Southern Pacific

[Gumboots]

Ok, I played it to an August 1872 Gold, without selling any industry. I didn't bother trying to take over the Wichita company. I just connected to it at Amarillo. I did the whole scenario with only 33 trains and four industries, and still romped it in. I was using inline sheds and towers, and re-routing almost every train for the best next trip whenever it stopped at the current target station. This meant not much in the way of train rides, but with only 33 trains it wasn't a lot of work and it seems to produce very good profits from rail.

Found a couple of good tricks with track. The pre-laid bridge at Austin has a horrible jump at one end, so I used the editor to adjust the terrain under that end of the bridge. Adjusting existing bridge ramps is a bit tricky. You can nudge any part of it higher, but if you accidentally nudge part of it too high there is no way of getting it lower again. The lump in the ramp is permanent. But, with a bit of messing around (and saving before experimenting) I think I have got the hang of it.

Also, at Carlsbad you can lay a really god bridge across the river if you get it right. It's tricky to draw the track in exactly the right position, but if you can do that the bridge comes out almost perfect without needing any messing around after you build it. You can also get down the slope to Hobbs with a maximum grade of 4%.

[Gumboots]

Tried it another way. I started from a save taken before I connected to Amarillo, and decided I'd try to take over the Wichita company - and - see if I could keep the daft little remnant company (DRGW) from being liquidated. This was just for giggles.

DRGW had reincarnated itself as a short line running from Wichita Falls to Fort Sill, but it had very little income and massive debt. So, I laid track from my Wichita Falls Junction station, over the river to Fort Sill, and put a Fort Sill Junction station of my own there. Then I bulldozed the line I'd just laid over the river, and connected to DRGW's line (which I also kindly double tracked). This meant I was running trains to my stations (for quick turnaround) but they had to go over DRGW track. I figured the extra income would help DRGW, and my company could easily afford the cost (annual profit was over $5 million by this stage).

So ok, DRGW is getting extra income, and if it had just sat around raking that in it would have helped its situation. However, the AI is stupid, and decided it was going to run DRGW trains to my stations elsewhere, over my track. Obviously this chews up all the profit from the loads hauled, and gives it to me. The result is that DRGW is slowly getting even more screwed than before, but somehow still has not been liquidated.

Anyway, I temporarily bought control of the Wichita company, nobbled that a bit to drop its stock price, then sold all my stock in it and waited for the price to drop. I played until January 1875, and then the game crashed.

It is obvious that I will be able to merge the Wichita company this year. If I felt like it, I could play through 1877 and get my company out of debt before connecting to Wichita. Getting rid of personal debt would also be a no brainer. I hold about 70% of my company's stock, so could easily sell enough to get out of personal debt anytime. At this point a no-personal-or-company-debt Gold is clearly possible by the end of 1877, and I would still have the majority of my company's stock. It would just be a matter of letting the clock run down, but at the moment I can't be bothered.

[Gumboots]

Had another go at this, just for variety.

This play was started by using RoR's trick of opening the game, opening the map, immediately returning to the main menu, then opening the map again (ie: to get a good random distribution of resources). The resulting seeding is interesting. It has a good range of resources spread across the map, but almost no cargo at all west of El Paso. This means that the track from LA to El Paso will initially have to be laid as burn track, because there is no realistic chance of it being at all profitable. It also means that once El Paso is connected to the eastern network, profits in the western region should be astronomical.

Anyway, I did something different this time with the robber baron tricks.

Taking out a bond with SP is good for personal cash (because SP can buy back more stock) but it's a nuisance if you want to merge SP early in the game, to stop the AI doing stupid things with SP. If you don't take out a bond in SP you can merge it anytime for a few $k, without incurring any debt load. So, this time I accepted the lower personal cash from asset-stripping SP sans bond. I also didn't bother trying to get rid of every last dollar in SP. I just bulldozed the station and left the track segments alone. SP ended up with $22k left over and 5 track segments. This meant that, instead of the $943k that is possible with a bond, I ended up with $695k. After checking a few trial buy-ins, it was clear that $695k is only enough to get a controlling interest in the New Orleans company (GH&SA). That was the only viable target for the next step.

I decided to wipe out GH&SA completely. It's not necessary to save a track starting point in New Orleans, because any company you decide to keep can easily build to New Orleans later. So I took out a bond, bulldozed everything, and bought back as much stock as possible. There was $111k of company cash remaining, but I left that. It turned out that stock price still dropped to $1 anyway (ie: maximum profit for me) and that $111k will be handy for the next stage. So, after the usual resign/dump/clear shorts I now had $1,053k personal cash. That was enough for a controlling interest in the Wichita company (CRI&P).

So, buy into CRI&P, and take out a bond as the first step. After that cash is secured: immediately buy up all available GH&SA stock, and then merge GH&SA at the minimum slider setting (because I won't need a few extra $k myself). This is where the remaining $111k in GH&SA comes in handy. It means more cash available for bulldozing and buybacks in CRI&P. So, do the usual tricks to CRI&P. It is left with no track or buildings, $1,000k of debt, and $22k of company cash. I now have $1,298k of personal cash. That's enough to get me control of the Santa Fe company (AT&SF).

AT&SF was treated the same way I handled CRI&P. Take out a bond first, then merge CRI&P into AT&SF, then asset strip AT&SF. This boosted my personal cash to $2,108k which is easily enough to get control of the last company: Denver & Rio Grande Western. D&GRW gets the same treatment as before, with one minor exception. I deliberately left the medium station in Durango. My reasoning was that this should tie the defunct company to that location, so it would be prevented from doing stupid things where I didn't want it. So far this seems to be working. Whether it will continue to work is another matter. We shall see. Never underestimate the inventiveness of RT3's Artificial Stupidity.

I then bought up all available stock in D&GRW. Why? Because it only cost me a few $k, and it means I can always take control of D&GRW if it decided to do something inconvenient. Personal cash was now $3,010k. That's easily enough to take over Texas and Pacific, which becomes my main company. As soon as I take over T&P I merge SP into it, for the princely sum of $42k. I now have my starting point in LA for a bit later. Then I issued two lots of stock and took out a bond, which gave me enough cash to upgrade the 3 medium T&P stations to large stations. After checking the cargo map I knew the larger stations would pay off immediately, so it was worth doing. You have to bulldoze a couple of houses to upgrade the Waco station, but I still had enough cash to buy a couple of trains. The first year generated $1,228k of profit from rail alone.

So far I have played until January 1866. I built a lumber mill in 1863, and bought two associated logging camps at the same time. The economy dropped into recession for 1863-64 and returned to normal during 1865. Profits for those years were $731k/$786k/$1,556k. It's definitely looking winnable from here.

---

This progression of asset-stripping companies is definitely the best way to clear territory and maximise your personal cash. It also means your company is guaranteed to have the highest CBV. On the other hand, I don't yet know if it will be the most profitable for fast expansion. It's possible that taking out a bond in SP (and accepting the merger debt load there) and only trashing CRI&P/AT&SF/D&GRW, and then playing both the New Orleans and Fort Worth companies, could be better overall. That is also arguably a more interesting way to play, because there are more factors to juggle (at least until you merge SP/GH&SA/T&P).

---

One thing I did do after taking over T&P is to smooth its track. All the track on this map looks like it was laid by AI, or by a human as careless as the AI. With a bit of terrain tweaking in the editor (with the game paused) it's possible to get T&P's track looking very nice. Even the bridges can be made presentable without much effort. It's probably worth having an already-smoothed version of the map stashed somewhere.

[RulerofRails]

This play was started by using RoR's trick ...

Happy to hear you are using it. Just imagine how many hours people have played the game, and very few experienced the best replayability that the game can actually offer. . . .

I see you two are having fun with this one. While reading your posts, I remembered that Stoker made a map based on this but "improved," it's for 1.06, but I remember enjoying the "twist" he put on it. I will link it: viewtopic.php?f=87&t=1629

[Gumboots]

Ok, cool. I'll check out Stoker's version too. I might even put some twists in a 1.05 version (apart from the obvious track smoothing).

Anyway this latest play turned out to be easy enough. Gold in December 1868, with company debt being $9 million in bonds @ 8% interest (the economy never went above Normal) and me holding 83% of the stock. Possibly could have done it a bit faster if I went harder on bonds earlier. An 1867 Gold might be feasible.

The idea of nailing the defunct AI company in place by leaving a station seems to work. It never tried to build anywhere else. I think the AI treats it like when you break an AI company's track. It doesn't know what to do, so it does nothing. Worth keeping this trick in mind for AI's in other scenarios.

---

Edit: Something just occurred to me.

If I can get a Gold in 1868 there is no need to save a track starting point in Los Angeles. The deadline for connecting LA to El Paso is the end of 1871, and on this seed there is no significant cargo west of El Paso, so it would make more sense to build west to LA instead of east from LA. That has to be more lucrative earlier in the game. If I build west from my existing network, into a region where there is almost zero cargo, the track should pay for itself as I build it.

So, the next challenge is to see how early I can get a no-personal-or-company-debt Gold while still holding at least 3/4 of my company's stock. I think I can do it by the end of 1870.

[Gumboots]

I tallied up what is required for track, and the cost for it.
This is for track only, including wooden bridges where necessary.
The track was laid for easy grades and usability, even if that required a few more track units.
I started with Texas & Pacific (Fort Worth > Dallas > Waco > Austin). No other track was left on the map.

I laid track from Austin via San Antonio to Uvalde.
Also from the track between Waco and Austin, via Bryan > Houston > Beaumont > Lake Charles > Lafayette > Baton Rouge, to New Orleans.
Also from Fort Worth via Wichita Falls > Ft. Sill > Oklahoma City > Tulsa > Joplin to Springfield, plus Oklahoma City > Wichita (required for Gold).
Also from Wichita Falls, via Lubbock > Hobbs > Carlsbad > El Paso > Las Cruces > Silver City > Tucson > Phoenix > Gila Bend > Blythe > Desert Center > Palm Springs, to Los Angeles.

That was my complete network at the end of the game (Gold conditions met).
The total track value was $15.5 million, but T&P starts the game with $1.3 million of track.
That means I built $14.2 million worth of track. This took approximately 4,700 track units.
If you want Gold, starting with T&P, this is a reasonable minimum for track cost and track units.

Breaking it down a bit more:

1. The track for Wichita Falls > Lubbock > Hobbs costs about $1.1 million.
2. The track for Hobbs > Carlsbad > El Paso costs about $1.8 million.
3. The track for El Paso > Las Cruces > Silver City > Tucson costs about $2.1 million.
4. The track for Tucson > Phoenix > Gila Bend > Blythe > Desert Center > Palm Springs > Los Angeles costs about $3.5 million.
5. Total track cost from Wichita Falls, all the way to Los Angeles, is about $8.5 million.

Building east from Los Angeles: you need $5.6 million for track to El Paso, and you get a $2 million bonus when you connect El Paso.
Building west from Wichita Falls: you need $8.5 million for track to LA, and you won't get the $2 million bonus until you reach LA.
By the time you want to connect Los Angeles to Wichita Falls (late 1860's) you should be able to generate enough profit in 3 years.

[Gumboots]

Was playing around with this a bit more. The no debt + 75% stock finish by the end of 1870 is possible, but at the moment I can't be bothered playing it through just to run down debt.

However, I did realise that the idea of building west is always going to slow things down. You need more track to build from your company west to LA than you do to build east from LA to El Paso, which costs more, plus you don't get the $2 million cash bonus until LA and El Paso connect to each other, and you will get that faster by building east. Then, once you pick up the $2 million, you can easily use that to finish the connection to your eastern system (at which point it should be instant win).

[Grandma Ruth]

Off-Topic:

Tried to remove this, but couldn't

[Grandma Ruth]

The joke is from the old Swallows and Amazons series. The elder of the two "Amazon pirates" was christened Ruth, but her uncle told her pirates were ruthless, so she decided she wanted to be called Nancy.

I remember playing that Russia scenario. It's not difficult to win, but at the moment I'm not a fan of Russia.

Oh, I see. Never heard that one before!!!
I played the Russia scenario entirely in the Ukraine, only going into Russia to make the final connections. I don't even like military scenarios to begin with, and felt very uncomfortable with this one. it's only a game, but...

[RulerofRails]

Bit late to the party, but I tried this one too. If we look in the OP we see that you can cold-turkey merge all these companies, even if we short-sell their stock first. That's good for PPP too, so there is no need for any "robber baron" shenanigans. With the correct sequence we can end up in control of a single company, not the SP, that owns everything on the map. After a brief un-pause, share price will jump to around $500 per share, because we got a big discount on all that CBV. Then we can issue stock twice to start with about $1.5M for trains. The first year result will vary because we are talking random placement with a fixed network. My first moves were to try to connect the various networks together, to try to boost express volumes. Some of the companies are "junk" grade CBV, but I think it's better to have junk CBV and take a hit on profits since we want to max bonds at the start of 1864 to lay the obligatory track.

My first year was 600k profit, second 1.6M. Issued stock at the start of each year. Economy jumped to Prosperity. Had enough cash to lay all the track without the LA to El Paso bonus. Utilizing the bonus it should be comfortable in a Normal economy too.

The dire lack of resources in the west of the map, together with the CBV requirement make it IMO one of the few maps that, when played "normally," is not possible without industry. Buying track allocations at $10k per unit eats into our CBV. We need strong earnings to offset this. The "classic" strat for me was Iron for Tool and Dies.

One of the changes that Steve's fixed version did is spread resources better on the map. He also disabled the Robber Baron tricks. But you can still do cold-turkey mergers. . . .

[Gumboots]

I have never been able to get cold turkey mergers to work, even on maps where you say they can work. It is always refused.

[RulerofRails]

Really? For this play I used a "clean" GoG version. Not even using dgVoodoo or widescreen patch. Did you meddle with your company at all first? That includes selling your stock. The reason I think it works is because the AI companies have a "loss" on their books, and you don't plus your "weighted return" is good. Selling shares in your company decreases that weighted return and thus "influences" these "investors."

How close is it to working? Do you get almost enough votes? Remember to not unpause the game before an attempt.

[Gumboots]

Can't recall the details. Just recall that I have never managed to get it to work. And graphics patches would not affect this. It must be purely technique.