Chip Off The Old Block

[Hawk]

The following text is a compilation of what was salvaged from the old Gathering Forum. It contains postings from several different people.
Thanks goes out to Wolverine for putting this all together.

Hawk

Chip Off The Old Block
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Industries are key, buy immediately what provides more than 10 per cent profit, in particular orchards and distilleries. Every 6 months look on the map for new industries.
I did make the connection to the City of Angels within the three years, with the trade it is profitable. Did not build up into the mountains to Crestview but connected all other cities incl Tetille.
Neville became a key hub and supported 2 hotels, 2 restaurants and a tavern.
The regular earthquakes at Neville can be avoided by building around the mountain ridge rather than tunnel or over the top.
Did Hard in October 2080, but with some stock manipulations. Good luck.
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I had good success with dairy, bauxite, cattle and lumber, but each time it works out a bit different.
Also, I avoid electric so that I can build a lot of track and get to LA in time for the reward.
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I just did this to complete the campaign this morning (after 4 days hard palying ).
I did it by running electic track all the way down from your starting island SE, then from there go SW to connect those two cities, hop across to LA and all the way back up to make a loop (this loop does not contain your fist 2-3 cities). This loop then contains 15 cities so all you need to do is connect up to the one city just north of your Se end of the loop just before your worth gets to £20m.
{sorry but I can't remember the names of the cities }
I bought a slow electic train for $350 initially and just shuttled between my stations. As soon as I connected to the mainland, I bought a fast train for $800 and used that on express only again shuttling between stations (i.e. A-B-C-D-C-B-A), I switched the original train to freight only. As my line extended all the way down SE, I bought another 2 fast trains and had these two do the same in the lower half of my track as the original were doingin the top half. When I had enough money I then built towards LA and then all the way back up, buying another 2 trains to service this line.
I only needed to buy 3 bonds early on.
btw, finished the campaign with 11 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze on hard, (it look me a while to learn how to use the stock market).
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I did it on Expert railroading all the way as follows:
Connect everything that offers rewards fast using Bonds if needed. Keep in the line from Santa Rosa to City of Angels as earthquakes regularly occur to the north-east. Spurs off enable you to connect to towns without too many expensive tunnels. You can finish lines above a few towns using a big station which is a lot cheaper than tunnelling onto the town itself. Electrify when money starts rolling in and move to electric trains for new lines and crash replacements. Finally go for the last few towns to reach 16 (I actually hit 18 because the extra couple are very profitable) and double track starting from Santa Rosa. PNW is hardest – buy lots of stock early and whenever there’s a recession and after about twenty years start upping the dividend (I reached $2.5m) and I got there 5 years early.

[low_grade]

Just replayed the campaign (on Hard) and dang this is a tough one. After several failed attempts where I somehow ran my company into the ground, I finally cheesed and restarted until I had 2 logging camps and no lumber mill by Winnefred and slowly ran the traditional industry approach (so few resources on this map!) The delayed start from industry approach accentuated price gradients and generated some great profits (furniture) early on, maybe 3 years before rail to El Resto. And all custom consists for the first 15+ years. The $200k diesel was my workhorse, then I added the $1200 diesel here and there, never electrified. Eventually a Steel Mill and then T+D in Rodriquez, fertilizer factories in Diamond Beach, all the iron mines and coal mines in the area. The start is the key to this scenario.

[RulerofRails]

Low_grade, glad to see you back.

As for a comment on the scenario, as has been said above, the bonus connection money makes hooking up the cities pretty easy. The PNW is a little harder. In fact, the bonuses complicate stock strategy because they increase CBV. It's not harder to hit a target return on CBV necessarily, but the trap is that there's nothing "bonus" about these cash lumps. For a healthy stock growth one needs to use the bonus funds just as efficiently as his own hard-earned profits. On the flip side, one can use these "bonuses" to PNW advantage by maxing out his margin just before making a connection that rewards a bonus (will still work after the connection as long as the game hasn't left PAUSE). Once the game is un-paused, the jump up in share price thanks to the extra CBV (bonus).

By using the above method and cranking up dividends once I had 100% ownership, I just completed a run in 3 years and 1 week. This map was always a nice bit of fun. I built stations in the countryside which is more ruthless than my normal practice. The seeding was probably better than average too. The only economic change let the economy slip into Recession during the second year. I only built Suspension bridges (even though there's a trick to fudge the Santa Rosa to El Resto bridge with even a Wooden one). I was "tricky"/careful with bridge-building, the purpose was to keep the ramps for the suspension bridges of a manageable size. The large ramps normally seen on suspension bridges cost a fair bit. Here's the ones I built:

[Just Crazy Jim]

A clever use of the terrain, RoR. Ever since I saw the post about zero-grade bridges, I have tried to make every bridge zero-grade when I can. Most maps are not friendly to this sort of bridge, but a surprising number (to me at least) are.

I never thought to approach the PNW goals by using the bonus money, so thank you for that tip. I will abuse it often now.