Do you ever build more than one City per zone? How big do you make your zones?
Actually, the city is the administrative center of a zone, so creating a new zone, or a new city is basically the same.
There is an administrative penalty if you exploit infrastructures more than 6 hexes away from a city, so I will usualy build a new city when it happens.
Yep, exactly this.
I also occasionally do it if I’ve just found a new, large, free folk town at a reasonable distance from my cities. Making that hex into a new city gives some instant population to work there.
Also, some buildings (like BP creating Bureaucratic Offices) can only be built in cities, so it’s sometimes worth it to build them for that reason.
What’s a “reasonable distance”, usually? I’m just trying to figure out how quickly and how many cities I should be building. I’ve gotten the basics of the game down but I’m struggling keeping up, so I’m clearly doing things wrong. :)
For maximum efficiency you want cities 14 hexes apart. Realistically that’s just a rule of thumb though. Zones encompassing mountain ranges and Arctic regions without any assets to speak of can be larger.
More zones also means more militia. The militancy of new zones tends to be high and they’ll eventually build their own garrison.
I also tend to prioritize a rail network between cities. Most of them can get by with just a railhead which are relatively cheap. Each city should have a food production source within its zone. Ideally you’ll reduce intercity transport of goods which clogs your logistics network. Depending on the planet and atmosphere actual farms maintained by rainfall are ideal. Each city also should get its own truck station to both supply military units and to exchange resources with the zone assets.
Setting a zone order with a salary for colonists (I usually use five credits) will start to build a colonist pool you can use to jumpstart new cities with population and workers.
Try not to combine building campaigns and military action on the same turn. The building resources coming from SHQ tend to saturate your logistics network and you’ll have trouble supplying units in the field until the buildings are finished.
Multiple light infantry/MG brigades on various fronts as border guards. They’re cheap to supply and build and it takes forever to relocate them. Keep your motorized/armored units inside cities until you need to use them.
Thanks, that’s all really helpful. When I tried building out new cities last game I crashed my logistics network. Part of that may have been map RNG though, because my capital and SHQ were on a peninsula with only one land hex connecting to the rest of the continent? All I know is that even with a railroad station in each city, that one hex remained a black hole for supply.
From your advice, things I think I could have done to help that:
- Farms and such in other zones faster, making them more self-sufficient.
- Keeping motorized units in cities instead of out and about.
- Not fighting and building out at the same time.
I also need to read up on how colonists work, exactly.
Still in beta.
I didn’t know that. Great advice!
Really good advice. I’ve had offensives come to a grinding halt because I ordered too much construction all at once.
Yep; they suck down precious fuel, and if stationed in cities, they can usually get to nearby hotspots fast.
If you dink around with the colonist screens, you’ll figure it out. The basic idea is to accumulate colonists in a big city and send them off to a fledgling city. They transfer pretty much automatically. I don’t think they burden the logistics network, though I could be wrong. Population is indeed a crucial resource. A new zone with worker shortages is trouble. (Look for those telltale “yellow” worker icons.) Workers shortages anywhere is trouble!
Quick update on where I’ve got to with this game.
Same area, 7 years later (now turn 58). It’s been a years long attrition to push the native wildlife back through the forests to the west and North East of my Capital. Even now, I’ve not really eliminated many units, just whittled them down and pushed forwards with MG units to take any ground they’ve left.
The main growth has been to the South where I took over a Farmer Minor and have pushed the wildlife back to a long border. Easier in these plains where I can run Buggies and Tanks around to swat away any incursions. Note the horrific Slaver minor to the west that is a pleasantly scary buffer to the big aggressive Major to the North West.
My main recent victory has been to push East to secure this isthmus and so be able to shorten my lines in NE and SE. It also gave me a path to the small Minor to the East which has just fallen in short order to an aggressive Infantry Corps and some HE armed Tanks.
The question is where to go now. Troppau Hansa are eating Primafel (the 4th Major) and we’re at peace with Orlabes Pax to the very South. There’s some rationalisation to do and I need to set up a new zone to bridge the very long gap to the new minor. I’m thinking to try and bottle up the wildlife in the North and keep pushing East to Omicron, but that’s going to be a long supply line back to Bannerfort and there are mountains that I’m going to have to run railways through…
This is a very different challenge to other games of SE that I’ve played. I’m quite enjoying the requirement to be slower and more methodical rather than smashing my way through all the Minor regimes.
1.05 is out of beta and released:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4866337
Highlights
• Pull Points added to the Logistics System
• History Classes added to game Setup
• Updated Manual (rules & grammar)
Check the link for the full list. It’s long!
Edit: the raw patch notes are hard to read. Scroll down a few posts and someone else cleaned them up … a bit.
YES!!! I was waiting til this goes live to jump back in.
For those with a good handle on the game, what is your pace of expansion like? Do you need to grab grab grab every bit of land as quickly as you can, or is this a game where you can grab a zone or two and then spend a while building it up without falling far behind others?
You can certainly build tall if you’d like. However a big territory means more free folk villages, which means more population. Also the more cities you have the more low-level bureaucratic offices you can build for BP generation.
Also a larger territory means more potential resources. Which is super important when your metal starts running out. Deep core mining can take some of that strain off, but that’s expensive in machinery.
Thanks. I’m feeling really stretched out in my current game and would like to consolidate, I just didn’t know if hunkering down with what I have was suicide or not. :)
There’s always got to be periods of consolidation I think. You can’t keep up the expansion unless you’ve got your materials and infrastructure sorted out.
Pro tip - when you’re starting a new game don’t pick the ‘Survival Stress’ history option. It adds lots of factions to your world which drag out turn times horrendously. In fact I think you’re safe to ignore all the history options.
Oh absolutely. When starting a new game I tend to rush to get as many villages as possible, and stake my claim on any neighboring minors.
When your initial brigades are infantry, the consolidation phase happens while you are relocating your troops to the next minor. Though on that topic after conquering a new city it is worth it to park a ton of troops on top of it for a few turns to get unrest to manageable levels.
I’ll then use cards to keep the major neighbors sweet while consolidating my gains and building a logistics network.
Though on planets with hostile fauna, you’ll generally want to at least keep expanding into wilderness territories even if you aren’t building cities. You need to eliminate those suckers.
Just got my 16th anniversary coupon from Matrix, so very tempted to grab this. Iron Harvest and Crusader Kings 3 also coming out tomorrow. Decisions, decisions.
Ended up grabbing this with my coupon. Unfortunately it crashed in my first turn with an out of bounds array error. Hopefully that isnt too common.
Yikes, haven’t had that happen. Are you on 1.05?