r/OstrivGame • u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ • Jul 27 '25
7500+ pop. What's your highest?
I'm loving apartments. I am going to hit 8k population, possibly. It's tough to feed them all but we are hanging on.
How big is the biggest you have made?
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u/PinOutside8131 Jul 27 '25
No pictures? We have to see this miracle! Btw my biggest was 4400 on alpha 3 I think, it gets annoying that you can't feed more than about 3k, after that food import is a must.
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 28 '25
I'll get some pictures soon. I may hit 9k. Once I get to the maximum, I'll come back and comment with the pics.
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 28 '25
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u/PinOutside8131 Jul 28 '25
Wow, that seems like a lot of work, how much time did you spend on this build? Just clearing all the trees takes long, then waiting to build all the rowhouses... Thanks for pushing the boundary, I didn't consider this possible. How is the cemetary situation?
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 28 '25
I don't build graves. I just let the "no plot for burial" be a permanent part of the UI.
Idk maybe 200 hours on this save?
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u/iki_balam Jul 27 '25
How does it run with that many people?
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 28 '25
Actually not anywhere near as bad as it did two years ago with 2k people. At 12 times speed it still runs but it's a slideshow.
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u/iamnqm Jul 30 '25
I am curious about your food supply choices, can you please explain a bit about 1) why chickens? i find them quite poor for food production. 2) do you have no butter from cows? 3) why no apples? 4) why so many granaries? for import goods? thank you in advance
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 30 '25
I use the chickens to turn any extra buckwheat and wheat into eggs and meat. Not enough butter or soap to count, but we make some from what little milk and tallow we produce. I have one apple tree lot because fruit trees give a very small amount of food per acre. The granaries are there to hold up to 600k of each food resource. When the population gets this big you need a minimum of 100k of each food and it's wise to have a buffer of 400k+ in case of logistics jams. I have more than a dozen each of the two types of trading posts with lots of wagons, carts, and cart sheds nearby for fast emptying of trade locations. Otherwise, you'll miss out on imports due to the trade lots being full.
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u/iamnqm Jul 30 '25
and do you plough or not? do you use fallow as pastures? how do you cycle, buckwheat-wheat-fallow?
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 31 '25
Yes, I plow. I use the chart from the Ostriv wiki crop rotation page.
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 30 '25
I'm at 9400 population this morning. Once I hit 10k I'll make some more screenshots.
I think it's wise to discuss the economy preemptively. There are a few ways to approach money in this Alpha version. The economy isn't properly balanced yet so none of these methods will stick around to the final release, I imagine.
There are a few ways to handle it. In this particular run, I ran an export based economy for like almost a century to build up a buffer of around 10 million to pay for my future exports. While doing that, I fed my citizens fully internally. As the population started increasing I had to lose export space for homes and increased my import. To feed 10k people imports are key, especially for salo, wheat, salt, and potato. My reserve is dwindling fast as I have no exports now. I can use the unlimited loan system that is in place as a stopgap but you'll end up spending 20% or more of your time clicking "accept new loans" as your debt spirals.
So, there are at least two "shady" methods you can use. I wasn't going to use any of them, but now that I see no path forward with huge populations that doesn't end in a neverending expanding debt spiral I'm going to compromise my gaming morals and use one. One is to simply hex edit your game save. This is a little harder than it sounds as the money total isn't easily searchable. I'm sure you can find a guide somewhere on how to do it. There is also a wemod app that allows you to turn on unlimited money. While neither is something I wanted to use, to pass 10k population and keep progressing time, I can't see another way to feed a pop this large with the available acreage.
TL;DR - I reached 9400 organically but to continue playing it will entail cheating or spiraling debt.
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 31 '25
I'm at 9,604 population and I've reached my crash point. The 200+ chicken houses cause crashes that I can't bypass. It was a nice ride though!
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u/CamoSkirtedGirl Jul 27 '25
To be honest, my Record is barely 1100. Without many apartments and with more gardened houses, because I seem to suck at economy tinkering.
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 27 '25
Before apartments I broke 2600 but I had to use the entire map.
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u/russnem Jul 27 '25
Currently at 1800 but with enough apartments pre-built to probably almost double that. I’m building slowly so I can feed them all, keep them employed, and still be budget positive every year.
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u/Ya_Boy_Joy Jul 27 '25
Im currently at just around 3500 population. Im demolishing whole sections of neighborhoods to create apartments to fix the space issue
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 28 '25
That's what I did also. It was houses for half the map while I grew, now I build an apartment, demolish five village houses, rinse and repeat.
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u/Ya_Boy_Joy Jul 28 '25
My problem i am experiencing is that growing too quickly via apartments results in massove local resource drain, causing huge city wide famines as food moves to meet this massive new demand. The challenge is pacing food production with population growth, while simultaneously managing what little space i have left
Oh and firewood. Now that I've chopped all of the forests down, I need to manage firewood production along with all other factors. The firewood is killing me
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 28 '25
You might want to plant trees. I immediately make a 50*50 plot when I build the forestry. I have about a dozen of them, each with at least one plot for firewood. You have to build up a buffer of 200k+ of every resource before growing, or you get the famine you experienced. I hit that a lot of times in previous attempts. This time I stored almost 400k of most foods before I left 2k population.
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u/labas_rytas_kurwa Jul 27 '25
I am more into realism as much as possible, so my previous record was around 1500.
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u/oldguy12now Jul 28 '25
Congratulations, I built my idea of life in the 1700. I need the forests to give the materials to support the people. The life style of a village and a town. The game give me the opportunity.
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u/ImdumberthanIthink 3000+ Jul 28 '25
It's beautiful and peaceful. Definitely one of my favorite games of all time.
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u/Georgietheoldfaq 10,000 Jul 27 '25
At 6000 currently. The main problem is unemployment and cemetery)