France The Path to Reconstruction

[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

France-The Path to Reconstruction
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Perhaps I'm opening wrong, perhaps I don't know jack about industries, but the France 1950 scenario just kicks my arse. If I don't slowly sink in a morass of debt as my trains pull a mere $50k each per run, my electric plants lose so much money in the mid-game that I can't stay afloat.
I generally start in Le Mans or Chartres, as those two cities allow for a nice, flat, bridgeless radial hub 'n spokes with about 5-6 other cities. I've found that if I build/buy an electric plant I don't have enough to lay a proper rail network and if I lay a rail line with my initial capital, I'll likely not be able to afford an electric plant without the use of bonds - which does me no good as I have to service the bonds and the perpetual losses I'm burdened with by my electric plant.
Yesterday I had a game where I connected all cities and was pulling in ~$2mil a year extra cash, but that money was being eaten up by my 14 bonds and my 6 power plants (Paris, Bordeaux, Le Mans, Brussels, Orleans, and Nabaz (something like that, near Brussels)) who seemed to be losing around $50-100k/year. If I bothered to play to the end (another 6 years) I might've made the Silver requirements for power wattage, but my industry losses could've bankrupted my RR by then.
I've never been strong at the industry game, but this one I'm especially bad at. Help!
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Oh, before you ask I was running plenty of coal (north of Rouen) and oil (port of Saint Mal, then Bordeaux) for my plants.
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I went with electric trains. I looked around carefully and started down by Bayonne. I built a large station house right at the Spanish border to get that port they had. Soon was running various trains in the area.
Then I looked for profitable items elsewhere. Found some milk and coal runs in other places and started really making some money.
Bought a nuclear plant in Lille, then started running uranium to it from halfway across the country, nearly the only source for it. Made gold without much trouble. Didn't have to buy access rights anywhere else.
Good luck, hope this was of help.
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I tried this again on medium and still lost the game because of the industry profits. I'm wondering if I should just avoid power plants until 1965 or so, building up a solid backbone of profitable industries that will help absorb the losses from my power plants. I even bought the only Uranium mine in existence and was eaking out a mere $40k/year from it, even though I was transporting every bit of uranium made to my -150k/year nuclear power plant.
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I didn't build an electric plant, I waited and saved my money so that i could build a Nuclear Power Plant near niort where the uranium mines comes up. I also bought the mines so i made pretty much money.
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I completed this on 'Medium' after a few tries.
I used steam but also started by laying a track between Bordaux and Bayonne to get the Oil, for a good source of steady income.
The Key for me was supplying Uranium to Nimes where one of the N. Power stations was. I could by then also ship uranium from Marseille, which had uranium gradually drifting over from Turin. I eventually also managed to complete a tunnel to Italy so get even more $$$.
The other key factor was 2 ports in Marseille, which created a great flow of oil etc up to Lyon. This enabled to get oil + coal to some Power stations in order that they make a small profit. However if you can get 6 Uranium to a Nucler P. Station you make a packet.
2 final SPOILERS so don't read on if not interested:
Paying the 350K to some guy to make an engine really pays of in the long run....+ If you generate enough power per year you will get another bonus if running electric....
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If you run electric you will get glowing green trains at night
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Aha, Void is right! However I was running steam, I got the Gold, and got the reward notice. I can't remember it saying 'if running electric'... In any case I did not see any glowing trains afterwards, just my bank account ;)
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I fell one year short of gold at hard difficulty. I started buying a soon-to-be-very-profitable brewery and then built a line in Belgium, which looked to have the most to transport at the start. I gradually extended my line roughly counterclockwise around France, buying industry as I went. I didn't buy power plants until the very end as I couldn't see a way to make them profitable - oil only in Marseille - until I was largely built out. Bought a bunch at the end but couldn't quite get it going fast enough. Never could get good profit from Nuclear Plants - there were only 2 uranium mines on the whole board.
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I played this again last night (on Hard) and finally whipped it into submission. I started out the same (Le Mans, Chartres, Tours, Angiers, Orleans) as my problems weren't transportation related but industry related.
However, this time I followed V0id's strategy of ignoring energy until the uranium mine shows up and then plopping down a newly built (by you) nuke plant right next to your mine. After upgrading, that pretty much solved the energy requirements of the Gold, and I was able to get a fair profit out of my Uranium mines and 1 Nuke plant:
Date ended: May 1970
# Stations: 19
# Trains: 16 (I didn't develop the run from Orleans to Marseilles at all)
Total Revenue: $93,631
Total Expenses: $40,783
Total Net Profit: $52,848
# bonds: 0
Outstanding Shares: 490,000
Price per share: $88
Market Cap: $43,120
5 Year Weighted Return: 16%
Earnings Per Share: $11.16
Book Value per share: $101
Revenue per Share: $17.27
Load Revenues: $68,506
Express Revenues: $31,514
Track Miles: 1,563
Revenue per Load Mile: $191
Industry Profits: $25,125
Nuke Plant Profits: $2,602
First Uranium Mine Profits*: $3,143
*I owned 5 by the end of the game, these numbers represent the first one that appeared - I bought it immediately.
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I just tried this one and the Uranium mne showed up at the start, in Itlay! Far enough into the country that I couldn't build close enough in France. Will I see others (on hard)?
It seems really weird that in the begining there is no pax traffic in a country that's starved for it.
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I think that uranium mine always shows up there. Shouldn't be a problem; by the time you are ready to build or buy a nuclear plant, you should have the money to tunnel thru to it.
Just remember the gold condition is 8500!; I overlooked this and spent my time dinkin' around after I had my plant built-had enough money and uranium to build 2 and supply the others with coal/oil. Only got silver as a result
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The mine showed up about Y2.
So I built the plant and it sucked up all the resources, nothing escaped. Two more plants showed up, Lyon and (?), and they seemed to be able to run without a supply of uranium.
Phil's 1.03 changes are going to make my tactics impossible, I bought up three Dairy Farms and easily made enough profit, when I have to run a line to the farms.
I did get Gold on Easy, barely.
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WTG!
Other uranium mines pop up during the game. By the end of my game there was 5 around my lonely power plant; part of the reason I kick myself for not building another one.
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I posted this on the H&P forum but no responses so far, mayve someone here has some info:
I have been playing the France scenario and am puzzled by the way some source cargo behaves (presumably for all scenarios).
Eg. I own a chem plant and have been delivering 1-2 (mostly 2) a year for several years to a fertilyzer plant. However, my profits remain small approx 20K per hear. I notice that I produce 2.2 chem per year, but I always have a usage of 0 even though they are delivered. I have checked closely and my fertilyzer plant is using the chemicals I send there. Both Plants are 'covered' by the stations next to them. The same story is true for my Uranium mines...Ideas? known bug?
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I believe for some resources all you (usually) get is num produced. They don't consume. Like iron, coal, chemicals
The places that make some other good from that resource get numbers for production and consumption.
Its either that...or I completely misunderstood your question (entirely possible )
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Thanx HAB ythats probably it.
I just thought that for these industries the lower number was to tell me when the materials it produced were actually consumed somewhere, not just delivered. Especially as materials can arrive at your intended destination from other sources.
If the number is really how much material that industry consumes and it is always 0, then it is totally useless, it should have N/A instead...
Can anyone confirm/disprove these conclusions?
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I cannot confirm but guess that HAB is right. But I have another question closely related: Why does nearly every industry produce more than the maximal possible amount each year if enough raw materials are delivered. Is this due to some bonus if one plays on normal?
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I think the production is higher than MAX for 2 reasons:
- Partly Seasonal variation and partly that it is accurate only to a whole number?
- Mainly though, I think this is because you always seem to lose some cargo to other leakage factors eg middlemen. So Poptop increased production slightly eg to 2.2 from "2.0" to ensure you can et 2 loads per year?
......OK.....thats only guessing ;)
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Based on a response in an older thread from Phil_Stein, the production can be influenced if there is a lot of inventory and the profits are good. He didn't remember the exact percentage but thought it was 10% to 20%.
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Did the French Republic (Medium) campaign after the Scotsman and scored an easy gold on this one as well - but my ease of winning was ensured by my playing the two France stand alone scenarios and knowing how to begin.
Started in the Chartres, Orleans, Le Mans, etc area with Chartres as my major hub. Quickly branched into Paris and Brussels, then moved south to Bordeaux, Bayonne, and San Sebastian (yeah, I paid the million gold).
Had a couple of situations where I boxed in the opponents line with mine - their revenues started increasing, but they never ran any more track. It was an easy set up too: (X=city, "="=my track, "-"=opponents track

=====X----------X=====

Here are my final numbers. All dollar amounts in thousands (000) except per-share/load mile figures. I could've finished this five years earlier had I been more rententive about buying industry, but I waited until late in my game to do so, which cost me a few years:
Date ended: June 1885
# Stations: 30
# Trains: 36
Total Revenue: $88,724
Previous years Rev: $10,612
Total Expenses: $36,713
Previous Years Expenses: $4,976
Total Net Profit: $52,011
Previous Years Net Profit: $5,673
# bonds: 0
Outstanding Shares: 481,000
Price per share: $81
Market Cap: $38,961
5 Year Weighted Return: 4%.
Earnings Per Share: $9.46
Book Value per share: $115
Revenue per Share: $17.28
Load Revenues: $80,721
Express Revenues: $60,400
Track Miles: 2,854
Revenue per Load Mile: $213
My numbers were a lot better on the Flying Scotsman, that's for sure!
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i cannot seem to win on this scenario i can connect first two cities needede but not the third even after issuing a bond i run out of money and i can issue only 1 bond please help i am desperate!!! can hardly buy trains and went tumbling into the red!!!
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This one can be tough. I always aim for a nuclear plant so it is very expensive.
What sort of investments are there? If you can build a distillery near a good source of produce and a port that demands alch. that will usually kick up your credit rating. If I remember correctly, grain farms can be a good buy as well; I always seems to end up with a large number of breweries being built by the AI.
That's all I can think of atm; good luck
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To start with, forget about the connection requirements for the time being. Concentrate getting your finances in order. This scenario has some great opportunities to do just that.
Try to find 3+ grain or produce farms and build a distillery or brewery nearby. Ports trade alcohol for clothing, so look for situations where you can transport grain or produce to brewery/distillery, then haul the alcohol to a port, then take the clothing from the port to someplace that needs it.
If you can get some of these deals going, you're home free financially, then you can start making your connections.
Don't mess around with electric plants. Buy uranium mines as they become available and build nuclear reactor. These are cash cows.
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i'll try to do that.
i have not had good experiences with industry yet but i will try.
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This scenario has a nice trick. You have to start electric and take the maximum of opponants (4) Then I buy a brewery near Lille (provided there is enough grain around. I wait for two years and let my brewery make money and wait for the others to lay tracks.
You need to lay only very little track and concentrate on making as much money as possible.
When Uranium mines start to appear near Niort build a Nuclear power station there (you will need bonds and that's why its important to spend as little as possible before). You need also to connect to that city. After a while when this nuclear power station produces enough power, suddenly the trains will be almost free (5k) and the cost of energy becomes zero. You can then upgrade all your trains for almost nothing and run them at no cost and therefore make lots of money.
From that point you can expand to Marseille and Lyon. You wil also need to upgrade your power station to reach the 8500MW needed for gold.
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wrote: You have to start electric
I did this one on steam, electric trains are way to modern for me. I mainly invested in dairy farms and coal to start with, then added a dairy processor and a distillery and brewery later on. It's best to try for 2 nuclear plants, very expensive, but with both of them going I was pumping 1400 gigawatts a year.
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I agree with most of what the other posters said. Start at Bordeaux and connect Niort. Then wait for Uranium to appear and build a nuklear plant. Connect the important cities(like Paris and Marseille) when the other goals are already reached. To have some income before the Uranium appears buy a grain farm or 2.
For some odd reason it's always good to start at the coast in RRT3.
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This scenario was my closest share yet december1975! when I just fell over the line for the electricity component.
I took 4 opponents and steam and brought dairys while I thought I'd watch the ai's build lines, unfortunately at the end I had to build my own stations and lines in/between bordeaux and orleans (took over the ai which had Paris early on) to satisfy the requirements for connection --something which annoyed me a lot-the ai's lines were apparently not counted for this. I already owned Lyon/Marseille thank god.
Getting enough Uranium across the country to my Nuclear POwer station (Lyon)was a problem, and in retrospect it must be much better to build at Niort straightaway when uranium becomes available.
My question to the forum is how to avoid the problem of the ai line not being counted for connection purposes -short of building your own parrallel line.
BTW I noticed that my line Paris/Orlean bypassing Chartes meant that many ai trains took my line in preference to their own, seemingly a good trick if such a ruse is available.
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i did it ages ago. but thanks for the tip

[TheBonobo4]

Not sure if this is a bug or not, but I went with Electric trains, and if you get the bonus for 250GW in the year, it seems bugged to the point of overpowered. I could get trains that were basically free (I think they were about 1% of their actual cost), for very little maintenance. The E18 is a seriously good starter train, cheap, fast, reliable, passengers like it. And also, the train you get for the $750k investment is also ridiculously good. So combine that with being able to get it for about $5k per train, means this scenario became super easy late game. I was making about $10M profit per year (admittedly in a Boom), around 70% of which was Industry (the trains themselves did okay, and I was losing about $1m a year from unprofitable Electric Plants).

Also, I'm guessing this scenario is possible with Steam. What is interesting is that the AI are also limited to Steam or Electric only, and they all pick what you picked. So if you pick Electric, the AI will only use Electrics, and same with Steam. I ran 4 AI on Expert, one got liquidated, a further two got bought out (one later formed another company that was also unprofitable), so none of the AI did well.

Though important to note, since I built Industry in the first year, and ran no trains until I was making at least $1M a year (maybe $1.5M/year), the AI had a Station in Paris to Angers (I think), then up to Brussels. You have to then buy them out, since the goal states you must have Paris-Orleans-Bordeaux connected, and they must be your stations (I had stations in Orleans and Bordeaux but didn't get the event newspaper for Paris as well, as I was using AI Stations).

Also, I think this is a bug. Textile Mills are activated, but Sheep and Cotton Farms aren't? So Clothing is listed as a Category but Wool and Cotton aren't, so Textile Mills always lose money, even though they can be bought/built. If you look at the screen where it says their profits and what they take in and what they supply (Clothes), it is blank and shows them losing money.

Finally, do Electric Plants ever make money? Nuclear Plants seem fixed at $3.5M to buy pre existing, and $5.5M new (either way that's very expensive), but fully supplied with 6 Uranium they made a profit of about $300k/year, but my Electric Plants even when fully supplied with Coal and some oil made about $50k/year, and often lost money. So other than in Scenarios where you have to buy one (like this one), is there ever any point to buying an Electric Plant? They just seem pointless since they only demand, and don't Supply?

Got Gold on Expert with about 6 Years to spare, can't remember exactly.

[RulerofRails]

I never tried this one against AI. I just did and I noticed that the AI don't build electric track, so they have shiny new engines that can't go anywhere. Did they build electric track in your game?

I took a look at the event coding. The really cheap engines are indeed a bug in the coding. What is happening is that the effects are being applied more than once because AI players are also getting the check. Playing without AI will not have this problem.

The thing with Electric Plants is that their Labor and Overhead Cost is $138k (normal size) and $238k Upgraded. So the profit they make is just a matter of how much business the plant has once this cost has been recouped. One of the tricks to getting them more profitable is to make sure that the plant has a supply of both Coal and Oil. Even if the plant is consuming all the Oil it can, that alone isn't enough revenue to make the plant profitable. Same goes for Coal. Coal is slightly less expensive so the plant will fare a little better with only Coal, but still not profitable. Electric Plants are never going to be cash cows the way that other industries are, but they can be run at a small profit. Most times that a scenario requires them, a small loss can often be overlooked in view of "the greater good".

Nuclear Power Plants behave similarily, they must be fully supplied to beat Labor and Overhead costs. They are a little sensitive to price since Uranium is so expensive (has a steeper demand gradient). Over-supplying one slightly will make it a decent earner.

Having a Textile Mill, but no Wool or Cotton supply isn't really a map bug. This is a consequence of a game bug that wont let a cargo show up in a Port or Warehouse recipe unless an industry that supplies it is enabled. If industries can be built by the player we sometimes see these "dud" industries. Thanks to Oilcan for this info he shared on the Trans-Caspian thread.

[TheBonobo4]

The AI all built track in my game, but they were pretty useless even on Expert. I did this scenario again on Expert and didn't Gold as easily as the first attempt, but still got Gold on Expert, with 4 AI. It's still an easy scenario without the cheap trains, but I'll have to try it with no AI and do it "fairly". Also I recorded myself doing the scenario for the second attempt.

[TheBonobo4]

I tried this one again last night, and decided to try it with 0 AI and use Steam, even though it's probably recommended to go with Electrics, on Expert difficulty. I started by buying a few Dairy Farms, then after a few years, ran trains from Orleans to Amiens, via Paris, as there were Electric Plants in Orleans and Amiens. I mostly used Kriegsloks throughout the scenario, as they're cheap, efficient, and seemed better overall than Mallards or Class 01s. The H10 was an option, but is more expensive than Kriegsloks.

I honestly struggled for money a lot of the time, and only managed a Silver Medal. Electric Plants rarely if ever make profits, my bonds were all pretty bad at around 11% interest, and I didn't have enough Industry to generate much profit. Still, after 25 years (actually 26, the game ran from Jan 1950 to Jan 1976), I managed around $13M in Industry Profits, far more than the $5M needed for Gold, and *almost* made Gold, generating 8300 of the 8500 GW of electricity required.

I think if I were to try this one again with Steam, playing with AI could be an option, (the reason I ran with 0 AI is because of the Electric trains bonus bug, as described in my earlier post here), as could buying more Industry and only running track and trains for the last 10 years or so. I think you are probably meant to go Industry to be honest, I only ran trains because I felt I needed to deliver Coal to the Power Plants. Yet, without Oil (Oil only really spawned in Marseilles, and made its way up the river towards Lyon and Dijon), even with loads of Coal, Power Plants made a loss and only made around 60 or less GW per year in power.

Also, in this attempt, Uranium spawned near Niort, but the Nuclear Plant in Lille didn't make Profit, and didn't generate that much power, despite still costing $3.5M to buy!

Strangely, I could never get the ledger to say that the government was focusing on Steam. I don't know what the requirements for that were, but I did pay Chapelon the £350K for the locomotive, and generated 250GW of power each year (thus getting the newspaper after each year). Also, very strangely, the locomotive I was given by Chapelon wasn't the Red Devil as I expected, but rather a Southern Pacific Northern locomotive?

[matthew s]

Just ran this, I understand the train cost bug for electric. I played on expert and won gold but it was very close on power generation. 8515 gw

I did have 50million in industry profits blowing away the goal.

I didn't start doing anything for electricity generation until 12 years before the game end. there were three Urainium Mines in the west of france. I build a station that covered 2 of them and then a NUKE power plant a couple stops away. I ran a cheap electric train just hauling uranium and was able to upgrade that plant. I wasn't sure I was going to make it so I built a Coal/Oil plant in the middle of the coal area in the middle of france and then another one in marcelles, the only oil on the map. I then ran oil to the coal area and coal to the oil area suppling both plant what they didn't have. I should have started power generation a bit earlier.

I started with building a distillery next to three fruit orchards and then looking for the newest industries added to map. (page up and page down). I build a station in Paris and set up for a bridge out so it would be postioned correctly when I wanted to run rails. I also build a number of industires during the game in locations that had an abundance of the resouce needed and that was moving a long distance on rivers to get to same industry but miles away.