I have just (barely, by the skin of my teeth) managed to get Expert Gold on this gem after a couple of warm-up exercises. I decided to play this map a couple of days ago after completing Canadian Viking's first map: Building to Buffalo -- also a very challenging and enjoyable map.
So, anyway, the first time I tried this I managed to connect to Iowa City and Council Bluffs in time to get the $500K bonus at each place, but I vastly over-reached myself in the stock market and ended up going completely bust in the panic of 1857. I should have been prepared for this, but I wasn't. I started again and was more conservative with my "investing," but when the war started I saw that I could never connect to Evansville in time to get any of the bonuses by hauling stuff there, so I quit and started yet again.
Expert Gold Winning game: Yeah, knowing in advance what events are going to happen is a little like 20/20 hindsight and is sorta' cheating. Well, anyway, in this game I went for the red-herring of connecting to Evansville just to get the wartime bonuses (hadn't read this thread yet, so hadn't seen Canadian Viking's advice about not going to Evansville). I had already laid rails north all the way to Green Bay, 'cause I remembered from my first game that good money was to be made with these connections. Also, I connected my Chicago Union Station to all the other Chicago stations & doubled up the track there (in my 2nd game the AIs made this connection). Also connected my Milwaukee Lake Shore station to the AI Milwaukee station, and otherwise connected to the AI track wherever I could. Bottom line: Over 50% of my annual profits came from the AIs running trains on my rails.
Since I wasted all my available track connecting to Evansville, way down in the SE corner of the map, I didn't get to connect to Iowa City in time for the $500K bonus, and connecting to Council Bluffs was out of the question. The wartime bonuses were a bust! I managed to haul 10 troops twice, by micro-managing a couple of trains. But, even though I hauled a
lot of ammo, weapons and livestock to Evansville, I guess I never got 3 loads of each delivered in any given year so never got any bonuses at all. At least they didn't take away victory points by not hauling enough war stuff, like on the "Gilded Age" map. But, once connected, Evansville, Vincennes, Danville and others on the route turned out to be money makers. My only industry was an upgraded textile mill in Vincennes which flourished with the 4 per-year cotton supply from the Evansville warehouse.
Once the war was over, even though the economy was in one of it's common recessions, my company was doing OK. I was just 25 track sections short of connecting to Council Bluffs -- the designated UP eastern terminal -- in the summer of 1867, and figured the connection would be made in January. I got an offer in September 1867 to buy another 200 track sections for a million bucks, but I turned it down. Well, when the calendar year changed I was suddenly a hobo walking on the track behind a rapidly retreating caboose -- didn't realize 'til then that you have to connect to the UP eastern terminal
before the end of 1867 or all is lost.
So, anyway, another little white-cheat: I reloaded my last save (July 1867 or so), and when the offer came to buy track for a million bucks I jumped on it. Completed the connection to Council Bluffs ASAP, and then started planning how to deliver all the required stuff. The only thing that was really hard was lumber, but it was available in Green Bay (someting like 2 1/2 years away with my Consolidations carrying 5 dedicated cars of lumber). I hadn't bothered to connect to Rock Island (and a lot of other small towns on the way to Iowa City and Council Bluffs), but I now noticed that Rock Island had an upgraded lumber mill -- so I quickly ran a short line to connect and was able to pull some 20-25 loads of lumber out of there before the time was up (end of 1872).
Once the required goods were all on their way the only remaining problems were to have a PNW of $20 million with $2 million in cash (and having the company be debt free, although that requirement was never mentioned in the briefing). Again, with 20/20 hindsight about the 1857 crash, I didn't buy any stock 'til after the crash, and then I slowly bought into all the profitable companies 'til the depression/recession went away -- got about $3 million on margin. (I
could have sold everybody short just before the crash, but convinced myself that this would be serious cheating). Some of the companies were paying huge dividends, so I had my company pay only a small dividend. I wished for boom times, and boom times eventually started in the spring of 1872. I had to issue stock 3 times in 1871-1872 in order to raise enough money to pay off my $10 million of wonderful 5% debt. My PNW hovered between 20 -22 million, but of course I still had $3 million or so on margin. Then, at the very last minute before the end of December, I sold off my best AI stocks in batches of 5000 shares. Didn't take long and I had over $2 million in cash and PNW still above $20 million.
![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)