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
Heartland Demo
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I just started building a line between the two cities we are supposed to connect. It seems it would be tedious to click through each of the commodities to find which to transport. What would be the quick way to
evaluate the best strategy for a particular map?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been playing the Demo for several weeks, and up until yesterday found the following strategy to get Gold in about 10-12 years:
Start your company wit the maximum from investors, take out a bond and issue two rounds of stock. Then connect Cleveland to Akron, Detroit to Toledo and Chicago to Milwaukee with single track. Place large stations in Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago and medium stations in Akron, Toledo and Milwaukee. You should have just enough cash left over to place short pieces of track in Lansing and Saginaw (to prevent AI from building there). After the first year or two, you should be able to take out bonds to connect Lansing to your Detroit-Toledo line, and after the third year or so, connect Cleveland to Toledo. In another year or so, connect Memphis to Little Rock (this is a real money making line and the AIs rarely build there.) Also try to connect Indianapolis to Cincinnati ASAP. If you have some money left, buy some industries, or better yet, build your own. As the money rolls in, keep adding trains, especially on the Detroit-Toledo line, where an "Express only" train can make lots of money. Don't forget to buy up stock in your company and sell short on the AI companies; most of them will be losing value hand-over-fist. If you can, when the economy goes bad, buy up a competing company's stock and merge with it to give new lines to populate with trains. You may need to upgrade some of the AI stations to cover an entire city. When you have a couple of million in cash, connect St. Louis to Indianapolis, and Indy to Toledo. Keep the trains running, and when passenger traffic picks up, put Restaurants and Hotels in the major cities. I usually start with a Restaurant in the big cities, and when the incomes goes to around 10k per year, I put in a Hotel. This strategy should easily get you Gold by the end of the scenario.
HOWEVER, after reading what others have said about the quick returns from industry, I tried another approach last night:
Again, starting up a company with the maximum investment, issue a bond and one round of stock. That should give you just enough to build a Lumber Mill and a Paper Mill. Go to the Cargo overlay and click on "Logs" to show you Logging Camps. Find a spot where there are two or three camps real close to each other, where the product hasn't moved yet (traincars just circling the camps with no apparant flow) and plop down a lumber mill right next to one of them. Then click on "Pulpwood" and find another group (or the same group) of Logging Camps that aren't in the flow and plop down a Paper Mill. Let the game roll and watch the money start pouring in. If your purchasing power goes up high enough, buy up some of your stock, otherwise when December of the first year rolls around, stop the game, look at the AI companies and see who is losing money; sell their stock short, let the game continue and in January of the following year, buy back the stock (it should have dropped by $10-$15 dollars if you picked the right one.)
In January of the second year, buy up some of your stock also, but not too much at one time. Issue as many bonds as you can and build another industry. There may be other Logging Camps that can be exploited, but also look at Iron to build a Tool and Die, or Wool to build a Textile plant. I like the Lumber Mills, because they seem to give a fast return when built right next to a Logging Camp. Continue this process for a few years, buy up your company stock a little at a time, take out bonds every year and build profitable industries. Forget about building a railroad for now. You can also look for already formed cargo streams that may be going to a particular industry, and build just upstram of the current industry, esentially robbing it of raw materials.
By about the fourth year, you should be able to refinance your bonds from the 11-13% range down into the 6-8% range, and by the fifth year you should have reached the Lifetime Industry Revenues goal, and if you've bought up enough of your company's stock, you should be over the PNW goal. Then, when you can muster about 4 million in cash (through cash on hand or by issuing bonds, build a large station on the northeast side of the river across from St. Louis (make sure it says "Connected") and stretch a straight line rail all the way to Cleveland. With a little adjustment, you should be able to get a single rail to just south of Cleveland and put a large station there to connect (again, make suer it says "Connected". Build this train in November or December, and by the end of the year you should be taking home the Gold.
By using this strategy, I got the Gold by December of 1856.
Unfortunately, this just goes to show what others have been saying about how the game should be named "Industry Tycoon" instead of "Railroad Tycoon". Another hint is don't buy in-place industries if you can build your own; they generally don't give as much return as the ones you build.
Hope this helps.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I forgot to add that in the "Industry Only" strategy, I chose the "$170k Return on Investment" otion at startup and used the mony to buy as much of my stock as I could at the outset.
In the "Build Railroads" strategy I chose 15% reduction in station costs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As far as the idea, of building upstream from a current industry, how would that location be determined. Is stuff going along those roads? The demo really needs a manual as connecting to commodities and coordinating to some industry is unknown. All I've got is a railroad connecting some cities. How do we note commodity flow not on rail?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go to the Cargo Overlay (click on the globe in the lower right of the box with nine buttons to get to "Overview Mode".) Then click on a cargo, "Iron" for instance, and look at the map. Upward pointing pink triangles show sources (Iron Mines in this case) and downward pointing light blue triangles show sinks (Tool and Die in early times or Steel Mills later on). You will also see streams of RR cars connecting the sources and sinks (sometimes a sink is just a city or warehouse). If there is a Tool and Die Shop, there will usually be a large stack of cars at the factory, signifying a large number of loads of the commodity amassed there, with a stream of cars leading back to the source. If you place another Tool and Die just "upstream" of the flow into the Tool and Die, that is, between the source and sink, the new Tool and Die will grab the iron before it gets to the original Tool and Die, and you'll start making profit from the new Tool and Die.
If you want to see the cargo actually flowing, keep the game running and watch as the little RR cars seem to move from sources to sinks. Newly placed industries (either by you or by the game) act like a magnet, attracting the commodity that's needed there, and it can sometimes take several years for distant sources to hook up with the new sinks. In the Demo, placing an industry just upstream from an existing one robs the old one almost entirely of raw materials, but one of the patches for the retail version of the game addresses this, and lets more of the raw material flow to the "downstream" sink.
To see how this works, as soon as you start the Heartland demo, pause the game and go to the Cargo Overlay and look at "Logs". Somewhere on the map, either up in Minnesota or down in the southwest by Little Rock, you should find a group of Logging Camps with the little RR cars around each one, showing logs that are there but haven't moved. Plop down a Lumber Mill in the middle of the group, unpause the game and watch as the little cars start to march toward the Mill. It can take a while for them to finally get to the mill, so in the meantime, click on the Mill to see it's profits, which will be negative at first (if the camps are not real close), but as the logs begin to arrive and are turned into lumber, you'll see your profits begin to rise too.
By using an "Industry only" approach, I've gotten the gold in as little as 5 years on Expert level, connecting St. Louis to Cleveland in December of 1855.
Hope this wasn't too basic, but you're right about poor documentation for the Demo.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote: poor documentation for the Demo
like Elvis said, don't be cruel, we at least got tutorials! most demos come with a readme with suggestions for possible graphics/sound problems, maybe a few hot key descriptions and maybe a brief "How to Get Started" intro, but rarely (if ever) do you get documentation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Using the "Industry first" method, I got the Gold by Dec. 1854 the other day. Started with a strategically placed lumber mill and paper mill, built a couple more lumber mills the next year, then a few breweries. In the meantime, bought as much of my company's stock as possible (got it all but 2,000 shares in a couple of years). Ended up with ~$9M in PNW and ~$16M in Industry Profits. Had the PNW and IP to make the gold much earlier in the year, but game only checks for winning conditions at the end of the year. My next goal is to try and make it by 1853!
Have you tried the "Italy" scenario yet?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't try Italy since it appeared to have no AI players. I wonder if the AI does things much different each time or if it even matters if they are there? This should involve getting in the competitors way such as blocking access to cities.
Suppose in Heartland you do it like the game was thought of, not just building industries, but build rail and didn't build industries any sooner than the AI. Then what would be done?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You're right, there are no AI players in Italy. You're on your own to connect the required cities and have $30M in CBV. It can be a challenge, especially on expert, but I've done it both ways; "railroads only" with a few industries, and "Industry only" with railroads built at the end to connect cities. It takes about $6M in cash to connect cities, but you can't buy stock or issue bonds, so it can take a while to get enough cash to build the RR. I'd be glad to share my experiences if you're interested.
As for Heartland Demo done the "traditional" way, see my post above in answer to your original question.