American Empire

[low_grade]

Took on the ridiculous challenge of American Empire - to hold $1B cash with no time limit. Not sure if I would recommend attempting this as it certainly tries both your patience and system resources!

Played 62 years, built I don't know how many but hundreds of stations. This map is so resource dense there's hardly a corner that doesn't have hauling potential, so anywhere I found 2 or more houses I plopped down a station, figuring it couldn't hurt passenger revenue at the very least. I even built rings around 5 star cities and put 4 large stations at the corners and ran trains profitably around them. At last count, I'm running 752 locos.... For the past 20-30 years I've been just letting it run while I'm asleep and pausing to change things only in the morning, because progress is achingly slow. Normally 8 hours of running (on any speed, doesn't matter) advances me 6 or 7 months if nothing pops up. I've kept the game running in the background without turning my computer off for weeks now, because it takes the game at least 4 hours to load.

GG1's are awesome, Zephyrs break down a lot but are my passenger trains of choice, fast and cheap. My salary is up over $300k, revenue at $350M, paying myself $130M in dividends per year the last couple years. Haven't quite gotten the $1B cash yet, but it's certain in a couple more years, and I've delivered the 1000 autos and weapons and connected everything. I even built suspension bridges to connect Cleveland to London and Milwaukee to Holland! I'm pretty sure I could just sell all my industries to get company cash and sell my stock/buy back the stock to get the $1B now, but don't have the energy left to make that effort...

Anyways, thought some here might be amused to hear the absurd story of what it's like to play this map to its conclusion. Also curious if it's just my wimpy laptop or if anybody running 400+ trains would experience similar gameplay and load time slowdowns.

[Gumboots]

That sounds totally mental. I'm not sure I'll ever attempt that one.

I suspect you may be hitting the limits of the game engine with that degree of complexity.

[low_grade]

Mental indeed! An unexpected fringe benefit, I read a novel for the first time in a long while as I ran out of housework and crossword puzzles while waiting for the game to progress (while I was still attempting to monitor individual locos, most are on regular routes, but 5% were on manual routing chasing huge price differentials or hauling particular resources where needed most.)

[Shamough]

Are you using an 8 or 20 row abacus?

Look at your resourses. How much total RAM? How much free RAM? How large is your virtual memory? Are you paging the game in and out of your virtual memory? (HD)

Here's a thought ... someone is offering a cloud service that allows users to use someone elses far superior computer to run their apps on.

Have fun.

Shamough/Hans

[RulerofRails]

Wow! That's an insane game you were playing! I am consistently impressed by your patience to micro-manage even when playing a long-time frame map. My PC generally hits a brick wall in terms of performance around 330 locos. I discovered while playing AOE IV - Blue Streak that if I used an unconnected network (2 unconnected stations in a city to make a gap in the network, for example North and East traffic will leave from the first station and South and West from the second, naturally occurring through-traffic must then be set down in one and then picked up in another, this will limit some long-distance haulage options but it does seems to work well for passengers). I could go up to at least 400 without hitting the brick wall. At this point I am thinking that the slow-up I am seeing is something to do with train routing, but I cannot be sure. Maybe your PC is getting tangled up with the same thing?

I have never tried this one, just from the briefing deciding it was one of those that suffers from the large-numbers are cool thing. Also I don't view this as being a particularly good long-term map because of the high-seeding/insane growth rate which makes for some difficulties obtaining long-term high ROI industry. I did take a look now and it seems there are some interesting events to stop robber baron play, but not much else in that line. Of course there is some strategy as far as how to get the 1 Bln personal cash, so that may get me to play it after all.

It's all about ROI again. Stable 20%+ seems to always be a good idea, but can you find enough to make a large company? Some compromise is probably necessary, but not to the point of buying full-priced industry as an investment. Theoretically, (assuming the 20%+ ROI opportunities have dried up), at what profit level should the switch be made to paying out most of company profits as dividends? I am going to say around 60 million company profit. After that it will take around 17 years (allowing a little help from interest and one year to turn the dividends up since cash will likely be low) to fatten your personal account using dividends. Expanding to 70 million would save 2 years, 80 would save a further 2 years, etc. but can you grow your company from 60 million profit to 70 million profit in 2? from 60 to 80 million in 4? It's possible, but most players would probably benefit from aiming for the lower target. The key is that this profit needs to be consistent over that time-frame so in a real game you may have to hit a higher initial rate due to rising interest and in higher economic states (+10 million or so), hopefully this will also give a couple of million to spend on new farms and other best quality investments as they become available that will help to keep profits stable overall and maybe even grow a little.

[Gumboots]

That's an interesting observation about separating routes into two main sections to improve game performance. Have you found that to give repeatable improvements via testing in multiple games?

I can sort of see how it might work, if the game is constantly trying to calculate priority traffic for every train that is sharing the same connected network. Even if they will never cross paths, it could be that the game engine wants to know where they all are all the time and is constantly calculating the entire routes just in case of route changes. This would, in a way, be sub-optimal coding*, but if it is the case it could explain why separating networks could be beneficial when trains numbers escalate to very high levels.

*Meaning it would make more sense to cache routes, and only recalculate when a route was changed.

[RulerofRails]

First, I don't in any way say this is a proven thing, I only did it once. Second, I thought carefully and my network is actually ALL connected in a much more convoluted fashion than normal, in a sort of zig-zag fashion. So SORRY for jumping to a conclusion.

I am currently playing this map (American Empire) and will try to have 4 sections to get a better idea if connection does make a difference. What I did in AOE - Blue Streak was more in sandbox mode (thanks to the build-able warehouses), so this play will give something of a better idea of whether it works in a practical way in a more average large game. BTW, a screenshot showing a small mini-map of that play.

[low_grade]

I'm pretty sure it does have a lot to do with calculating routes. I gave up trying to bulldoze any track sections or stations after about 400 locos when it would take the computer about 20 minutes to decide what impact this would have on all trains.

And you're right about industry. At one point I was selling off a lot of the distilleries/breweries and paper mills I'd built because they'd become unprofitable. I later regretted this when I noticed over the long run they did in fact turn a profit on average greater than 10% of what I got from the sales... And, I'm sure I could have gotten the $1B a LOT sooner except I spent probably $500M over the years buying up 10% return industries trying to increase profit and my stock portfolio when I probably would have been better off paying out dividends. Maybe $1B in 40 years is possible?

[Gumboots]

It's things like this that make me wonder how critical low-poly models for trains really are. All the default and custom locos have varying poly counts, but I've never heard of anyone deliberately selecting the lower-poly ones for better game engine performance. I have a suspicion it would make little or no difference. I think the biggest performance bottlenecks are likely to be elsewhere in the coding. I know Thietavu liked using WP&P's custom Mallets on his huge China map, and those things have 800 polys on the lowest level of detail (because they only have one level of detail: the highest).

Incidentally, if anyone does want to do a performance test in a huge map with the lowest poly models deliberately selected, and compare it with the same map with the highest poly models running, I'd be happy to give a list of the poly counts for any models you want to test.

[RulerofRails]

Maybe $1B in 40 years is possible?

That's the number I was aiming for, but I am not confident to get it on this play. I was trying to put the theory into practice of more shorter term (still ok in the long term) profit until all bonds are taken out and then transition to the better long-term ones. The problem is that all the new revenue coming from finance (bonds) means that overhead was rising rapidly right when revenue growth slowed. I should have done the transition a couple of years later. But who knows, maybe I will still make it. (Currently at 24M profit in year 16).

Incidentally, if anyone does want to do a performance test in a huge map with the lowest poly models . . .

This shouldn't be hard to do if "replace all locos" would count. Anyone with a large map saved can go and try switching between models and then try to play the game and see if there is a noticeable difference in frame rate, freezing etc. Maybe you could start a new thread with those numbers, then those who have time can post how it affects their PC?

[Gumboots]

TBH I'm not sure anyone will actually test it, so on second thought am not that keen on listing poly counts for every default and custom loco in the game (especially since I never look at diesel and electric ones).

However, if someone actually does want to test it I did think of an even easier (for the tester) way of doing it, and that should give more dramatic results. All that would be required is to make a replacement _body.3dp for the loco in question. This would be coded like a basic bogie, with only 2 polys. Basically it'd be a profile/billboard shot of the loco with no thickness, and with only one level of detail.

This is simple to code, and could be named to suit (for any loco) and dropped in UserExtraContent as a loose file for testing. Doing it this way means no tedious replacing of hundreds of locos with a computer that is already crawling at a snail's pace. The "loco replacement" for the entire roster could be done in ten seconds.

[RulerofRails]

Well, it took 42 years. Tried not to over-do the economy. Got all the Weapons hauled but was 150 short on Autos. My setup wasn't the best so my Weapon's Plants were consuming all the Tires even though they had wood available as well. I just wanted to finish at this stage so couldn't be bothered trying to fight the tycoonatrons over the rubber or make some special routes. A second attempt should easily get 40 years. I was unable to lock and hold 60M dividends per year. Because I was running at the edge of oversupply of some of the cargoes such as Alcohol, when the economy swung from Boom to Depression my industries only made just over half their former profit since so much of the map became orange and glutted, so I had to cut the rate until the economy picked up again. I flubbed a few things and dividing the line into sections wasn't necessary as I only bought 230 trains. I went electric because I couldn't wait the extra 5 years for the Atlantic which is the first 20th century steamer available here. I must say that 700 trains and 130M is really over-clocking this map!

PS. My saved game isn't large enough for testing performance. I am also fairly sure that the loco models are not the limiting factor in large games, so maybe it's not worth bothering with then?

[RulerofRails]

Been playing with the start on this one. Last time I played with a classic expert-style industry start by buying a Brewery in St Louis (1st yr 400k profit). It took me 10 years to break free past 5M profit. Well, I discovered similar to what Gumboots did on the "Across the Blue Mountains" scenario, that there are only two types of seeds I have seen in 10+ starts, and one of them (not the one I played first) has a great little starting pocket for an initial Saginaw-Lansing-Detroit line possible using three large stations with careful track-laying, issuing stock, not building service, and buying 3 4-4-0 Americans. Saginaw has 4 Milk farms around it nice and close as well as a Meat Packer and Textile Mill, Lansing has a nicely supplied Brewery and Detroit should have at least some Coal as well as being a good market for everything else. By using the initial profits from train arrivals it's possible to connect to Toledo, building a nice large station that gives a good cover of the functioning Steel Mill (a cell on the far sides). Then buy some new trains/re-route the others in the station to take all profitable (15k+ per load) cargo there. This should give a first year profit of 1M to 1.3 or so. This is excellent after-costs ROI (60%+), industry can hold nothing to it!

In the second year I took out max new bonds (2M more) and built a Lumber Mill in the boonies amongst some Logging Camps near Minneapolis. I used the rest of the money to advance my line to Lima. Now all profitable cargo was routed there. I built a medium station next to the Cattle Ranch beside my line between Toledo and Lima. Some trains returning north carried Livestock and Corn for the Dairies up to Saginaw. The Steel from Toledo can become a strong cash cow and before it migrated out of Lima towards Indianapolis I extended my line there which I funded by an issue stock round. Obviously, I directed all profitable cargo there. This also gave a reasonable second year after-costs ROI (34% of assets at year end).

In the third year I could get hold of 4M more worth of bonds at the start of the year. I used this to build a Brewery in Mason City and another Lumber Mill amongst the camps right up in the top left corner of the map. I kept on using the micro-managing type of traffic management, but began to add Service Towers which slowed traffic down, but it was no longer worthwhile to replace trains. Once prices of cargo such as Milk dropped at the latest railhead in Indianapolis I decided to shot a line east to Cleveland to give a new market and to pick up on some available passenger traffic and a little Steel that was sitting at the struggling Munitions Factory there. Throughout the year more bonds came available as book value passed target values to lift credit rating. I built a Textile Mill next to a Cotton Farm outside Rochester. In October I decided that with 22 loads of Steel sitting in Indianapolis with more on the way and a 38k price differential to Mount Vernon I would make the connection. A shiny new Duke and no service on the line gave me one delivery just before year end. More trains are following slower that have enough initial revenue to pay for this connection. Now ROI after-costs is down to 25% and because of the fast growth overhead is coming up a storm and as I transition out of managing every detail, I am going to have to be very careful in order to keep profit growing year on year as my industry profits will also drop as resource prices rise. So a flat-line for a year or two and then profit, here we come. But this is a good example of how to launch a game using some micro-management but only in the early critical stages. Last play I flat-lined at 5M years 7-10, this time I hope to pass this point just after year 5.

American Empire start.jpg (90.17 KiB) Viewed 8939 times

This whole play the economy was stable in Normal state. If the economy ticks up to Prosperity or Boom Times on these years better results would be possible as all bonds may already be available (conversely, hopefully an uptick soon will prevent me from flat-lining too bad). It seems to me that loading a saved game messes with the economic state progression and makes it more likely to change. I plan to keep this play running in the background on pause until I have time to finish it. Playing aggressively, I made the decision to forgo service and just replace engines that ran out water in the first two years. Maybe that's a big no-no for some, but water stops take so long and when I have a train bearing 300k I don't want it to stop especially since the Americans have Poor acceleration. The first play I never built an industry outside a city or made a station away from a city in the countryside (a personal preference in normal play). I can see advantages to starting new companies on this one from an investment perspective but will leave that for others and keep my focus on one. I have been really, really conservative with which new industries I buy, needing a pretty sure 30% ROI for any newly seeded farms I buy. The seedings are so uniform that in the one I am playing the same Dairy down in the lower left corner near Charlotte is the first industry in the map's "list" making it easy to set a camera up on it right from the start to find those newly-seeded treasures with a Pg Dwn or several. There are lots of new farms here, but even with not much randomness, overall the seeding is better than the base map (Mississippi Valley) in terms of dud-competing industries making it more enjoyable to play.

[Gumboots]

Sounds interesting. I have used the trick of replacing locos rather than servicing them, but usually only on long runs with high value cargo. It hadn't occurred to me to use it in the early stages to speed up turnaround times, but with the early locos being so cheap I can see the sense of it, depending on the scenario setup.

[RulerofRails]

Finally finished this play. I reached 1Bln after 36 years and 8 months (needed two months worth of interest to get right to 1Bln). The economy never went below normal throughout. I never bought established industry for the 8-12% ROI I would get. Did a pretty good job of scooping new farms. Mid-game I spent some good money on buying up the more precious resources to prevent them from disappearing mainly Iron Mines and Logging Camps. In the long run this probably paid off. In the end a 460M book value company was giving me a solid 60M profit and up to 75M in Boom times. I had minor misses with my margin buy-in, which when I went to merge the final AI was -38M, and that final merger was ill-timed, I paid 10M too much, should have done it a little sooner.

After the last screenshot, I decided to merge with all three poorly performing AI as their chairmen's net worth was low enough to prevent them from starting a new company immediately. I could do this by buying 5,000 or so shares and the other investors were unhappy enough to vote for me. I then had an easy connection to St Louis and developed some lines in the north-western area of the map. I was making the most of initial haulage revenues and stopping some trains to wait for new price differentials or the next expansion, but phased this out completely by year 10. When expanding my rail network I aimed for the largest cities this time for the initial network. After a peek in the editor I realized that it is much easier to grow these than the small ones that might otherwise seem to give a better layout for demand balance. I aimed to get the Steel industry going quickly and linked 3 mills in Toledo, Columbus and Chicago together and using Oilcan's trick of transferring Coal and Iron between the various mills got them running upgraded throughout the rest of the game (late game, built another, plus bought 3 new ones that were profitable). In hindsight there may have been a case for pushing rail expansion for a little bit longer before settling focus on industries. In a long game like this I like to keep industries clean, sometimes this means waiting a little longer for start-up of a new industry. When investing bonds I built a couple of industries in the countryside, but thereafter everything was in the cities.

Got the 1,000 loads of Weapons hauled more comfortably this time, but my first supply port appeared in 1905. Didn't bother as without some hauling cheats I could have never made 1,000 in 10 years from that. I decided to put a limit of 300 locos on this so that I could avoid any potential unplayable freezing. In 1915, I failed to notice that my oldest bonds had expired, and contrary to what somebody said there is no message to inform you. This meant that there wasn't quite enough cash to maintain dividends at 73M per year. I was making around 65M per year, but was hoping to hang onto the higher rate until the end. Doesn't make much difference though as I wouldn't have saved a dividend payment. Was using the 2-D-2 again. Using Atlantics instead would hurt profits, I estimate around 10M a year.

American Empire 1Bn.jpg (108.84 KiB) Viewed 8843 times

[thietavu]

Finally something as crazy (in a positive way!) as my own "Great China" scenario for TrainMaster! :) It can easily reach 800 trains (and kill your computer...). And winning it can take some serious amount of time! ;) But I made it mainly for myself, and I don't ever seem to get bored with it. Every game is a totally different adventure. :) So, I'll definitely need to try this American Empire, too! :)