AI magic credit.

[Gumboots]

You're going to love this. I was playing around with one of my maps, just doing a bt of casual debugging. Now that I can see things clearly (no more low res problem) I got a bit enthused about RRT3 again.

So, this was the Royal Tour map, and it requires starting a second company, then leaving that to be run by AI most of the time. Since the plan is for this second company to make a profit, it's desirable to stop the AI board doing stupid things for as long as possible. This means keeping them broke, or so I thought. I've done this before, but this time I went further, with some surprising results.

I put in $3million of my own, and no other investors. That got me a really good credit rating, so I grabbed the full ten million worth of bonds at less than 10% average rate. Spent the resulting $13 million total on good industry. No more bonds available, so hopefully the AI board will be stuck, and will have to just put up with running something that is profitable. Should be a nice little earner, right?

Just to make sure, I'd also set track and loco prices for the second company to +100,000%, so there was no chance of them buying trains or track. So, they have no more bonds available, and even if they did they couldn't possibly afford trains and track, so no problem.

What happened?

Well, after setting this all up, with a nice little dividend too, I go back to running my first company. Shortly after, I see a notice that the AI company has borrowed 500k and connected two towns. I go to take a look at the balance sheet, and their cash is negative $2 million, but their bonds are still only $10 million, BUT,

this is the really good bit,

their book value has crashed to negative $33 million!

So, although the notice only said they'd borrowed 500K, and although no extra bonds were showing, and although company credit rating was only B when I finished setting it up, somehow RRT3 just magically grants the AI board whatever credit it needs to build those tracks and buy those trains at +100,000% over normal price, with the result that the company is instantly dead meat.



ETA: Oh and there's more weirdness. The book value of the track and trains purchased would have been around $2 million at normal prices. Sure enough, that's what the AI company's balance sheet showed. It had still had to pay over $20 million for them, because I'd jacked the price up for that company. However, +100,000% is 1,000 x normal price, so that should have been around $2 billion, not the $20 million that had actually been paid.

IOW, RRT3 couldn't even get the basic maths right. It was out by a factor of 100.

[Wolverine@MSU]

If you don't want them to build track, just make an event to set buildable track to "0" for them. I've seen cases where the AIs are allowed to take out bond after bond, way over the 20-bond limit, to keep them going.

[Gumboots]

Yup, I figured out the buildable track was the way to handle it. I'm still amazed at what happened before though.

The thing is the company didn't need any loans to keep going. It was totally solvent and profitable the way I set it up. The AI taking out those insane amounts of loans is what killed it. IF the AI board hadn't done that, the company would have been really good.

It's more like the game is programmed to think AI companies must build track at any cost (literally), so if the cost is insane it will allow the AI complany to borrow whatever it needs to build track, even if doing so is instantly suicidal.

But yes, setting buildable track to zero fixes them. They are restricted to acting more or less sensibly then.

[Altoona+BeachCreek]

It is happening! And yet, even though the game will do all that, it still won't let AI companies merge. I guess it's alright as long as it's not realistic.

[Gumboots]

After doing a bit more thinking, and changing scenario aims slightly, I came up with a nice solution that doesn't involve buildable track settings. I didn't want the buildable track limit applied to the human player's company, nor did I want the human player to see the track limit, even if it was high enough to be no problem for them. I also didn't want to write more code.

What I ended up doing was allowing the AI company access to one territory only. If AI track expansion setting is set to "conservative" in the editor, and if you start laying track for it when you create the second company during the game, then the AI will quite happily run trains on the track you laid for several years. In general it will do a good job of assigning and routing them too.

It will tend to assign more trains than are really required, which can be a problem if profitable cargo isn't abundant. In the scenario in question this isn't a problem, because for the required timeframe there is enough good cargo to haul.

So, all I have to do is start by laying some track properly (so the AI doesn't lay stupid track) and set it up with a train or two and a bit of good industry base. The AI will then run it for me, and make good profit, while I go back to running my first company. I just take over the AI company every six months or so, whenever it seems like a good idea, and maybe expand the track to another town or two, or buy or build a bit more industry. This keeps the AI happy, and it wont try to build track without supervision.

[RayofSunshine]

Some real comical happenings in RT3, when a player takes on the Chairmanship of another company, leaving his initial company to that of an AI.
Now Gumboots, you are commenting on your "endeavors" using an Editor. However, a player, such as myself, just uses the "created scenario" as programmed. So, we are left in the hands of the programming, much of which you have "checke", to find that much does not seem "realistic", once we return to our initial company, and see what the AI has done. Considerable engines, enormous number of bonds, both of which puts a player in grave debt.

But your comments of endeavor are very interesting. I will have to watch more closely in future play.