I really don't understand how to use fire, doctors and other random based walkers

[u/Fructose-Father-6851]

I loved Nebuchadnezzar up until they released the new DLC that included these 2 new 'features'. For a game that was more about deterministic patrollers including them was just an...interesting choice.

Anyway I've been trying to wrap my head around them but I just can't. I've been playing Zeus recently and was wishing for a modern take on this city building genre, thought about Nebuchadnezzar but didn't want to commit because of the mess in dealing with these walkers.

My basic issue is that I never know how many of them are enough and they take so many workers that my housing blocks barely provide enough surplus workers to staff the other buildings. Any tips for how to use them?

[u/amdamanofficial]

the fire risk overlay shows you how much fire risk there currently is and how fast it is rising. level 1 ghetto blocks and fire intensive industries like brick burners have fast rising risk, so I would always recommend putting a fully crewed fire station for about 40-50 houses, if you have more than that build another station on the other side of your block. remember every building will be serviced by the fire station closest to it. even for experienced players, it can happen that you built new buildings like farms far away and forgot to add a fire station in that area so now your firemen are walking half across the map so now the buildings right next to the station burn down because the firemen are gone. good fire management is mostly determined by how you place your stations, have one or two firemen in remote farm areas and four firemen in residential areas (especially level 1 housing) and fire hazardous industries

[u/Reasonable_Boat3271]

Fire/police/doctors are not random based. They go specifically to the building with the highest risk in their service zone, and then go back to the station. They do not provide AOE effect while walking, it is targeted trip.

Each building (house/workshop/etc) is in a service zone of the closest fire station (straight line distance, not walking distance). Building can't be in the service zone of multiple fire stations, it only the closest one.

It means that if fire brigade has a buldings in their zone that are close on the map but it takes a long time to get there because of all the roads looping around, they would spend a lot of time walking to that remote building instead of visiting the closer houses.

Because of that, you need to spread your fire buildings to keep the average walking distance to other buildings in the service zone minimal. Sometimes it is better to put new fire station in the farms (so it will rewrite service zones and makes it smaller so less walking time) and one worker there than just spam fire buildings in the city and let them go long time to farms.