North South Corridor

[Shamough]

Where I want to collect all output from a factory or whatever being serviced by a station I use two trains.
This does NOT cause a bottle neck with the rest of the normal trains.
The first created train is PRIME and the 2nd one secondary. Both are set to Min 8.
The PRIME will collect everything it is assigned to collect, and then move off.
Secondary train then starts collecting ... depending on how long it takes PRIME to return and number of product being produced it could have 0 to X cars.
When PRIME returns it then takes precedence over secondary and freight is attached to it until it is full and moves off again.

As for trains ... look at the comapnies befor eyou create or take over your company. IIRC all comapnies in N-S Corridor have no trains in the begining.

As I took over eack company I had to go thru the new consists and set all of the new trains to 0 MINIMUM & 8 MAX.


Shamough/Hans

[Wolverine@MSU]

Regarding AI consists, what I've seen as the default AI setup is to run two trains, each with a minimum consist of 1 at one city or the other, and a minimum of 0 at the other city. That way, at least one train will always run back to the other city of there's no cargo to be had at the first.

[Shamough]

I only looked at the first city/station in the consist list ... fixed it and set all consists to be the same.

[RulerofRails]

Hans, I like your idea to try to incorporate the PRIME system for pick-ups, I didn't think to do that. Overall this sounds solid.

One thing I would watch with that system is that your route is short enough that the secondary train doesn't fill up before the first PRIME one can return. What I am talking about is a small chance that some cargo will escape if for instance the PRIME train arrives into station when the secondary is 75% full. The PRIME fills, then leaves. The secondary will then finish filling pretty quickly. There is a gap in collection when the PRIME train doesn't return before the secondary departs. This is pretty rare, but a very small amount of cargo could potentially still get through this system. Adding a third train reduces the gap still further, but I think the inconvenient solution for TOTAL pick-up may be to add an interchange point a short distance from the output. Cargo will be unloaded from the PRIME and secondary trains here, and transferred onto other trains for the main journey to its destination. The idea: have enough trains waiting at the interchange so there are always two waiting, and either waiting train will be filled completely and depart when either the PRIME or secondary arrive. Theoretically this removes any inefficiency from any train filling before another, which I admit is hardly ever practical. Anyway, if you want to make good use of your system and experiment some more, Wolverine's Panama Canal is a good map for that. Cargo isn't scarce, but there is a deliveries per year requirement to earn points which requires efficient pick-up. When I played I used the "cheat" of stopping some of the trains, which were carrying cargoes whose quotas had already been met, just before they arrived to prevent the loading-order problem. (If you play, choose the lump-sum to pay for the access rights offered mid-game. Check it's thread for more details on the game bug involved.)

Right now I tried re-starting this and just let the game run for a month without any action on my part. Then I went around and checked all the trains the AI bought at the beginning of February, and not one of them was using a minimum consist. Wolverine summed up the way I have seen the AI use the minimum consist order. That use falls under the small network, little cargo to haul category of my best-guess theory. I didn't think it necessary to go into detail with this before because I saw no strategic advantage in making mergers during the first year except if you do them before un-pausing the game when, as you absolutely correctly pointed out, none of the companies have any trains (beginning of the game). Now I am thinking that there is a possibility the AI will use them with a large company to prevent ghost runs once it realizes it has bought too many trains. This is a circumstance that I didn't see on this map, especially with my latest quick game, and may explain why I never remember seeing it.

[Shamough]

Hans, I like your idea to try to incorporate the PRIME system for pick-ups, I didn't think to do that. Overall this sounds solid.

It's not my system ... I use two or three trains, but the PRIME/2nd/3rd etc are, as far as I'm concerned, a BUG. Trains should fill based on the order they've arrived at the station ... when all things about the trains are equal.

[RulerofRails]

Yes, I agree the loading issue is a bug.

I finally worked out that what you are describing (first station of every consist is set to one minimum) is a 1.06 thing. Since I played in 1.05 it never happened to me. It seems the AI re-routes a train in 1.06 this rule is followed also. Must have been one of the tweaks done to the AI in the patch.

[EPH]

The only really bad traffic jam I've ever seen is the dog-pile on St Louis. There wasn't a graceful way to funnel all of the tracks into the one bridge, so the complicated intersections interact with the MoP jamming 20-year-old rustbuckets into St Louis to create gridlock. I'm aware that some other sites like Gary and Birmingham can get congested, but those don't cause their companies to crater as will sometimes happen with the MoP.

Not sure if there is a solution to the way the Ai sets up trains. The RT3 AI is like a talking dog; you're so amazed it can talk you don't insist that it speak well.

Let me know if you have suggestions for improvements for this one. Even though Lama used the 'most express cars to/from a station' mechanic in North-East Corridor I've never felt it was a great fit for the story of the GM&O.

[Shamough]

Let the AI companies heve their trains before the start of the scenerio. Go in and make sure that all of the trains have a Min consist of 0 for all stations.

[EPH]

If I do that then won't they use the 'min 1' method when buying new trains? AI players - especially the big lines like the Nickel Plate and MoP - buy a lot of trains.

[RulerofRails]

Let me know if you have suggestions for improvements for this one. Even though Lama used the 'most express cars to/from a station' mechanic in North-East Corridor I've never felt it was a great fit for the story of the GM&O.

I like the experience the scenario currently gives. Having one bottle-kneck in St. Louis adds something to the gameplay as it encourages the player to takeover the St Louis Terminal RR and build a new station/ re-route some tracks to facilitate better traffic flow. Once or twice is interesting, all over the map would be boring. In The North-East Corridor, I suspect that Lama ran the game for a second in the editor and then saved to stabilize the stock prices. Doing this here would make getting control of one of the large companies virtually impossible in the first year at least. Only other thing that bugged me a little was a couple of the cities that were served by only one company still have their stations jinxed (too close to bridges, Little Rock is a good example) so that you can't upgrade them to the superior Large variety. Of course these are mainly in the large companies so stabilized stock prices would de-prioritize this to the point that it may not be worth the effort.

For the record I am yet to play this in 1.06. There may be room to make an updated 1.06 version where scripting is available to count all cargo instead of just passengers. The drawback is that the 1.06 haul-at-a-loss will allow load count cheating of the "any cargo" that is counted. The passenger counts are some of the hardest things to cheat at in the game, IMO. As we discovered from the discussion here there are some differences in the way the AI behaves in 1.06, and the city balance may need tweaking a little as Construction Firms and the like could force useful industries outside the station boundaries.

Let the AI companies heve their trains before the start of the scenerio. Go in and make sure that all of the trains have a Min consist of 0 for all stations.

Sorry, but aside from the new trains EPH mentioned, after looking at a save of Rail Baron East where after leaving a company under AI control I saw what the AI did to trains I had bought before resigning, this wont work for long. The AI pretty consistently changes the routes with its micro-managing algorithm, so in a few years the majority of trains will end up with a one minimum consist for their first station. IMO, this idea is one of the dimmer ones introduced in 1.06.

[RulerofRails]

I finally gave this a go in 1.06 after I had removed the share price upward correction at the start. There are quite a few differences in how my PC plays the game in 1.06 compared to 1.05. The main difference is that the Lumber price rise is spiraling up to peak of around $600 per load around year 10 (in 1.05 I didn't see any spiral). This means good profits especially for the AI with their micro-management style, two made 12M profit each in the same year. But after the Lumber price subsides they are pretty weak. It is almost better not to try to merge with some of the big guys, unless you are prepared to spend lots of money to fix their mistakes which you can't spend on replacing your engines, or making your routes more efficient, etc.. I also noticed that the 1.06 AI like to buy the Pacific as their main engine, whereas the 1.05 AI mixed their choice better by using a mix with H10s. Once I takeover their companies I have no choice but to retire all their Pacifics. There is too much competition that keeps rates well below what I consider an acceptable level for the Pacific to be useful on Expert.

Without the stock price correction, the largest company I can take immediate control of is the Yazoo. So I chose that, and discovered that it can make some good profits immediately. Around 900k using 6 Atlantics and building a new station to catch Cotton from the river. I issued stock for this. I then merged with the Alton with the bonds/cash I receive at the start of the second year and then use the Alton's cash to also merge the St Louis Terminal RR. The best I can come up with for new second year revenue is to ship Livestock from Kansas City to Chicago as demands on the east side of the lower stretch of the Mississipi are equalized almost completely after my efforts in the first year. I then got hold of the Mobile and Ohio at the beginning of the third year, and try to set up my routes to get the passengers flowing in and out of the hubs while still being profitable. I am trying again, but last time I needed 18 years to medal as I missed a few points when my finances were on the knife edge. (I already missed the 16 year cut off, so if I'm lucky it will be 17.) To do the mergers I worked on the principle I observed in this instance where the other investors would vote 25% for a merge, so I got about 30% (mostly in one swoop) and then pressed the merge button. I think this is linked to some threshold level of price compared to assets (the more you buy at once, the higher the price) so if you can only get 20%, raising the offered share price seems to do the trick fine. I used Wolverine's tip to short the companies at first year end. The way that the government grant is applied means that you will get a little more purchasing power until the end of January of the second year. I found doing this especially helpful to short sell one lot of shares in the Alton which prevented a stock split which would have put the company out of my grasp.

Edited: Fixed some poor grammar. Sometimes I can fix grammar/spelling later without an "edited on" notice below the page, and others not. What causes this?

[EPH]

I like the experience the scenario currently gives. Having one bottle-neck in St. Louis adds something to the gameplay as it encourages the player to takeover the St Louis Terminal RR and build a new station/ re-route some tracks to facilitate better traffic flow. Once or twice is interesting, all over the map would be boring. In The North-East Corridor, I suspect that Lama ran the game for a second in the editor and then saved to stabilize the stock prices. Doing this here would make getting control of one of the large companies virtually impossible in the first year at least. Only other thing that bugged me a little was a couple of the cities that were served by only one company still have their stations jinxed (too close to bridges, Little Rock is a good example) so that you can't upgrade them to the superior Large variety. Of course these are mainly in the large companies so stabilized stock prices would de-prioritize this to the point that it may not be worth the effort.

The bottle-neck in St Louis is intentional, and as you say it pretty much forces the player to build a new station (in my last play-through I built two, one on the northern through-route and one in the south for my west-of-the-river line to Memphis). In fact, most of the game-play is oriented around re-organizing, streamlining and making the roads more efficient. This is not a road-building scenario. Other than a line from New Orleans to Houston or a Chicago-south of Gary-Indianapolis-Cincinnati, I've never had to build any major new lines. A short Memphis-Little Rock or a connection from the Yazoo to the NOGN terminal usually does it for me. If anything the map is overbuilt (as the country was historically - we are only now wishing we had more capacity).

If you try stabilizing the stock prices I would be very interested in how it would turn out. I'm going to be on the road a lot in the next few months so my gaming time will be too limited
for me to take on any new projects. So Russia gets put on the back burner again (*sigh*).

The small stations, etc were partly intentional and partly driven by the map - Peoria Alton is a prime candidate for expansion, as is Jackson NOGN. It does convey the sense that the rail lines had grown up haphazardly and were in need of someone to re-organize them for efficiency. I originally wanted the L&N and maybe the Southern to be accessible to the player like the smaller roads, but winning with them isn't very difficult. I think the hardest start is the Terminal; until AI traffic shows up you are limited to buying hotel-restaurant-tavern buildings. Historically this was a 'joint corporation' owned by a number of the major roads to keep St Louis and its bridge out of the hands of any one line.

One interesting alteration might be to cut out issuing and short-selling stock and let the player build (not buy) industry instead.

[Shamough]

It does convey the sense that the rail lines had grown up haphazardly and were in need of someone to re-organize them for efficiency.

I tried to simplify the tracks once I owned everything ... game came to halt ... dozer took forever to remove tracks, trains slowed to a crawl. It looks like there is a serious problem in the track laying and removal algorythm. (V1.06)


Shamough/Hans

[EPH]

There are so many railroads and trains and businesses and such in that scenario that the game engine just barely copes. Trying to bulldoze track and sand-water-oil facilities (or stations) causes it to have to recalculate routes for all of the trains I think.

[Hawk]

Due to the density of that scenario, I wonder if playing it in 1.06 would add to the bulldozing issue, as opposed to playing it in the RT3 version it was created in.

[RulerofRails]

If you try stabilizing the stock prices I would be very interested in how it would turn out.

The effect is that you can only consistently takeover the Yazoo, NOGN, or St Louis Terminal at the start of the game. The Yazoo needs one other investor vote, but I have tried it a dozen times and never missed it. Wise investment should allow you to get control of one of the medium companies (Alton, M&O, GMN) before they get out of reach as they blossom into profitable companies around year 4-5, but I haven't tried yet. This is probably a good investment challenge that I should try. Waiting as an outside investor until your PNW grows enough to enable takeover of one of the big companies would probably get boring for me before I could "do anything". It may even be one of the most difficult ways to play the game though.

So far I have played with the stabilized stock prices with Yazoo in 1.06. As far as time to medal, I took 18 years in the attempt I mentioned last time. I was one point shy of 17 years. 16 years may just be possible also. In my latest attempt I managed to pick up 3 points in the first year followed by seven in the next, but I then mucked some of my train routes and only received 9 points in the third year. This makes a 16 year result out of the question this time. No doubt it is possible after a few attempts, but it doesn't have my interest quite enough to give me the determination needed to try again and again. This type of play style is saturating your lines with service before there is enough cargo build-up on the map to make it decently profitable, so no CBV or PNW records will be made with this sort of attempt.

At this point I suspect that the number of other investor votes you receive is tied to how happy your investors are. There must be some threshold, but compared to the 2M first year profit with the SR which gives 100% other investor vote, the 900k of Yazoo is only good for 25%. I even speculated that dividends may even be enough to sway some of the investors. So far I have kept them, but ran out of cash before it mattered. Scarcely worth the effort though.

Whenever I am playing I prefer to try to divide the tracks East of St Louis so that deliveries from the south are more likely to take a new line to the existing Terminal station. That doesn't preclude a connection which flows to both, but I think it better prepares traffic for later expansion and a new station on the middle route that I always build.

Allowing industry building would give a different slant to this. The density of service means that it would probably mean most players would build their industries outside of the city centers. Only allowing industry building (no buying) may influence players to build industries that "steal" from existing industries' resource streams. Still could be interesting. I am never really a fan of issuing stock year after year as it seems like a cheap tactic, although sometimes I will issue stock in the first year like I did on some of my attempts with this one.

[RulerofRails]

NS Yazoo Electric 1.06.jpg (105.57 KiB) Viewed 33849 times

This is where I decided to finish my second proper attempt with stabilized stock prices in 1.06. I was awed with how well the AI followed the Lumber price increases last time that I was determined to compete with them. Together we ran the Lumber price up to $1,000 compared to a peak of $600 last time I played. I didn't stop the game to re-route individual trains, but I watched the price map for new outbreaks and bought new Atlantics where they would pay 300k or more for a trip. Most of these hauls came along the St Louis to Kansas City route. I bought 50 extra trains to service the outbreaks. If I didn't buy these trains the AI would have hauled this cargo, and waiting for a train to arrive in other circumstances can miss out on the full potential of the outbreak as prices are already starting to equalize during this time. The AI still did really well, the year I made 15M, one AI made 11M and another 10M with the rest above 5M. (Large companies, I had merged the medium ones already.) I saved the cash I made mergers.

When Depression hit I was positioned so that I could immediately merge with the Nickel Plate, deciding to merge with the best companies first. I had also salvaged 20M personal cash from the good times to start investing in the cheap markets, but I held back from going all in. The start of the depression coincides with the end of Lumber price breakouts. Without new higher breakouts, the price adjustments can be good, but it doesn't warrant buying new engines. It certainly puts a dent in the AI. Profits dried up across the board. In 1931 and 1932, my overhead was enough to drag my profits into the red. I also had to start replacing engines, and started a culling campaign on those I had bought for the Lumber price outbreaks. I lost 10M. I had been buying up the MoP, and during 1931 I bought aggressively in the others including in my company as my shares were very weak. In 1932 I merged with with the MoP, once again reorganized trains and continued heavy buying, especially in my own company.

Out of the AIs, the Louisville & Nashville was making the greatest profit at this point, so I tried to merge with it. Company cash was low, so I needed to save for this and luckily company profits had bounced back. But, just as I neared the amount I needed (11M) it started to make a boatload of money by hauling Lumber into New Orleans where a huge 150 load stack developed. I chased its merger price up to 15M, but having no chance to merge in 1935, I decided instead to begin replacing all my Atlantics with Zephyrs. I concentrated on this, and running costs for the Zephyr are virtually half of the Atlantic, slashing profit margins and giving me a strong income for the rest of the mergers. I didn't think about it, but the normally sporadic AI were just starting to get a profit boost from the World War II events when I merged the last ones in 1940. I feel sure that they would have suddenly become very profitable, as prices sky-rocketed after Pearl Harbor. Clothing peaked around $400.

When the economy crashed in 1943 I decided to electrify for 41M. This was a significant saving on the cost during normal times (52M). I then saved all war profits to replace the Zephyrs with GG1s once engine prices returned to normal. I then ran the game for a full year. The result is interesting. The running costs of the 260 NEW GG1s are obviously MORE than those of the 7-8 year old Zephyrs running identical routes. Compare full year 1944 (Zephyrs) with full year 1946 (GG1s). Granted average speed was 6mph higher and I hauled around 500 more loads to bring the yearly total up to 7,000, but then there is the additional 2M track maintenance cost for the electric track. I hate dozing stuff and left all original track intact except to make a few small traffic flow adjustments, this cost would have been less if I had taken the dozer to lots of the repetitive routes.

As can be seen in the screenshot, I was limiting myself to only use overpass crossings of the AI lines to try to give them more of a chance. I ended year 16 with 146 points, so missed the 16 year medal (changed the points value to continue playing). I never before realized how much difference there is in the severity of the price outbreaks in 1.06 compared to 1.05. This translates to a LOT higher profits on this map when played in 1.06. But in my opinion the AI are definitely weaker, especially in the engine choice department. In case you were wondering, the 1.06 AI one-load minimum consist didn't bother me at all. Most of the AIs trains I ended up retiring, others I rerouted. Of the few remaining I turned some off, but those I left on didn't suffer profit-wise. Just for fun (doubted it was a good strategy economically), when the Lightweight cars event came around I chose the first class option. This option was in effect for the second half of 1946. I don't see a good benefit, however this was in the face of an economy that soured.

I thought I would mention two minor things that I noticed. Maybe they are intentional, I don't know.

• 1. If you try to turn some of the customizations off and then back on, you can't do it. They don't trigger a second time. Early on in the game when I had just merged with the medium companies I turned the station unloading off to save on station maintenance, and the track improvements off to tone down engine speeds which saved me a little on fuel to help get through the lean patch. That was the intention, but if I had known that it was impossible to turn them off I would have left them on. I used the benefits of these options to get a higher first year profit.
  2. Some of the routes don't have Maintenance Facilities. Especially on the MoP between Alexandria, Sherevport, El Dorado, and Little Rock. Some other lines are missing sheds between two cities, but not a couple cities in a row. Haven't seen AI engines running here without oil but wasn't watching carefully for them either.

[Shamough]

1. If you try to turn some of the customizations off and then back on, you can't do it. They don't trigger a second time.

For all ONE TIME ONLY EVENTS you need to COPY the EVENT and delete the original, then modify the COPY.