The Hub 1 Pirates

[edbangor]

I'm written a full stratagy for this scenario which I'll post once other people have had a chance to play.

In the meantime, here's some hints.

Choose your start city with GREAT care.
The only business you can buy, at the start of the game, are in the Bad Lands, boardering Mines n' Minerals (north)- & Furtilia (east).
Warehouses in the Bad Lands should be investigated. (note that stations in the Bad Lands also count towards the 30 you need)
Keep an eye on the AI railroads as if one goes into liquidation you could get access to The Hub territory, early.
If you are aiming for Gold plan well ahead in order to be able to make the Ammo and weapons you'll need, as all the resource material has to be shipped from the other side of the map.

[edbangor]

The Hub #1 - Pirates
a Scenario for RailRoad Tycoon 3
(requires the 1.06 unofficial patch)

Earliest Start Year: 1900
Default Start Year: 1900
Latest Start Year: 1900
Scenario Length: 40 years
Size: 960x960
Mandatory Human Players: 1
Mandatory Computer Players: 3
Optional Computer Players: 3

MAP DESCRIPTION
At the turn of the century, an eccentric billionaire Hawk Badger found the inactive volcano of his dreams with a region in the north to supply all the raw resources, while to the east was a highly fertile area. Admittedly the southern region was a little rough, but industries don't need it to be pretty which left the west for food production.
People flooded to the idyllic lifestyle of the Hub, with the richest settling in the plush Island in the oceans surrounding it the central section.
However, all was not well. Those who didn't fit into the system ended up in the desolate region that separated the residential areas from the farms, mines and industry, known as the Bad Lands. There villains, rouges and pirates thrived, raiding the boarding nations for whatever they wanted or could find that they could then sell on - at a high cost - to those living on The Hub and the Island.
Eventually Hawk Badger had no option other than to allow the Police (military) to set up shop in the corners of his land in order to combat this thread, although their leader, General Ruth, but then she might have other matters on her mind.

SCENERIO BREIFING
In order to defeat those supplying the pirate ports, Hawk has called in the European rail tycoons to bring goods and services to the Islands. Thanks to General Ruth's help you managed to get exclusive rights to The Islands while the others are left to fight it out on The Hub or in the Bad Lands, at least for now. Of course, in exchange for her help General Ruth is going to want something in exchange, namely a Military Network to connect all her far flung bases with each other, and eventually the capitol, Centre Point. But why would she want troops in the capitol? There's no trouble there. At least, not yet.

SPECIAL CONDITIONS
- No unconnected Track building
- No building industry buildings.
- No Starting multiply companies.

TERRITORY ACCESS
The Island - Open to you alone (for now)
Bad Lands - Open to anyone, and everyone
The Hub - Open to the AI/s but you have to connect 30 cities
Mines n' Minerals (north)- 10,000 miles of track
Industria (South)- Company book value $75mil
Furtilia (East)- 2000 passengers loads
Supermarkia (West) - $75mil industry profits
Military Corners - $100,000 player net worth
Centre Point - All eight other territories connected.

VICTORY CONDITIONS
BRONZE - Connect all eight territories.
SILVER - as above plus and be the only active company
GOLD - all of the above plus:
Be the only company & connect all the Military corner cities to Centre Point and Haul the following their:
30 troops
15 ammo
10 weapons

Version History:
Version 2.00: The Hub1: Pirates - October 2009
Version 1.00: The Base Map - September 2009

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My thanks to those who made the scenarios that I 'borrowed' events or ideas from, including (amongst others): aprop, orange46, low_grade and, of course General...I mean... Grandma Ruth.
A second scenario - currently titled TheHub2: Recovery will follow in a few weeks where "Ray of Sunshine" comes to the rescue of the war torn country.

[belbincolne]

Couldn't make up my mind whether to post this here or or in the Review post - anyway its here.

Don't really understand what I have to do. I've built a railroad right round the island. Taken over 2 of the companies and can take over the third whenever I want to but I still haven't managed to get to any of the Military cities and the only Industry I own is very unprofitable as is the only hotel and restaurant. Railing however is very profitable. I've had a couple of messages to say Pirates have taken over some of my lines but have no idea what effect this has had. I've just been granted rights to the northen industrial territory which I suppose might make industry profitable.

Its 1922 and thats it - the end. Crash. I've had four restarts and crashes each time - probably when it goes from Jan into Feb. Whether its the date or the territory entry thats caused it I've obviously no idea but I think there must be a flaw in the scenario. It hasn't happened on any other scenario for the last couple of years although there were some others around then. Be interesting to learn what others experience is.

[edbangor]

Couldn't make up my mind whether to post this here or or in the Review post - anyway its here.

Don't really understand what I have to do. I've built a railroad right round the island. Taken over 2 of the companies and can take over the third whenever I want to but I still haven't managed to get to any of the Military cities and the only Industry I own is very unprofitable as is the only hotel and restaurant. Railing however is very profitable. I've had a couple of messages to say Pirates have taken over some of my lines but have no idea what effect this has had. I've just been granted rights to the northen industrial territory which I suppose might make industry profitable..

I order to answer the first quesion I'm about to post my complete stratagy for the map in a moment, which should give you some clues as to what to do. but in general, in order to get into the military corners, you need to own most, if not all the shares in your company, and then pay a silly dividend to yourself, to get your net worth up high enough.
However, by the sound of it, you are never going to have enough industry profits to open supermarkia (to the west). As you will read in the stragagy this is done by buying up all the profitable industries that auto generate in The Bad Lands, to the north and east. These should include lumber/paper mills, steel works, distillery, brewery and others. Of course, once you have access to those two lands that can actually produce raw materials in the north (which you have) and the east, then you can real pump up the profits.
The message you've got, about the pirates is that they have taken over some of your track and are now charging you to use it (ie you pay a percentage of your profits for any journey that uses those sections) as if the track belonged to another company. Only you can't buy it back so this will go on until... well let's say the end of the game.

Its 1922 and thats it - the end. Crash. I've had four restarts and crashes each time - probably when it goes from Jan into Feb. Whether its the date or the territory entry thats caused it I've obviously no idea but I think there must be a flaw in the scenario. It hasn't happened on any other scenario for the last couple of years although there were some others around then. Be interesting to learn what others experience is.

I've checled the time line (yes I had to write out a time line for the scenario so I could keep track of all the events) and there's nothing happening there. In fact there's nothing in 1922 at all so have no idea what could be causing that, unless you've reached one of the other territory goals, or the AI companies are doing something stupid (wouldn't be the first.)
As you can see from the snap shot I'll post with the strategy in a moment, I've played the scenario right through, several times, and never had a crash on it.
Do you still have the saved game from before the crash that you could send me, so I can have a look at it in the editor and see if I can spot any issues?

[edbangor]

The Hub - Pirates

The Strategy

Like all of my maps - well both of them - this was designed for how I play the game with events added and designed to either help or hinder my progress. So, rather than give you a blow by blow on how play this scenario (and becuase I can't remember it) I will give you some general hints, on how to get into the territories but, bare in mind that most, if not all, of these shouldn't be done one at a time but overlapping or else you'll run out of time.

Okay, the main key to this scenario is the starting position as you will need to look for the warehouses, and industries of the BAD LANDS as well as ports on both THE ISLANDS and THE HUB for your survival as there is nothing other than passengers/mail in your starting territory. There are, however, nearly a dozen different port/warehouse recipes all of which should make you money but be careful not to loose too many passengers to the human traffickers!!

Now, during testing I always started at ISLESTRAIGHTS, running a single track to ISLETOPPER. That, and the hotel at each station, is all the building I did for the first two years until I had control of (nearly) all the stocks of my company (and some of the AI's as well). Only then did I extend into BADHIPP, and in particular the warehouse there and then started to work on territories access.

THE HUB is the easiest territory to get as it's just building stations, although should one of the AI companies go into liquidation first you can just snap up their assets and get access that way! Whichever way you do it, remember that you will eventually need access to all corners of the map so expanding north and south around THE ISLAND is a good idea, as is going deeper into the BAD LANDS. I tended to start with just single trains on single track until the cash is coming in when the track & trains were doubled. (Note that as stations in the BAD LANDS, also count towards the target, so connecting to BADCENTRAL will gain you a second warehouse recipe and loads of cash as Goods move onto, and then around, THE ISLANDS.)

Once inside THE HUB, the passenger loads for access to FURTILLIA, should come up pretty quick but try to get your tracks to the edges of FURTILLIA as soon as you can to be ready and to help with future goals as the BAD LAND cities bordering both FURTILLIA and MINES 'N MINERALS have the only industries you can buy at the start of the game. (and you should buy them as soon as you can!)

Which brings me to FURTILLIA, as you get close to being allowed in, try to get a lot of cash together, so that, once inside you can buy any, and everything that is making money even if you have no intention of connecting it. This is also true of MINES 'N MINERALS territory. However, in both make sure you find the source materials you will be needing to meet the gold requirements - Steel or coal/iron, chemicals, & rubber - and connect them to your railroad.

Hopefully, by this stage of the game, you should be getting close to the requirements for INDUSTRIA. Once inside, you need to look for, and connect to, the nearest Munitions and Weapons Factories. Buy these even though they won't make money for a while (if ever), upgrade them and start to feed them with what they want (you may also need a tire factory but those can be found in the BAD LANDS), as all raw material has to be shipped from north to south and that takes time. (again these trains probably won't make money!)

Meanwhile, your industry profits should get you into SUPERMARKIA about now, but as that territory has no real benefits towards the medals other than being connected all you need to do is bang a station in anywhere you want and that's done and you can work on the Military network.

If you managed to buy all your own shares at the start of the game, you should now be paying a very high dividend (hopefully just to yourself) in order to get the net worth needed for MILITARY CORNERS. Once you have access to them, connecting to any of the four will get you access to CENTRE POINT (and a Bronze medal), but you need to connect all six cities they contain between them to CENTRE POINT before the military network is complete.

There is easy access into the CENTRE POINT volcano on one the east side, with space to build a tunnel out the west side, depending on the rest of your railroad, you'll probably want to do both to ease access and congestion.

Now all you have to do is get the ammo and weapons built in INDUSTRIA to CENTRE POINT (this is fairly easy if you set it up earlier but slow). meanwhile you need to find enough troops who want to go to the capital from anywhere in MILITARY CORNERS. These can be from any of the six cities and/or from the solo barracks littered around the corners).

During the final part of your game, your company should be making excessive profits which should enable you to buy out the AI companies (if you haven't already done so in order to raise your personal net worth, of course.) Naturally you may need to put, one or more of them out of business some other way, but it all counts.

And that's all there is too it!!

Attached to this message (I hope) is a screen cap of the ledger during one of my GOLD medel play tests which will not only show that all the goal can be met (the amount of weapons needed for Gold was incorret in this version and has since been corrected), but how the layout on the map will look and how many trains it can take to do it.
Hopefully someone else will now be able to reach gold, or else I'll just have to assume that I'm a better RT3'er than everyone else on the forum.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Its 1922 and thats it - the end. Crash. I've had four restarts and crashes each time - probably when it goes from Jan into Feb. Whether its the date or the territory entry thats caused it I've obviously no idea but I think there must be a flaw in the scenario. It hasn't happened on any other scenario for the last couple of years although there were some others around then. Be interesting to learn what others experience is.

I had the same thing happen, multiple times. It occurs in the Jan-Feb 1922 transition. Looked in the Editor to see if there was anything obvious there, but couldn't find anything. I did, however, notice that there are a few events pertaining to General Ruth that have a particular month as a trigger condition, but are selected to fire Yearly, at the beginning of the year. No wonder thay never happened.
(Edit) - Could the crashing be due to the appearance of a loco that is not in the inventory?

[edbangor]

I had the same thing happen, multiple times. It occurs in the Jan-Feb 1922 transition. Looked in the Editor to see if there was anything obvious there, but couldn't find anything. I did, however, notice that there are a few events pertaining to General Ruth that have a particular month as a trigger condition, but are selected to fire Yearly, at the beginning of the year. No wonder thay never happened.
(Edit) - Could the crashing be due to the appearance of a loco that is not in the inventory?

Now this is weird as I played the scenario right through nearly half a dozen times during testing and it never crashed once so don't know what's going on there, especially as you said, there's nothing triggered for Jan-Feb 1922.
Are there any locos in the enhanced Euro set that generate at that time?
If so then I could just disable them in the editor...

[edbangor]

Okay I've had a look in the editor and there is a new loco that is due to spawn in 1922 so I've disabled that and made a few other minor corrections to some of the events - thanks Wolverine for spotting those - and upload the new version for Hawk to put up.

Hope this one works for you all.

[Hawk]

The new version is now available.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Tried the new version and it crashed in Feb 1922, just like the old one. I think I was well on my way to Gold, so it was very frustrating.

[edbangor]

Tried the new version and it crashed in Feb 1922, just like the old one. I think I was well on my way to Gold, so it was very frustrating.

Darn... I'm at a loss what could be causing that as there's nothing I can find that should (or shouldn't) happen at that date. I removed all the locos that would generate, or would be removed in 1921 & 1923 as well as 1922 itself, so I just don't understand it.

[belbincolne]

Glad I've been too busy to download it - always worried that merely adding a train could cause it but then I don't understand computers. When I added some new buildings (granaries etc?) to the main file several scenarios refused to play and this I could understand - and after deletion they were o/k again so a standard train shouldn't cause a problem.

Just got a new camera and I reckon learning how to use it will take me the next 3 months of my time

[edbangor]

Okay think I've fixed this now (no really I have promise!)

The problems seemed to be one of the time related Events coming to an end at the start of Feb 1922 which could have been clashing with a "Track theives" event also scheduled to happen at the same time.

So I've deleted both! and having worked right through all events and actions, there can't be anything left to cause a crash (even though I could never get it to crash for me.)

The new version, has now been uploaded to Hawk.

Fingers crossed

PS: the second scenario in this series - continuing the story from the end of this one - will be available shortly.

[Hawk]

The newest version is now available in the Other Lands section.

[belbincolne]

Yipee or not??

Got past the dreaded 1922 date no problem but as doomed to failure once satisfied in this respect I've packed it in because I'd loaded myself with debt to buy 51% of last company and as depression made all shares fall I got the notice so took it over expecting that to put me in the black again - not so - the shares must have fallen so much that I was still in the red and all were sold off.

Shall replay on return from a short break cos its a real fun scenario.

[edbangor]

Thats great news belbincolne ....
about it not crashing that is, not that you lost your shirt on the stock market....

Hopefully by the time you're ready I'll have "the Hub#2 Military" finished, which continues the story with Hawk depossed and General Ruth in charge while the charity "Ray of Sunshine" (erm wonder where I get these names from ) is struggling to feed the people...

[Wolverine@MSU]

I got by the dreaded 1922 crash also. I'm into the early 30's, and just passed the point where Munitions Factories require Chemicals, but lo. there are no Chemical Plants on the map. How am I supposed to make Ammo without Chemicals? I should have the PNW to open up Military Corners in a year or so, so I think I'm on track for Gold, but without Ammo, I'm sunk. Any suggestions?

[edbangor]

I got by the dreaded 1922 crash also. I'm into the early 30's, and just passed the point where Munitions Factories require Chemicals, but lo. there are no Chemical Plants on the map. How am I supposed to make Ammo without Chemicals? I should have the PNW to open up Military Corners in a year or so, so I think I'm on track for Gold, but without Ammo, I'm sunk. Any suggestions?

All I can suggest is wait!!!
Chemicals like all the supplies in the hub are auto seeded up in MInes and Minerals up to 100% so some should turn up at some point - especially as the deman increases - unless you're really unlucky (or the game hates you!)
Of course you could have just stock piled Ammo before the change over (have a train sitting there collecting them but never leaving, or just never arriving at a station to unload... (this is either very crafty or cheating depending on your viewpoint!) but that's not much help to you now.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Of course you could have just stock piled Ammo before the change over (have a train sitting there collecting them but never leaving, or just never arriving at a station to unload... (this is either very crafty or cheating depending on your viewpoint!) but that's not much help to you now.

I don't call that "cheating", just good game strategy. I'll play on and see if I can make it, but as a backup, I have saved games from each January, and can easily go back and replay from any point (I don't consider this cheating either, just playing out alternate strategies ).

[belbincolne]

I agree with Wolverine that neither of those are cheating although I rarely save games because sometimes the files are huge and going back years to when I had a small computer and they overloaded it I stopped doing so now when it scarcely matters I've got out of the habit and only have the last Auto - which can be a nuisance and stupid as here because one poor judgement means I've got to go back to the beginning - at my age should learn and know better