Scenario in progress - "Warrington Wire" (CA02)

[Grandma Ruth]

Yes, it's OK now. I've re-installed all campaign files and it's working fine. Will let you know how I go on!

[edbangor]

Yes, it's OK now. I've re-installed all campaign files and it's working fine. Will let you know how I go on!

If you say something nice I'll put Bradford on the map maybe

[Grandma Ruth]

Ooh, bribery will get you nowhere!
I've come across a little glitch to do with connecting cities. I've bought another company so I have 7 stations connected - i.e. 5 in one company and 2 in the other but it isn't even giving me the 1 point for my 5 original stations. Although the status page is saying "7 cities connected"
I'm not looking in the Editor till I've played it through, I love these games where you don't know what's going to happen next and I'm not going to spoil it!
Edit: I'm not doing very well, though. It's a long time since I played and I'm not doing very well with the stock market!

[Grandma Ruth]

Now it's given me a point when I have NO cities connected!

[edbangor]

It's been a while since I set this up but I think you only get points for cities that are connected to Warrington (Bank Quay) but I might be wrong, will have to look into that.
The first point though you get for just having Bang Quay - it counts that as being connected although it's not actually connected to anything at the start of the scenario...

Oh and Ruth well done for not looking in the editor..... although I'm not going to say why.... as you'll find out sooner or later..

[Grandma Ruth]

Can't wait! You're a man after my own heart! You should play my Arabian Nights game which I've forgotten the name of - no it's The Quest. That has no indication whatsoever of what your goals are till you get going on them.

[Grandma Ruth]

Hmm. I've now got to the position where I own a controlling interest in every company except the big one, and don't quite know what to do next. No point in buying any of them out as they'll just start new companies with the proceeds. Switch about being chairman of each of them in turn? Do the old robber baron thing? Any suggestions, anybody?

[edbangor]

Don't get too cocky Ruth as I had the same experiance during an early test play, so I put in something major to make it 'interesting' (no peeking in the editor) and some other goals to try out...

BTW -can you let me know the date you got to this position so I can see if I need to move the 'interesting' thing about....

[Grandma Ruth]

Well of all the things! What a thing to do! I'm speechless!!!
But it can only work once, because now the player will have to re-start and play differently. Plus you'll have to extract a promise from everybody who plays it, not to spoil it for everybody else. I can't believe such lurks in the heart of any Englishman.
My last post, when I was innocent and naive, was in 1836 so it was quite a tedious time for a while afterwards. And by the way, the event that says Lancashire is opened up doesn't work. Now I have looked in the editor and I have to admire the amount of work you've put into this. I think the problem with the Lancashire event is it should be applicable to "all companies"- unless there's some further shenanigans to come which I'm not aware of!

[edbangor]

It is a little bit nasty isn't it, but is there to chance the direction of play, and you shouldn't need to start again from scratch as in all the test plays I did the AI actually makes a fairly decent job up until the 'event' and then does spectacularly badly afterwards, making the eventual take overs fairly easy (assuming you've got the right mix of shares in the first place obviously!)

Of course it only happens once. But then I would say that, wouldn't I?

I'll check the Lancashire trigger as don't know what that wouldn't have worked if the others did (it's a copy of the others - I'm lazy like that!)

And may make the 'event' happen a bit earlier, to both prevent player boredom, and to give enough time to recover afterwards although I may wait to see what Ned things, once he's conquered China and can have a go at this one.

I did wonder if I went a little over the top on the Events - especially the 'historic notes' but did make sure most were one time only so it wouldn't bog computers down in the long run.

One thing I will probably do is change the title before release as the scenario isn't so much about Warrington anymore, as the L&M... but we'll see.

Anyway, glad you did okay, and hope you can forgive me (or better yet make your own dastardly scenario to get your own back!)

[Grandma Ruth]

You're forgiven! The Lancashire event I mean is the one in 1850 that lets the L&M in, not the start of scenario events. I will try and have a better look when I can. Unfortunately that probably won't be any time soon. We're going on holiday tomorow and when we come back we're moving house so I can't see me having much time at all during the summer.

[Wolverine@MSU]

I had a go at this one last night on Expert and got to the point that Ruth is talking about. Along the way, I did buy out one company (bad idea, as Ruth pointed out, because a new company was started and the "boss" had almost all the shares), and got controlling interest in another one, but couldn't get enough in the other two (especially L&M) before it was too late. The "change of roles" took me by surprise, and there was no way I was going to make it work as head of L&M because I was so efficient setting up BR, to the tune of $68 MILLION CBV!!!!, nd, since when I was it's (BR) head, I got the lion's share of the stock, there was no way on God's Green Earth that I was going to be able to "absorb" it.

I also noticed the bug of L&M not getting access to territories promised. I'm playing [warrington-wire-TestVersion03.rar]. Maybe there's a more recent version?

I would suggest allowing takeovers so a shrewd tycoon can "manipulate" the other companies as the requirements of the game evolve. Either that, or only allow starting one company so that once a company is bought out, another doesn't spring up. I think the AI profitability is balanced very well.......they grew at an average pace and didn't either tank or skyrocket.

I'll look forward to playing a "revised" version

[edbangor]

Thanks for the review Wolverine.

The easy things first. You were playing the current posted version so you didn't miss anything although in the version on my harddrive, I've already fixed the issue with L&M not getting territories.
I should have also disabled starting multiples companies so sorry about that, as it was always my intention for the AI to only have one go at starting up so that won't be an issue later on.
The above should also help sort people out when the 'swtich' occurs although I'm still looking into a historical way that I can move it up the time line, so the player gets more time to recover as, if you've built BR up to a 'professional' point, then the AI won't be able to handle it and will drive it into the ground, given time.

This I will now work on now I've got this feedback and that it seems the AI balance is working really well - the rivers are mostly the reason behind that as they feed the AI's industries given the AI's aren't all that good at doing it themselves.

Once the above changes are made - and assuming I don't get sidetracked by my new idea for a map - I'll post a new version for testing.

Thanks everyone who helped out.

[edbangor]

Okay I've made several changes to the scenario based upon the feedback here.
Starting multiple companies is now disabled.
Several new behind the scenes modifiers have been put in to 'help' the player and/or AI at various points.
I've added in some hints about what is going to happen before the major event hits, so you can prepare for it.
The time has been changed, but only slightly, for the major event.

However I now need to test things out myself to ensure things work, then I'll post another test map.

[edbangor]

Test plays of the new version have been completed.
The victory conditions have been set.

Now I just need to finally paint the map and FTP it to Hawk for posting...

[nedfumpkin]

Make it a campaign map, and save it as CA02.

[edbangor]

Oh yes, that's what we were going to do wasn't it... no I didn't forget about making it campaign... honest...

Shall I send it to you , Ned, rather than via FTP to Hawk, instead... just so 'no one' gets to see the twist in the middle before it's made available.

[edbangor]

I finished the painting earlier than I expected and have PM'ed the map to Ned.

[Hawk]

I finished the painting earlier than I expected and have PM'ed the map to Ned.

...and Ned posted it and I added it to the TM Main Page.

[Blackhawk]

I figured I'd give myself a couple days off from working on my own map, so I decided I should finally get around to playing this one.

I had to restart this one after a year or two since I connected the wrong city at the start and I was only breaking even. On the second try, things have been going well. I'm in the 1850s and am just working on generating enough money to finish taking over the last 2 other railroads left. I'll update once I finish.

I did however notice so far these issues:
183211 - It says Major, but I assume you mean Mayor, since in the follow up event it uses the term mayor. However, unless the player upgrades the Warrington Bank Quay station to a large station, Warrington the city is not yet connected. Maybe it was intentional to make the player have to upgrade the starting station to a large station? But after receiving the "Connect to Chester to find out how to gain access to Wales" message, I was left wondering why I was not told how to access Wales, since I didn't know that Warrington Bank Quay, didn't actually connect Warrington, nor did I know that was part of the trigger, until after a few years of having Chester connected and nothing happened, I peeked into the editor to see I had to connect 8 cities.

Midlands Offer also suffers from the same issue as the Wales/Chester offer. In that the check looks to see if Warrington City is connected. This event also appears to be missing a word or maybe the "to" should be removed in the phrase "should you choose to it". Also It's should be its.
Crewe - Crew = Crewe
Status - Holly - Hollyhead = Holyhead
Steel - Sheffield is misspelled.
Sheffield - recieves = receives, loose = lose
Seaforth = loose should be lose.
York - peices = pieces
Wales Offer - boarders = borders
Wales - boarders = borders
Holyhead - open = opened
Steel > 5 = loose again should be lose.
Steel - loose = lose.
1837 - the trigger is 1937 when it should be 1837, without this the player has no idea a change may be coming at L&M. (or is it L&MR, the two seemed to be used interchangeably)
1840 - owed = owned
1843 - camodities = commodities
1853 - delete 1 "over" as it says "over over", it's = its, and grammatically it says location, AND transport, AND, overlooked. It should probably just be a comma after the location part of the message rather than ", and". also indentitied = indentified
1855 - Thier = Their [I took over the BR before this event triggered, but this event uses companyid =2. So does that mean only company 2 sees the newspaper, or are the effects only felt on company 2, but everyone sees the newspaper?]
1860 - benifits = benefits
1873 - missleading = misleading
1873 econ his - loosing = losing
cities 30 - point = points
cities 40 - point = points
cities 50 - all of these you are awarded more than 1 point, so the message should say This gives you 2 points, not 2 point.
Steel > 10 - Qauy = Quay
Cambridge - loose = lose
Stratford - loose = lose
Stat - Fest - Connected = connect
Stat seaforth - loose = lose
Stat steel - loose = lose
Steel- yorkshire - build = built, "They've built plants to make this but don't have..." Possibly include alloy/metal after the word this.

Then with the iron events there is an issue in that in the message that says how to get a point (ship AT LEAST 5 loads of iron) does not fit with the iron>5 test. As the test checks for MORE THAN 5 loads of iron. So either the Iron Test needs to be changed to >=5 or the original message should be changed to say more than 5 loads of iron will give you a point. I also made a status message in the ledger so I'd know how many loads of iron I shipped in a year. I'm not sure if it was intentional to not have a status message on the iron to make it difficult for the player to keep track of the amount of iron or not.

Also related to the iron event, it keeps giving points yearly until 1956, but if Warrington says they are no longer going to accept Iron in 1856, it should probably stop giving a point for shipping 5 iron to Warrington after 1856, not 1956.