Why can't I confiscate trains?

[Wolverine@MSU]

After completing the goals on the newest Pennsylvania map, I wanted to take a leisurely ride from Philly to Steeltown and didn't want to endure the video stuttering from having a whole bunch of trains running. I stopped the game, went to the editor and wrote an event to confiscate the trains in the following month. No matter what I did, I couldn't make the trains go away. I set it to trigger when Game-Month-Year was 190910 (the next month) and tried tests against companies (mine), against player (me) and against all (or none) territories. No matter what I did, the event debugger showed that the event triggered, but the trains were still there. I went back and changed the effect to "Confiscate All" but with no luck.

I even made a small test map, and couldn't get the game to take away my trains. Is this event bugged or am I doing something wrong. I thought that maybe confiscate just meant "take away ownership" but leave the assets in place, but nooooooo....even after the event triggered my company still owned all the stuff.

Anybody have insight into this one?

[Lama]

Are you saying you wanted to get rid of all (your) existing trains in one fell swoop? Try "destroy all trains", and apply to human player-owned company, only.

The "confiscate" event works in the way that the company specified in the conditions is the one who is doing the confiscating, rather than having its stuff confiscated.

If you want someone to take away stuff from your RR, you actually need a different, AI company that can play the role of the confiscator (as seen in "Chicago to New York", "Pandaimonia", and "Guatemala").
You then have to specifiy that AI company in the event condition, and it will take over either all items specified, or all such items located within a particular territory; but never just the items belonging to only one particular other company.
So, "confiscate all" in "territory 1", "apply to company 1" means that company 1 will receive everything (inclduing houses!) in territory 1, no matter who, if anyone, owned these items before.

[wsherrick]

Ah Ha! What do you think about this? I have been trying to discover ways to control my marauding AIs in this game I am working on. I have set the AI control to conservative track expansion, after they connect 5 cities the track cost goes up 400%, station costs up 250%, then when they hit 7 cities, the track cost goes up 1000% etc, and they still connect up to 15 cities each. What if every 5 years or so I write an event that wrecks all of the AI trains. They then have to slow down an recoup don't they? Will this work

[JayEff]

It would be simpler just to increase some of their costs, like maintenance or overhead.

[davey917]

...... What if every 5 years or so I write an event that wrecks all of the AI trains. They then have to slow down an recoup don't they? ...

Probably not. If All your AIs are expanding that much, you may have too many/too large cities. There may be too much cargo floating around. You may want to re-think your city densities & Industry allocations. When testing the map, pause the game and enter the editor ([shift]+E); check the cargo stats. If the supply outpaces the theoretical demands, you will need to tweek those industries.

The only way to slow down the AIs is to destroy their trains AND their cash reserves. Unfortunately, this would possibly be unrecoverable.
From an old Murphy's Law scientific corollary: "Under the most contolled environment, the test subject will do as it darn well pleases."

[Lama]

If you don't have a role for these AI to play in the scenario, then why do you allow them, in the first place?

[Wolverine@MSU]

Thanks Lama for the explanation about "confiscate". It all makes sense now. I'm off to"destroy" some trains

[wsherrick]

If you don't have a role for these AI to play in the scenario, then why do you allow them, in the first place?

I hope you were asking me the question. I set up the game to be won in two ways. One the reqular way by piling up lots of cash or .(2) if the human player can absorb 3 of the AI companies, you get an instant gold. I wanted it to be darn hard to buy out those AI's so it would be some kind of challange. These AI's are able to grow and make millions on their own. They have enough to buy breweries, steel mills and lumber mills all over the place. I just want them to stop at connecting 6 cities, so the game wouldn't slow down to much toward the end of the scenario. :)