PULPWOOD - BETA VERSION 1.05V

[OilCan]

PULPWOOD - BETA 1.05V
(I have been dilly-dallying around with this game for several years. I’m sending it out as a BETA before I submit it to the map archive. And yes, dilly-dally is a technical word, used mostly by indecisive game makers.)

Fictitious country of West Camonia.
Start 1935. 30 Years. 1 nuisance AI + 2 optional AI.

Pulpwood is the key commodity throughout the entire game.

The player starts with an easy requirement of the traditional conversion from pulpwood to paper near to the haul destination, the Port of Colossus.
It gets a little harder and a longer haul when pulpwood must be converted to oil and then to diesel.
It gets even harder and a much further haul when pulpwood must be converted to rubber, then to tires, AND a steel industry must be started in order to produce automobiles.

Goals (GOLD, no other medals offered):
<1> Haul 500 loads of paper to the port of Colossus
<2> Haul 350 loads of diesel to the port
<3> Haul 200 loads of autos to the port
<4> Achieve a $300M company book value
<5> End with zero company debt
(Option to add PNW goal with more than one AI selected to play.)

Any comments or suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Pulpwood_BETA1.zip

Pulpwood - Beta1

(2.97 MiB) Downloaded 261 times

[RulerofRails]

Played it. Nice map. No problems to report.

Story of my play:
When strategizing for my start I didn't check out the ports properly. So I started with a focus on hauling Livestock to Glynn City and later Pell City. This was profitable, $2M first year, and $8M in the second as I expanded towards the southern forests. Obviously, I was foregoing industry to get the better ROI that I found in rails using the trusty Zephyr. Building up the Paper industry came later. In fact, I only built 2 new Paper Mills in the early game, the reasoning being that it would require less effort to divert Pulpwood to produce the other cargoes. This worked, but I stopped diverting too late, shipping 375 loads of Autos before I hit 500 loads of Paper. Also, I was too aggressive in going after pure profit at the start, CBV ended up at $520M and PNW at $425M (Boom) middle of 1955 when the last load of Paper came in.

Trivia:
It can be interesting to try to keep the Oil Refinery over-producing. It seems that Oil price doesn't need to fall too much to unlock this extra capacity. At least compared to the level of price needed for most other industries (typically red prices needed). When you build (this game it's the idle one) the refinery this seems to happen more often than not when there is good supply. If you can keep supplying enough to keep maybe 10 loads available, it can persist for a good while. However, once supply is not enough to keep at max production it seems to fall back into normal mode. I feel that the price must drop lower for a re-engage than to maintain the over-production. But this is just a theory. In this game, I failed to keep a constant stream of Pulpwood flowing North in the mid-game. I built a second refinery in 1951 as Diesel exports were lagging. A large stack of Oil (45 loads) had built up without a re-engage.

[Hawk]

I fired this map up to play and a couple of things jumped out at me.

In the description it says:

Turn pulpwood in palaces, wood fiber into fortune. resin onto riches: build a railroad empire from nothing more than pulp

Did you mean that to say "from nothing more than pulpwood"?

Shouldn't you also include this

1 nuisance AI + 2 optional AI.(Option to add PNW goal with more than one AI)

in that description so folks will know about adding more AI's at the beginning?

[OilCan]

Thanks for the comments.

I am not surprised, RoR, that you aced the game. Your ability to dissect and dominate a game are unequaled.

Hawk, you are correct...it should say pulpwood, to keep the meaning clear. I work in the wood products sector and we just say 'pulp', never pulpwood. It slipped in unnoticed.

And you are correct again (twice in the same day?) that the AI info should be in the description. I'll add that in.

[Hawk]

And you are correct again (twice in the same day?)

That doesn't happen very often.

[Hawk]

In Jan. 1939 I got this message.

But, as you can see, all I'm using is electric.

I looked in the editor and the condition for that event looks right, so I'm not sure what's happening.

Electric3.jpg (7.48 KiB) Viewed 13885 times

Not that big of a deal, really. Just thought I'd point it out.

[Hawk]

I keep seeing in the train manifest that paper, diesel, and autos cannot be hauled profitably. Kind'a makes this scenario a little harder, and would probably be a bit easier in 1.06.

That said, maybe you should mention in the text file, or somewhere, that this map is really intended for 1.05 as playing it in 1.06 may take all the fun and challenge out of it.

I'm playing in 1.05 at medium difficulty and not doing so good. I'd probably do better in 1.06, but that would take away from the spirit of the scenario.

I do own a good bit of AI stock but decided to just let them run. They are making me and my company a bit of money by running on my track and making a bit of profit and I really see no reason to buy them out.

[Hawk]

Well, I lost, but I know why. I neglected to build a second oil refinery.

Great scenario. I enjoyed it enough to play it again.

I really didn't see any problems.

[RulerofRails]

I'm sure Oilcan will realize it straight away, but the test "# of comp. electric track pieces" doesn't work in 1.05. Game-wide electric pieces works. An easy fix. I missed this niggle because I was still playing with Diesels at that point. BTW, the engine discounts make the switch to Electric engines strategic.

Hawk, turns out that you were closer to the goal than you thought. Here's some ideas on "more natural" (no switch-and-bait forcing or building/re-locating industries outside the cities) strategies I tend to use often for 1.05 hauls. You might be doing all this stuff already, or some elements may not fit with your play-style. That's A-ok.

Here's my routing in about a similar time as I play without any stations in the countryside (obviously my game had progressed further at this point). The odd-looking sections are from the AI. I selected 3 players, and between them they started 8 companies, all with rail laid.

I try to control what cargoes are allowed to LEAVE the specific towns that are producing the cargoes I need to haul. Because there is no dedicated option to forbid a train from hauling a particular cargo type, I use custom consists with consist makeup involving any cargoes other than the one I want to control instead. This sacrifices some profit, no problem though in this case. Generally, the ones to load on the train are any cargoes that are locally produced in sufficient quantity, for example a healthy Brewery would mean that a train could be given the opportunity (in 1.05, must be profitable at the time of loading) to load 2-3 cars of Alcohol.

An obvious takeaway from this idea is that when building rail connections it's far less useful to have those that you will want to restrict to make the hauls. For example in my play I didn't bother for a connection between Rankin and Old Marsh. Just from your routing map, it appears your doing this right.

My other suggestion for you based on your network picture is to connect to the coastal towns sooner. I notice you have plenty of money, but I guess you probably ended up connecting these cities later in the game? This is not for the purpose to re-haul some cargo for a double count. A little of that may happen, but the main purpose is to stabilize the price at Colossus by providing frequent service to surrounding cities especially so that we minimize the geographic isolation that the mountain range toward the northeast has in blocking demands from the river valley in the middle of the map.

[Hawk]

I don't normally play electric, but on this map it seemed a good choice to use the E18.

Yea, I should have connected more towns to Colossus to haul some of that demanded freight away to keep the demand higher. I probably could have got Gold sooner like that. I did place 2 large stations in Colossus.

I think my biggest bust was, as I mentioned, not building a second oil refinery. If I had done that I could have made that goal, no problem. I had more than enough oil over there.

I think I'm going to try this map again. I enjoyed it.

[Hawk]

I got Gold this time, although paper was the biggest problem, whereas last play paper was a lot easier.

I have no doubt I would win Gold in this one on any difficulty level higher than medium.
It was a fun scenario to play though. So much so that I'll probably play it again, but I might wait to see the final version, if OC decides to make any changes.

The AI in this play did lousy. It was finally liquidated after about 22 years.
I sold all stock in it when it's price dropped to $10. It just didn't want to seem to expand.

[Cash on Wheels]

If you do the price island changes there should not be much of difference between 1.05 & 1.06.(Its an old map I know)

Good: This is not a HUGE map! these 7777 x 8888 maps everyone likes to put out can be over bearing to me. Save the big maps
for the Continents!

Opinions: My game was over after the second loan. More is not always better! Now if the loan options were like $6M ; 11% Interest. $4 million 10% int; $2 million 8% int. Now I have a choice to make. Or get rid of loans altogether. The port$ reward. Too much free money. Not to mention a pain to write. Plus the Global Building density is 100%, That high makes it seem like a farm is on every corner. If you go this route. It does not hurt to bring down the port & CBV requirements.

I know it a beta but are there any other events/setbacks in this game

[RayofSunshine]

Well,
With the explanation of this being a 1.05 scenario, that I wasn't able to do much in the 1.06, of which I only have that option. However, I enjoyed its challenges, and thought that it is a well created scenario.

[Sugus]

Strange behaviour - can not load this map! It's Pulpwood.gmp beta, dated 10/6/16, size 9051451.

I can not see the map in the list of maps when selecting a scenario to play. Interestingly, I can see it by means of the editor; but when I force to load it into the editor, RT3 crashes without any comment. Thereafter there is a Pulpwood_A.tga file in the Maps directory!?

(I'm playing with the German version of RT3, patched to 1.05, unsing Win10, and never had a Problem like that.)

[RulerofRails]

I just re-downloaded the map from the OP. Displays and loads just fine for me. Used a clean 1.05 install (as from GoG). Maybe your file got corrupted during download?

PS. The tga file is seen often when a map fails to load. That is the map paint job, which is the last section of the gmp file (basically appended in image form).

[Sugus]

The Problem arises as soon as I rename "Pulpwood_BETA1.gmp" into "Pulpwood.gmp"! Just reloaded the map from OP without any renaming and it worked as expected.

I have never seen the described effect before. You can try to rename e.g. "Tazara.gmp" into "TazaraXXX.gmp" and there is no problem.

Finally loaded "Pulpwood_BETA1.gmp" into the editor and immediately saved it as "Pulpwood.gmp". And what happened now? The same strange behaviour! Not shown at all in the scenario selection list as well as available for editing, but RT3 crashing when trying to do so.

Additionally I renamed it to "PulpwoodXX.gmp" --> works!
No idea what kind of magic is operating here.

[RulerofRails]

Renaming it like that gives it the same name as one of the cargoes: Pulpwood. Maybe, the game's internal referencing is looking for a "pulpwood" file for the game and gets confused when the map has the same name. It wouldn't suprise me if you can't load maps named for other cargoes either.

[Sugus]

That must it be - great hint!

[Gumboots]

Does it work now?

[Sugus]

Of course, whenever you don't name the map "Pulpwood.gmp" it works.