това́рищ, Comrade, Genossen, Compañero. Welcome to this guide, in it I will try to share some basic knowledge to improve and ease your gameplay in this daunting game, It is not an optimal, end-to-all guide about everything, in fact I am sure there is plenty of ways to do everything better than the way I present here, but i will try to keep it useful and updated as the game progresses and so does my experience with it.

The main sources of knowledge for this game have been:

• The in-game help tab, which already cover most of the basics and I encourage all comrades to read it thoroughly if you please.
  
• The steam discussion forums and the other steam guides, especially about more specialized info like farming optimization and the most recent updates.
  
• My gameplay experience, both in-game as in other similar management simulation games. If i were to recommend two very similar games to this one would be the tropico series but most importantly the transport tycoon series, W&R seriously share lots of mechanics with OTTD and most transport tycoon players would feel right at home even with the more complex elements as the railway signaling system.

At the first writing of this guide the in-game tutorials are still a bit too rough, they explain little and handhold too much in a very robotic way. I am hopeful they get better but insofar the help tab is still your best source of knowledge besides playing the game itself.

At the very least, i hope to guide the player from a basic random map start to a functional town able to fund the further expansion of the republic, all within hard mode parameters (maybe except seasonal cycles that's a WIP both here and in-game)

Workers and Resources at its core is an industrial logistics game, therefore the first most important question is what industry you should build first and how to build it. the game start with most of industries available for construction. however the initial focus of this guide is bootstrapping an exportable industry that's simple and profitable enough to bankroll the development of the rest of the country. in my opinion the 3 best from worse to better are:

• coal to electricity
  
• farming to farm products
  
• oil to refined oil products

electricity is used everywhere in game, citizens and factories use it, and you can even electrify your logistics network with enough investments in rail and trolleys therefore it's easily one of the biggest cost items through the game both early and late game.



Pros of coal electric

electricity is fairly easy to produce, a thermoelectric complex needs 3 or 4 buildings at the very least: a coal mine, a coal preparation plant, the power plant itself and bus stop of some kind.

its distribution is a bit more complex and expensive, you need a high tension power line to an export connection and some transformers and switches for the local distribution, also probably you need to import for a while before the power plant becomes fully functional.

usually a coal mine and prep plant can produce way more coal than a single power plant can consume so you can make a train line or even some trucks to export the excess coal.

Cons of coal electric

the biggest drawback against the next two options is that it need workers to be generated and a good chunk of them. therefore it needs an functional inhabited town (and most probably a passenger transit line to commute from it to the power plant and mines)

the another big drawback of power plants is that since it needs to be staffed at all times to work, the very moment that a bus arrives late it will shutdown the entire country. there are two ways to secure against this situation,

• one against that is to have your electrical grid connected to two different foreign connections, one set to import (in case of outages) and the other to exports (to export the surplus). if you do this always set the import to a lesser wattage than the export connection, otherwise you'll be re-exporting electricity that you've just bought at a higher price.
  
• the other way is to improve your workers delivery, something that can be done by either: increasing the frequency of vehicles by getting more buses, trams or whatever (however buses and diesel are recommended since electrical vehicles can shut down causing a catch 22 situation)
  or by ordering some residence to exclusively "work" at a bus stop that leads to the power plant, so everyone in that apartment will try to work at the power plant.

Farming is another good choice for starters. It is not as profitable as electricity or refined oil products, but its greatest strengths are the ability to mechanize the production of the crops and to reduce the need for imports



Pros

The biggest pro of farming is that it can be done without any workers thanks to the mechanisms. This wonder of soviet robotics or heroic self-sacrifice of the shock machine drivers baffles me. However it means that an agro farm building just needs electricity, fuel and vehicles to work, and that greatly simplified production.

Nevertheless, workers CAN work at farms, but insofar it seems rather inefficient, maybe seasonal mechanics change that due the need to sow as many fields as early as possible, but I have not checked that yet. All in all, an agrofarm paired with a warehouse or a silo is a great way to make some money without workers input.

further processed products as food, meat, alcohol or even later on clothes have a better price on the world market but they also are demanded by your own citizens, so you might have to decide if they're better for internal consumption (and therefore reduction of imports) or export market (and increase of money reserves)

also at least since fields only require some flat land (and not that flat if you use small fields), the theoretical upper limit of how much money can be made out of agricultural exports is quite high, however agrofarms are still on the expensive side.

Cons

the biggest problem of farming is that at the end, isn't that profitable enough, it is certainly a great way to reduce imports most of what citizens need is produced with crops but the prices aren't that spectacular, so even if it seems a great way to bulk up exports, maybe specially in mid and late game when mineral deposits become more scarce the trade surplus doesn't seem to be that amazing.

In my personal opinion this is the best starting industry of all, it is simple, profitable and useful. First, crude oil production is fully mechanized, you just need the electricity for the pumps and the trucks and roads to move it back to the custom-house and make rubles or dollars, making it probably one of the easiest ways to generate cash in a workers-free manner.



Pros

Not only crude oil is really easy to pump out, but also it increases a lot its value by refining it into fuel and bitumen. In Addition, if you are playing in hard mode all road vehicles need fuel so this industry also reduces greatly the need to import fuel for your vehicles, usually setting a pair of tankers per fuel station (with orders to stay in the gas station until unloaded) is enough to keep the fuel stations fully supplied even quite far from the refinery.

Cons
The drawbacks of oil refineries is that they are big, expensive, polluting and need workers too. also the oil pumps themselves are dangerously toxic to workers. so no matter how tempting is to settle workers close to refinery try to at least use bus lines to keep residential areas far from refineries, or any industrial complex to be honest, unless you want to see how quickly they can turn into ghost towns once production starts to take speed.

An Essential part of the game is catering the needs of the workers to keep them happy, and therefore productive. One of the most effective ways to ensure this is to follow a MicroRaion or MicroDistrict form of urban planning. This consists in making fully walkable districts where citizen can serve all their needs through walking instead of taking public transport or cars.



Walking distances
The main limit to how big a microdistrict can be is how far citizens will walk, the game says that this is about 300 meters and this is mostly true, however to be exact how far a citizen will walk is strongly influenced by the type of road that they are walking. In game this is measured on the walking speed value in the info of the roads, this means that roads with a speed percentage lower than 100% will actually walk less than 300 m, therefore roads with a speed value of 100% or more are preferred, since they will comfortably walk beyond 300 meters up to almost 350 m in some cases.

in the case of vehicle roads this mean illuminated asphalt streets, which are quite expensive, but in the case of footpaths this mean gravel paths, something what makes not only excellent roads for dense residential districts but also to serve sprawling industrial complexes with few or only one transit stop.

a town to fulfill the needs of the people needs:

Housing
I'm not sure how much the quality of flats values affect the happiness or chances of migrating away, but if recently matured adult does not have an empty flat available to move out their parents home, it is quite probably that they will emigrate out of the country.

Food
apparently providing food (bread) is enough to keep them alive, but meat does seem to improve both happiness and health. the problems of meat supply are that most shops cannot store much of it, but that can be expanded through clever use of trucks and parking space.

Entertainment
this can come from: sports, culture (cinemas), pubs (alcohol consumption) or churches. the latter two are discouraged due their negative health or political effects. the cinema complexes are actually rather huge so they can cater lots of customers but sport fields often have the problem of closing at odd hours due how work-time slots work. there are mods to improve it by hiring 2 or 3 workers instead of 1 for each field but it is your call to install those.

Consumer goods
Clothes and electronics. these kind of goods increase the happiness of people and clothes also seem to improve health too, some players seems to avoid electronics altogether since people will not flee if they don't have a TV but they become more useful once media broadcasting mega-buildings are built. also they are rather complex to manufacture locally and a bit on the expensive side, but as long as exports are bringing a good cash-flow, importing them is not a big issue.

Hospitals
they are big and require university professionals but extending the lifespan of the workers is very useful, to not mention a human right. they can use ambulances, which is a nice touch, but not much to say about them, a good all around investment even if you build your towns far from polluting sources.

Education.
education is a curious thing, to be honest citizens do not need it but the economy needs educated workers to properly work. kindergardens allow more people to work, schools allow children and illiterate third world immigrants to become useful workers and universities educate professionals. childcare and schools are rather cheap but universities are rather big investments. sometimes it is convenient to shuttle students from closer towns to places where there is a university, but building a technical university in almost every town is a recommendable if very expensive suggestion.

Transportation
another thing that people do not really need but you as the economy planner do. I recommend not putting more than one transit station per small town but this can change in larger composite cities. usually buses are the way to go in early game, but trolleys, trams and trains can become more useful in late game when plenty of electricity and steel are locally produced.

as a personal preference, since most citizen services just cost some workers and a bit of electricity to be run after being built, oversupplying services spaces isn't a bad thing, especially in starter or isolated towns, cinemas and hospitals can serve lots of people, as also can universities if fully staffed. usually the smallest service buildings are the kindergardens and sports field to the point that you need one sport field and kindergarden to service a few apartment buildings.

small shops in general seems to be able to serve more people than sports fields and childcares but they seem to still have a rather low service capacity, to not mention small storages and few unloading spots which can be a problem when supplying them through local logistics, but more of that in the chapter of industrial logistics.

theoretically you can plan so the citizens can use services beyond their walking range by using transit and cars but the wasted time, resources and space in transit capacity or parking space used by using those makes that proposal unappealing. the only reason to not place people close to industrial complexes (less than 1 kilometer approx.) is simply the lethal amounts pollution that they produce when working at higher capacities.

Moving people around is a common problem to many players due how work shifts work, people will spend an specific amount of time both waiting and travelling and if they don't do it in time they just disappear, who knows what really happens? are they fired? sent back home by the factory manager? just say f**k it in the middle of the road, get down of the bus and walk back to watch the soccer at home? no clue but they never arrive late to work, they rather skip the whole day rather than go late to work.

Also there is no factory shift or rush hour, people enter to work at any time of the day 10AM 13PM 3AM, as long there is a slot they go there to fill it work 8 hours and go home (walking of course or maybe even teleporting back home. because it seems that people only need transit to go to work but not to come back from it)

This means that the most important element of a working transit system is not only the capacity or velocity of vehicles, but frequency of vehicles. the most optimal transit service in-game is the one that has enough busses to keep one after the other coming to the town station. once they take the bus, they still have to arrive to their job but that is just as critical as the time they spent waiting for it. at the end this mean that more, smaller vehicles are more effective than a few big vehicles. microbuses and vans are often still too small to be useful but lots of smaller trams are more useful than one huge electric train when it is about moving people.

Speed is still an important factor of commuting since they have to arrive in time, so asphalting roads where buses go is an excellent idea as so it is using high-speed railways tracks for passenger routes.

Also, remember to put gas stations in the roads between your towns and industrial complexes because bus drivers will stop for gas even when they are transporting passengers. Another way to avoid this problem is putting a gas station in their route back to town since they are not transporting passengers back from the factory at this stage of the game development.

Now this is a part i'm not fully interiorized mostly because the theoretical productive potential of most factories in this game is enormous, since most industrial buildings are republic-sized colossi the amount of production that a single industrial building can output is staggering, probably there is no better example of this than the oil refinery, a city block sized monstrosity of industry and chemistry, however I will try at least sketch a gradual process to get most of them. Starting from the most basic the road logistics, and progressing towards bigger or more complex forms of movement of goods and people.

Road vehicles are the most granular form of logistic usually available, cheap to start and with very low cost, they are perfect for early stages. Compared to other forms of logistics trucks are actually quite inefficient since loading bays space are scarce in many industrial buildings and the cargo capacity of trucks rather low compared to trains (one small train easily can carry more than several trucks). therefore trucks are best suited for lower throughputs and passenger traffic.

Road cargo stations allow greater throughputs of trucks to feed industrial buildings, however, another use for them is to smooth the flow of good for "commercial" buildings. Since shops have a single parking space usually and only two when using both big and small shopping centers it is sometimes difficult to keep them constantly supplied so they do not have to import goods.

By using road cargo stations to increase the parking space it allows keeping trucks as temporary small warehouses. this is especially useful in meat deliveries since the meat lockers of the shops are really tiny and using a combo of a small shopping center with a road cargo station it allows a whooping amount of 6 parking slots, enough to keep parked trucks for food, meat, clothes and electronics and still have space if another 2 delivery trucks arrive early. In strict sense this called a planned inefficiency or slack space to keep shops constantly supplied 24/7.



Distribution centers are a rather new addition to the game but present many opportunities as they allow giving more complex orders to trucks. insofar their best uses are to export excess production and to provide extra trucks for farming fields so they can use more harvesters and tractors.

their use to distribute to shops is a bit limited since they can't be given the order to stay in the shop's parking until they are empty something that could improve greatly their functionality in that aspect.

other possible uses for It is to feed industries that require small amounts of different input goods as the chemical plants or electronics factories but I have not tested this yet.


All vehicles except trolleybuses require fuel to work properly. therefore gas stations are a must to most towns and several industrial complexes and agrofarms. In the oil industry section I explained a setup that usually ensures that all gas stations are well supplied, two oiler trucks with orders to stay in the gas station until unloaded, since gas stations have 4 vehicle slots, this setup does not impede the use of the station by the potential customers. Some gas stations further from the oil refinery might require more trucks but the optimum of this strategy is to always have at least one truck feeding the station deposits.





This might as well fit in the construction yard tips but it is also a very important part of any road logistics, the road themselves. a good practice for road building is to use double roads everywhere, especially in the longer routes. this is because this allows traffic to use one road meanwhile the other is being improved to a better type. in addition, it is a good way to speed up road building is by segmenting it to allow more mechanisms to build at the same time.

Another good practice to always start with mud roads since they are free and they can be used to plan and draw more efficient routes or any kind of urban planning to be honest.

Usually gravel roads are good enough for most cargo routes and they're cheap and easy to build requiring only gravel and an excavator or bulldozer to be built, no worker input needed, also having an excavator allows free ground moving allowing you easily lay roads in the more uneven parts of the republic, finally the heavyweight 706 Skoda trucks are a perfect match to gravel routes due their high capacity and low top speed.

Asphalt roads are often a luxury for cargo routes but passenger routes benefit a lot if fast vehicles are available, car if used are also greatly benefitted by asphalting. illuminated streets are a luxury often best left to the inner streets of residential microraions or some of the most sprawling industrial complexes where their improved walking speed is of use to pedestrians.

Building your own buildings from the groundwork to the roofing is an amazing feature of this game, however this is also comparatively tedious and complex compared to just auto-building everything. Therefore, i will try to explain in how to make your construction brigades the most efficient in this side of the iron curtain.



certainly, either one could build everything with vehicles or autobuild everything with rubles. but in my game experience, the bigger is the project the most rewarding is to build it manually. there is not only the sense of monumental achievement on doing this, but also it allows distributing through the time the otherwise insane cost of auto building it. on the other hand extremely small projects as road intersections, gravel footpaths and even some buildings as kindergartens are cheap enough to better not bother wasting time and vehicles in building them. however, the final choice is for the player. also of course, there is the problem that further you are from the border, the more expensive autobuilding is, therefore leaving that football field to the excavator team is never a bad option.

often the very first building that should be built is a construction yard, if only to provide free earth leveling. secondly, since at hard mode you cannot build all the necessary products for construction, building storages and warehouses close to the border and filled with construction materials are a wise investment to jump-start the construction sector.

usually the very first construction industries are rock quarries and gravel crunchers, these industries should be built usually together the starter exporting industry. not only this provides a cheap gravel source, allowing "free" gravel roads but also it can be easily expanded with conveyor belts into concrete and asphalt plants, contributing even more to reduce the cost of most buildings and even allowing cheap asphalt roads early on the game.

there are many ways to improve the speed of construction brigades, like better roads, more and bigger trucks and building closer to materiel sources but limiting how many constructions are being built at the same time is also very important. if you plan ahead a town, try to build it a few buildings at the same time, not so many to dilute the goods delivery, not too few to idle the mechanisms.

Besides railways, electrical grids are something that is more complex than the usual planning. At the start one can comfortably extend wherever you need some medium voltage lines from a frontier transformer and just buy a few megawatts from your neighbour. But once you start to produce your own electricity (as suggested in one of the starter industries sections) having high voltage lines becomes a must to an integrated electric grid.

The best way to ensure a functioning electrical system is making a high voltage "backbone line" to which several power sources are connected and extend from this line switches that go to power transformers to extend from them medium voltage lines for consumption.

since power lines, specially high voltage lines are quite expensive there isn't much problem in using lower capacity high voltage lines, however the export line should often be at least of 14 MW capacity or more.

I hope this guide has been useful in way or another to improve your experience playing this game, It is not exactly a step-by-step guide but I tried to cover several key elements for playing a better early game. if you have questions about this guide or the game in general I will try to answer them to the best of my abilities, keep in mind that this guide was made by a player and not by the devs or even a modder, so i do not know much about the internal mechanics of the game or the mathematical optimization of it. also the game is still in early access so a lot can change. finally i'll leave a log of stuff that i left to be done (eventually, if at all) after the first writing of this guide:










eternal to do list:

• translate it to spanish

• railway systems
  
• conveyors and factory connections (maybe forklifts too)
  
• ships
  
• nukular energy
  
• complex industries (from electric and mechanical components all the way up to carmaking)

water is a recent addition and a simple to make but hard to master system. in fact so far i can give advice in how to set it up but not how to optimize it, at its basics the piped water and sewage system work in these flow:

water:
water source > pump > water purifier > pump > substation > water user

sewage:
sewage source > sewage tank > sewage outflow

drinkable water is water with a 99% of purity, usually pristine well water is 97% pure and surface water 78% pure. so both need purifying treatment to avoid health issues. apparently surface water as it's more dirty needs more chemicals, but i haven't run the test for that.

water needs to be pressurized to move around and to be distributed among users. usually pumps can give enough pressure to move water anywhere, but water towers can be used not only as reservoirs but also as pressure amplifiers, just keep in mind they need pumps before themselves too.

in the best case sewage doesn't need pumps, only a downward slope, to run from a septic tank to an outflow but now and then sewage needs pumping due rough terrain or having too many switches.

technically you don't have to treat sewage before dumping, but untreated sewage outflows are VERY polluting, almost on par with coal power plants or steel mills. so it is recommendable to put sewage outflows in heavy industrial zones. the biggest reason in favor of treating sewage instead of dumping it in a high pollution zone is that pipework can be very expensive.