This manual is incomplete.
You may want to read the first post here or even all the pages to get an idea of what plantations are about.
Time in Plantations
The time flows freely in plantations. You can add workers any time. Request improvements at any time. Change anything at any time of the day. However, some of the choices you make, may need a few minutes (up to 10) before they are reflected to the plantation.
Improving Buildings
When improving any building, the following factors play a role in how fast the building will be completed.
- Utility Facilities Quality This plays a paramount role. There is a base bonus that sometimes will be larger than your Quality bonus.
- Laborers Number There is an optimal number but the more you add, the more production you will get. If they become too many, their efficiency drops.
- Tools Availability There is a minimal maintenance fee. With no tools, you cannot improve anything.
You can control the amount of Laborers by assigning more acres to Utility Facilities.
The interface will give you approximately the time remaining for completion. This time is based on cycles of 10 minutes. Which means that you will not get 14 minutes, you will get Approximately 20 minutes instead.
Maintenance
Maintenance display is rounded. The actual amount might be less. However, you will only pay in whole crates whenever the time comes (ie, if your actual consumption is 0.2 crates, then you will pay 1 crate after 5 hours have passed).
While you get an hourly display, in fact maintenance is paid multiple cycles within an hour. If you do not have enough resources to pay for a cycle, you will miss the building benefits for this cycle (not the whole hour or day) but no resources will be removed. If you have enough resources at next cycle, it will count normally and resources will be removed.
Consumption
Needs are not cumulative. Your workers will only consume what they currently need.
Food
Food maintenance is a little different. You can control how much your people eat and they workers need this much more than anything else. You must pay extra attention to your food reserves. If you run out of food, the negative affects can be devastating. It is always preferable to limit the rations or fire workers rather than risk to end up with no food. The workers will get very unhappy if they have no food and their health will drop significantly and can even result to their death in short time.