The Industries expansion is a lot like Park Life. In the same way as there, you mark the district (the “industry districts” type appears in the corresponding tab) and place a “control building” in it, which will determine the type of industry in this district. And then you locate mining and processing enterprises of this type there.
Industrial complex (4 pcs)
There are four types of industry – forestry, agriculture, oil and mining. Each corresponds to a different type of resource on the map – forest, fertile soil, oil and ore. At the same time, industrial buildings from the add-on differ from industrial buildings, which “grow” themselves on marked industrial zones.
In forestry, you have plantations and fields of seedlings – trees grow on them, which are processed into logs and taken to warehouses. Log warehouses are also included in the list of proposed buildings.
From warehouses, logs (more precisely, in the game they are generally called “raw timber”) are supplied to processing plants. There are several options for such enterprises, differing in size and, accordingly, productivity. And besides, these enterprises are of two types – those processing wood into paper and into boards (lumber).
Thus, “at the output” you get two resources, which, by the way, can only be produced in your city (more precisely, forestry in the city). Then sell it… or put it back into production.
The add-on has a separate tab (all industry buildings are in the “garbage collection and industry” menu) for “unique factories”. These factories use paper, boards, as well as products from the other three types of industry to produce “luxury goods” – confectionery, furniture, plastic, etc. n. There is even a car factory. And they all bring just huge income.
True, each factory or farm also requires quite a few jobs. Most often 50 people or more. So if you want to go all out and maximize your income, first you’ll have to rebuild a lot of housing. But on the other hand, you can build fewer industrial zones – after all, there will be jobs anyway.
The last important nuance is that while processing and mining enterprises can only be built on the territory of the corresponding industry you have allocated, unique factories and warehouses can be placed anywhere. This is worth using to optimize your traffic.
By the way, among the additional buildings there are “barracks”, which really do not serve as housing (as one might assume from the name), but increase the productivity of all enterprises in the sector by 5%. The effect stacks up to +100% efficiency.
Other industries work in a similar way. In agriculture, there are fields and gardens where “cereals” are grown. There are pastures and slaughterhouses where grains are fed to livestock and livestock are processed into “animal products.”. There is a mill where the same grains are processed into flour.
Interestingly, for many building industries https://grandxcasino.co.uk/games/ there are several decorative options. Let’s say for a field you can choose wheat, potatoes, greenhouse. For gardens – oranges, pears, apples. However, let me remind you that all this is just a change in appearance. In fact, a field or a garden always produces abstract “cereal crops”, which can always be “processed” into animal products or flour at the appropriate enterprise.
To be honest, this moment disappointed me a little. In principle, I understand that more resource variations would require more fiddling on the part of players, but on the other hand, isn’t that the purpose of an industry expansion?? And seeing how apples are used for flour clearly does not contribute to immersion in the fantasy of your own city.
By the way, in forestry you can also choose several types of trees to change the appearance of fields with seedlings. However, there is still less dissonance here – after all, in any case, you are talking about wood.
In the oil industry, the beginning of the “production chain” is, of course, oil. Several types of mining enterprises can be built, differing in size and efficiency. The oil can then be processed into gasoline or plastic. After which these two resources are already consumed by unique factories. Plastic, by the way, is used in more than half of production – in a toy factory, in an electronics factory, in the production of clothing and even food (we are talking about packaging, right??).
An important difference between the oil industry (as well as the mining industry) is that it gradually depletes its resource. Therefore, when you have developed all the oil fields, everything that you have built will remain hanging as a dead weight, requiring additional money for maintenance. So you’ll have to demolish and build something else if you don’t want to go into the red.
The mining industry is built on ore deposits on which several types of mines can be built. As with other mining buildings, they differ from each other only in appearance and performance. But nevertheless, visually the “big mine” is truly impressive.
Ore is processed into either metals or glass. Those, in turn, are needed for the production of electronics, cars, etc.n.
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In addition to the actual construction of the industry, the add-on offers other useful services. For example, cargo transportation services – a cargo airport and a cargo airport combined with a railway cargo terminal.
These buildings, by the way, go very well with the main part of the add-on, since they allow you to export manufactured goods on a large scale.
“Freight roads” can be useful in the same way. They are cheaper to build and maintain than regular ones, but create more noise. Therefore, if goods from your factories are sent directly to a cargo airport, then it makes sense to take a shortcut, bypassing residential areas, and save.
The postal service, on the contrary, is connected with the population. Postal vans collect and deliver letters. Sending or receiving a letter improves the mood of a resident, so by placing a service building you can raise the mood of the surrounding neighborhoods by a couple of percent.
Yes, unfortunately the effect of postal vans driving around the city is mostly decorative.
The DLC also added several decrees for city politics. Tax breaks for unions will improve your mood, but will reduce your tax income accordingly. Automatic sorting of letters and free WiFi will reduce the load on mail, but again at your expense.
Also, for each individual industry sector, you can set a “policy” that increases the efficiency of resource extraction and processing, or improves the health of workers. And you will also have to pay for all this from the budget.
Finally, the set includes five cards. Each one is full of resources – mostly forest, as well as fertile soils and ore (oil is completely absent on one of the maps). Just right to build a city with its own industrial complex (or even several).
Although in terms of detail and picturesqueness, these maps clearly do not live up to the works from the Map Pack or other add-ons. For example, the points where water appears in rivers are not very realistic. In one place right in the middle of the river, from which it flows in a different direction for a certain section. Plus, a couple of names are misleading – on the “Twin Fjords” map, the fjords do not look like fjords, and the “Marble Canyon” is several connecting rivers (maybe a canyon is considered a small area with steep banks, but it occupies a very small part of the map).
To be honest, “Industry” fell somewhat short of my expectations. I thought there would be really long and varied production chains with different materials. And not abstract “cereals”, “plastics”, “animal products” that are extracted and processed at different enterprises, the difference between which is purely decorative.
But on the other hand, for those who simply want new production opportunities or to give the city individuality through an industrial zone entirely dedicated to a specific resource, the addition will be interesting.
Big cities will benefit the most from the supplement. Considering the high cost of construction and the large staff required for each enterprise, I doubt that you will be able to establish an industry so that it works normally starting from a small settlement. Although maybe you just want a challenge – how to make one of the four industries a city-forming enterprise?
Freight roads and an airport will be a good help, both with and without industry. But the post office is, by and large, just decoration. So the DLC in general can only be recommended to people with specific tastes.