Pacific Northwest

[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

Pacific Northwest - Added in the Coast to Coast Expansion
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Is there any way to beat this map without cheating? I can't get near the mark by using the baic rules. As for Rober Barron tactics, that can only get me so far. I had to actually "." in a couple 100,000 dolars to be able to beat this by 1950.
Can anyone advise what you need to do to be able to win normally?
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What do you consider cheating?
Decided to try the scenario today to see what I could. First thing I noticed was that the delivery counts are game-wide so if you have multiple companies, all hauls will count. Need to fix one of the status reports though in that case. I did everything with one company.
Suggestions (some obvious): Build your furniture factories where none of your regular trains can pick up the furniture, and upgrade them. Basically try to avoid losing needed cargos to your regular trains. Each year-end project when you will meet each delivery objective and take appropriate actions. Issue stock every year. Use debt liberally to expand but carefully to purchase industry.
Following is my walkthrough and exploit. May include SPOILERS.
Here's my WALKTHROUGH (on Expert).
Issued stock every time I could remember to do it until I was too rich to care.
1/30-Issued stock, bond, purchased milk and iron around Tacoma.
1/32-Issued 2nd bond, connected Spokane-Pullman + one H10 hauling cattle, etc to meat packer in Pullman. Took out 3 more bonds & purchased meat packer some time within the next 2 years.
By 8/35, Had 6M debt & connected the 7 cities from Seattle to Eugene.
By 12/35, had 7.5M debt & expanded Spokane line N & NE to 2 more cities. Running 10 H10's now.
By 12/37, had reduced debt to $3M & connected Cut Band and Choteau & built meat packer in Choteau to pick up heavy livestock in the area.
At 12/38, economy in full depression, debt back up to $7.5M. Choteau now connected to Pullman to transport excess cattle, etc. Followed the cargo route across. Couple other connections also. Running 16 H10's.
By 12/40, debt 9.5M, some @ 12% & 13%. Bought CANADIAN rights. Expanded to Lethbridge, Carmangay in the east and Seattle in the west. Three trains dedicated to meat from my 2 plants to Seattle.
By 1/43, debt 8.5M. Had added station and built lumber mill in the midst of 3 logs east of Carmangay & had built furniture factory in Tacoma. Econ good now. Shortly after, built a furniture factory west of Ritzville with its own station so that no other trains would steal its output.
By 1/49, had expanded to 2-3 more lumber mills. Had bought and built several more industries and upgraded the furniture and meat factories. Sitting on no debt and $10M cash.
Gold end of 1950. Econ in recession. Have $18M company cash, $21.5M industry investments earning $3-3.3M/yr. Running 36 engines incl a few U1's.
Here's my EXPLOIT. I built a small station in Seattle covering the port. Delivered a lot of meat and furniture to it from large stations in Seattle and Tacoma, both of which covered it and the port. I'm not sure if you would consider this exploit fair or not, but I was impatient and lazy! It is very similar to just turning a loaded train back to Seattle, I guess. Many of those trips required rerouting due to disappearing demand. In fact, many of the "legitimate" trips from afar required rerouting in order to pick up any cargo.
On second play I could probably avoid the exploit by setting up 3-4 upgraded furniture factories, instead of only 2, in the wilderness with their own stations. It certainly looks like I had both the money and the lumber to do so.
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The best I ever did was to get silver in this. But this is what I did.
I placed several large stations right next to the Canadian border to grab as much cattle as I could. (Disconnected track is allowed.) You just have to haul the cattle a little way for them to count. I think it might have been possible to haul them to a midway station and then pick them up again to double count them. But I didn't try that.
I placed several (in the end 4 upgraded meat packers around Choteau. The goal I could not meet was 200 meat loads to Seattle. The demand became so low that I ended up hauling meat to Seattle then hauling it somewhere else just to get it out of there. 4 Upgraded meat packers produced 8x4 or 24 at (full capacity) meat loads at year. It takes about 2 years to get to Seattle so you need to have this in place at least 11 years before the end of the game.
maybe I should have done the Loco exploit. Ship to the small Seattle station and pick up the meat with a large one nearby and ship back.
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Still, I've seen no opinion about the fairness or unfairness of using it. I believe it can be used for 2 reasons. Firstly, its in the game by now, ie; well known and not patched. Secondly, you, being a playtester, had a chance to have them revise their goals accordingly. In fact some haul goals are so high I thought you had. On the other hand, whether that is the case or not, I guess its nice to win without any multiple counting.
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The way haulage is counted is a vestige of RT2. Where this could not be exploited because cargo disappeared instantly when it was unloaded. Now it stays around awhile and can be picked up and hauled again. Imagine if there was a haul anywhere feature. All you would need is one load of cargo and you could haul it back and forth and meet any cargo haulage goal.
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Dammit! the obvious staring me in the face again, that's the difference, the cargo hangs around causing enormous gluts around all the factories after several years. We need a "cargo disappears on delivery " option.
Where's that wish list gone
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When I've tried to play PNW I keep getting a industry distribution that looks more like NJ, one game had 41 chemical plants and only 3 lumber camps!
Is this a normal distribution?
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Yeah, who would have thought the nearest logging camp to Seattle was in Idaho?
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i tried a simpler method (cheaper too!)
Find a cattle farm, connect it to a nearby town and build a meat packer if one isn't there, take out a bond, repeat this to the same or nearby meat packers and then connect them all into 1 tracks, cheaper than running individual tracks, from here all track should be double so it can cope with the number of trains using it issue as many bonds as possible along the way. this double track now runs to seattle. run 1 train to and from each cattle farm to its closest meat packer carrying livestock now from each meat packer run 2-4 trains to seattle now the same exept with lumber.
cattle-->meatpacker meat-->seattle
Now tend to all other issues to win.
A good way of making money is to find an industry in plentiful supply but then find a town/city that needs it badly, this makes it cheaper to buy than an industry in a red zone that is rare and is sold for a simmilar price to that of a rare product when it reaches the green zones. also there will be more places to get it so more of it reaches the demanding area.
If you dont understand a word of this please say
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wrote: a vestige of RT2. Where this could not be exploited
Not really. Turning back to originating station would increase count. This could be done repeatedly until disappearance at the cargo delivery date or whatever it was called.

wrote: We need a "cargo disappears on delivery " option
Imo this would take too much out of the economic model, where cargo disappears a little bit on delivery, whether by rail or otherwise, and can be intercepted and diverted. The gluts of cargo would be there even worse if they couldn't be picked up. Remember the huge gluts of resources that could be stored at 2-input industries in RRt2?

wrote: had 41 chemical plants and only 3 lumber camps
I had 27 and 5 in my starting map.

wrote: who would have thought the nearest logging camp to Seattle was in Idaho?
They log potatoes in Idaho and furnish vodka out of them.
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I understood the words and your description of my 1/32 starting strategy. Did you win? At what level?
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Find a cattle farm, connect it to a nearby town and build a meat packer if one isn't there, take out a bond, repeat this to the same or nearby meat
Most cattle farms are in Canada. How you going to place a station next to one?
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Thought the author of this thread might also have a laugh at my super-cheesy strategy to easily win this scenario(no cheat codes)
1. Started near Seattle ,built railway and ran for 1 year, sold out my stock , crippled that company by bulldozing 1 section of track between each connected station and resigned.
2. Started 2nd company connected some adjoining cities , ran for 1 year , sold out , crippled the company and resigned.
3. Repeat of 2.
4.By this time ~ 3-4 years into the scenario I was able to completely buy out the stock and takeover company 1. Reconnected track and resigned again (ai management of small-medium companies is usually better than human once good connections are setup).
5.Purchased company 2, then tookover company 1 which cheaply merged with 2 . Reconnected company 2 track.
6.Repeat with company 3. By 1934 I had the east coast cities all connected and owned all the stock. Company went through the roof.
7.Started new #4company joined Spokane/Pillman/Sandfield ran for a year and crippled.
8. Company #1 takes over and reconnects #4 1936. Build Meat packer Choteau.
9. I now have PNW of ~ 10million. Start big #5 company connect Spokane to East cities and buy rights to Canada! Cripple company sell stock and resign. Because I don't care if I make a loss personally I merge quickly after a steep decline in #5 company shares.
10.1937 and I have connected Seattle to East , have rights to Canada and personal NW of ~5 million to start a new company. As well as hold all stock.
11. Time to sack the ai management of the main line to avoid train spamming/snarling I don't let the ai control this company again. Can now start small companies and cripple them to connect other places [unconnected to mainline] as required but start to send meat to Seattle and build tracks in Canada .
Continue to victory(playing several variations of this at present)
I'm sure the old hands here have tried this before and it certainly is a cheap trick but hey.. I'll look for other ways to have fun next scenario.
PS if Poptop read this I wonder if it would be easy to code the ai so it fixes broken track, that would stifle this strategy!. Though you can still do variation of stop trains a la Bothersome.
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Btw I didn't mention the hardest thing about this scenario is getting the price in Seattle so you can deliver to it, same problem as Japan Quakes , oversupply drives the price down so you can't send meat or furniture there. I had to use the exploits of taking the stuff away and redelivering but used an automated version of these posted by others above.
It sure would be nice to be able to boost consumption, say by building ports
For the record finished with 93 trains, Market cap of $69m and PNW $55m
deliered ~750 livestock without any consists. I found furniture the hardest to get.
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won at silver but was 3 loads of meaty goods off winning. those cows were having mating issues there wasnt enough and canada was out of bounds which caused some problems to my above technique
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Forgot to mention was on expert gold ~1950.
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Darn, you guys are right, this is a tough scenario. I finally got a Silver on Hard, but not without running the station coverage exploit stripping cargo already at the station that is mentioned above (a Mobius strip? ).
Started by running a basic RR operation in the Seattle ~ Portland area. Once I had enough to purchase rights to Canada I built mutiiple upgraded furniture factories in Atlee. Built extra Meat Packers in Pariff (or is it Banff? )
But the only way I could find sufficient cattle to bring to Canada was using a Mobius strip.
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After many failures, I was able to finally beat this scenario on the expert level.
Here's how I did it:
1) At start of game, Pocatello usually has a meat packing plant and there are several cattle ranches in the general area (accross the rive). I made a short line that connected Pocatello, Idaho Falls, and a third station on the river bank below the cliffs from Pocatello. (This makes a U shape with Idaho falls in the middle). I used this line to move cattle to Pocatello and create a good supply of cash early in the game.
2) When I have more cash, I try to do something similir with Helena, which also usually either has a meat packing plant (or one starts up there fairly early in the game). I run a line from Helena to Choteau (which usually has a strong cattle supply), and this brings in good money fast. Then I extend this line to connetc Cut Bank to Choteu, which again brings in good money.
3) By now, the area over by Pocatello is getting a little over-supplied with meat, so I run lines from my river bank cattle pick-up station over to both Sun Valley and Twin Falls, and then Boise. Once Boise is connected, and the meat packing plat in Pocatello upgrades itself, this line gives a stead flow of cash all game.
4) Next, I save up 4 million (which comes pretty quickly) and buy rights into Canada and extend the Helena line straight up through the country one city at a time until I get all the way up to Edmonton. The demand for meat is high in the Candian area, which again brings you tons of money. I doubled all the track and ran two U1 engines between most of the cities. This kept everyting moving well and the cash gushing. (Abut this ame time, I upgrade all my pre-existing level grade trains to U1 and steep grade engines to Challenger)
5) Then I build four upgraded furniture plants and four upgraded meat packing plants in Cut Bank. With all the money coming in, I had this done with ten years left in the game.
6) Then I saved up about 8 million and ran a fairly straight line all the way from a new station near Cut Bank to Seatlle using steel bridges. This left me with some wickeded high grades for traffic headed back from Seatltle.
7) Right about the time the line to Seatlle is done, the Big Boy engines become available. I buy about 10 of these , with five of them being dedicated to hauling meat to Seattle and the other five dedicated to hauling furniture. I configure them to run empty on the return trip, so they don't slow down everthing while trying to climb the high grades on the way back. This also ensures that they will cede the right of way to any train with cargo.
Then I work on supplying Cut Bank with all the cattle and lunber it needs. I buy serveral U1 and configure them to only haul lumber or cattle from varions parts of Canada. I configur them to run empty on the return from Cut Bank so that they don't haul away furniture or meat back into Canada. (that part took me a few tries to figure out!)
9) Now I go back and double up the track between Cut Bank Junction and Seatlle and add as many Big Boy engines as it takes to keep the furntiture and meat picked up.
10) By now, a lot of loads are heading towards Seattle, but time is running out. So I sell a few of the meat plants and funiture plants so I can buy more of them. I think 8 upgraded furniture plants and 6 upgraded meat plants is ideal. Don't sell off plants too quickly!!! The stockholdreres will be upset and fire you. If you do anyting drastic, wait until the last year so they don't have time to send you packing.
11) Then I just add all the Big Boy engines I have money for and cross my fingers! I got the gold on expert, but barely.
Hope this helps. Have fun!
P.s.: The requirement to haul U.S. cattle is a laugher if you set up things the way I did. You are required to haul 300 loads and I finished with something like 1,500.
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Doh! Somebody kick me, when the overview said to haul cattle from the US, I thought it meant FROM the US, that is, to Canada.
I tried this again and fared better (Gold-Expert-1955). I wanted to do it without robber baron tactics, without mobius strips , and without buying rights to Canada at all.
fwiw, here's what I did:
Started my company "Northwest Harvest" with $100K me and $900K outside (allows an immediate purchase on margin)
1930 Built a Paper Mill in the area near Sun Valley
1933 Built a Meat Packing Plant in the same near location with tracks to four nearby ranches (hauling cattle from the US )
1936 Now own the ranches (ultimately these were gold mines at over $180K profit annually each)
Now I maxxed bonds and began building Upgraded Furniture Factories and Meat Packing Plants near the Canadian Border with Lumber and Cattle brought by Canadian rivermen
When my Purch Power was about $2m, I incorporated a second company "Northwest Transport" with as much outside investment as possible (about $4m).
With this company I was able to lay track first to Spokane, and ultimately to Seattle (and the southern cities on the coast) and begin hauling (company was losing $ because of huge track investment and little revenue) That allowed me to buy up to over 50%
Went back to first company, and merged 2nd, then began hauls in ernest.
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Quote: Now I maxxed bonds and began building Upgraded Furniture Factories and Meat Packing Plants near the Canadian Border with Lumber and Cattle brought by Canadian rivermen Smile

I tried it this way a few times, but furniture factories within Canada kept popping up and stopping my flow of lumber. That's why I began just buying rights and hauling the stuff to my factories via rail.
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Quote: I tried it this way a few times, but furniture factories within Canada kept popping up and stopping my flow of lumber.

Ouch! I guess I was lucky. That didn't happen once and I had more than enough lumber.

[BikerTim]

These tips seem quite interesting. I can't wait to try them out. I have played this scenario many times and have only medaled once, a bronze at the medium level. I had just one load to spare and the last delivery got in right under the wire. With these tips, maybe I'll do better.

[BikerTim]

One more thing. I think I will make my own version of this scenario that is more geographically accurate. The Pacific Northwest is one of my favorite parts of the country and whoever designed this scenario was way off the mark. The Columbia River flows into the Pacific Ocean, not forming an upside down "U" with the Deschuttes and Willamette Rivers. Following the Columbia upstream, it winds up into Central Washington with its source up in British Columbia. Also, there is still plenty of logging in the Coastal and Cascade Mountain ranges. I doubt if there is much logging in Alberta east of the mountains. If I remember correctly, there is no produce in this scenario, even though Central Washington is a major fruit growing area. But if I make these changes, I will probably have to change the win conditions. With so much wood located near Seattle, getting furniture into it would be pretty easy.

To tell the truth, if I were to make all of the scenarios that I have in mind, it would take me at least 20 years to do it. Too bad I can't find a job making RT3 scenarios that pays as well as my current job.

[Hawk]

The Pacific Northwest scenario was made by Pop Top and came with the Coast to Coast Expansion, JFYI.

[KevinL]

I was off playing other games and came back to RRT3 again. I decided to try this scenerio as a break from Age of Steam.

First of all, there sure are a LOT of chemical plants in Washington. Also, why are there so many aluminum mills but no bauxite mines? I cheated and turned on bauxite in the industry list, but with 0% in the city list will any be generated on their own? Its the same with distillerys but no produce farms.

I started this three times and ran out of money three times. Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia are too close together so the price differential is so small. I have just started making a little money on the fourth try by starting in Olympia and heading south to Portland. I'm not looking forward to going across those mountains.

[BikerTim]

Out of all of the RT3 scenarios that I have played, I think this one is the toughest. While the suggestions on this site have been helpful, I still have only won once out of numerous tries. I have had my best success starting with a lumber mill near Boise, upgrading it and adding a paper mill and furniture factory as soon as feasible. I also try to connect Boise with Sun Valley and Baker City early. But the key is still accessing the logs available in Canada, linking them to Cut Bank, and establishing major furniture manufacturing there. Only then do I try to get to Seattle. Also, I try to issue stock at the start of every year, though sometimes I forget.

I agree that this map is geographically inaccurate. I lived in Portland for nine years. The Columbia River is not shaped the way it is on this map, there are still extensive logging operations in the area, and there certainly not that many chemical plants. If you read some of the earlier postings that I have made for this scenario, you will read about how I am trying to make my own version of this scenario that is more geographically accurate.

[RayofSunshine]

Boy, I would like some feed back on this scenario.

From the creation of the terrain, Iknow that a lot of time went into it. A geat terrain, although I am not partial to mountainous scenarios. But that is the 1st problem, as I started east or the center of them to begin hauling cattle etc. A slight amount of cattle, considering that it bulk of ranches are in Canada, setting in a $5M access fee location.

Maybe I should have started on the West Coast to connect cities, but I didn't, but is still not my reason for my comments. My biggest comment is that of hauling logs/lumber to the coast. It happens to be in Canada, and with a $5M access fee, that could be a long time in such an endeavor, and then to haul it to the coast.

SO, between both major commodities are in ""hostage"" in Canada, what might be a better strategy that that of my opinion?

[Hawk]

Ray - I moved your post into the right thread for this scenario.

[Stoker]

Been a while since I have played this one, but I do recall the odd resources allocations- No logs anywhere in Washington and Oregon??, mega chem plants all over-etc.? This is one of those that requires a good seed to be winnable.

[BikerTim]

Since making my last posting on this thread, I have achieved one more medal on this scenario, bronze on the hard level. This time I made it with a little more room to spare, but still did not come close to the silver. This continues to be a very tough scenario.

[Alfed E Neumann]

First off, this map is broken: car factories but no tires or rubber. Aluminum mills but no bauxite. Lots of fertilizer and no place to put it. So it was created by poptop -- still, someone clearly wasn't paying attention. Or maybe that's on purpose and all those useless factories are meant to be decoys. They certainly serve as obstacles to your railroad operation.

The terrain is fractally broken. Now matter how far you zoom in, there's bumps and peaks everywhere. Laying track is challenging and/or expensive.

The scenario goals are steep but should definitely be doable -- at least if you have both a harbor and a warehouse in Seattle. Then you may ship like 15 furniture and 18 meat to the coast, annually. Just pipe all of it through Seattle before distributing the excess along the coast.

However, it's tricky. After several false starts, here's my tentative strategy:

- get access to Canada early, and start producing furniture on a grand scale. Bonus points if you can do it with your own sawmills, but if there's an abundance of boards, make use of it.

- if your map is in any way like mine, there will be a meatpacker in Spokane or one of the neighbouring towns. It may be undersupplied or overproducing, but usually it can be bought cheap. Upgrade if supply allows.

- build a meatpacker near Cut Bank. Don't upgrade this, ever: it's merely the magnet to pull all the livestock to an convenient point, naturalizing the canadian cattle along the way. Takes about a year to get online and will make ridiculous profits until you start moving the cattle. *Carefully* manage how much you ship to Spokane (or wherever you run your true meatpacking operation). You want the price to be high enough so the ranchers keep breeding, but not so high that you must ship it at a loss. $120-140 seems to be about right.

- don't start railroading until all of the above is in place. This comes at the risk of severely overproducing before you're in a position to move the goods, but that's still a lot better than building the track and having no cargo. Besides, it's surprising how much stuff an industry may dump on the map and still make some half-decent profit.

- DON'T GET SIDETRACKED. The map is ripe with business opportunities, but... you have no time for this.

- Really. I mean it. After about 1933, any money you spend should somehow be furthering the scenario goals. You probably can't get into Canada before 1934; unless you're very lucky, your furniture operation will take a while to get going. That's a lot of money spent and no revenue to show for it at first, but it must be done, and it must be done *early*. Make it another three years to acquire the meatpacker and upgrade all production, two more years before you can afford even a ridiculous, shoestring-ish railroad to carry your first loads to Seattle. By then it's about 1940 and high time you got going.

That schedule leaves little room for mistakes or even bad luck. Truth be told, I wonder whether this scenario can be won without advanced tycooning. When keeping half an eye on personal net value at first, one can easily have enough money to start a second company at $4M in 1934. Buy access rights to Canada and fold the (now worthless) second company into the first one. You lose perhaps 25% of you own money, but your company gets into Canada for a mere $150k or so. And PNV doesn't matter, nor do the other investors who just lost 95% of their money.

However, once I start fleecing investors I cannot stop... and then things become altogether too easy.

[Alfed E Neumann]

Update:

I've now dumped timber and meat on Seattle, 50 loads each over the course of three years. The prices in Seattle haven't dropped very much; actually,the good people on the coast have scarcely seen the stuff. It goes straight to the harbor which consumes a small part of it and dumps the rest into the sea. You can see the cargo move along the coast and decay rapidly. Is that because I'm playing with the 1.06 patch?

Anyway, at that rate the game can certainly be won without resorting to cheating.

You still have to be quick in setting up the scheme; the scenario forgives no mistakes during the first ten-twelve years or so. Then you spend the next 10+ years doing little but overseeing your operations. I don't think I will finish this.

[BigBoyTycoon]

Seems like a lot of people are struggling with this scenario. Personally this is one of the few i really enjoy of the "deliver XXX number of YYY ressources to ABC towns/areas. Basically because if it´s only about hauling, you can easily spam stations a tiny bit further on the railroad line, and easily a mass loads hauled. Which feels stupid and like cheating, only reason it should be done is if the station is too busy with trains.

Anyhow to simplify how i did this scenario and got GOLD on EXPERT difficulty, I pretty much did what the scenario asked me to.
1) I decided to make a huge amount of profit quickly, by using industries in USA to my maximum effect, ignoring cities or supply chains, and then I issued a few bonds and stock + buying my own stock
2) Bought into Canada for the full 4$ million once i had the money. I did however before hand, setup a meat packing plant close to Canada. But by setting up the multiple factories in the fourth step, i could create an even bigger demand and just shift the cargo.
3) I setup the industries for furniture, and meat packing plants to create a huge amount of ressources, so the price would drop significantly, and thereby making it a lot easier to supply Seattle.
4) Once I made around 10$ Million per year, I made a tunnel from Canada directly to Seattle.
5) Once the tunnel was built. I made doubble track and large stations to all the furniture and meat packing plants, I made several so my trains could load faster.
6) Basically i wanted to sacrifice every train once it had made a trip. So i put 7 meat/furniture + one caboose to seattle. Then Retired the train once it got there.
7) To sort the problem of not being enough demand in Seattle, i simply spammed trains. As long as the cargo hasn´t reached its destination, obviously the price won´t fall. And by having 5-6 meat packing plants upgraded around a few stations, i could send 40-50 Meat per year. Same goes for furniture. Also the trains made a nice profit. If someone asks me what trains i used. I used the big-boy train simply because its awesome and i love it.
8) I finished the scenario around 5-6 years before time was due. With a ton of profit. A good personal networth.


I have a golden rule about when the scenario ends, you have to be able to get a huge amount of personal networth + paying off debts. Otherwise it would be unrealistic and easy to abuse the stock market. This is just a personal goalso of course you can abuse the stock market all you want. I issued bonds every year but i managed to keep profit.

Depending how your map looks, you can easily amass the 300 cattle, by doing the cheat trick i told you about earlier - but try and avoid this. I say this simply because i thinks its boring. What i did was just sending it to a meat packing plant in USA. So i got it legit, i never focused on that. And it shouldn´t be a problem for you.

It´s a really wonderful scenario and i love the atmosphere. There´s alot of ways to play it. i noticed one thing, when i tried launching the scenario several times i think i made it bugged since it didn´t spawn any cattle ranches in Canada, only 2-3 or so.

If you need any help you can always add me on steam. I completly understand that this scenario is very hard. The first time i played it i ignored Canada, but only managed silver. So Canada certainly is the way to go. :)

For the ADHD version->
1) Make huge profit in usa.
2) setup in canada and make the cargo - wait a long time.
3) Send all the cargo to Seattle, you got so much profit you can easily take the loss of sacrificing 400k trains just for one trip.

Hope this helped :) I really loved this scenario, and so will you when you finally beat it. And of course play it on expert - but focus on industries so the trains won´t matter anyway with the profit

[RulerofRails]

antso22, that's an impressive first strategy post from a seasoned tycoon! Welcome to the forum!

I also find many of the large haulage goals tedious at best (playing honestly). Cheating and spamming the system is so boring that I haven't used it for years. But, upon your recommendation, I will try this one in the near future. If you have 1.06 and want to try my favorite hauling challenge, I recommend Panama Canal by Wolverine@MSU.

[BigBoyTycoon]

antso22, that's an impressive first strategy post from a seasoned tycoon! Welcome to the forum!

I also find many of the large haulage goals tedious at best (playing honestly). Cheating and spamming the system is so boring that I haven't used it for years. But, upon your recommendation, I will try this one in the near future. If you have 1.06 and want to try my favorite hauling challenge, I recommend Panama Canal by Wolverine@MSU.

Thank you very much RulerofRails, Perfect name for RT I gotta say! I just wanted to post this one strategy, right now I´playing through all scenarios on expert/gold. And in the russia one i found paper mills making 6 million per year, and one paper load worth over 1500$. Playing for hudnreds of years - the game crashed a bit. But managed to make around a billion a year in profit. Basically my railroad was worthless but at least they supplied the industries :p . I love going crazy trying all the new trains and i had like 20-30 industries around the same area. It was the most insane scenario ever. probably bugged but who cares. Was so fun. I wish you could delete the saves easier though when done. And thank you for welcoming me to this forum. Ive used the site for years but now i finally get to see this lovely community :3

if you do this map again, i definitely think if you do like i do it should work. Just make sure you make a ton of profit in USA, as much as possible. I remember 10 years ago i always failed and had no clue what to do - i gotta say i miss those times :p

Anyhow - im happy you agree with me that these kind of scenarios can be tedious. I havent played 1.06 i think, i think it was something about you could move cargo with loss? I loved the idea, but i just wanted to see how it was without being able to do it - so just the standard game. But i´ll cartainly give your recommendation for Panama Canal and get it downloaded with it though. Seems like great fun! Thanks alot my friend! Looking forward to the hauling challenge and will go check it out. Thank you so much, if you like it so much I´m sure I will too!

Hope you´ll enjoy playing this scenario again too :) And again thank you for making me feel welcomed. I love this site. Its like a peace of heaven and nostalgia where its our own little world.

Ps: I love these forum smileys! Whoever picked them is a genuis!

[RulerofRails]

Thank you very much RulerofRails, Perfect name for RT I gotta say!

Thanks! When I think of ruler I think of empires in the past, and decided to use this idea in combination with rail. I don't use steam. Not my thing. I love the strategy of the game, and take that as far as I can. I doubt the casual player would follow some of the stuff we talk about round here. But, of course, I love to try to help others become better players. Don't know if I am the best teacher though, I tend to get wordy.

How are you having difficulty deleting old saves? As long as you can use file explorer and the delete key, it shouldn't be too difficult. The hardest part for me is naming them so that I know what each one is without loading it. I normally use a numbering system like Alaska001, Alsaka002, . . . For the next play of the same map Alaska101, and so on. If you want a step by step, feel free to ask in the General Discussion section.

I love RT3, but there are some bugs in the program. The insane paper prices you saw in the Russia map must be due to a price increase event. The game doesn't apply these events like it should, instead spiraling price up to insane levels. There are a few maps around here that use them anyway. Sounds like you had good fun with it still, so that's the main thing. I get lag from my computer, once I go past 300 trains and 300 industries, so don't normally stretch scenarios into the distance.

1.06 only hauls at a loss if you use custom consists, otherwise it plays like 1.05. This gives another opportunity to cheat, but better AI, new industries and more interesting events (proper math is allowed) make playing it worthwhile. The recommended way to install it is to make a copy of the whole 1.05 folder (there are topics about this) because 1.05 maps don't play the same in 1.06. Panama Canal is challenging, so playing another 1.06 scenario such as one of the many by Arop would be a better introduction to learn the new industries. (In Panama Canal you need to build and supply almost all the cargoes on the map to the building site.) Best of luck with your games. Maybe it's escapism, but playing RT3 helps me stay grounded and relaxed. Enjoy.

P.S. I believe the benevolent Hawk is responsible for choosing most of the smilies as well as this excellent site. We are grateful!

[Hawk]

Ps: I love these forum smileys! Whoever picked them is a genuis!

P.S. I believe the benevolent Hawk is responsible for choosing most of the smilies as well as this excellent site. We are grateful!

Kind of. About a quarter of the smilies came with the phpBB forum software. The rest I got from various other sources or from folks that sent them to me.

As for the site: Yep! That's all me. Well, except for the fact that it wouldn't have been possible without everybody that contributed maps, patches, rollingstock, various other files, donations, comments, suggestions, criticisms, forum content, donations, patience, snide remarks, blood, sweat, tears, eyes of newts, rats warts, gnats gonads, and various other miscellaneous and sundry.
Oh! And did I mention donations.

[RulerofRails]

. . . eyes of newts, rats warts, gnats gonads, and various other miscellaneous and sundry.

Ha Ha Ha! Very important!

[Gumboots]

Hey RoR, did you ever get around to trying this one? I played it through yesterday since I'm currently in the mood to remember why I like RT3. That means actually playing some games instead of just obsessing over modelling details.

I'm not usually big on basic connect and haul scenarios, but for some reason I found this one very appealing once I got into it. Part of the appeal is the terrain. It looks impossible, but is surprisingly tractable if you take the time to analyse it and try a few things. I ended up using two short tunnels just to cut through some peaks between Boise and Kennewicke late in the game, but the rest of the (quite extensive) track was done without tunnels and with only occasional cells at 6%.

Playing on 1.05 and without using bait and switch loads, I found the haulage goals seem well balanced. It's a mission to get the meat and furniture haulage to Seattle done in the available timeframe, and adds some excitement until you reach the point where you're sure of winning (this was about three years or so from the deadline in my case). The US livestock haulage turns out to be incidental, and never presents any real problems. I did use robber baron tricks to get cheap access to Canada a bit earlier, but I'm sure the game is winnable on Expert without doing this. I may try that as the next challenge.

One thing about the haulage goals is that they restrict you to running a fairly crappy company in terms of profit/PNW/etc because so much cash has to go into factories, track and trains that are minimally profitable. It becomes a case of setting up just enough "good stuff" to fund all the "bad stuff" you need to build and run, since getting shipments to Seattle requires creating huge gluts of meat and furniture inland near the Canadian border, then shipping it down to Seattle for a few bucks a load.

[RulerofRails]

Yes, I played it through, but I forgot many of the details of my play. I started a dud attempt with a Tool & Die in Seattle but things stalled as the economy soured and I didn't have the patience to push on with a flat start. Then I did a far better start which in reality was more of an even split between rails and industry, but I remember starting with some rails on the west coast in the Seattle-Portland area. My current view is that this map is good in many aspects. The terrain is decent, painting is quite nice, and the map isn't really that challenging if you have a good handle on industry. As is typical with the original maps the economy balance feels a bit "cheap" compared to the other features. Despite the aforementioned multitudinous Chemical Plants, in my successful attempt the seeding meant that I could collect some great short-term profits hauling chemicals east to un-supplied Fertilizer Factories and longer-term profits from hauling the less plentiful Fertilizer towards Canada which seems to be the main place that farms will seed.

I have said it many times, but I believe that hauling specific cargoes is the game's weak point, and it is the biggest con of this map. I like to make hauls as honestly as possible, but the map isn't setup for the Seattle area to have enough demand to soak up the 20+ loads of each cargo I was delivering in the later years. I don't particularly relish the "challenge" of preventing automatic re-hauling while also needing to find a distant place to haul away all the glutted cargo in an attempt to keep demand up. There are things that can be done about that such as placing conversion industries in the countryside where the base price will be lower and the other option of using the editor to increase warehouse demand amounts, but I didn't use them and the second will obviously change the game making it easier to get honest hauls. If I decide to purposely use a re-hauling routing strategy I may as well just drop-ship and re-haul in bulk which will destroy all challenge of production and delivery. For these reasons, I feel there is little subtle strategy in specific haulage as a scenario's main goals. If I get the goals 10 years before the deadline there are so many legalities involved with honest hauls that it means virtually nothing to other players. With dis-honest hauls likely another 5-10 years can be shaved off that theoretical time. I enjoy working time for the goals into strategy decisions. All that being said, these type of scenarios can still be fun for economy setup etc. and to try to get all the hauls as honestly as possible while trying to balance routing and economy so that almost zero micro-management is needed. A more relaxed game without the thrill of exponential growth but still good for refinement of management skills to design and run a slick operation.