Prince of Steel

[Hawk]

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

Prince of Steel
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The Prince of Steel map for RT3 is now available at the H&P Map Archive.
http://www.exdx.net/RT2/MapArchive/
This is the ultimate 19th Century industrial strength map. A remake of the map that won the only Pop Top sponsored RRT2 map contest.
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Look forward to giving it a try.
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Got the map started and started train, Crash?
P4, 512 Meg, 64 meg Video Card
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Awesome, thanks. I know I need that one! But it may have to wait until I've conqured Great Northern. Folks, don't downplay the RT3 game until you've tried one of Mobius' maps.
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I really like the Map! But can't get it to play!
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Removed ' JP Offers Choice ' event and the game did not crash. Event validation says there is an invalid city ID? Don't know why that would make it crash, but with the event gone it runs. Could you take a look at it Mobius? I'd like to try it the way you designed it.
P.S. -- Still trying for Gold on G.N.
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I moved the map to my other machine and it crashed too. I'll see what gives.
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OK, here's the fix.
Go into editor and change the event that says
JP Offers choice.
One of the trigger conditions says that city connects to city (30 to 32).
Change this to (30 to 44).
I moved some cities away from rivers at the last minute to give the AI better starting positions and I moved Pittsburgh and thus renumbered it.
Sorry about that.
It sometimes takes awhile for me to ftp to my site so this will save you time.
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Yeah Baby, Yeah!!! Fixed it right up! Great Job!
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For those of you that are afraid of the editor I have fixed that event and the map is on the archive site.
And there was great rejoicing....
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The people fall to thier knees and sing the praises Mobius.......The steel God.............
Mobius, Mobius...God of Steel Make us a map that's Ideal.
oh, that's good!..........LOL
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What's the story line about? What's it about?
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There is no story line other than the steel industry in late 19th Century US.
We don't have Andrew Carnegie in the game who was the real Prince of Steel.
I don't like forced history story lines. Just situations where you are free to make your own history. But industries match real industries and resources mirror real resources.
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I would add to the praise of this map. It is fun and a challenge. Also shows the changes from RT2, in that delivering coal and iron is much harder to manage.
Thanks for the work put into this map.
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Updated to 1.4
Somebody came across an AI that beat him by getting silver. But the medal trigger went to them both. Fixed this. But watch out for the AI when playin hard in this scenaro.
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I do like this map for building lucrative railroads. I had a PNW of 162MIL last time with no mergers.
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Hi,
I have obviously missed something - do I take it you can use Mobius maps or indeed others with the Demo, I have put the maps for both Great Northern and POS maps in the maps folder but they are not visible when I launch the demo!
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They shouldn't. You can't play third party maps with the official demo.
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I finished playing Mobius' "Prince of Steel" map through to the end for the first time. I very much enjoyed it, and highly recommend it. Like Mobius' other maps, this is the type of scenario that will extend the livespan of RT3. The geography is based on the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S., and the goal is one of Player Net Worth (PNW). Ressources and industries are both realistically distributed, and make for a working game economy. The author has visibly paid attention to nice landscaping and accurate placement of cities and rivers, and has also planted lots of trees, which I always like in a map.
Two thumbs up!
For those interested in strategy advice on this map, which may serve as general advice on how to boost your PNW, I summarize my approach to this map below.
The goal for gold is to have 100,000,000 PNW in 30 years. Early gold is given if the player has a cash balance of 64,000,000, or maintains 100,000,000 PNW three years in a row. I made the early gold in 1907, having had 100M+ PNW at the end of 1904, 1905, and 1906 (started in 1881).
There are two ways to make a personal fortune: Paying dividend to yourself, taking over an AI RR in which you have a high stake, or the Enron way: resign from your own company, start a new company with a majority stake, have it build track or buy industry that will complement your original company's portfolio, take over your original company again, then have it buy up your newly founded company at an inflated price. Repeat.
Either of these strategies depends on having a profitable company, in the first place; and on achieving majority ownership in your own company as soon as possible. Owning 51% of your company has two main benefits: After pulling an Enron, you're guaranteed to be able to resume your chairmanship; and you will always get 51% of the dividend payments, which you can start reinvesting in more stock, towards 100% ownership. Whatever you do, though, do not issue stock! This will decrease your share price, and can cause you to receive a margin call.
During the first five years, I bought all the newly built dairy farms, cattle ranches, and fruit orchards I could afford. I maxed out the dividend at all times, and bought more stock as soon as I could afford it. Every March, I paused the game to find the newly built ressources, bought what I could, with an occasional bond (keeping the [debt]:[CBV]-ratio at 1:1 or below), and used whatever spare cash remained after dividend payments to buy back stock. I refinanced bonds in the first boom cycle (in the fall of 1885).
Of the two AIs, one had built out of Detroit, and was doing well; and one out of Cincinnati, which was loosing money. I short-sold the latter with whatever money I had left after buying my own stock. Short-selling in measure hedges your portfolio: When your own stock goes down as the economy goes downhill, so does the stock you have shorted, leaving you with less debit, and keeping you away from the dreaded margin call.
The combined effect of my own stock purchases, the buying-back of stock by my company, and the high dividend, was that the price of my stock was usually double the book value per share. The investors liked that, and drove my salary up to $70K within a few years - which is a lot of money in the early stages of the game. Added benefits of the inflated stock price were an increased purchasing power for myself, and a deterrence against AI purchases of my stock.
In 1885, the Detroit AI was raking in profits that came dangerously close to my own, and had advanced as far as South Bend. I decided it was time to build track, and maybe place some industries, to keep ahead of him. I built my first station in Chicago, to keep him out of there, and built a textile mill in Cedar Rapids. There were hardly any textile mills on the map, and a half-dozen sheep farms around Cedar Rapid had nowhere to ship their wool. I like the textile mill for an industry to build yourself, because for its modest price of $1,200K, it can produce a nice return of >$300K p.a. within the first few years of being built (though usually losing money its first year). I also bought up the surrounding sheep farms, which were losing money, to keep them from shutting down. I lost money on these for a decade, roughly $50k per year, combined, but considered that a worth while price for guaranteeing continuous supplies of raw material to my textile mill.
Next, I borrowed more money, to build a line from Chicago to Rock Island and Cedar Rapids, to ship out the textiles. By 1889, my line had reached Des Moines.
Around this time, I had a majority stake in my own company.
In 1890-91, I built a separate station in Chicago, and built a north-south line from Milwaukee to South Bend, where I connected with the Detroit AI. Expecting him to do better once connected to my network, I started buying stock in his company from this point on, eventually owning a majority stake (59%) in that one, too. My personal cash flow was not a problem at this point, since I was still paying myself high dividends, which by now reached $1.5-2 Mio per year (of which I would keep half, since I owned 51% of my stock). At this point, I no longer maxed out the dividend, figuring that I'd be better off investing the money, to improve the cash flow of the company.
After buying all available stock in the AI, I waited for my personal cash balance to get out of the red, after which point I invested every spare dollar in purchases of more of my own company's stock. During recessions, I would also go into debt to buy more of my own stock, to take advantage of the lower price, and to keep the stock price up.
Re-investing profits in the company, rather than doling out all available money to investors, will increase the CBV-per-share relative to the share price. I considered this a good thing at this point (between roughly 1889-1902), since I wanted to keep buying more of my own stock, at a less inflated price.
During the 1890s, my company money went mostly into expanding the network into all directions from Chicago. In that decade, I also built some industries to provide goods that weren't already in high supply by automatically built industries. There was a shortage of cheese, lumber, and furniture, which I supplied from my own industries - with the added benedit of adding traffic to my lines.
In 1901, I also started an auto industry around Gary; built another steel mill in Milwaukee, to keep all those tool & die shops I had bought well supplied; and built a refinery in Grand Rapids, all of which made very decent money.
In 1902, a recession finally lowered my share price to the CBV-per-share. Normally, the share price during a recession would dip below the CBV-per-share, but since I was paying high dividends, and kept buying my own stock, this didn't happen in my case. In response to the recession, I increased the dividend from $1.66 to $3.13 per share – to increase share price, and to give me more personal cash to buy my shares with.
From 1902 on, I built or bought no new industries or ressources, and didn't expand my network further, either. The only investment in my capital stock were replacements of crashed trains, and of trains over 15 years old. At that point, my company had profits above $10M per year, of which $6M went into dividends.
With the aid of an economic recovery in 1903, the increased dividend, and my stock purchases made possible by that dividend, my share price again overtook the CBV-per-share (at the end, it was a ratio of 60:50). At the end of 1904, my PNW exceeded 100M for the first time, and went further up from there. I never owned all my stock. The Detroit AI held 9% of my stock, the Cincinnatti AI had a few crumbs, and 12% remained on the market. I only got up to 79%, but that was enough to meet the goals.
For an overview of where my company's money went:
Income
Initial Capital 1,100,000
Revenue *223,329,000
Total cash available 224,429,000
Expenses
Operating Expenses§ 84,214,000
Investments+ 79,337,000
Stock market# 43,332,000
Cash balance in 1907 17,546,000
Total cash spent 224,429,000
* 100,232,000 of that revenue came from industries
§ This includes 1,240,000 in salaries paid to me by the company
+ Industries, track, trains, and stations. 47,430,000 of this amount was invested in industries, 13,200,000 of that alone in one upgraded and very profitable steel mill I bought.
# Money spent buying back stock and, mostly, paying dividends
I calculate that I received about 2/3 of this amount (ca. $29M), personally. The rest of my final total PNW of $120M ($91M in my own stock, $18M in AI stock, and $11M in cash) can be attributed to some dividends paid by the Detroit AI, and mostly to the increase in value of the stock I owned. Salaries, while important early on, are negligible (see §)
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Thanks for the review of the map. Frankly, I'm surprised that you could make the gold by staying to the west of Detroit. I usually head to NYC to unload my goods and clothing at high prices. Plus one can get a view of Niagara Falls on the shore line route.
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Thanks for the review, having finished the formal game now looking for scenarios to play and Prince of Steel I guess will be my first.
Anyone like to recommend others to try?. Its great to have a review first.
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How do you connect to New York in this scenario? It seems impossible to bridge the rivers and get room for a station in the city.
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I go with a few stations around the outskirts. New York is, after all, a big village.
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There is enough space to place a large station almost directly under the 'New York' label and lay a double bridge line due west, between the buildings, across Manhattan to the Jersey side. Then curve north in the foothills and eventually run along the Hudson. Actually, you should lay the track first as there's very little leeway between the buildings.
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I got Gold-Expert in 1906. I started out with a $900k lumber mill in the far north, and a station in Chicago. I did a combination of things with my own company, connecting to ai and connecting them to each other. They started using my track and the money rolled in. I expanded track towards the lumber mill, and to other cities. I kept an eye out for new fruit orchards and dairy farms. I placed secondary industries where resources were abundant and real cheap, then I bought all the resources nearby too.
Rates of return at the end:
Logging 71%, Paper 15%, Lumber 20%, Toys 25%, Furniture 13%
Dairy 25%, Dairy Processor 10-20%
Cotton 40%, Textiles 25%
Fruit Orchard 30%
Steel 18%, T&D 24%
Hotel 22-65%
Restaurant 10-42%
Tavern 12%
Industry was key. My rails, stations and locos barely recovered costs. Industry profit was about equal to net profit. Basically I fostered the ai or left them alone. The motivation was laziness. I did not want to have to manage a lot of trains, so I thought I would let the ai do it. In the end I had about 50 trains and $39M worth of industry.
I never took over nor did I merge with any ai company. I let them be, and bought or sold short according to their outlook. I used my own company to fill in any gaps: place post offices, double track where busy, place industries to meet demand. Ultimately I held at least 75% in every company, except for 60% JP Morgan's.
No tycoon tricks at all.
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There is an overlooked, yet very lucrative area on the Prince of Steel map. Check out the Mesabi Range in the Northwest corner of the map. Build a track from Duluth to St. Paul, then a spur over to the resource area west of Duluth. Drop a Steel Mill in St. Paul and a Tool and Die factory in Duluth. Then drop a Lumber Mill and Paper Mill in the Mesabi Range close to the logging camps. You now have an almost perpetual chain of goods to haul on your rail, plus it's easy to expand from St. Paul south to Mason City, Des Moines & Cedar Rapids. I've made millions exploiting that area of the map.
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POS is an excellent scenario. I used a different strategy to above.
I had little industry just railroads but used the ai to control my trains except when i was building rail and at the beginning when I was taking control my company.
I used Duluth/St Paul as my first track. Followed the scheme to get complete control in about 3-4 years and took most of the successful ai conpany as well. I started no other companies.
I connected to chicago/detroit/pittsburg/cleveland around the top east to New york and down to washington , and spurred to StLois .
The problem with ai control is train snarling or spamming, so I divided my track into about 10 sections with about 6 towns max so the ai added extra trains when in control but it was managable by double tracking and making sure there were no long steep gradient( I redid about 3 of these to stop snarling).
By placing 2 large overlapping but unconnected stations in the junction city of each each small network I still could get most traffic to flow around the whole larger network. For example at Toledo I had a large station on either side of the river there, that was one junction city to break the network.
I only tookover to build track then resigned again from about 1888 to end.
So by about 1901 I had $100m PNW.
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No ones ever sold their operations to J.P.Morgan?
There's an event where he offers to buy your rails in Ohio and eastern Pennsylvania.
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Cool!
I have never seen that event and I've played this scenario a lot...must play more!!!!
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There's an event where he offers to buy your rails in Ohio and eastern Pennsylvania.
Can he still buy if he's broke?
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Made the gold medal in the last year of the game in expert mode without running an inch of track. It was all industry based. Kept my original company as well. No Enron tactics.
When the game starts you can find several dairy farms for $350K. I bought three and at the first opportunity, April, took out a $500K loan and bought up another. Afterwards I stopped the game every couple of months and bought up all the new cattle/dairy farms that appeared. Four seems to be the max. These IPO's can be had for $400K if you catch them before they ship out a load. After they ship that first load the price jumps to $450K and up for every load they ship.
A neat trick for bumping up the revenue of your farms is to drop a fully upgraded dairy processor or meat packer in the middle of a cluster of farms. After a year your farms should be in the "green zone" generated by the demand of the upgraded factory. At that point your farms should be cranking out a better than 50% yield on cost basis if you bought them early enough. The factories will still be generating a respectable profit as well, better than 10% in most cases.
This trick doesn't work as well for other factory/raw material combos. A fully upgraded distillery seems to only have about half the green zone radius of meat packer.
I was able to keep Morgan & Thomas out of my company by ramping up the dividends and buying back stock. Most of the time my stock price was twice the book value of the company. I was also able to buy up 100% of the outstanding shares early though I did teeter on the verge of margin calls.
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Hi all,
It has been a long time, btu I re-installed and patched to C-to-C.
I am having a problem on POS is that in about 1903 (my company is all industry-based) my price-per-share suddenly drops and even though I keep a 300-500K buffer on my purchasing power I end up with negative purchasing power and a margin call.
I can stave off the margin call for a while by having the company buy back the stock, but that is not the real issue.
I can't figure out why the company suddenly tanks. Everything is lloking good. I own about 60% of my own company, all my industries are making money, purchasing power is around 450K, Sotck seems to be doing well and then blamo.
I do have about 2M in bonds and I was saving up money to start paying them off when it all went south.
I think my problem is that I am not correctly calculating and/or understanding the [dedt]:[CBV] ratio. Could some kind soul expond one what components are combined for Debt and CBV?
THanks,
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After a certain length of time industries may become flooded with products or new industries may pop up and change the flow of cargo.
That may be what is happening.
Also, I think in 1900 the cars get heavier and maybe your engines are struggling with their loads.
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Thanks Mobius.
It must be the first thing you mention.
I forgot to add that I haven't yet started a single train.
I will examine my industries and see if I have a revenue fall off.
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That may be it, but I find stock value always tanks for a bit as you run up to the finish. If you weather it (or even flourish) you should sail into an upswing.
I don't think I have ever got gold on this in "expert" w/o starting a second company. A second company, started with oil wells and a refinery just seems to rocket in value, far faster than I could bump up the price of stock in the first company.
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I sold to J.P. Morgan on Hard one time. I had a majority share in his company so there was a lot of opportunity to manipulate both companies to advantage. I told him to put on his parka and move along
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I'm intrigued by all this in that most replies say how to build up Company value (which is pretty easy by the industry route - using RobberB's method or many similiar) but this scarcely increases P N W. I've never understood the Enron method so haven't used this and (being forgetful) I rarely sell short (stupid of me) so several times I've finished with a huge Company profit - and I own most of it - but my PNW is only just above Bronze. Whilst it would be nice to have no track the only real way I can increase P N W is by taking over other Companies at inflated prices and making them profitable so I get it anyway (and very profitable it is too) but still my P N W hardly increases.
So what am I doing wrong and can someone explain the Enron method in words of one syllable so that an idiot like me can understand it?!? One problem with it (as I see it) is that you rarely have any personal cash to be able to buy 100% of a new company because (in the early years) you can only buy shares by borrowing so your cash is minus and - if you sell the shares you do own to get cash the bottom drops out of the market (just like real life in fact).
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The Enron method is pretty simple, but I didn't bother to use it in my gold game.
> Take the company that you start with first and buy up as many shares as you can over 3-5 year period. Keep dividends HIGH in order to boost your income.
> In year 4 or 5 stop the game in December and issue all the bonds you can. Sell off all income producing assets. Remove any track, trains and stations.
> Use the cash raised for stock buybacks. (Buy back all stock not in your hands.) Run the price of your company's stock up as high as possible and start selling only when you're company's run out of cash or outstanding shares. If you run out of shares to buy sell off 1000 shares at a time and have your company buy them back.
> After you've sold all of your stock back to your company get rid of as much of your company's cash as possible. One thing I do is buy and sell the same asset over and over until I've drained the company's treasury.
> Now your original company should be left with a high stock price, no income producing assets, very little cash and a pile of high interest debt. You should have a few millions in cash in your pocket.
> Before you start the clock, resign as chairman and sell short as much of your company's stock as possible. Once the clock starts your company's stock should quickly sink to $1 or $2 per share adding tens of thousands to your personal cash.
If you've done all this properly you should have between four and six million cash in your pocket. Now you can start your own company with no outside investors if you wish.
Another twist to this is that it gives you the ability to take over one of your competitors RR's. Buy up 51% of your competitor's RR and repeat the above steps. If I find that I have a lot of outstanding cash available after ruining my competitor, I'll use it to buy something like an ammo factory that's loosing $75K a year.
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Thanks RB - I can see how it will work with an industry based company but how (without using Editor) do you get rid of lines/stations etc - cost of demolition is enormous. Trains (I suppose) will vanish once there's no lines.
Another snag is that if you borrow lots to buy shares paying high dividends doesn't increase your cash (see my numerous other posts on this - no-one has been able to explain why not) and in the early stages most of this goes elsewhere anyway.
Anyway I'll replay as it's a nice scenario and will (try to) remember to sell the AI's short - that should certainly give me a cash boost.
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"I can see how it will work with an industry based company but how (without using Editor) do you get rid of lines/stations etc - cost of demolition is enormous. Trains (I suppose) will vanish once there's no lines."
Plow up track and stations only if you build them with your first company. Remember, the idea is to ruin your first company. So if you happen to build a RR and link a couple of towns you really don't care how much it costs to tear down the line. Then again, from what I've done and have seen posted, all you really need to do is delete one section of track between each town. The AI isn't smart enough to complete line, therefore the trains will never again run on that line.
"Another snag is that if you borrow lots to buy shares paying high dividends doesn't increase your cash (see my numerous other posts on this - no-one has been able to explain why not) and in the early stages most of this goes elsewhere anyway."
When I say borrow to buy back shares, I'm talking about your company issueing bonds and doing a stock buyback. Yes, you'll have to buy your own stock on margin, but after running the stock up through the roof you'll wind up selling your shares for more than enough to pay off the margin.
I wouldn't concentrate too much on the Enron Gambit anyway. There aren't many scenarios that are designed to take advantage of it. Prince of Steel is probably the best example of an Enron type scenario.
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Pardon my silly question, but where are the downloadable user made maps?
I'd love to try this one out, but have absolutely no idea where to begin looking for maps.
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http://www.railroadtycoon.info/
http://www.express-world.co.uk/rt3/
http://theterminal.dune2k.com/?p=rrt3-files-maps
http://www.exdx.net/RT2/MapArchive/ (home of the Prince)
http://www.mizus.com/kraellin/RT3/
http://www3.telus.net/public/a6a17593/ (my huge 10 MB site)
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Look out for a small bug in POS 1.5.
One of the managers you can hire (forget name atm) causes the game to announce his hiring, and then announce it again almost evertime you switch screens or click on something.
Still one of the best scenario's out there
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Yeah, got rid of that pretty quick. The manager event should have been an annual event instead of a monthly. If that happens just shift-e it to annual. But we are at 1.6 now and I added back in sugar and rice and cotton as there is no longer the two input industry bug.
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Hey Mobius this maybe why I cannot win - I downloaded in Jan 2004- is this v1.6? One very noticeable thing is how very different the luck of the start up position makes the early play using the industry method.
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No, I updated to 1.6 yesterday. After I tested 1.05 to see if the two input industry bug was fixed. I added back in some of the cargo types that I had previously removed.
If using an industry start the name should give you a clue on which industries may be best.
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Thanks Mobius - downloading write now as I right - well somthing like that
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I've just been playing this scenario and I found something that might be interesting. I started off with dairy farms around Chicago and after a few years started a Chicago Milwaukee line. There was quite alot of iron and coal in Chicago but for some reason the iron would go straight to the steel mill, but the coal would travel down the water side past Milwaukee (??). This meant that the steel mill wasn't producing any steel, but I figured that if I placed a large station in Chicago the coal would go to the steel mill. I bought the steel mill for $1.7 mil, but the large station in Chicago didn't have the desired effect of moving the coal to the mill. However, a new steel mill appeared soon after on the South side of Chicago, but that was making money, since coal was coming from the east as well as the ports. So in January one year, I just decided to sell my steel mill and buy the new one before it's profits got too high. I sold my steel mill for 850k and bought the other one for $1.7 mil, but then I noticed my profit had already gone to -850k in January. My stock price nosedived to about half the CBV! Also, JP Morgan had about 6K shares to my 4K in my own company, but after this happened he sold all his shares! It's possible he got a margin call. So while on pause I bought up as many shares as I could, and within 2 years I owned all my own stock, great!
Just thought that would be interesting to some of you. Also, I saved after this point, but five years later when it was autosaving the game crashed. Now I have to do the next five years again, because the autosave was corrupted (grr!).

[low_grade]

Am I the only one playing these old scenarios for the first time?

Still in the middle of this one, just wanted to let folks know about a bug to fix with the Editor if they're going to play. The 4th manager choice gives you the option of a guy who'll increase engine speeds by 15%, but unfortunately he reduces speeds by 15% instead. Easy to fix.

So far, as above, this is a pretty engaging scenario. I appreciate all the prebuilt cities, with carefully placed commercial buildings, big houses, industries, etc. NYC is a monster, as it should be!

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

I think I played this many, many, years ago. As I recall it was fun but pretty easy and when its easy for me that means its REALLY easy as I'm not any kind of a RRT3 shark.

I suspect that you'll find most of the people posting here have played pretty much every scenario that is done in a style that appeals to them unless the scenario is quite new and they have yet to get to it.

[low_grade]

Yes, I got the Gold on Hard with a few years to spare via the PNW>$100M route. Morgan was an aggressive competitor for highest PNW in class in the beginning, but I pulled away from him and never looked back by around year 10. Both interesting and annoying that I relied on the Consolidation for most of the game, until electrifying and going with the 2-D-2. Can't remember any other scenario where I used them so extensively. Swapped many out for Dukes when they arrived, which was late for some reason...

[BikerTim]

I have tried this scenario several times and have not achieved gold yet. Thought I was going to make it last time. I got my PNW up to $90 million. Then the economy cratered. I finished with PNW of $55 million and another bronze. As always, I played with the maximum number of AI competitors. I bought out the AI that occupied Detroit, but let the one that occupied Chicago live. Big mistake! When I tried to make mega-bucks hauling iron from Duluth to Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh, none of my trains could get past Chicago!