Cake Production Guide

To procure the necessary materials you will need:

Ideal Locations:

• PRIORITIES:
  • Ocean – necessary for efficient brine production. Choosing anywhere that’s not by an ocean and you’ll need too many salt fields and this will eat up too much space. Being by an ocean is a non-negotiable if you’re aiming to produce cakes.
  • River – contributes greatly to the growth of the various crops and the numerous trees you’ll need to produce cakes.
  • Forests – the extra money you get from selling the ponds in a forest gives beginners a buffer to avoiding bankruptcy while learning the ropes and gives advanced players a quicker start to getting over the early game hump of making your town sustainable. The abundance of trees in a forest provides a steady supply of wood that greatly supplements a Windmill focused start, which is ideal for cake builds.
  • Plains – the open fields that the plains provide allows an easier expansion when you have your initial income generating setup in place. The abundance of pastures will also supplement your animals If you opt to go for a ranch start instead of windmills.
• AVOID:
  • Mountains – they cast shade on crops and blocks the wind for windmills and wind turbines up to 5 tiles away. Building by a mountain greatly limits where you can place your crops and windmills. 
  • Deserts – the oil seep in the desert negatively affects farm and ranch buildings, there is no advantage whatsoever in choosing a desert over plains for a solo town aiming to produce cakes..

Balancing:

1. MILLS

• To produce cakes you will need to be harvesting wheat, sugarcane, salt, and trees in significant amounts. A big part of your town has to be set aside for the agriculture.
  • Create a setup where all of your crops are passively watered and aren’t affected by shade or pollution. You can achieve this by being by a river tile and/or by utilizing fountains and ponds.
  • Design your town in such a way that you have a designated silo and production area for flour, for salt, and for sugar. By doing this you will know which crops you are producing in excess as the designated silo will be flooded and your farmers will start dropping them off in another silo. Having a zone for each product contributes greatly to monitoring your overall production so you can adjust your town accordingly.
• Having green timers for your mills is key in the early stages of the game, but since you’ll be needing a few for flour, salt, AND sugar forcing green timers will utilize too many tiles on your grid for you to be able to efficiently produce cakes. Spacing windmills to have green timers also creates too much distance between the windmills and silos significantly prolonging the gathering aspect of the production process.
  • Surround your silos with windmills. This will cause them to have red timers and take 4 minutes to produce one of each product BUT they will gather resources a lot faster and you will be able to place enough mills around the silo to outpace efficiently spaced windmills with green timers.

2. RANCH

• Animal facilities have no edge requirements, and only the milk barn casts shade. You can effectively place them on any empty space you have on the map without disrupting the productivity of your mills.
• Chickens coops need 3 feed to produce an egg, and each coop has a group of 3 chickens that gather feed. Milk barns on the other hand need 8 feed to produce milk and only has a single cow for this. This will more often than not lead to a surplus of eggs filling up your storehouses and your milk barns starved of feed. To deal with this:
  • Have a separate feeding area for your cows so they can gather feed in peace.
  • Create enough distance between your chicken coop and your feeding area so that the cows get to the feed first. This will ensure that they’re continuously able to gather feed as the ranchers place them in the troughs. Your chickens will be able to gather if you have feed in excess, or while your barns are producing milk.

 3. STOREHOUSES

• All crafted food products are kept in the storehouse. You will need adequate storage for the necessary components leading up to cake production. When going afk or heading to bed it is better to slow down production as to not flood your storehouses rather than have them overflow and cause your production to come to a complete halt because your workers have nowhere to store their products.
• Strategically placed storehouse could be what balances your cake production. The distance you place them with respect to your production facilities (windmills, bakeries, cakeries) allows you to prolong or shorten the gathering and dropping off aspects of the production process.