As it turns out....I frogot to add the effect to give the million to the company. ...ooops...was getting late when I did that one I guess. :) ...Mind you, it has me thinking about possibly including some possible events were the actually gets screwed out of money some how. ie some dude comes by with an offer and you get suckered. :) would have to have deals that work to keep it interesting.
Also fixed the conditions for whether you get it connected or not. Should work...but it has been a long and sunny day for me.
Basically, what I am trying to do in this scenario is thwart the player's ability to pause the game, go get bonds and then lay miles and miles of track, then unpause the game. I pretty much do that when playing maps most of the time. So what happens here is you lay a month's worth of track at a time. Tedious for sure, but it creates the challenge of you having to pay attention or else time passes you by. Just like life.:)
When I am creating a map, my habit is to play it until I find an error, then go fix that before starting all over again. It takes a long time to complete maps especially if they have complicated events and variables etc.
A trick I have found with the track is you set out your task, and any track you have left over in the fall use for doubling sections at stations and maintenance spurs. I am trying to make this map focus on track planning.
PS...use the trick for doubling steel bridges where you bring the double track uo onto the first cell of the bridge, and then the whole bridge doubles at no extra charge.
A good start is to buy the textile mill at Minni, connect St. Paul to Superior, lay up for your bridge to mini, large station at St. Paul, medium at superior with the farmstead in its cache. Maintenance spur behind Superior - curve the track. Run a Standard from Superior at first, then upgrade medium station to large. Install your maintenance shed and water tower. When asked, don't lay track for your first year.
Try to buy the lumber camp east of Superior. Next year go to Minni, lay a large station. Connect Superior to your lumber camp. Drop ship lumber and pulp to Superior. Get a consolidation and run it to Minni from Superior pulling full freight cargo. Buy the lumber mill.
A second lumber camp comes up so buy it and away you go. Next you want to go to Sioux City. (I think that's it...by the river) Then the deal for deadwood should come up and go for that.
As you move westward and transport passengers to the cities and towns, they will start developing. So in some cases you bring a load of passengers and they will settle into a farmstead community. I remember doing research on some of the tonws and I think I have some accuracy in the industrial distribution as it was during this period. But don't hold me to that because I did that almost a year ago. But Industry will spawn based on the passengers you bring to the towns.
Gold rushes will be happening in various places. You don't need connected track, so you can chase some of them. The Railroad closest to you, forget...I think Northern Pacific, may connect to St. Paul. Sometimes it does, other times it doesn't. If it does, it's stock does very well, if not then it is cheap.
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PNW...I don't think that I've succeeded at any scenario that has a pnw goal, or last company standing goal without forst chasing all of my stock. I even considered it a loss if the AI buys any of my stock, and I will start over. So generally right out of the gate I try to get an industry that I can supply, then I work at getting all my stock by buying it, or the company buying it back. I try not to let it split too early, but once I see that it might, I buy back as much as I can, even taking out maximum bonds, until I have it all. Then it can split a kajillion times for all I care.
This makes for lean and shaky first few years, but then you get ALL the dividends to get you out of hawk (pun intended.
) and you can go after the stock from other companies. Expect your credit rating to go to F if you do this, so you need good income from your first route, and regularly supplied papermills are the greatest for this. Once you have done that, you can focus entirely on building your railroad. I try to keep my bonds at 2 million max...but have gone as high as 7 million. Watch the ledger for interest payments to see how much they cost, because after you do the stock grab, you will get soaked on interest for your bonds which will slow your recovery and growth.
Just my way of doing things but works every time.
Here's the map with the deadwood deal fixed...I'm pretty sure. :)