South Africa

Discussion about reviews and strategies for user created scenarios made for RT3 version 1.05 and earlier.
Jeremy Mac Donald
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South Africa Unread post

So I just finished playing this scenario by Steve (Mobius) Lorenz. There is no link in the scenario section so I decided to create a topic on it.

I found it quite difficult as it seems to nearly require a favorable seed. I probably restarted due to bad seeds at least a dozen times. Essentially I'm looking for a seed that is going to provide a steel mill with lots of iron and coal, will do so shortly after start but has not already done so. I need a short breather before the steel production starts up because there is not quite enough starting capital to buy even an unprofitable steel mill so I've got to issue some stocks and won't manage to put together the extra $100,000 until early in the second year of the scenario.

After that one finds oneself on a pretty brutal clock. I was surprised at how often I'd get into the home stretch only to realize that there simply was no longer enough time to finish setting up the auto making chain, connect to Cape Town and haul 25 loads of autos there. Still despite the frustrations I found the scenario compelling and I ended up trying it over and over until I finally won.
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OilCan
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Re: South Africa Unread post

This is a game which will keep you on your toes and keep you guessing. I got the gold with only 2 years to spare! And yes, I too found it compelling.

It took me three starts before I realized the mistakes I was making. In short, the first industry has to start making money immediately, instantly & stay out of the mountains with rail, all unlevel areas, at the start.

Resources are scarce at the start so rail profits are low for many, many years until the map is able to seed in sufficient resources. I selected 2 AI to play against and neither company could turn a profit by rail. Only 1 was able to expand to a third city much later in the game.

I enjoyed the challenge of this game very much, but here is the info which this game does not tell you at the start:
(1) All track must be connected, so choose your starting spot with that in mind
(2) The terrain is rough and bumpy and much, much more so in the mountains. Track will be costly because much of it is graded due to the bumps.
(3) Some ports demand the same thing they supply - check the ports carefully.
(4) The port at Warvis Bay does not demand aluminum despite a game requirement to haul 5 loads there. The player has to build a T&D to create the demand (if played in 1.05V as it was crafted).
(5) Electric track and trains are probably the better choice. For a long span of the game the player has only one choice for a steam engine, yet always multiple choices for electric.

Here are my hints for this game:
(A) Rail profits are important, but not enough to keep the company afloat for the first several years. Focus mainly on building the industry base in the early years – again, the early industries must start making an instant profit.
  • (i) Depots between cities which gather countryside cargo work very well in this game & help boost rail profits.
    (ii) Look for warehouses in cities which serve to attract scattered resources to the town. I was able to build instantly thriving lumber & paper mills in 2 of these towns because of the warehouses.
(B) Once your company is ready to safely expand, get into the steel industry – it will make your profits jump upward. T&Ds will pump in profit too.
(C) The automobile goal is not difficult but requires track to the two opposite corners of the map: Cape Town and Mozambique. I started my auto industry with 8 years left on the clock by first starting a tire factory in Beira and reaching it with rail. I set up an auto plant in the countryside, away from any city station’s cache and down the route towards Cape Town. I fed it steel and tires (I soon had a second auto plant going). Cape Town was reached by rail about the time the first factory began making cars. It was then just a matter of keep a train waiting to haul 4 carloads of automobiles at a time to Cape Town.
  • (i) Using the game's Camera View (Shift Number) helps tremendously to keep track of trains waiting for tires & waiting for cars.
(D) The aluminum goal requires track across an empty desert wasteland. It is not a hard goal to reach once your upgraded T&D at Warvis Bay becomes hungry.

Overall, an enjoyable game that, at times, requires patience to just sit and wait for profits to mount.
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Gumboots
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Re: South Africa Unread post

Sounds like it might be interesting. Haven't played for a while and was thinking about it. Will give this one a go. !*th_up*!
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Gumboots
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Re: South Africa Unread post

Just took a quick look at this.
(5) Electric track and trains are probably the better choice. For a long span of the game the player has only one choice for a steam engine, yet always multiple choices for electric.
Doesn't seem to be the case, at least if you're starting in the default year of 1910.
Loco_selection.jpg
Now admittedly some of those aren't default 1.05 locomotives. However you still have the choice of the P8 and Class 500 for the entire scenario, bearing in mind that you can buy P8's until 5 years before game end and they will easily last 5 years. Plus a lot of people have a range of custom locos installed anyway. The scenario allows you anything that is classified as European (E).

Anyway, this reminded me of something: the default loco classifications don't make any sense. Mikados, Pacifics and Atlantics were used all over the world. They were some of the most common types, just about anywhere. Not that the default RT3 Pacifics and Atlantics are much use in practice, but the H10 Mikado is a very good all rounder and is representative of a lot of South African classes. They only had a few Mikados over the years, but used a lot of Mountains in various classes. They also had a range of Pacifics and Mastodons, among other things.

So if anyone wants to play this with steam, and with a better loco selection, while still keeping a South African spirit, I'd say enabling the H10 would be fair enough. It really should have NA, E and W classifications anyway.
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Gumboots
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Re: South Africa Unread post

Hmm. About halfway through and will probably make it, but it's not that exciting. As OilCan says, lots of time spent just sitting around and waiting for cash to roll in.

Had a few thoughts while I was sitting around. A lot of the warehouses seem pretty pointless. The demand-only ones may have been intended to concentrate widely dispersed resources, but I'm not finding they're adding much to the game. Some of them are a slight nuisance, and the rest just seem to get ignored. I think it might be better without them.

Another thought is that this one might do well as a 1.06 map. You could use the crystals cargo to add a diamond trade.
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RulerofRails
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Re: South Africa Unread post

I believe Oilcan is referring to the gap from when the P8 retires (1924) and the Class 01 appears (1934). No problem with allowing some more steamers here. Depending on industrial strategy, steamers like the Pacific, H10 onwards generally suffer from high fuel costs and may not actually be super useful especially on plays that rely mainly on rail profit.

In terms of economics, the map was designed sparsely. It is an early map with some design principles obviously carried over from RTII. There is nothing wrong with this type of design, in fact, I like it. More events would be nice, but IMO opinion they are better than some of the Poptop maps. These are the type of maps that originally steered me into the belief that industry profits were the basis for playing difficult maps. Relying on industrial profits takes much of the difficulty away. Passengers and Mail in the Pretoria - Johannesburg - Krugersdorp area is one way to get a start without real industries (Hotels needed).

One tip for this map is to go into the editor and get rid of the green ground texture. I'm sure you guys remember how to do this seeing I think I learnt it from one of your posts/tutorials. I'm guessing you both did this already? For those who don't know this procedure, I forgot where to find it so I wrote it up below.

In the Editor, go to Paint Terrain, then "Add in or decrease a ground detail texture". Select the Bucket Fill, "Fill the entire map", then the minus sign (-). Now that the tool setup, click on the map a couple of times. About 3 times should take the green background away and make the proper colors visible even at ground level. Much nicer on the eyes. 8-)

Quick ETA: I have only seen 2 seeds on my attempts. I haven't seen one with an instant Steel Mill operation possible. This is interesting in light of the OP. Also, what did Jeremy mean by "there is not quite enough starting capital to buy even an unprofitable steel mill so I've got to issue some stocks and won't manage to put together the extra $100,000 until early in the second year of the scenario." Is he waiting a year before starting his first company?
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Gumboots
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Re: South Africa Unread post

I think a better range of steamers makes sense. South Africa relied on them during the relevant era, assuming you're using the default start year of 1910. Having electric all over the country between 1910-1940 is not at all accurate.

The Class 01 would be useless on this map anyway. It requires flat terrain, and still has very high running costs. And I made a mistake about the end date for the P8. I was thinking (dunno why) that the game ended in 1930.

I haven't edited the map yet, but had noticed the ground texture and was thinking of doing something about it. I suppose the sparse map is personal preference. I'm inclined to think it'd be more engaging if there was more to do. Goals could be made harder to keep it challenging. That's the sort of game I tend to like. Lots to do, and ramp up the goals to suit. Or at least, that was the sort of thing I was more in the mood for yesterday. ;-)

Anyway I'll finish this play and see how it goes.
RulerofRails wrote:Quick ETA: I have only seen 2 seeds on my attempts. I haven't seen one with an instant Steel Mill operation possible. This is interesting in light of the OP. Also, what did Jeremy mean by "there is not quite enough starting capital to buy even an unprofitable steel mill so I've got to issue some stocks and won't manage to put together the extra $100,000 until early in the second year of the scenario." Is he waiting a year before starting his first company?
I think he has started it the first year, since he mentioned that he had to issue stock but is short $100k, which implies he has a company started. But if you were wanting to go straight to purchasing a steel mill it would make more sense to wait a year before starting a company, since you'd save one year's running costs.

I've found range of seeds when trying various starts, but so far I haven't found one that allows instant steel mill operation.

ETA: Heck, I should whip up rudimentary game files and skins for those SAR Garratts and start testing them live. Ideal map for it.
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RulerofRails
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Re: South Africa Unread post

The Class 01 is available on this map starting at the default year of 1934. In looking into fuel costs and real perfomance, my conclusion is that the Class 01 is better than I thought. Compared to the Class 500 which is the only engine available on this map in 1.05, the Class 01 even comes close on grades and only costs slightly more for fuel. Biggest difference is double the maintenance cost and cost. The Class 01 is 58% higher. Here's the real stats I pulled up from your spreadsheet.
Class 500.jpg
Class 01.jpg

I completed a play without buying/building industry except a Steel Mill (the only one originally on the map in Johannesburg disappeared so I had to rebuild) and a Tool and Die in Walvis Bay to build up some sort of an Aluminum demand there late in the game. I also bought the 3 Rubber Farms as soon as possible to prevent them from disappearing.

My strategy was to wait for 3 years before starting a company. In that time I "invested in" (mainly short-sold) the AI. Beginning of Year 4 I had 220k of personal cash. Then I started a company with max investor money (2.4M starting funds) and went from there. The AI hadn't started in the Pretoria - Johannesburg area so I started there. Main difference in this play was a soon added more direct connection of Pretoria - Pietersburg - Ft. Tuli. I added a spur off towards Komati Poort soon after.

I had to build one station in the countryside at the Rubber Farm beyond Beira. I waited 5 years, but my station in Beira wouldn't pull Rubber demand from Komati Poort (Rubber Factory seeded there in 1919) even with 4 trains on the route.

I was playing the seed with a Meat Packing Plant in Johannesburg. I must give a word of caution that whether or not a Musuem seeds in Pretoria or not may have an impact on the ease of starting with the passenger run I suggested works in normal (1.1M starting funds) conditions. Most of the seeds I saw would either have the Museum in Pretoria or the Meat Packing Plant in Johannesburg.

Playing the map with little industry gives it a good challenge aspect for me. It took me almost the whole time to complete. I made the Aluminum haulage with a year or two to spare. The first Aluminum Mill didn't seed until 1932. It was located in Bloemfontein.

There are many ways to play a particular map. Perhaps the "wait for the map to seed in" is a consequence of the ruggedness of the map in general and the way that affects seeding. I enjoyed playing this map again with my personal restrictions.

My first thought on the warehouses is that they are mainly designed to keep local raw material suppliers profitable enough that they don't disappear in the years before your rails can reach them.
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OilCan
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Re: South Africa Unread post

Gumboots wrote:I think a better range of steamers makes sense. South Africa relied on them during the relevant era, assuming you're using the default start year of 1910. Having electric all over the country between 1910-1940 is not at all accurate.
I agree, electric would be out of place and era.

Here's a screenshot of one my my P8s lighting up the African night sky.
Train Fire.JPG
I have passed through this part of the world and don't recall seeing saguaro cacti growing everywhere - baobab trees, yes, but not saguaros. :-D
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OilCan
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Re: South Africa Unread post

RulerofRails wrote:I completed a play without buying/building industry except a Steel Mill (the only one originally on the map in Johannesburg disappeared so I had to rebuild) and a Tool and Die in Walvis Bay to build up some sort of an Aluminum demand there late in the game. I also bought the 3 Rubber Farms as soon as possible to prevent them from disappearing.
....
Playing the map with little industry gives it a good challenge aspect for me. It took me almost the whole time to complete. I made the Aluminum haulage with a year or two to spare. The first Aluminum Mill didn't seed until 1932. It was located in Bloemfontein.

There are many ways to play a particular map. Perhaps the "wait for the map to seed in" is a consequence of the ruggedness of the map in general and the way that affects seeding. I enjoyed playing this map again with my personal restrictions.
RulerofRails you win the prize! I know for certain that I would fail miserably if I tried to follow your tactic in this particular game. And too, I don't think I have the self control to let the ripe fruit of industry go untouched. My hat is off to you. !!howdy!!
My first thought on the warehouses is that they are mainly designed to keep local raw material suppliers profitable enough that they don't disappear in the years before your rails can reach them.
This is probably true seeing how they were set at the lowest level of demand. If Mobius had tweaked them into exchanging for goods it would have represented an African open air market.

I went from playing this map to playing Twenty Years in Tibet - now that is truly a rugged map!
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Gumboots
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Re: South Africa Unread post

Well I ended up getting a Silver. Me. Gumboots. A Silver! Oh, the shame of it all. ^**lylgh

I agree that the Class 500 and Class 01 are fairly well matched with default 1.05 cargo cars and on grades up to 2% or 3%. My thoughts on the Class 01 were a result of using it on the Italy map sometimes, where it's hauling D era cars. It's quite weak with those.

I have tried the Class 500 with C era cars (mainly on Orient Express and its offspring) and I find the P8 is better if there is much in the way of grades. It's also more reliable. That's a bonus for the Class 01 as well. Its reliability is a lot better than the Class 500, and its pax appeal is also better, but you're right that the extra maintenance cost rapidly adds up.

Anyway since I had a range of custom locos installed I went for the Suburban Tank once the P8 was unavailable. It's a good substitute for the P8, and gives reasonable service. I didn't feel too guilty about this, since SAR did run a class of 2-6-4T locos for a while (originally built for the Pretoria to Pietersburg line). Apart from the famous Garratts, SAR used a lot of Mountain classes too.

The idea of waiting to form a company and playing AI stock is a good one. Hadn't thought of that. With the rubber farms out in the boonies, I just ran trains straight to Jo'burg. No problems with demand that way. I did fail to start automobile production early enough for a Gold. Plenty of tyres once I started shipping rubber. Heaps of steel, as I had bought the two seeded steel mills at Jo'burg and Pietersburg. These both had enough coal and iron to run at full production. I just needed to start shipping rubber five years earlier.

I'm not really keen on the aluminium goal. It feels artificial. The cars to Cape Town goal makes sense. I think the map would feel more natural if you had to ship 5 loads of cars to Warvis Bay, instead of aluminium. You'd probably still end up running an aluminium mill anyway. The map usually ends up with adequate bauxite, and it's a handy way to feed tool and dies while leaving more steel for cars.
Last edited by Gumboots on Mon May 16, 2016 8:33 pm, edited 8 times in total.
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Gumboots
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Re: South Africa Unread post

OilCan wrote:I have passed through this part of the world and don't recall seeing saguaro cacti growing everywhere - baobab trees, yes, but not saguaros. :-D
Yup, that's one of the catches with RT3's default deserts. You get saguaros in places they never grow. I went through my SE Oz map and got rid of them. Looks better with trees that fit the location, and you could do it with this map too. !*th_up*!
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RulerofRails
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Re: South Africa Unread post

I used the Class 500 exclusively until the Class 01 arrived. I guess I figured that the better acceleration and top speed would be enough to bring it out ahead and negate reliability concerns.

Well, I did a little test with a saved game towards the end of this map. With economy changes disabled, I first tried replacing all my 39 engines with brand new Class 500s and then followed this up with a run of the Class P8. I ran both tests for two years, then I decided to record the results from years 3-10. Consist makeup was identical over the tests with no cabooses anywhere.

Here's a brief overview:
Class 500 vs P8, cost difference.jpg

Assuming there are no other major factors I forgot, this seems to give good evidence that the P8 is the winner here hands down. I noticed that for obvious reasons, a higher maintenance and fuel cost on a brand new engine will blow out wider in real terms as the engine ages.

So my strategy call on engine choice here was wrong before 1925 when the P8 disappears. A closer look at the fuel charts reveals that the Class 500 is in the ballpark of $0.10 for freight while the P8 is $0.06. A substantial difference there.
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Gumboots
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Re: South Africa Unread post

Oh good. I like being right. :mrgreen:

I'd be inclined to ignore the cost of crashes. The long term testing I did with and without a caboose indicated that crashes were random and were not affected by other factors. But in this case the fuel and maintenance cost differences are conclusive. !*th_up*!
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RulerofRails
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Re: South Africa Unread post

Here's the real stats for the P8.
Class P8.jpg
Probably the acceleration advantage is lessened because the map is sparse. If we look closely when comparing with the Class 500, the P8 is only faster on hills when the grade is 4% or more (at 4% it's 3mph faster with 8 C-era cars). I was thinking about what I said before that speed isn't that important in the game, and this would seem to be some confirmation of this theory. Still beating myself up for getting my loco use wrong on this map. *!*!*!

Ok, crashes are random but on average the Class 500 will breakdown a lot more than the P8. Some allowance must be made for this cost which one doesn't have if they use the P8. Perhaps this figure could be split in half just to take care of the fact that perhaps I encountered a randomly high frequency. Either way, it's still a decent extra expense when using the Class 500.

I didn't really mind the Aluminum goal. But it might be better if one didn't have to build the demand up first. Perhaps the demand for Aluminum could have been included in the port there. But, as you said Autos would work too and there could be another test to make sure that you got an Aluminum Mill running.

Oilcan, I sometimes enjoy playing the more subtle nuances of the cargo economy that occur naturally. On a map like this with few cities I can still have reasonable control over the freight market without building industries. It also can be kind of fun to wait for an industry to appear (such as the Tire Factory) in a place that is random and then deal with the logistics of getting the right resources there. The other thing is that I want my games to last a bit longer than doing them in the first x amount of years. Good thing I don't setup map goals. !facepalm!
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Re: South Africa Unread post

Ok, so if the Class 500 is breaking down (ie: separate from crashes) a lot more often that would imply the greater speed of the Class 500 is being traded off against more time lost due to breakdowns, to give the same overall revenue as the P8. If you can be bothered sometime, it'd be interesting to try another test run with the Class 500 and see if the number of crashes was more normal, and how that affected revenue.

By the way, one nice thing about this map is that I get to use the multiple bauxite cars I made. !*th_up*! The South East Australia map, and the Royal Tour map I made from it, also usually have bauxite if anyone is looking for other maps to try the bauxite cars on.
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RulerofRails
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Re: South Africa Unread post

I tried another quick run with the Class 500 and this time got 5 crashes. Revenue was $1M lower. Another test without controlling economic state gave 6 breakdowns. Revenue doesn't count so didn't record that. These tests aren't controlled enough to be considered proof.

Delays from breakdowns and crashes are hard to account for properly. I suppose that average speed is a better thing to go by to see if breakdowns are impacting the overall traffic flow that much.

I know for sure that the Class 500 is getting a better average speed of 21mph versus 17mph for the P8. In theory this means that even after breakdowns and crashes are factored in, the Class 500 is moving faster. A calculation reveals that the Class 500 is 19% faster, the difference in outright speed with 8 full cars is 29%, so a decent percentage of the extra speed is getting utilized. I'm sure the better acceleration plays into this.

I could get excited about these sort of tests, but the uncertainty is part of the fun of the game and I think it's a good thing that in an actual game one can't quite be sure of the exact effects of certain factors. One major problem with any "quick" test involving revenue is that there is a finite supply of price demand differentials for a given network to utilize. A slight change in overall speed probably doesn't often change frequency enough to get a different formation pattern of price demand differentials.
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Re: South Africa Unread post

The crashes algorithm is a bit weird, and I've never quite figured out how it works. I know it's random to some extent, but there do seem to be other factors which influence it. I emphasise seem because, due to the random stuff, I can't actually be sure about the other factors.

One I remember noticing was on the Italy map when I had a long downhill grade (not steep) that had a fairly sharp turn at the bottom. I was running Mallards and they kept crashing at the bottom corner. Switched to a slower locomotive (Kriegslok, IIRC) and no more crashes. This seemed to be a direct correlation, but I'd have to do a lot more testing before I was sure of it.

Not sure how you're getting a 29% difference in speed with 8 cars. The spreadsheet shows 70 mph for the Class 500 and 50 mph for the P8, on a level track, putting the Class 500 40% ahead. Are you averaging over a range of common grades?

And I agree we can't get too obsessive about these figures, unless we are going to run a lot of massive tests to even out the lumps. It's handy to have some idea of trends though if we are going to be revamping loco stats.
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Gumboots wrote:Not sure how you're getting a 29% difference in speed with 8 cars. The spreadsheet shows 70 mph for the Class 500 and 50 mph for the P8, on a level track, putting the Class 500 40% ahead. Are you averaging over a range of common grades?
I mistakenly compared the difference to the large number and not the small one. Woops. Sorry. :oops:
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Oh fair enough. I suppose it depends which way you want to look at it. ;-)
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