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Alien NationsAlien Nations: Solving the challenge of a growing town (a Noob question)(8 posts)solved(8 posts)solved
(8 posts)solved
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Posted July 19, 2009
First of all - this is my first post on the forum, so a proper introduction is in order: Hi everyone, nice to meet you. Thanks to GoG for providing their invaluable service. I really appreciate what you are doing. So much so that about half of my purchases here are duplicates for the games I already own on CDs, mostly to support your noble cause.
Now back to the topic:
I have started playing AN only recently and there is a problem I encounter while expanding my town.
There are a whole lot of parameters to observe and keep in the green, by basically it all boils down to one serious problem I am yet to overcome. Namely - food. Without food you can not uphold a number of taxpayers sufficient to pay the upkeep for the motivating facilities (taverns, temples, etc) and it is a downwards spiral once a famine starts, especially so if you are at war with a neighbour.
And not like I can not establish the food provisioning in the beginning. But all the food sources are finite. Once the bushes are stripped bare and all the wildlife in the vicinity put to a better use - famine.
The only source of potential self-replenishing food supply seem to be mushroom farms (I play for the blue fellas) but my citizens are, unfortunately, wretched drunkards - they would sooner starve to death then allow a single mushroom to miss the distillery.
So the question is - how does one feed his population, while keeping the motivation and other parameters high?
Thanks in advance.
P.S. Any useful tips not related to the topic are still mostly welcome.
This question / problem has been solved by PotatoMasterimage
Posted July 19, 2009
The best way i've come up with, to solve this, is to split up your nation, into smaller villages.
Basically, only have 15 familys, to one tavern. Group the houses around the tavern, along with any work places, so that they can quickly go back and forth between them. Having one market for each village helps too, along with a bakery for each. Giving each tavern a well is a good idea too.
That also helps cover the food, if each tavern has its own bakery, fisherman and if you feel like it slaughter house. I've come across abit of a bug though, that if you have more than 1 slaughter house, only the first you build actually gets supplied though...
You always have the option of trading for resources, so if your store house is full of timber or stone, trade some for food.
Grouping things together like this, so that you have 4 of the 4 family houses per tavern (or 3 of the 6 family houses), seemed to work really well for me. Making sure you have 4-5 carriers for each village makes sure that the goods you're making get distributed properly too.
It's all abit of trial and error, but i've used that statergy with all the different races (since they're all the same, except for what products they make), and i've not had any problems ^^
Posted July 19, 2009
While you have nothing selected (or the town center of the town you're in), click on the right-most button in the line with the six buttons (below your gold). There you can set, how many mushrooms will be converted to food. The default setting is none, that's why all are sent to distillery.
zaxlor most probably talks about The Nations, i.e. Alien Nations II. I find the second game very much easier, except for the combat (armies are expensive there and towers powerful).
Posted July 19, 2009
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Protoss: While you have nothing selected (or the town center of the town you're in), click on the right-most button in the line with the six buttons (below your gold). There you can set, how many mushrooms will be converted to food. The default setting is none, that's why all are sent to distillery.
zaxlor most probably talks about The Nations, i.e. Alien Nations II. I find the second game very much easier, except for the combat (armies are expensive there and towers powerful).

It seemed to me that the slider with the percentage was solely for one time conversions - it does not seem to work any other way. At least my food production does not automatically increase even if I put it to 100% and the spirits for my alcoholic minions keep pouring, too. Go figure.
I may be wrong here, of course.
Posted July 19, 2009
The slider for the mushrooms does affect the harvest. I have tested this extensively in my last game.
Also, while I'm less certain about this, there seems to be difference between land quality. I built one farm on green land, this farm easily supported four houses, filling the storage units with both food and mushrooms with the slider set to about 50-60%. A farm on brown (hill) land however, could barely support a city with three houses. Yellow seems to be in between.
Getting a functioning city is difficult, you have to weigh the benefits of each building against the costs. I find that a city with 3 small houses is fine. The fourth house requires a tavern, the fifth a police department, the sixth a news stand, etc. Economically, 3 houses seems to be the most efficient, since this requires no support buildings. Having small satellite towns helps a bigger town grow. You can even have a satellite town with nothing but a city hall, if you have enough bushes around to feed three people.
Each villager pays 7 coins in taxes, unless they are criminals or homeless. A house costs 5 coins to maintain, and houses 3 villages, if the city has enough food. That is +21 -5 = +16. Now weight this against the costs of each support building, and you see the reason for the economic downward spiral if you grow your city too fast. A sattelite town with 3 houses goes a long way towards helping your main city grow. If food is scarce, one farm should to be able to support 3 houses, if on brown land, you may need a few bushes to "supplement the diet".
Also, bushes do grow back, slowly. Animals also repopulate, randomly, but they seem to like forests and dislike houses, so this might be a reason to avoid chopping down all available forest.
Trees grow back too, slowly.
Rocks however...
Post edited July 19, 2009 by PotatoMaster
Posted July 21, 2009
Thanks to everyone, even zaxlor, whose advice I will probably use in the sequel :)
The special "thank you" goes to PotatoMaster.
I will contemplate upon your words of wisdom. :)
Posted July 20, 2014
Please help. I am having the same problem on all campaigns, My Foreman is standing idle by a half built building due to lack of building supples, but my carriers are 'awaiting orders' and not delivering to him!
Posted September 13, 2014
I never had to build more than one town in the whole Pimmons campaign. Here are the most important tricks I've learned:
- Large dwellings. This is the biggest thing that will save you cash. They are way more efficient than small ones. Research Large Dwelling as soon as you can, then replace all your small ones with large ones.
- Bank. Basically, free cash.
- Shut down buildings that cost you money when you don't need them. I usually shut down the lab when I think I won't need to research anything else. Shut down the mine - you only need so much iron. Shut down the police station when there's no criminals.
- No need to build a big city. 3 large dwellings + Bank + 3 mushroom farms is a self-sustaining city. When you combine this with shutting down unimportant buildings you will have 100+ income for your army needs.
- Important thing about special needs (Tavern, Newsstand, etc.): Your nation still grows when there' only one need (e.g., just a Tavern). Don't be in a hurry to satisfy all their needs. The only downside to having more than 2 needs is your nation will grow slower. Once you have all your houses filled up, you can safely take away the police station, tavern, etc. Your citizens will still pay the same amount in taxes and you don't need them to grow anyway.
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Alien NationsAlien Nations: Solving the challenge of a growing town (a Noob question)(8 posts)solved(8 posts)solved
(8 posts)solved