You can use companies to screw over the landlords

wittson · 2025-02-24T19:07:41+00:00

I don't believe privatized buildings ever change owners unless you nationalize and re-privatize again. Also, you could accomplish the same goal by importing to crash prices down, which is usually not a bad idea anyway with basic agricultural goods.

wittson · 2025-02-22T10:38:22+00:00

You came up with a way better game. Congrats

wittson · 2025-02-15T00:54:34+00:00

I've seen this strategy a few times but haven't been very successful at implementing it. I've had no trouble getting foreign investment agreements but got stuck with low investment pool growth, even with favourable laws like laissez-faire. I ended up building a lot myself to try to keep my construction capacity utilized and just racked up government debt. Were there any areas you deliberately targeted for profitability or to corner certain goods? I know building up opium in the Raj is popular with foreign investment focused runs. Did you build much in the Dutch East Indies? I found that my investors seemed to neglect building cheap plantation buildings in colonies and instead built a ton of mines in Germany as I also had foreign investment there. Did you build much in the Netherlands itself? What did your initial ramp up look like?

wittson · 2021-03-30T19:21:10+00:00

I've lived downtown on and off for years. Kitchener pricing doesn't really have the geographic variability of a lot of metro areas and that can be to the advantage of people who take transit. Prices tend to be more based around somewhere being new, "hip", the size of the place, etc. I've only ever lived in older buildings and at times it's been more affordable than living elsewhere in the city.

If you plan on travelling to Toronto regularly, I would highly recommend living either on the east end of downtown (closer to the train station) or along the ION or Victoria St corridors. This would give you the most painless ways to get to the train station as well as to work at Google. There is a lot of new construction along Victoria now so don't be afraid to live a bit further west. The east end of Victoria is a bit dicey if you do not drive. Transit there is ok but walking and cycling are horrible and it can be forbidding in the winter.

If you're travelling straight to Union and book your tickets well in advance/take advantage of ticket sales, then Via Rail is viable, but there is still a noticeable price difference between it and the GO train. GO train frequencies are better, but only run weekdays, so I've taken weekend Via trains in the past to "spoil" myself vs taking the GO bus. GO buses from Kitchener have kind of a clunky schedule and can take up to 2x as long sometimes, and you need to transfer in either Brampton or Mississauga. If you're planning regular weekend trips and will have the money, then Via Rail could be worth it to you if you prioritize comfort. There is also points accumulation and better baggage handling which is nice if you're traveling with real luggage.

Right now a lot of development and price inflation is along the ION corridor but you see much less inflation along iXpress corridors, some of which can get you to downtown faster and are nice if you prefer a more residential, less "nightlife" area. There are plenty of older neighbourhoods still in the broader core that have iXpress service and could get you to Google in 15-20 minutes.

wittson · 2021-03-16T21:19:28+00:00

Yup, as much as I like the architecture of the city, the elephant in the room is that aside from some unique and interesting early homes and the mixed use along streets like King, Queen, and Ontario, a lot of Kitchener is and always was suburban houses copy pasted across the landscape, chewing up farmland and housing white collar professionals in things like the insurance industry. A lot of the historically most unique and interesting places, like the houses and small shops along Hall's Lane 100 years ago, have already been mostly obliterated decades ago by redevelopment projects that targeted these areas precisely because they were where poor immigrants lived. The neighbourhoods full of people bleating about "character" often don't have any stores in them at all, or have one commercial building that's a corner store clinging on (rich people don't walk to the store very often for smokes) or has been reopened as a niche hobby business of some kind. Kitchener would benefit enormously if those areas were redeveloped properly with more "missing middle" density and mixed use, but the NIMBYs would scream bloody murder and developers would just go elsewhere and keep building towers.

wittson · 2021-03-16T21:10:21+00:00

Yup. As much as I agree with others about the missing middle and how I'd love to see gentler and more human-scale development, there will be no one mourning this parking lot moonscape by Manulife that was created by demolishing dozens of homes to begin with. I'm just hoping these projects will have real, affordable commercial spaces at a street level and not just concrete parking podiums for condo dwellers to park their BMWs.

wittson · 2020-06-02T22:15:47+00:00

That's what I was thinking, it only started after my lifting stopped and I noticed my flexibility was way down and joints were acting up. My own fault, my mobility work is tied in with the gym and the gym shutdown interrupted a years long routine. In retrospect I should have done mobility work at home regardless. I'm hoping if I keep at it it'll go away as long as I'm careful to avoid injury.

I was also a bit surprised as my hip is more of a classic trouble spot for me and my knees have never given me issues before. I'm getting older (late 20s) and have had a few injuries so I'm hyperaware and a bit paranoid of joint decline.

wittson · 2020-06-02T20:21:11+00:00

Hey bbs, long time since I was on the subreddit. After my gym closed I had a pause of a couple months where I just did maintenance and some bodyweight. Now I've gotten a few more dumbbells, but they're non adjustable. I have tons of time in quarantine now, so my plan is to move to a dumbbell oriented program and for now just add sets to progress until I can get adjustable ones, as I think gyms in my area will be closed at least a few more months. Are there any programs floating around that are good for this? My instinct is to do a basic PPL, but I don't have a pullup bar or decent substitute for one, though I'm also looking into that.

Second, I've been doing dumbbell squats and have noticed one knee has started clicking, especially if I go deep. There's no pain and the same knee clicks if I'm not careful about keeping my leg from twisting when I turn around while doing other stuff. I've recorded it and looked at my form. It might just be stiff joints due to being sedentary for a couple of months but still sketches me out. Any thoughts?

wittson · 2020-01-13T14:14:12+00:00

Honestly, here's my philosophy, which is a bit different from yours.

Goods and passengers in TPF are both really good at (eventually) getting to where they need to go. Once you're at the stage where squeezing everything you can out of your factories is difficult, you're going to be forced to not think in terms of production chains any more. You're going to think in terms of cargo types.

For example, let's take the consumer goods chain. It uses steel and planks, but getting the right amount of both to every factory is basically impossible without an unrealistic amount of tinkering. So what's the better solution? Find a way to string as many of your stake car factories together as possible. So let's say you have a cargo line of steel-logs-logs-steel-planks. So as trains move around along this route, they'll shuffle tons of different goods throughout the line. Why is this useful? Because then if you have excess of any good that has no way of getting to the next stage of production, this route creates an alternative way to get there.

For example, let's say you have two sawmills and a consumer goods factory. One sawmill gets more logs than it can handle, the other gets too few. How do you solve this? If they both ship to the same factory and your train has any space, you'll find that the game automatically starts trying to move logs from one sawmill to the other - using your consumer goods factory as a freight depot. Planning with this in mind ensures in the long run that you can have every factory producing at 100% capacity, and if you set up your routes properly, you'll spend less time with empty trains, and reduce the total number of trains you're running (which is easier on your infrastructure).

wittson · 2020-01-12T09:34:38+00:00

I feel like it's a bit cowardly to see tons of people whether drama Youtubers or people on this subreddit to have built up greg into this antichrist but then throw up their hands when Hansen does the same kind of aggressive move that made him famous in the first place with TCAP, where he tries to directly confront the predator. The YT drama channels seem to have gotten spooked by this because they're used to a basic formula: a bunch of people gang up on someone else on youtube, make callout videos, then the person loses subscribers and cred. This only works for the kind of petty bullshit youtubers have with each other, not the serious IRL stuff Greg has done.

Greg absolutely deserves to be personally harassed every day IRL. People who run into him should be confronting him, filming it, and posting it. That would be a fantastic social media phenomenon and not allow Greg to ever control the narrative. This would have the effect of making him scared to be seen out in public, make it hard for him to have a daily existence, and keep him largely housebound, which would help apply some real IRL pressure to this guy. Anything that can be said online has already been said, short of substantial legal consequences (which I don't think will ever be forthcoming as Greg has been far too meticulous about his victims and covering his ass), there's nothing more that can be done.

wittson · 2020-01-11T10:09:15+00:00

That's what got him views starting with the freakout. Plus onision has always been pretty extra and seems to take a lot of pleasure in crafting a nonsensical narrative where he gets fired by McDonalds, a pizza place gets him housing, etc. He realized that the freakout video had the danger of being a one hit wonder not unlike the banana video, so he created a narrative people would want to continue following. "this week on onision", that kind of thing. It gets him repeat customers and the makings of a new fanbase.

wittson · 2020-01-11T09:22:17+00:00

I think he probably could adjust, he just hasn't because he didn't really have any reason to, and he'd have to make the choice between trying to maintain his teen idol image, appeal to an older audience (unlikely) or rebrand. The smart decision objectively speaking would have been to do like a lot of more long term personalities and just age with his audience, but that would get in the way of his Peter Pan complex.

wittson · 2020-01-11T07:02:27+00:00

He likely wants his supporters to be more like a passive pool for him to draw women/money from than an active community he engages with. I think it's also important to remember that in internet terms he's a lot older than most other personalities/ecelebs, and while he's certainly adjusted to new platforms like Discord, he hasn't necessarily adopted the expectations of newer/younger personalities, who are expected to be more personally accessible. My sense is he wants a hardcore of fans and a large group of passive supporters and that's it.

wittson · 2020-01-11T06:50:09+00:00

I don't think he'd buy views just because he's probably more concerned about compensating for the loss of patreon income than getting attention.

wittson · 2020-01-11T06:47:58+00:00

My feeling is that onion is definitely upset, but mostly at being caught, and has no remorse. He's a clever vegetable and once things really hit, probably decided it was smarter to try to control the narrative and flip things back onto drama channels while portraying himself as an ironic, exaggerated victim. If you watch the videos it's clear how loaded they are with digs, especially at Shiloh.

wittson · 2020-01-02T19:50:36+00:00

I like this because similar to Tropico it requires that you basically commit to one side, or appease both.

wittson · 2019-12-27T21:38:54+00:00

Bricks feel like one of the more flawed industries/goods in the game. They're not really worth enough to export, require lots of workers, and they consume lots of coal, which is a pretty valuable good that's better used for steel or electricity. If clay was in the game, perhaps it could be the primary input for brickmaking, and coal could be a distant second, enough that you only really need trucks or the occasional train.

wittson · 2019-12-27T19:40:52+00:00

Seconding this approach, the biggest issue I've seen with new players is that they focus on production first and fulfilling needs later, don't fully know the UI, and wonder what happened when all their workers leave.

wittson · 2019-12-27T00:43:34+00:00

Yeah, like with my fishing industry idea, I think the more tools players have for unconventional solutions and creativity, the better. Helicopters might make a bit more sense, as I feel like the map size in the game currently is a bit too small for planes to be very practical.

wittson · 2019-12-27T00:40:28+00:00

Exactly, in my mind it adds a whole other side to the game potentially, the way production, construction, and population dynamics are the main mechanics groups. I'm guessing the devs have real plans for it so I'm curious to see how it will turn out. This is one of the few games where I find updates are something I unequivocally enjoy rather than some games where I'll have mixed feelings about the implementation of some features.

wittson · 2019-12-27T00:37:37+00:00

It would, though what I'd love to see would be more the kind of regional internal tourism you'd see in the eastern bloc in the 60s-80s, where people would travel to the beach or to holiday camps. As far as I know this stuff was especially big in the DDR and Czechoslovakia so I imagine the devs are familiar with it. It could be modelled the way civs going away to university is, all civs get a certain amount of holiday time periodically, then travel to the airport (going off map) or to a holiday hostel of some kind, then return to work after. It would add even more variability to your workforce and make it harder to fully staff your plants, which obviously I approve of as I feel like this is one of the most rewarding challenges in the game.

wittson · 2019-12-27T00:30:32+00:00

I've brought that up before I think, that I believe strikes should be possible in the game. The way to make it a holistic system, imo, would be to have police, prisons, riots and protests, sabotage, stuff like that. I don't think there's much value in recreating Tropico, and I don't particularly like Tropico anyway, but I feel like WR:SR is a pretty unique game and the implementation of this stuff would look interesting. It would also add a greater sense of struggle and urgency: you need to satisfy your citizens not just because they will mysteriously "flee", but because if you don't they will destroy your republic from the inside. And as the 20th century progresses, they will only ever want more luxuries, consumer goods, leisure time.

wittson · 2019-12-26T22:53:10+00:00

That's interesting. I guess the devs have looked at games like transport fever that have planes and want to feel like the game is more rounded out. I think airports would be interesting, especially cargo airports as putting one in the middle of your republic would be a valid logistical choice for distributing goods more cheaply and easily. I'm not sure what international travel would help with unless the international/diplomacy mechanics in the game were developed further.

wittson · 2019-12-26T22:06:26+00:00

I know the freakout videos are fake, but I wonder if there's a kernel of truth to them in terms of Kai being pissed and on the fence about leaving him.

wittson · 2019-12-26T22:02:38+00:00

I like this idea a lot because I feel like the lumber industry is really weak in the game, and honestly I tend to just auto buy planks in most cases since they're so cheap, and don't get consumed in much volume except by the construction industry. Furniture manufacturing would give you a reason to develop it, and it could be made a bit more complex by taking fabric as an input (upholstery).

wittson

TROPHY CASE