Few industries in FIRS?

[Rollerghost]

I love to play with FIRS, more types of industry is great, and I love that you need to give them something to boost production. But I like to play in the 18 hundreds and the distances get too long for my poor horses. Clusters of farms are OK, but the accepting industry is usually almost on the opposite side of the map. (I play 512X512) They will need most of the year to get thet goods there.
Is this supposed to be like this, or is there anything I can do to shorten the distances? I have tried allowing multiple industries in the same town, tried different settings in the setup menu, but nothing seems to do the trick.

[Wahazar]

Use sailing ships newgrf (and "many rivers" and sea edges in map generation), additionally change map shape to more rectangular instead of square.

[leifbk]

I'm playing a lot in the 1700s and 1800s, and what you're experiencing is just normal. The game is constructed for fast-moving 20th century trains, not for horses, which were added quite recently with the GRVTS NewGRF.

Routes over more than 150-200 tiles are impractical with horses. Instead, you'll have to cherry-pick what you can find of opportunities. I'm usually starting with a few 4-horse mail carriages between towns located 20-50 tiles apart, and then moving on to ships as soon as I can afford them. The Sailing Ships and the Squid Ate FISH (FISH 2) NewGRFs is a very nice combination that makes early shipping profitable. The map has to be suited for shipping, so you should choose high water level when you generate the map. I'm also selecting Mountainous, and High Variation to make it look a little like Norway You can for instance set up a fishing business with Schooners to do the fishing, and Clippers to carry the food to a town. Lime kilns, brick works, and paper mills close to the shore also work very fine with the early ships.

That being said, there are usually lots of opportunities for the horses too, but you should limit the horse routes to rather short runs over max. 100 tiles. Use 4-horse wagons and carry livestock to a nearby stockyard, milk to a dairy, plant fiber to a textile mill, grain and fruit to a brewery, etc. - and then of course carry the goodies to a town. Those are moderately lucrative runs, and will keep the industry alive until you can build up the infrastructure with ships. Or wait for 1915, when the Bradley hopper comes hop-hop-hopping along

Study the map closely at the start while paused, and if you don't find any good opportunities, start over. In my current game, I started with 4 mixed farms in a cluster with a stockyard and a textile mill in the middle. It became rather claustrophobic and I needed a lot of roads across expensive farmlands, but I sweated it out

[Rollerghost]

I'm playing a lot in the 1700s and 1800s, and what you're experiencing is just normal. The game is constructed for fast-moving 20th century trains, not for horses, which were added quite recently with the GRVTS NewGRF.

Thanks a lot for the tips leifbk. I am now playing with 60% water and things look a lot better. I am making great money from fishing (As would be suspected beeing a Norwegian) and horses to feed harbors where ships picks up the goods and transports to industries.

[kamnet]

Indeed it's not just FIRS, but all of OpenTTD that is only optimized for game play between 1920 and 2050. The ability to go back to an earlier time was only implemented a few years ago, and NewGRF development has only started to address that. Andythenorth has begun addressing it in FIRS by offering earlier industry availability and starting to scale its production accordingly. He's asked for other people to contribute graphics for era-appropriate industries as well in order to help speed up that development. NewGRF vehicle sets like eGRVTS, Sailing Ships, SQUID, Iron Horse, 2CC Trains/Trams will also help to support that as well, but one does have to remember that the steam train didn't come into development until the 1820s. Before that it was just horse and sails and you now come into the full reality of what transport life was like back then: massive amounts of animals who could only cover short distances, inland river boats that could cover medium distance, and sailing ships that could cover long distances and carry mass quantities, but still very slowly.

[andythenorth]

I wouldn't start before 1870. I see no point in playing before then. DanMacK likes the earlier horse games though, he might have some tips.

[kamnet]

In my "Birth of an Empire" scenario for Spring 2013 Patch Pack I used full FIRS, eGRVTS, UKRS2, NARS (or maybe Canadian Trains, I can't remember) Sailing Ships and FISH (pre-SQUID) in 1850 and by 1870 I was doing fairly well. In fact within 3 years I had only borrowed $600,000 and had it all paid off. I was only using the agriculture/food chain and hadn't even gotten into heavy industry.

[leifbk]

There's no problem making money even as early as 1700, - all you need is some patience And of course, then you've got all the time in the world to build your empire. The main frustration is to observe a map full of opportunities which will have to wait until the 20th century to be exploited.

I started my previous game in 1830, and made a fortune on fishing before I laid a single tile of road. I invested the initial loan in a fishing business with 3 schooners and a clipper, and long before 1870 I was way past caring about the money.

Edit: A point worth mentioning about those early games, is that you should turn off both inflation and city growth. I use to turn on slow city growth around 1920, but I always leave inflation off.

[Wahazar]

TI use to turn on slow city growth around 1920, but I always leave inflation off.

Early houses newgrf is also worth to mention, or any of "balanced city growth" game script.

[Baldy's Boss]

There's no problem making money even as early as 1700, - all you need is some patience And of course, then you've got all the time in the world to build your empire. The main frustration is to observe a map full of opportunities which will have to wait until the 20th century to be exploited.

I started my previous game in 1830, and made a fortune on fishing before I laid a single tile of road. I invested the initial loan in a fishing business with 3 schooners and a clipper, and long before 1870 I was way past caring about the money.

Edit: A point worth mentioning about those early games, is that you should turn off both inflation and city growth. I use to turn on slow city growth around 1920, but I always leave inflation off.

Having inflation off feels to me like the worst of all cheats.I have yet to start any game before 1887,but do you think it impossible for an early game with inflation to succeed?

[leifbk]

I don't see turning inflation off as a cheat. In OpenTTD, you're basically free to set the parameters in any way that you deem fit. But anyway, it's an interesting idea. Within a few decades, I always end up with more money than I can possibly spend, so maybe inflation is a way to make the game more challenging. I'll try to go with inflation on in my next game, and then report back here.

[Wahazar]

I tried to play from 1800 with inflation on, get bankrupt before end of XIX century.
Inflation was designed to work with native vehicles and original time span.

[andythenorth]

Having inflation off feels to me like the worst of all cheats.I have yet to start any game before 1887,but do you think it impossible for an early game with inflation to succeed?

Inflation is a bug. It should be turned off. It should be removed from ottd, but eh

[leifbk]

Inflation is in itself a cheat: It's basically the government stealing your values by printing money without the reserves to back them up.

[PikkaBird]

the government stealing your values

Darn govmint stealing my values.

Inflation is a key economic driver because it makes money worth more now than in the future, encouraging spending and discouraging hoarding. This is all very off-topic though - the point was that the inflation mechanism in (O)TTD is fundamentally broken if you don't have a constant start year. The only way to make sure NewGRFs are reasonably balanced and work as intended is if everyone, set creators and players, has it turned off.

[leifbk]

In the TT world, inflation can be seen as a way to offset the huge rise in transport capacity and speed of the 20th century. There is much to say about the TT economic model, but it has never been very realistic. Most notably, it totally ignores the laws of supply and demand.

Way off topic: Historically, inflation has generally been lower in peace times and higher in post-war times. For instance, in Europe after the Napoleonic wars, the inflation was very high because most European governments were bankrupt and therefore issued a lot of essentially valueless money.

Since WW2, most experts have agreed that a moderate inflation is good for the economy. Today, as money has become virtual, the economic models have been greatly refined, and the governments have no real control over the value of money anymore. Rather they have become an object of mutual trust between the major actors of the global economy. Actors who abuse this trust, governments and corporations alike, are the true causes of monetary crises and hyper-inflation.

[Gankenstein]

Perhaps veering a bit off topic, but since some talk about starting early, what are your preferences for starting in, say, 1800?

I realise I can just go try picking the right GRF's on my own, but some pointers would be nice.

[PikkaBird]

In the TT world, inflation can be seen as a way to offset the huge rise in transport capacity and speed of the 20th century.

We've done this whole discussion dozens of times. http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... 5#p1066875

[leifbk]

Perhaps veering a bit off topic, but since some talk about starting early, what are your preferences for starting in, say, 1800?

My personal favourites are:

Sailing Ships
eGRVTS 2
Rock Replacement for Transmitter
Swedish Houses
HEQS
FIRS
Canadian (International) Roads
Squid Ate FISH (FISH 2)

The Canadian (International) Roads provides dirt roads, which adds some realism to the game. Unfortunately, depending on your version of OpenTTD, it may or may not be available in the in-game downloader. See this thread for the reason why.

[Rollerghost]

Perhaps veering a bit off topic, but since some talk about starting early, what are your preferences for starting in, say, 1800?

The Canadian (International) Roads provides dirt roads, which adds some realism to the game. Unfortunately, depending on your version of OpenTTD, it may or may not be available in the in-game downloader. See this thread for the reason why.

I start that early just for the experience of it, and for fun. I used to start my games in the late 1900's, but wanted to try something new.
I have now read the complete thread you linked to, and it seems my OpenTTD version number is too high to use Canadian Roads? The version I have is 1.4.2.