Resource and Trading Guide - Just the Basics

[nezroy 0]

I see a lot of people asking questions about the mechanics of resources, and closely related to that are the issues of trade. Even though I did all the tutorials and browsed through the manual, I too had many questions about how resources (and by extension, trade) was supposed to work. This guide is intended to cover the basic mechanisms of city resource production, how to use the reports available to see and manage your resources, and the basics of how to trade for resources that you are producing or require.

EDIT: Latest edit; fixed some typos, added info on each resource type and included caveats regarding trading.

I. Resources

  I.a. Resource Pane

  I.b. Tokens

  I.c. Resource Types

    I.c.i Freight

    I.c.ii Passengers

II. Trade

  II.a. Trade Pane

  II.b. City Status Tab

  II.c. Market Place Tab

  II.d. Direct Trade

  II.e. Surplus Shmurplus! or Broken Contracts

 

I. Resources

There are a bunch of resources required for a city to run smoothly. There are the obvious ones that you run into right away: workers (of all 4 levels), electricity, and fuel tend to be the ones you notice first in a new city. But there are plenty more... all of the basic zones that you can create (maufacturing, heavy industry, high tech, offices) all produce resources as well. People and businesses both require different types of resources in order to remain happy and profitable. For a city to grow successfully, it must have access to a well-balanced supply of resources!

I.a. Resource Pane

In order to see the resources produced and demanded by your city, click on the "resource meter" button at the top of the UI, next to your portrait, to open the "Resource Pane".

You will see a couple of things immediately in the resource pane. First, resources are classified into two categories: "freight" and "passengers". This distinction becomes important later, when trading, but for now its only importance is that some things are found under the "freight" button on the left, and some things under the "passengers" button, and both sets of resources are equally important, so don't forget to check both regularly!

In the details, you can see each resource listed, alongside a bar with a marker. The marker will either be centered, or to the left in the "demand" side, or to the right in the "supply" side. If it's to the left, on the demand side, that means your city wants more of a resource than you are producing. You'd better zone some more of that type, or build utilities to provide it, or else buy some through trade; otherwise businesses that require that resource will become unprofitable because the resource is too expensive to buy.

Likewise, if the marker is on the right, on the supply side, that means your city is producing more of that resource than they require. You want to avoid zoning any more of that resource for a while, or else sell some through trade, or else those businesses will become unprofitable because they cannot find buyers for their production.

The basic goal is to keep the marker for every resource near the center; that means supply and demand are in balance, and everyone is happy. Generally speaking, as long as the marker is green, you are fine. It can stray a bit to the right or left before you have a serious problem, but it's handy to keep an eye on it so you can anticipate future needs before they become issues.

For instance, in the screenshot of my resource pane above, I can see that the "Waste" resource is starting to get pretty far into the demand side. I know that I'm probably going to need to build a garbage dump soon or else my citizens and businesses may start complaining. I might not do it right this second, but at least I know I need to budget for one soon. If the resource marker starts changing to yellow, orange, or red, it means you have a serious imbalance that needs to be addressed right away.

The method of producing resources to meet demand varies for each resources. Some resources, such as heavy industry, retail, offices, and workers, come from buildings created using the basic zoning tools. Others, like fuel, water, and electricity, come from utility structures that you must build, often in conjunction with the availability of a specific natural resource on the map. There are others that require speciality structures of their own as well, such as holidays and business hotels. Details for each are in the section labeled "I.c. Resource Types".

I.b. Tokens

Resource production (and trade) is measured in "resource tokens". This is an abstract number that simply represents some quantity of resource produced (or required). Resource tokens cannot be "stockpiled"; they simply represent either surplus or demand of a given resource at the present time. You are either producing too little, just enough, or too much of a resource at any given moment. So you cannot try to produce a large surplus of a resource initially, then warehouse it for later on when you need more. You have to keep supply matched with demand as your city grows, either through increased production or trade.

In the resource pane next to the supply/demand bar are four extra columns. The first column, with a city icon at the top, indicates how many tokens of surplus (or required) resource are being produced by your city. If the number is 0, that means your city produces exactly as many tokens of that resource as your city requires. If the number is negative, that means your city does not produce as many tokens as your city requires. If the number is positive, your city is producing more resource tokens of that type than your city requires. Note that this number could be greatly negative or positive while the supply/demand column is still green and "happy", because you can offset this number with trade.

The second column, with a two-arrows icon at the top, indicates how many tokens of that resource are being used in trade. If the number is positive, it means you are purchasing that many resource tokens via trade contracts. If negative, it means that you are selling that many resource tokens via trade contracts.

The third column indicates how many resource tokens are being used by an active blueprint.

The last column indicates how many resource tokens, in sum, you have balanced between city production, trade, and blueprints. In general you ALWAYS want this number to be 0 or 1 for every resource, which indicates that your city is in balance and has no resource deficits or demands. This means that you are buying enough resource tokens on the market to make up for any gaps in your city production, and that you are selling any surplus tokens that your city might be over-producing.

The goal is to make sure your city always has enough of what it needs, or else business will have a hard time staying profitable. A -1 deficit is usually survivable, but should be recitified quickly before it gets much worse or business will start to go under.

I.c. Resource Types

I.c.i Freight

Waste - No, the waste resource does not represent piles of garbage. Instead, this resource should more properly be called "Waste Handling", since what it really represents is your ability to get rid of those piles of garbage. It is produced by building garbage dumps from the "Utilities -> Waste" menu. Waste can be traded (and when you buy a waste token, what you are really doing is paying to ship your waste to someone else's garbage dumps).

Water - This is pumped from the ground on maps that have areas of "ground water" (viewable in the resources overlay), by building a water pump from the "Utilities -> Water" menu. Water can be traded.

Food - This is produced from farms, zoned from the "Industry -> Food Industry" menu. It requires "fertile ground" areas (viewable in the resources overlay). Food can be traded.

Fuel - Produced from oil fields, built from the "Utilities -> Fuel" menu. Must be placed on "oil" areas (viewable in the resources overlay). Fuel can be traded.

Heavy Industry - Output of businesses built on "heavy industry" tiles, zoned from the "Industry -> Heavy Industry" menu. Denser zones output more of this resource. Heavy Industry can be traded.

Manufacturing - Output of businesses built on "manufacturing" tiles, zoned from the "Industry -> Manufacturing" menu. Denser zones output more of this resource. Manufacturing can be traded.

High Tech - Output of businesses built on "high tech" tiles, zoned from the "Industry -> High Tech" menu. Denser zones output more of this resource. High Tech can be traded.

Electricty - Produced by power plants, built from the "Utiilties -> Electricty" menu. Electricity can be traded.

Retail - Output of stores built on "retail" tiles, zoned from the 'Commerce -> Retail" menu. Denser zones output more of this resource. Retail CANNOT be traded.

I.c.ii Passengers

Holidays - Output of holiday hotel businesses, created from the "Commerce -> Hotels" menu. Must be placed on the "holiday" resource, viewable from the resources overlay. Holidays can be traded.

Workers/Executives/Elites - Generated by people moving in from each worker class into houses zoned from the "Housing" menu. Denser zones allow for more people. Workers can be traded, but at this point it seems that if you purchase workers in trade they will NOT actually work in your businesses. So right now it only really makes sense to sell excess workers to OmniCorp [unconfirmed].

Offices - Produced from office buildings, built from the "Industry -> Offices" menu. Denser zones output more of this resource. Offices can be traded.

Business Hotels - Output of business hotel businesses, created from the "Commerce -> Hotels" menu. Business Hotels CANNOT be traded.

II. Trade

Now that you understand the basics of resources and their token representations, you might be noticing that there can be some very important resources your city needs that don't show up anywhere on your map. Like fuel, or holidays, or maybe food. The reality of CXL is that very few maps make for "self-sufficient" cities, and there will probably come a time when you have to buy a resource via trade that your city needs to keep growing.

Just about every resource can be traded: the basics, like fuel, water, food; as well as "human" services, such as workers and office space. The only items that show up in the resource pane that cannot be acquired through trade are retail and business hotels.

II.a. Trade Pane

In order to access the trade pane, you click on the "trade" icon in the main menu, circled red here:

The trade pane is separated into two tabs; "Market Place" and "City Status". You can switch between these by clicking on the tabs in the upper left. You can see in the screenshot that we have started on the "City Status" tab.

Other general information shown at the top are the number of cash tokens available, the amount of freight available, and the amount of passenger service available.

Cash tokens are like resource tokens, but they represent the surplus or deficit in your budget. For each 100C in your budget surplus (i.e. the amount by which your cash balance is growing, not the actual amount of your cash balance), you will have one cash token. So if your income is at 20,000C, then you will have 200 cash tokens (20,000 / 100).

The freight and passenger services available represents the amount of capacity available for trading. Every resource token that is traded uses up 1 freight or 1 passenger service. The amount of freight or passenger service you have available depends on your city links (the roads going off the edge of the maps). Regular road links give you a set amount of freight and passenger capacity, and adding more can increase the number; highway city links give far more than regular roads, but are very expensive; harbors will increase your freight capacity; and airports will increase your passenger service capacity.

In order to determine whether a resource needs freight or passenger services, just look to see which category it falls under in the "Resource Pane".

II.b. City Status Tab

Still looking at the City Status tab, on the left we have "Available Tokens" and "Tokens needed". The available tokens show all of the resources being overproduced by our city that are not actively being traded. This would correspond directly to positive numbers shown under the last column for that resource in the "Resource Pane". Under tokens needed, we can see all of the resource tokens our city requires. This corresponds directly to the negative numbers shown under the last column for the resource in the "Resource Pane". Note that when you first open the trade window, these numbers often do NOT include tokens you may be receiving or selling through trade. Sometimes it takes a while for the game to register the numbers based on your trade contracts. Even after the list of "Active contracts" is fully populated, however, the numbers often don't get updated properly.

On the right are tabs for "Active contracts", "Contracts in danger", "Offers sent", "Offers received", and "History".

The active contracts show any contracts that are currently active with your city. It shows who the contract is with, and what tokens you are sending and what tokens you are receiving as part of the trade. It also shows the duration remaining on the contract. There should also be a red "X" button that lets you cancel the contract.

Contracts in danger shows contracts that are not being fulfilled; either because you failed to produce enough tokens for the trade, or because your partner did. Unfortunately there does not seem to be any way of telling which, other than to make sure you are producing the tokens required by your end of the deal. Once a contract is "in danger", it means you are no longer receiving or sending the tokens that are part of the trade. At the moment I know no way of "restarting" the contract, even if both partners resume producing enough tokens to meet the contract, so generally these just get cancelled too.

Offers sent shows any buy or sell orders that you have placed on the market but that have not yet been filled by a trading partner, or offers that you have sent specifically to a single city. Offers received shows contracts that have been sent to you directly by other players for consideration. Finally, history shows a history of contracts that were previously active, but have since been cancelled or expired.

II.c. Market Place Tab

The other tab on the trade window is the "Market Place".

The same general information is shown across the top in this screen as well. Below that info is a list of all the resource types that can be traded, shown by their token image. The number on the image represents how many tokens of surplus (or demand) your city has, including any active trade contracts. Unlike in the "City status" window, these numbers are usually up to date and accurate. Just like in the city status, these numbers should correspond to the last column for that resource in the "Resource Pane".

In order to trade a resource, first click on the token image for the resource you want to buy or sell.

On the left, you will see a price history for the resource. This indicates the average unit price (price per token of resource) over the last little while. Unfortunately, the price history often does not seem to display correctly.

Beneath that is the token summary, which corresponds directly to each of the the four columns in the "Resource Pane" for that resource; city production surplus or demand, tokens acquired through trade, tokens going to blueprints, and the sum total balance of all of these.

On the right, we can see a list of all available buy and sell contracts for the resource. On the top are the list of people that want to sell resource tokens; it shows the city, the number of tokens being sold in that contract (Nb.), the unit price per token, and the total price for the contract.

The unit price per token (and the total price for the contract) represent cash tokens, which correspond to income (budget surplus) and not just a fixed value. Remember, 1 cash token = 100C/turn increase in your budget, not just 100C total. So you will continue to receive (or pay) 1 cash token, or 100C/turn, for the entire duration of the contract. In other words, this directly affects your budget income/turn.

The last column in the list is the "Actions" column. This will show a green checkmark for any contracts that you can afford (i.e. that you have enough cash tokens for). Clicking the checkmark will enter you into that contract. Your own sell offers will also be shown, with a red "X" that lets you cancel them.

Beneath this is the equivalent list of buy orders. These are cities that want to buy resource tokens; the same details are shown as for the sell contracts.

In order to buy or sell tokens, simply find a contract that you can afford for the amount of tokens you want (or a contract offering a price at which you're willing to sell), and hit the green check mark next to it. Make sure to look at the unit price to ensure that you are getting a good deal!

If there are no contracts that meet your needs, you can place a buy or sell offer using the options in the lower left of the market place window. To place a sell contract, make sure the "Sell" option is checked (orange), then enter the number of tokens you want to sell and the number of cash tokens you expect to receive under "Cash". The unit price (price per resource token) will be calculated automatically. Click on "Submit", and after some loading, your sell offer should now show up in the top-hand list. The process for placing a buy contract is the same, just make sure to check the "Buy" option instead, and your contract will show up in the bottom list once submitted.

II.d. Direct Trade

In addition to the market place, you can also create contracts directly with other cities, and trade one type of resource token for another directly, instead of using cash tokens. This can be done either through the trade options in the chat window or the trade options in planet mode. This guide doesn't yet cover these advanced methods. You can even create, accept, and cancel trading contracts for your cities at the CXL website, without even firing up the game!

II.e. Surplus Shmurplus! or Broken Contracts

One very important thing to keep in mind when trading resources, particularly when selling resources, is that as your city grows the number of "free" resource tokens to trade may diminish. This is because your city may require more of a given resource than it used to, and if you do not also increase production of that resource to match, eventually your suprlus production will go down. This is important with regards to trade, because if the surplus you were using in your trade contract gets consumed by the city, you will no longer have it available to trade and the contract will be suspended and put "in danger", ultimately requiring it to be canceled. This means you'll lose the cash flow, not to mention annoy some hard-working neighbors of yours.

So, if you are selling a resource, make sure to keep a close eye on the supply/demand meter, or even better, always leave at least one surplus resource token free to handle your growing city's needs, and build more production once that token gets used up.

Likewise, to protect yourself against this situation, it's usually a good idea to spread around the contracts for any resources you are buying between multiple cities. If you need 5 of a resource, for instance, consider buying smaller amounts (1 and 2 tokens) from 2 or 3 people. This way, if any one person fails to meet their quotas, or worse yet, deletes their entire city, then at least your economy will not be completely gutted by the broken contract.

[rss334 0]

BRAVO !!!!!  and Thank you.

[calfroper55 0]

I posted this questions earlier but thought you might be able to help me as it seems you have a good handle on trate ?

I had a quick question on how to determine what you should be selling your resources for.

For example if building an Oil Field cost you 5,000 a month/turn , what should be the minimum you be selling it on the market to break even ?

What is the formula ?

5000/100 = 50 ..so 50cu per unit on the market...is that right ???

What does "cu" in the market count for per turn.

Is there a way to figure this out also for you workers (qualified, executives) and also for industry (heavy, tech etc) as you could trade that as well.

Just want to know what how to figure out cost per unit.

[nezroy 0]

Yes, you should sell it for at least 50 cash tokens per oil token, in order to break even and perfectly offset the cost/turn of the oil well vs. the cash/turn coming in from trade. (This does not count the potential that you may be able to produce oil more cheaply, through the various special buildings that can increase output). I don't know what "cu" is, I don't remember seeing it specifically, but it looks like it just means "cash token" in your context. So if you enter a contract on the market to supply 1 oil token for 50 cash tokens, it would correspond to 5000 C per turn for the duration of that contract (5 days by default). In other words, you should see your income (budget surplus) go up by 5000. It's not a one time thing, where you just get 50 cash tokens worth 5000C when the contract is accepted and nothing after that.

Also, you should never sell anything for less than about 17 cash tokens per unit, as OmniCorp always has contracts available to buy 5 of any resource for 16.6 cash tokens per unit.

[TheJackalope 0]

trading for workers won't make them work in your city so keep that in mind.

For resources production keep in mind that some industries get production modifiers from other buildings. All have at least a 30% increase building that unlocks later. Also they each consume another type of resource so the cost of these should be taken into account. However one issue is the opportunity cost of selling an extra uneeded unit.

[calfroper55 0]

thanks both of you for the quick responses......

[Rik81 0]

Thanks for the post.  Looks very helpful.

[JakeMD 107]

Thanks for the post! (Bumping this)

[Dr. Mcfarmsworth Hugglesbottom 0]

Hey guys, I suppose this question is only relevant to the post on a tangent but you guys sound helpful, so I'll ask anyway.

I have a city of 210000 and 150k income per tick, and I might lose all of it unless I get some fresh freight. I cannot for the life of me figure out why the game will not let me build another road connection to fix the problem ( the purple area is no longer there). I only have one connection so far (an expressway) thus I suspect some sort of limit on freight is not the problem.

If anyone could enlighten me as to what is going on/ what I should do I would be very grateful.

PS. nezroy your post was very informative, thanks.

[Skimbo 304]

Wow, you've done a very good job, netzroy

@ Dr.Mcfamous Expresswaycitylinks are one method, they cost more but you also can trade a huger ammount of ressurches (100 instead of 20 Freight) with them.

If you've got a sea City link area you can also build an habour, the small one will increase the freightvolume by 40 token.

[soltangris 42]

You wanna say Highway citylinks, Skimbo, not Expressway. Expressway citylinks have 20/20 as a normal road, Highways are the ones that have 100/100.

Also, highway citylinks have a different resource area than road citylinks, meaning you can build a highway citylinks when all road citylink resources are spent. Hope it makes sence.

[Dr. Mcfarmsworth Hugglesbottom 0]

Thanks soltangris and skimbo, that was helpful, but the problem seemed to have solved itself magically (the purple layer came back.... weird).

Anyway I decided to build another expressway link for now, the price tag on the highway didn't seem worth it just yet, I think I'll build one next.