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
New Beginnings
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The scenario asks you to have 25million pnw and connect \London/Paris/Berlin from 1990.
You get several options to take access to various countries or cash, I took the cash and brought a cheap access with a few cities I could max out(Belgium) and still had money to seriously track the old East Germany (which comes available quickly) as well as some industry( in this case grain farms/lumber mill and soon a furniture fact.) Taking the cash gives you a great bond rating so you can get bonds to about 5 million.
Things took off quickly and I was able to buy the poorest of the ai's in France after a couple of years. Buying this french ai gave me access to ALL the other countries !!!!! straightaway. Ionly had brought Belgium -no other country , I guess ai's get free access to all countries.
From then it was just keeping building finally buying ai which controlled Paris and finishing the connections for June 2000 victory and $30m pnw
BTW I also posted my highest salary $92(+$5k bonus) with the next year $94k.
PNW was the usual with shortselling the loosing ai( the other ai was profitable) and aggressively buying my own stock as well as high dividends when possible and company buying back stock.
All in all a standard scenario with the instant access to all countries gained by buying an ai in an unaccessed country the highlight.
New Beginnings
Re: New Beginnings
I'm finding this scenario quite frustrating.
The premise is a good one: you have Europe from Poland and Austria in the East to France and part of the UK as a stamping ground, some interesting modern industries (Auto plants, Recycling, Chemical factories, nuclear fuel) to carry, and nice (but expensive) modern European trains to play with.
Once I got used to the low ratio between train cost (your cheapest, only diesel loco costs $200k) and cargo prices - very different to the 19th Century campaigns I'm used to - I made good progress, starting with a connection between Berlin and Magdeburg, and expanding across Germany, with a Steel Mill in Saarbrucken, Auto plant in Frankfurt and Tire Factory in Kiel working together.
It's now 2004; I long ago linked Berlin and Paris, PNW is $50m (twice the $25m for Gold), and I could have afforded to connect to London back in about 1999. But I'm holding off ending the game, because I want to be in charge. The reason is the extremely annoying AI companies. As soon as you buy out their companies, AI tycoons pop up again with a new stretch of crummy track which somehow nets them enormous profits. This is because they cheat unashamedly. Looking in the Events in the Editor, it appears that their companies get an annual grant if their debt is above $1m or their cash below $300m. Tycoons also get a cash grant if their PNW falls below a certain level.
If the scenario designer had made this part of the story, with an EU Competition Commissioner tearing his/her hair out about these subsidies, angry scenes in the European parliament and so on, perhaps trade embargoes for certain goods, I'd have found this humourous and a challenge
.
As it is, it just feels like a last-minute, unpublicised and clumsy attempt to balance the game. The trouble is that it makes the AIs obviously, unrealistically tough to take over. Their financial figures make no sense.
There's also a "struggling German economy" event in the early 2000s, which, because it lowers cargo prices (everywhere, for some reason), produces those price bugs on the map which cargo-price modifiers seem to be prone to. So then the AI companies go in for shameless arbitrage: hauling all the Steel away from my Auto plant in Frankfurt to a meaningless price spike in Brussels, starving my Auto Plant, using my rails (and no doubt not paying me for it).
So this is a flawed one. I think I might play it again, either as a sandbox on my own, or with the AI subsidies removed: because the context in itself is interesting.
The premise is a good one: you have Europe from Poland and Austria in the East to France and part of the UK as a stamping ground, some interesting modern industries (Auto plants, Recycling, Chemical factories, nuclear fuel) to carry, and nice (but expensive) modern European trains to play with.
Once I got used to the low ratio between train cost (your cheapest, only diesel loco costs $200k) and cargo prices - very different to the 19th Century campaigns I'm used to - I made good progress, starting with a connection between Berlin and Magdeburg, and expanding across Germany, with a Steel Mill in Saarbrucken, Auto plant in Frankfurt and Tire Factory in Kiel working together.
It's now 2004; I long ago linked Berlin and Paris, PNW is $50m (twice the $25m for Gold), and I could have afforded to connect to London back in about 1999. But I'm holding off ending the game, because I want to be in charge. The reason is the extremely annoying AI companies. As soon as you buy out their companies, AI tycoons pop up again with a new stretch of crummy track which somehow nets them enormous profits. This is because they cheat unashamedly. Looking in the Events in the Editor, it appears that their companies get an annual grant if their debt is above $1m or their cash below $300m. Tycoons also get a cash grant if their PNW falls below a certain level.
If the scenario designer had made this part of the story, with an EU Competition Commissioner tearing his/her hair out about these subsidies, angry scenes in the European parliament and so on, perhaps trade embargoes for certain goods, I'd have found this humourous and a challenge
.As it is, it just feels like a last-minute, unpublicised and clumsy attempt to balance the game. The trouble is that it makes the AIs obviously, unrealistically tough to take over. Their financial figures make no sense.
There's also a "struggling German economy" event in the early 2000s, which, because it lowers cargo prices (everywhere, for some reason), produces those price bugs on the map which cargo-price modifiers seem to be prone to. So then the AI companies go in for shameless arbitrage: hauling all the Steel away from my Auto plant in Frankfurt to a meaningless price spike in Brussels, starving my Auto Plant, using my rails (and no doubt not paying me for it).
So this is a flawed one. I think I might play it again, either as a sandbox on my own, or with the AI subsidies removed: because the context in itself is interesting.
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RulerofRails
- CEO
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Re: New Beginnings
Eliminating the AI isn't part of the original goals. If you want to merge their companies once, I would suggest using the "Disable starting multiple companies" switch. They and you will only be able to start one new company near the start of the game.
The reason you are seeing the AI make a lot of money when they first start a company is because they choose starting locations with profitable industries (green in the color coding profit overview) with the caveat that the path for track needs to be almost a straight line. The active industries have good short-term profit potential because there is cargo waiting to be hauled at both ends of their line, each city demanding strongly what the other has. After a couple of trips the demand is equalized and profits drop. New connections are needed to cities that also strongly demand those products to keep this process going.
The AI boost events seem to be intended to stop the AI going bankrupt, not to give them a massive boost. The max cash level when the extra $125k will be awarded is $300k not $300M. Sure, disable it in your game if you want, that's your call.
I understand your frustration when the AI hauls precious resources away from your industries. Depending on the percentage of a run that is on your track, they will pay you that percentage of total revenue. They must pay all engine maintenance and fuel costs. Sometimes the AI will connect to your track. If that happens you might be able to still sever the connection by bulldozing some of your track and curving around that place. If I connect to their network, I assume that I open up the risk of stuff like this happening sometimes.
The reason you are seeing the AI make a lot of money when they first start a company is because they choose starting locations with profitable industries (green in the color coding profit overview) with the caveat that the path for track needs to be almost a straight line. The active industries have good short-term profit potential because there is cargo waiting to be hauled at both ends of their line, each city demanding strongly what the other has. After a couple of trips the demand is equalized and profits drop. New connections are needed to cities that also strongly demand those products to keep this process going.
The AI boost events seem to be intended to stop the AI going bankrupt, not to give them a massive boost. The max cash level when the extra $125k will be awarded is $300k not $300M. Sure, disable it in your game if you want, that's your call.
I understand your frustration when the AI hauls precious resources away from your industries. Depending on the percentage of a run that is on your track, they will pay you that percentage of total revenue. They must pay all engine maintenance and fuel costs. Sometimes the AI will connect to your track. If that happens you might be able to still sever the connection by bulldozing some of your track and curving around that place. If I connect to their network, I assume that I open up the risk of stuff like this happening sometimes.
Re: New Beginnings
Very interesting points, thanks for your reply!
I was inspired to criticise this scenario (while in no way being an experienced or even qualified scenario builder myself) by some interesting comments Gumboots made on the CPR thread. These built-in campaigns and scenarios can have flaws as well.
You're right about the cash level at which the AIs get a cash boost - I meant $300k but typed $300M!
I'm about to restart this scenario, trying to pay more attention to buying in to the AIs early on - which is difficult, when I'm trying to concentrate on building up my holdings in my own (eventually-dominant, of course
) company. Also to make sure that I secure Brussels early on, as that's a big focus of economic activity. One of the AI tycoons - whose earlier tiny Pomeranian effort between Schwerin and Rostock I took over with ease - restarted there, and became really difficult to dislodge. I got frustrated waiting (with $18m of company cash ready) for a recession that never seemed to happen, so that I could buy in to the company and assure (or at least assist) a successful merger. It just seemed to me that their stock was overvalued, given the minimal loads their trains were carrying and their lack of an industry base. That 2nd Brussels company dropped profit year-on-year by more than 50% in the last year I played - and the stock price rose! I'd been watching the Earnings Per Share line going south, and at year-end.... nothing happened. My board would roast me over a fire for that kind of profit drop (even though I own 60% of the stock - where's the fun in being a tycoon if you can't order people about? 
)
I'm especially interested in the track needing to be a straight line. That does tend to be how AIs lay track - sometimes with ridiculous consequences
. Wonder whether I can exploit this in choosing a starting location, if AIs avoid hilly territory, or whether they'll just plonk down silly-grade track in that kind of terrain (if it's available) anyway.
I was inspired to criticise this scenario (while in no way being an experienced or even qualified scenario builder myself) by some interesting comments Gumboots made on the CPR thread. These built-in campaigns and scenarios can have flaws as well.
You're right about the cash level at which the AIs get a cash boost - I meant $300k but typed $300M!
I'm about to restart this scenario, trying to pay more attention to buying in to the AIs early on - which is difficult, when I'm trying to concentrate on building up my holdings in my own (eventually-dominant, of course
) company. Also to make sure that I secure Brussels early on, as that's a big focus of economic activity. One of the AI tycoons - whose earlier tiny Pomeranian effort between Schwerin and Rostock I took over with ease - restarted there, and became really difficult to dislodge. I got frustrated waiting (with $18m of company cash ready) for a recession that never seemed to happen, so that I could buy in to the company and assure (or at least assist) a successful merger. It just seemed to me that their stock was overvalued, given the minimal loads their trains were carrying and their lack of an industry base. That 2nd Brussels company dropped profit year-on-year by more than 50% in the last year I played - and the stock price rose! I'd been watching the Earnings Per Share line going south, and at year-end.... nothing happened. My board would roast me over a fire for that kind of profit drop (even though I own 60% of the stock - where's the fun in being a tycoon if you can't order people about? )That's a great tip! And revealing of how I like to play. I want to end up controlling everything (after a lot of hard work making the money to buy control off the AIs), no matter whether "only company left standing" is in the official goals or not.RulerofRails wrote:Eliminating the AI isn't part of the original goals. If you want to merge their companies once, I would suggest using the "Disable starting multiple companies" switch.
Interesting. That's exactly how I chose Berlin-Magdeburg - a big price gradient there to be exploited, along with an easy buy-in to a Distillery and Lumber Mill. And as you say, the profits fall off very quickly, so that you have to connect further to go on making money. Much more apparent on this map than on the "new virgin territory" 19thC US maps like Germantown, CPR etc.RulerofRails wrote:The reason you are seeing the AI make a lot of money when they first start a company is because they choose starting locations with profitable industries (green in the color coding profit overview) with the caveat that the path for track needs to be almost a straight line.
I'm especially interested in the track needing to be a straight line. That does tend to be how AIs lay track - sometimes with ridiculous consequences
. Wonder whether I can exploit this in choosing a starting location, if AIs avoid hilly territory, or whether they'll just plonk down silly-grade track in that kind of terrain (if it's available) anyway.I think my frustration was not at the AIs taking this opportunity, but at the opportunity existing at all. The Steel price-map went all weird, with huge profits possible from hauling Steel from Frankfurt (where I had an Auto Plant and Tool&Die grabbing gratefully at every scrap of steel) to Brussels (which had no real demand for Steel at all). I remember seeing this on the Britain map after a famine price-modifying event - these kinds of events do produce weird price bugs.RulerofRails wrote: I understand your frustration when the AI hauls precious resources away from your industries. Depending on the percentage of a run that is on your track, they will pay you that percentage of total revenue. They must pay all engine maintenance and fuel costs. Sometimes the AI will connect to your track. If that happens you might be able to still sever the connection by bulldozing some of your track and curving around that place. If I connect to their network, I assume that I open up the risk of stuff like this happening sometimes.
Re: New Beginnings
A few notes on this scenario now I've restarted it:
1. If you take the starting cash option, rather than access to a territory (note: W. Germany, the one you'd really want, is not on offer
), do NOT then buy into your company and then spend your money on access. Territory access doesn't go onto your balance sheet as an asset, but the money you spend on it does (as a negative). So once you spend money on territory access, your share price (tracking your company cash, which is your only asset at this stage) will take a huge dive, before you've had a chance to do anything in the territory to prove yourself to the market.
2. You can exploit the game, if you start at the standard time of Jan 1991, by taking the cash and doing absolutely nothing until February, when E Germany will become available for free. You can then start up a very nice operation in E. Germany without paying any access rights! (This is exactly what I've done).
Note that if you haven't started a company by Feb 1991, for some reason the German Re-Unification newspaper will not appear. So it's best to start a company in Jan 1991 but do nothing with it until February if you go for this strategy.
3. Prices collapse very quickly on this map after you make the first big, profitable delivery of a good. Very unlike the US 19thC standard campaigns I'm used to. I've found that setting up regular train routes and leaving them alone to follow that route doesn't work so well in the early stages. Micro-management to take advantage of immediate, momentary changes in price gradients is very important at the start. I get a feeling this map demands a lot of this kind of micro all the way through - changing train routes to quite weird routes, just because the price gradients make it make sense. This is exactly what the AI is good at and humans not so good at (given the calls on our attention - bond credit rating, plans for expansion, industries to buy, state of our own PNW and chance to buy in to a rival at a good price). So you have to pay close attention to the goods price map - there's a high chance that your train routed A-B-C-B-A will be missing out on a hugely profitable cargo that only wants to go A-C or C-A, with a "price-ditch" in the middle at B so that it will never pick it up.
4. As the OP (or rather, Hawk's summary) noted, you can get access to ALL territories for free simply by taking over an AI company. It's worth doing this early on, even by paying a large premium over the market cap, because it gets you about $3M worth of access rights.
5. Oilcan and others have already said it, but: buy industry early on! A well-placed built or bought industry gives you a vital, constant income cushion. This helps your expansion and keeps the bond market happy.
Ostis über alles!
1. If you take the starting cash option, rather than access to a territory (note: W. Germany, the one you'd really want, is not on offer
), do NOT then buy into your company and then spend your money on access. Territory access doesn't go onto your balance sheet as an asset, but the money you spend on it does (as a negative). So once you spend money on territory access, your share price (tracking your company cash, which is your only asset at this stage) will take a huge dive, before you've had a chance to do anything in the territory to prove yourself to the market.2. You can exploit the game, if you start at the standard time of Jan 1991, by taking the cash and doing absolutely nothing until February, when E Germany will become available for free. You can then start up a very nice operation in E. Germany without paying any access rights! (This is exactly what I've done).
Note that if you haven't started a company by Feb 1991, for some reason the German Re-Unification newspaper will not appear. So it's best to start a company in Jan 1991 but do nothing with it until February if you go for this strategy.
3. Prices collapse very quickly on this map after you make the first big, profitable delivery of a good. Very unlike the US 19thC standard campaigns I'm used to. I've found that setting up regular train routes and leaving them alone to follow that route doesn't work so well in the early stages. Micro-management to take advantage of immediate, momentary changes in price gradients is very important at the start. I get a feeling this map demands a lot of this kind of micro all the way through - changing train routes to quite weird routes, just because the price gradients make it make sense. This is exactly what the AI is good at and humans not so good at (given the calls on our attention - bond credit rating, plans for expansion, industries to buy, state of our own PNW and chance to buy in to a rival at a good price). So you have to pay close attention to the goods price map - there's a high chance that your train routed A-B-C-B-A will be missing out on a hugely profitable cargo that only wants to go A-C or C-A, with a "price-ditch" in the middle at B so that it will never pick it up.
4. As the OP (or rather, Hawk's summary) noted, you can get access to ALL territories for free simply by taking over an AI company. It's worth doing this early on, even by paying a large premium over the market cap, because it gets you about $3M worth of access rights.
5. Oilcan and others have already said it, but: buy industry early on! A well-placed built or bought industry gives you a vital, constant income cushion. This helps your expansion and keeps the bond market happy.
Ostis über alles!