Transcontinental

[besterik]

One "funny" thing, if you are eligable for the gold medal and repays the last bonds during 1891 you doesn't get any kind of message, neither gold, silver, bronze or lost. One way to avoid this is to either allow the gold or the lose message to fire during 1891.

[Canadian Viking]

Transcontinental has been on my "to play" list for many months, but working on my own game creations has taken so much time I didn't get around to it until this month. I finished the game a few days ago and think it is one of the most interesting and innovative games -- while still being rooted in reality -- that I have played. Excellent scenario which I recommend highly. The work of a master scenario craftsman Very well done, EPH!

I would prefer a map region that is wider and not as high so that the terrain would come closer to matching reality, but reusing the Great Northern map was a HUGE timesaver I'm sure. And the map does capture the essence of the geographical challenge, so it works. I built up from Sacramento to Reno and had some short excessive grades (over 6%) near the top as I went over the ridge and curved back into Reno from the north. I'll try building down from Reno next time.

I saved my game in the middle of 1890 so I could try a couple different end strategies. I wasn't going to get gold, but thought I might manage silver. In one ending I did not finish paying back the government bonds so I got the lose message, but not until the end of 1891. Since several game messages had said I had until 1891, I though the game would end with December, 1890. Knowing I had that extra year, I replayed the ending and paid off my last government bond in December, 1891. I thought I would get silver, but wasn't sure - since I had not connected to Seattle. (The game messages are not real clear if the Seattle connection is needed only for gold, or for all three medals.)

Surprise! I got no message at all - not silver, bronze or lose. I checked the editor and saw that the game checks for the silver medal at the beginning of the month and before 1892. By paying off my last bond in mid-December I missed the medal check even though I met the deadline. I think there may be one or two other similar fixes needed on the end game events. I would do them myself but am not sure what EPH intended. Are the goals to be accomplished by the end of December, 1890, or 1891?

In spite of the uncertain ending, it is a great game and I will likely replay it several times.

[EPH]

The deadline should be December 31, 1890. Sorry for the glitch with the events.

I am glad you liked the scenario. I know that some of the mechanics are confusing but I couldn't find a better way to model how it was 'really' built. The final challenge - connecting to Seattle - is a more typical RRT3 goal, added to give the scenario a bit more length and depth.

I've never been a map-maker, so re-using the Great Northern map actually made 'Transcontinental' possible. (Great Northern is a terrific scenario, one of my favorites.) I did have to raise the Sacramento valley, lower the Sierras and otherwise jigger the terrain around to get a usable line from Sacramento to Reno.

My great regret is that upgrading the medium station in Sacramento sends it to the bottom of a coal mine. But as finicky as RRT3 is about some things I decided I had to just leave that alone.

Many thanks to wsherrick and wolverine for their insights, time and knowledge, and a special salute to the men who really built the impossible across the uninhabitable. A special breed, indeed.

[BikerTim]

Just recently I achieved gold medal for the first time on this scenario. I must disagree with EPH on one strategem. Instead of paying the bonds off early, I find it better to let the cash accumulate once the link to Seattle is achieved. It costs $750,000 to pay off those bonds no matter when. The accumulating cash generates interest to help make those bonds more affordable.

I agree that a player should cash bonds as soon as they become available. It is also best to not sell off the land grants until the Omaha-Sacramento line has been connected, but sometimes it is necessary. One expense that is appears unavoidable is the purchase of additional track-laying rights. So it is best to sell land grants sparingly before the Transcontinental connection is made, only when needed.

About the only other advice I have is to decline the opportunity to steal from the company. While being honest may cost the company one bonds-worth of cash, that loss is more than offset be the cash outflow from the stealing. The player also does not get much benefit.

As for strike breaking, that one can go either way. Giving in to the union's demands costs one bond, but at least the work continues. Using strike breakers avoids the loss of a bond, but if it does not work, precious building time is lost.

Overall, I think the creator did a fine job with this scenario. A lot of concepts that are not found in other scenarios.

[EPH]

Many thanks for your kind words. I am glad you enjoyed the scenario - it is as true to the real building ofthe TransContinental Railroad as I could make it.

I agree completely that the best way to pay back the bonds is by accumulating cash and allowing the interest of your fat bank account to help you. However, some players (including me - sorry to say) may have trouble letting that pile of cash sit and grow. There is always one more profitable route to lay, one more industry to build... My real cautionary warning to the players is not to let the deadline creep up and find you unable to pay off the bonds. Paying them offslowly but steadily ensures that victory condition can be met.

Taking the bonds as sson as possible and holding on to the land grants is, I agree, the best value for the money.

What route did you use to Seattle?

[Wolverine@MSU]

The interest rate paid on company cash varies with the economic state, and in any given economic state is always lower than the interest on a bond, even with the highest credit rating. Depending on the current economic state and the interest rate on the bond, it may make more economic sense to pay off the bond. If you're only getting 3% return on your company cash, but have a bond out at 7%, it's a no-brainer. Unlike the interest rate charged on a bond, which is tied to both economic state and a company's credit rating, I think the interest paid on company cash is fixed by the economic state only.

Does anyone know what these rates are?

[EPH]

My bad for using the same term 'bond' to refer to two different things.

Company bonds are issued by your company and are backed by its financial assets - this is why your interest rate varies and why your credit rating controls how many bonds you can take out. Government bonds are federal credit extended to the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific because the cost (and risk) of building the railroad made it impossible to raise the cash by ordinary means. These are backed by the US government, which in those days had less taxing power but little or no debt, so its credit rating was better than the railroads. As an aside, when the UP and CP were chartered they became overnight the biggest and second biggest companies on the planet - a good indication of the size and difficulty of the job.

In short, company bonds are a part of the RRT3 game engine and have a variable interest rate. Government bonds are unique to this scenario and have no interest rate, just a flat repayment cost.

Your company bonds are taken out at various interest rates depending on the economy and on your company assets; your max limit here is $10 million dollars. You can also issue government bonds as you extend your railroad to certain milestones. These must be paid off by the end of the game at a flat rate of return (issued at $500, repaid at $750). That $750 repayment does not alter with time or economic state. You are limited (I think) to 50 government bonds ( I believe you receive $25 million and repay $37.5 million). The amount of government bonds you have or use does not affect the economic state or your credit rating. Getting caught spreading the wealth to yourself and your favorite politicians does.

Paying off company bonds is always a good idea, especially if you can spare the cash and the economy starts trending down. Of course it is always a temptation to take that cash and connect another town or buy/build an industry instead.

But the worst effect of economic slowdown (in my opinion) is that your trains slow down. That's just cruel!

[BikerTim]

After two months, I am back to answer the question that EPH asked me. To connect to Seattle, I started northward from Central California, crossed into Oregon east of the Cascades, crossed over the Cascades to Eugene, then up to Willamette Valley through Portland and on up to Seattle.

[AdmiralHalsey]

So anyone still play this? Much as I love it I find it's hard as heck to make money once you build the RR. Then again that's exactly what the UP experienced until IIRC Jay Gould took over and fixed her up. I'd love to see RoR take a stab at this one.

[RulerofRails]

I did take a stab at this one some time back. I didn't want to go boasting all over the forum so kept my result to myself. Seeing you asked though, here is my best effort. Of course, I love this map, EPH did a great job to make it full of strategy options, so first off I want to say THANKS!

Transcontinental.jpg (85.39 KiB) Viewed 16841 times

I last played this one after finishing the TM beta scenario by Ned called Deadwood Dakota which uses the same map. I had numerous plays and looked in the editor before I got the medal this fast. I had played it years ago also, but didn't get half as good a result. I didn't hold back with this attempt, this includes issuing stock. I did strategize about how many government bonds to takeout before the Omaha to Sacramento connection, but forget exactly what amount I used on this run.

A few things I remember:
1. It's pretty easy to takeover the AI if you make use of the share price jumps your company will get when you take out government bonds (CBV increases). Theoretically there could be an advantage to take out one at a time instead of two or three, but what I did is, after every government bond issue I would unpause the game just for a second to allow share price to jump up. This allows me to buy some stock on margin at a better price than I could if I did all bonds at once. (The AI will spring up again, but the original location and territory access is worth going for early, however, be careful how early you go for this, because there is a bug I found where taking control and connecting Omaha to the Chicago rail link will mess with the variables and then the Gold medal wont fire. This is why I looked in the editor. To prevent this, don't connect the AIs track to yours before you finish the main Omaha to Sacramento section. Main reason for the takeover is for the track and the station that connects to Chicago. Near the start it will be better value for money. Even without the connection to your tracks, this track should be break-even over time.)
2. The Dairy Farms are cheap at the start. Buy one (or two in a slightly less profitable location) for some extra revenue. The key is to come up to the industry profit limit without stepping over it. If you are going to slightly overshoot (such as in boom times) it is possible to build and bulldoze a Post Office or two to lower your industry revenue to the right range. (I didn't do this in the above play, I bought industries that would hit around 220k per year.) Is that legal, wasting your money on purpose? I am not sure.
3. Go after the government bonds and the connections right away. I know there are a few traps (none will make the game unwinnable, just set you back a bit) in here, but don't remember exactly what, that's for you to have fun figuring out. If I remember right, I waited to sell most of the land at full price, but sold some early when I had track units to build but no cash.
4. There is a farming sweet spot on the map just North and a little west of North Platte. Depending on the original seeding (as to how quickly to connect), but a connection might be worthwhile for the extra revenue even though it will use track units.
5. Don't upgrade the Medium station in Sacramento, as it is bugged and will drop down to sea level and disappear. I prefer to build my own large station right at the start, for a connection (it's possible to have 5% grades) down to the San Francisco rail link. (In the screenshot above, I dozed the medium one, but it is possible to ignore it and build slightly to the north, just make sure to get best possible coverage.) This is where the rail revenue is at game start, so should be some of the first track you build as it will make money. (Remember that some connections will give you extra track pieces, so there is always a chance that it's better to lay track somewhere else to get those pieces first, but you should make sure you have this connection in the first year.) (I don't know why in the OP, EPH recommended to do this in the second year???) Also, seeing the east is so barren of resources, connecting up to Reno should be done in the second year, it's possible to keep grades below 8% and the American will climb these slowly but surely with 4 cars (EDIT: it escaped my memory that the Consolidation isn't available until you complete the Transcontinental line). The way the government bonds and land grants get allocated gives great incentive to expand from both ends like in real life, so do this.

Good luck! Hope this helps you to win this one. Let us know how you go. As I said, it was awhile, so hopefully I didn't lay a trap for you with incorrect advice.

ETA:
I am in the middle of giving this one another whirl. For gold the original connection needs to be done by 1869. It might just be possible to do this at the end of 1868 if you build the last section during winter, but it doesn't help you at all. Main thing is to try to keep your company slightly profitable so you can get some normal bonds between the government ones. This section of the game is pretty scripted. Getting this connection is the important part for the gold, how you make money later to pay off the government bonds is really at your leisure. I maxed out normal bonds and went straight into industries in January 1869, before I had made the connection. I believe the check for too much industry profit is at year end, so come 1869, industries are fair game. The Tool & Die in Salt Lake City often has potential.

This was one of the maps which influenced the development of my rail haulage strategy. As I expanded up from Sacramento I noticed that since the towns are well separated and small, connecting a new one every year works really well from a profit perspective here. The cargo which originally came from the valley (Meat, Coffee, Lumber, etc.) sits at one station for a period of at least 6 months depressing the price there and the same loads can be re-hauled next year to the next city. This is a natural process, but the player can promote it. This then forms the basis of my strategy for the fast medal. Immediately after the Omaha to Sacramento connection is finished I sell all the land for full price. This gives me capital that I use to develop the Seattle area, and specifically to expand down to Portland and then up the Columbia Valley, one city at a time. There is less time to wait as the river will try to carry cargo itself, but you can have a great stack going at the leading edge of your expansion with all the plentiful cargo in this area. Coal, Lumber, Coffee, Livestock, etc.

I edited (1.) as to the reason for trying to takeover the AI. It isn't a requirement of the scenario. It can still be fun to play with PNW here, but also be careful when paying off the government bonds as CBV disappears and this is BAD for share price. The first time I tried this map, I was so happy to find a map that seemed almost impossible at that time. I went about it the wrong way and only expanded from the east. I think after a restart or two I managed to get the medal, by using this strategy except I also added a connection from Sacramento to the San Fransisco Rail Link. The connection down from Reno was the last thing I did. When I finally worked out the intention was to expand from both ends, it almost seemed easy. I trust you are getting the hang of the connections and the way to use the government bonds by now.

[EPH]

This one is pretty straightforward (RoR is right to call it scripted) in that it requires the player to follow the historical UP/CP routes and 'allows' him to experience the 'joys' of building the Transcontinental. It also requires you to start from both ends and head to the middle, not just build from one end or the other. You need all the bonds and most of the land sales and track just to get to Promontory Point. That's also the reason to penalize you for buying too much industry early on. The UP/CP could not have done bought industry, especially with all of the government land grants and bonds they got (though the CP did manage to sew up a lot of the other railroads in California). But after the TC is built - well, then the West is open and it's all fair game.

Once the road is built, the player has to try to make it profitable, and as Ruler points out the best way is to expand. And expand. And... you get the picture. In history the UP had to pay back the government bonds, and I thought that mechanism - taking out huge amounts of interest-free loans backed by government credit - would be interesting for the players to try. For my part I thought building the line to Seattle was a lot of fun (whatever route you take). Of course my tendency is to expand and build/buy industry and then scramble at the end to pay all of the bonds back, but that's just me. I like to get the money and I HATE to give it back.

Never, never upgrade the station in Sacramento. To make the grade reasonable at all I had to massively terraform that part of the map, and if you upgrade the station it drops to China. Bulldoze it and rebuild it, and all is well. If I knew how to fix it I would... I can just imagine a group of miners and Central Pacific men standing around a giant hole in the earth scratching their heads. "You see it fall in Bob?" "Nossir, I looked over to the Gen'rul Store for a second and when I looked back... just wern't there." "Beats anything I ever seed." "But... but... how to we run trains HALF A MILE straight down to our station!!!"

I think this is the most rigid scenario I've ever done and it doesn't have a lot of replay value. Still fun to try it again every few years or so. I was always amazed that no-one had tried to make a scenario of this, but maybe the lack of replay value answers that question.

Thanks all for your comments -

[OilCan]

Never, never upgrade the station in Sacramento... If I knew how to fix it I would...

It is fixable. I did a test of it today to make sure. You will need to take control of Central Pacific, fix the station and then retake chairmanship of Union Pacific.

In map editor, take control of Central Pacific company through buying majority stock (need to enable takeovers and resignation in special conditions, & give player cash through 'fat cat' cheat).
Bulldoze the station. Build a new station. Rename the new station.
Sell all stock in Central Pacific, buy majority stock in Union Pacific and takeover chairman of Union Pacific. Sell all but 2,000 stock in Union Pacific.
Disable takeovers and resignation in special conditions.
Create new event to reset the player's cash at start of game.
Save & test.

That should do the trick. (I don't think I missed any steps.)

[RulerofRails]

Oilcan, thanks for the tips on how to fix this. I went and fixed it in my copy. It seems to simply be a glitch with the station from what I can see also. Bulldoze the station and build/rename a new one on the same spot works fine for me. I also noticed something weird about the way that players are setup. There are two mandatory human players here as well as two mandatory computer ones. But, only 3 are visible, including the second mandatory human player. This makes it easy to fix the station up with Ctrl+click on the middle player to take control of the CP. Maybe this was for a potential multiplayer version? It means the cash cheats to take control aren't necessary anyway.

EPH, while you are fixing this you could do something about an incorrect Golden Spike notice appearing if you takeover the AI and connect its track to yours before you make the Transcontinental connection. This is because a connection from Omaha to the Chicago Rail-link (same would happen if you connected to St. Louis or Memphis Rail-links) gives the same effect as the proper Transcontinental connection (Game Variable 2 is increased by one {+1}). This will trigger the "Golden Spike 2a" event, giving the following newspaper. This will give you unlimited track, but land grants will never reached full price and you need to pay off all 50 of those bonds. Maybe this isn't a real problem as a medal is extremely unlikely anyway without more government bonds. A simple fix would be to test for connection of the Rail-links to Sacramento instead of Omaha (text would need changing as well). Otherwise maybe use a different variable?

Transcontinental bug.jpg (85.2 KiB) Viewed 17084 times

This does go to show that I was trying different things here as I was after a little more money from the Chicago Rail-link connection even though it used up valuable track sections. Either way, not many people will make this connection, so it's really minor.

When I said that this map is scripted, I didn't mean that it was boring. I meant that the story is controlled especially in the first few years, but I like that because I can accurately compare and analyze different strategies. Sure, it may seem like best strategy (it's definitely easy) to take out all the government bonds, but on my fastest run I remember not taking them all out. I calculated that the repayment amount is fixed at 87.5% (350/400). The quickest I got the Gold Medal only used 5 years after the spike was driven. Because the principal also had to be repaid at the end (100+87.5), from an investment perspective I needed a ROI of 37.5% (187.5/5) for any new investment in 1869. Prime industries and newly seeded farms/mines/wells might give that, but you can see why I was really selective about which industries I invested in. Of course, there are other factors involved such as the cost of the Seattle and Chicago/St Louis/Memphis links which you must complete and if you issue the government bonds as cash earlier you may get some money back as interest. This was a scenario where I was satisfied that I found a good point to stop expanding and start saving, which is one of my weaknesses. Obviously, over increasing lengths of time the government bonds become more and more attractive, but I hope this shows that there is plenty of room to strategize in a "scripted" scenario.

[EPH]

Sorry, I'm lost. There is no Central Pacific RR in this scenario, only the UP and the Rock Island.

[RulerofRails]

The CP is Company ID#2. At game start the CP assets (the Sacramento station) are confiscated by event which effectively gives them to the Union Pacific. Then the CP is deactivated. You will only see the CP if you load the game in the editor, not if you use Shift+E to enter from a started game. Here's what I see:

Trans railroad companies.jpg (28.98 KiB) Viewed 16699 times

[EPH]

Sorry - it's been years since I looked at this scenario. I opened it up and found the UP and the RI and didn't look any farther.


Here's the thing: if I invest the time in updating this scenario I'm going to make some pretty major changes like forbidding stock issuing, mergers and the like - probably dis-allow the UP to build to the east of Omaha as well. If that's OK I will look at editing it; otherwise I'm going to leave it alone.

[RulerofRails]

if I invest the time in updating this scenario I'm going to make some pretty major changes . . .

Go right ahead. Sounds good to me.

[AdmiralHalsey]

Go ahead and do some more with it. Would love to see a new version of it for sure.

[low_grade]

Well, I didn't come close to a 1974 win, but gold on Expert in March 1883 I thought was pretty good! Had to restart a few times, of course, as I figured out how things worked. First time I said no corruption and then got hit hard and never ran a profit. But I did other silly things. Second try said $100k/mo for corruption, but it was too much and again I ran in the red. Third time I focused on the connection goals, and probably didn't need even the $500 I gave for extra track in 1869. Spent the $1 M for 500 track units. Was able to save back almost all the land and sold it for $250k/unit, and on to an expansion victory. I got a bit carried away on that end and could have made a victory years earlier most likely if I hadn't tried to build to so many towns. Finished with 148 locos running, mix of Dukes in the flats and Connies in the hills. I let the tunnel up from Sac to Reno be a 7% grade, otherwise a few 6% grades here and there, much of the rough stuff was manageable at 4% and under. Some nicely carved paths! I went through Crowsnest pass to get to Spokane to get to Seattle.

Thanks for another great recommendation, RoR!