Hi Oilcan,
Good to see you round these parts again. And great to have another nice map to play!
Not sure what you kept up with, so apologies if this is old news for you.
RNG is broken (easy workaround).
Maybe 1.5-2 years ago I worked out that the RNG for seeding doesn't work if you just start up the game and load a map. But if you load one map/saved game then retreat to main menu and THEN start a new map the RNG will give you a properly random seed.
I spent quite some hours and did 100's of loads to try to confirm this.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4100 This was with 1.05 patch. Maybe in an earlier version things were different, that may explain the report you mentioned on page 6 of your handbook:
"One player has identified what may be a glitch in the game program. After starting a game map, immediately go back and start the same map again. You may get more cargo and a better mix of industry on the map. It seems that each time you restart the same map before saving the game you get more cargo on the map."
Do you remember the source? Doesn't matter if you don't but I'm pretty confident it wasn't with patch 1.05.
Not sure if this map is here for testing? Anyway, I ran it 3 times, siding with each family and have a little report. Nothing major.
Cargo price increases.
I'm not keen on the increases to cargo price. Those are bugged. The calculation of price at stations fails. When the game is trying to give a "soft" price increase because a train recently visted that station bound for an area of higher demand, the calculation goes wrong and goes almost as high as, if not higher than the maximum price on the map.
Please note that I didn't see outbreaks where price took off into the stratosphere (no $3,000 loads). Livestock was the main cargo affected, and this is because volume is coming into play.
It wasn't unplayable, but I found myself having to micro more than I wanted to tweak things to keep Livestock flowing, swap pickup sites etc.. (I only
built one station per city and none in the countryside). But I'm supposing you tested this a lot? Maybe I should just accept it as giving "character" to the map. In any case I'm sure it would breakout madly if played in 1.06.
Other notes.
The events to adjust Acceleration doesn't work. The display changes, but behavior stays the same. That bonus is worthless for the player.
At the end of year the Boese haulage figures are still shown after all quotas are reached.
The sell track message 3x a year is too repetitive in the late game. I see no reason to sell track then? I would suggest to disable it after 10 years have elapsed.
I see it suggested that you buy the mines/farms etc. that are seeded. Those are likely to drop off the map otherwise. Maybe the Aluminum Mill in Johannasberg can be manually placed so that it doesn't disappear after you haul a few loads there (yes I was playing without buying/building industries).
Spelling/Grammar:
Salisbury to Beit Bridge connection:
from Salisbury to Beit Bridge
from via Bulawayo
Limpopo river flood:
races out *(of) its banks
Special European coaches:
allow you to raise passenger fare(s)* by 25%
Newspaper NATO:
"Port
ugual joins NATO"
Sell track event
sell some of these as sc(r)*ap metal
Zambezi river flood
Mightl*y river
Tanganyika region name in north.
Is Tanginyka an alternate/archaic spelling? I don't know majority of these places but did know this name.
The name change happened when Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged into one country.
