Dutchatlantis

[Hawk]

The following text is a compilation of what was salvaged from the old Gathering Forum. It contains postings from several different people.
Thanks goes out to Wolverine for putting this all together.

Hawk

Dutchatlantis
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I really enjoyed this scenario which is not surprising, given that it is a fit for my style of play of building vast corporate empires, steamrolling everything in my path ala Standard Oil.
My trains were far more expensive this time around, both initially and as an annual expense. My profit margins went down compared to Flying Scotsman, but does profit really matter when you help remake an entire Continent?
Date ended: Jan 2048 (have until end of 2050)
# Stations: 32
# Trains: 20
Total Revenue: $105,188
Previous years Rev: $9,040
Total Expenses: $68,850
Train Expenses: $21,497
Previous Years Expenses: $6,087
Total Net Profit: $36,338
Previous Years Net Profit: $2,953
# bonds: 2
Outstanding Shares: 475,000
Price per share: $61
Market Cap: $28,975
5 Year Weighted Return: 7%
Revenue per Share: $18.10
Earnings Per Share: $5.90
Book Value per share: $99
Load Revenues: $103,129
Express Revenues: $51,363
Track Miles: 3,040
Revenue per Load Mile: $122
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I too thought it was a very funny scenario.
My line was mostly electric, with the Re 6/6 was the backbone of the system, and the Eurostar (aka Trans-Euro) as the long-distance hauler. Both were set to max 8 mixed cars. I also had 2-3 E-88 designated for express only, and a few Class 132 & HST 125 (the DD 080-X felt to good to be used in this european campaign, I am however using it in the Californian one) for the for-fun sidelines/mostly-freight lines. I connected to all towns in the map but two or three, and had roughly as much revenue from freight as from express. I managed to haul more than five cars of cheese every year without promoting it (in fact I hauled over 60 cars of cheese towards the end). I started my network around Berlin and got gold without any problems.
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So how do you connect to Britain? I have tried everything and can't get a bridge across. Help!
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Don't forget to buy access rights to Britain.
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I did ($500K) and I still can't build a bridge. It just won't do it. I'm trying for the shortest distance and I'm up on the edge area.
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I just clicked and drug a bridge from Brussels to England. It cost about $10mil, but that was OK as I had $13mil in the bank.
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Hey!
I used a tunnel to connect Dutchlantis to England, and now I'm curious how you did. Tunnel or suspension bridge?
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I tried so hard to bulid a bridge, before I realized it must be the Chunnel ! Is a bridge possible anyway?
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I buit a bridge only because I didn't know a tunnel was possible.
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I haven't gotten to play it most of the way through yet, since it keeps crashing on me. Only one that's done it so far too. Just offhandedly does this one have a lil movie intro before it, cause since I went 1.02 they don't seem to be playing, intro included?
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same with me - when i tried to connect, the bridge was offered - so i was happy to have the money asked for it and took the chance
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Bridge here too. I fall into the catagory of I had no freaking clue that I could build a tunnel.
I went up on the dike area at the one point where it was a somewhat decent grade and then proceeded on top of the dike until I was directly across from the UK. Then I built a little $5M bridge
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I didn't realize a tunnel would be offered either. How much does it cost? Are the special effects neat enough to justify replaying? (Won very easily with a monster bridge)
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wrote:
I didn't realize a tunnel would be offered either. How much does it cost? Are the special effects neat enough to justify replaying? (Won very easily with a monster bridge)
A tunnel costs a bit more than $10M and has zero grades all the way. I think that it is a waste of money to replace a bridge with a tunnel, it can maybe be justified as an option to doubletrack a singletrack bridge. Then again, maybe you can afford to waste money.
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Hi all,
I am chugging along in Dutchlantis, enjoying the speed of modern trains, when it suddenly struck me:
There is a whole lot of water between us and England
Now, I have a fairly sound economy running some 2M profit from trains and industry each, totalling 4M/year.
Since I only have ten more years to the campaign scenario, I do not feel any urgent need to invest heavily into either rails nor industry, except for the England line.
I have no clue to the cost of driving such a long link to England, and before I spend more time wasting my resources, I would want to know how much a link to England cost.
I assume the cheapest is to drive rail up on top of the wall, and make a looooong bridge across the ocean. ( I tried to make a tunnel, but no luck. )
Also, would it be worth it to make a rail to the little island west of Germany, for transporting the Bauxite to an Aluminum mill ? ( After buying said Mill of course )
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Tunnel or bridge, the choice is yours Price is roughly the same as far as I can remember; bridge looks much cooler
Before you try to run rail...even just to get a cost estimate, buy Rights to run rail in Britain. Sounds obvious, but I think its been a source of great confusion to ppl.
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go for the tunnel, so you can avoid creeping upon the dam. Both tunnel portals have to be below sea level, start from Amsterdam (or what the heck that city is named in this spooky map).

BTW there is a bridge or chunnel poll thread in the forum
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Thanks for the tips. I will see what I can do later tonight.
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Single track costs about $8.5m from almost anywhere just south of those northern inland lakes (cant remember town names) but go in just south of Camelot so you can also run a line straight up to the uranium mines (Sheffield) - my home town incidentaly and I dont remeber seeing any - plenty coal mines in my youth!
Take bonds if neccessary and put on two uranium only trains to two separate towns wanting the stuff and you'll win before you have time to go bankrupt. Remember you'll need an extra million or so for the stations and trains and max No of bonds is 20.
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Make sure you have connected to as much Nuclear Plants as possible in the Benelux before making the bridge to the UK. The initial Uranium runs from the UK to the Benelux will immediately pay back the costs of the bridge (8 loads of uranium on the futuristic yellow train => 500k $ for each load => 2000k $ for each run => 5 runs and you got your money back
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Only take one run on each of two trains so provided you've met all other conditions you get gold within 6 months of connecting to "Sheffield" There's plenty of Uranium in them thare hills around Sheffield.
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I just tried starting Dutchlantis and can't seem to make a profit. I'm using the diesel HS125's. I made one line with trains Arnhem-Brussels and Immersterdam-Poort Whatever. I'm getting like $6k per run. Should I have borrowed more and used the super-fast electrics?
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You're starting in the wrong place. You need nearby two star towns preferably crossing no rivers. Hanover worked for me (it always seems a good place to start in any European/German scenario) - I went south and east from there (cant remember city names) and made enough to get to Munich pretty quickly. There's also cheese in that area.
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It is hard to overestimate the importance of Cheese in this scenario
If you manage to interupt a milk flow with your own Cheese factory then you are a long way towards making a solid income.
For what its worth, I managed for a very long time ( 8 cities ) to use only one train. I used the blindingly fast electric train with 5 cars. It had no trouble keeping up with handling cargo, letting me concentrate on a solid foundation of industry to enable me to expand.
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wrote:
You're starting in the wrong place. You need nearby two star towns preferably crossing no rivers. Hanover worked for me (it always seems a good place to start in any European/German scenario) - I went south and east from there (cant remember city names) and made enough to get to Munich pretty quickly. There's also cheese in that area.
Use the cargo map overlay when you start the game and see where the cargo is and what it is, then play to suit.
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I remember I connected 3 (close) cities and bought 1 train with my initial money+bonds. Then connect as fast as possible to more cities, on the start of the new year, your ratings will go up, and you can issue a new bond. Also try to refinance bonds every year: if you have no money, but you can issue a bond at 2% less interest than your highest one, issue that bond and repay the highest.
I could live with 1 train for 5 cities too. When you start to earn a yearly income, start paying back the +10% bonds, but keep the others. Then expand to more cities and maybe buy a second train.
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What are your suggestions for hollantis?
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1) try to connect at least 3 or 4 cities with 2+ stars and 1 diesel loco with your initial money
2) haul cheese and waste
3) try to connect to england as fast as possible (you'll need approx 10M for a bridge + 1M for track in england+stations+trains) and haul uranium. Once you've done this, you'll receive money faster than you can spend.
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Playing on easy, I went the whole game and only set custom consists for uranium from England. I got the cheese bonus every year without really trying.
I went all-electric for Holland, with all E-88 engines for the flat lands. I avoided grades. The only serious hill I climed was on the Ijsvogel to Neu Frankfurt link, and I used a tunnel for that so that there were no long grades of more than 3% anywhere.
I didn't try to go to England until I was out of debt and had a AAA credit rating and a couple million in cash.
I had trouble figuring out how I was supposed to get to England, but finally saw the ramp up to the rim near Hemelweg. I ran non-electrified track up the ramp and rollercoaster track around to the corner near Brussels where I could make the bridge to New London. Then I figured out how much I needed and borrowed a huge pile of bonds (all at 5%) to get enough to get there. I'm not sure this was the best way, next time I'll try a longer bridge straight to Camelotte from closer to the top of the ramp. I used aDD-080X for the trans-channel part of the run and it dump all the uranium at the same large town in Holland. It was automatically spread around by the E-88's from there. After a couple runs I added another DD-080 and just let them carry whatever made the most, which was still usually uranium. As PJay says, by this point you're rolling in cash because the uranium brings a huge profit (best part of a million for one 8 car run)
When I'd paid off all the bonds I wrote to pay for the England link and saved a few million more I ran a burn track (non-electric, cheapest path) to Munich for the gold. I went across the little chain of lillypad islands, which was a mistake, next time I'll go the long way, it will be cheaper.
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just for reference if you play this again, I started at Brussels and without climbing the wall, ran track to England as a tunnel for roughly $11 million. Saved winding track along the walls and made a nice 0 grade track except coming out on England side having to climb the hills out of Camelot.
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Dang, I tried that first but couldn't make a tunnel stretch out. When I saw the ramp I figured the scenario writer was forcing me that way.
I played with it again just now and didn't have any trouble getting a tunnel to go straight to camelot -- $10 mil like you said. I still had trouble getting a tunnel to go to New London, but finally found a single spot almost at the west end of the islet which would work. That tunnel is only $7.5 million, but its a 1% grade and you're still not all the way there. The camelot tunnel slope was so low it shows up as 0%.
Definitely the way to go!
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Buy a lot of industries and farms early, steel mill in dusseldorf, keep them supplied. Head toward munich, branch off when you can drum up the money (bonds). Save up 12,000,000$ and complete the tunnel to Camelot. Then buy alll the fast locamotives you can and rape camelot. The E88 worked well for me.
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I'm really missing something: to Silver-win this scenario you have to haul Uranium from New Camelot (or some such), but I can't figure out how to dig a Chunnel across the North Sea to do it! I've finally figured out how to tunnel through a mountain, but under water eludes me.
I've misplaced whatever book came with this -- probably dropped it under mountain of papers in closet -- and I'd appreciate a clue from someone who's tunneled under water!
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I built a bridge over the water. Works too.
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There's some "trick" here : I've built over narrow straights, but I can't build over the North Sea. 'Wish there were some way you could identify the Place and Conditions under which you crossed the North Sea in the Dutch Atlantis campaign, 'cause I'm just not able to do it. Nor Chunnel it.
'Can't see how I can make any progress in this campaign.
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Wasted lots of time re-trying to place a bridge across the North Sea, but finally succeeded.
What a chore: it took a couple of hours to "get it right" and I can't say with certainty what made it work. I'm inclined to think there is a dual requirement that (1) the roadbed be heading in precisely the right direction and that (2) there be enough "beach" to initiate the bridge. This was a pointless pain in the butt when climbing the steep Dike and then trying to get a demanding angle. It took perhaps 20 trials to get the roadbed right -- if that was the issue.
Just mind-numbingly stupid if the game doesn't let the approach trestle and the bridge turn to make building the bridge sane. Or... maybe there was some other problem. So it goes....
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I ran my rails up the dike in the north of the netherlands, then ran them on top of the dike to the west side of the netherlands. I made a bridge from there to the high levels of england (in the south). From there to the uranium mines.
Don't try to start a bridge from tracks which are not yet on the dike.
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And make sure you have access rights to the UK before you even try to build the bridge!
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I never tried this campaign, but after reading this thread, I gave it a whirl.
Playing on medium level, I managed to get Gold bt 2041, using a bridge. I kept playing the campaign and by 2045, I had a chunnel. To save on track maintenance, I demolished the bridge.
The trick to building a chunnel is to start at the base of the levee (or dike) and head for Camelot. Just below Camelot is a deep valley. That's where the chunnel should come out, approximately the same elevation as where you started. If I remember right, the chunnel cost about 12 mil, about the same as the bridge form the levee to New London.
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Coincidentially (not) if you look at the dike there's a neat little path for you to lay your railroad track. It lets you quite easily build a suspension bridge (for $15M+) to the island! It shouldn't take more than a couple minutes to do, if it took you hours, you must have been trying from a nearly impossible location (like the south end of Europe - the nice little ramp is on the North end).
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The ramp on the north end is near a river and the city starts with an H, all I can remember. Going for gold on hard, so far I've done all but war effort on gold.
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Just played this for the first time last night, gold the gold but it was close:
1) With two years to end of scenario, i hit pause, and maxed out on bonds with $9 mil in cash. The tunnel from brussels to the north of UK was 10 mil so i thought i was sunk.
2) starting right at the Brussels train station though, if i click and stretch across the tunnel, i found that on the slope just south of Camelot you can get a tunnel to poke out for about $9mil, but you haver to comb that slope back and forth to get a good spot.
3) With my remaining cash, i built a qiuck little line and station into camelot, and built a train to start there and connect top brussels, then i un-paused.
Strangely, my UK island only had one Uranium supply, from a warehouse in the town south of camelot, so i had to run a spoke down there next.
The payoff was a handsome $325K per car, foolishly i had the max cars set at 5. I know though that only 8 cars of uranium crossed the channel, but then the gold screen came on, so i can only assume that it counted a delivery from Brussels to another point with a nuke plant.
Getting the gold first try on Dutchlantis and this scenario last night was quite a rush! I have to go back and re-do the scenarios where i didnt go for broke.
Oh yeah, speaking of going for broke, even after sinking 18 bonds i was still profitable given the Uranium revenue.
I never overlapped my train schedules this time, just kept adding a new train every time i added another 3 cities on the way to Munich.
Much as i love Dutch cheese, i never gave it a thought.
---my first post at the Gathering--to wordy?
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i simply chunneled tonewc and then track to sheffield where the uranium mines were, so won the thing.

[Alfed E Neumann]

Probably the fastest way to win this scenario is to not lay track for the first ten years or so. The area's mostly flat as a pancake with several rivers, wares will easily move around even without your assistance. Most industries will work even better than usual, while there's only small price differences you could exploit with a railroad.

So, keep your eyes peeled for any startups. Farms, dairies, orchards, it practically doesn't matter where they spring up, if you get them soon you'll have a guaranteed 20% revenue even at bad sites, while the average is more like 30%. Don't be shy of buying access rights only get at a new orchard. Be more careful about any actual industries, because hey, you never know when, where, and if the AI may plant a competing building.

When you're able to borrow like five million at prime rate, it's time to look towards England, the land of unheard-of opportunities. Your situation will probably differ from mine, but here's what I did as an example of what can be expected:
a) the perfect aluminum mill
The bauxite mines apparently are always cramped together on a small patch of land north of Oxford; e few years into the game they will be sitting on huge stockpiles. Until it has consumed those piles, an aluminum mill will get bauxite basically for free and yield ridiculous revenues (~ 1m/year). Depending on how many mines there are, this may take several years. When things start to settle down, the mines themselves will be good investments. Buy or build tool and die shops to process that aluminum; the Oxford area could consume three loads of goods each year even if there were no retail stores.
b) plastics
Oil wells usually are spread out a bit more. A Plastics Factory placed into the same tile as one oil well earned 1 million in it's first year, then the output dropped until demand spread and more oil finally arrived, which took five years. The oil well soon made 130k/year and provided enough oil to keep the plastics fab in the positive, however, for sustained high revenues you'll need two wells. As a sink, the Sheffield Warehouse(s), if there are any, will demand both plastics and toys.
c) power plant
Uranium has no price in england; however, as soon as you place a single power plant, it will initially bid 120k per unit. Demand will instantaneously spread even into the most remote corner of the island, all available uranium will start moving at once. The plant will provide pretty decent revenues and offers the side benefit that all uranium is organised into a single stack for easy pickup once you connect England to the continent. At that point you probably better sell the plant, though...
Usually there should be more supply than the plant could possibly consume, so you should have no difficulties procuring the ten units you need. Don't forget that warehouses may upgrade to double production if they make a profit.

At that point, quick victory could be had by saving for the chunnel. Just a few trainloads of stuff going to and from England would have earned me enough to piece together some kind of connection to Munich and be done with it, before year eight. Instead, I started building a railroad network in the new Netherlands... in terms of reaching the scenario goals, this threw me back several years. But then again, this is a railroading game after all. Still, I was glad I had the huge industry revenues; until it reached critical mass, the railroad barely paid it's own upkeep. Without industry support, the system wouldn't have grown at all.

Electric or Diesel?
Choosing Diesel will upgrade all Diesel Train's fuel efficiency to "Outstanding", a slight benefit as they're all at least very good to begin with. However, choosing Electric will change nothing at all. Building electric track, using the "upgrade all non-electric track" button or track mainenance -- it costs always the same regardless of wether you chose "diesel" or "electric" in the beginning. Maybe running electric trains would be cheaper, I didn't test that. Anyway, choosing between a slight benefit and nothing at all is sort of a no-brainer.

What trains shall I use?
On level track, the Trans-Euro will be the fastest engine. "Fuel" cost for electric trains is almost neglegible, building electric track generally pays off about as fast as any other industry. Large parts of the map are almost level, so much can be said in favor of the Trans-Euro. However, even the ramp of a bridge will be a major obstacle. In terms of speed the DD080 will draw even with the Trans-Euro on almost any real track; and if there's any true grade climbing to be done, it positively rules. In fact, the DD-080 is the best mountain goat at your disposal. It's also more expensive to buy and to run, but then again, you don't need electric track.

Either way, forget the E-88 -- what good is a train that only performs well when empty? You should use either of the above on any real line. For special purpose trains that spend most of their time waiting for a custom consist, well, the cheapest engine is better than many of the more expensive ones.

I exclusively used the DD080 everywhere. Once I had a flourishing network generating lots of passenger traffic, I wished I had gone with Trans-Euros wherever possible. However, had I built electric track right from the start, my network would have grown much slower... how does one compute the compound benefit of speedy development?

Reliability or turn-round time?
I'd say turn-round time. These late-age trains are very reliable to begin with. Given their pulling power and the low freight rates, you can afford to slap on a caboose at all times. They're also fast, zooming from city to city almost in an instant even with eight carts attached -- the time they spend sitting in the station really makes a difference.

[Ray of Sunshine]

I am going to resurrect this sceanario, as it is very interesting, in the respect of hauling the required amount of cheese, connecting to Munich, and especially the connection to England, in order to fill the requirement of hauling the 10 uranium.

But after reading all of the previous threads, I am starting to wonder about that connection. Years ago, I had difficulty in getting adequate revenue to build a bridge across the Channel. However, now I wonder about why I was not able to build that bridge. I ended up with a tunnel connection from Brussels. It was the only location from which the tunnel was able. And the only land in England was via Oxford, although I tried to connect to New London.

There might be a difference between the previous threads with bridges, as there was a mention of the "easy" level, and I was playing in the "hard" level. And for financial purpose only used the HST 125.

The only problem I had was my fault in trying to cross the Channel, until I thought about, and remembered that there was an access fee to connect with England.

I still believe that players should "relive" those Campaign scenarios. They are a lot of fun with good concepts of imagination.

[Gumboots]

Played this last night, just on a whim. After looking around at opportunities and thinking a bit, the obvious thing to do was to start in England. You start the game with $2640 k, and enough credit to get one bond. The one bond pays for access to England, and the $2640 k pays for an aluminium mill sitting right on top of a pile of free bauxite, in a location that has the maximum price for aluminium. There is nothing else that will give you quite so much bang for your buck.

The reason for the high aluminium price is that there are a couple of tool and dies sitting in the general area. By the time you can afford to spend another million, your shiny new aluminium will have trickled to the nearest tool and die, and it will have just started to make a useful profit. Because of all the houses and retails around, demand for goods is high, ensuring stable prices for years. Obviously you buy all the bauxite mines as soon as they start making any money. What else?

Well there is usually a couple of oil wells, and warehouses that will produce oil in exchange for clothing, steel and a couple of other things. So, plastics factory and recycling plant. The aluminium mill, in combination with the recycling plant, will supply two fully upgraded tool and dies, so build a toy factory to use up the plastic. Lots of houses and two warehouses chewing up toys, so again demand is good.

Basically, England is a little powerhouse in this scenario, and will really enable you to hit the ground running. I fully exploited all the opportunites in England before even doing anything on the Continent. When I started building on the Continent, I concentrated on interrupting established waste streams with my own recycling plants, and building tool and dies to take advantage of the steel.

Since I was, as usual, playing with steam trains on Hard I knew I couldn't expect the same profitability from a rail system that all electric would give in this era. I took the reliability option, which puts Red Devils at "outstanding", and ran them with 6 cars + caboose. This is more reliable than running 7 or 8 cars, and since the railway wasn't the main source of profit I preferred to have it more reliable.

I did build a basic rail system on the Continent to get things moving while I saved up for the Chunnel. Immerstedam over to Dor-Adel, stopping all towns, is just at the limit of water capacity for a Red Devil, and is also a good time to top up on oil. Dor-Adel down to Timmerwhatever is another good run, then another run down to Slovokia, then a final run to the town just after Munich. This is enough rail to get the gold requirements, and to provide a bit of interest to the game.

Once I had the money for the Chunnel I went over to England of course. This worked well for timing, because my factories in England were finally outstripping local demand, and profits were dropping significantly. I ran straight to Camelot, and had one train doing that, just to take care of a pile of non-uranium trade. Then I had two trains that were uranium haulers: one taking care of southern England and the other taking care of northern England. These were manually routed every run, to make sure they went to the stations with maximum uranium. Consist was just any cargo, because the high price of uranium meant it would always be carried by preference, with anything else filling up any remaining car spaces.

Obviously a couple of loads got the Gold (sometime in 2045 I think) so I decided to turn it into a uranium hauling fest just to see how much I could haul before game end at the end of 2050. Managed to haul 69 loads, which is pretty good. Also ended up with no company debt, no personal debt, CBV of just over $100 million, and PNW of just under $20 (could easily have bumped it higher by buying back some shares).

Based on this, I think good Gold requirements for expert players would be something like no company or personal debt, $80+ CBV, $20+ PNW, and 60 loads of uranium hauled. This should provide sufficient leeway to allow for an unusually bad economy.