Beta-Tester? Two new maps

[Lama]

I got Gold on Expert by making 20 points (in 19 years).
(...)
Just before taking over a company, I would assume ownership.

I am impressed! In my most recent attempt, I got Gold on Expert in 24 years (playing as Cabo Gobernal). My approach to the pace of mergers was about the same as yours.

I am also a bit disturbed by your ability to take over the chairmanship of another company. "Resigning as chairman" is forbidden in special conditions. Logically, that would mean you cannot take over another chairmanship, once you already have one! That's how it used to be in RT2. This is a bug that needs to be fixed in the upcoming patches, if at all possible.
If you have to do it, try not to exploit the economic breaks the AI gets. That really is not the way it was meant to be played.

There really isn't a mapmakers' trick to prevent this switch, since you can do it on pause.
However, once an original AI chairman is ousted, he will get a $1,000,000 hand-out, just so that he has something to do with his time.

[belbincolne]

Well I'm very impressed that anyone can get Gold on Expert. My best is Bronze although I was only a year off Silver but could never have got Gold cos my Company had virtually no cash expenses eating up all revenue. Personally I was also bankrupt with only a few shares left in my own company so could never have mounted a takeover of the last area (Cabo) and was hoping to have enough cash to buy in but :x :x :x

Meant to try the switch of chairman just to see if it worked although, apart from saving time, I can't see how it could provide that much advantage - but then I forgot. Never thought Cabo to be a good start point but perhaps I'll give it a try if the seeding looks better than it has in the past (doesn't seem to vary very much actually).

Several AIs are granted rights to other territories but never mine - is that something in the programming or could one get lucky?

[belbincolne]

O/K I'm just off to children for Xmas so HAPPY CHRISTMAS and NEW YEAR to everyone.

One last thought on AIs. I'm now playing Age of Steam with 5 AIs - all are extremely profitable and none have gone bust and basically its virtually impossible to buy over 50% in any so is it correct that you need to have 12 to ensure that they all keep in business?

[Lama]

the seeding ... doesn't seem to vary very much.

Several AIs are granted rights to other territories but never mine - is that something in the programming or could one get lucky?

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year to you, too!

The seeding of industries is fairly standardized for some key industries such as steel, oil, and cars; but varies much more for the rest, and for raw producers.

Extra territory access for AI is granted to the companies that expand the fastest. Human players never get to benefit from that, though.

I have found that there are only about six out of the twenty-one railroads that one can take over and run successfully. The remaining fifteen are not in a position to generate enough revenue.
Since I want to make it possible for the player to start by taking over just about any of the railroads on the map, I had the idea of giving the minor RRs a few perks that would make them competitive.
For instance, you could have a $100k per year subsidy, to be paid either once a year to the company, or in monthly installments of $8,333 to the player.
There could also be other breaks, like cash bonuses, or even free access rights, if you make certain connections within your home territory.
Those of you who have played the map, please let me know what you think.
(I won't get a chance to actually put out an updated version of the map until mid-January, since I don't have my computer with me on vacation)

Post-patch, if we get AI that actively pursue mergers, this would be a pretty interesting map to observe AI behavior.

[belbincolne]

Haven't played this again but I don't think you should make the AIs any stronger. The game is very easy to win by the load carrying route and impossible by the takeover route hence its that area you should be making a bit more difficult because so far (I think) virtually everyone has got Gold some 10 years early and really you should only be getting there say 2 years early for a tough scenario. There's no point in making whats already impossible any harder. If I remember correctly the poorly performing AIs are connected to capital cities well away from other territories so when you take them over you have an expensive time connecting them to your line.

[Cliff]

Hi Rat, Lama -

Just finished NWP. Got all gold for goods, lumber and paper, but screwed up in the later years not routing passenger trains out of SF soon enough. Missed Silver by four loads.

Managed to get gold just now on expert, after two false starts.

I reasoned that I would need at least some kind of industry for cash flow, so on my first attempt I took out the 11% bond and built a lumber mill in South Fork. The mill was a goldmine from the get-go, so the 2nd year I took out two more 11% bonds and laid track from Eureka - South Point - Alderpoint - Willits, and ran two Shays. The Shays did fine the first couple of loads, but then demand petered out evereywhere and I was running mostly empty trains, and barely breaking even after paying the interest. After the 3rd year I could see I was getting nowhere so I quit & tried again.

In the 2nd attempt, I built the lumber mill at Alderpoint. Again it was a goldmine from the start. Issued stock the next January, saved my money and upgraded the mill near the end of the 2nd year or beginning of the 3rd year, without taking out another bond. Just got the mill upgraded & about to pump out lumber by the bushel when a new mill appeared out of nowhere at Willitts and stole all my logs!

3rd attempt: Built the lumber mill at Dos Rios; had to wait an entire year before it started attracting logs, so my investors gave me the old "fed-up" speech. Finally the mill started producing big time; issued stock each January and saved up 'til I could upgrade the mill. By then (3rd year) the fates smiled on me and the economy went booming; so I was able to refinance at 9%, 7% and then at 5%. Sold another bond or two and built a new paper mill at Willitts where the original one had just disappeared. Saved up another few months and upgraded that mill. So, finally, sometime in the 4th or 5th year, I could borrow enough (at mostly 5%, but the last two were at 6% & 7%) to start laying track.

After running a line from Dos Rios - Willitts - Fort Bragg, which hauled really well with two Shays, I bought into San Francisco and ran a line all the way from SF to Eureka. Got the lumber, paper, goods hauling well to the desired places, and put stations in the remainder of the 13 towns (through which my line already ran) and started hauling pax out of SF. Even built a hotel/restaurant/tavern combo there with fair-to-middling returns. With so many trains to/from San Francisco, I doubled the line as far north as my limited track allotment would allow; but had no further major gridlock problems.

Bottom line: Had completed the gold requirements for lumber, paper & goods by about 1920-21. Used Shays exclusively until about 1922 when I replaced them with H10-2-8-2s. My last train (#24) was a Northern 4-8-4 which started the SF - Eureka run in August 1924. Hauled my 120th passenger & got the gold in February 1925, a little less than 2 years before the deadline.

[Cliff]

It took the better part of a day, but I just now managed a gold win on this diabolical map in expert.

On my first attempt, I figured -- what the heck, I'm an expert after all -- I'll just take over the other 20 companies and win the gold in a hurry. Well, 16 years into the scenario and I had taken over about half the AIs; had a L-O-N-G recession which I hoped would end the coming September. Well, it did! Economy came crashing down in a depression, and I was red everywhere I looked for money. Finally threw in the towel & gave up the ghost.

Second (winning) attempt: Decided to go for the points instead of last-man-standing. Carefully chose which company to take over -- picked the strongest AI in the largest & most centrallly located territory. There weren't any industries worth buying during the the 1st week industry discount period, so started running trains. Unlike my first attempt, I found I was already connected to the capitol, so started racking up points for making the 400 deliveries. I did eventually manage to buy a couple of virgin dairy farms & several oil wells, and got bargain prices on a steel mill & nearby T&D located in the middle of dozens of coal mines; made a fortune hauling iron to the mill from a deep red iron area with more than a dozen iron mines not too terribly far away.

Anyway, each time I had a little money, I would target the weakest AI in the next adjacent area for expansion. Would merge with him and connect to all the rest of the AIs, from which I reaped healthy and very helpful "Miscellaneous Income." After completing the required loads in each section I would reroute or trash any trains that were losing money.

Bottom line: Finished with 20 points with just under 6 years to spare.

Thanks, Lama for another very challenging map. This one was so darned hard that I doubt if I'll try it again for a long time.

-- Cliff in Virginia

[Lama]

Hey Cliff,

thanks for the long comment! I'm glad you made it, eventually. It takes some time to get an overview of this map, I guess, since there are all these AI-Co's around, and it's not very predictable how they will behave, at first.

I'm giving this map a final polish, right now. I am mostly still trying to get the right array of engines available, and to set engaging multiplayer goals.

I'll drop the last-Co.-standing alternate Gold - no-one has gotten it, so far, and it may just be too frustrating for people to try.

[Trainboy]

Since i do have a bit of a megalomaniac in me, of course i want to give IN a try. Hope to do so later today.

Trainboy

[Trainboy]

i just finished Isola Nova winning Gold on Expert on the second try.

On the first try i took over the Rhion and Nijosfor to start and proceeded to merge the Vronsko River RR (to get access to the lumber mill in Ago Vronskofors), bought the lumber mill (which seemed to be the best industry on the map) connected the two RRs through the Brisansc RR. The lumber mill gave me great early earnings and growth. Later on, however, i neglected buying competitor stock quickly enough and overpaid for merges and ended up not being able to merge the last three RRs and had to settle for silver.

On the second try i decided to take over one of the Montavi RRs (the Montavi Central) because Ernul was the biggest city. i then realized that i could merge several RRs whose stock prices were artificially depressed and actually had more cash than what it took to merge them. So, before i even took the game off pause, i merged the Vronsko RR, Campvirda, Plana National, and Western Perion without buying any stock.

i then had to decide between merging the Pelegro or buying industry. i decided to merge the Pelegro because of its central position. As a result of these merges i didn't make a great deal of money on shipping but i made a LOT of money on MISC income from other RRs running on my track-over 90% of my profits!

Next i merged all the peripheral RRs around the edge of the map because i found if you connected too many RRs in a small area (like Rhion and vicinity) with a lot of cargo around they become difficult to take over because they become too profitable too quickly. So instead of working for control of Rhion first i saved it for last.

During this process i made sure to buy stock of companies that became profitable before they bought up too much of their own stock and saved buying the stock of losers until down economic times. i then alternated between taking over small RRs at double price (to enrich my cash position) and using the trick of buying all the stock of good RRs and selling it down to 51% just before the take over of expensive ones to get a good deal for my company (which caused losses and hurt my cash position).

As a result, i took over all but one RR by 1925 (started in 1905). The last RR i only owned 40% of the stock (but more than the chairman) and had to make two high offers before the merge went through, winning in 1927.
i found that yearly stock issues were both critical and decisive.

The only glitch i found with the scenario was that, i believe because i took over so many RRs before unpausing, the game assigned Perion rather than Montavi as my home territory, but this didn't really cause me any trouble getting the required loads to win.

[RulerofRails]

This thread contains testing on a gaggle of maps, so maybe I missed something, but what happened to Lama's Northwestern Pacific map? (The links in the OP require a login. The sign up option seems to require paying money.)

[Hawk]

The Isola Nova map is in the archives in the Other Lands section.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/r ... lands2.htm

Unfortunately I don't have the Northwestern Pacific, either in the archives on on my hard drive.

Lama was here as recently as July of this year so maybe he'll pop back in, or maybe someone that reads this topic will have the map (Wolvy maybe), although the last post before yours was almost 10 years ago.