The transportation of goods is the backbone of your economy. In order to
accomplish most tasks you'll need materials (resources) of some kind, and these materials
will have to be transported from location to location. Without a sufficient number of
carriers, your economy will collapse, and when goods pile up at the source, production
lines will halt.
For example: The miller needs wheat, which is carried from the farms to the grain mill, where the wheat granules are processed into flour. The baker in turn needs the flour from the mill and water from the waterworks to make bread. However, if no one ever comes to pick up the bread, the mineworkers go hungry and stop working.
You have to accept that the larger your territory becomes, the more complex your economy becomes; the more you produce, the more carriers you'll need to get the flood of goods where they are needed on time.
You can determine the minimum ratio of carriers yourself, by clicking on the
"Settlers" button in the Control Center and then on the "Occupations"
button. With the arrow buttons you can increase the minimum ratio of carriers, to say,
50%. As soon as you build your next residence, half of the new Settlers who are added to
your colony will be carriers.
Carriers don't require any special tool, but can benefit from having multiple storage areas close by, thus minimizing travel time and increasing overall production.
An efficient production line will cause resource materials to build up, and soon some products won't be needed so urgently. Goods not in immediate demand aren't picked up, and pile up in front of the craftsman's door. When your craftsman sees that eight of his goods lie before his door and haven't been picked up; he sees no reason to get into a sweat and simply takes a break until his goods are needed again. This could lead to a situation where, for example, the stonecutter remains idle for a long time and then when another flurry of construction takes place, the eight blocks of stone quickly disappear, leaving you without the materials needed to finish construction on key buildings. You'll have to wait until he's cut the stone you need, and it's been delivered to the appropriate location. Wouldn't it be nice if you could get him to produce more stone in reserve? This is the reason for storage areas.
You can find the storage area in the "Buildings" menu under
"Misc." buildings. You'll need to designate everything that is to be stored in
the storage area. You can do this in the "Goods" menu under
"Priorities". The goods marked in green are brought to the storage area, the
ones marked in red stay at the doorstep of the respective craftsman.
In general, the goods most suitable for storage are those which aren't constantly needed: building materials, weapons and tools, and of course gold and gems. When your gold smelter takes a break because eight bars of gold lie before his door, the combat strength of your army cannot grow.
A storage area has enough capacity for six piles of goods with eight pieces of whichever good in each pile. Remember that building multiple storage areas every now and again is a must for maximum efficiency, if for no other reason than to stockpile gold reserves throughout your colony.
Important: Transport orders for goods to building sites have priority over transport orders to storage areas. No goods will be carried to a storage area as long as carriers are needed to supply a building site. If your carriers are in short supply, it would be a good idea to build a residence.
You can set the ratios (maximum or minimum) of builders and diggers in the
same menu. Diggers clear and level the land so that a stable foundation can be
constructed. It's important to note how steep the land at the building site is, the
steeper the land is, the harder the diggers have to work to level and clear the land. Once
the land has been leveled, the builders begin construction on the new building. The
proportion of builders at the beginning of the game is relatively high and may be a bit
too high for a thriving colony. During the course of the game you may see fit to decrease
the maximum ratio of builders and diggers.
Builders
need a hammer to be able to carry out their work, the diggers need a shovel.
In general, there are some important matters to consider while establishing an efficient infrastructure. Among them are: short transportation distances, sensible grouping of production centers, and an efficient use of natural resources.
Short Transportation
Distances
In a real-time strategy game such as THE SETTLERS III, time is of the essence. Because your carriers are not world-class sprinters, you'll need to keep the transportation distances as short as possible. The overall design of your colony will determine the efficiency of your transportation system. Your entire economy can be brought to a crawl if just one element is slowing down the process. For example, let's say a sack of flour has to be carried from one side of the island to the other, just to get from the farm to the grain mill. This slows down the bread making process which in turn causes the miners to go hungry. The miners stop working, and your entire metal production stops. The smiths can't make tools or weapons, and thus your military growth is halted, leaving your colony vulnerable to attack from nearby enemies. This is often a deadly situation.
Another argument against long transportation distances is that these, naturally, can be more easily severed by your enemies. It's tough enough when your enemy gains control of an isolated pig farm, not to mention an entire food system. Soon you can no longer produce iron because your coal miners want ham if they are to work. Without iron, you can no longer arm your soldiers and soldiers without weapons don't make a very strong army.
If your territory doesn't offer an area large enough to construct all the buildings in a particular group (farm, mill, waterworks, bakery) it is a good idea either to make room in your territory by removing trees or stones, or crushing buildings that are no longer necessary. You can read more about making more room in the tip section "Making Room".
Considering the importance of keeping transportation distances short, it seems logical to keep certain groups of interrelated production sites near one another.
Sensible
grouping of production centers
Success in THE SETTLERS III world will depend, in some measure, on the design of your infrastructure, particularly in a sensible grouping of your production centers. Please note that the various production centers are often interdependent of one another. For example, the mineworkers are dependent on the food industry, and their products are required for the heavy industry. If the transportation distance for the weapons to the barracks is too long, your military growth will take longer, offering your enemy an ideal scenario for a surprise attack. Poor weapon transportation results in a smaller army. It'll take a lot of practice to learn the best methods of production design and groupings, but with each game you'll get better and better.
The building industry, or those buildings not interdependent of any others to keep functioning, need to be placed in areas that correspond to their resource– build woodcutter huts near forests, and stonecutter huts near stone. Try to maintain a balance between efficiency and distance between buildings. Over-building in well established areas can cause congestion, and might clutter up space that you could put to better use for, say, your food industry. The building industry also has the task of clearing the land to make as much space as possible for the other industries.
A stonecutter's hut needs no materials from other buildings, therefore it can stand alone, but shouldn't be too isolated. Most importantly it should be situated in an area with large quantities of granite. When there is no longer any more granite in the area, the stonecutter's hut can be demolished–it is then only taking up space.
The ideal place to obtain wood is in a forest. Because the number of trees is variable by nature, it is a good idea to build a forester's hut in the middle of your wood-producing buildings. For the production of wood, you'll need some space, even if you already have a thick forest. So that the forest doesn't at some point overwhelm your colony, you'll need a couple woodcutters to start, whose huts should be located as close to the forest as possible. Finally, you'll want to have at least one sawmill--depending on which race you're playing--which is ideally located between your woodcutters' huts and the place where the wood is needed.
An important matter to note here is that the individual branches of production can be separated from one another. Meat production doesn't need to be in the immediate vicinity of bread production, and bread production in no way requires that beer production take place nearby. This could perhaps lead to a certain synergy, but as a rule, the effect would be small.
What's far more important is that the different groups or centers of production are well integrated.
Bread production: Grain farm Grain mill,
Bakery Waterworks.
Meat production: Grain farm, Pig farm, Slaughterhouse, Waterworks
Beer production: Grain farm, Waterworks, Brewery
Rice Wine production: Rice farm, Waterworks, Distillery
Two things are important here. First, a grain farm can't supply more than one other building effectively, simply because the production capacity of a single farm only produces enough food for one mill. Second, the food industry should not be too far away from your mines. The bakery and the slaughterhouse, being at the end of the food chain, should be nearest the mines.
Metal processing should take place near the mines from which the raw materials are received.
The metal processing industry should be located very near the mines and in the case of the weapons smith, also not too far away from the barracks. The distance between the gold mines, gold smelting works, and the storage area should be kept minimal. In the long run, as your gold production expands, this distance will naturally increase – this is almost inevitable – but then is not so negative since the fighting strength of your soldiers increases with the production of gold bars and not after they have been brought to the storage area.
Iron production and processing: Iron mine,
2 Coal mines, Iron smelting works, Tool and weapon smiths.
Gold production and processing: Gold mine, Coal mine, Gold smelting
works.
Lean production is a term you should become familiar with, as it's the means by which your colony will live and die. All buildings can be used in two basic ways: efficiently, and inefficiently. Storage areas are a great way to maximize resource production. The storage area should not be used indiscriminately as a solution for senseless overproduction. There are goods which are wisely produced in advance such as tools and weapons. There are also those goods that aren't used for further production purposes but have their value in other areas such as gold and gems.
For those goods to be produced in advance, a degree of moderation makes sense. If you have a pile of hammers without a gigantic construction phase in view, it may be wiser to change the adjustments for your tool smith or even stop production for a while. The same applies if your army has already assumed a respectable size and nevertheless more piles of swords, spears and bows lie unused in the storage area than you'll ever be able to use.
It can make sense to store building materials for shorter periods. With a little experience, it should be possible to keep the production of these materials at a comfortable level without having to rely too heavily on the storage area.
The storage of food products makes almost no sense at all because when they are not needed, their production is automatically reduced with the result that your farmers stop working as soon as the grain is no longer picked up. As soon as the grain is again picked up, the production resumes.
In order for a mine to operate at peak efficiency, it's important that it's built in a location with a high concentration of minerals. You'll need to have your geologist survey the mountainous regions to discover the locations of the different mineral deposits. The geologist makes note of this by putting signs in the areas where he finds each mineral. In order to get the most out of your mines, build the mine in the location corresponding to the highest concentration of each mineral. At the same time, you should also note that the mineworkers are most efficient when they can eat their favorite food. They work five times more efficiently when they eat what they prefer! A gold miner, for example, goes down into the mine ten times to extract gold when he's had a meal of fish, but only twice when he's had a meal of bread or ham.
One observation can't be repeated often enough. What you lack most at the beginning is space. With the few soldiers that you have at your disposal at the beginning, you're in no position to conquer large amounts of territory. For this, you need weapons and these are only available in sufficient quantities after your infrastructure is well developed. Therefore, it's paramount at the beginning of the game to put the land you have to the best possible use. At this point, time plays a subordinate role. Developing a concentrated and thereby effective grouping of your main industries, food, metal production and metal processing, will certainly repay the investment in time.
Rework your land. Trees and granite offer no advantages in the area in which you've chosen to build your centralized complex of industries. Green areas are no doubt attractive but have no practical value where the shortest possible distances for transporting goods are needed. In this respect, our industrious little Settlers lean strongly in the direction of the pragmatic and less in the direction of the picturesque.
The same principle applies to buildings that you no longer need. Woodcutters and stonecutters have only a limited area in which they're effective even though you can change their work area. The longer the distance the product must be transported before it can be used, the more you should give thought to whether the building might be better off in another location. A mine that has exploited all the mineral deposits in its area has no further value.