On trading X minimizing wealth

[the_red_kraken]

So, I'm a pretty casual player who had sucess on the lower difficulties but is looking to climb up. My strategy used to be beer production to trade. That would allow me to buy all the other things I needed.

However, I constantly read in this forum about the raid escalation problems that occur with wealth on the higher difficulties. So, my question is, is it still worth to mass produce beer to trade for things as weapons, or would it be optimal to just produce weapons myself, that way the wealth is not spiking up?

[Serenity]

Don't pay too much attention to min-maxers. It can help, but it's hardly necessary

[Canute]

that way the wealth is not spiking up?

Basicly there is no way to advance your colony without gaining wealth.

Basicly trading is a good way to eliminate wealth, since you never get the full market value of your things from a trader.
But trading is slow, and you never get these things you want.

I just buy things there are hard to craft, like bionic, television, componets, adv. componets.
But weapon and armor i like to craft self, not to speak to train 1-2 crafter into higher level on that way.

[Lowkey1987]

I think, you are doing it right. Perhaps change the difficulty of your saved game and see what happens.
Yes, there are spikes in difficulty, but these are problems of the max difficulty.
I always buy things, which will be handy in the future. Things that will give me an advantage over my enemy (like artefacts). Or components, later all the steel.
Try to be near another settlement and use small caravans.
Change the environment, so when there is an attack, you have good defending points.
And use your one-use weapons.

[Razzoriel]

If you want to minimize raiding potentials, controlling your colony size does way more for that than simply controlling your colony's wealth. Just avoid making legendary artwork and letting useless high-quality weapons lay around and you're good to go, for the most part.

A more extreme approach is to hire useless pawns and let them get killed in a raid. It "resets the difficulty" and makes the next raids for one year easier.

[the_red_kraken]

Would it be better to be picky when it comes to recruiting colonists, then?

[Razzoriel]

Would it be better to be picky when it comes to recruiting colonists, then?

It's ALWAYS a great strategy to be very picky. Non-violent pawns are a huge burden to a colony, unless they have very good stats on something your colony lacks. For example, a colony with more than 10% of non-violent pawns is doomed to be overwhelmed. Good rule of thumb is a maximum of one non-violent for every 10 colonists. Two when you reach 13 is already a little too much, but manageable.

And recruiting useless pawns for the sheer purpose of sacrificing work.

[Ruptga]

I agree, I won't take a pawn if they have more than one negative trait.  I'll bend that if the negatives are not that bad, like annoying voice and slowpoke, especially if I really need their skills, but things like slothful, wimp, sickly, or non-violent are almost always an instant write-off. 

Skills are more important than traits, generally, but even a pawn with no skills or flames can be ok if they're a fast learner or too smart.  Jogger and a willingness to clean/haul or even a little handling skill can also salvage an otherwise useless pawn.

Anyway, I always craft whatever I can, for money I sell off whatever extra leather or fur I have laying around, plus art and sometimes yayo.  I try to keep no more than 1000 to 3000 silver on hand, depending on the stage of the game, and keep my non-food stockpiles about as low as I can get away with.  Whenever I have extra money I'll call in a trader and pick up whatever rockets, artifacts, or bionics (especially archotech) look nice.  I'll also buy as many of both types of components basically whenever I can.  Components are a great way to level a budding crafter, but they take too long if you have stuff you need to be crafting right now.

[B@R5uk]

Archotech enhanced people became a bad choice in latest versions for caravan journeys because of them freaking out due to high expectations and absence of mood bonuses during the journey.

Also there is another one way to gain wealth suitable for the most of the forest regions. You can chop off all the wood you can find in clusters (good job to train plant skill) and turn this wood into fuel. This way wood 4.3% more expansive, 16 times lighter and takes 4 times less cells. Good for storing and then for selling during expeditions. Not mentioning great effectiveness of fuel-powered generators. Bad thing they heat up a lot, but whether that is really bad depends on situation.