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Romans 3:23
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;"

One of my favorite games is prison architect. I was not expecting much when I first bought it. Boy I racked up the hours quickly. I have not had this much fun with a tycoon since Railroad Tycoon 3. Prison starts slow, but gets out of control quickly. I have found a few tricks to playing but first I just want to show you some screen shots.
This was tooken before we were allowed more than 1 foreman as you can see I glitched it to have two.
A more detailed look of the first.
THREE ARMS! AAAAAH!
I don't know why there is a glowing block in the corner of the screen.
Testing Warden mode... With a riot that ended shortly.
Oh this one has a funny story to it. I was having trouble getting suppiles in and out of my prison. I was concerned about building the prison to notice that my prisoners were not obtaining food. So I tried changing the schedual. Nothing happened. Increase the quality of food. Nothing happened, Hired more cooks, and improved the kitchens. Nothing happened. It wasn't untill I noticed my Deliveries room was FULLY STOCKED with mail. The storage areas too, the mail room was a mess. It was nasty. I added a bigger deliveries area, and the death toll started to drop. So remember, Prisoner families send letters not food.
This was one of my earlier prisons. The prisoners tried to escape through the least resistence possible. I had a perimeterwall surrounding the area, so under the front door would be the route of least resistence. However I think I just built the reception area. Cause the escapies ended up right there. It was sudden, I treally hate escapies, then I laugh when I saw they couldn't do anything.
Escape mode tends to bring out the worst in me.

Tips and Tricks:

Getting started:

You'll Want to take the top two grants first. Start by building a small prison, and a reception. This small prison will likely be protective custody or Super max later in the game, but for now it houses all prisoners Later in the game, it's a bad idea to build during the day since you have prisoners, but you have none now so ZOOM ZOOM BUILD!

Daily Routine:

Unlike most tycoon games. Prison Architect has some RTS elments to it.
7:00 A.M. Before prisoners arrive, you'll want to hire guards to meet the new demand. (You may want to hire the new guards before the Tazer rollout program starts. So that they'll start the day with Tazers.) As well as getting all dangerous prisoners settled down. This is to ensure the fresh fish easily fit in with the system. While the prisoners are arriving check the intelligence to see if any are snitches or ex-lawenforcement.

DAY SHIFT: New prison construction, offices, and forestries should be carried out at this time

6:00 P.M. This is your time to search the prisoner cells, before they go to bed, Any suspecious prisoners should be searched. (Like Super Max, repeated escape attempts, Quick prisoners with access to labour zones, ETC) The New Search toliets option can be done every 3 days. Just don't over do the searches else prisoners will go mad.

NIGHT SHIFT: Construction on existing prisons should be carried out at this time. It can also stop escape attempts as you can see in one of the screen shots. Make sure all perimeter guards are ready, especially dogs.

Guards:

A little unknown fact when first playing the game is suppression effect. This makes prisoners less likely to do stupid things. Yet they also can't consentrate. Being locked up in solitary provides this effect, but Armed guards do to (Up to 25 feet). So really you want just dogs, and average Joes to do the patroling, and opening doors. Snipers supply suppression too (Up to 30 Feet), but Walls stop the suppression unlike the Armed guards.

Entrances:

For bigger prisons logistics become apart of the walkways. There must be four different entrances to your prison. One for Prisoners, one for visitors, and Two for Staff, an Imports(Delivers),and an export(Exports and Garbage). Exports should be done last, as unloading trucks free up space.

Managing Finances:

You have to make money in a tycoon right! Well the best way i've found is ironically making forestries. Turning it into a lumber tycoon rather than a prison game. But if you are running an actual prison, try to make at least 2,000 a day. That's the federal grant limit. Prison expenses should be done with the Prisoner grant.