I build these minimal towns that stockpile steel and concrete. This pic looks like one large build but there are two separate towns. I run this setup forward to generate about 30K-70K steel and concrete per hour. Its basically how I fund large city ideas without the pain of waiting on, or managing, construction resources. Am I the only one who builds a “battery”?
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I don’t understand what for, since there is no civilian traffic? You can literally just spam sulphur and sand mines on the other side of a map, not connected to anything, only storages.
70K per hour, so about 1k per minute? It’s not that much, if you don’t want to wait a lot, you might want to go higher than that.
Overall, am confused.
I concur. While the concept of a “battery” is fine, you really don’t want it attached to the rest of your road network and clogging up other industries. This is especially true for Concrete, which you don’t want anywhere near other kinds of traffic. It really doesn’t even need to be connected to the rest of your road network at all. Concrete produces absolutely staggering amount of traffic. On hard difficulty with early-game gravel roads I find that three Concrete Factories in close proximity will gridlock all on their own due to the staggering amount of traffic they generate. You don’t want these competing with anything else for road space.
Steel is a bit different, because it’s still needed for export for things like Motors, but it also generates a lot of traffic and you really don’t want it competing with things like Electronics for thru traffic. Motors are the only Factory I would even consider placing near Steel production. I like to keep my Steel production in a separate area with the Motors production and hook it up to the rest of the network via rail so it’s not touching my road network.
I’ve found on Hard difficulty that over-producing Concrete and Steel is a bad idea. While on Normal you have plenty of wiggle room, on Hard you run into the problem of just not having enough people to work all those extra jobs and if you overproduce Concrete and Steel you’re just going to be waiting on Science.
Playing on hard/hard - so can’t speak to traffic volumes on easier levels.
100% agree with Darvin’s explanation - it’s the same approach I took to isolate the traffic.
There are many different layouts for the ‘battery’.
Righthand turns only from factory to storage, districts to make sure it goes the storage you want. The only traffic ever on the feeder arteries left/center/right is sulfur/sand.
Scalable to any size you desire, or just copy/paste it (lol - wish) around the sulfur mines
I’ve never had an issue with running out with just this ‘battery’. I don’t play at a very fast pace though so i’m not using tons of concrete/hour.
When it comes to steel - like in the pictures above, just feed that direct into your motor factories.
The steel you want for building your city (buildings/rails), I did exactly the same as concrete. Smaller scale, same idea. (Not running full capacity right now because i could only spare 1 iron mine for it.
That electronics maze in the back sucks up a ton of iron ore.
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AfroSpock
I don’t understand what for, since there is no civilian traffic? You can literally just spam sulphur and sand mines on the other side of a map, not connected to anything, only storages.
No, this is not just a solve for civilian traffic, it’s a green level research setup that can run indefinitely. You can leave this setup with 20+ research objectives and they complete without a hiccup. Maybe I didn’t explain it properly. I was hoping to help new players who might be having trouble. This is a foolproof way to generate resources and start to construct massive cities new players start this game for. I should make it clear, again, that this is a preliminary save I keep around as a basis for new cities. These screen shots are not finished builds in any way. This pic is simply a barebones resource generator that has been proven to be perpetual. There are two in this pic, not connected.
70K per hour, so about 1k per minute? It’s not that much, if you don’t want to wait a lot, you might want to go higher than that. Overall, am confused.
How are you doing more than 70K per hour with 1700 population or less? I’d like to update the explanation to help beginners understand and exploit your efficiency.
Darwin
I concur. While the concept of a “battery” is fine, you really don’t want it attached to the rest of your road network and clogging up other industries. This is especially true for Concrete, which you don’t want anywhere near other kinds of traffic. It really doesn’t even need to be connected to the rest of your road network at all. Concrete produces absolutely staggering amount of traffic. On hard difficulty with early-game gravel roads I find that three Concrete Factories in close proximity will gridlock all on their own due to the staggering amount of traffic they generate. You don’t want these competing with anything else for road space.
I agree. I made sure to state that this pic is of two separate “batteries”. They are not connected. The entire point of them is that they are closed road networks and require nothing from the outside and are not interconnected. They generate no “traffic” and require no maintenence. They simply generate resources indefinitely.
Steel is a bit different, because it’s still needed for export for things like Motors, but it also generates a lot of traffic and you really don’t want it competing with things like Electronics for thru traffic. Motors are the only Factory I would even consider placing near Steel production. I like to keep my Steel production in a separate area with the Motors production and hook it up to the rest of the network via rail so it’s not touching my road network.
See the above explanation
I’ve found on Hard difficulty that over-producing Concrete and Steel is a bad idea. While on Normal you have plenty of wiggle room, on Hard you run into the problem of just not having enough people to work all those extra jobs and if you overproduce Concrete and Steel you’re just going to be waiting on Science.
See the above explanation
riots1337
Playing on hard/hard - so can’t speak to traffic volumes on easier levels.
100% agree with Darvin’s explanation - it’s the same approach I took to isolate the traffic.
There are many different layouts for the ‘battery’.Righthand turns only from factory to storage, districts to make sure it goes the storage you want. The only traffic ever on the feeder arteries left/center/right is sulfur/sand.
Scalable to any size you desire, or just copy/paste it (lol - wish) around the sulfur mines
I’ve never had an issue with running out with just this ‘battery’. I don’t play at a very fast pace though so i’m not using tons of concrete/hour.
I think I’ve explained it properly above. I play, almost exclusively, on “fast pace” so I can’t speak to slow play, but the principle still stands, I think.
With no changes to this setup I currently sit at 2milion+ of each resource (I’ve gained a bit since my original screenshots). That’s more than enough to build whatever I want without the stress of low jobs, resource scarcity, traffic, and the other headaches of managing the “city”. I was hoping to help new players figure out how to build cool stuff without gatekeeping them. I really don’t mean to be crass, but just looking at the resource numbers in all of our screenshots in this thread, I think my point is well proven.
Ok, thanks for the explanation. And yeah, with 1.7k pop this is huge. You should explain better this thing though and give more screenshots, maybe flat view from the top and with resource tab open. It’s hard to see now how come this doesn’t clog up. Also, what happens with apartments at higher levels? You leave them like that and accept a small penalty? What about yellow and red science?
Overall, interesting, but no 
I don’t see how it’s faster than just building separate districts and just expand them along the way and using sliders to manage overproduction.
riots1337 approach is super clean, efficient and looks cool.
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AfroSpock
Ok, thanks for the explanation. And yeah, with 1.7k pop this is huge. You should explain better this thing though and give more screenshots, maybe flat view from the top and with resource tab open.
So here are a couple more screen shots to show how it’s laid out and production.
It’s hard to see now how come this doesn’t clog up.
It’s a completely minimal setup, It doesn’t grow or generate anymore traffic than it starts with. These two small towns are not something I add on to, they are just a means to build up res without ever worrying about running out. You can leave these just chugging away and start your real city on the other side of the map, or demo all of this and start over with a ton of materials in the hopper. You just can’t connect these to your larger city with larger resource generation because that when you get traffic problems.
Also, what happens with apartments at higher levels? You leave them like that and accept a small penalty?
You don’t connect this to the larger city, or even need to leave it.
What about yellow and red science?
They are in your larger city. The purpose of these two little towns is solely to build up my res storage, nothing else. You can leave this running overnight, or while at work and come back to hundreds of thousands or millions of resources. These two little towns are so basic they aren’t really subject to larger city problems, there is no outpacing your power grid, or traffic issues, etc… it just fills your storage, without needing any management.
Say I were to delete all of this and save it… then I could load it anytime I wanted and start with a completely clean map, but 3mil+ res ready to design whatever massive ambitious project I want. You could save the blank map with all the resources and use it as a starting point to try out large city plans… as many times as you want with basically unlimited resources. You cant really do unlimited, the game tops you out at 9,999,999 steel and or concrete, and I have had it circle me back around to zero so don’t go over that.
I mean, If you had a cheat code that allowed you to start a city with millions in storage would you ever use it? All you have to do is build something like this, leave it running as long as you like. When you get all the resources you want then delete all this stuff and start whatever city you want with the added bonus of all green and blue research done as well.
I don’t see how it’s faster than just building separate districts and just expand them along the way and using sliders to manage overproduction.
riots1337 approach is super clean, efficient and looks cool.
It’s not faster, its automated not quicker. This is not the basis of a future city, it is a resource generator only.
I’m sure there are a thousand different ways to do this with varying production capabilities… this is just what I threw together one night before leaving it run while I went to bed.
Arial overlook. Notice the roads of these two towns don’t actually connect anywhere as to combat traffic issues.
Another view with the res numbers in the bottom left.
Here is a look at the Production Overview.
Just threw this together for fun to see what kind of sustained production could be done with the 20 free people.
Just messing around and thought it looked cool if nothing else - for a miniature battery.
I like the way you manage traffic, it looks cools.
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Here is a screenshot of the ultimate goal for building batteries. I have a perfectly clean map (not sure why I still have power) with masses of resources to build. I also have all blue, green, and yellow research completed. Maybe I’m the only one, but I don’t like reorganizing a city plan as tech progresses. I like to plan for expansion and starting like this gives me an open canvas.
Here is the level of research I am starting with as well;
I decided to experiment with adding yellow research to the basic battery setup. While it worked, I don’t know if I’ll make it a practice in the future, it was a bit of a pain for something prioritizing simplicity.
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Yeah - I have a couple more research items to finish then I’ll probably save a copy and erase my entire civilization so I have a clean slate as well and try different things without having to level up from scratch again.
I’m not unhappy with where I’m at, but there are things I’d do a little different. Right now, the 4 input nodes into a large Train station are my choke points for appliances, computers, and VR. So, my population is constantly going through 3k people occilations. I wish they were configurable so I could have more inputs and fewer outputs at my production sites and more outputs and fewer inputs at my population sites.
So I need to spread out those production sites to not all be the same Train station, and quadruple the size of some of them.
Concrete plants are the “best” in creating traffic due to creating 4 trucks @ every construction cycle. the only way I found to handle this is build the Storage apart from factories and using a “helix” road as a delay so that the traffic wont clog the factories-mines area
And yes I’m using districts
Steel manufacturing is more simple since the factories spawn 2 trucks per cycle
Note that the helical road is a one way road. One way roads are the ones above the concrete plants that lead to helical
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