RayofSunshine wrote:this may seem to be a dumb question, but it just "popped" into my head.
Will a load consist to a city of around 4 houses, be the same as to that of a metropolitan? I would believe that it would depend on the amount of "demand" which would be greater than those of a smaller city. May have answered my own question, but I would like it to be confirmed. Why work at it, when a greater talent knows the answer.
The amount of demand (more houses = more demand) does make the price higher at the destination, so you're likely to see bigger consists going to a big city.
But that's only part of the story. Let's take Lumber just for example.
If there's already a big stash of Lumber at the destination (perhaps from a previous train that unloaded it there), that will lower the price. But the large number of houses in a bigger city will use up the stash more quickly, so that the price will recover more quickly.
If there's a productive Lumber Mill at the destination, you're not going to get consists of Lumber going there, as the stash is constantly renewed as fast as it's used up, so the price stays low. Unless there's a LOT of houses, and/or an industry using up the Lumber fast.
But the local situation isn't the whole story. A hungry Toy Factory or Furniture Factory outside or beyond the destination city will push the price of Lumber up, by "radiating" demand outwards across the Goods Map (see especially Steel Mills to illustrate this, as they "radiate" very strongly). A big city which is not covered by the destination station will do the same. This is why you can still make good profits hauling things not quite all the way to a destination. Perhaps there's a river or national boundary you can't cross just now. If you build a tiny depot just this side of the barrier, prices at the depot will still be high, because of the demand from across the barrier.
This "demand radiation" propagates more strongly along rivers (because it's easy to move stuff along them), and even more strongly along rails. So you could have a tiny station A in the middle of nowhere with a high Lumber price, just because it's connected by rail to another place B where they're going crazy for Lumber. (Whether you actually run trains from A to B may affect this: just the rails on their own might not be enough).
All this resolves into the prices on Goods map. Big city is generally better than small town for demand, but the price is the final determining factor: a train will load Lumber if the price difference between the stations is at least $2 (and, assuming you're working on auto-consist) there isn't something more profitable to load).
How the cargo prices are calculated sort of makes sense if you look into it. But the bigger benefit of connecting big cities is the Express (Passengers/Mail) traffic they generate. Express traffic is ruled by grandiose, intricate equations of intimidating beauty and elegance, which were originally transcribed into the ancient Enochian language from the mutterings and howlings of a Buryat shamaness in a ceremony of Possession-By-the-Thunder deep in a cave high in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan (after much fasting, preparatory ritual and self-immolation). Like the Schleswig-Holstein Question, only three people have ever understood these equations: one is dead, another is in a secure mental institution, and Sid Meier has forgotten.
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