Arizona Railroads (AZRR)

[RayofSunshine]

Hello Members,

And it has been a time since I last played RRT3, but believed that both of the AZRR scenarios had been discussed in Stratagy. Maybe it was in a different catagory. Any way, although I could not get an adequate supply of track laid to save the Capital seat at Tuscon in May of 1877, I did manage to connect it with Yuma prior to 1880.

Then the problem started for the Crystal Bonuses. Connect present line to PHX to help with the trolley line. A player has to get thru Chandler, at a price of $10M, and then the PHX area for another $10M. I ran double and triple trains to try and complete this project prior to 1886, but to generate $20M in that time span?????

Anyone been able to accomplish the "feat"? And I know that this scenario has been around for some time, but I am trying to relive some of the older player created scenarios, on the way to the newer ones.


Ray of Sunshine

[AZ Rail Rat]

Thanks for the interest Sunny. Have not ran it in YEARS, but I seem to recall the $10M will go away at a certain time, the time when the Trolley really started, 1892 I think.

You don't have to buy access, but you do have to answer YES that you want to participate and start a new company. If you answer NO, price stays at $10M for your Southern Pacific to go up there.

Give me a chance to look at it this week and I'll get back to you.

[Pat in the desert]

I downloaded this scenario. Wow, what a map! Very big and very detailed! This must have taken some time to set up. Then it has the most detailed set of conditions as well.
The first time I tried, the company ran out of money before it could get to Tucson. Spent all the original money, could only borrow one bond and then the credit rating went to CC and stayed there. Also the initial good money for hauling cargo from Yuma did not last long. The prices between Yuma and Gila Bend, Maricopa or Casa Grande Grande equalized and could only get like 40K per train, which the maintenance ate up. I was to Red Rock before the deadline to get to Tucson, but could not get there in time. And was having trouble getting there at all.
Went back to an early save of this game and went into the editor. The description had said that lots of goods from California were waiting to go East. I add 2 more warehouses to Yuma, similar to the one that was there supplying Coffee and Coal. Ran from there and it got MUCH easier. Maybe too easy. Got to Tuscon about 6 months early. Spent some time building up the assets for the SP railroad. Bought a brewery and was supplying it with grain. Got the call in 1886 to start the PST. Did that and got the award. Then got the territory access to join the SP and the PST together. (By this point had switched back to SP). Made sure to have 51% of the stock before I switched.
Built up the routes to Phoenix and Tucson. Waited for the next challenge which is the Prescott & Phoenix. That route, you're kidding about the route! From Skull Valley to something to Hillside to Date. Had to accept 6 and 8 % grades as I did not see any choice. Took over a lumber mill in Wickenburg and ran trains from the logging camps to the mill. Good thing this made some money as it was running out before connecting to the PST. After getting the little award, the next challenge was to build East from the PST to the mines of Hayden and Winkelman. After getting them connected - up and over the hill. <EDIT> That's up and over the hill from Florence - not sure if that's the correct way but it worked.</EDIT> Waiting for the next challenge - not sure what it's supposed to be.
Went back to the original map. Edited the start to add just one extra warehouse at Yuma (total of 2). Also said no to the first question and got the extra 1 Million. Have played this scenario to the Hayden & Winkelman mines too. Have to see what comes next. The road up to Jerome?
Seems like the object of this scenario is to build most of the rail network of Southern Arizona.

[Hawk]

Pat - I moved your post into the already started topic on this scenario.

It might have thrown you off because the title of this thread is AZRR final scenario, but it's the same scenario as the one you posted about.

[RayofSunshine]

Well Fellas,

And it has been some time since I tried to play the sceanario. Played it several times and each time was able to get tracks laid to PHX, but unable to connect with the Trolley company. But it has been too long since I played, so can't really say I discontinued trying, but put it into my inventory for future attempts.

Glad to see that someone is making the attempt to play it, as it is a very good scenario, with its terrain creation of the map especially. With the explanation of Pat-in-the-Desert I might take it back out of inventory and give it another attempt.

Good luck Pat.

[Pat in the desert]

Hawk,
That's fine. I was not sure if it was the same scenario.

Ray,
It tells what to do in the dialogs and newspapers. Mostly at least. You have to start a new company for PST. Before you resign from the SP make sure you own 50+ percent of the stock. So you can take it over again. That's not too hard with all the money the chairman starts with. I just did some mild tycooning by timing the stock buys. One item is to wait until just before the first train reached Gila Bend and bought quite a bit of stock then. The company was losing money up till then and the stock price was dropping until the profits start.
After the PST is going it's time to jump back to the Southern Pacific. Once again you need 50+ in the company stock if you need to switch back. Then the offer will come for the next company. Make money for the SP until then. If the locos are getting old, it is time to buy replacements. Either more Dukes or else the Moguls, which come at a good price.
Then the offer comes to start the Prescott & Phoenix. You have to start a new company and resign again. Have fun building this one. Go to the cities listed in the dialog. The route after Kirkland is ridiculous. You have to build to Congress before it makes any sense to start a train. Because of the grades, only the Mogul or the Shay will work. You may need to make money any way you can to finish the track from Wickenburg to Glendale.

Pat

[RayofSunshine]

As AZ Rail Rat,

It has been a time since I played the scenario, and don't completely recall the problem. It is just that for some reason, I was not able to take over the operation of the PHX Trolley system. Will have to pull it out of inventory and try it again, as it was/is a very interesting imaginative scenario, both in terrain and the goals.

But thanks for the info Pat, as I will use your suggestions.

[AZ Rail Rat]

You think you had fun with AZRR, wait until you try Northern AZRR!

It's MUCH prettier because I painted it starting with a satellite picture. Never did set up any medal winning conditions. It's just for fun . . . and MORE frustration!!!

On another note, just noticed this week my website got wiped out by those devils at Qwest. Called support and they gave me some crap about my account and an MSN server and said I had to call another number tomorrow. May take a bit to get it back up. Good thing I keep backups of all my files ready to FTP them back if needed.

[Gandar]

Now this an impressive map I dread to think of how long it would take to make such an interesting map and I loved all the survey details, a great job, I think I tried to play this a long time ago and the machine I had could not handle the detail I wouldn't mind but I'm getting ready to buy a new machine now because this one struggles when it goes over 130 trains. I played it through to 1953 at which point instead of giving me gold it suddenly decided that I had no electrified track and I had 6400 miles of it, I had electrified whilst waiting for some of the events to transpire. The only real trick to this, is to get a good start, and then every company you start afterward has a load of cash so its not too demanding but I did like all of the historical info. Of course not knowing where all of the AZ cities and towns are didn't help. I was searching all over for those towns .
Putting you under no pressure, but how long before Northern AZRR ?

[TheBonobo4]

I've got a potential big with this scenario. I reloaded my saved game and since then the bottom third of the map is just black apart from trees buildings track and trains. Makes seeing things really hard and looks really bad. The top two thirds of the map are fine it's just the area south of about Gila Bend.

[RulerofRails]

Sounds like it may be a bug where the game itself corrupted your saved game instead of something specific to this map. Do you have an earlier saved game where you can test if this bug is repeatable when you do the same thing again?

PS.
Post a screenshot if you want.

[TheBonobo4]

I don't no, I'd have to restart the entire scenario which I'd rather not do. This scenario is certainly interesting and unusual, and difficult but in an unusual way (I'm on Medium). I'll get a screenshot later if I can.

[TheBonobo4]

Okay here are two screenshots, showing both the Graphical bug and a bug where I'm now wondering how I haven't yet got Gold.








I'm wondering if it's because I missed the Silver requirements (Troops, Ammo, and Weapons seemed nigh on impossible to be honest, there were no Munitions or Weapons Factories built by the game, and there weren't enough Troops). Also I missed the Coal goal by a few hundred loads (I think I had about 1500/2000). Alternatively, it could be because I haven't merged with all other companies (though I did electrify the AI's track), but merging is impossible because a) they are the most laughably bankrupt company I've ever seen and b) despite this, they require $85M to merge with at $1 a share .


Also, another bug, and this has been reported before, is that reloading the game from a save resets the count on Electric track to 0, forcing me to have to build up 2,000 more miles of Electric Track. I'm wondering if this could be why I haven't yet get Gold, does the game not think I've built the Electric track despite the ledger saying so? Although it does seem to count the mileage from the AI's electric tracks. And I wasn't given access to the Arizona or Arizona Land Grant Territories for free, though I'm not sure if I was meant to. There was also no prompt or goal to build the SP Yuma Phoenix and the other SP line, though I'm guessing this is more optional and for historicity than anything.


Long story short, it seems like a really good map, but there are bugs. I *think* if you did it in one run, all bugs could be avoided (since track count would not reset and I think the graphics bug on my part is to do with loading saves messing up conditions), but I'm unsure regarding no Gold or Medal yet.

[RulerofRails]

I haven't played this map for ages. I just loaded it up into the editor. First thing here is that a real medal will never appear. Instead each "medal" has a different time period in which it is the "goal". So essentially this is three games in one. The number of Clusters indicates how well you did in a particular stage.

However, even with this unique game setup there is a bug with the 3rd stage: "Gold". The event to record completion of the electric track build is missing. There may be other reasons (didn't go through with a comb) too, but this is a definite. What should happen is that you get a new message in the ledger saying "You have GOLD with # of clusters". There appears to be no time limit for "Gold".

The electric track count (Game-wide) is the only type that works by default in 1.05. What you reported is strange. The event (STATUS 1953 ON) that is counting has a "forced test" against the territory named Phoenix Street Trolley. There is no reason for that. In theory it shouldn't cause a problem, but you might try deleting the condition "Force test against territories is TRUE".

[TheBonobo4]

If it helps, I'm playing in 1.05. Interesting regarding Medals though, so my game is essentially finished?

[RulerofRails]

As I said I didn't read all the text, if there's a condition somewhere for only company, then do that. Otherwise your finished.

[TheBonobo4]

Yeah I can't take over the second company, their number of shares is ludicrously high. I might just consider it game over to be honest.

[low_grade]

FINALLY played this. I think I did it wrong, though, as every time I took the chance to start a new railroad, I immediately went back to the Southern Pacific and merged with the new one, rather than "abandoning" my old one. If you're going to play this, I'd probably not recommend trying to get majority ownership in any of the companies, just keep moving on, and see what happens. What started as a map scarce in resources develops to be fairly rich over time, watching for dairies and cattle ranches and produce as they spawn can be significant in the early years. Of course PAX is king early, too, place stations anywhere that has a couple houses, and add a hotel. Was interesting without being part of the challenge to develop the map eventually, and had a bit of worry to make the Weapons and Ammo haul goals by the end of 1952, but it was coal that I missed by a year maybe, 1500 is probably more reasonable than 2000. Overall a unique map, worth playing for the guided experience, gave me a real feel for the development of rail in AZ, up to the 1920s or so. Kudos to AZ Rail Rat! Dukes, then P8, then P2, then E18. A few Mallards just to set speed records to get named locos that were then replaced... Yeah, there was silly money as you would expect after 75 year... But played quickly with most years on max speed just waiting for the next "history lesson."

[Gumboots]

Those sound like real Arizona locomotives.