Guatemala

[Gumboots]

Nice. I assumed Mexico was too hard for a start.

It probably is with the restrictions you're imposing on yourself, but go ahead and prove me wrong if you like.

I wasn't restricting myself with industry purchases and had gone for an industry start, so the first track wasn't laid until 1877. By then I already owned four distilleries (three of which I had built, one bought when seeded*) plus three sugar farms and a cattle ranch. Averaged industry ROI for 1876 was 21%, despite the price of Alcohol dropping quite significantly on the coast due to lack of transport, so I was in a strong position and was able to take a risk on Mexico. There was good haulage there, so I figured I might as well try it.

Incidentally, a tip for anyone thinking of buying sugar farms at the start of the scenario: don't do it. At the start of the scenario the purchase price for sugar farms near the port will be $200+ k. If you leave them for a few years their profits drop to almost zero temporarily, and their purchase price drops to $140-160k. This applies even if you start by building your own distillery in the area. The amount of sugar already there will temporarily overwhelm the demand from the new distillery, so sugar farm profits will still drop to near zero. Buying them when their profits start heading up again is the way to do it. They end up being a very good investment.

Stacking is key to big riches.

I can see the potential of it, but in this particular case I'm not sure how beneficial it was. Bear in mind that a large part of it was due to prices dropping on the coastal plain, so you would have to trade off the profits from the stackathon against the earlier profits I could have made if I connected up to GC earlier. At the moment I'm not sure how it balances out, but I did notice that lifetime profit up to January 1881 is only $12.99m, whereas in my previous play I had lifetime profit of $24.1m by the middle of 1883.

To match that this time around I will have to make $11.1m in two and a half years, which is just possible but realistically not likely. Given that lifetime profit is probably the best indicator of company strength, I'm not sure the approach taken this time is necessarily better. Although growth this time was flat-spotted to some extent by me going for 100% of stock, so that's another factor to take into account. To really get a good comparison I'd have to try a similar start to this one, but without the 100% stock aim, and see how that goes.

Good job on the 4% gradient too.

It always amazes me what is possible with grades in this game. I liked your approach to Tegucigalpa too. I hadn't thought of trying it that way, and will have to experiment next time I get down there.

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*About the four distilleries: it's usually worth building one over at the Caribbean side. I usually put it just north of the Izabal River, on the border of British Honduras, where it will give solid profits for several years. Later in the game, clothing will start flowing from Punta Gorda around to Peurto Barrios and alcohol prices at the distillery will start dropping, at which point I throw down a short branch line from Puerto Barrios to pick these up for shipping further afield.

On the Pacific coast: distilleries are usually the best option for fast money, with Puerto San Jose being a prime location at the start. This is my standard first move. The second move depends on what seeds and how fast, but usually another distillery on the Mexican border is a good option.

However, having thought of it I just checked the price differentials between sugar and alcohol at both locations, and it turns out to be fractionally better at the Mexican border ($182 vs $176) so it's probably worth trying the one on the border first. There is still good demand for alcohol in Mexico, and the lack of a distillery at Puerto San Jose for a few more years should drop the sugar price further there, so overall ROI is probably going to be slightly better if building at the Mexican border first.

It's likely that more distilleries will seed later in the game. Escuintla and Retalhuleu are common locations. I don't try to compete with these. I just buy them as soon as they start making a profit ($850k each). There is enough sugar on the coastal plain to supply four distilleries, and the purchase price for them is not much more than the price for upgrading the ones you built, so buying the seeded ones and not upgrading any of them ends up being a good strategy. They will all be well-supplied with raw materials and you own the lot, so it's all good.

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Edit: Ran a quick test. Built the first distillery at the Mexican border, and the second one at Puerto San Jose. Seems to be an improvement. Slight difference in economy over the first few years, but not much. Profits are substantially better with the Mexican border start.

First year is down very slightly, probably due to less concentrated sugar loads offsetting slightly better price differential. Second year profit is substantially better, although part of this may be down to me paying off the initial bond at the start of 1872. I can't remember if I did that in the other start, but since there was no useful possibility of expansion it made sense to not hold that bond for an extra year (the reduction in interest outweighed the early repayment fee by 9%).

This time around I also used one stock issue to finance the second distillery in January 1873, since that was just enough to get me over the $1,400k build cost without a third bond. The second distillery did very well, because by January 1873 the price of sugar at Puerto San Jose had dropped 25% compared to the price in January 1871. Net result is that the company is in a significantly better position in January 1884.

I'm also in a better position. Stock ownership is down compared to the earlier play, but will be easily made up.

[RulerofRails]

Yeah, the Mexico start is too tight for a rails only. with $100k or so extra (after issuing stock) you could actually make a city-city connection with Small stations and perhaps have a chance. PNW would be no issue, but it would be very slow start for sure.

The good thing with stacking is that you get a large short term return. When and how to take that is a strategy call. Of course you could have earned a lower, more consistent return from connecting earlier, but obviously you were chasing other opportunities that, at least in the moment seemed better. The key to insanity it is to get the process cycling, but on a map like this it's a challenge (terrain, city spacing, limited track) even for me.

This time I played with the new cars. I did focus towards express to test the Ten Wheeler more. But, partly because I never got good stacks developing, seed didn't fill in with like types, more scattered. Had a Museum in Escuintla since start too. I did a trip to the editor to breakdown express in the ledger at game end (1890).

I will take time to write more on the details later, but an obvious point is that the Ten Wheeler is earning lots more express revenue compared to the default Connie last time out. I used it in haul-anything use anywhere where grades were not prolonged over 3%. I will run it on flatter maps soon. The danger if it's too stong is that we have to answer the question: Why should I buy a Freight engine out of the mountains? Whereas in the regular game everyone is leary of buying Express engines, when with the proper usage they can actually even be a good idea in an established game, esp. with the new light pax cars. More on that later. . . .

I didn't get into Honduras this time before the military event. That sure makes it easy. I had barracks at all Honduars towns on the east coast, so didn't raise any sweat at all.

I will try a no-holds-barred. Let's see what happens. Maybe I will use a "better" seed too.

[Gumboots]

That breakdown is near enough to 60% pax, 40% troops and mail. The Perkins is set to 120% pax appeal at the moment, so with an average 60% pax it would have returns 12% higher than a default Connie if both were on express-only consists. For mixed traffic, given the express-heavy nature of this map, the Perkins would probably have 6-8% better returns than the Connie. But on a map where pax were scarcer the difference would probably be minimal.

I can see the point about balancing, but stats that are balanced on one map might be out of balance on another. Take OilCan's India map. That thing is absolutely chockers with pax. You can run dedicated trains with full 8 car pax-only consists all over the place. On a map like that a pax appeal rating of 120% would make a huge difference (about 20% hey ) whereas on his Grand Canyon map you'd hardly notice the difference.

[RulerofRails]

I can't call it "fact", but I consider that:
1. Troops are much more common than normal here. There are a lot of barracks. Only a couple towns didn't have one.
2. This map isn't that heavy for passengers and mail given the time period. A big part of the reason it seems high is because the freight density is so low. Many maps have events to cut express production. When playing maps without events to cut production, while using Hotels and watching express traffic I'm often surprised by how much there actually is. There are few towns here, but they are spaced along definite routes. The only thing that will bring numbers up a bit is having them in closer proximity as the crow flies, albeit up or over yonder mountain in reality. I seem to get around 200 undeliverable loads here. Compare to some maps that are 500+, some even approach 1,000.

Anyway, I was actually issuing stock for first years of my current play. On my particular seed I had trouble getting to $300k 1st year with industries. But the ball started rolling. Not quite sure how to strategize the hauls. This time I copied your idea and built a Distillery on the Mexican border in 2nd year. There is also a Meat Packer there, so it's a bit harder to get hauls in. Full cheat mode would be to use countryside stations. But I don't know if I can stomach it.

[Gumboots]

I've been giving countryside stations a miss, even though in reality they are often a perfectly standard part of building a railway. The only exception has been the one I often put over near British Honduras. I've been thinking that it might be fun to play this as a total hook-up game, where you have to connect every town on the map. There's some interesting track building to be had.

Anyway, I've been doing some thinking and realised that I may have been mistaken about the steamship company idea. You have a 2% chance of losing the lot in any given year, which is only once every 50 years if you believe the statistics, so there's a good chance you can get away with not losing the steamship company over the remainder of the scenario timeframe.

It costs $200k to set up, and returns are minimal at an average of $10k per year, so on that basis it makes no sense when there are better opportunities available. However, setting up the steamship company also gives a 50% boost to pax, mail and goods production, which last for as long as the steamship doesn't go down in a hurricane (IOW potentially the rest of the scenario). So although the nominal ROI is pathetic, when you take into account the increased production it may well be a decent proposition. If the ship does go down the gurgler, all that happens is that production goes back to normal and you're out of pocket (by $200k minus whatever returns it gave while operational).

It's a bit of a gamble against the RNG, but if you were lucky enough to get 10 years of increased production I can easily see that being worth a lot more than $200k, providing you can organise delivery of the extra loads. That's always a bit problematic with pax, but it may well be possible to run dedicated pax-only trains on most routes, to take maximum advantage of the pax appeal rating, with mail and troops taken care of by Moguls (cheap, and adequate for the light loads). So maybe Pax @ 120% & high priority, Troops and mail @ any rating & medium priority, freight @ low priority could work well.

(The banana plantations are still not worth it.)

[RulerofRails]

Well, this is what happened. I issued stock once each year for the first 5 years, then once again to make full use of the large track allocation I paid for. Over-reached a little on builds and didn't put enough focus into PNW. I didn't cheat the loads, I started a disconnected network to get Nicaragua haulage going. However, I did pump the share price in the end. Nominally was about $7M in a normal economy beforehand. I pumped it high because I thought it would drop at year end: it didn't drop because profit was a new high of $3.8M that year compared to $2.5M the year before. Ended up just going quick at the end, so it's nothing special to see.

This seed wasn't that good for industries. I had competition on the Textile Mill, one seeded in Punta Gorda at the end of the first year: right when I planned to build one. Had the two Distilleries on the Pacific coast, one bought, one built. Two farms for each with somewhat reliable supply. There was already a Distillery gobbling the Produce at the eastern port city at game start. Then just a couple farms.

[Gumboots]

Just for the heck of it, I'm halfway through a play where I've bought into British Honduras and grabbed the upgraded textile mill while its price is at rock bottom. I've often thought about doing this, so thought I'd give it a go. I think I can turn it into a good earner.

I've also gone for the steamship company this time, so I'll see what happens with that. Haven't bothered going for 100% stock ownership. I'm currently holding about 2/3 of the stock, which is heaps for the PNW requirement.

[Gumboots]

So that worked out alright. That textile mill does well once you give it more access to a market.

I went ahead and played it to hook up every city on the map, just for fun. This took until 1894, by which time PNW and loads hauled were up to bonkers levels. Could have done it a bit faster, but I wanted to have some fun with the routes and that took extra cash and track.

The run into the depths of Honduras was done like this. There are a few squares of 6%, and some at 5%, but most is 4% or less and I was just running standard trains on it.

The other good route is one I tried direct from Puerto San Jose and down the Pacific coast to San Salvador.

Mostly flat, of course, and the grades at the southern end are a maximum of 4% and not much of that. This one is guaranteed to set a speed record and get your train a good pax bonus, because launching downhill out of San Salvador onto a straight and level track is a sure winner for a speed record. If it's set up with spurs, the train will just get to the end of the run by the time it uses up all its water.

This is a route that I think might be worth trying earlier in the game. It takes a bit of track to get down to San Salvador in one hit, but it has the advantage of cutting out all the mountain runs via Guatemala City if you want to ship stuff down south. I found there were very good returns from it. The scenery is great fun too.

Edit: By the way, I found that once my network was fully developed, Guatemala City became a bit of a bottle neck. Even double tracking it isn't enough to get good traffic flow all the time. It really needs two stations and/or a bypass, but it's almost impossible to arrange them effectively in the limited space, so anything that can be done to circumvent GC will help the overall situation. The Guatemalan coastal plain has stuff that is in demand down south, so running straight down the coast to San Salvador as soon as possible is probably a good strategy.

[TheBonobo4]

Question unrelated to this map. If I download custom locomotives and or cargo skins, will they work on old saves if do they make old saves unplayable? It would be nice to have some extra locomotives, I'm less bothered about cargo resins, though I'll admit locomotive resins do look nice.

[Gumboots]

If you add extra custom locos they won't be selected in the editor, but if you go into the editor and select them they should work.
They won't break a save. Saves will only break if you remove a loco that was being called in the save.

For loco skins I don't know, as I've never tried it, but as skins rely on having the original locomotive installed I can't see it being a problem.

Cargo revamps are a different matter, because they usually change files in the CargoTypes and EngineTypes folders. This can bork a save big time, so I'd advise against trying it. If you want to use revamped cargo cars, start a new game. No problem then.

[RulerofRails]

I tried this one again. Unfinished business. Your $700k result in the third year was a great effort. I finally managed to do similar. This seed had 7 Cotton farms and no Textile Mill, so I started by building a Textile Mill in Puerto Barrios. Didn't issue bonds to do this, just stock. $257k profit 1st year.

2nd year play was to upgrade it, then mid-year to purchase a newly seeded ranch near Escuintla. This gave me a $608k 2nd year.

Start of 3rd year I built a Distillery on the Mexican border (this is only worth doing if there are two farms in that area). Then In November this happened:

I connected Los Amates and Morales with two small stations. Before the end of the year I maxed bonds and used up all available track (including the extra for $100k) with the plan to buy access to Mexico the following year. This way I had rail laid all down the Pacific Coast in one go. The bonus boosted proftis to $1M that year.

This seed enabled me to place Retalhuleu station in such a way to cover 2 ranches (not so much the stream that was heading to Mexico packers). I will paraphrase now. I started building in from the east for the Weapons/Ammo haulage before connecting to Guatemala City. I placed a Distillery in Puerto Barrios, but apart from the close one, the Produce farms were far away and most of the fruit was rotting before it arrived. ROI didn't exceed 15%. I later built a second Textile Mill too. One never appeared in Punta Gorda.

I made a mistake and purchased the wrong Distillery on the east coast (one in Retalhuleu and the other in Mazatenango). This cost me on average about $200k per year compared to what I could have had. I settled on about 2/3 ownership with personal debt of around $3M. Never paid a dime on stock buybacks or dividends.

Economy went to Prosperity in 1874, reaching Boom in March 1875. Boom lasted till September 1878 before slumping off to end in Recession. In spite of this PNW was fine.

I did a disconnected network in the southeast again. Starting beginning of 1880.

The first big lump of track is available at the beginning of 1881. Since the medal checks at the end of the year, the goal was to finish by the end of 1881. I wont say it's impossible to do it without this lump of track, but that would be insane.

One tip with the haulage to Nicaragua is to route trains through it. So for example San Miguel - Puerto Morazon - Choluteca; or Tegucigalpa - Puerto Morazon - Choluteca. With a Hotel this works especially well for express traffic. I didn't re-route any trains to make the target. Maybe it's an exploit, but it's just using the normal game mechanics in your favor.

This is a well put together map. What I expect from Lama. I wonder how I missed it all this time?

[Gumboots]

Yeah it is a good one. I'm going to have to check out more of his maps.

I found getting the haulage to Nicaragua wasn't a problem even with it being the last stop, although I expect it could be done faster if I used tricky routing.

I usually put the distillery on the eastern side over the river right next to British Honduras. This puts it closer to the produce (usually right on top of one farm). I then ship the alcohol to Puerto Barrios via a large station on the southern side of the river (capture area will grab the distillery).

Odd to not get a textile mill in Punta Gorda too. It's always been there in every seed that I've seen. I might have to try a few more.

[Gumboots]

I was just idly thinking about this map again, with a view to trying it with some different ideas. Looked into the scripting, and found out the the banana plantations are potentially more profitable than I had thought.

The way it works is that if you buy the plantations with your own money (ie: not via graft*) you get $2k added to your player cash for every increment in YTD Produce delivered to the Ports territory. This is controlled via a TV reset to 0 at the start of every year, then checked weekly. In other words, if you deliver 1 load of Produce to the Ports territory in the first week of the year, you get $2k player cash. If you deliver 20 loads in the first week you still get $2k player cash, because it's only going on an increase in TV per week, so the extra 19 loads make no difference.

The way to maximise returns on the "banana plantations" would be to consistently drop at least 1 load of Produce in the Ports territory every week. This could potentially earn you $100k player cash per year (IOW, 100% ROI per year). It might be best to deliberately avoid stack and dump with Produce to Ports, to avoid depressing the price there and ensure continued haulage.

In practice it may be difficult to maintain a consistent >1 Produce per week to Ports, so ROI on your original $100k player cash will probably not be 100% per year. However with a bit of cunning it is probably possible to keep it up around 25%, which is a pretty good return. And if you really wanted to get into it, since this scenario encourages dirty tricks anyway you could have several cheap locos loaded with 1 car of Produce each, and keep using bait and switch to cycle them from a Port station to just outside the Port territory, then back again. This could require quite a bit of management, but if you were clever/lucky with timing might push your player cash ROI close to the theoretical maximum of 100% per year.

*NOTE: If you buy the plantations via graft, they will not make you any money at all.

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With the steamship company option: it does give +50% mail and pax production to the Ports territory, but given the existing high express traffic on the map a 50% increase from two moderate-sized cities is probably not going to amount to much in the scheme of things. The more likely payoff is from the increased Goods production, since Goods is a low production and high value cargo on this map. Extra haulage of Goods could make the steamship company worthwhile. I suspect it will never really be a big earner, but as a relatively cheap thing to set up with a potentially reasonable ROI it may be worth trying.