Topic: How to keep the higher order industries running smoothly?

LLet's see

I have just started playing Widelands in campaign mode

Welcome to the club

I can rarely seem to exceed 10% productivity with the fighter training bases.

Another issue I've run into is that if I have a Big Inn that is producing neither Rations nor Meals, it won't make Snacks for a certain type of miner, even though (to my knowledge) it ought to be able to

Those two facts could easily be explained by one single cause: lack of bread. snacks require bread. the training camp requires bread. No bread, no productivity. And bread is one of the two barbarian's achille's heels, because it is very expensive. With barbarians you need lots and lots of farms to make bread. Also with empire, but even more with barbarians. The only tribe that does not require too many farms is atlanteans, but they require trunks for smokeries instead. So, basically, with every tribe you will need a lot of space to produce what you need.

Back to your specific case, try to build more farms, eventually one more bakery, and see if it helps. Alternatively, you could be missing water, but in that ccase making wells is easy. In general, when your economy seems cranked, you can look at the stock (under statistics) to see which wares are missing and which ones are abundant.

Or you could have the roads jammed, but I doubt that's your case. it only happens on very productive, very large economies.

A third issue is that I can have an input being used well below capacity and still the industry relying on it is starved of that input.

I don't really understand this one and how it would be possible. If I understand, it could mean that, for example, you are not using all of your coal, and yet you don't have coal in your smelters. There are only two possible explanations to that: 1) your roads are crowded, so you produce the ware, but it get stuck during transport and it does not go where it is needed, or 2) that's not what you meant. Could you expand on it?

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readyready15728 wrote:

What I had in mind specifically is my bakery and water. The bakery was always short of water, even though the well was not being used at capacity. I added a few more (underused) wells and > this issue seemed ameliorated.

If my problem is being caused by excess traffic on the roads, how best should I add more roads to fix it? Also how should I know? In the Sim City series, it is easy to know traffic jams when you > see them. I don't recall any kind of impatient foot tapping or shouting or anything of that nature, but maybe I wasn't paying enough attention.

Ah, so by "not being used at capacity" you mean that your well is producing, like, 60%?

Happens, because not all terrains are equally favorable for wells, and on some they cannot get much over 50% productivity. So, it just mean your welll is on an unfavorable terrain. I don't really know which terrains are better for wells, because they occupy little space so it is easier to just make a few more. If you send a geologist on non-mountain ground, it can find water resources, and wells produce better over those.

Anyway, it seems you are lacking water instead of grain. If you look at the stock, you should see that you have 0 waters in warehouses and many grain in wharehouses, that means you can use more water. If, instead, you produce plenty of water from many wells but you lack bakeries, then you should see that you have both water and grain in warehouses, that means you can use more bakeries. If you have a traffic jam, you'll still see both water and grain in warehouses, and you will also see many more of them in stock than in warehouses.

Seeing a traffic jam is fairly easy. Every flag ccan store a maximum of 8 items. if a carrier is trying to put the 9th item there, it will wait until the flag is free again. So it won't carry merchandise, so the flag at the other end of his road will get clogged too, and that will set a chain reaction that will gradually spread. You can easily spot a traffic jam if you see a carrier with something on his shoulder standing still in front of a flag full of stuff at the bottom. Then, by moving in the direction the carriers are trying to send merchandise, you can find eventually where your bottleneck is. And you have to make more roads around it.

Annyway, if making more wellls improved things, then it meant the problem was just lack of wells.

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einstein13 wrote: 5. Think, then build. On some maps (especially those big ones) it is good to build production lines: farms -> mills -> bakeries -> inns -> mines -> smelting works -> workshops -> trainings camp. It is good to use space wisely. If you place all of those building in one line and in correct order, no wares will "go back". All wares will go forward and change the image (crops into flour, then into bread, meal, coal, iron, helmet and trained soldier. Conlcusion: if you know the map, you can think of best places for any building, so wares will not go across the country, but only to the neigbours :)

That is a fantastic strategy ... not always easy to achieve, but something that should be aimed for as often as possible.

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fk wrote:

einstein13 wrote:

If you place all of those building in one line and in correct order, no wares will "go back"

True, but you should know everything more or less in advance. I use a rectangular road layout to connect everything and this works fine with me.

You're right that on most of maps it is enough to use one shape for all of the roads. Sometimes you have to change the shape a bit, because you will lose valuable "green" (big) building spot. In other maps it is not enough to have one base shape- you have to organize your economy more wisely to have good results and no traffic jams. But most maps are enough to have standard shape connection, as you described

To know everything mor or less is not that difficult You just have a minimap view, map size and number of players. It should be enough to say the basic strategy type

einstein13
calculations & maps packages: http://wuatek.no-ip.org/~rak/widelands/
backup website files: http://kartezjusz.ddns.net/upload/widelands/

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king_of_nowhere wrote:

This thread was started by a new player looking for advice, I would avoid telling him stuff too complicated for now.

hmmm... what os too complicated for him/her? How can you know that?

I know that for me as a newbie there were another things "too complicated" than for you. If somebody don't know what something means- he / she can ask and learn something. If somebody don't want to know everything about this topic, there will be no question then

einstein13
calculations & maps packages: http://wuatek.no-ip.org/~rak/widelands/
backup website files: http://kartezjusz.ddns.net/upload/widelands/

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