Review of Northern Ontario

[proudcanadian]

Hello All!

Well, here it is, after hours of tireless work, v1 of Northern Ontario is available for all to enjoy. Once again, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank EPH and JSS for their help in the scripting of the ****** status page

I thought I'd start this thread in order to see what people thought of it. If I get enough comments/improvements, I'll make v2.

Anyway, the scenario is fairly simple. You must connect several cities, make 20 Million at least in industry profits, and have 10 Mill in CBV for a Gold win.

I'm sure you experts will have no problem with this. I was inspired to create a map of my home locale, and I wanted to try this out firsthand.

Sault Ste. Marie, for those of you who don't have a clue where it is, is located between Lake Huron and Lake Superior. It's on a few Poptop maps, and some user ones, but other than that, it's hard to come by in this game. Most maps also fail to recognize that there are TWO Sault Ste. Maries. Oh yeah, and one more thing, one Sault Ste. Marie is in Canada, the Other in the United States.
Despite sharing the same name, we have quite different histories. Sault Michigan is actually the third oldest city in the United States, founded in the 1600s, while the Canadian Sault didn't get started until 1793.
Eventually, the Canadian Sault Outgrew the American Sault (Canadian Sault has 80,00 happy people, Sault Michigan has about 20,000), but they still remain friends. The Sault Locks are one of the region's major tourist attractions. These locks are part of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System, and raise lake freighters a total of 20 feet from the level of Lake Huron to the Level of Lake Superior. It doesn't seem like much, but is teams a big deal to shipping.

Anyway, I just thought I would post this to share a little local history with everyone. There's much more in the scenario. Please post any comments here. Thanks.

[besterik]

The scenario was generally fun, but very easy. I got gold on expert in 1912 on the first try, with a lots of cash that I didn't know what to do with.

One thing, the gold conditions requires the industy profit to be higher than $20M, but the CBV to only be higher than $10M. However, since all industry profits makes the CBV rise, by the time Industy profit is over $20M, the CBV will most likely also be over $20M (I think it was around $57M when I got gold), and for a while all my engines had an atrocious-level for reliability, without any apparent reason...

[proudcanadian]

Thanks besterik for playing. I realize that this scenario is relatively easy compared to most others, so maybe I should raise the CBV goal in gold for v2. I didn't know Industry Profit counted towards CBV! I don't understand why the reliability is down, I might have put it as an effect in one of the events, I'll check it out, and I'll make it more apparent in v2.

Thanks again!

[proudcanadian]

I've sent an updated version to Hawk.

The CBV goal has been raised to $60 mill, and the text has been changed for the North Bay boom event.

Enjoy!

[Hawk]

The updated map is now available. :D

[Wolverine@MSU]

Even at $60M CBV, the game is very easy. I've only been playing 6 years on Expert, and I'm at $40M CBV and ~ $12M Industry Profits and havce made all of the connections required for Gold. There are way too many cargoes to be shipped, especially at the beginning of the game. Perhaps cutting down on the density at the start would help. The cities seem awfully big too for that time in history. Most should be one or two stars big at the start of the game, which would cut down on huge profits in hauling at the start of the game. If you want folks to play through most of the 30 year length, you need to make it a slow starter (with more rapid growth once things get going if you want)

Started with a line from the Soo to Wawa and then built out from there, North, East (after taking over Sudbury AI) and West. I was able to make a regular steel-girder bridge across the Straits of Mackinac to Mackinac City, which is a bit unrealistic. You should replace the river with several cells wide of open water to force the player to build a suspension bridge across the straits.

The staus page was giving multiple reports of Ind. Profits and CBV, with no room for connection stati. The problem is in the Event coding: you need to have "Do not test against trerritories", and "Do not test against players" checked. Keep the "Test against on-screen company" checked (I think those are the right ones, at least the "On-screen" bit, but turn off checking of other things). When I did that the Status screen displayed correctly.

The dramatic increase in Steel Prices early on led to very low profits from Tool & Die shops, sometimes going negative for a year due to high cost of raw material, and also decreased their production levels a bit. It recovered somewhat, but I think the 75% price increase for steel is a bit high. Granted, there was a lot of money to be had in hauling steel, but there weren't enough Goods to go around.

With a little tweaking to slow things down a bit, it would be a top-notch scenario. I like the historical tidbits but haven't played long enough to see most of them. Historical notes about connections don't make much sense if the connections have already been made. I connected The Soo to Wawa at the start, got my reward, and years later was informed about the benefits of the connection. Perhaps a trigger event that tests whether the connection has already been made, and if so, then skip the dialog. You might also consider adding Churchill to the list of required connections. It's way out there in the boonies, and unless there is an incentive to connect, I doubt whether most players would bother. Perhaps making a small territory around it and having cargo delivery requirements (i.e. goods, meat, clothing, and other "life necessities") would make it a place worth connecting.

[proudcanadian]

Wolverine, thanks so much for your comments. I agree with a lot of them, especially that the city density is too high. After all, at that time, I believe the Sault only had a couple thousand residents. (I even found it easy)

I should probably make the Straits of Mackinac harder to cross. That would help the scanario to be more challenging.

I never noticed the status page problem, but I'll fix it right away.

I'll decrease the price in steel to maybye only 10% or 15%

I like the idea of adding Churchill as a connection. I couldn't find any other large centres to put up there, so it's pretty hard to connect to it. Maybe I'll add it to Silver along with Moosonee. I might also add haulage requirements up there.

I'll get to work right away, and hopefully have the map up by the weekend.

[proudcanadian]

Well, thanks to Wolverine's comments, I've come up with a much more challenging version of Northern Ontario, and sent it to Hawk. Feel free to post more comments here. :D

[Hawk]

The latest version has been uploaded and is available in the usual place. :D

[belbincolne]

Been away for 3 weeks so not played this before. Uploaded today so assume its the latest version. On Expert I'd more than met all the rquirements for Gold after 15 years EXCEPT for load hauling to Churchill. There's nothing in the Almanac to say how many loads of each commodity I'd hauled although it must have been quite a lot as I'd perhaps 8 custom consist trains hauling Goods etc with a minimum of 4 cars on each.

So I guess ProudC that you need to alter the Almanac pages again! :)

[proudcanadian]

****** this stupid almanac page!!!!! :x

thanks for playing, anyway. I've got the event written up, and its supposed to appear after you connect to churchill, but I guess ther's something wrong with the trigger.

Thanks again

[proudcanadian]

Well, I've sent v4 to Hawk, and it should be up soon.

I fixed some city densities, as well as the Churchill status.

I guarentee there will still be problems with it, so Baffania will have to wait.

Enjoy!

[Hawk]

It's going to be tomorrow before I can get this version added. Sorry for the delay folks, but I'm reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling the OS on the computer that has all the stuff I need.

[Hawk]

OK! The newest version is now available in the usual place.

[belbincolne]

Well proudc I'm afraid it still aint fixed :o :o

There's goods carried but NOT meat and clothing which are also goals. At the moment (on Expert) with plenty of time I've met the goods requirement but (obviously) don't know where I stand on the other two - the economy seems a wee bit harder this time as its taking me longer to reach both the financial goals.

Incidentally does anyone know - when you buy into another territory does this increase Co Net Value or is the sum paid just lost in the ether?

[proudcanadian]

??????

The other requirements are written in one event so they should all be there. I'll check just to make sure, but I don't know why it wouldn't show up.

[Orange46]

I remember checking to see what happens when you buy in to another territory in RT2 and 3. I think I discovered that assets decreased in 3 but not in 2. In other words, cash decreased in both but some other asset item increased by the same amount in 2. Just look at your book value before paying and then look again after. It will either stay the same or drop by the amount you paid.

I've yet to try this scenario, as I've been involved in other projects. But, it's first on my list for when i return to RT.

[Wolverine@MSU]

I downloaded and started to play the latest version of this scenario. After starting the game, I went to the Editor and looked at the Status events, particularly the one that counts loads to Churchill. To my surprise, each of the load counters was asking to display different cargoes than intended. The Goods report was showing that it would report LTD ingots, Meat was reporting something else. Each of the three was coded to report the wrong cargo. I'm pretty sure the author selected the right cargos to report when he wrote the scenario, so I wonder if it isn't a bug or incompatibility between scenarios written without the beta patch. I have it installed, but forgot to check if the same thing happens without the patch.

I also noticed that only one cargo report is listed on the Status page, and following the arrow to the second status page (I didn't know there was even this possibility) showed some text about artists visiting the area. Further searching the events found that the text was actually from an event that was commenting on the Group of Seven artists in an event that hadn't even fired yet.

I'll post this in the beta patch section too.

[proudcanadian]

Okay, then....... :?


I have no clue what is going on. Actually, I didn't know you could have multiple status pages like in RT2, and that seems to be why the other half of the event was there.
I'm positive I set up the right cargos, but i'll check again. With this game, anything is possible. :D
One last thing. Group of Seven is in the status?! No clue what's going on but will check ASAP

P. S. Wolverine, I'm going to play your Michigan 1830 scenario soon. I enjoyed the RT2 version, so hopefully RT3 is just as good. (I'd also like to see the other lumber and auto era maps when you get the time. :D )

[belbincolne]

Likewise I'd no idea there was a page 2 in the Almanac - I did look but didn't find one :(

Another fault (cos I played on until the end to see what medal I got - silver) is that for about the last 3 years a message comes up (I made a note of exactly which one but my internet connection crashed and in all the resulting chaos I've lost it) EVERY MONTH saying something like "the road to XYZ has been completed".

I've no idea whther I'd carried enough meat and clothing to qualify for Gold but I was more than double all the other requirements