Pacific Coastal

[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

Pacific Coastal - Added in the Coast to Coast Expansion
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Best Way to Win Gold
Start in the North near Seattle 23% [ 4 ]
Start in the South near L.A. 0% [ 0 ]
Start in the Heart of California(Sacramento) 35% [ 6 ]
Start in the East near the Oil fields 0% [ 0 ]
Start in North Califfornia near Eureka 5% [ 1 ]
Other 17% [ 3 ]
I will play this scenario later 11% [ 2 ]
I refuse to play it/ This one sucks big time 5% [ 1 ]

Total Votes : 17
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This scnerio map was added later by PopTop. Until now noone has commented on it. At least there is nothing in the metathread. OK, here's a poll.
What's the very best strategy? Unfortunately I didn't make gold and thus don't know the perfect answer. The scenario is quite difficult. To winn silver I needed nearly 10000 miles of tunnel.
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I got gold on hard setting. Like many other scenerio, industries are the key. Pay attention to the lumber mills. Get them early when they start making money. Build or buy distillaries near the fruit farms. Do all these and you should have a pretty good revenue base to start building your tracks.
Starting laying tracks near your industries whether north (seattle) or south (san francisco)... doesn't really matter. Or start at both places... eventually you will join them with a coastal track that follows the seashore. (take a little bit of trial and error to avoid steep grades.)
When you have enough money... you can build all the tunnels you want to go east and get your gold.
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I'm playing on Expert with the max # of AIs. I bought all the Dairy farms I could at the outset, then built a Lumber Mill and Paper Mill in the next year or two. Let the AIs run some track, and after about 5 yrs, when they went down the tubes, bought them out and connected and extended their tracks. In the meantime, bought a Plastics Factory and a Tool & Die, built a Distillery and bought an Oil Well that was just starting to turn a profit. Took out lots of bonds and refinanced when rate was 5%. Built through the mts. north of Redding (there's a pass you gan get through w/o too many steep grades.) By 9 yrs, I have Seattle connected to San Fran and a line down to Bakersfield. In a year or two will be able to connect with L.A. Should have no problem getting gold.
BTW-I noticed the ledger screen talks about a connection between Seattle and Boise, but doesn't say anything about it in the Scenario Goals. Do you need to make this connection?
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Finished it yesterday. Found out by looking at the events in the Editor that indeed, connecting to Boise was a requirement for gold, not mentioned in the Briefing .
A steel mill in Seattle was hoarding coal, so I dedicated a couple of trains to haul it south, then built back from my mountain route to connect Boise. Along that rail line were two uranium mines with cargo flowing away, so I built a station to grab it and dedicated another couple of trains to haul it away.
Let the company cash build up for a few years until I had enough to punch through a tunnel from Bakersfield to LA. Then sat back and waited to complete the coal/uranium hauling reqs. Finished with 8 or 9 years to spare .
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then correct the briefing.
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That would only fix my copy of the scenario. I thought others might be interested in knowing about the problem. It might even make its way back to Poptop so they could update it for future players.
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but if you corrected it it would solve the problem and everyone else would be able to correct it themselves.
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I've already played the scenario and won, so I don't care if it gets corrected on my computer.
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fine.
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fine.
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wait... I thought the briefing did mention the Boise connection. On second page... I thought.
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wrote: wait... I thought the briefing did mention the Boise connection. On second page... I thought.

In my copy it got mentioned, too. I play the German version, though.
It's interesting that the starting position is well balanced.
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I thought this a very good balanced scenario.
There is lots of industry if you want that route and the track placement is pure rrt.
Personally I usually prefer to build/buy a few industries first ( here lumbar mill/furniture/distllery) wait a bit for cargo to build up while I make money on industry- about 3 years.
Then I started North though quite quickly I maxed out the easy connections north/mid and south. To give me 3 networks unconnected.
Connected south to mid network and then saved my pennies for the big connections. I connected Boise/Bend then to the mid network which is porbably suboptimal, connecting to north network gave much better returns.
Lastly I did the Bend/north network connection. I didn't use any tunnels btw.
I got the uranium from a station placed along the route the uranium was coming over the hills- a bit of a cheap cheat probably but it worked to ge the required 10 loads in ablout 5 years. Finished with about 6 years to go.

[MArk S]

HO
LEE
CRAP
!!!

This level is hard.
I was not feeling too productive this evening so I decided to try this level. I had started it once a couple months back, but had to do other things and never came back. Today for some strange reason I put it on brutal with 2 (max) computer players. Now, several hours later I felt like I built the rail by hand.