Absolute Beginners Guide to Rise of Industry

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One of the most important things in Rise of Industry is choosing a town where you can begin building your empire. The right town can give you big advantages, while others can make survival difficult.

When you first enter the map on a new Career, the game will be focused on the town with the largest population. By clicking on the town name, you can see information about the town such as population, resources in the region, and what stores are located in it. Every town will have a Farmers Market and a Hardware Store, but only towns with a population over 100,000 will have a third store. This third store is where you can sell higher tier products. Higher tier products sell for a higher price, but may not make you as much profit as lower tier items on a percentage basis due to the increased up-front costs of research and infrastructure.

It is important to note that there may be more than 1 town with a population over 100,000 so you should scroll around the map and look at all of the towns. Alternately, you can check the ‘Budget Overview’ by clicking the $ in the circle in the top-right corner. If you then select ‘Total Sales’ on the left, you will be able to see what stores are available in each town and what products each one will purchase from you.

What makes a map “good”?

It is important to understand that RoI is NOT a 'logistics simulator' where your goal is to ship things here & there as quickly as possible. There IS a logistics element to the game, but RoI is primarily about finding a demand and supplying the products to meet that demand.

Take a look at this screenshot:



The town of Hazel Run is a good place for a beginning because it gives us a lot of options for starting out. For the time-being, I'm going to ignore the Grocery Store just to demonstrate that you don't need more than basic farm products to succeed.

One option would be to sell Sugar and Berries to the Farmers Market. These would be good products to sell because they are both grown on Plantations and have a 30-day production cycle. This means that they are easily balanced with the 15-day demand in the town.

Another option would be to grow Cotton or set up Harvesters to gather Sand, Wood, Oil, Coal, or Gas to sell at the Hardware Store. All are viable options, but maybe not as profitable as our third option.

While both of those are fine choices, what I'm actually going to do is grow Wheat and raise Cows. Wheat can be sold directly to the Farmers Market and also serves as food for my Cows. Cows produce Beef & Milk to sell at the Farmers Market and Leather to sell at the Hardware Store. The 45-day production cycle of both items makes it a bit more difficult to generate a steady income compared to the 30-day Plantation crops, but I want to give the Cows a chance to show what they can do. Also, notice that the prices for Wheat, Milk, Beef, & Leather are all listed above 100%. As long as I don't oversupply the stores with those items, the prices shouldn't fluctuate downward too much or too quickly. This should help me to start making a profit sooner.

It's important to note that this is simply my choice. The other options will certainly work, perhaps better, perhaps not. It's your choice how you proceed. When you have played for a while, you will develop your own style and preferences. As long as you have fun and don't go bankrupt, you're doing it right!

Now look at this screenshot:



This shows us the town of Hazel Run and the orange-colored “No Build” zone. Building anything inside the orange circle other than roadways or logistics buildings will result in a strongly negative impact on your relationship with the town. In future releases, this will severely limit your ability to sell to the stores in the town and thus your ability to succeed.

Placing your Headquarters

Placing your HQ gives you a free permit to build in the region where you place it. If all other things are equal, placing it in the region with the most expensive permit will save you money later on in the game. You may place your headquarters anywhere in your desired region. You can see in the above screenshot that I have placed mine conveniently adjacent to the town.

First Steps

Making use of the 3 Tech Tree unlocks you receive at the start of a new Career is important. Since I am going to grow Wheat and raise Cows, those will be my first 2 unlocks. My third unlock is going to be Urban Roads on the Logistics page. I could have unlocked Flour to give myself something else to sell and to build upon my Wheat farms, but I've already set myself a limitation of not dealing with the Grocery Store just yet. And I like being able to have paved roads for my trucks to drive on right from the start.

Next, I'm going to start by doing some expensive terraforming and flattening that hill on the far side of the town. I'm also going to fill in that small pond. This all costs me $650,000, but it gives me a big swath of land to use for all of my farms.

In this screenshot, you can see my initial buildout:




 * 2 Wheat farms will produce enough to feed the Cows and the other 2 allow me to sell some to the town.
 * 2 Cattle Ranches won't come close to filling the town demand, but it won't depress the prices either and I have room for growth.
 * 2 Water Siphons with 2 Harvesters each will produce enough water for everything I am growing and raising without a surplus.

In the upper left-hand corner, you might also note that I have set up my Research queue. I’m going to research into expanding the number of Fields that I can place on my Crop farms and the number of Harvesters I can place for a Water Siphon. Those items will take me through my first year of operation, after which I can expand my Wheat farms and the Water harvesters that will supply them.

I am using manual destinations for everything at this point because I'm a cheapskate and I don't want to pay upkeep on a warehouse if I don't need to. If you prefer to automate things, it's a simple matter of rearranging things a bit so that your warehouse is centrally located and its Area of Influence covers all of your buildings. Everything here could have been packed in more tightly, but I wanted to leave room for growth.

I do want to call special attention to the Water Siphon layout. I blatantly stole the idea from somewhere that I no longer remember. If it's yours, let me know and I'll be happy to give you credit! It's a great concept that packs 2 Siphons and up to 10 Harvesters into a space saving 12x13 tile area. A $225,000 bit of terraforming makes that 10-tile long trench. Expensive but very attractive and compact.



All that’s needed now is to un-pause and watch the money roll in.

A Few Minutes Later...



A little good luck, a little bad luck, and 1 year later I’m doing well. That $1.25M profit is misleading. I got very lucky and had a ‘Research Grant’ Event that dropped a cool million bucks into my account. But even without that, I’ve been sinking $100K a month into research and I would still be up over $250K after the 'Injured Employee' event that cost me $75K and the 'Pay Raise' event that you can see in the second screenshot below.

Expansion

The research where I’ve invested is now going to let me expand my operations:



I can now place up to 5 Harvesters per Water Siphon and 5 Fields on any Crop Farm. I’m continuing research into expanding my Cattle Farms.



Some notes on what I’ve got going on in the screenshot above:


 * You can switch into & out of that nifty overhead view by pressing F8.
 * Wheat Farms 1 & 2 are filling orders at the Farmers Market, but 10 Fields still won’t meet demand and I’m fine with that. It keeps prices from dropping.
 * Wheat Farms 3 & 4 are feeding my Cows. 10 Fields is too many, but I’m okay with building up a surplus on the Cattle Ranches since I’m going to be expanding them as soon as the research is done.
 * I’ve added 2 Harvesters to each of my Water Siphons. This will supply the expanded Wheat farms as well as build up a bit of a surplus for my future expansion plans.



Take note of the screenshot above and the little green arrows on the products I’m selling (Wheat, Milk, Beef, & Leather). Because I’m not over-supplying the stores, I’m still getting above-average prices for all my goods. It’s an important concept in RoI to not kill your profits by flooding the market.

Expansion completed, Research queued, Time to un-pause again and watch the money pile up.

540 Days Later…

My Livestock expansion research is completed and I’m up almost $1.5 Million. The town of Hazel Run is prospering and my good are still selling at a premium with prices between 116% and 127% of market value. My next steps are as follows:


 * Expand my Cattle Ranches to 5 Fields each so I can sell more Beef, Milk, & Leather.
 * Add the 5th Harvester to my 2 Water Siphons to cover increased water needs.
 * Spend some cash Researching on the Efficiency page of the Tech Tree so that I can spend more money per month on Research and develop new stuff more quickly.

And it’s done:



Once my new cattle fields are producing, I should be making enough money to cover my newly increased research budget as well as the loan payments that have started in Year 3. I’ll have some decisions to make at that point.


 * I could go back to basics and research more of the things I discussed at the very beginning like Berries, Sugar, or Cotton.
 * I could move into the products that the Grocery Store wants like Flour, Dough, or Cheese and build on the foundation of things that I already have researched.
 * I could look around the map for other towns that I could expand into via Logistics Permits and the Network.

Whatever I decide to do, I have a firm foundation to build on with just basic products being produced on my farms and only 2 ½ years into the game.

I hope this helps you to understand some of the base concepts behind Rise of Industry. I want to stress once more that this is only my way of doing things. There are many more ways to play the game and they are all valid. Like I said before:

As long as you have fun and don't go bankrupt, you're doing it right!