Latvia (beta)

[RulerofRails]

I'm not sure how many other custom maps you have played, but the "most time-consuming" goal here of $5M cash is pretty low for us. Bonds can fuel very fast growth, my test plays have been in the 7-9 year range. Hence the suggestion to slow this. Even if you don't do that, you could at least require the player to repay all bonds before a medal (test for Company Debt = 0).

Unfortunately, the quickest way to reach a cash goal is to sit and save for the last bit of the game. So as Cash on Wheels said, people are only experiencing a portion of your map. Instead of expanding to the further reaches they sit around and watch their trains run.

Also, the East and South of your map are pretty barren. You will notice on other maps that great care has been taken to provide economic enticement to connect towards the edge of the map instead of hanging around in the middle. I think because you are focusing on Latvia, it's ok. Just to say that in effect the map is smaller for the player. Perhaps a Warehouse in Poland and another Russia could simulate some trade between the countries?

I'm not sure what Cash on Wheels meant about the resources . IMO, they seem much improved from the earlier betas. But I am not a map maker so don't know the intricacies of their setup myself. I will also say there is no wrong way as long as there is enough demand for whatever you supply.

Riga is a major city, right? It could have its own territory (visible). The game enables a test for haulage revenue from/to a territory, so maybe a goal to generate a certain amount of revenue from/to that territory?

This could be extended into an express (passenger and mail) haulage task (turn off Hotels if you do that). So Riga would be a hub for traffic and the player would have to manage that. Once the player connected to Riga, you could raise the cost of station building there to make a player think more carefully if he should build a second or third station to make managing traffic flow more strategic.

Connecting cities is a good goal to make sure that the player builds a better network than just burn track everywhere. Personally I like this suggestion.

A few more "story" events couldn't go astray. There's no need for a complete history lesson, but more choices for the player are good (the choice of faster engines or bridges is good). If he takes a positive thing he may get a negative. Production rate of cargo is powerful, for both good and bad, especially so if the player owns many industries. Maintenance (train, station, track), station turnaround times and company overhead also have solid effects.

This is just me shooting ideas. Use them if you like. Please don't feel obligated to use any of them.

For some strange reasons I had a setup with only one port in Riga - it was a real horror... Any other ideas how to make a map more complex?

I have started the map in various betas at least 10 times. Only once did I see two ports in Riga. One time there was no port in Riga.

My suggestion for this is to turn off the seeding of the port in the city recipe and then place it manually. Just a note here that there are twelve possible ports identified by a number (#1-12) unless you rename. These are buildable when in Editor mode, just like you would go to place an industry. The first port (#1: you used this for "Riga Port") is located about half-way down the list. All other ports are at the bottom of the list just before the warehouses. They are all named the same "Port" so you need to count manually to chose the correct one.

[Gumboots]

I'd be inclined to tighten up the time limit too. 30 years is a bit much for a small and simple map. I'd knock it back it to 20, so you'd have to have the goals done before WW2.

[juriko]

RulerOfRails, thank you for your reply, some changes:

v0.12
FIX: A no recipe port was placed in Sweden
FIX: Players credit rating was decrised
FIX: A GOLD condition was changed: requred a company book value - 20,000,000, meet and lumber houls - 300 to Riga
ADD: A few warehouses are placed to Poland and Russia
ADD: A few boost and other events are added
FIX: A time limit was changed to 22 years
FIX: An ability to declare bankruptcy is removed

All suggestions are implemented except this one:

My suggestion for this is to turn off the seeding of the port in the city recipe and then place it manually. Just a note here that there are twelve possible ports identified by a number (#1-12) unless you rename. These are buildable when in Editor mode, just like you would go to place an industry. The first port (#1: you used this for "Riga Port") is located about half-way down the list. All other ports are at the bottom of the list just before the warehouses. They are all named the same "Port" so you need to count manually to chose the correct one.

just because when economy is seeding by RNG, the map has something new everytime and it is interesting all the time. Also, after all changes, with my ability to play I couldn't even get a silver.

Juri and Alex.

[RulerofRails]

Gave version 012 a play. Used up all 22 years but got the medal with a month or two to spare. There's a bug with one of the haulage tests for the Gold Medal being YTD when it should be LTD. Obviously with haulage goals now my play style is a bit different. This is partially dictated by my play preference of one station per city and no countryside stations. Basically I forego some revenue when I restrict cargo flow (using custom consists, in the simplest form only express is allowed to travel east, but anything can go west) between certain cities in order to facilitate price gradients that are helpful to pick-up of the goods for haulage, which can be pretty safely automated. Occasional checkups/oversight of course.

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I'm going to mention something else here. When I first started reading the forum years ago, I read somewhere that extra resources can be seeded onto the map if you load it, exit to the menu, then load it again. The author of the comment was trying to get an advantage at the game this way. Therefore, from that point on my practice has always been to exit the game completely between loads of the same map. For example, if I make a mistake on the start or elect not to replay a seed I played last time, instead wanting to try another for a change.

I haven't gone to the effort to test extra resources appearing after a re-load from the Main Menu. This is a question mark in my mind at this point. Anyway, in my recent games I have been paying attention to the seeding patterns. I mentioned recently (South East Australia, Louisiana maps) that there were a couple common seed patterns. I find this to be true on this map as well when I exit the game completely between starts. Easy way to distinguish between the two most common ones. Type #1: One port in Riga, Steel Mill in Daugavpils. Type #2: Two ports in Riga, no Steel Mill in Daugavpils. I haven't seen a third type even though I have started the map in this way at least 10 times.

So, I thought this is a bit odd seeing that I have somewhere around 50% chance of having only one port in Riga and you only saw it once. I tried loading the map on another computer and it behaves the same way. Then when I tried to not exit the game completely but instead do the potential "cheat" load from the main menu I found that the seeding is actually much more random. I haven't analyzed even one entire seed (inventory of all the resources) to get a hard figure on extra resources or not, but certainly there's better replayability this way.

So, this just leaves a big question mark in my mind. I don't want to play easier games if there's extra resources, but it's certainly more enjoyable to start with a more random seed.

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Ok, back to the map. There's a good incentive to build a railway now which is good. Decrease in credit rating is good to slow the start (good call by Cash on Wheels). Connection bonus events are well designed to encourage expansion across the map.

The seed I played had a Meat Packing Plant in "Riga". (It had seeded in the city of Riga, however it was outside the visible border to the west). Therefore I placed Jurmala station so that I could haul Meat from there to Riga. I called this "legitimate" because it was outside the visible border. Later two more Meat Packing Plants seeded in Riga, another outside the visible boundary and the other inside. Obviously some seeds only have a plant inside the boundary.

Basically, having to haul Meat to Riga, but also having a high chance of Meat Packing Plants seeding in Riga is maybe not the best idea. The definition of cheating haulage is basically to pickup the Meat with a station just outside Riga and then haul it back in. The only "legal" way when there's no Meat Packing Plants outside in a particular seed, is to never use them (producing Meat there will drive the price down, we need high price for successful bulk deliveries) try to catch all Livestock arriving to Riga and haul it elsewhere for processing (or build your own/ arrange consist and train routing so that Livestock never arrives in the first place). Not trying to say this to discourage, I think it's ok as is, just has a bit of a trick element which may drive players toward the less legal haulage methods.

For the Lumber haul, the player can create demand with Furniture Factories. I eventually built 3 upgraded in Riga. Majority of Logs->Lumber processing happened at Mills in Kuldiga and Saulkrasti. The two upgraded mills in Saulkrasti were feed by a couple Logging Camps near Livani and then I used the Druja and Ostrov warehouses as collection areas for Logs to then be hauled to my mill. When used as collection points, the 6 demand for Logs probably wasted a few loads, but still managed enough hauls.

300 hauls of Meat and Lumber are doable, but possibly players on the easier levels might enjoy the map more if they get a lower target. (Test for "Game Difficulty = {3 is Expert, 0 is Easy}").

Game really needs a Status report. Triggers: force test against companies, force test against territories (Riga). When writing the text in order to get haulage/ years elapsed etc. press the "[" key to bring up a range of variables that can be displayed in the status. Made a basic one during my play.

PS.
My start was probably not the best but for reference had $120M CBV and $122M PNW (Prosperity) with no company or personal debt. Not suggesting anything except that the CBV target of $20M is low side.

[juriko]

A new (looks like the last) release of Latvia map... changes:

v0.13
FIX: A bug with lumber haulage test is corrected
FIX: Increased company book value to 60,000,000
FIX: Lumber and meet houlage tests provided for gold for expert level only
ADD: Status report is provided for lumber and meet

Type #1: One port in Riga, Steel Mill in Daugavpils. Type #2: Two ports in Riga, no Steel Mill in Daugavpils. I haven't seen a third type even though I have started the map in this way at least 10 times.

- never tried to understand changes between seedning, but sometimes even this small looks interesting... a specialy attached a saved game where no ports were seeded at all at the begging. Of course, after a few years a port in Riga appears.

Therefore I placed Jurmala station so that I could haul Meat from there to Riga

- good idea, I think this is the only way to carry gold expert level requirements.

[RulerofRails]

Interesting, that saved game has no seeded ports anywhere (Sweden one doesn't count).

I must apologize for my comments about the seed types. I had come to wrong assumptions. I did some investigation (Hawk helped). The summary is that you must discard the first map loaded, quitting to the main menu and loading that or another map again before you have a random seeding to work with. I was in the habit of not doing that since there was a comment somewhere that suggested that if you reloaded a map you would get more resource industries on the map thanks to some sort of bug. I can't say conclusively that the statement is not true (not enough data collected), but so far my test data doesn't appear to support the theory.

The first load of map after starting the game is very broken, not "random" at all. It appears to be limited to the two patterns (Type #1, Type #2) I mentioned. These are pretty useless as they can't be standardized, different installs and different exe files seem to give different patterns. So, there's no point to me finding fault with one of them for having only one port in my install. Other players will not necessarily see the same thing (one port in Riga approx. 50% of the time) on their first map load after starting the game. I just didn't realize this before. Apologies.

PS.
In the future I'm going to make use of random patterns by discarding the first load after the game is started.

[juriko]

Also what I don't understand with game random generator, is why I setup for Riga and some other probability of 100% for port and other facilities, but sometime it is seeded, but sometimes not… I thought that 100% probability is a 100% probability .

[RulerofRails]

There are actually 3 density adjustments.

1. There is a map-wide slider on the Building Density page.

2. In the City-Region page there is an overall (size) density slider.

3. Then there are the individual building sliders.

If the math was straight-forward (there's no guarantee with this game, but I must assume until I know reliably otherwise), the game takes the first two adjustments to calculate (with some randomness) how many buildings should be in a particular city. This figure is visible as the "Start" predicted number of buildings on the City.

Once the game knows how many buildings to place it has to work out what type to seed. This is where the individual sliders come in. The sensible thing would be that the game totals all the chances (with a higher slider indicating better representation) and picks one random number at a time from among that range. Through observation alone, it's impossible to be completely sure. Also unclear is what happens if a building fails to be built (too close to other buildings or ground not flat enough), does the process get rerun x amount of times?

Here's an example:
Suppose the game needs to seed 2 buildings, but we have the sliders set to 100% for Lumber Mill, Fertilizer Factory, and Dairy Processor. The game can only build two buildings. It must pick randomly one at a time, so there's no way to predict which two, but one will be missing each time. For example you might get a Fertilizer Factory and Dairy Processor but no Lumber Mill.

The short of this is that if you increase the size of Riga and/or reduce the sliders for buildings other than the port you will effectively give it a higher chance of being built. Hope this makes sense.

[Cash on Wheels]

I'm not sure what Cash on Wheels meant about the resources . IMO, they seem much improved from the earlier betas. But I am not a map maker so don't know the intricacies of their setup myself. I will also say there is no wrong way as long as there is enough demand for whatever ..

What I mean by this is he needs to carefully chose what resources to use. You don't want incomplete supply chains (below) or too many redundant resources thay have no impact during the game. You don't have to have all 41 v1.05 resources to make a great map.

IIRC on the map he had autos on the map, but no way to get rubber to make tires. So that means a player can ship steel to an auto plant that will never make a car.
Or lets say you make a map centric to delivering Milk and then u decide to leave cheese out? What?!

So he could drop cars and tires. There's two resources he does not need.

Or just add rubber to the map now the auto chain is complete.

Or just have tires arrive by a port. No need for rubber then.

For some strange reasons I had a setup with only one port in Riga - it was a real horror...

As RoR suggested and I second, if the port is critical to the game you will need to manually place it. Then remove the port option in the seeding.

Port Recipe #1 is order by the Persian houses, recipes #2-#12 are at the bottom of the list. I know RRT3 logic at its best.

[juriko]

If the math was straight-forward (there's no guarantee with this game, but I must assume until I know reliably otherwise), the game takes the first two adjustments to calculate (with some randomness) how many buildings should be in a particular city.

Thank you, it was a new info for me… Anyway, for me a game random generator looks strange (unpredictable)... for instance, in Riga I have 100% chance to appear for port, but sometimes we don’t have port, but a meat factory – it probability is about 30% or something else.

[juriko]

So he could drop cars and tires. There's two resources he does not need.

Or just add rubber to the map now the auto chain is complete.

Or just have tires arrive by a port. No need for rubber then.

I hope it is not about my map... because, we have a good chance for steel in Liepaja, also a car factory in Jelgava, rubber from Ventspils port on so one… all produced resources could be consumed. Also great thanks to RulerofRails, let say together we improved map dramatically.

[Cash on Wheels]

Also what I don't understand with game random generator, is why I setup for Riga and some other probability of 100% for port and other facilities, but sometime it is seeded, but sometimes not… I thought that 100% probability is a 100% probability .

It seems to act more like "points" not percentage.
If sheep farm is 10% corn farm 10% & fertilizer factory is 10% in an area they should all seed evenly. If you total them over a couple of game starts.

If you do 100% port, 30% distillery 6% bakery = 136

100/136= 73.5% 30/136 = 22.0% 6/136 =4.5%

Now if everything totals to 100 it may work like percentage! Just speculation.

[Cash on Wheels]

So he could drop cars and tires. There's two resources he does not need.

Or just add rubber to the map now the auto chain is complete.

Or just have tires arrive by a port. No need for rubber then.

I hope it is not about my map... because, we have a good chance for steel in Liepaja, also a car factory in Jelgava, rubber from Ventspils port on so one… all produced resources could be consumed. Also great thanks to RulerofRails, let say together we improved map dramatically.

Your older version of the map had those issuesn not thr newer one.

[RulerofRails]

v0.13

...
FIX: Lumber and meet houlage tests provided for gold for expert level only
ADD: Status report is provided for lumber and meet

Sorry to take this long, but I loaded up the latest version. Good changes, however, Expert level is "Difficulty Level = 3" not #4. This is because numbering starts from zero , but that's how Poptop did it: Easy is level #0.

I think it would be nice to keep track of the connections in the status as well. I can easily add them in if you don't have the time.

There are some spelling mistakes, for example "Meet" isn't an allowed spelling for Meat. Just small things. I can document them all or fix them if you like.

I still tend to think that it isn't a great design to have a high chance of Meat Packing Plant in Riga if Meat is a required haul, but expert players can always manage this (let's just hope it doesn't frustrate them into cheating the haul count). I also would still recommend hand placing at least one of the Ports in Riga especially for the sake of the expert player who needs the demand to make the haulage targets honestly. But, these choices are yours. Otherwise, pretty soon this one will be ready for the archives.

[juriko]

I am back… Unfortunately, my son (not Alex, other, but 5 months old) was in hospital for 3 weeks and there was no time for railroads…
Thank you for your reply – list of changes is here:

v0.14
FIX: Riga has no more meat packing plant, but other industries are availbale
FIX: for Expert level "Difficulty Level = 3"
FIX: "Meet" was corrected to "Meat"

I think it would be nice to keep track of the connections in the status as well. I can easily add them in if you don't have the time.

I am not sure that I understand you well, but sounds good… also, please, check spelling of texts - if you could correct those things it would be great, thank you, in advance.

I also would still recommend hand placing at least one of the Ports in Riga especially for the sake of the expert player who needs the demand to make the haulage targets honestly.

No… it is extremely rare chance for Riga to be seeding without port… besides this, meat and lumber hauling is required only for experts.

Otherwise, pretty soon this one will be ready for the archives.

It would be great, because in next year we will celebrate 100 years from Latvian republic foundation. This map could be a nice gift for all Baltic people (and other) who play RRT.

[Gumboots]

I'll check it out.

[Gumboots]

Just took a look at it. The connections are no trouble at all, and the CBV shouldn't be an issue either. So really, the haulage counts are the game. I suspect that simply cheating the haulage count is what's going to happen.

It's good that seeding for lumber mills and meat packing plants is now disabled in Riga and the surrounding towns, except for Adazi which still has lumber mills. It may be worth disabling lumber mills in Adazi too.

The other thing is furniture factories. Having furniture factories enabled in all towns surrounding Riga will make it more difficult to ship lumber to Riga. It may be worth disabling furniture factories in Adazi, Jurmala, Ogre and Salaspils.

Another point is where does the lumber go? The warehouses in Sweden have a huge demand for logs, but no demand for lumber. This is going to conflict with the lumber-to-Riga requirement. It will tend to draw logs off from eastern Latvia ports to Sweden. If you want to ship lumber to Riga, it may make more sense for the warehouses in Sweden to demand lumber. If you want to keep the demand for logs in Sweden, it may be a good idea to increase the seeding rate for logging camps.

Have you actually tested the two haulage goals on Expert level, to make sure they work?

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The huge demand for automobiles in Sweden is interesting. Since you don't get paid for cargo across oceans, there is no money in sending automobiles to Sweden. Any steel mill will have to be placed fairly near to Riga to be workable, but if you make automobiles you will want to keep them away from ports. This is to maximise your return on the auto plant, by shipping automobiles around Latvia instead of wasting them on Sweden.

Add to that the allowed seeding for tool and dies in all towns, and it's clear the best way to run things would be to put your steel mill away from any of the towns, but still fairly close to Riga to allow easy shipping of coal and iron. That way you will be able to control which industries are fed by your steel mill, and can keep automobiles away from Riga. Either that or you just don't bother making automobiles, and stick to making goods.

If Latvia didn't have an automobile industry in that period, you could disable building auto plants and tire factories, get rid of rubber from the cargo list, and use the Swedish warehouses as a source of automobiles for importing.

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I'm not sure that having every European locomotive available really suits the map. Things like the Mallard and the Class 01 don't fit with Latvia in that period. I'd be inclined to set their availability to false.

[RulerofRails]

Gumboots, I completed the expert haulage goals with a rail start strategy (not industry reliant, preferring to buy existing but built some mainly those that were critical for haulage, for example didn't build any new Steel Mills on the map, instead transporting Coal and Iron to the existing ones) without cheating the counts via re-hauling. The Meat haulage will be more seamless in this new version since Meat Packing Plants don't seed in Riga anymore.

I think this Expert goal is aimed at players like us, IIRC juriko stated a few versions back (012) that the gold (on expert) went beyond his abilities. The more expert players that test it out the better. Give it a whirl if you like. Oilcan, Wolvy, low_grade, Cash on Wheels, (insert your name here ) anybody got time/enthusiasm for a test run on the latest version with the more difficult expert goals?

[Gumboots]

Gave this a run through on Expert level. Gold medal connections were done years in advance of the deadline. CBV ended up at 109 without trying very hard, and only a half a dozen or so stock issues. It should be quite simple to bump CBV up over 150 if you really wanted to.

I used P8's and 2-6-4T's throughout the game, because they were the only available locos that felt appropriate for this map. I took the 20% faster trains option at the start, but should probably try it again with the cheaper bridges option. Plus 20% speed for P8's, and even more so for the 2-6-4T, is unrealistically fast for Latvian trains of the period.

*Just had an idea. Instead of giving a +20% speed option, perhaps it would be more suitable to give an increased acceleration option.

I ignored all notifications about connecting optional towns, within a limited timeframe, for optional cash bonuses. The amounts of cash on offer weren't significant enough to bother derailing my expansion strategy. To be honest I felt these options didn't really tie in with how anyone would to play the game, leaving them feeling a bit artificial, but some people may thinks it's fun to chase them.

The meat haulage flows fairly well, as long as you make sure there's plenty of production. The lumber haulage not so much.

The only way of keeping lumber demand up in Riga seem to be to build a stack of upgraded furniture factories there, and make sure you bulldoze any seeded ones in a large radius around Riga. The game's whole focus becomes scrounging lumber for Riga and bulldozing seeded furniture factories. Apart from that you're just stuffing around, but if you like that sort of goal then this would suit you.

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Thee never seemed to be any oil on the map, which in turn meant there was never any way of making diesel. I'm not sure why those cargoes are enabled if you can't actually use them. Maybe this should be looked at. Same goes for a few other cargoes. For example I don't recall seeing any sugar, or any way of generating it.

There are a few spelling mistakes, and a couple of minor glitches in the briefing. You have to connect Daugavpils for Gold, but the only way of knowing this is to shift to editor mode and check the events. It's not shown in the briefing or on the status page.

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Edit: Just having another look at it. Seeding seems to be wildly variable. I'm getting a lot of seedings which would make the game near impossible, due to hardly any logging camps at the start, so therefore no scope for shipping significant amounts of lumber.

Livestock seeding seems to be very variable too.

I think the status page would benefit from being more informative. Giving a list of all required connections, including saying if they are done or not, would be helpful.

[Gumboots]

Ran through it again. Changed the +20% speed option to +1 level acceleration, just to see how it went. Also changed the P8's end date to 1939 (because they were manufactured in Romania until 1939) so ended up using more P8's this time around.

Getting 300 loads of meat and lumber hauled will probably require faster locomotives, unless you want to micromanage everything. I say probably because the seeding was harder this time around. Only one port turned up in Riga, so lumber and meat demand there was lower. It was hard to get good price gradients across the map. It might be fine with the slower locos if there were two ports in Riga.

The other odd thing is that this time hardly any furniture factories seeded in the area around Riga. Last time they were popping up like fleas on a dog.

Quite honestly though, this isn't really my cup of tea. I prefer maps that are more of a rip-roaring party, with plenty to keep me entertained. I'm finding the haulage goals just give the map tunnel vision. meaning on a limited map like this they dominate the entire game, leaving nothing much else.