Canada Bound!
Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2006 9:09 am
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
Canada Bound!
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It's posted at popular RT3 websites.
This scenario for advanced, patient players. The economy is tricky for the first 10 years, and there are some intricate plot lines.
Setting: British North America 1836 - 1867
There are 6 annual haul missions (HM) and 6 special political missions (PM). To win medals, all you need is enough of each.
A few hints:
1. There are 2 PM that start before 1840. You only have enough clout to complete one of them, so put all your energy into completing one or the other. After this, just build a solid railway company. The other 4 PM have deadlines in the 1860s so you have time to prepare.
2. Ten years may pass before you start completing HM but don't worry. As your company and the economy get stronger it gets easier and easier. Build enough in one area to ensure a successful annual HM then start on another one in another colony. Each time you complete a HM, related industries get a slight boost.
3. Once Reciprocation starts do your best to keep the Yanks happy. The Union and the Brits are going to have the occasional tiff especially during the civil war, but as an neighbouring entrepreneur, you understand the importance of relations with the USA. Happy Yank = Happy Wallet.
4. There are a couple of passenger missions, so you might want to keep express separate from freight. Same for military cargoes.
5. Read dialog instructions carefully, maybe even write them down. They may not be the same every time you play.
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I haven't had time to play it yet, but it gets thumbs up. I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't cover whole Canada though. I still misses the RRT2 Canada Pacific map.
Seems much better than the PopTop Eastern Canada map. Here you can make a saner connection between Albany and Boston. BTW, Boston should be more to the south. Now it is placed where Gloucester is in RL.
I just tried the map. Spent the first year doing nothing, just waiting for never appearing victory conditions. You need to tell us if it is safe to start building before we have been assigned a goal. And if it is not safe, then the scenario shouldn't start before we are assigned a goal.
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I have now played enough to get the first political goals.
As a hint to other players: The two first ones are a passenger hauling goal with a f-ing speed limit and the other involves Aroostook (I don't know the details of this goal). It looks like winning gold is very hard (at last as hard as Great Northern) on this map.
Overall I like the idea of having a lot of small subgoals counting towards the scenario victory.
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I too have had a couple of goes at this and got absolutely nowhere. I'll give it another try but so far I've just not seen any possibility of achieving any PM or HM. Incidentally all PM/HM (3) have come up at the same time and in the same order and the first HM was after only about 3 years and is totally impossible because it's to haul wool (? bad memory) from the state in the north where you have to pay for entry quite apart from the distances involved.
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wrote: I too have had a couple of goes at this and got absolutely nowhere. I'll give it another try but so far I've just not seen any possibility of achieving any PM or HM. Incidentally all PM/HM (3) have come up at the same time and in the same order and the first HM was after only about 3 years and is totally impossible because it's to haul wool (? bad memory) from the state in the north where you have to pay for entry quite apart from the distances involved.
Well, the HMs doesn't have time limits, so you don't have to worry about them at the start.
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Thanks for your help and comments CN. I will wait a bit longer before bringing a new version, but here is what I plan to do:
1. Increase Upper Canada grain - it seems a tad sparse.
2. Move Boston, heh. Too far from Providence. I should have known that from Go West!
3. I will add a help choice with the greeting event.
4. I am going to change the reckoning event for Political Mission #6. There is a time delay in the way the loads are counted - only one of each kind each week. I will either push the deadline back one month, or change the way loads are counted.
I am trying to find a balance between surprise and playability. Really, the 6 annual haul missions should be stated at the beginning. Any railroader would have known what the most important cargoes were. The annual hauls are:
- fur (wool) from Rupert's Land
- wheat (grain) from Upper Canada
- anything on Newfoundland
- coal from Nova Scotia
- logs to New Brunswick
- goods from USA during Reciprocation
Nova Scotia can be a nice place to rack up points with a short line. After completing my first political mission, I would build here if there is a port to receive the coal.
The political missions - well they seem to come up when they come up. I will move the Aroostook hint to the beginning, so you have the choice, and I will try to come up with a hint on the passenger / speed mission, and suggest you only take one or the other. They require completely different rail systems. For the passenger mission, you connect as many cities as you can and wait for Jack to come along. The Aroostock mission is out in the sticks, and might even be do-able without any city connections. BTW these two missions are very demanding, so there are some events to help make sure you accomplish them, like steroid shots for your locos.
Now a few excuses:
Yeh, gold is very hard. Since you have to pick one of the first two missions, you have to complete all of the others. I nearly always fail Political Mission #6, so do no better than silver. But it is doable - I have accomplished it at least once before.
This is the time period I wanted to cover. The economy had to be suppressed or growth would have outpaced history by too much. It's more of a political history than a railway history. I have 87 events (never again!) already so I decided to leave out the railway stuff.
There is enough railway lore to make another scenario. I may make one with PNW goals, and some rail history events. Some of the events I am thinking of will be drawn from Canada Bound (RT2), and some of them are pretty funny. This one would start in the late 1840s, so players can ride a nice railroad boom. Within about a decade, BNA increased her track mileage by about two orders of magnitude.
----
Bug Warning! There is a new bug with 1.04 beta where temporary production changes to territories have multiple reversal events. So a temporary +10% production increase can end up -80% or something. I think i caught them all and changed them to game-temporary or territory-permanent, but in case I missed any, keep yer eyes peeled.
This bug may have killed some key events in Warming Trend and Of Men and Seals. I'll have to check them with 1.04b.
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The HM are triggered by where you placed your track - Lower Canada. There is a relationship between the textile industry in Lower Canada, and the fur trade. If you place track in Upper Canada, you will get the grain HM, and so on. To get gold you need to complete one of the first two PM. If you complete no HM before Responsible Government, you can still achieve gold.
So after getting one PM under your belt, you just try to make a lot of money for a while, maybe lay a little track.
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I've just played through "Canada Bound" once and failed miserably(at medium difficulty). I find the instructions somewhat unclear but maybe that's me reading them badly. But I would suggest you re-look at the ledger details where you outline what has been achieved and what hasn't. I've always liked RT3's way of doing it: "You're in year 0 of 00 years. So far you have hauled 00 loads of whatever. You have not connected A with B with C." And so on. It's always quite clear.
Somewhere during the game I got the instruction to haul coal "from Nova Scotia" but it never said to where. I assumed New Brunswick would do so I hauled some to Moncton but it never showed up in the ledger.
I note that you want there to be "surprises" in your scenario. Surprises are good and fun but mysterious unclear goals aren't so much fun. I don't intend these comments as criticisms because you've done a ton of work, obviously. I'm hoping you can make things clearer for an old geezer such as I am because it's a great-looking map.
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You will be glad to know that I have an improved version in progress. I have been delayed by business at work and recent problems with XP-SP2. My computer tech informs me that the RT3 maps I was working on have been successfully rescued and burned onto a CD.
Note that after you play a few times, you will see many examples of how some missions and choices can be employed synergistically. For instance you are asked to earn money hauling from Aroostook, and to bring logs to New Brunswick, so you can work two missions at once; that's what the Aroostook War was about: logging.
A wee strategy note... When you have a mission to haul from somewhere, you can deliver to the same territory if you wish. Similarly, hauling to a territory can count even if it originated in the same territory.
The coal mission is one of the annual haul missions. The ledger should show how many loads were hauled this year. At year end this is automatically reset to zero. Also at year end, you will receive a series of game messages, one for each successful annual mission (5 loads, 6 possible missions). A successful coal haul makes your trains run better for a while. It is just small writing that shows up with the arrival and stock purchase messages, top left.
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As I recall, if those annual messages ZIP by you too quickly, you can get them redisplayed if you do it before going along further. You simply hit the "m" key, perhaps a few times, and VIOLA! they re-appear. I recall doing this on one scenario, I think it was Canada Bound, but I may be wrong. It would be more convenient if it appeared as you suggested in the briefing but I dunno if it can be designed that way. CB is a fun scenario and I will re play it when the new version comes out. I really liked that no two games were alike. Cheers. Stoneman.
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Version 1.1 is uploaded at H&P and Railroad Tycoon Info, and has been sent to Express World.
- Moved Boston to where it should be
- Fixed Durham event
- Moved Union Army Depot to Boston
- Fixed St. Albans raiders
- Fixed Fenian haul count and added a month to time allowed
- Full disclosure on the 6 annual haul missions
- Dialogs assigning political missions are clearly labelled
- Removed AI dole but increased U.S. passengers to normal levels
- Increased grain in Upper Canada and wool in Rupert's Land slightly
- Increased 1850s boom track to 500 pieces per year
- Added headline for Canada's birthday: that gives you a six month warning for end of scenario.
All that done in less than 11 months.
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Well I downloaded the new version and it's certainly playing better than the first - in fact my first attempt is going really well even though I hit Expert (big head ). I may even get Bronze I'm finding real difficulty in meeting the political targets - too far away, track limit etc. To get to Boston I took over a railroad I didn't want just to get their track allocation - I didn't get it although earlier when I took over other companies I did. The annoying thing about this was that although I had 500 miles I couldn't use it that year and then lost it at year end.
I couldn't carry loads of troops, weapons, ammo to Northern Canada because there is no demand there - alcohol no problem! And I cant get to Newfoundland (Island) because suspension bridges aren't available and building industries on their bit of mainland doesn't work very well.
There may be others too which I've forgotten about - but, as I said, at least it's playing now so that I can enjoy myself which I couldn't do on the first version.
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Your track does not have to be all connected. You can have separate railways on Newfoundland and around Boston if you want.
The Fenian military haul is to Upper or Lower Canada. They each will have at least 3 barracks to receive cargo and generate troops. Look at the likely invasion routes Niagara River and Riviere Richelieu; there will be one or two in each of those places.
The Fenian event still needs another fix. Players can do it themselves by editing line 316. Add the condition "test against companies" and choose human companies only. That should do it.
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Well yes that's what I did for Boston but you dont haul enough until you get to the main line. For Newfoundland it says TO N.. so I didn't think internal hauling would count - and I must have misread the Fenian one because I thought it said to Upper C - ah well, back to the beginning!!
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Well after yet another 6 hours I got Bronze on Expert - I managed 3 political points but only just scraped the mimimum 30 loads carried. One reason was I was waiting to take over the AI in the north but instead of it being a failure it proved highly profitable and it took too long so I didn't haul much fur from Robins Island (or wherever ). It would have cheaper just to pay to go in a let earlier!
There was still absolutely no demand for troops anywhere in Canada and very little for weapons although I did manage the ammo. I shall have to have a note of your previous comments on this because (of course) I'd forgotten the detail when it came to searching. Ah well
Building rail within Newfoundland worked a treat - and was very profitable as well!
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I have played it over and over since you posted it; doubt if I ever even made Silver Love the period, love the events! Who sez good history can't be fun
ps. maybe I better dl the update and see if I can finally win one
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I am not a very observant .what happened to the American fort you are supposed to deliver all the stuff to?
It doesn't seem to be where it was, and I can't find it anywhere else.
Ok, found it. Boston you say
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Version 1.2 is up at RT Info and the Terminal, and on its way to H&P and Express World. The only change was a repair to the Fenian capture event.
Thanks goes out to Wolverine for putting this all together.
Hawk
Canada Bound!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's posted at popular RT3 websites.
This scenario for advanced, patient players. The economy is tricky for the first 10 years, and there are some intricate plot lines.
Setting: British North America 1836 - 1867
There are 6 annual haul missions (HM) and 6 special political missions (PM). To win medals, all you need is enough of each.
A few hints:
1. There are 2 PM that start before 1840. You only have enough clout to complete one of them, so put all your energy into completing one or the other. After this, just build a solid railway company. The other 4 PM have deadlines in the 1860s so you have time to prepare.
2. Ten years may pass before you start completing HM but don't worry. As your company and the economy get stronger it gets easier and easier. Build enough in one area to ensure a successful annual HM then start on another one in another colony. Each time you complete a HM, related industries get a slight boost.
3. Once Reciprocation starts do your best to keep the Yanks happy. The Union and the Brits are going to have the occasional tiff especially during the civil war, but as an neighbouring entrepreneur, you understand the importance of relations with the USA. Happy Yank = Happy Wallet.
4. There are a couple of passenger missions, so you might want to keep express separate from freight. Same for military cargoes.
5. Read dialog instructions carefully, maybe even write them down. They may not be the same every time you play.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I haven't had time to play it yet, but it gets thumbs up. I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't cover whole Canada though. I still misses the RRT2 Canada Pacific map.
Seems much better than the PopTop Eastern Canada map. Here you can make a saner connection between Albany and Boston. BTW, Boston should be more to the south. Now it is placed where Gloucester is in RL.
I just tried the map. Spent the first year doing nothing, just waiting for never appearing victory conditions. You need to tell us if it is safe to start building before we have been assigned a goal. And if it is not safe, then the scenario shouldn't start before we are assigned a goal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have now played enough to get the first political goals.
As a hint to other players: The two first ones are a passenger hauling goal with a f-ing speed limit and the other involves Aroostook (I don't know the details of this goal). It looks like winning gold is very hard (at last as hard as Great Northern) on this map.
Overall I like the idea of having a lot of small subgoals counting towards the scenario victory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I too have had a couple of goes at this and got absolutely nowhere. I'll give it another try but so far I've just not seen any possibility of achieving any PM or HM. Incidentally all PM/HM (3) have come up at the same time and in the same order and the first HM was after only about 3 years and is totally impossible because it's to haul wool (? bad memory) from the state in the north where you have to pay for entry quite apart from the distances involved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wrote: I too have had a couple of goes at this and got absolutely nowhere. I'll give it another try but so far I've just not seen any possibility of achieving any PM or HM. Incidentally all PM/HM (3) have come up at the same time and in the same order and the first HM was after only about 3 years and is totally impossible because it's to haul wool (? bad memory) from the state in the north where you have to pay for entry quite apart from the distances involved.
Well, the HMs doesn't have time limits, so you don't have to worry about them at the start.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for your help and comments CN. I will wait a bit longer before bringing a new version, but here is what I plan to do:
1. Increase Upper Canada grain - it seems a tad sparse.
2. Move Boston, heh. Too far from Providence. I should have known that from Go West!
3. I will add a help choice with the greeting event.
4. I am going to change the reckoning event for Political Mission #6. There is a time delay in the way the loads are counted - only one of each kind each week. I will either push the deadline back one month, or change the way loads are counted.
I am trying to find a balance between surprise and playability. Really, the 6 annual haul missions should be stated at the beginning. Any railroader would have known what the most important cargoes were. The annual hauls are:
- fur (wool) from Rupert's Land
- wheat (grain) from Upper Canada
- anything on Newfoundland
- coal from Nova Scotia
- logs to New Brunswick
- goods from USA during Reciprocation
Nova Scotia can be a nice place to rack up points with a short line. After completing my first political mission, I would build here if there is a port to receive the coal.
The political missions - well they seem to come up when they come up. I will move the Aroostook hint to the beginning, so you have the choice, and I will try to come up with a hint on the passenger / speed mission, and suggest you only take one or the other. They require completely different rail systems. For the passenger mission, you connect as many cities as you can and wait for Jack to come along. The Aroostock mission is out in the sticks, and might even be do-able without any city connections. BTW these two missions are very demanding, so there are some events to help make sure you accomplish them, like steroid shots for your locos.
Now a few excuses:
Yeh, gold is very hard. Since you have to pick one of the first two missions, you have to complete all of the others. I nearly always fail Political Mission #6, so do no better than silver. But it is doable - I have accomplished it at least once before.
This is the time period I wanted to cover. The economy had to be suppressed or growth would have outpaced history by too much. It's more of a political history than a railway history. I have 87 events (never again!) already so I decided to leave out the railway stuff.
There is enough railway lore to make another scenario. I may make one with PNW goals, and some rail history events. Some of the events I am thinking of will be drawn from Canada Bound (RT2), and some of them are pretty funny. This one would start in the late 1840s, so players can ride a nice railroad boom. Within about a decade, BNA increased her track mileage by about two orders of magnitude.
----
Bug Warning! There is a new bug with 1.04 beta where temporary production changes to territories have multiple reversal events. So a temporary +10% production increase can end up -80% or something. I think i caught them all and changed them to game-temporary or territory-permanent, but in case I missed any, keep yer eyes peeled.
This bug may have killed some key events in Warming Trend and Of Men and Seals. I'll have to check them with 1.04b.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The HM are triggered by where you placed your track - Lower Canada. There is a relationship between the textile industry in Lower Canada, and the fur trade. If you place track in Upper Canada, you will get the grain HM, and so on. To get gold you need to complete one of the first two PM. If you complete no HM before Responsible Government, you can still achieve gold.
So after getting one PM under your belt, you just try to make a lot of money for a while, maybe lay a little track.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've just played through "Canada Bound" once and failed miserably(at medium difficulty). I find the instructions somewhat unclear but maybe that's me reading them badly. But I would suggest you re-look at the ledger details where you outline what has been achieved and what hasn't. I've always liked RT3's way of doing it: "You're in year 0 of 00 years. So far you have hauled 00 loads of whatever. You have not connected A with B with C." And so on. It's always quite clear.
Somewhere during the game I got the instruction to haul coal "from Nova Scotia" but it never said to where. I assumed New Brunswick would do so I hauled some to Moncton but it never showed up in the ledger.
I note that you want there to be "surprises" in your scenario. Surprises are good and fun but mysterious unclear goals aren't so much fun. I don't intend these comments as criticisms because you've done a ton of work, obviously. I'm hoping you can make things clearer for an old geezer such as I am because it's a great-looking map.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You will be glad to know that I have an improved version in progress. I have been delayed by business at work and recent problems with XP-SP2. My computer tech informs me that the RT3 maps I was working on have been successfully rescued and burned onto a CD.
Note that after you play a few times, you will see many examples of how some missions and choices can be employed synergistically. For instance you are asked to earn money hauling from Aroostook, and to bring logs to New Brunswick, so you can work two missions at once; that's what the Aroostook War was about: logging.
A wee strategy note... When you have a mission to haul from somewhere, you can deliver to the same territory if you wish. Similarly, hauling to a territory can count even if it originated in the same territory.
The coal mission is one of the annual haul missions. The ledger should show how many loads were hauled this year. At year end this is automatically reset to zero. Also at year end, you will receive a series of game messages, one for each successful annual mission (5 loads, 6 possible missions). A successful coal haul makes your trains run better for a while. It is just small writing that shows up with the arrival and stock purchase messages, top left.
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As I recall, if those annual messages ZIP by you too quickly, you can get them redisplayed if you do it before going along further. You simply hit the "m" key, perhaps a few times, and VIOLA! they re-appear. I recall doing this on one scenario, I think it was Canada Bound, but I may be wrong. It would be more convenient if it appeared as you suggested in the briefing but I dunno if it can be designed that way. CB is a fun scenario and I will re play it when the new version comes out. I really liked that no two games were alike. Cheers. Stoneman.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.1 is uploaded at H&P and Railroad Tycoon Info, and has been sent to Express World.
- Moved Boston to where it should be
- Fixed Durham event
- Moved Union Army Depot to Boston
- Fixed St. Albans raiders
- Fixed Fenian haul count and added a month to time allowed
- Full disclosure on the 6 annual haul missions
- Dialogs assigning political missions are clearly labelled
- Removed AI dole but increased U.S. passengers to normal levels
- Increased grain in Upper Canada and wool in Rupert's Land slightly
- Increased 1850s boom track to 500 pieces per year
- Added headline for Canada's birthday: that gives you a six month warning for end of scenario.
All that done in less than 11 months.
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Well I downloaded the new version and it's certainly playing better than the first - in fact my first attempt is going really well even though I hit Expert (big head ). I may even get Bronze I'm finding real difficulty in meeting the political targets - too far away, track limit etc. To get to Boston I took over a railroad I didn't want just to get their track allocation - I didn't get it although earlier when I took over other companies I did. The annoying thing about this was that although I had 500 miles I couldn't use it that year and then lost it at year end.
I couldn't carry loads of troops, weapons, ammo to Northern Canada because there is no demand there - alcohol no problem! And I cant get to Newfoundland (Island) because suspension bridges aren't available and building industries on their bit of mainland doesn't work very well.
There may be others too which I've forgotten about - but, as I said, at least it's playing now so that I can enjoy myself which I couldn't do on the first version.
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Your track does not have to be all connected. You can have separate railways on Newfoundland and around Boston if you want.
The Fenian military haul is to Upper or Lower Canada. They each will have at least 3 barracks to receive cargo and generate troops. Look at the likely invasion routes Niagara River and Riviere Richelieu; there will be one or two in each of those places.
The Fenian event still needs another fix. Players can do it themselves by editing line 316. Add the condition "test against companies" and choose human companies only. That should do it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well yes that's what I did for Boston but you dont haul enough until you get to the main line. For Newfoundland it says TO N.. so I didn't think internal hauling would count - and I must have misread the Fenian one because I thought it said to Upper C - ah well, back to the beginning!!
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Well after yet another 6 hours I got Bronze on Expert - I managed 3 political points but only just scraped the mimimum 30 loads carried. One reason was I was waiting to take over the AI in the north but instead of it being a failure it proved highly profitable and it took too long so I didn't haul much fur from Robins Island (or wherever ). It would have cheaper just to pay to go in a let earlier!
There was still absolutely no demand for troops anywhere in Canada and very little for weapons although I did manage the ammo. I shall have to have a note of your previous comments on this because (of course) I'd forgotten the detail when it came to searching. Ah well
Building rail within Newfoundland worked a treat - and was very profitable as well!
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I have played it over and over since you posted it; doubt if I ever even made Silver Love the period, love the events! Who sez good history can't be fun
ps. maybe I better dl the update and see if I can finally win one
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I am not a very observant .what happened to the American fort you are supposed to deliver all the stuff to?
It doesn't seem to be where it was, and I can't find it anywhere else.
Ok, found it. Boston you say
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Version 1.2 is up at RT Info and the Terminal, and on its way to H&P and Express World. The only change was a repair to the Fenian capture event.