Hey all looking for your advice. I am at level 38 and have all the factories up to the oil refinery. Before I move on should I build more of anything else (ie ranches, paper mills, farms) to keep up with production?
Hi Saryna - with the benefit of hindsight (I'm on Level 54, and need a population of 280000 before I can place another industrial building) I wish I had bought a few more ranches, in order to get the Cowboy achievement (I think 7 are required for that). You can always demolish however many you then consider to be surplus to requirements after the achievement, and keep your population requirement as low as possible. I have two ranches, which I manage okay with, but I think life would be easier if I maybe had 4. I have three confectionery plants, 3 mill houses, 5 farms and 2 paper mills and seem to manage pretty well. I could probably have done with an additional dairy farm and sawmill, but it's not too bad.
For the higher end industrial buildings; you'll definitely need the toy factory, food plant and mine if you want to complete several of the major building tasks (which require items such as shirts, aluminium, etc. to complete). Also, a lot of cargos at the port require products from the radio factory or the cosmetics factory, and you'll definitely need the chemical plant as well to make the raw materials for these factories.
The only industrial building in the shop that I could comfortably live without is the electronics plant; apart from products being occasionally needed for VIP containers at the port, I don't make that much use of it - it was nice to be able to complete the targets in the left hand bar, but that was about it! It now spends most of its time in storage, as I was able to purchase a printing office directly to storage without increasing population requirements, and can now swap the two around as I need to - the printing office, by the way, is definitely a lucrative little factory!
Hope that helps, sure others will have better and even contradictory advice
Steve
(SteveGPI, Hanham, Level 54. Need trowels and hammers for Thanksgiving building upgrades.)