Alternative title: Trotskyite gets put in charge, tries to push communism button, finds out the material conditions of a fucking ice age may not be conducive to declaring a final victory of the 5th internationale over Stalinism in a videogame.
My favorite quote in the article
Everyone was incredibly happy with me and all my kept promises right up until the coal ran out, which I'd kind of stopped paying attention to as I got ensnared in a thicket of political manoeuvring and ideology. I wasn't overwhelmed—the game does a good job of not bombarding you with too much information and mechanical complexity, and Stokalski says it's a conscious effort by the devs to make sure you're never "doing notes, doing maths on the side just to not die"—I'd just gotten wrapped up in ideas without paying much heed to material reality.
If you can pull it off, automaton spam is a better option
Eventually, but from the first second of the game, sending in engineers to the mines and maximizing the first circle (if you cheese it you can get everyone housed on the lowest tier on day one) are critical to a no death run.
Also never hitting the overtime button is a requirement for no death, so you really have to work the engineers early on to prevent that one story death.
Sure, for the early game engineers aren't super useful but you need them for their skills later
Yeah, and if you're going for no death then it's not really an issue. It's just impossible if you let your engineers loaf around early game when stockpiling and hitting those tier 1 upgrades are critical.
Those silly little steampunk daddy longlegs were so silly but a real pinch hitter when you played your cards right