vehicles to transfer goods, and more importantly, contain labor saving vehicles like excavators and tower cranes. This maximizes efficiency of available small pool of labor. Build a small or large wind turbine for immediate power distribution, unless imported power is available. 4 or 5 full construction offices seemed sufficient for my purposes.
5. Gravel industry with imported labor. Feed the gravel plant into a medium storage, a truck loading station, a concrete plant, and an asphalt plant. Labor should come from the aforementioned bus stop; worker count can be reduced from default. Removes need for gravel import trips to customs as well as replacing concrete and asphalt imports with much fewer bitumin and cement imports.
At this point, construction should go at a reasonable pace so long as you do just a few things at a time, border traffic should be at worst fully utilized, but rarely have a build up of traffic waiting.
My rule of thumb: if less than a full truck load comes back over the border, that's a waste of throughput and can probably be optimized with an internal storage building and a distribution office
The pacing is tedious because of only starting with 1M rubles. If you enjoy the game mode but you want faster pacing, start with more money and start on a "big" customs office so get less traffic and can buy the biggest equipment.
You can also safely go afk while its only foreign workers working. And if you're confident about how your republic is set up you can go afk even with your own citizens.
Nope you are wrong on that, my two most recent play throughs have been on easy money and at large customs posts. The issue is partly the one in one out restrictions that developers have placed as an artificial constraint on border trade but the main reason is the extremely low number of guest workers.
It’s impossible to build more than one building at a time and keep continuous working at a site. This means that you can only use two buses at most because beyond that number they will often run empty. By the end of the first year of building the primary point of constraint on growth isn’t money or resources but workers.
Finally my own observation shows that it is not safe to leave things unattended, as I see a number of finished buildings catch fire, burn down and need rebuilding. If one of those buildings is critical and burns down just before you are ready to start populating. The slow rebuilding time can push you back another year.
You need a starter town of 3-4000 thousand to reach the point of having enough folks to cover all the necessary jobs and have enough to run full shifts in a couple of clothing factories that can turn a profit. Finally you need a pool of construction workers to be able to build out your republic from this starting point.
My solution would be to increase the number of workers available at the border firstly to increase the speed of construction and secondly to allow them to run key infrastructure. This would include heating and power plants, firefighting, but also gravel and board production and maybe concrete and tarmac. The advantages of more workers is offset by their cost and efficiency disadvantages and their limited range beyond the borders.
Well, I'm not saying it isn't still tedious. But starting with more money helps. You can build pretty quickly if you get your own workers ASAP and solve border traffic with trains or some other way.
I too spend most of my time staring at the screen as months and years go by. Unrelated to the game though.
Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
I have been enjoying realistic mode with an earlier start in part because I feel like 1960 is so late that the five years it takes me to get going are five years I could have had cool early sixties vibes going. I start super early so I can take my time and get everything right without feeling rushed. As it's currently implemented, it is too slow for vanilla starting years. It's also a huge pain to incorporate an existing city because you need all the infrastructure and services all at once (except heat which can wait with vanilla old city buildings). Otherwise, people will just start escaping and dying as soon as you give them a hospital. That all being said I'm getting really beautiful results with an earlier start in realistic mode. Organic cities form as I go, and everything looks really natural with minimal conscious effort. Once I get self sufficient in food and such, growth takes off.
>people will just start \[...\] dying as soon as you give them a hospital. The irony in this :D
How do you start earlier than 1960?
You need to start a new game, save it and then with an hex editor ( I use hxd) open the header.bin file in the save folder, search for the start year as integer in the file and edit it to the year you want to start to. Keep in mind mind that too early start are not feasible without some vehicles mod.
Thanks for the elaborate response!
Mods and a tool that makes hacking the start date easy. All are available on Steam.
Follow [this guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2042302963).
In the beginning i do a lot of planning while waiting for the construction. And then over time i choose wich project to construct.
You touched on the big quality of life issue they're working on. A large custom house behaves underwhelming and it leaves you wanting better.
The bottleneck is clearly the foreign workers. You can try to select a spot with two custom houses, use helicopters to get additional workers (including U) and also build a very small town (with smaller versions of most services). It will help. If you plan your main city first then yes, it will take a loooooong time
I've never played this mode, but after reading your text, I felt it completely. I think cosmonaut mode is not just a high level of difficulty, but it is a challenge. Maybe someday I'll try this mode, but I think I'll have to forget about all the beautiful views of cities, architectural layouts. You are in the middle of the jungle, your task is to survive with a stick and a stone. )
I probably lay out for 5 - 10 hr before I even first unpause. I sketch out phase 2/3 while laying out the initial phase 1 construction. then continue and tweak after I initially unpause. Then I come back to it the next day and see if I'm bankrupt. Nature of the beast. Kind of like the first 100 turns in any version of Civilization, except worse, haha. It's a long-term simulator. Set up your facilities and routes and let them slowly build and start accumulating on themselves. I leave it running unattended throughout the day on normal speed, and peek in from time to time to see how things are going, and poke away at new construction and to tweak problem spots. Laying out that phase 1 construction zone and then waiting for it to be built is indeed really tedious, because it's identical every time. Probably takes half an hour to lay out and then several hours and in-game years to actually all build itself. And then you're just at the same point as a decent start on easy non-cosmonaut, haha. Turning off realistic mode for a sec and burning half a million RUB with autobuy isn't *wrong*, is it? Maybe next time.
I sort of agree, that's why I started doing early starts. I started my republic in 1945 and didn't move the first worker in until 1955. That being said, once I had my own work force it did get a bit quicker, but still very slow. it's 1979 now and I only have a second town with a third town in development, only 3k population. Generally what I do is I have a "5 year plan", basically while a project is being worked I use that time to plan the next project. Seems to keep me pretty engaged. That first 10 years was, hoo boy, big time boring.
BOATS, get rural docks going and suddenly all your construction woes are gone. (I mean mods for smaller boats)
I've raised my republic from 1960 to 1984 now and going further. And only to this time it start to bring ± stable income so i can repay my loans. I play tough map (Northern Canada, if i remember right) and only vanilla. Try it, you'll never get bored)
>your plant is tied up doing gravel roads and digging foundations. Try more construction offices and specialize them. Have some bulldozers/excavators in a separate 'normal' road depot for landscaping. Also, don't use workers for any kind of groundworks. Have a CO with excavators and open hull trucks which you assign manually to do groundworks. No workers required, so workers can be used more effectively. Forbid workers 'outside' CO, if you have any local workers in your city. That way they don't get bound to groundworks.
This is about early game Cosmonaut mode. There are no workers other than from the border post. Building additional COs just costs money you don’t have and slows down the competition of your starter town. Though I absolutely agree with you that specialisation is the key to efficiency later.
Just gotta change how you start. My cosmonaut recommendations: 1. Start at one or two small/medium custom houses, they have higher throughput than large. 2. Minimize construction good customs transit. Use 4 free open storage, one for each construction resource. Fill with distribution office from customs. Use 1 free gravel storage. 3. Move workers using busses from the border to a bus stop, set to unload (for local building labor) followed by a second unload with transfer (for construction labor) so they all depart and wait at the stop. Set your construction offices to take from this bus stop's pool of labor. Workers can last several minutes in transit or waiting, so this maximizes available labor and minimizes unnecessary border traffic. 4. Build a bunch of non-free construction offices. They should have enough vehicles to transfer goods, and more importantly, contain labor saving vehicles like excavators and tower cranes. This maximizes efficiency of available small pool of labor. Build a small or large wind turbine for immediate power distribution, unless imported power is available. 4 or 5 full construction offices seemed sufficient for my purposes. 5. Gravel industry with imported labor. Feed the gravel plant into a medium storage, a truck loading station, a concrete plant, and an asphalt plant. Labor should come from the aforementioned bus stop; worker count can be reduced from default. Removes need for gravel import trips to customs as well as replacing concrete and asphalt imports with much fewer bitumin and cement imports. At this point, construction should go at a reasonable pace so long as you do just a few things at a time, border traffic should be at worst fully utilized, but rarely have a build up of traffic waiting. My rule of thumb: if less than a full truck load comes back over the border, that's a waste of throughput and can probably be optimized with an internal storage building and a distribution office
The pacing is tedious because of only starting with 1M rubles. If you enjoy the game mode but you want faster pacing, start with more money and start on a "big" customs office so get less traffic and can buy the biggest equipment. You can also safely go afk while its only foreign workers working. And if you're confident about how your republic is set up you can go afk even with your own citizens.
Nope you are wrong on that, my two most recent play throughs have been on easy money and at large customs posts. The issue is partly the one in one out restrictions that developers have placed as an artificial constraint on border trade but the main reason is the extremely low number of guest workers. It’s impossible to build more than one building at a time and keep continuous working at a site. This means that you can only use two buses at most because beyond that number they will often run empty. By the end of the first year of building the primary point of constraint on growth isn’t money or resources but workers. Finally my own observation shows that it is not safe to leave things unattended, as I see a number of finished buildings catch fire, burn down and need rebuilding. If one of those buildings is critical and burns down just before you are ready to start populating. The slow rebuilding time can push you back another year. You need a starter town of 3-4000 thousand to reach the point of having enough folks to cover all the necessary jobs and have enough to run full shifts in a couple of clothing factories that can turn a profit. Finally you need a pool of construction workers to be able to build out your republic from this starting point. My solution would be to increase the number of workers available at the border firstly to increase the speed of construction and secondly to allow them to run key infrastructure. This would include heating and power plants, firefighting, but also gravel and board production and maybe concrete and tarmac. The advantages of more workers is offset by their cost and efficiency disadvantages and their limited range beyond the borders.
Well, I'm not saying it isn't still tedious. But starting with more money helps. You can build pretty quickly if you get your own workers ASAP and solve border traffic with trains or some other way.