Production

A few goods and buildings form a production chain for beer. Grain and hops are produced without needing any other goods. Grain is needed to make malt, while malt and hops are needed to produce beer - the final product.

Production is the main source of all goods and therefore an essential part of the gameplay. The production process requires space for buildings and their modules, sufficient workforce, sometimes also appropriate resource deposit or fertility. The process also decreases the coin balance by the maintenance cost of all involved buildings. There are many products that are made out of several less complex goods, which can also be made out of even less complex ones. In result, goods and the buildings that produce them form whole production chains.

Production process involves two aspects:

• Logistics - transport of ingredients and final products between islands and buildings
• Production cycle - the production process itself when a good is being made

Logistics

Goods that are consumed and created during the production process have to be transported between buildings and islands. Many of the buildings which create goods or effects need to have the necessary ingredients delivered. When goods are created they also have to be transported away from the building that made them. Within the islands the transport is handled by carts travelling on the roads. Between the islands the transport is handled by ships travelling across the ocean.

Building to building transport

Every production building, multifactory etc. has an internal storage where a few tons of specific goods can be stored. It is divided into input storage and output storage, both with different capacity for different goods. For the building that processes goods at least one ton of each required good must be present in the input storage in order to start the production cycle. When the cycle is finished, one ton of the product is added to the output storage. The production stops if either the input storage of one of the goods is empty, or when the output storage is full. That is why to ensure continuous production, the transportation of goods needs to work properly.

Framework knitters can store up to 6 tons of wool in its input storage. The building cannot start its production cycle if the input storage is empty.

Framework knitters can store up to 4 tons of work clothes in its output storage. The building cannot start its production cycle if the output storage is full.

Goods can be transported by carts via the road network. All buildings involved in any production cycle have at least one cart in their possession. The carts can perform three actions:

• Deliver building's output to the next building in a chain
• Deliver the output to a warehouse or trading post
• Fetch ingredients the building needs from a warehouse or trading post

Every cart's trip follows the same general steps:

1. Leaving the building the cart belongs to. When a building has a need to fetch resources or to deliver its output, a cart immediately leaves the building. Depending on the cart's purpose, it can leave either empty or carrying goods its building produces.
2. Moving from the cart's building to a warehouse or another building. The cart's destination typically has to be within the street range of the building. The cart travels towards its destination, selecting the roads that form the shortest distance. Carts pick paved streets over dirt roads if the distance is the same - carts travel faster on paved streets than on dirt roads. When a building is selected, its carts' paths are indicated with yellow lines on top of the roads.
   • Optional: waiting in queue at a warehouse or trading post. Warehouses and trading posts have limited number of loading ramps. Every cart during its unloading/loading process occupies one loading ramp. While all loading ramps are occupied, any carts arriving to the warehouse or trading post will form a queue, waiting for the loading ramps to be freed.
3. Unloading/loading goods at the destination. Upon reaching its destination (and having a free loading ramp in case of warehouses and trading posts), the cart starts the unloading/loading process, which lasts 20 seconds in case of horse carts or 2 seconds in case of trucks, regardless of the amount of goods transferred. If the destination is another producing building, the cart can only unload its cargo into that building's input storage. If the destination is a warehouse or trading post, the cart can unload its cargo and/or load goods that the cart's building requires.
4. Moving from the destination back to the cart's building.
   • Optional: Unloading picked up resources into the building's input storage. Of course, it happens only if the cart previously picked some goods at a warehouse or trading post.

Number of carts

Framework knitters with 200% productivity, having 2 carts at its disposal. Access to electricity causes the horse carts to turn into faster and more efficient trucks.

Buildings can receive additional carts when their productivity increases above the next threshold. The thresholds are located at every 100% increase of productivity. For example a building at 100% productivity has 1 cart, but as soon as the productivity reaches 101%, it receives another cart and has 2 carts in total. At 200% productivity the building still has 2 carts, as soon as the productivity reaches 201% or more, it gets another cart, having 3 carts in total.

Cart types

There are two types of carts the buildings might have: horse carts or trucks. Horse carts are the default type, they spend 20 seconds when unloading/loading goods at their destination. If a building is electrified, its carts all turn into trucks. Trucks take only 2 seconds when unloading/loading goods. Additionally, trucks have higher movement speed on the roads than the horse carts. Both types of carts can hold only up to 10 tons of goods at a time.

Three sheep farms on the left produce wool delivering it to the warehouse, three framework knitters on the right deliver work clothes to the warehouse while grabbing wool from it. This production chain of work clothes is separated into two sections and the warehouse needs to service 6 buildings at once. It has only 2 loading ramps and carts might regularly form a queue in front of the warehouse.

All three sheep farms and three framework knitters are close to each other and to the warehouse. Sheep farms deliver wool directly to framework knitters, while framework knitters deliver work clothes to the warehouse without needing to grab wool from it. The buildings from this production chain of work clothes are placed together, buildings that produce basic resources can easily deliver them to the next building in the chain. Therefore the warehouse needs to service only 3 buildings at once and cart queues would form only very rarely.

The warehouse on the right is just outside of the range of the framework knitters building. Therefore work clothes cannot get delivered anywhere, the island's storage of work clothes will not increase and the building will stop its production as soon as its output storage becomes full. The building also cannot grab any wool from the warehouse, though it can still receive wool directly from the sheep farm next to it.

Island to island transport

For more details, see: Transporting cargo

Goods produced on one island are often needed on other islands, typically as input for further production steps or for the population. Moving goods between islands has to be handled by ships. While transport within a single island is always fully automated and taken care of by carts, ships have to be used manually by the player. The ships can also become automated by setting up trade routes.

Production cycle

Selecting a production building opens its menu on the right side of the screen. It contains a lot of information: input and output, current productivity, applied effects, maintenance and workforce costs etc.

Production cycle is the time when buildings process their input goods and produce new goods or effects. Every cycle has specific duration reflected by building's productivity, which depends on the building type and various effects that may have an impact on the building. At the start of every cycle exactly one ton of every input good gets consumed from the building's input storage and the production process progresses. The progress of the current cycle is indicated by the circle around the productivity value in the central part of a building's menu. At the end of every cycle exactly one ton of the product is produced and added to the building's output storage.

Production cycle can be stopped, or new cycle cannot be started, when one of the following things happens:

• Building gets manually paused by the player.
• Input storage is empty (if a building requires input goods) – currently ongoing cycle can be finished but a new cycle cannot start.
• Output storage is full and cannot be emptied - either all carts of the buildings are currently occupied or the island's storage for the output good is full.
• The island does not have appropriate workforce.
• Building is affected by city incidents: explosions, fire or riots.
• One of the special requirements of the building (if applicable) is not fulfilled: no appropriate fertility, no free space in radius (or not enough trees planted yet), no electricity, no heating.

Regardless of how the cycle got stopped, whenever the cause of the stopping is no longer in effect, the building immdiately starts producing again, and it continues its production from the same point when it got stopped.

Paused buildings have a blue pause icon above them as well as appropriate warning in the building's menu. As indicated by the circle surrounding the current productivity, the production was stopped almost in the middle of a cycle. When the building gets unpaused the production will continue the cycle from the same moment.

Productivity

Hovering over the central part of a building's menu with its current productivity value reveals a few more details. The infotip that appears lists the processing time, the progress of the current cycle and all production modifiers.

Building's type and its productivity determine the processing time and overall production rate. The base processing time can be different for every building, for most buildings it is displayed in the construction menu, it corresponds to the building's productivity of 100% (corresponds to 200% in case of buildings that require electricity). The higher the productivity gets, the shorter the production cycle is and the production rate increases. It means that within a certain period of time more output is generated, but also more input is required. Building's current productivity can be checked in the building's menu or in the statistics menu.

Productivity can be changed by several factors:

• Insufficient workforce – workforce is essential to keep production buildings operating, any lack of workforce lowers the productivity.
• Insufficient amount of fields or free space within the radius – productivity decreases proportionally to the amount of missing fields/space.
• Working conditions – adjusting working conditions makes the workers' shifts longer or shorter thus increasing or decreasing the productivity. However, it also impacts the happiness of the population and the chance of incidents.
• Items equipped in trade unions or harbourmaster's offices – items can drastically change the production. Some items simply increase the productivity, some decrease the maintenance or workforce needed but some can even alter the input and output of factories.
• Electricity – increases the productivity by +100%. Some advanced factories require electricity to even start operating.
• Palace, Local Department or Hacienda policies – some departments and policies effects can change productivity of specific buildings.
• Newspaper propaganda – specific propaganda articles can increase productivity.
• Irrigation – in Enbesa irrigation can increase productivity of animal farms. For Enbesan crop farms irrigation is absolutely required to produce anything at all.

Buildings that need specific number of fields for optimal productivity have longer processing times and lower productivity, if the number of fields is lower than required. Red productivity icon is displayed above such buildings and appropriate warning with field icon can be seen in the building's menu.

Production rate

Production rate defines how many tons of goods are consumed and produced within a period of time, the most often used unit of production rate is tons per minute (t/min). It can be easily calculated from base processing time and productivity. While the game does not show production rates for individual buildings, the production tab of the statistics menu displays combined production rates for all buildings of one type located within selected islands. The rates indicated there are rounded and shown with accuracy of 1 ton per minute.

The production rate in t/min of any building can be calculated with the following formulas:

• For buildings that work without electricity: ${\text{Production rate}}={\frac {\text{productivity}}{100\cdot {\text{base cycle time (min)}}}}$
• For buildings that require electricity: ${\text{Production rate}}={\frac {\text{productivity}}{200\cdot {\text{base cycle time (min)}}}}$

Examples:

• The production rate of a bakery (base processing time is 1 min) with 200% productivity is: 200/(100*1) = 2 t/min. That bakery consumes 2 tons of flour per minute and produces 2 tons of bread per minute.
• The production rate of a cannery (base processing time is 1.5 min) with 100% productivity is: 100/(100*1.5) = 0.67 t/min. That cannery consumes 0.67 tons of iron and 0.67 tons of goulash per minute, and produces 0.67 tons of canned food per minute.
• The production rate of a bicycle factory (base processing time is 0.25 min, it requires electricity) with 300% productivity is: 300/(200*0.25) = 6 t/min. That bicycle factory consumes 6 tons of steel and 6 tons of caoutchouc per minute, and produces 6 tons of penny farthings per minute.

Production chain ratios

Based on the production rates it is possible to figure out the perfect ratios of all buildings which form a production chain. In a perfect situation the amounts of goods that are consumed are the same as the amounts produced. Since the production of 1 ton of a product requires always exactly 1 ton of each of its ingredients, the perfect ratio occurs when the production rates of all goods within the chain are exactly the same. For example in case of the bread chain, the production rates of grain, flour and bread have to be exactly the same. The basic production rates are 1 t/min for grain farm, 2 t/min for flour mill and 1 t/min for bakery. In order to find the perfect ratio, the smallest number that is divisible by all production rates has to be found. In case of the bread chain it is simple, this number is 2. Then dividing that number by every production rate defines numbers in the perfect ratio of buildings of the chain. For bread it means the ratio for grain farms to flour mills to bakeries is 2:1:2.

Such calculations may become complicated if buildings are under various effects, have bonuses applied to them etc. In many cases establishing a reasonable perfect ratio might even be impossible. Unless a player wants their islands to be fully optimised, calculating perfect number of buildings is going to be a waste of time. In complex cases, the best way of handling a production chain is to accept slight overproduction. It means placing just enough buildings so that their combined production rate matches the desired production rate of the final product of the chain.

Monitoring production using the statistics menu

For more details about the statistics menu, see: Statistics

The production tab of the statistics menu can be extremely helpful with managing production across all islands and regions.

Production can involve many steps and a lot of buildings, and it may suffer from various issues within each step if not set up properly. The more islands and the more buildings a player has, the more difficult it might be to monitor the production process. Fortunately, the game includes a powerful tool, the statistics menu, which can help even in case of the most advanced savegames.

The main use of the production tab of the statistics menu is establishing a balance between the production and consumption of goods. The green and blue bars in the central part of the menu are the most accurate indication of whether there is an under- or overproduction, or if it is perfectly balanced. Production over time graphs help with making sure that production rates remain stable and the production does not suffer from any major issues. Production tab also includes the list of buildings producing each good, it allows to locate ruined or paused buildings, as well as those which encounter various problems – typically indicated by decreased or fluctuating productivity.

The storage tab helps mostly with noticing problems with the stock of specific goods and with transport via trade routes. The current storage and trend columns in the middle and stock over time tab allow to monitor the storage of goods in order to notice any shortages which may result from production or transport issues. The trade routes and passive trade tabs contain information about goods added and removed from island's storage via those ways. The amounts of goods and the time passed since previous shipments allow to estimate the average storage changes caused by those shipments. Combining this information with consumption and production rates from the production tab makes it easier to find out whether the production or island to island logistics is the cause of potential issues.

The finance tab can be an alternative to the lists of production buildings in the production tab. As the finance tab contains all sources of income and expenses, it includes not only the buildings that produce goods, but also other types of buildings relevant for production, such as infrastructure or administration buildings. It allows to locate and check the status of all those buildings. Another use is finding which population tier on which island suffers from insufficient supply of needs. Providing population with goods usually increases income so any loss or fluctuations of income from residents can indicate problems with fulfillment of needs, which might be related to issues with the production process.

The population tab can serve a similar purpose as the finance tab with regards to needs fulfillment. Changes in current population column or residents over time tab may indicate insufficient fulfillment of basic needs. Noticing which population tiers are affected allows to narrow the production problems down to a small range of goods.

The items tab does not necessarily help with monitoring production but can provide information about items that can be used to improve and change the production process. There are many items that can affect many buildings that produce and consume goods, from increasing productivity of production buildings to decreasing population's consumption of goods. Item location tab can show where every item a player owns is located, while item sources tab shows how items can be obtained – both tabs helping with finding items that can improve player's islands, including the production process.

Building layouts

There are many different playstyles and many ways of organising all the production. Some players come up with various layouts which suggest how to place all the necessary buildings, usually in a way that allows to use up as little space as possible. Efficient organisation of production areas can minimise wasted space, shorten the transportation times and can ensure that the production process is uninterrupted.

For the layouts of production areas created by the community, see: Production layouts