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Release Date: August 29, 2013


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Mining specializations are excellent choices for early cities to new regions. While other specializations arguably can make bigger profits, mining allows you to sell the goods to the global market and earn money a bit more quickly. Even better, mining up coal allows you to have essentially free resources to keep your power plant alive, thus decreasing your hourly expenses.

The disadvantage to mining is two-fold. First, it significantly increases pollution, not just in your city, but in the whole region. This damages all cities' health, indirectly increasing expenses and slowing growth. Second, mining attracts uneducated and low-wealth workers, so your overall tax income will be less.

That all said, many of the financial drawbacks are offset by lower net operating expenses. Mine shafts are dirt-cheap per hour, and because you don't need to worry about education, you don't need to build any schools. Neighboring cities in the region can eventually take care of any educational issues your mining city may have.

Mining Buildings

Video Tutorial

Want to see mining specialization in action? Check out the embedded video here!

Getting Started with Mining

After creating your town, reconnaissance should be your first objective. Click the button in the very lower-right corner of the interface to open the data map views, then click the "Coal Map" or "Ore Map" button. The land will turn white except for any area that has your chosen resource, and you can plan your road network.

Also, while you're in the data view, be sure to check out which direction the wind blows and where water is concentrated. Because of the significantly heavy air pollution that mines create, you'll want to be sure any residential zones are upwind (i.e., the direction the arrows are traveling from) from the mines.  Also, mines generate significant ground pollution, so you'll want to avoid placing water towers next to them (filtration water pumps would be okay as demonstrated by the infinite water trick).

Build your city as normal, but prioritize getting a mine as early as possible (requires 7 industrial-zone factories), even if you have to issue a bond (Just don't build any mods for it, else you might go bankrupt before you can turn a profit!). When placing a mine, you'll see a white circle around the footprint; this represents how much coal or ore is pulled up from the building itself, and you'll see the amount numerically as well.

A mine by itself won't make you a profit however, and you'll have to get into the trading specialization as well. Plop a trade depot near your mines (but not so close that you take up valuable mining space!) or near your city entrance (money is received in the budget when the global truck arrives at the Depot and global trucks have to traverse back to their origin before starting another trade run), then add a modular to store coal or ore. You may want to add a modular to your mine as well to have another delivery truck at your disposal.

Finally, click your Trade Depot, then click the "Manage Global Market" button in the popup box. Select your resource from the tabs, then click the "Export" button. From then on, every time your Trade Depot collects enough resources, a truck can come to sell it outside of town. The money will be added to your treasury; in the budget panel, the income will be reflected in the "Recent Transactions" pane.  Note that adding freight trucks to your Trade Depot will not increase the shipping frequency for coal and ore.

Optimizing this stage of export involves two things: First, making sure your mine has enough delivery trucks.  If mine storage fills up, the mine will close until another delivery is made to the Depot.  Second, making sure you have enough modular storage.  Global trucks leave their start point (another city in your region) and only make the trip once you have enough material (e.g., 10 ore, which is half of a single Depot modular), then enter your Depot to initiate the transaction, and finally drive back to where they came (watch closely and you may even see a global truck leave its origin to perform an hourly "check" and simply turn around before entering the freeway if there isn't enough material in your Depot).  If your delivery trucks fill your Depot storage before the global trucks make their pickup transaction, then subsequent delivery trucks will return to the mine and put material back into mine storage until there's room in the Depot (which could also refill your mine and close it!).  In this case you may want to plop another freight truck in the Trade Depot to increase the number of global trucks that visit for exporting.  Watching the trade map for 4-5 game hours should give you a sense if you have any supply chain choke points.

Mining, and the air pollution it creates, significantly increases the rate of fires that may start in your town. Because mining attracts uneducated workers, and because land value will be low, crime will be fairly prevalent too. You'll need to place a fire station early (once your first mine is up), followed by a police station. After that, be sure to get a clinic operational, as the general health of your city will be low.  Also keep an eye on basic utilities, as mines tend to use significant amounts of water and generate plenty of sewage.

Remember though that you will not need any education buildings. If you want to place them for completeness, that's up to you, but it's advisable not to educate everyone, else they'll seek employment in neighboring cities instead. It's not a bad thing to have one city in your region to be lacking in education; every city has its role!

Advanced Mining

As you increase your gathering rates for resources, you'll unlock the right to build a metals HQ. This building provides no direct benefit by itself, but it automatically increases the abilities of your mining operations.

The modular upgrades for the mining HQ are extremely expensive: $200,000 per upgrade, and three mods total will run you over a half-million. However, at that point, you'll be exporting so much coal or metal that your city will become extremely wealthy. If it's your first town in the region, all this money can be gifted to other cities to help them get started with their development.

There is a finite amount of resources, however; play a city long enough, and there simply will be none left. As such, you'll want to mine up as much as you can, and as fast as you can, once you have your economy stable enough to keep a profit.

In order to increase your wealth as quickly as possible, you should prioritize smelting metal and alloy, which will make you a larger profit than selling raw ore or coal alone. As such, when you can upgrade your mining HQ, the first modular you should add is the Smelting Division, which unlocks the smelting factory; this way, you can increase your profits enough to quickly reach the next upgrade requirement. After smelting, your next priority is exporting your goods. The Commerce Division mod unlocks the trade port, which allows you to sell and store more goods and ship via boat or train. Your final priority is the Engineering Division, which unlocks the advanced coal mine.

What Links Here

Specializations | Drilling | Gambling | Electronics | Trading | Culture | Trade Depot | Metals | Cape Trinity

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