Scenario in progress - "Warrington Wire" (CA02)

[nedfumpkin]

psst...Blackhawk...We are going to secretly fix all the typos after they have been identified and then when I get the videos and stuff made, then we are going to secretly substitute the map with a corrected version...thanks for highlightng them since something came up and I'm not able to get back to TM till the weekend. :)

[Blackhawk]

Ah... I guess I was left out of the loop and uninformed of the future secret fix

The typos aren't really much of an issue. Except I figured having things spelled correctly and in the correct tense may help a future translator of the scenario. (And it's a pet-peeve of mine with loose/lose)

I think the main things to "secretly" fix on people would be the iron event (is it 5 and more, or only more than 5), and Wales/midlands offer not triggering because a medium station doesn't "connect" Warrington.

Any idea when the video may be made for this scenario? I'm having a difficult time of thinking what could be used as an intro video the future potential CA3 scenario.

Well off to cut the grass, then debate do I clean up around the house or dive back into this scenario and hopefully finish it before the night is over

[nedfumpkin]

Ah... I guess I was left out of the loop and uninformed of the future secret fix

---the loop is actually a string around my neck.

The typos aren't really much of an issue. Except I figured having things spelled correctly and in the correct tense may help a future translator of the scenario. (And it's a pet-peeve of mine with loose/lose)

----I concur, which is why I didn't make a fuss about it....I have the same pet peeves, but I also include then/than, should of/should have or should've, and try and/try to....but the medication seems to be working. :)

I think the main things to "secretly" fix on people would be the iron event (is it 5 and more, or only more than 5), and Wales/midlands offer not triggering because a medium station doesn't "connect" Warrington.

----take it up with ed.

Any idea when the video may be made for this scenario? I'm having a difficult time of thinking what could be used as an intro video the future potential CA3 scenario.

----once I have finished the express set I am working on I will start on videos. Most of the stock video is comeing from the Prelinger Archives at archive.org. A lot of old industrial films there so I try to take stuff relevant to the scenario story.

Well off to cut the grass, then debate do I clean up around the house or dive back into this scenario and hopefully finish it before the night is over

---take your time, relax...the weekend is almost upon us.

[Blackhawk]

Ah... I guess I was left out of the loop and uninformed of the future secret fix

---the loop is actually a string around my neck.

Don't let the string get too tight! TM 2.0 still needs to be released

Back on topic, rather than add more spelling corrections, and another possible issue with the iron event to this post, I just added it to my post above for possible convenience when it comes time to make the mythical secret changes.

One thing I did add was that 1855 triggers a newspaper but one of the conditions is Company ID=2. Does this mean the effects are felt by just Company #2 or is it only company #2 that will receive this newspaper? If only company #2 sees the newspaper then this event might need to be changed as well.

[Wolverine@MSU]

One thing I did add was that 1855 triggers a newspaper but one of the conditions is Company ID=2. Does this mean the effects are felt by just Company #2 or is it only company #2 that will receive this newspaper? If only company #2 sees the newspaper then this event might need to be changed as well.

Newspapers are a "Game" event and will show to anyone playing, although the trigger conditions may depend on the status of a company (i.e. is it still active).

I also agree with you above about spelling/grammatical errors; they're small potatoes, but the small potatoes are the ones that stick in my craw.

Example: (I got this in an email from a college senior) "My name is xxxxxx. I am a BMB senior and i hope to be able to due a senior thesis this year......" followed by :"I have however ran into difficulty........." <-this would be me, except these are the people we expect to run the world when we get old?

[Blackhawk]

Thanks for the information Wolverine.
I remember a few years ago back when I was in college and we had to exchange papers for an English class and proof-read each others papers. I was horrified with what I read. I couldn't believe that the paper I was reading was by someone who was supposedly in college. It seemed more like a paper I may have written while in grade school. Sadly the occurrence happened several times. I always felt bad about marking up their paper with all these mistakes I found (it would be covered in red ink), and then getting mine back and they'd say something like "seemed okay to me."


Back to the scenario:
I finally beat it last night, although I will say I "cheated" in that after finally getting the steel mill up and running for a few years and shipping steel back to Warrington, I got bored of just waiting to rake in the last few points I needed for victory, so I changed the steel >10 event to give me a few points that would give me a TM victory. Unfortunately, the TM victory doesn't trigger until 1875, so I ended up needing to wait longer anyways. I was lagging pretty badly after I connected to Sheffield and had ~175 trains, and it became difficult to try to micromanage the trains hauling steel so that's the reason I changed the event to hopefully end the scenario earlier. I'll have to try the scenario again sometime with fewer programs running and a fresh restart to see if 175 trains + that size map is the limit of my computer, or if my computer was just running slow with too many things running at once. Everything seemed fine, until randomly it started going very slow on me.

Overall a nice scenario with some interesting and informational historic notes. Towards the last 10-15 years I didn't feel like there was much left to do except wait for the steel to be hauled. However, the ending years of a scenario are often some of the slowest years just waiting for the final objectives to be completed for victory, so I can't complain too much about it, it's just the way the game usually plays out.

Nice work Ed.

I did notice the TM victory event was set for current game year = 1875, shouldn't that be =< 1875, or did you want the player to have to wait until 1875 to finally get a TM victory?

Also is the L&M supposed to have access to the Midlands? I assume so, but after connecting the required city to gain access as British Railroad, even as L&M I am told I have now gained access to the Midlands. So maybe a 2nd event should be created to give the point for that city without saying you've gained access to the Midlands? or maybe no point should be given if you aren't BR? Or maybe L&M isn't supposed to have access to the Midlands? Just something I'd bring to your attention.

[Hawk]

and then getting mine back and they'd say something like "seemed okay to me."

They probably didn't know if there were errors or not.

[edbangor]

The typos aren't really much of an issue. Except I figured having things spelled correctly and in the correct tense may help a future translator of the scenario. (And it's a pet-peeve of mine with loose/lose)

Sorry about that and I was expecting there to be a lot due to the ammout of text in the scenario and the lack of in game spell checker in the editor (maybe something for Ned to do once TM2 is out!)

not triggering because a medium station doesn't "connect" Warrington.

That was done on purpose I'm afraid. The reason I used a medium station for Bank Quay was to prevent the station from 'steeling' all the cargo from the L&M's Central Station (the reverse is also true) so the Human player would have to expand either/both station to make them work better as part of the game play.

I did notice the TM victory event was set for current game year = 1875, shouldn't that be =< 1875, or did you want the player to have to wait until 1875 to finally get a TM victory?

That's a mistake. Should be =<1875 .

Also is the L&M supposed to have access to the Midlands? I assume so, but after connecting the required city to gain access as British Railroad, even as L&M I am told I have now gained access to the Midlands. So maybe a 2nd event should be created to give the point for that city without saying you've gained access to the Midlands? or maybe no point should be given if you aren't BR? Or maybe L&M isn't supposed to have access to the Midlands? Just something I'd bring to your attention.

I never had that problem during test plays athough by the time of the big switch BR had already connect to the midlands so the L&M took over BR, the access was already there.

[Blackhawk]

Sorry about that and I was expecting there to be a lot due to the ammout of text in the scenario and the lack of in game spell checker in the editor (maybe something for Ned to do once TM2 is out!)

After learning that you can copy and paste it makes things a little easier. Type it up in Word or OpenOffice and just copy it on into RT3. Shame I didn't learn of that trick until after the majority of my events have been created. Of course that doesn't save you from using the wrong word.

That was done on purpose I'm afraid. The reason I used a medium station for Bank Quay was to prevent the station from 'steeling' all the cargo from the L&M's Central Station (the reverse is also true) so the Human player would have to expand either/both station to make them work better as part of the game play.

I thought that may have been the case. Some sort of notice that Warrington needs to be connected before the Chester Mayor tells you how to gain access to Wales would have been nice. Maybe rephrase the message about Chester to say create a rail line from Warrington to Chester?

I never had that problem during test plays athough by the time of the big switch BR had already connect to the midlands so the L&M took over BR, the access was already there.

I had only connected to Welshpool and Wrexham and then the "twist" hit. Although I was just getting ready to conquer the mountains and head into Ruthin.

Thanks for the clarification on some of the issues. Don't forget about the iron issue as well. (is it a point for 5 or more than 5, and the date you get points until is in the 1900s)

[Wolverine@MSU]

Okay, so I downloaded the campaign version of this scenario, assuming that the issue of growing British Rail to be a giant (immune to takeover) had been addressed. I started as any Tycoon would, and played to make BR a powerhouse right from the get-go. So by November of 1840 (see attached saved game) I had built it into a respectable company, with CBV of ~$25 Million (2.5 times that of L&M) and yearly profits of ~$4 Million (3 times that of L&M)with 455,000 total shares, of which I (George Hudson) owned 120,000 shares, William Wheelwright owned 5,000, and the rest were "Other Investors". After the rollover to December and the "Surprise Event" I (New Player) find that I have 19,000 out of 182,000 shares of L&M, that 69,000 shares of Grimsby are already spoken for, leaving 71,000 for me to buy ASAP to be able to take them over, AND both Peterborough and Northampton don't have enough shares left on the open market to make a takeover reasonably possible. As George Hudson, I invested heavily in these companies, and now that well intentioned strategy has come back to bite me in the butt . What a dissappointment. I played on for a little while, but it soon became evident that my skill in setting up BR meant that L&M was doomed from the start, so I abandoned that play.

I restarted, with the knowledge I had gained in the previous attempt, and just bought a logging camp with BR's money just to give it enough profit to keep from being liquidated, built no rails and ran no trains. Despite this, I got a notice that I had connected 5 cities (you need to fix the city connection events), and played George Hudson for a fool, buying stock at high prices and selling low so that by November 1840, he was virtually broke and BR was just a sitting duck for takeover. I only got this far this morning, so I'm anxious to see how things progress for the rest of the game. It was really boring for the 10 years of doing nothing, but it's looking like that may be the strategy that will most likely lead to a win.

There must, however, be some happy medium, as I assume that edbanger was able to achieve the Trainmaster medal playing on "Hard" as a campaign map. I'ld like to hear some comments from others who have tried this one. Maybe I'm just too much of a Tycoon for my own good, but it would be nice to have some "warnings" if a player is getting too aggrssive in making BR competitive.

[Blackhawk]

I've uploaded my saved game from 1939. It's saved as a scenario not a campaign map.

While I grew the BR I didn't grow it to the size that you have. I only had 16-17 locomotives compared to your 70+. I also noticed the amount of stock in the stock market was lower for me than for you. I'm guessing since you were profitable you bought up a lot of stock which inflated the prices and caused it to split.
If you look at the saved game, you'll see we had many of the same connections. Although I didn't really expand much into Wales, and I did not have the secondary connections to cities. I only had 1 way into a city where you had 2 ways into the cities from multiple cities. I saved that for later after switching companies. I may have bought out another railroad as the BR before I switched to the L&M as well, I can't really remember the details and I must have deleted most of my saved games for this map. If I did it was the railroad in the lower right. I guess with the company switch you can't be too much of a tycoon too early.

It is interesting to see that you did not connect to Blaenau Ffiestinog to get access to the Midlands, even with as large of a company as you were. As I brought up this issue in an earlier post.

Blackhawk wrote:Also is the L&M supposed to have access to the Midlands? I assume so, but after connecting the required city to gain access as British Railroad, even as L&M I am told I have now gained access to the Midlands. So maybe a 2nd event should be created to give the point for that city without saying you've gained access to the Midlands? or maybe no point should be given if you aren't BR? Or maybe L&M isn't supposed to have access to the Midlands? Just something I'd bring to your attention.

I never had that problem during test plays athough by the time of the big switch BR had already connect to the midlands so the L&M took over BR, the access was already there.

[Wolverine@MSU]

So how did you deal with having to take over the other companies? When I went back to my 2nd try (sit on BR for 10 yrs) I found that I could not buy stock in the other companies fast enough to get 50% share. I bought as much as I could, and I see only 2 options: 1) offer an exhorbidant price for the stock (which usually fails even when you offer 5 times the stock price), or 2) try to drive the remaining companies into bankruptcy by "stealing" their cargo. I've expanded L&M into all of the cities serviced by the other companies and will set forth to ship all the cargo from those stations far far away, so they can't make any money (or very little from dedicated PAX).

I also noticed the amount of stock in the stock market was lower for me than for you.

That's beacause I issued 2 rounds of stock every year, and it split several times. As a result, it would be almost impossible to take it over.

[Blackhawk]

As for the amount of stock, not only did the BR have more stock (as you said you issued it twice a year) but some of the other companies still had quite a bit more stock than in my game. I played fairly conservatively knowing that something was going to happen sometime into the game. I didn't look at the editor to see what exactly happened, but having looked over this thread before playing the game I knew something would happen so I tried not to issue a lot of stock.

As for buying out companies, I thought you switched players as well as companies so the stock you buy up while in control of the BR shouldn't really matter. If anything the more stock you buy while in control of the BR, the more difficult it would be to take over the other railroads since the stock you formerly owned is now working against you. I suppose one way to make things easier is to sell all your stock shortly before the big change, which would drive the stock price down and hopefully the AI's buy up the cheap stock. Ideally George Stephenson would then buy a decent amount of this stock which in a couple months ends up being stock you control. So to me the amount of stock that Stephenson owns is more important than the stock you buy up while in control of the BR, which in a way means there is an incentive to help increase the L&M profits. As this would allow Stephenson to get a larger salary and an increased L&M stock price thereby allowing him to purchase more stocks.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Well, it turns out I was wrong about the difficulty of taking over railroads in which you have only a small fraction of the stock. I let L&M assets grow into the tens of millions, and just for the heck of it, tried to take over one of the competitors by offering the maximum allowed by the slider. Lo and behold, the merger suceeded, for both of the other companies, so now I am the sole railroad, and just got the Sheffiield steel task. WIll have the 50 cities connected as soon as I get access to the last territory. It's 1857 and the mills are just starting to make some steel, so we'll see how it goes from here.

[nedfumpkin]

What state was the economy in when you took over...I am wondering if that makes a difference. Perhaps when times are good then there is more profit so the shareholders are less likely to want to change things, but when times are bad they will sell their shares. Or time of year? perhaps while profits are negative at the beginning of the year. Just wondering.

[Wolverine@MSU]

I think you are right Ned. I'm pretty sure the economy was in depression, and coupled with my aggressive "attack" on their cities (stealing the cargo), both companies were going downhill. I went back to a saved game before I mounted my attack and started replaying with the aim of trying to take them over without the attack. I bought up as much stock as I could over a few years (still not more than about 33%). The economy was in Normal and on several occasions, when offering the maximum amount, the mergers failed. I'll keep playing on and see whether a downturn in the economy may persuade them to sell out. If it doesn't come naturally, I'll add a couple of events to force the economy into recession followed by depression.

[edbangor]

Am I right in thinking that this scenario is proving challanging then guys?

I did put in some "Behind the scenes" EVENTS to make takeovers more likely in the latter part of the game which probably helps.

And yes, I've got Train Master on this, but then I knew what was going to happen.

[johnny_oe]

Hello all,

this is my first post in this forum and I am still trying to find my way through the several boards with similar content - so please excuse if my search did not find the answer to my question although there is some ...

I am playing TM for the first time and have successfully completed the Birth of a Nation and Monkey Motors campaign scenarios.
On the 02 campaign scenario "Warrington Wire" I am completely lost from the beginning. I have only 390 $, credit rating is CCC - and I cannot build up a profitable business with that little money. Am I doing anything wrong or is this campaign scenario broken at the moment? I have the version downloaded from the web page within the TM "Campaign Files 3" package. Is there another (working) version?

Thank you for the work put into TM and thank you even more if you have an answer to my question! ;)

[RulerofRails]

Welcome to the forum, Johnny! You posted in the correct thread.

First, this is one of the most difficult scenarios I ever played in TM. You don't have a problem with your scenario, that is the way it is supposed to be. If you are new to TM, don't be surprised if you have to attack this one a few times learning as you go. I haven't played it for a while, but just now I spent a few minutes looking around to see how to get a decent start.

The surest option I could see just now was a connection over to Chester using a medium station. Make sure you have just enough money (10k) left to buy a Planet engine. There should be Troops, Passengers and some Livestock there that will give you a decent first train profit. Chester is on a different river too, so hopefully there is some cargo traveling down the river that wants to travel on your line to the river near Warrington. Over the rest of the first year this route should bring a little more money. The threshold to get a bond is around 700k book value (in normal economic conditions). It may be necessary to issue stock at the beginning of the second year to achieve this target. Take out this first bond which I would use to make a large station which covers most of Warrington and either a new connection or an upgrade of the Chester station which should make some more passenger and troop loads available.

Remember, that in TM it is sometimes a viable and profitable solution to start with a connection to an agricultural community especially the ranch. That is the first start strategy I saw, but it does depend on the seed. Depending on how close an agri community is seeded, it may be a better solution than the connection to Chester. There is a Meat Packing Plant in Warrington so when you deliver Livestock it will be a small supply of Fertilizer and this will give something to haul back and help the community produce more. You can then use the bond at the start of the second year for the connection to Chester and a large station that covers Warrington properly.

I didn't do any of the work of TM, I am just a player. Some kind folks dedicated many hours of their time to it. Most of those that worked on it don't come by regularly any more, but, their effort is not forgotten and we play this ultimate version of RT3 as a result. I will give this a play now, to brush up my knowledge of this map. If you have some more questions please feel free to ask and I or others will try to answer them.

[johnny_oe]

Thank you for your quick answer, @RulerofRails!
I am going to try the scenario again soon. Maybe I just gave up after too few tries because I did not think it was that hard at the beginning. After all, the seeding seems to be quite important in this scenario, I realized that depending on the industry placement I can make from no to quite a decent income in the first year. And another thing is the timing when (if) economy turns into prosperity - because then I can get another 500k$ to spend ...

In general, I realized that I have a lot more difficulties in the first years of a scenario and that I am a lot more dependant on luck (better: random generators) during the start of a scenario than in the later time. Normally, if I manage a decent build-up during 3-5 years at the beginning, there is almost nothing that can make me lose except a badly timed economic collapse in a scenario where personal net worth is important ...
What I want to point out (apart from the fact that I seem to be a quite successful tycoon ... haa, just kidding ;) is that for my style of playing, scenarios should be less dependant on randomness in the starting areas especially if the margin for losing is that small at the beginning. Otherwise I am driven to the annoying habit of restarting the scenario several times until I get a favourable seeding ... and I would not call that strategically challenging.

So, is it possible to reduce the impact of seeding in the starting region (I noticed that in "Warrington Wire" there were already a lot of industries placed in fixed locations) even more? Maybe even disable it altogether?
Presetting economic development changes for the first years of a scenario would be another interesting idea to decrease randomness at the beginning.

Randomness for sure is important for making a game interesting, but if success completely depends on the randomness then for me something is wrong ... (just my personal opinion as a very strategic player)