Iraq

[TheBonobo4]

I couldn't find a thread on this one, so I'm making one, if one already exists, let me know.

Any way, this is the map in the archives called "Iraq" by Louis (Louie) Schanus. It starts in 2004. I have just finished it now, a fun map. Not too challenging although I did have to sit around for a few years to get $18.5M to get to Iran. I think that's the most expensive territory purchase I've ever seen!

I just used Diesels, no point going Electric, as the DD080 is amazing, and I have a Canadian variant of the Genesis that is more expensive but better, so I used those 3 locomotives exclusively. I also went for the cheaper locomotives at the start. I started in Kuwait, then connected the neighbouring cities, then took out some loans and kept expanding. Quite a slow start, but once I got to Baghdad things picked up. I then bought into Saudi Arabia (for only $500K it is a bargain), and connected Kuwait down to King Khalid and Bar'a, and then North back up to Baghdad. I then went up to Mosul from Baghdad, and Manama in Bahrain (it costs only $100K for access, but because it is on an island on the end of the map, actual track, loco, station, and bridge costs ended up being around $2M, but it counts for the 30 needed cities and gave good profits). Never bought into Syria or Qatar.

But here comes the big problem I had. After I bought access to Iran, around 2033, I had around $40M CBV, around 5 or 6 years left for Gold, and 29 cities connected. All I needed to do was get to Tehran for Gold. I connected up a city in Iraq close to Kuwait, and then after the year ended I was awarded with a Bronze. WHY?

Looking at the editor, everything *seems* okay to me, but then I'm not familiar with event triggers. It should be (for reference):

Bronze: Connect any 30 cities in less than 40 years
Silver: Connect 30 cities, CBV $20M, and connect Baghdad to Tehran, in less than 40 years
Gold: Connect 30 cities, CBV $30M, and connect Baghdad to Tehran, in less than 35 years.

I never did get to Tehran. Looking at the terrain, I'm not sure if I would have been able to get enough money to do so. A tunnel would be easier, but would be very expensive. I couldn't find the least steep path, so have no idea where it would have been, or how much it would have cost.

[RulerofRails]

In the readme, it says that Louie only spent 12 hours making this map. In light of that, it plays much better than I expected. It's not a "work of art," but it's still a good time. I played without bonds or industries. On my run, the events seemed "fine." However, this was just coincidence.

There aren't many events, but they need some fixes. Bronze and Silver need to check at Year 40, = instead of <=
At the moment, as soon as you have 30 cities connected, the Bronze medal will fire at the end of the year. This is what happened to you.
Silver could be checked starting in year 36.

The setup event "Constants" is applying to players when it should be gamewide. Two of the effects are dead ones. I generally don't like price increase effects because of outbreaks. Also, -80% on the price of Diesel is far too much for any useful production to occur. The price of Oil would also need to drop, however with such a steep drop we can easily anticipate collection problems.

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When going in the mountains, the key is to look for the smoothest passes, with connecting valleys. In this game if the mountainside is smooth you can climb it at reasonable grade by building diagonally. You could climb Everest if the mountainside was done smoothly.

There are a couple options I saw. Here's a screenshot of the one I chose. No section has a sustained gradient above 6%. Cost: about $5M in boom times.

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Tip: Territory access fees don't count towards book value. My strategy was to reach 25-30M book value then start saving for access. While this is best practice, it also means that the Iran connection is an end of game/burn-track exercise.

[TheBonobo4]

I'm constantly amazed by what is possible with track building in this game, your track route (or any well made winding mountain pass with low gradients) is a work of art!

Yeah, I felt that buying into Iran and building to Tehran is essentially the last thing you do. Interesting point about CBV, I feel I probably already knew this, but since Iran costs so much to get into, and cash counts towards CBV, you'll need to make sure CBV is already high when buying into Iran, since it is essentially a big loss of $18.5M to CBV.

Regarding events, would it be possible for you to fix them and reupload the map? I would do it myself but I'd not know what to do and would probably mess something up.

As a side note, I played with the maximum number of AI (3 I think). Only one made a company, but never built any track. So it's interesting to see some AI owned track in your screenshot.

[RulerofRails]

Ok, I here's a fixed version. From the readme:

-- edit by RoR in Feb 2021

Change notes:
Medals will fire at correct times and in correct sequence now. Bronze and Silver could fire too early previously.
Adjusted the effect for Diesel fuel cost, this is bugged in the game, substituted -25% diesel engine maintenance.
The starting bonus effects have been tweaked for more balanced choices
The event that sets up pricing has been activated. Had wrong application to player instead of game.
Tweaks to Diesel price drop, -35% instead of -80% to prevent Oil Refineries from going bankrupt/sitting almost idle.
Oil price down -25%, Plastic down 10%.
Added a supply of Tires so Weapons can be made. +1 per year at Auto ports.
All pre-placed ports and industries replaced so they now have a 2001 date so that you can't buy them cheaply at game start, and the industry report displays normally.
Some effort was made to fix the area near Mosul so that the river didn't run up and over the hill there. Not professional, but it looked so bad before. Part of Tigris in Turkey was removed instead of extreme sculpting to make the flow appear reasonable.
General spelling of text checked/corrected. I don't know the place names in this area. But Teheran was an obvious one I fixed.

[TheBonobo4]

Thank you for your fixes, I'll definitely have to retry this one at some point!

[Gumboots]

If it plays well with those fixes I'll replace the existing zip in the archives.

[RulerofRails]

It's a fairly simple map, let's say not "finely tuned." There are only 9 events, including medals and loss events.

Activating incorrectly setup events will change the gameplay a little. If I over-think these things, I make no progress. Because the medals are simple there should be a lot of room here. Normally I don't like events that increase price of specific cargoes, because they are known to be bugged. However, I realized that on low volume cargoes outbreaks are far reduced in frequency, so I went with them here. Also, all cargoes affected are end products. The practical problem with price outbreaks is that eventually the new outbreaks will attract resources off the resource stacks of properly supplied industries. That wont be a problem here. Lastly, this is/was a war zone. If somehow the player does manage to get a high volume of Weapons, Ammo, or Autos and cause outbreaks, the rapid transit around the map will not be unlike what you would see in an actual conflict. Think of it as hotspots of guerilla activity.

Other than that, I tried to fix obvious things that to me improve the feel of the map a little. Whether it plays well or not, you will have to try it and see..... Unfortunately there are no steamers here for you.

[TheBonobo4]

Unfortunately there are no steamers here for you.

Is the Red Devil not available? I can't remember, but in any case I just used the 3 Diesels I mentioned earlier. Apart from if I ran a train in Iran on steep terrain, ideally I'd only use DD080 locomotives, since from memory it is not good on hills.

[RulerofRails]

You are right, the Red Devil is available. Actually, the tags ALL NA and ALL WORLD are used. In keeping with the "simple" setup we find elsewhere on the map. So it will depend entirely on what engines you have installed.

IMO, as long as you don't make "super" engine tunes, I would consider to play this with the engines of your choosing. By default this uses the E-088 with Instant acceleration, so even some optimstic tunes, as long as you don't make their cost dirt cheap, wont be "excessive" compared to the E-088 fantasy. IMO, the DD 080-X is also a "fantasy" engine, although at less advantage than the E-088, the DD 080-X has a relatively high fuel bill (the coding to change that is broken, as I said previously).

Because there is a book value component and medium-term saving period before buying into Iran, electric track can be worthwhile here. The saving on diesel engine maintenance (in my fixed version, I substituted it for the broken fuel cost effect) will extend their service life. However, the limitation with the E-088 is reliability, even with caboose, they will typically crash before replacement age. Engine maintenance would do little to help them.

Even if I were to use the E-088, on a no bonds/no industry run, it's still a bit harder to justify the large upfront cost of electric track and these expensive engines. Your start will be comparatively slow. Is there enough late game to catch up? idk. Also engine crashes are lost CBV. I used default stats/cars, all USA 103s, except for two NA-90Ds I bought in the final year for the trip through the mountains into Iran.

[Gumboots]

Haven't played it yet, but took a quick look in the editor. All seems reasonable and looks decent. The "Constants" event includes an increase in the price of Troops, which will have no effect due to express prices being locked in the .exe, so that could be removed. Won't adversely affect things if it stays though.

If I was going to play it I'd probably make some fun and useful steamers available for the relevant timeframe. The QJ would be an obvious choice for freight. For fun, you could even make it a "Diesel", since steamers don't need to run on coal. They'll run on just about any old hydrocarbons you throw at them.

Edit: Come to think of it, RT3 needs more wood-burning and oil-burning steamers. Nobody in their right mind would have run steamers on coal in Iraq.