Maximizing wagon use -- hub and spoke warehouse distribution centers

[prolefeed]

Accidentally created a hub and spoke distribution center in my current game -- I have four cities, each using all of the fully developed eight land and sea squares around it, all two squares away from a central warehouse city with no squares being worked.

Each turn, the four outlying cities loads whatever goods they have in excess onto a wagon which trundles off to the central distribution city, dumps off the goods, then loads up whatever goods they're short on for the return trip with the wagon.

Some additional wagons then cart the finished goods ready for shipment to Europe to my main port city and chief manufacturing center four squares away, while wagons in the port city return to the central distribution center with imported goods (mainly horses), plus tools from the port city's ironworks.

One of the four spoke cities has the gun manufacturing plant in it, while the port city four squares away is cranking out a new wagon each turn, which I'm starting to cram full of guns and horses and parking in cities in preparation for declaring independence in a few turns.

I used a Great General to promote my lone galleon to Navigation 2 (plus three other units -- made two medics and a merchantman with Navigation 2) so it now has a movement of 5 squares, allowing it to be loaded with goods from the main port city, go to Europe, sell and buy stuff, and return to the map all in a single turn (playing on the quick setting). It's operating in tandem with a merchantman, so each turn either the galleon or merchantman makes the voyage to Europe laden with manufactured goods for sale (mainly fur coats), and the other returns to port loaded with units and goods from Europe.

 

[Railrunner130]

One of the things I've been toying with is a national central warehouse. Sometimes it uses wagons, but mostly it's via ship. Each settlement should have certain supplies always in hand, such as 100 food and 100 tools. If a place has a Tobacconist and the appropriate buildings, it becomes the cigar factory and imports tobacco, while exporting cigars to the warehouse.

I like to be able to run finished goods (silver, cigars, tools, coats and cloth) directly from the central warehouse to Europe, but on a limited schedule and only when the boat can be completely filled.

I have a few problems doing this.
1. Transportation does not appear to prioritize the movement of excess or needed goods. So you end up with lengthy shortages or excesses.
2. The auto transport will take excess items directly to Europe, unless you designate each ship to specific routes, which can be fairly time consuming. It could also end up costing more money too, especially if there really is a correlation between trips to Europe and tax rate. The boats need to run to Europe completely filled and nothing less.

 

[HermannLombard]

Well, the solution--which you probably are already doing--is to not permit any automatic exports to Europe. That does require being specific about your trade routes, but one wagon can be assigned to more than one trade route...with the caveat of your problem #1.

 

[joachim_ds]

Yeah, that sounds interesting.

Up to know i had "supplying villages" that were only gathering resources.
"food villages" for food
and production villages, that i rename to "hubs"

I transfer all the required resources to the production village and from there i move the produced stuff to europe.

It sounds ok, but it isn't. The production village as a hub is causing jams etc,

Might be a good idea to have a central warehouse village. Littel question, what to do with 200+ surplusses? In a production village, you get 60 production per turn, in a warehouse you are almost forced to lose some every turn, right?

 

[HermannLombard]

The simplest approach is to use wagon trains as warehouses (which have the flexibility of being mobile warehouses).

Unfortunately there is no mechanism so far to restrict auto-imports the way you can restrict exports from a town. Even Dale hasn't managed that one...yet.

 

[prolefeed]

"Might be a good idea to have a central warehouse village. Littel question, what to do with 200+ surplusses? In a production village, you get 60 production per turn, in a warehouse you are almost forced to lose some every turn, right?"

Expanded warehouses allow storing up to 300 of each item. If you have more than that, either store on a wagon or move to a nearby city with its own expanded warehouse. Wagons are cheap, so build lots of them if needed. If you need to store over 600 of tobacco, fur, or some other raw material, then you should either sell the surplus or buy the appropriate units to crank up production of finished goods (Master Fur Traders and building Coat Factories for a fur surplus).

For fighting the REF, I build expanded warehouses in every city and stuff them all full of guns and horses. If you play on the quick setting, with just 37 guns/horses needed per combat unit, each warehouse can equip up to 8 fighting units.

 

[Newbunkle]

I haven't tried this yet as I'm in a WoI and turned off my production, but to limit imports couldn't you get the wagon to dump its stuff and then immediately pick it up again (leaving an amount in stores equal to the max capacity)? That way it should always remove the excess before it gets wasted, I think (I've only been playing for a few days).

I suppose if it works, the same wagon could carry the excess to a second town for processing raw materials. Its output would be much lower, but it would prevent waste. You could always have a second port for any overflow of finished products, but you'd have to remember to check it.