If you’re jumping into the Cartel Tycoon demo, you might find yourself overwhelmed by the blend of logistics, crime economy, and city-builder mechanics. The game provides some tutorial help, but let’s be honest — it’s not the most beginner-friendly. That’s where this guide steps in: no fluff, just a detailed walkthrough of the early-game basics to get your empire running smoothly without falling into frustrating trial-and-error loops.

Booting Up and Interface Basics

Once you launch the demo and create a new game, you’re thrown into your first region with a small map and a list of objectives. These objectives — visible through your Efficiency tab — guide your first moves. Pay attention to the upper-left corner where several question marks hold helpful information and tips. While the in-game hints are useful, many players prefer learning by doing, which is why a guide like this helps simplify the learning curve.

Right off the bat, you’ll notice a SimCity-style layout: lieutenants, warehouses, farms, and labs form the backbone of your operation. Each of these has its purpose. Lieutenants are your mobile assets; warehouses store goods; farms grow your base crops (like cannabis); and labs process raw goods into packaged drugs.

Core Flow: From Farm to Fortune

The foundational supply chain works like this: you build a warehouse, connect farms to it with roads, and then link the warehouse to a lab that processes the product. From the warehouse, your goods travel to the airport, your main export hub in the early game. The airport accepts illegal goods without question, making it your go-to for generating fast income.

Once your first batch of cannabis is ready and your warehouse is connected, you’ll need to set destinations. Click on the warehouse and set the lab as a destination, then do the same from the lab to the airport. That flow — farm to warehouse, warehouse to lab, lab to airport — is your early-game pipeline. Simple, effective, and crucial.

Location and Efficiency: Picking the Right Soil

When placing farms, take a moment to check the terrain’s efficiency by viewing the fertility layer. Shades of green will show you how well cannabis (or other crops) will grow in different areas. Darker greens mean lower efficiency; lighter, brighter shades mean better yields. Since you’re confined to a small section of the map at the start, place your farms in the most fertile available plots and expand later.

Watch out for the Tier 1 default crop when placing farms. If you accidentally start growing the wrong crop (like vegetables when you meant cannabis), you’ll need to wait for the farm to finish its current cycle or manually reset it — wasting time and money. Plan before you place.

Using Lieutenants to Move Goods Early On

Before automation kicks in, your lieutenants play a vital role. You can manually assign them to move cannabis, money, or goods between key locations. For instance, after storing cash in the warehouse, you can order your lieutenant to deliver it to the bank. This manual delivery helps bridge the gap before automation systems (like workstations and residences) are online. It’s also a great way to avoid product overflow and keep your cash flow active.

Reaching $100,000 Before the First Bribe Event

Here’s one crucial tip that can save your entire operation: aim to reach $100,000 in dirty money before completing your initial tasks. Later, the game will throw a National Police bribe event at you, requiring exactly $100,000 to avoid disaster. If you don’t have it ready, the airport gets destroyed — which means game over, essentially. Stockpile early, focus on your farm-warehouse-lab-airport flow, and use your lieutenants to handle cash deliveries.

Unlocking the Lab and Automating Your Setup

Once your lab is available, place it as close to the warehouse as possible to shorten transport routes. Each warehouse starts with three trucks; upgrades give you more. As your production ramps up, these trucks become essential for avoiding delivery delays and overflow. You can still use lieutenants to help if the trucks aren’t keeping up, but investing in logistics efficiency should be a priority.

Introducing the Workshop: Automation Begins

Once you unlock and build the workshop, you hit a big milestone. The workshop allows you to package drugs using cover items like vegetables, coffee, or chicken. This step is required for certain export routes, especially when dealing with seaports in the full game. For now, keep it simple: stick to basic drug packaging.

Place the workshop close to your warehouse and connect it to both the main road and the warehouse itself. Then, set the workshop’s destination to the airport — it becomes your new export center, automating your product shipments and freeing up your lieutenants.

The Residence: Automating Money Laundering

Next, unlock and place a residence near the airport. This building automatically transports dirty money to your bank, finally removing the need for lieutenant deliveries. Just connect it via road, assign it to pull from the airport, and set the destination as your bank. You’ve now got an automated system laundering money, exporting drugs, and minimizing micromanagement.

Final Steps and Upgrades

To keep up with production, upgrade your warehouses and farms via the research tab. Level 2 upgrades give you more storage and transport slots, speeding everything up. This helps prevent overflow, which leads to lost money and wasted goods.

Once this setup is in place — warehouse, farms, lab, workshop, residence — and all destinations are configured, your operation runs mostly on its own. You’ll have lieutenants freed up to handle other duties, and you’ll be well-prepared for whatever events or expansions the game throws your way.

Closing Advice

This guide covers the critical first phase of Cartel Tycoon’s demo. Mastering these fundamentals will prevent early failures, wasted time, and missed opportunities. Build smart, automate early, and always keep one eye on your money laundering pipeline. The police are coming — and they don’t wait for rookies to catch up.

Enjoy the demo while it lasts — it’s surprisingly expansive and playable even beyond its intended limits. With this knowledge, you’re not just surviving — you’re laying the foundation for a drug empire.