Ukraine 1865 Beta

[PaulJohann]

Oops!
just realized that there is a respective thread in the RT3 Review section!!!

[Blackhawk]

Paul I moved your posts into the thread you recently found :)

I'm not sure what got changed in the final version of the map as I haven't played it, but on the beta it was possible to get to 10,000 loads hauled. You could always keep playing the full 25 years and see how far off you are. Keep in mind that as you grow your company you will haul loads faster. As you can see in the previous screenshots in the posts, I had over 4,000 loads in just 3 years towards the end of the scenario and Sugas was able to get 3,500 loads in 4 years towards the end. So as the game progresses it becomes easier to haul more loads.

[nedfumpkin]

With Ukraine being in the news, I decided to give this map a try since I like playing RT3 maps with an original version of RT3 , as in no custom add-ons at all.

I'm still working on it, so this is preliminary.

The only thing I would like to mention is that the pathways through the cities are oriented the wrong way for a lot of the cities. This is something that is a tweak in the map making stage. Cities generally have an x shaped reserved spot where stuff doesn't get spawned to allow a throughway for track. On this map it seems there is just one path, rather than an x, and it seems oriented in the wrong direction for a natural rail approach. I'm finding a lot of my stations are pointing the wrong way and I have to ziz-zag through towns to go to the next. The problem is worse since the AI is very aggessive with track expansion so this is causing them to place all kinds of weird track and station. Othewise a nicely made map.

[nedfumpkin]

Got gold in with one month to spare. I managed to exceed 300 on cheese, steel, and furniture. I'll post my strategy in the strategies section.

Overall a fun map that You want to play on slow speed or else you don't get things done fast enough.

[nedfumpkin]

This is a 25 year map that requires you to do a lot of building quickly.

Since there can be only one company in the end, I tried a few strategies as first, and ended up going with 80/800 to start my company. Bought the brewery at Balta, connected to Odessa, and then sat back.

Next I connected Orel to Kursk. Then I connected Balta to Kiev, Kursk to Sumy, passed Gomny then to Kiev. I have the connection done by the end of the second year. I also focused on getting all my stock by the end of the thid year.

Next I bought the munitions plant at Vasilkov, and began feeding it with iron. Got ready to connect down to Sevastopol. Once I did that, I set trains to go from the weapons factory at Mykolaiv, and ammunition at Vasilkov, and Kremenchug. I also had trains load with 2 weapons, and 2 ammunition at Orel going to Sevastopol. I ended up with four trains doing this, as soon as they load, the go. The setup allowed me to meet the 2 per year.

Once I had all my stock, I started buying the other companies. The AI companies do very well in this game. So I got 50%+1 of one company, and then I worked at getting all the stock from the first.

Next I focused on building a steel mill near Krivy Rih, right where the mines were. I hauled coal to it. Try to get a steel mill as soon as you can because you have a steel haul requirement, and you'll also need it for weapons and ammo real soon. I ended up with two steel mills. The second was on top of coal, so I ran a train between them to balance out coal and iron between them.

The key to this map is to build industry to meet your goals. Try to buy industry when you can, or build it strategically so that you can control your inputs. So put lumber mills near logging camps and furniture factories on top. Then add a paper mill. Upgrade all, then haul furniture and paper out. Same wih dairy processors, drop them as close to the dairy farms as possible then haul out only the cheese. Upgrade your industries as soon as you build them, especially if you have to haul inputs to them because the demand will come quicker.

When you get the choice, take the consolidation. When you get the option to modify your engines, take the acceleration increase. This will help you move your cargo faster.

After you have your steel mill, merge with the company that you own 50%+1. Try to keep your bonds low, but I got up to 7.5 million with them. Get them down to at least 5 million.

I was only able to merge with the last company in the 22nd year. Its value was up to 20 million, I had 15 million, so I started dumping stock until I had it down to 14 million. I had 270k shares compared to 35k, so I was well above majority.

At this point I already met the furniture cheese and steel goals, and just needed the 10k loads. I doubled all my track and connected the last few cities.

Got gold with 5 weeks left.

[OilCan]

The only thing I would like to mention is that the pathways through the cities are oriented the wrong way for a lot of the cities. This is something that is a tweak in the map making stage. Cities generally have an x shaped reserved spot where stuff doesn't get spawned to allow a throughway for track. On this map it seems there is just one path, rather than an x, and it seems oriented in the wrong direction for a natural rail approach. I'm finding a lot of my stations are pointing the wrong way and I have to ziz-zag through towns to go to the next. The problem is worse since the AI is very aggessive with track expansion so this is causing them to place all kinds of weird track and station. Othewise a nicely made map.

That's a very good point about the reserved cells in a city: they are often not well oriented for the lay of the land. As you know, the reserve cells are a cross pattern of North-South and East-West with a small area for a station in the middle. As far as I know there is no way to swivel or re-orient the pattern. I wish there was. In the last 4-5 maps that I have made, I've added reserved cells to the centers of towns near rivers and oceans, especially port cities. Your point about ensuring sufficient room for positioning a large station in a city is very sensible should be adopted by map makers.

[nedfumpkin]

Actually, when you paint terrain one of the tools is to turn on or off reserved cells. You can change the shape of the city cells that won't spawn houses etc.

[Lama]

In my experience, even when you use the map painting tool to erase the reserve cells created when placing a city in the editor, the game will automatically restore them when you save.

[Hawk]

In my experience, even when you use the map painting tool to erase the reserve cells created when placing a city in the editor, the game will automatically restore them when you save.

That's pretty much been my experience too.

[OilCan]

In my experience, even when you use the map painting tool to erase the reserve cells created when placing a city in the editor, the game will automatically restore them when you save.

Very true. I have tested this several times. The editor does repaint a city's reserved cells if any are erased.

In addition, the editor keeps a memory of the reserved cells of any cities deleted by the map maker - once the map has been saved. The reserved cell pattern stays on the map even though there is no city marker. One has to go to the reserved cell tool and manually 'unreserve' or unlock the cells from deleted cities. This has tripped me up more than once.

[nedfumpkin]

I just checks and found that you can addd to the reserve cells, but if you remove some, they will come back, but the cells you add stay. Not an ideal solution, but something to consider if a map really needs it.

[Hawk]

That's one thing I did like about RT2. Any cells you removed stayed removed. Same with adding cells. And you could shape your reserved cell area any way you wanted instead of just in a cross.

[Stoneman]

Recently, I have been playing UKRAINE. Thank you so much for putting this game together.

I played my first game on Expert and did not do so well. But I sure enjoyed the map.

And I am looking forward to playing it again, with new insights and new strategy.

I think my biggest Surprise was how FLAT the map is. For some reason, I had expected more mountainous territory--so the game was very educational for me, as well as fun.

Well, I am now returning to Odessa. Thanks again. Cheers. Ed.

[TheBonobo4]

Just tried this map for the first time, on Medium difficulty (as a test to see how hard/easy it would be). Got Gold with just 6 months left, so it isn't easy. Making money itself was straightforward, by the end I was making around $10m/year, and the AI were not very good (I spent about $2m to take out the best one, and I played with the maximum allowed, 5). But actually hauling 200 loads of Steel, Cheese and furniture is tough. Cheese was the hardest, as expected. By the end though I had around 350 Furniture, over 300 Steel and 200 Cheese.

It is very useful, if not vital, to both have a lot of trains (I had at least 150), and many cities connected to increase productivity and also to make routes more direct (I think I had every city connected, except the ones in Transylvania, since they seemed pointless to me and, being surrounded by mountains, expensive to get to (not that money was an issue). Also, I built a great deal of Furniture Factories, Lumber Mills and Dairy Processors, and upgraded them, (even if the factories themselves made a loss, every little helped, I could always sell them).

I also managed to get the 5 Weapons/Ammo to Crimea, as well as the Paper, Clothes, Lumber and Meat goals for $1m each. All in all then, this is a very good (and challenging) map.

[Just Crazy Jim]

The Ukraine beat me 3 times, then I limped over the finish line to a Bronze twice, then staggered blindly into a Silver Win once. I gave it a day to consider what I knew. After 6 attempts and armed with foreknowledge of the events, I still ended up using a high level of micromanagement to get a gold win.

I went with the max AI players, hoping they would set down tracks near me, but only half of them did. RNG is no one's friend.

In my former attempts at this map, steel mills had been as common as dust. But this go around, it was a wet day for dust. I had built a Steel Mill in Odessa early in the game, upgraded it and sold it. The demand it created was nothing compared to the background noise of all the houses on the map. So I built a second in Nikopol, rinse repeat. There was a bit more luck there, but never enough coal where I could get at it to manage more than 1 or 2 loads a year. Still, the little houses. So I loaded myself with debt and built three steel mills at the far east of the map, outside my network, sold them and recouped some money back. Repay as many of the bonds as I can, then try to make the monies so I can force a merger with two competitors to get to my steel.

It's 1878 by the time I get enough scratch and stock to make the mergers happen, then I gasp to find my steel mills, my precious, precious steel mills were now too far from the economic demand for iron ore to have made any steel. By 1880, I had built five steel mills in Mykolaiv and one extra in Nikopol as a bait for coal. By 1881, I had managed to produce enough steel and re-hauled it enough times to get to 61 of the 200 needed. Then I noticed the warehouses in Orel had a stack of steel on them....

In 1880, the flow of logs to mills was already working sweetly, so adding the leg for lumber to furniture factories was easy-peasy. I spammed furniture factories and upgraded them, sold them and flipped my attention to Cheese. The flow of corn to dairy farms I had long established, so when the dairy processor became available, I dropped six on the map near each of the clusters of dairy farms. But Steel... wretched, rotten steel.

Rather stupidly, I hadn't checked, so I didn't notice that the warehouse in Orel would exchange 1 alcohol for 2 steel until after I had gone through elaborate efforts to get steel produced. By then, the exchange limit is too small to get me the gold, so I was committed to my original plan and forced to micromanage the flow of coal. I had 205 trains running, almost every one of them Connies, so I start killing them off to keep the coal where I need it, because the economic map is hating my plan. I set up alcohol runs to Orel, then swicth back to my win-or-die solution.

By 1883, I'm making crazy money, enough that the Czar is loving/hating me. Oilcan's warning was popping up like ads on a porn site. But still my mills are iron strong but coal weak. So I tear up tracks in a final desperate effort to get the coal to stay where I want it long enough to get some steel made. It was a magic moment when it finally went over the tipping point. I reconnect my tracks and get the steel moving. Then it was just waiting to see if it would work. It did. I nearly fell out of my chair.

Without a doubt, this map is a work of art. It had me in a very uncertain state on my last run, by no means was I certain I would get gold. But, next time, I'm going to take that offer to connect to Orel....

edit: becoz reasons

[RulerofRails]

In RT3, I always say go with the flow and try to work in tandem with the natural processes. This means building Industries where long term natural resource flows will keep them supplied. Remember that any terrain might skew normal resource flow routes. It took me some time to have a bit of "prediction" accuracy, but now I look at the map with a pretty good idea of what the potential flow will look like. Most of the time I will not place an industry when I cannot get reliable natural flow from 2 or 3 resources. I have no qualms about placing industries in the countryside. Often it's next to one resource with guaranteed natural flow from a couple others.

When I need to build an industry for a goal (such as the Steel on this map) I may build where I wont have a natural flow in the long term. In such case I will build the industry in a city, then rely on collection by rail. A station in the countryside covering the resource works well, but I tend to like the challenge of a cities-only network. So I connect to the city closest to the resource (or not if there's a mountain range etc.) and rely on the natural flow there thanks to the houses. Then I will plan all train routes from that city so that any movement will be in the direction I desire (often I don't even add trains in the other directions, or they are express only), towards the city with the industry.

This can end up a hub-and-spoke design with several cities serving as collection points sending resources back to the city with the industry I am nurturing. I will use custom consists for the direction carrying the resource and tend to add one or 2 specific cars and leave the rest any cargo for all two or three trains instead of having one dedicated one.

---

In reality the demand model is quite simple, virtually any game cell with a demand (however small) will reach the same maximum price if un-supplied for a period of time. The larger demands will reach the maximum price quicker (after reaching un-supplied state), but since we are looking for the delta between cells, houses can be very good at keeping Coal from Steel Mills. There are lots of them, and given enough time they provide the same maximum price.

There is nothing wrong with building many Steel Mills, but you will not see a higher maximum price by doing so. Either there is a demand or there is not. It's useful to place an industry for this purpose where price is yellow/orange/red to help boost resource prices for better local production, but when the price is already fairly high (light or bright green) there is also potential conflict between demands. Conflict between demands might be good for cargo movement, but generally it's bad for production. Whenever cargo is moving around the map there is no chance of it been converted by an industry.

In my latest game I built a steel mill in each resource cluster and then fed one mill by robbing the other.

Which is a great tip! In the case of this Ukraine map, Coal seems to be more scarce so I would build a Steel Mill or two carefully so that I can efficiently gather Coal with them, then build another Steel Mill in the middle of the clump of Iron Mines that seem to spring up west of Nikopol. Maybe place it in Kryvy Rih. Then I would rob Iron from there (probably not even bother to bring any Coal into Krvy Rih.

And that's enough talking for me. Conditions will vary and hopefully my ramble is good for some ideas.

[low_grade]

First try, gold on Expert July 1886.

Nice Oilcan scenario! Kept me busy throughout! Though easy to anticipate. Just when you think you're going to have to wait... another territory opens up! Took the pulling power option, and Stirlings were golden! So flat.

[Gumboots]

Had a quick look at this. You can only start one company, but there are no other restrictions, and you have to take over the AI's. Ok.

So this isn't hard. You robber baron the first company, ignoring the Odessa-Orel offer, and bump your personal cash up to around $1.4 million. When the second company forms, you buy majority shareholding and take it over. You will have picked up all the first company's stock at $2/share anyway, so can merge that for a small personal cash boost. You can then robber baron the second company too, but the catch is that the third company is likely to do a typical RT3 AI stunt, and start somewhere totally useless and with very little cash. The second company usually starts in a much better location, so is a better option. The third company will probably go down the tubes pretty fast anyway, so should be easy to deal with.

The other possibility is stick with your first company, which is quite wealthy, and try a simple cold turkey merger on the second company as soon as it forms. It only has a few hundred k worth of assets anyway.

I did notice that for some reason the game seems very prone to crashing with this map. I'm wondering if it's because of me playing dirty tricks with companies. There may be a conflict in the coding somewhere (haven't gone right through it yet).