When I first started playing this game, I would open the game, stare at the map, and wonder: "What in the hell am I going to Do Now?"
Eventually, I would plop some housing down, add some industry and whatnot, and hope for the best. This can work. It can also fail - big time!
Professional builders don't do things that way. Before they ever lift a hammer they have figured out the costs and materials required to get the job done. I am by no means a professional, but I find counting the beans saves a lot of pain in the long run. I am going to try and illustrate this by taking a city, running the numbers and seing what they can tell me.
The city is Lutetia (Paris). It is in a northern climate, and is considered a military scenario. As always, the first consideration is getting exports going. Checking the empire map, I see that I can sell both weapons and furniture to Mediolanum. I need to build mines, timber yards, and warehouses. To get the workers I need for this, I must put together a building block , and the farms, etc necessary to support it. So how much of everything do I need?
To start with , we know that mines and timber yards can each produce 9.6 cartloads of stuff per year. Workshops all produce at the rate of 4.8 cartloads/ year. It follows that we need two workshops for every raw material source.
I can sell 25 cartloads of weapons/yr to Mediolanum. To produce this I need three mines and six workshops. In addition, they will buy 15 cartloads of furniture. In order to produce this, I need two timber yards and four workshops. Then we need someplace to put this stuff and someone to keep an eye on it.
Facility |
Number
Needed
|
Workers
|
Timber Yard |
2
|
20
|
Furniture Workshops |
4
|
40
|
Iron Mines |
3
|
30
|
Weapons Workshops |
6
|
60
|
Warehouses |
1
|
6
|
Engineers |
2
|
10
|
Total Workers |
166
|
Next, we'll take a look at housing: