Eastern China

[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

Eastern China - Added in the Coast to Coast Expansion
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Have any one of you tried the Eastern China Map? I have a hard time getting things going. More than half of the 30 years alotted went by and I still hadn't fulfill any of the victory conditions except the export of 30 loads of clothing.
I think issuing the bonds will help expanding but it will drive the economy downhill... which ends up in recession.
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I was one car of coal short of gold after my 3rd try.
Bonds drive economy down if higher than $1500.
Stay there or below.
I ran several train circles for almost half the time period in low lands then slowly built track to high lands for coal and iron needs.
You can quicken your train return to upperland stations if you lessen the # of cars for that uphill climb.
My two main circles were clothes and auto.
Look for rubber supply in begining of game for you will need this for auto needs. Build circle around that location.
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Last Sight, great tips! thanks.
Finally got Gold on Medium with two year to spare. So far the hardest map I've played. It took about 15-20 years for the company to establish. After that, it was a building fanzy. Wuhan (the city at the bottom left of the map) is an important city towards the end of the game.... as you need to get Auto from it and ship to the port cities. BTW the three bonds were quite helpful in the very beginning.
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Here's a question for you. Transport toys from Handan (sp?) to port, forget which one, to work towards gold medal. Consist is min 2 cars toys with no stop to port. All fine and good, toys 2.7 cars go. Money for delivery to port not too bad, forget how much. The train then sets off again, going to Shanghai with any freight 7 cars. Guess what the first 3 cars were! Yep, toys! OK, so I earn money twice from the same cargo. But when, at the end of the year I check the ledger, I have not transported any toys to the ports! Is this correct? Do the toys have to stay there or am I totally confused and I have to deliver to a specific port?
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If Shanghai has demand for Toys and the Port station has stock it will get delivered. Check the cargo supply/demand pop-up for Toys in Shanghai.
If the sceanrio goal is to deliver X Toys to a port, the goods will need to move from the Port station to the port for this to register. Know, I do not know if the goods move by the 'cart guys', or if the the port is in the city's 'area of influence' does it happen straight away.
Or, since I am new to this game, I could be talking codswallop !
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It can be any port on that map. But the port must be within station radius.
actually, toys were the hardest of the 3 requested goods to "export" (After I had "lost" 1/3 of the map to the AI)
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Thanks.
Still plugging away at this one. Failed so have started again. It is a great map, struggling to shift enough coal and iron, tracks up and down all over the place, then I realised I had tunnels set to rare! (I had enough cash at this point, however had not noticed the setting. Oh well, back to the drawing board...)
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Enough of what ELSE this game can/could/should do in the next SP or EP or Version [for a bit anyway!]
Has anyone finished the China map on Expert? I can complete for Gold on Hard ... but on Expert I can only get Silver (or nothing by really going for gold)
Just wondered if anyone had any tips on how they managed it (if they managed it!)?
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Hi mate,
You are clearly also British, maybe a Londoner by the title and "ta".
I'm about to put up a post for those that love this version.
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I've just played China on easy (played it the first time ever last night as a coincidence), and it was totally easy. The money just gushed in. Clothing delivered itself, and after connecting all the big cities in the flat areas I went after the iron & coal. My map had penty of iron mines, but less of the coal, but in the end I got plenty of that to deliver as well. To meet the autos and toys goal I had to set up a couple custom consist trains, and toys was the last thing to get to its quota.
On expert I'm sure its a much different story. I suggest trying it with the maxium number of AI companies (4). Having AI's in the game seemed to help in this scenario. You can buy them later, sometimes not too expensively, and they aren't limited to the two steam locos, so you can pick up a nice loco or two that way as well.
I got nailed when I bought one because of the debt it had, I should have paid it off right away (while paused) but I forgot to. So I ended up with 3,500K in debt and some of it at high percents, which was a stupid mistake.
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I'm currently playing China on hard, and it's totally hard.
I really like the restrictions on this one. It's truly a RR builders game. No stocks, no Industry purchases, just RR operations. I'll let you know how I do, but I've had a couple of rough starts.
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I forgot to mention before that a strange thing happened on this one. I had started several different pieces of railroad (taking advantage of the lack of a connectedness restriction), and I was playing with the max number of AIs, so they were building a lot of rails too. At one point it made sense to connect to both ends of an AI railway from my parts in Shanghai and Beijing. This created a rail connection between the two cities that involved AI rails. I unexpectedly got credit for connecting the cities!
I thought in other scenarios you didn't get credit for a connection unless it was all your rails. I've seen posts with people talking about not getting the connection and others saying it has to be all your own rails. So now I'm confused.
I didn't compare the connection test event in China with the one in the scenario where you have to connect St. Louis to Clevland.
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Finally managed a gold win on hard. But just by the skin of my teeth. The Iron Dragon RR delivered its 50th load of iron in July of my last game year. Very few iron mines left by the time I started servicing them. Time to try expert (man, this should be interesting).
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one thing your post made me think of again is, it would be nice if we had seed numbers like civ 3 uses. one could start a scenario and pick your seed number and everything would be seeded the exact same way as long as you used that seed number again. this would allow you to play on easy, medium, hard and expert, all with the exact same seeding. this would test yourself against an exactly replicated scenario and seeding in each of the difficulty levels.
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Well lukas I finally did get gold on expert with this one. fwiw here is my approach.
The saga of the Peoples Railway:
First I realized that I needed to think like a good Communist, while previously I had tried to think like a Capitalist. Therefore, rather than competing with the AI RRs, I tried to complment their routes, and assist them where I could. You do not need top or a minimum CBV or PNW in this one so it doesn't matter if they do well.
The first step was waiting for the AI to get started, which they did as ususal in the plains in the southern centeral portion of the map. I immediatly connected the three AI's lines and soon they were dutifully running trains over my new track. After making some $ with that, I conected Heifai (sp?) with the AI's line and the next city south towards Singapore. I gradually built from there using a minimal number of my own trains, just to help the AI grow. I connected any large cities they got close to so I had a lot of things they wanted to move. I also connected south to Singapore.
For my trains I concentrated on moving the necessary items (Clothes, Toys and Autos) towards the ports, expanding to each of the port cities (note, I never was able to get credit for deliveries to the bottom one, I must have missed the territory with my station or something).
Once that operation was underway, I built up some $ and then concentrated on the Northwest Coal and Iron deposits. Those built, I expanded to each one as money permitted, and started hauling unit trains to Beijing.
By that time the AI had built further north so I was able to connect in to their line which completed the Singapore/Beijing circuit. Then it was just a bit of concern about getting enough coal moved (plenty of iron this time).
I ran a total of 22 trains. It was a very fun map to play because I could concentrate on operations only and not worry about stocks and industry.
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My usual approach at Hard or Expert level is to use my starting money to build an industry. Usually, a paper mill is all I can afford. It must be carefully placed to make money. This gives me an income to subsidize my RR building until the trains start making money.
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Has anyone got that without AIs?
I did what I could but I didn't manage to export a single automobile in 30 years. After the start my economy went into 7 years of depression. Then I had the 7 broken trains. Not to forget the 7 disappperaing industries.
And I don't think that they disappeared randomly.
I started in the East near Rizhou.
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DONT! START SOMEWHERE ELSE INSTEAD! Sell the broken trains and take it from there!
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I tried this one again (on Hard without AIs) and did manage a gold in 1974 but it was touch and go at some points. fwiw, I started in the south with the $2M in bonds where the city (Wuhan sp?) makes autos and toys. I used it as a hub and then expanded north and east using hub/spoke until I reached Shanghai.
You're absolutely right about the disappearing industries. If you don't start shipping the required Iron and Coal early, it might not be there when you are. I had to save up a year and a half of profit to finance the tunnel near Bejing and track to the nearest coal mine. Then with the lucrative profits from each succeeding run, expanded in the northwest to the Iron and Coal cities. Then I continually ran sticks of iron and coal from the mines.
After that, I concentrated on making my way up the coast to the port cities and started running Toy/Auto/Clothes trains on express to there. Finally, as profits allowed, I ran track from Bejing to the port city to complete the connection requirement. My last Toy shipment arrived in Feb 1974. I also hit a slump in the late sixties that I thought I might not get back out of, but it turned around in time.
I like this scenario because of the varied goals and the restrictions.
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First I thought that I don't like it. But then it grew on me with the challenge. Last time I made Silver on Hard with 10 autos missing. The reason was the 2 stations in a port city problem which distracted me a bit. I produced cars in Nanjing and toys in Hainan with plastics and tires from Heifei. The southern route Shanghai-Hainan is quite profitable. Next time I will go more southern.
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Do you find yourself double-tracking much in this one? I put most of my lines as single (except near stations) with only a few major inter-hub lines double tracked.
To me, the killer part of this scenario is near the end when the Annual Overhead charge gets huge. Except for when I was saving up for the Iron/Coal line, I tended to expand as soon as I got a few hundred thou. When the Overhead charge catches up at the end-of-year accounting, I had trouble getting out of the red a couple of times. Ouch!
Also, I gambled a couple of times and took out an extra bond or two in January, to finance some extra expansion to the mines. In each case I was lucky enough to recoup the cash in time to pay off the bonds before Dec. and not suffer the Cash Deflation event.
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In the beginning only a few meters in service areas. I only build the wooden trestles. There is not much reason for speed.
To me, the killer part of this scenario is near the end when the Annual Overhead charge gets huge.
Please specify "overhead charge"!
wrote: Also, I gambled a couple of times and took out an extra bond or two in January, to finance some extra expansion to the mines. In each case I was lucky enough to recoup the cash in time to pay off the bonds before Dec. and not suffer the Cash Deflation event.
I did that, too. It's sometimes necessary to speed things a little bit up. I usually get wealthier by the time and have less problems in the last 10 years. Once I have Diesels the profits are coming in. When establishing the coal and iron routes too late it's not possible to fulfill the victory conditions, though. In my last game I had 52 loads of iron in the end. The comfortable expand and then settle approach doesn't work well here.
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The Overhead line item in the Income Statement corresponds to additional operating costs of the company not associated with specific stuff like tracks/trains/buildings etc. Mine was up to over $800K per year. I mistakenly thought that it was being charged annually. I went back and checked it. Actually there's a charge at the beginning of each month. What I had noticed was actually the January month start of train and track maint. as well as the monthly overhead.
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IMHO the best scenario/ campaign of the lot for purist RRT players.
It has a very balanced industry and the game map is interesting with lots of varied terrain.
The key I think is getting the required industry(auto/toys/clothing) going whilst maintaing a profitable RR. As said above elsewhere starting in south China is best as this is the industrial heartland. Wuhan and Hainan are key . Make sure they have rubber/tires and plastic for toys early on so you can find enough autos's and toys to haul to the ports once your RR is complete.
I started at Wuhan as one hub and another hub was in that cluster of cities to the mid north. I then worked to connect the two hubs. This gave me a very profitable base to save for my NW china coal lines. I went south-> NW though probably a norhtern -> NW route is slightly better through Bejing.
The only thing I didn't like was the scripted quake which was an annoyance rather than anything else and IMHO served no useful purpose to the scenario. If you lost because of that it would be very annoying.
I also tried playing by disregarding the constatnt depressions by taking out the full $10m in bonds, that went ok but not good enough to get gold on expert.
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I'm glad someone has managed to get Gold - I've had umpteen tries and never got anywhere - the overheads are so enormous that I hardly ever made any railroading profits. From memory I only managed to connect to the NW coal mines once and even then the trains lost money but I'll try again now that I've read the advice above!
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Ah, Eastern China, one of my favourite maps indeed, the dream of an railroad engineer.
And indeed, after a few less successful attempts I realised that the key to winning Gold on Expert difficulty is location and where to start. I too started in the South-Western corner of the map, with a line from Wuhan via Shashi to Jingmen. There are lots of resources and the corresponding industries in that region, amongst them all cargos that one needs to haul for winning the Gold. Start in the south-west and expand to the North (Kaifeng) and from there to the coast near Rizhao and the cargo needed for the Gold goal almost hauls itself via auto-consist.
But don't forget the coal and iron from China's North-West and remember that one can lay unconnected track in this scenario. What I did was to start a line from Beijing to Chengde after about 10 or 12 years in the scenario. This line can be operated with a profit and can finance the expansion from Chengde to the West to get access to the coal and iron there. The earlier you start this second line in the North the easier to meet the haulage requirements.
My 3rd line then was a pure money-maker, a line from Shanghai via Changzou, Nanjing and Hefei to Huainan. Later on I expanded this line to Kaifeng to meet the 1st line there built earlier in the scenario. The money made with this line then allowed me to build south from Beijing to connect with the first line at the coast near Rizhao.
A fine scenario for railroad builders (no industry game), though the events are a bit strange. The default starting year of the scenario is 1953 and with that starting year one basically never gets to run new engines. The event that makes it possible to switch to diesel or electric is in 1975, that's 22 years later and at that moment one basically has done everything needed and won't start to upgrade engines or track for the remaining 2 or 3 years.
The first event in this map is in 1953, the last event is in 2001, but one only has 30 years time for the map, thus some events will never happen.
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try continuing to see the othe events.

[Moggie]

Got finally gold on this one . It was on medium since I know my limitations. Anyway, the way I did it was to first connect Beijing to the ports of Qingdao and Rizhao. From there I went down the coast to Shanghai. Then I connected Wuhan and started the toy and car exports. Instead of going due west from Beijing I went North to Chengde and along the high country to the coal and iron producing powerhouses of the Northwest. I didn't realise that the clothing export had stopped until very late in the game and thus finished with just months to spare. Overlending wasn't really an issue since the trains kept turning a profit even on slow times. Perhaps on the higher levels of difficulty the player will be punished more harshly. Going diesel was a good decision since it spared me around 2.5 to 3 mill in track electrification costs. Also, the one-two combo of the monster Deltic and the capable Class 37 (I think) gave a tremendous boost to the speed of my operations. I put Deltics on long lines and 37's on short lines.

[Gumboots]

Actually got Gold on Expert setting with all steam last night. First time I'd ever bothered playing this scenario through to the end.

I've tried it before, but always gave up on it since it seemed so boring. Without a stock market or industry to play with, there's hardly anything to do. Last night I had a couple more goes at it, then read the notes in the OP and tried it again.

It's winnable, but honestly I don't think it has much replay value. I really just knocked it off so I could say I'd done it. It comes down to just making the obvious connections at the obvious times, taking advantage of the AI networks, and not borrowing too much in bonds.

My 2c is that, if playing on Expert, with steam through to the end, the AI's are crucial to winning this. Towards the end of the game, when overheads go through the roof, my annual profit was pretty much equal to the miscellaneous income gained from AI trains running on my track. Without that, I would have been screwed.

Also, the note saying that bonds have to be $1.5 million or less at year end to avoid crashing the economy is not correct. You can get away with holding $2 million of bonds. Any more than that and the economy goes into a depression. At times I did have up to $3.5 million during the year, but always paid it down to $2 million or less by the end of December.

Starting in Wuhan seems to work, and it's a good source of toys and autos. I built a basic network connecting the local cities, then looked for AI networks to connect to each other. This was a good way to get the income moving, since it was cheaper at that stage than trying to expand my own network outside the local area.

For the lines connecting the AI networks, since money was so tight I didn't bother putting sheds and towers between the stations. I just built my own maintenance spurs where I wanted them and the AI trains had to take care of themselves. Also, when using an AI station I always double track it, just to give my own trains a chance of a decent load/unload time when on the AI's track. If you don't do this, your train will often have to sit around for ages while a bunch of AI trains get priority.

I found the haulage for clothes, iron and coal was easy enough. I exceeded the targets by large margins (totalled around 140 coal, 100 iron, and lots of clothes).

I ended up running priority trains direct from Wuhan to Rizhao to get the haulage for toys and autos. These were scheduled to stop at a maintenance shed and water tower halfway between the two cities, as well as at my standard shed and tower on a spur off both stations. I also had a train running around the coast to hook up the port cities north of Rizhao, just to keep prices up there. This worked well.

For the Beijing-Shanghai connection, I had to use my own track all the way. The game didn't tick that off if part of the way was AI track.

Having AI's in the game seemed to help in this scenario. You can buy them later, sometimes not too expensively,....

I never had the opportunity to buy any AI companies, so I don't know what this person was referring to. When the option to change to diesel or electric comes up, there is a caution that the government will not be happy if you stick with steam. I stuck with steam. So, maybe you get the option to buy AI companies if you make the government happy by switching to diesel or electric. Dunno, and don't care.

[Gumboots]

Ok, so I played it again.

Found out something different though. You don't have to tunnel through the range behind Beijing and then go uphill from there to get the coal and iron haulage from the north west territory. I got Gold haulage for coal and iron just by building a small network up on the plateau and hauling iron and coal to Taiyuan. Apparently that city counts as not being in the north west territory, even though it's still up in the hills, so any iron and coal you haul to Taiyuan from the plateau counts towards the haulage requirements for Gold. It's even profitable.

This was easier than trying to go up from Beijing, and got me heaps of coal and iron haulage with years to spare. The medal requirements seem a bit skewed. There always seems to be heaps of clothes, iron and coal hauled even if you aren't really trying. The only things that slowed me up a bit were toys and autos, but I still got Gold in April 1978.

Then I played to end of 1983 just to see how much I could haul by their deadline. Didn't micromanage or custom consist, just let things run. I did go up through the range from Beijing after getting the medal.

Oh and you can get up the range from Shijiazhuang to Yangquan with a max grade of 5, then a cheap bridge will get you over to Taiyuan with good grades. This area ends up being a good earner.

[Gumboots]

So like I was saying, there's no replay value in this one.

Ok, so this time I was thinking about that dodge of hauling iron and coal to Taiyuan instead of hauling it to Beijing. So, I decided to start up in them thar hills. Funnily enough, it works.

Turns out that if you get the maximum safe number of bonds that wont crash the economy ($2 million) then that, when combined with your starting cash, is just enough to use large stations to hook up four towns that will give you good haulage for iron, coal, oil, plastic and toys. Grades can be kept to 5 or less if track is laid with care. It's also just enough cash to buy you the required water towers and maintenance sheds (two of each) with enough left over to get you two brand new shiny H10 2-8-2's to haul your stuff.

I made a slight mistake this time since I also put a shed and tower at Taiyuan, which meant I could only afford one crappy Decapod. After running it the full length of the run, I realised that having sheds and towers at each end of the run is adequate, so if I'd only used those that would have left enough money for two good locomotives instead of one crappy one.

Taiyuan is a mini industrial powerhouse. There always seems to be a steel mill there demanding coal and iron, and the price difference between Taiyuan and the plateau towns is always pretty high. There always seems to be oil in Lishi and Jiexiu (you hook Jiexiu up later) and there's a plastic factory in Taiyuan, which does a nice job of supplying a toy factory in Lishi. All things considered it's a great little circuit, and will stay profitable for decades.

As you can see from the screenshot, I ended up with Gold levels of iron and coal haulage in the 12th year out of 30. Getting the haulage for autos, clothes and toys took longer. Ended up getting it all sorted, with Beijing and Shanghai hooked up just as spur lines, in late 1980. At that point, haulage for iron and coal was roughly double the Gold medal requirements. Haulage for the others ended up well balanced, and just a few over the requirement of 30 for each. Final network is shown in the first shot.

Tips: it's important to grab Rizhao early for yourself if possible, as it's always the prime port for shipping autos and toys to once you get your industrial network in the south west going. If another company grabs it first, run your own line and place your own station later.

Also, it's advantageous to run a line around the coast from Rizhao to Donjing, picking up all the coastal ports on the way. This means if there is any price differential for the haulage cargoes between ports, you can take advantage of it to boost your haulage stats. As long as you are hauling autos or clothes or toys to one of your stations in a port city, it doesn't matter if the same load has already been hauled to another port nearby. And yes you could cheat this with bait and switch, but there's no real need to. I just ran auto consists.

I think China is done and dusted now.

[aspenfallen]

I've skimmed this thread but didn't find much relating to the Auto hauling requirements. So far I've struggled really hard to get any autos shipped to ports. Does anybody have any recommendations?

Whenever I start the game on Medium, the auto plants are either (1) not producing cars because they lack tires and/or steel, but tires aren't being produced because they don't have rubber; or (2) auto plants that ARE producing cars are doing so so far away from ports, it's unprofitable to haul them to the ocean.

I'm struggling with toys too, but not nearly as bad as Autos... Not having any issues with Coal/Iron requirements either.

[Gumboots]

You don't have to haul autos immediately. Get some profit coming in first. Hooking up between two AI companies is a good trick, because they will pay to run on your rails to get to each other's network. Just build any such lines cheap (timber bridges, no maintenance sheds) because you don't care how badly the AI trains run as long as they pay for the use of your track.

To get the auto production going you'll have to get the rubber from the warehouse to the tyre factory, and the tyres back to the auto plant. That doesn't take much of a network, and once you do it there will be plenty of autos to ship. They will force the price down at the point of production, meaning you'll be able to make money by shipping them elsewhere.

Note that the only place it's worth trying to make autos is usually down in the south west of the map. Lots of rubber and steel down there.

[aspenfallen]

Finally getting around to posting my summary on my accomplishments for this one! Somehow I managed to win it on Medium with 2 AIs. :D

I found out if I started in Wuhan, which in my scenario that had an auto plant and steel mill, and branch out to all the surrounding towns, one that has the tire factory, one that produces rubber, coal, iron, etc. etc. that a really rich money stream kicked up really fast! Within the first 5 years, the money was pouring in. No matter what the economy was, Wuhan always generated a good profit. So much so, I never had to borrow over $3 mill at any given time (usually only had $0 - 500k in debt at a time).

Once that was established, I setup a good stream by Taiyuan and, since I had so much cash, was able to build tunnels right through the mountains to the oil, coil, and iron towns. Getting the iron & coal goals out of the way allowed me to focus on the harder ones while also increasing my cash flow.

Since cars have been the hardest for me to complete, I focused on that first. I hooked Wuhan up with Nanjing, and Nanjing with Rizhao. Although they didn't generate much profit, I setup trains that shipped just cars or just steel & tires to Nanjing, which also had its own auto plant. Then I set trains to sit at Nanjing until they had a min of 3 and max of 4 cars that shipped straight to Rizhao, a port city.

I did similar tricks with Toys and Clothes -- found cities that produced those items, and set trains to ONLY haul those goods to Rizhao or whatever port was closest. It was about where the supply was, not how much it cost to move it or how far it had to go.

I did a lot of branching out while doing all of the above too, simply to make sure everything around the country kept moving and my money flow kept going through the roof. I don't remember my exact total, but by the end of the game I had a ridiculous amount of money. One of my best games yet! I'm very proud and excited. I love this map now that it doesn't frustrate me so much! :D

[Hawk]

I swear, I don't know how you folks can play on those stretched out screens. It just looks to odd to me. Heck, a circle isn't even a circle. It's an egg on it's side.
I guess it's what you get used to but personally, I wouldn't have a monitor I couldn't control.
I reckon that's why I still used those old, antiquated CRT monitors.

[Gumboots]

You just need to set the game resolution to a suitable setting. Once you do that, you can play on widescreen without any distortion.

Aspenfallen: try this fix. It works really well. http://www.wsgfmedia.com/jackfuste/Rail ... 3_uniws.7z

Instructions here, if you need them: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3128&hilit=widescre ... =15#p36581

[RulerofRails]

Hawk, the newer screens will play any size you choose from those available. In fact it is those LCDs 6 or 7 years old like mine with only parallel port (analog) input that can't handle a crop of resolution. With digital and HDMI on the latest ones anything is possible. You can't resist technological advancement forever!

Gumboots, from my understanding this fix is for the actual game-world, not the menus and controls right? Small price to pay, though, works well.

[Gumboots]

It sorts the whole game to the right native res for your screen.

[Hawk]

You can't resist technological advancement forever!

Sure I can. I plan on using XP and CRT's until the day I die, and at my age and with my health, that's probably not too far in the future.
I don't have any need for all this new fancy schmancy stuff.

Besides, I don't have any choice. I can't afford to upgrade on any new technology.

[Gumboots]

Umm, I hate to break it to you, but when XP and CRT's and PC's were introduced they were all "new fancy schmancy stuff".

[BigBoyTycoon]

Anyone but me had a bug in this scenario? I had over 30 autos, clothes, and toys hauled, and over 100 each of iron and coal hauled, and Shanghai and Beijing was connected - the ledger said all this too. But still no gold medal - i actually got a loss after the 30 years dispite checking a million times that everything was correct. Quite frustrating when the ledger says i did everything.

[Shamough]

Anyone but me had a bug in this scenario? I had over 30 autos, clothes, and toys hauled, and over 100 each of iron and coal hauled, and Shanghai and Beijing was connected - the ledger said all this too. But still no gold medal - i actually got a loss after the 30 years dispite checking a million times that everything was correct. Quite frustrating when the ledger says i did everything.

If you saved the end game, ZIP it and upload it so we can take a lookie see.

Hans

[BigBoyTycoon]

Thanks -- i fixed it now though. apparently by reloading my save and deleting the railroad from shanghai to beijing it worked - not sure why. Seemed like a little bug near the rails. Oh well. Got the gold now on expert, but such a weird glitch.
Uploading it would probably also show more than just that, also my incredibly horrible looking way of managing in rt3

[kingecbert]

You don't have to haul autos immediately. Get some profit coming in first. Hooking up between two AI companies is a good trick, because they will pay to run on your rails to get to each other's network. Just build any such lines cheap (timber bridges, no maintenance sheds) because you don't care how badly the AI trains run as long as they pay for the use of your track.

To get the auto production going you'll have to get the rubber from the warehouse to the tyre factory, and the tyres back to the auto plant. That doesn't take much of a network, and once you do it there will be plenty of autos to ship. They will force the price down at the point of production, meaning you'll be able to make money by shipping them elsewhere.

Note that the only place it's worth trying to make autos is usually down in the south west of the map. Lots of rubber and steel down there.

That's correct. The best way to start is in Wuhan.
Yichang, Xianning, Guangshui, Shashi and Jingmen provide coal, iron, steel, autos, oil, toys, cotton, clothing, tires, rubber, livestock, meat and plastic. This route, if micromanaged, generates huge profits compared with other routes. Also, you can get autos and toys to transport to the ports in late game(Rizhao port is the most convenient destination to haul toys and autos from wuhan), i didn't use AI networks.

Datong, Ningwu, Taiyuan and lishi is, perhaps, the second most profitable route, hauling coal and iron to Taiyuan counts to your goals, and is very profitable, lishi produces oil and toys and taiyuan steel and plastic.

Hauling clothes is the easiest task , toys and autos is more difficult, but you can do that late in the game(i hauled 23 loads of autos in 2 years). in the neginning, profit is your priority.

The Shanghai was terrible, didn't generate a decent cash, anyone knows why? shhanghai - nanjing with other southeast cities, it was my achilles's hill. Any guess?
thanks

[RulerofRails]

The Shanghai was terrible, didn't generate a decent cash, anyone knows why? shhanghai - nanjing with other southeast cities, it was my achilles's hill. Any guess?

Two major factors I suspect are at play here: the cities are large with flat geography so demand is strong at the cities and it transmits well (river demand transmission as well fairly nearby the two you mentioned): as demand gets stronger it gets harder to find an imbalance and therefore there are less profit opportunities; second, there isn't a really good supply of resources there, I saw some rice, cotton and chemicals there, but only one or two, not a good supply.

It may be possible to build up the economy there to make average profits, but once again it isn't a good location. In RT3 too big really is not good either. If you build factories there will likely be issues with competition for resources, as such I wouldn't expect to make lots of money from this area of the map. It's far better to look to the better locations that Gumboots outlined.

[low_grade]

Had a tough time with this one, too, on Expert, with no AI's. Wuhan start every time, but first four or five tries I over extend myself by taking out January bonds that I can't repay. So finally not so ambitious and more prudent, I grow maybe $2M-$3M per year, some years back down to $1M-$1.5M, with some years taking up to $2M in bonds in January. Eventually when economy sours but I have Beijing-Shanghai passenger boost I save enough for tunnels for easy connections to coal and iron. Took the diesel option, but only 2 years maybe of the C55 being a great option, 8-12 trains dedicated hauling to meet goals, only built to the one port R... on the coast previously mentioned. Very hard to maintain profitability on Expert, only got Gold 3 years before the end, and only the first of 5+ tries I kept playing past 1963ish.