Louisiana!

[low_grade]

At long last, something about this scenario!

A little bit interesting as you start with only $1100K, and no stock or bond issuing. I tried watching for emerging resources/industries, but that was a slow start! Tried again and took an unusually approach for me, made two little lines, New Orleans to Baton Rouge and Dallas to Fort Worth, with only N.O. getting a Large station, the others Medium (I always place Large to begin with, so this was quite unconventional for me.) Ran a single Connie on each, and had water and maintenance on each by the end of the year. Took a few more years until I could take the next step, a Lumber Mill of course on top of a stack of logs near Baton Rouge, then bought up the logging camps nearby. Somebody came with an offer of 3 textile mills, cheaper track, or cash up front, I took the cash and was a bit disappointed, it was something like $450k only. Still, it was money I could decide what to do with now, and it got me the Lumber Mill a year+ earlier. Lots of resources on this map, distributed regionally, so lots of long distance profits. Rapid expansion for the win in 1889, cruising the last 2 years to get the $30M cash on hand.

Given my recent education, instead of running trains a bit short to keep the speed up, all were 7 cars + caboose, with a few express routes (big cities and huge profits!) Hotels everywhere and watch the passengers fill the trains!

Mostly flat track, so I did run some Dukes, and Moguls in the final years.

[Gumboots]

That's a blast from the past. I vaguely remember playing this one ages and ages ago, but that's about all I remember. I should give it another go.

[RulerofRails]

low_grade how was your ROI using the medium stations? Did you achieve the 20% you aim for?

Generally an unconnected network means lower ROI in the mid-term in my experience. I like that you didn't just go to play the map, but tried something different. I like to do that as well.

Years ago when I last played this one I did what would probably be considered a "vanilla" play: Start St. Louis to Baton Rouge and then work me way up the Mississippi. This isn't a good strategy, but the "assists" (including +15% cargo prices, and +15% cargo production that both trigger within the first 10 years) can enable slow starts to still reach a medal.

Your comment about the smaller stations and a quick refresh of the map gave me another idea: buy the Textile Mill in New Orleans at the start of the game. In at least two of the possible seeds this is available for $750k. With the remaining $350k it's possible to very carefully connect to Baton Rouge with Small Stations, with the main purpose being to ship Cotton to run your mill. I place both stations then run the track between them, then I had to run the game for a month or two to get the $40k to afford an American. As money comes in I replaced both with Large Stations, upgraded the mill and then went for rail expansion on a general latitudinal plan (flatter ground, better possibilities for demand gradients on a range of cargoes, and larger cities for more pax traffic). So Lafayette and Mobile are early targets, with the exact decision depending on timing and resource flows.

One of the two "common" seeds has the New Orleans Textile Mill is priced at $950k. The reason for this is that the mill made a small profit in 1868 (compared to a loss). And just like one specific Furnace on your Chile map, the placement of the resources (Cotton Farms) is the determining factor. Anyway, with this seed I used my stack method to take better advantage of all price differentials available to me. That same seed had a good supply of Rice coming down the river into Mobile, so the first connection was Mobile to New Orleans, then profits were enough for a connection to Baton Rouge in the start of the second year. Then expanded to the west, reaching Beaumont and $3.3M (flat normal economy, so that's effectively a little over 30%) CBV by the time the choice shows up in Jan 1874. This was a little better than I could do with the cheaper Textile Mill ($2.6-2.9M CBV, with at least one + economy change).

You guys might find it hard to believe, but in all my efforts exploring the start here, I never bought a Consolidation even though I'm playing with an entirely default 1.05 install. All Americans and then some Dukes once network size made some more specialized runs feasible. Duke is for pax appeal. There are no major hills. Main thing for short-term ROI is price, I'm going to be surprised if anyone can make the Consolidation do 3x the work even with the 60mph top speed.

There is the possibility for an industry only start by building a Paper Mill. I think it was the seed with the more expensive Textile Mill, there's a good flow at game start on the river east of Durant. A river helps to ship out the product, and the supply there is reliable. It wont give a great ROI over time (20%+ is lucky). This could be coupled with buying up newly seeded Dairies and Ranches in premium locations that might just enable a 20% average ROI (this map is denser than average for resources so most regular farms don't have stellar prospects for approaching 30% ROI), but that changes once cargo prices and then production is raised via event. But 30% ROI from rails in those first years is going to put CBV ahead at least at that point, then because there's a city connection goal, I didn't see a strong case for this being quicker.

My exploring was all done with one AI player, who almost without fail started with Dallas-Fort Worth line. If playing with 3 AI players, it's likely that an AI would connect New Orleans to Baton Rouge, so the Textile Mill in New Orleans might still be worthwhile even at $950k. Potentials for making profit with this idea on the rail side are lower, but it could be a chance to go into industries.

[Gumboots]

You guys might find it hard to believe, but in all my efforts exploring the start here, I never bought a Consolidation even though I'm playing with an entirely default 1.05 install. All Americans and then some Dukes once network size made some more specialized runs feasible. Duke is for pax appeal. There are no major hills. Main thing for short-term ROI is price, I'm going to be surprised if anyone can make the Consolidation do 3x the work even with the 60mph top speed.

I can see the logic there, although you also have to factor in maintenance and fuel to get a good figure. One Connie costs $9k/year in maintenance. Three Americans cost $21k/year. For fuel, a Connie has to move 70 tons of loco and tender everywhere. Three Americans have to move 195 tons of locos and tenders everywhere. Upshot is that one Connie doesn't have to do three times the work to break even with three Americans. I haven't crunched the numbers on the break even point, but it shouldn't be hard to work out.

[RulerofRails]

I hesitate to side-track a thread about the map. The 3x comment was obviously related to purchase price, which is a woefully inadequate way to do any sort of real comparison.

Briefly, for 8 default freight cars on an average 1% grade, Connie has a max speed of 51mph vs 29mph for the American. It takes the Connie 2.7 months to run out of water from a standing start (no traffic, straight track). It takes the American 4.1 months. So we have a roughly 50% potential mileage advantage to the Connie. An estimate for stops reduces this, my guess-timate sheet estimates there's 34% mileage advantage on the long run type.

We can say that the Connie incurs 2/3 the Rot factor loss of the American. Freight cargoes top out around 5% decay per month, but most are 3% or less. In the above example (run out of water) we get about an extra month and a half of decay. This figure is hard to fit in with the other percentages because revenue varies drastically.

Maintenance cost for the Connie is 28% higher. American costs $69 in fuel per mile, the Connie is $61 per mile. To overcome the extra maintenance, Connie needs to do a little extra mileage. When compared against revenues (esp. initial connections with big price differential), the running costs for both the American and Connie are low, so for me not a big part of engine selection process.

When expanding by rail, there is a timing element. There is a period (some months) to "save" as much as possible for the next connection. It's best to keep a new expansion to as much of a one-time expense as possible, so that almost 100% of profits from one leg (maybe need a service tower or two) will go to finance the next leg. Such sustained expansion is necessary as far as I can tell to be getting 30% ROI from rails. This comes down to decisions in the planning stage, for example avoid linking a row of cities that have a big gap in the middle, lots of rivers, a hilly area etc..

With cheaper engines there are two benefits:
1. The frequency of new connections can be higher since less money needs be "saved" (IMO saving is a delicate activity so as not to flat-spot growth).

2. When setting up the latest connection, any cargo in your network is a potential to haul to the latest high demand, cheaper engines gives more flexibility and probably higher profitability when sourcing cargo from a variety of sources. For example I would also buy an American for a trip of revenue of $100k, but wouldn't buy a Connie for the same trip (would look for at least $150k). If first trip revenue is at least 2x engine purchase price I will buy the engine even if it has to sit idle for some months/years before I can organize it for regular service.

As network size grows, buying extra trains can be self-defeating as you might encounter choke points for traffic. My rail expansion methods require a fair few engines, and this can sometimes limit how far I can push ROI from rails less so than being an obvious mistake with engine choice as far as I can tell. Although in the long-term definitely less engines doing the same amount of work will mean less traffic, but a lot of this is up to the player to manage as far as double-tracking, service facility placement etc.. Which comes back to a variation in how much practical work a player can get from any particular engine type for a given run type.

I'll finish this by saying that the Consolidation does have an advantage. If cash wasn't super tight and I was buying engines weighted for more than their single year potential I would buy the Connie over the American. But, in this game at least, by that time the Duke is around and with a haul Any cargo consist setup, the extra revenue from the better Passenger appeal rating (using Hotels for good express traffic) leads me to favor buying it over the Connie. Maybe I am wrong in this though. Maybe my instincts on this have been altered by using the slower Connie from 1.06 and TM.

Also, I did some simple maths (for personal reference). After 20 years, with 20% ROI compounded $1.1M becomes $35M. At 30% ROI we end up with $160M. I did this while trying to get an idea if buying heavily into industries (closer to 20% than 30% average ROI) from the start would have enough catch up from the subsequent production and price boost events to come close. Without looking too closely, I concluded that was a negative.

[Gumboots]

Fair enough.

But, in this game at least, by that time the Duke is around and with a haul Any cargo consist setup, the extra revenue from the better Passenger appeal rating (using Hotels for good express traffic) leads me to favor buying it over the Connie. Maybe I am wrong in this though. Maybe my instincts on this have been altered by using the slower Connie from 1.06 and TM.

I suspect so. The 1.05 Connie stats really make it the express choof par excellence for anything other than short hops. It's 20% faster than the Duke on flat terrain and murders it up grades, with the same running cost. Even with a pure express consist averaging 60/40 pax/mail, the Duke will only earn an extra 6% in revenue. For mixed traffic, probably halve that. And then there's the fact that the pax appeal isn't applied until after loading, frequently leading to pax being overlooked in favour of lower priced cargoes when auto-loading.

So for a standard auto consist I'd say you probably have a potential 2-3% revenue advantage, traded off against a 20% reduction in speed on flat terrain, and a 30-35% reduction in speed up light grades. Or to put it the other way, the Connie is roughly 50% faster up 1% and 2% grades.

[low_grade]

Americans are good, too, for sure, and I probably should have considered them for the cash-strapped start.

But wow that's a lot of attempts at this scenario! Yes I'm a huge numbers/modeling geek so when I can I keep finding myself coming back to this game. Hard to believe the first time was in 2009 when RRT3 wasn't really that old, but even then most players had forgotten it I guess. Luckily Hawk was maintaining this wonderful website with a dozen or so active users at the time. Still a few even today, it's nice to see!

I'm comparing this with my experience with Gran Turismo, the playstation car racing game. I got really into GT2 in a HUGE geeky way. I had backward engineered such modeling characteristics as tire size (215/55 R16 for example) based upon speeds at shift points/revs and transmission gear ratios, and a second data point given vehicle length in mm and counting pixels in a side profile snapshot of the wheel and tire heights to determine wheel size and approximate tire diameter. And then the endless comparisons! This is a great example of all the glorious tedious detail I went into, I even calculated the drag coefficients! https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/ ... ro.231398/ Well actually I guess today the GT2 section of those forums doesn't get any more activity than this site...

Oh, just saw the replies as I'm typing this, yeah, the saving-for-the-next expansion is painful. And also, if you're getting hard core about profits, with what I think you mean by the "stacking" strategy, engine speed is entirely unimportant, as you'd holding them until the fill up or stopping them until the price differential is sufficient for most of the year. Yeah, I don't mind slow trains strategically. And I did go for some Dukes, but Connies are just such great workhorses. Still, at the start Americans might have been better.

And yeah, I got 23-25% on my start with the two two-town networks. I never noticed the cheaply available and quickly profitable textile mills, so that was the best I came up with, and it got me through.

[low_grade]

And way off topic you may appreciate, I'm a hardcore carspotter
https://www.flickr.com/photos/76619182@N07/

but I've also spotted one train!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/76619182@N07/15672853644/

and even a car apparently trainspotting!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/76619182@N07/25263077893/

[Gumboots]

I never got into GT2, but I was a hardcore GT3 freak for a while there. Not so much into the calculations for that game (don't actually recall making any) but just loved thrashing the game. Although I did get right into fine tuning all the suspension and other options to suit my driving style and various tracks.

[RulerofRails]

RT3 is an interesting game. There's a lot of potential variation between seeds and for a whole range of strategies both for starting and then expansion. There is no tight strategic path that can be followed with success the way there is in RTII for example. If we define some variables (as I did in my first post in the thread) at the start we can get a tight strategy right at the start of the game. There are many other factors, but even on it's own the visible and dynamic economic model provides lots of possibilities and therefore variation between the outcome of our decisions which only increases as a game goes on.

Stacking is probably classified as an exploit (depending on who you ask). But, even if I forego using it, buying only the number of trains that can be put into immediate service, the knowledge gained by exploring this method gives an advantage. Once aware of the potential, it becomes a tool in the arsenal. I don't feel guilty when I use this technique as it does require thought, planning and concerted effort. Creatively it could perhaps be compared to partial shipments with a train continuing to take the majority of cargo somewhere with more demand.

Aside from stacking, where I see an obvious benefit to the cheap engines early in the game at the cost of some speed, when using engines "normally", an engine near the start of the game isn't likely to be used at 100% capacity. So some of the extra potential from the Connie may end up falling by the wayside, but you still had to have that extra $80k to buy it (how much could you have made by investing that money before there's the opportunity to use the Connie at 100% capacity?). I will have to revisit the express Duke vs. Connie comparison. No matter the starting strategy, as cash flow improves there is a certain point (I would call it an educated guess as to where the point exactly is) where I agree whole-heartedly that it's clearly better strategy to buy the more expensive, better-performing engines.

I never played GT2 or GT3. But I can see you dug deep into the GTRs, well done. In RT3 we aren't really drag racing trains, there are many legitimate ways to use the same engine. If you want to try to help decipher the economic implications of the performance/running cost data I have collected, speak up and I'll post them up (Warning: my working spreadsheets tend to get a bit messy/complicated).

[bombardiere]

Louisiana. This map is similar to Pop Top’s South East USA map. High in raw material (although less than in South East map), but cities are sparse and far between. Industry is slightly more diverse as the start is later, 1870. Cargoes, such as Toys and Oil is added and it makes the industry somewhat better, but I do not like the industry map with this one either
.
Cargo requirement is Clothing which means that Cotton is important again. And there is plenty of it around although this time there is less textile mills. You can actually carry some cargo and there is a good demand for Clothing in cities in western region.

I played hard difficult level. 1.05, but with few extra engines, Penn H3, deborked Mogul and I madea dummy fast passenger 4-4-0.

Baton Rouge and New Orleans looked like a good city pair. I had a test run and got it going well, but I did not save the game. Second attempt went bust as industry seed put distillery / brewery in both cities and little of other industries so there was no profitable cargo to sustain my railway. Still I think that Baton Rouge – New Orleans is a good place to start if the seed is good.

So I went to Columbia – Birmingham connection as the seed offered variable cargoes. It went well enough that I was able to slowly carry on to Tupelo. Then I run out of the money. My Railway was making profit between 20K to 50K per year.

As the bonds and stock were closed in this scenario, I could only lay few miles of track per year and slowly crawl towards Memphis. It actually took me about 10 game years to reach Memphis, build a station and run first train.

After Tupelo, I go an event for offering 3 textile mill, cheaper track or money. I chose textile mills as I foolishly thought that my company would own those. As these were randomly placed, those were little use to me. I should had taken money, as it might have enabled fast connection to Memphis.

I thought that the game was done, but I continued playing. With several trains running between Birmingham, Columbus, Tupelo and Memphis, I was making enough money to expand to Little Rock and Jackson. After this it was easy sailing to Baton Rouge, New Orleans and then finishing the connection requirement to St Louis.

Then I went to rail building spree to get at least Silver. After connection required 25 cities, I still thought that I was a too far away from full victory, but I said what the heck, lets go for gold. At this stage I had less than 50 car loads of Clothing delivered and only about 10 years left. But money was pouring in and it did take me only about five years to connect remaining 25 cities to reach full 50. Same time I was buying Consolidations and kept sending those to far corners of the map with full loads of Clothing.

Last five years I was just counting my money and occasionally added a new train if I thought some connection would be highly profitable. Eventually I got Gold just 5 months to spare. Nice final run to Hard victory.

Okey, I did much better than with South East map, but I cannot say that I liked this scenario much. I feel that it has the same problem as South East, flawed economy. It really cries for diversity. Especially I got frustrated with alcohol. There was produce, grain, sugar and rice, but all ended up as alcohol. I have heard that Southerns like their Mint Tulips, but this was too much. I was literally soaked with alcohol in this play.

I thought that I really would like to see a Cannery in this game. To make something else than alcohol. I have to see what it would do for game balance, but it would not be hard to do with 1.06 patch. I wonder why Pop Top dropped it from RT2. May be a balance issue.

[Grandma Ruth]

I was a bit apprehensive about a scenario with no stocks or bonds, which I usually rely on. But it was OK, as it turned out.
The plan was to make the haulage requirement and the new Orleans/St Louis connection, then make loadsamoney and finally do a burn track with small stations to connect all the other cities. There could be other strategies that would work just as well of course. You could end up with a massive railroad with 50 cities and hundreds of trains!
I started with cotton farms for a while, then built a textile mill in the middle of them which was soon profitable. I connected this to nearby cities and expanded down to New Orleans first. Big stockpile of cotton at Memphis so with the two textile mills at New Orleans and Memphis and my own about half-way between I was doing OK on the haulage.
I kept adding cities along the Mississippi so connected New Orleans and St Louis in 1882.
A nice sideline was the AI's railroad at Dallas/Forth Worth. I connected it to Tyler and so on to the main line. They couldn't get enough clothing from Tyler so I had a constant demand and also a tidy fee for using my tracks. In one year it got to be over $1m!
I met the haulage requirement in 1888 so now all that was needed was to connect all the cities - and make the $30m cash, of course!
By this time I'm bored - my attention span isn't that great - so I just let things run for a while to make the cash needed. $30m to keep, about $11m to connect.
I re-routed the trains, which had been concentrating on hauling clothing, and had most of them on straightforward North/South or East/West routes. A few I micro-managed to keep my industry profitable.
In 1889 I had a textile mill, cotton farms, dairy farms and coal mines. In 1890 I added a dairy processor, some lumber mills and a paper mill. In 1895 I bought a brand-new oil refinery, just because it was there...
By February 1897 I had about $42m so that was enough to connect all the cities needed. I connected them in twos and threes, they don't all need to be joined to the main line. I connected one to the AI's line, that also counts as a connection. Usually just small stations except sometimes on the bank of a river it might be cheaper to have a big station rather than a bridge. The Gold comes almost immediately which was good as I don't know how the maintenance for all this infrastructure might have affected profits.
A scenario with no stocks and bonds and no industry would be a real challenge for me. This one was actually a bit too easy, I thought.

[Gumboots]

So, make it harder for yourself. Just go into the editor, and switch off buying or building industry.