I normally start with livestock products as well, since they can be easily produced and sold. And I almost start from the moment I have enough cash, since training them up take time, and the city's population doesn't need to be very big to have enough demand, they also provide basic food in Quality of Live index.Spac3y wrote:That was what I was trying to do, eventually got it figured thanks Eleazza
So interms of company planning, there are a few industries that seem to work well to start with at these population rates. ( I am mainly going chicken/eggs/frozen beef or lamb or both) in a convenience/supermarket) A media firm as we all know makes all the difference and early on the land is cheap enough to do it so it is worth buying. I then move onto drugs, getting 4 R&D down all on ten years (headache/cold pills, cough syrup) and ofcoruse plastic. Furniture is probably next on my list or foods although some foods take more input elements , where as everyone needs a bed and all we need is timber.
Circa 100m a year profit just out of two factories and some stores. This is great as it means I can now fund mayor campaigns and also start new cities.
I always start with general store, they are cheap to maintain, and have reasonable turn out if placed in high traffic index area. And it can sold everything, especially useful when population is lower than 100k. After that I would normally went with farm related products, since farms always take years to trained to level 9, and they provide the foundations for all the other products, and their quality usually rely less on technology but raw materials (thus the earlier the start the better). Usually the high profit margin products in those area are food and beverage class, also snakes and body care products, as well as household products. They have decent necessity index, so the demand will be quite high even if the population is small. Low necessity goods usually need a much larger city to have enough demand, and required economy of scale. (Even furnitures like sofa and chairs need farming raw materials, so I rarely start with timber, since AI usually will build logging camp for me). Only after the general store is maxed, I would switch to convenient store and supermarket, or other specialized stores, and I would maxed them out, before building new ones, so I can save as much overhead cost as possible. Small and compact.
My small town of merely 200k population in my town can already provide more than 20m of profit for my company on vertically integrated farming industries (exclude real estate income, and I haven't produce half of the potential products yet). They also provide enough jobs, without the need to spam media firms. And I like diversifying my revenue streams, and never put all eggs in one basket. If any product gets competition, I can always rely on something else. Even though I start R&D pretty late, and with University specialization focus, I think I can catch up in tech at any time.