Awesome! Fun, good game and edjucation! Could be a little more difficult
Reviews for "Waterworks!"
Edit: I was playing on easy mode.. hehe.. but i know my mistake now, sorry for the low review back then! Great game 10/10 addicting, hard and satisfying to complete. Nice job!
scriptwelder responds:
If you managed to get achievements but no medals, refresh the page, reload the game and go to achievements section in game. Medals should sync.
Great game! Really educational and addicting!
It's the man scriptwelder again. Well done on this masterpiece!
Took 199 turns but I beat Impossible Mode! There is no way to earn enough money to build the Sewers before your Influence starts dropping like crazy. So you have to sell everything for that 240 gold price tag (and use Gift cards if you don't have 50 Influence) and screw over the city you've spent all this time upgrading, leaving them all to die of dehydration but hey I got a shiny achievement out of it and they have better plumbing now!
I actually got 3 Well requests in my game which really helped me out. Don't know if I would have made it without them. War is an okay request if you have a surplus of Builders. You get a slight gold and influence gain. Weeding on the other hand is awful requiring 6 Workers and thus greatly hampering your Construction efforts. Using solely Workers lets you break even but anything else is not worth that 20 Influence. Taxes would be okay if it didn't cost 22 gold to finalize on top of paying for a Scribe. The worst is Misplaced Shipment which can be done cheaply with 3 Small Gifts. The man claims he will "Speak highly of you"... but you don't get influence, let alone any reward for doing it.
A lot of requests are a 1:1 trade of gold/influence, basically acting as forced Gift/Donation cards. I think it would have been interesting if you could have a reward like pulling 1 card from the discard pile. I would so love to use that on Water Carrier due to the frequency of me drawing Water Carrier only for a fire to immediately occur, denying me any influence gain. This is particularly bad when your deck gets big enough where TWO FIRES happen before you can reshuffle the Water Carriers back in. Sadly, fires only worsen if you don't douse them. Otherwise I would let them keep going to *cough* reduce the increasing population *cough*.
The hardest part of Impossible is actually when you're struggling in the beginning. My rule of thumb is to restart the game until the two red houses are close to each other and in the middle. Makes it easier for your Water Carriers to handle it. You're off to a good start if you manage to draw two Water Carriers at the same time, especially as that's necessary to get enough Influence to immediately use the Increase Funding card. Remember you can use Gift cards to acquire Influence to immediately use Increase Funding or for Constructions that need it.
Influence is hard to come by on Impossible so take some time rearranging Carriers/Wagons for maximum gains. Shifting them a single space could make all the difference. If a house keeps on being chosen for population growth, just write it off as a lost cause and try to move your Water Carrier somewhere he can actually make a difference. In the late game, it'll get to the point where you barely earn any Influence and actually have to take measures to reduce loss to survive long enough to build the next water upgrade.
Donation cards are still as useful to get gold immediately but you have to be careful not to lower it too much if what you're constructing needs Influence or unlocks Increase Funding.
You need to build Archive first on Impossible because not only does it add more Permits to your deck but you're actually able to hold them and not be at the mercy of RNG giving you cards at the right time. You can use the undo turn button if you start the wrong Construction. From your experience playing Normal/Hard mode, you should create a basic Construction list, showing what Workers are required/if it needs Influence/what it unlocks. This is definitely important for Impossible mode so that you know which Workers to store in your Quarters in preparation.
Remember that Construction and Requests can act as pseudo storage if you pay the gold for them. So it's best to pay for the least expensive stuff like Workers/Building Material/Permit first to free up storage space. Every card you manage to store away is another card that is kept out of deck circulation, allowing you to temporarily draw through it faster. If a Request lasts past the turn you reshuffle, you can choose to finalize it after you reshuffle to keep used cards out of your deck temporarily for that cycle. Worker/Building Material requests should be done before reshuffling though (assuming you need those cards for your next construction).
Delaying Construction that increases Population Growth is an important strategy on Impossible. Since those usually unlock more Sumps, it's best to thin out your deck as much as possible before finalizing them. That way you'll draw them sooner. Do make sure you've built everything else beforehand though. You can use the undo turn button if you accidentally start the wrong Construction.
On the other hand, you may want to complete certain Constructions before reshuffling to put the used cards back into your deck. You only have a certain amount of Workers and Building Materials so take note of how many remain in your draw pile. If your Quarters are full, you can discard someone you don't immediately need for any Construction or if you're gonna end up drawing another copy later anyway.
Wells and Sumps should be placed to always cover 4 houses or 3 if absolutely needed for those houses. Until you upgrade them, Sumps are best on the right side. Early game, Wells are better on the left side since they have the same value as Sumps placed there. Even late game, when Sumps have taken over the middle row sections, Wells are still useful on the perimeter to keep two houses green/yellow longer.
Where to place them? if all houses are green you can keep them in your Warehouse. You can also look at all the house values and judge by which group of houses is getting close to hitting yellow/red. Also note that a Sump that supplies a house on the corner is especially helpful since Water Carriers only affect 3 houses when placed on a corner. Likewise, you can place a Sump to lift the burden/help a Water Carrier and allow you to move them somewhere else. If you put a Pipe or Sump in a wrong spot, again the undo turn button is really handy.
Pro tip: Laying down pipes frees up Warehouse slots. As Sumps should be placed adjacent to 3/4 houses, pipes of course should be laid out in a straight line on either side of the middle row houses. You can always sell one later if you end up needing to create a line up or down.
After building Quarters II, build Stables ASAP, Water Wagons will keep you alive until you upgrade Sump efficiency. You will also need Stable II. Personally I'd love to be able to get a fourth Water Wagon but I suppose that would the game too easy.
Underground Tunnels/Advanced Sumps/Heated Water Tower are all optional upgrades and you can only afford to build 1 of them on Impossible. I'm not even sure if it's worth it considering they only give +1 Sump efficiency while eating 88 gold's worth of cards. By the time you fulfill the requirements, it would just even out with population gain. It'd be another story if they also give you 1 additional Sump. Well, I ended up building 1 so maybe it is necessary?