Your first move: touch a field
The whole game works by clicking. There is no permanent row of buttons on screen: you click a thing, its inspector opens in the bottom left, and you act from there. Click a field, then choose plant cotton.
Seeds cost 900 lira per planting. A planted field turns green and starts growing; when it ripens it turns white and a label appears above it showing what it is worth. One in-game day is about four real minutes, so waiting is not a long affair.
The most common opening mistake: planting one field and waiting. You can afford several at once, and an unplanted field is idle capital. Plant every field that is open to you in the first round.
Hiring is free
You can hire a worker from the field inspector, and there is no hiring fee. Employing someone costs nothing up front; you pay a daily wage of 500 lira. Workers plant and harvest for you, which removes the manual clicking from the loop entirely.
This is why hiring early is almost always right. The one thing to watch is whether the balance can cover payroll: if there is not enough money at the end of the day, staff leave on their own.
Production runs itself
Once harvested cotton reaches the factory the chain runs without you: cotton becomes yarn, yarn becomes fabric, and the sewing workshop turns fabric into garments. You never press a production button. Your job is only to keep the chain from jamming.
| Product | Comes from | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Cotton | Fields, or purchase | Raw material, also sold wholesale |
| Yarn | Factory | Intermediate, sold wholesale |
| Fabric | Factory | Intermediate, sold wholesale |
| Garment | Sewing workshop (2 fabric → 1 garment) | Retail sale, the highest margin |
Your first sale: watch the shop
When a customer reaches your shop, a sale panel opens at the top of the screen and waits for you to press sell. If you do not, the customer runs out of patience and your reputation drops.
The fix is to hire shop staff from the shop inspector. With staff, the panel never opens at all and they complete the sales for you. This is the second thing to buy.
Garment prices rise with reputation, so protecting reputation is directly protecting income. Reputation starts at 2.0 and climbs to 5.0.
Your first order
Order cards appear along the left edge: a company wants cotton, yarn or fabric and sends its truck. Deliver and you gain money and reputation; let the timer expire and you lose reputation.
An order you cannot fill can be rejected with the ✕ on its card. That also costs reputation, but only a quarter of what missing it costs. Since the loading bay holds one vehicle, leaving a dead order parked there delays every delivery queued behind it.
The first ten minutes, in order
- Plant every field that is already open.
- Hire field workers (free to hire, you only pay the wage).
- Hire shop staff so sales are not missed.
- Deliver the first order that arrives and start building reputation.
- When money allows, open a new field (6,500 lira).
- If storage starts filling, build a silo or a warehouse.
Three things not to do early
- Buying cotton. The market price is around 240 lira a unit, and cotton you grow yourself costs a fraction of that. Purchasing is for emergencies, such as an order that is about to expire.
- Building facilities too soon. Facility bonuses are multipliers on production. A multiplier on almost no production is almost nothing.
- Ignoring capacity. The moment a store fills, the whole chain stops: harvesting halts and production stops with it. If a stock counter in the HUD is flashing red, build storage now.