Veteran difficulty can be as challenging as you would like it to be, however, if you want to min/max sectors and have dense temperate cities, these settings might be just for you. Looking to get the 4M synths achievement? I've also outlined my space station layouts, and trade route concepts and other ideas I used to get it. Good luck and take your time!


The primary setting here is Goods Consumption - Sparse



Sparse goods consumption is the key. To unlock it under Veteran difficulty every other setting needs to be set to its "hardest" difficulty. Positive settings are disabled or scaled down. Most of the settings have little impact on the games toughness. They're more about game play mechanics and usually just mean things take an extra step or additional time.

Of the other major settings, Satisfaction Impact - High, ends up affecting cities less, due to the reduction in good consumption. Meeting the needs of everyone is easier to do and more stable as you grow.

Once you get to Investor and Synthetics, Provided Workforce - Sparse, also becomes a non-issue. Mitigate its impact with drone building modules early on however be prepared to clean those modules up later.

The one unfortunate part is the frequency of calamities and enemy invasion, however, many upsides on several fronts.

- Less production buildings required in all zones
- Less goods traded between sectors
- Mountain and Coastal Building sites won't run out early on
- Lots of extra room for housing in temperate sectors
- Reduction in service buildings required by your cities
- Most efficient usage of the World Market trade routes

My notes below will help guide you through middle and end game. Early game is really just a matter of small steps, starting some big temp sector cities, and getting everything unlocked for late game.

These are some additional observations, overall setup ideas, and tips and tricks.

- The Plus key (+) on the keyboard will speed up the game.
- Changing your computers clock can allow you to re-cast your vote, meaning you can finish all those achievements in a matter of minutes, instead of months. No extra (bribe) resources are given.
- If you place a building chain or roadway in the wrong spot, do not release the left mouse button, right clicking will cancel it instead. Since buildings cannot be moved, this will save you so many headaches.
-If Credit Balance seems to be showing wrong numbers (negative even though should be well into positive side) you may need to restart the game. Rare glitch.

1) Sector traits are one of the more important aspects of the game which I often overlook and I am sure others do as well. They can be re-rolled so you get a good bonus if the initial one is a flop. Many traits are just trash, so highly recommend correcting them once you have enough extra resources. Re-rolling is a bit hit and miss, so try this once you have a decent stockpile of the resources.

2) Of course make sure to unlock all the space station parts before doing this. The best way I've found to farm / max out Iridium, Graphene, Petrochemicals and Magnetite is via the Technology Nexus. It would take so many battles to get to 9999 of each. A 3/3/3/3 space station (skipping agriculture) early on in the game will help fill those up. Switch to another layout once you have 9999 of each. After that the ship battles and sector projects keep me topped up, more or less.

3) I switch to a 5 Electronics, 5 Energy, 2 Biotech space station layout after the 3/3/3/3 layout is useless. The energy from houses has basically helped me power most of my temp and arctic zones. I use the fusion reactor to power the lunar sectors and supply any additional power. You will need at least 3 arctic and 2 lunar training centers, however due to calamities and invasions indirectly disrupting those buildings sometimes I recommend eventually having 4 arctic and 3 lunar training centers. You will always have the max number of astronauts. If you built any training centers in temp zones, feel free to delete them at this point, they will be unneeded.

4) I buy all Luxury Food off the World Market, since I do not use the agriculture tree on the technology nexus, to make food design workshops use rice (which can be a good early choice, but one I usually skip completely). Caution, luxury food does have a wildly fluctuating price point.

I did this because making the luxury food, even with rice, takes up a very large area on the map, and to get it, I would have to forgo some good bonuses in the technology nexus. In the end I use most of my World Market trade routes for this and manufacture essentially every other good, with the exception noted below in item #5. Again this is why I have chosen the difficulty settings above, they help to keep this manageable. Since this resource is unneeded by Synthetics it does seem to be a good choice for using WM trade routes.

Also, I do not trade Luxury Food with the arctic sectors normally. The one exception is if it will help in the short term for a sector project and cancelled once no longer required.

5) I produce ZERO Biopolymers, Construct-o-Bots, Metal Foam and Titanium Plating. Early on yes you will want to / need to, but once you have your first sectors setup, you can easily do away with those buildings altogether. When you need them, you can get them off the World Market. Just make sure you have a few open trade routes, fill up your sectors warehouse, and then delete the associated trade route, rinse and repeat as needed. Due to this the sector traits for construction products are rendered meaningless.

I have a good laugh about one tree in the technology nexus, because this essentially does the same thing as that Orbital Warehouse bonus from it, so in the end this is like I have 3 of the games big bonuses from the Technology Nexus. Its so much nicer to have 500 biopolymers filling your warehouse in a flash, as you expand a new sector, instead of the 50 or 80 you might be producing locally or in other sectors.

You will want to watch your credit balance as you do this. Early on it can eat up a big chunk of it, because yes, typically they are more expensive off the World Market, than made locally. The volume you can get at once easily makes up for that small downside, and that balance is restored once you cancel the trade route.

6) The MOST important building in the game is the Trading Floor, it will make your city way more densely populated, and ensures you upgrade your houses for max profits. I try to fit it in so it covers large areas of houses without any overlap between other trade floors. 100% coverage is not required, if you open the employee upgrading panel in the bottom right of the screen you can see the quantity of available upgrades vs the number of homes left. Since they are 2000 credit balance each, it is best to use them efficiently.

7) The stock market can be a double edged sword. I highly recommend not activating it until you have at least 50,000 - 100,000 or more credit balance, however you can do it at any time. I've started it right at level 10, just to see how low I could keep each competitor level. It will just take up more of your time and credits during the early game, so not recommended to do this if going for the 10hr achievement, as it makes funding things tougher. I typically wait until I have a decent city started in both Viridian and W.W. Bay before going after the stock market.

You can sell off stocks of a competitor, to avoid the fluctuation of their credit balance when they go into the negative, while you buy out the other competitors one at a time. Once each competitor is bought out completely they cannot fight back, so you just need to clear each of them and then they'll go away for good. The industry dominance is averaged between all active competitors, so even if you sell off the stocks to avoid the negative credit balance, you can still cap each industry and unlock those key bonuses. As long as you are the last one standing, you will have total dominance.

I suggest focusing on getting all your own stocks first, and having a decent pool of credits and Influence points at all times. That way you can launch an Antitrust Investigation (with influence points) or re-buy your stock out from under the competitors when they bid on them, to save your influence points. When you have 75+ influence points its a very safe time to buy a new stock from them. Always buy the owned stock first, leave the un-owned ones, this will reduce their credit balance, restricting their ability to buy any stocks. Due to my settings above, the influence points grow very slowly, so this will take some time to buy each competitor out completely.

Lastly, Espionage is key to keeping each of your competitors out of the red once they're your puppet. You want to load up all 5 insiders first for all of them, the game is very unforgiving to low success rates. Really the only things you need to do in the late game with your influence points, is keep all the insiders up, and use Patent Transfer to max their credit pools to keep them out of the red. This can be done easily for all 5, but its a bit rocky as you are buying up all the stocks, so you want to have a decently large credit balance of your own first, and not rely on theirs to support you while you do this. Close to 300,000-500,0000 is a safe number depending on corporation level, but watch out still.

8) It is extremely easy to finish the sector projects, once you have finished the Lunar Licensing Program. I often ignore them until that point, because they require you to build extremely population heavy Arctic and Lunar cities, which you will need to redo to reduce your workforce to only what is needed (item #11). I also use the World Market routes to buy up the resources needed for each task, since you can easily maintain X # of this or that, for the 5-15 minutes required, without getting interrupted by invasions or calamities. Or to quickly load up 500 at a time when I go upgrade each sectors space port.

The one exception to this is the bonus in Akia Floes, its very beneficial, and not too hard to do the first 2 stages early on.

9) Corporation Headquarters, I find these to be just horrible on Veteran difficulty, so far. They really only provide a decent amount of Information & Security, for the cost of a very large amount of credit balance, which is so very very precious. Perhaps in a very densely populated urban setting this might be different, so less individual buildings are required to supply the needed info and security.

10) In lunar and arctic zones, maxing your peoples satisfaction rating is totally pointless. Never build the second tier goods, the secrecy or health care buildings. One that does offer a decent trade off is the Lunar Lunches, the two buildings provide decent population increases for cheap. You can upgrade their houses, but you don't need to make them supper happy. Of course do whatever it takes to finish the sector projects, then trim down what you don't really need after that. Some of those goods/resources are needed for the Space Station (5/5/2), so you may end up producing a few in one sector.

11) Low population in Arctic and Lunar zones only, this is mentioned all over steam already, but is one of the most important points. Use 4 Drone Rack modules on every building in those 7 sectors (8 once you include Tundra) and you will never need many workers there. Of course this is only once you have the industry dominance unlocks, if not, you will need 5 of the drone building. This keeps the goods they use to a minimum, ensuring you are trading nearly all of them to your temp sectors. It will also mean that your production buildings have way more room for them. You can even send out the goods that would apply to the satisfaction of the local workers, but I find that to be pointless, considering the difficulty settings apply substantial goods reduction already. The one exception for drone modules is the credit modules on energy buildings if you end up needing any.

12) Selling goods or resources back to the World Market, this seems to never work out regardless of what I choose, the margins are so thin on Veteran difficulty. Walk away from the game, come back and you will suddenly be netting a loss for those goods, so overall I suggest not doing this. You will also want to save your World Market trade routes for better things like Luxury Food.

13) Calamities and Invasions should be ignored if the impact is small, or they hit an empty zone. If you leave them, they cannot respawn until after the timer is over. The more time with garbage ones, the less time dealing with the harder ones. You will want to get your ships max levels right away, the Invasions go up in difficulty very quickly, however once you have the space station setup, the lasers are all you will need to clear every map.

5 Electronics / 5 Energy / 2 Biotech Space Station


Additional goods will be needed to get nearly all of the Technology Nexus bonuses (minus one), but you may find you do not need them all right away. Ones related to Assignments are rather pointless, since sector related assignments are disabled due to the difficulty settings. Security Infiltration is very nice to have. They make the success rate 100% once you have all 5 insiders, for the Patent Transfers on Ibarra and Lei Sheng, but they are another one that can be skipped, if running into issues getting to the top bonuses.

5 Electronics / 5 Energy / 2 Biotech Technology Nexus




3/3/3/3 Space Station - Stockpiling Resources


Apologies, I do not know who to credit for this one. It was posted on the Anno forums long ago before I had any understanding of how the space station heating even works. They have my greatest appreciation as it taught me a great deal about the layouts!

This layout requires no additional goods to get full bonuses from the technology nexus, because it does not go very far up the tech tree.

3/3/3/3 Technology Nexus

Below is the general outline of what sectors I am coordinating my trade routes between. I figure with these match ups I should have lots of room available in each arctic and lunar sector for the associated temperate sector(s). My other reason for this split is to avoid too much disruption from invasions and calamities but some of that is inevitable.

Luxury food is an exception for trade between temperate sectors, while in the process of building up the trade routes needed for each sector. Once tropical sectors end up with their own dedicated trade route(s) you won't face any shared disruption from the events.

Tundra sector components use up a decent chunk of credit balance, so trading between the island sectors and the large sectors can be useful before needing to go that route. Water and mountain resources from island sectors to the large sectors can help with shortages.

The free Intelliwear from the moon is a great bonus to trade to tropical sectors, more so island sectors in my mind.

Energy is traded from Temp sectors, to associated Arctic and Moon sectors. You want a decent oversupply to make up for disruption from the events. You will have way more than enough for this.

Temperate | Arctic | Lunar

Viridian | Savik | Iwamoto

W.W. Bay | Akia | Novikov

Cape Ambar | Ikkuma | Iwamoto

Walbruck | Kinngait | Novikov

Greentide | Savik | Mare R.

Madrigal | Akia | Mare R.