Supply chains: steelworks, warehouses, and roads that matter

Until now, everything a nation's mines and wells produced went straight into one shared stockpile, wherever they stood. Now it matters where things are made and how they reach the towns: a mine at the end of a long road produces less, a cut road or a bombed bridge costs production, and weapons come out of factories that can be bombed. All of this is in the living world; War mode keeps its three resources.

Version française plus bas.

Roads that matter

The new Logistics map: two works cut off from the towns stand out in red, the warehouses in blue.
La nouvelle carte Logistique : deux exploitations coupées des villes ressortent en rouge, les entrepôts en bleu.

• Every mine, well, farm and factory now produces according to the road that links it to a town of its nation: full output up to 3 km, falling to half at 10 km, 30% with no road at all. Only a works right on its town's edge needs no road.
• A bridge destroyed or a road cut by the war makes the way longer or breaks it, and production drops. Cutting a road is now a real blow.
• A new Logistics map mode (Map menu): a faint green dot on each works well linked, a yellow or red halo on those far or cut off, the warehouses in blue, each nation tinted by how well its works are linked. The nation sheet says how many of its works are badly linked.

Deposits

• Oil and uranium now lie in real deposits drawn from each map's seed: oil in the low plains and along the coasts, uranium in the hills. Rarer, but richer. On the Resources layer (R), oil shows in blue and uranium in lime.
• Works and factories produce a quarter more, and nations put them near what feeds them and near a road: a factory near its ore, a coal plant near a mine, an oil plant near a well.

Supply chains

A refinery and a steelworks on the edge of a town, more of the chain beyond.
Une raffinerie et une aciérie en lisière de ville, la suite de la chaîne plus loin.

• Five new buildings. From the industrial age: the steelworks (ore into steel, needs power), the refinery (oil into fuel), the munitions works and the arms works (steel and industry into munitions and arms). From the atomic age: the enrichment plant (uranium into enriched uranium, needs power).
• The arsenal pays in munitions and enriched uranium, the reserve, the units and the warships in arms and fuel, and an army in the field eats munitions and fuel.
• Without the chain, a nation pays in raw materials at double the price, like a makeshift workshop. Building the chain halves the price of its weapons; losing it, bombed or cut off from its ore or its oil, doubles it again.
• The computer builds its chains in order (steel before arms), near what feeds them, and no more factories than its steel can run.
• No fixed ceiling: a nation keeps adding munitions or arms works only while it uses up what they make. When it needs something and has no room left, a works it has more of than it uses gives way to it, for part of its price back, and the news says so. A kind pulled down is not rebuilt for ten years, so nothing is torn down and raised again in turn.
• At war, these buildings are targets for raids and missiles, like the power plants.

Warehouses

A warehouse in the foreground, among the works whose loads it takes in, the city beyond.
Un entrepôt au premier plan, parmi les exploitations dont il reçoit les charges, la ville au loin.

• A new building: the warehouse. It houses workers and acts as a town for the works around it, so a cluster of mines far from any town becomes worth working. Its own road to a town counts for a third, since it ships in bulk.
• What the works around it make waits there for about a year before it reaches the towns. Taken or destroyed, the warehouse loses everything it holds: a target worth hitting.
• Cut its road to the towns, and the works around it fall to 30%.

Behind the scenes: what broke on the way

Not everything worked the first time, and the fixes are part of the story.

Railways: a line that ran straight over a mountain and across a lake in a test game, and the same rules now.
Le rail : une ligne qui passait droit sur une montagne et à travers un lac dans une partie de test, et les mêmes règles aujourd'hui.

• The first rules rounded the railway's bends without looking at the land: a line climbed a hill at nearly 50% and cut across a lake.
• Keeping to the land then made some lines loop round to come at a tunnel straight, and one joined another line deep inside its tunnel. Junctions now stay in the open.
• Forbidding that, with a 3.5% grade, left two nations with no railway at all on a hilly map. The grade is now 6%, a mountain railway's, and cuttings are no deeper than 8 m.

The Logistics map's first rings, and the soft marks that replaced them.
Les premiers anneaux de la carte Logistique, et les marques douces qui les ont remplacés.

• The Logistics map first ringed every works with a thick circle, the well linked ones too. Now what works is a faint dot and only what goes wrong stands out.

Also

• Railway lines keep their gentle grade round the bends (no more climbing straight over a hill), no longer cut across a lake, enter and leave their tunnels straight on, and skirt the towns; the houses still in their way make room when a line opens. A nation's network can start from any of its towns, and an island gets a network of its own. Lines keep off the roads, are never built between towns a few hundred metres apart (the lorries do that), and a town near a passing line gets its station on it.
• The news names every building a nation raises, and every works has its name on screen.
• Every window (Rules, Chronicle, the bill of a war) keeps its Close button in sight while you scroll it, like the menu's launch button.
• On iPhone, version 1.2.0 (aircraft carriers and what a front costs) is still with Apple for review. The supply chains will come in the next version.

Every game still draws a new world. Feedback is very welcome in the comments, especially on the balance: how much a far mine should lose, how dear weapons should be without the chain.