Bridging the Mississippi

[belbincolne]

Well after two tries on Normal and one on Expert I decided I'd play it real soft and went to Easy and connected o/k. Got the message and changed companies. End of story. Let it run for 15 months and no cash arrived. Same as when I'd got there a month late. Sorry but looks to me that there's something wrong at this point.

[Orange46]

Well after two tries on Normal and one on Expert I decided I'd play it real soft and went to Easy and connected o/k. Got the message and changed companies. End of story. Let it run for 15 months and no cash arrived. Same as when I'd got there a month late. Sorry but looks to me that there's something wrong at this point.

Has anyone else had this problem? I downloaded the version that is available on this site and I am not having any problems with it.

[Frank]

Well after two tries on Normal and one on Expert I decided I'd play it real soft and went to Easy and connected o/k. Got the message and changed companies. End of story. Let it run for 15 months and no cash arrived. Same as when I'd got there a month late. Sorry but looks to me that there's something wrong at this point.

Has anyone else had this problem? I downloaded the version that is available on this site and I am not having any problems with it.

I had no problems on expert level, I changed to the L&M Company and received cash the next month.

---

I think unused goods like iron, wheat, alcohol... should be completely disabled (in the overview map).

I haven´t finished the map yet, but so far I like it very much, thank you



Frank

[Orange46]

Thank you Frank for the input.

[ishaybas]

Hey Frank,

Which cities do you connect first?
And how many times have you tried?

[Frank]

My first try on expert level failed, this is my second game.

1. Connected Toledo to Adrian and Detroit, only one train. Micro-managed that train for some years.
2. Connected Detroit to Lansing and Saginaw, profit from Saginaw was disappointing.
(waited for the first boom to be able to get cheap money)
3. Connected Toledo to Cleveland and Akron, 2 coal mines near Akron. Trains from Akron returned 100k + profit several times.
in the last 2 years before the deadline with risen credability, I was able to connect Chicago and StLouis:
4. Lansing - South Bend - Chicago
5. (last year) Toledo - Fort Wayne - Indianapolis - (Terre Haute) - St Louis
(17 Trains when I changed the company)

But I dont think it is important which cities to connect, I think its more important to:
- micro-manage the trains
- have a look on the overview map to see where goods return the most profit (deep green) or where they are extremely cheap (red), thats the reason why I connected Akron, coal was very cheap here

Hope that helps,
Frank

[Orange46]

I got to peek at someone else's game and I realized a couple of things:

1. There are two optional logo packs available at this site and all 4 RR's in this scenario use logos from that pack - NY Central, Southern RR, Rock Island and C&O. All RR's in the scenario are real and started more or less when they did in the scenario and eventually wound up as a part of the logod RRs.

2. Also available are new car sets that really improve the appearance of the game. The game's 19th century milk cars really stink, so if you add nothing else, replace those awful milk cars with the ones on this site. Let's face it, in this scenario you see them a lot. Personnally, I think every new car is a major improvement over the original cars. Even RT2's tank cars are better.

[Frank]

2. Also available are new car sets that really improve the appearance of the game. The game's 19th century milk cars really stink, so if you add nothing else, replace those awful milk cars with the ones on this site. Let's face it, in this scenario you see them a lot. Personnally, I think every new car is a major improvement over the original cars. Even RT2's tank cars are better.

- I installed the "10/7/09 - Trainmaster Passenger/Mail/Troops Carriages" by Ned Fumpkin and yes, that package also contains milk cars that look alot better.
But this broke my savegames and I had to restart the map, but I never mind.

- When playing the L&M Company, I connected to East St Louis (before Lexington) and no event was triggered. I had to build a second station there?! then the event triggered. (I still have the savegame, but I cant load it anymore)

Frank

[ishaybas]

Same thing happened to me when building in East St. Louis, with the first company.

[Orange46]

There is nothing special about East St. Louis, but RT3 sometimes gets fussy about when cities are connected.

[belbincolne]

Every line you take over has to build its own station there (also in Chicago) - you cant just connect to the original line although its probably best to. You can then add a small or medium station on your own line making sure that that one comes up as connected. This is what I did but always used the main large station because it covered a larger area and costs virtually nothing although later in the game it might slow these trrains up (of course by then you're probably running a different line anyway!)

[Orange46]

I always connected to the other stations and built a large station for my new line (when I had the money). Connecting to the other lines is important, because express traffic doesn't walk across town. But, just connecting isn't enough, you have to actually run trains between the stations, although I don't know if you have to do it frequently or just occassionally.

[belbincolne]

Don't know I'd guess just once would be enough and I can't remember whether I ever used my own stations either - if I did it would have been permanently.

[Hawk]

This map has been updated.

[Sugus]

Just did my second try on normal. Fullfilled first contract at end of 1841. Switched to L&M and fullfilled the second contract in 1850. Now I had to wait till 1853 for getting the possibility to switch to C&RI. (Would be nice, if this could be done immediately, so I'd got more time related to contract three.) And now the troubles began. I made some tries from a saved game at this point, but never had a chance to go rich enough to win the "fight against the silly, bridge destoying steamboat". Also, the economy went down every time!

Now I've seen the updated version. Are there any changes made concerning the "double bridging"?

[Gandar]

Sugas I am playing this on expert right now and I have just seen the conditions for gold and my little laptop is chugging unbelievably so I am not sure if I will be able to finish it. Not that I think I can achieve gold, it seems unsurmountable.
Regarding the bridge, I connected everything I could before crossing the bridge and making the connections on the other side, I got the connection counted then the bridge went down and I rebuilt the bridge and it stayed up, I am not sure if I was supposed to be able to rebuild the bridge, to be honest the bridge being up or not doesn't matter because the amount of goods I shipped across it was minimal. It continues on with a court case that drags on until 1868 so you need to have all connections made and be ready for that. As for the recessions the only thing you can do is play through them believe me the recessions are a real killer later in the game.
This is a terrific scenario and I am impressed by the way the story unfolds

I just realised that orange46 has updated the map. Does it affect the gameplay ? because I would hate to go all the way back to the start, tho if I did I could leave myself set up for the end game.
Hmm I shall wait and see how I do with the old map.

[Orange46]

The updated map does not affect game play. Some things were not clear, and one error could cause real confusion if you were in 1856 and not controlling the CR&I.

This scenario is winnable and all the clues are in the scenario so that theoretically a first timer could get gold - but I could not have. In most of my tests I tried to play as if I was playing for the first time and I did not get gold, although twice I just missed by months.

[Gandar]

I haven't played any further as yet but I thought I should mention that at the beginning I had read this thread and I started by micromanaging my trains and I got nowhere. I tried varying amounts of milk but the payoff just wasn't big enough for me to get going. Instead I laid rail between pairs of cities and ran a train between each pair with a caboose and a dining car. That did the trick I earned enough to improve my credit rating and I waited until it was at 6% before I took out as much money as possible and played a normal game from there.

[Orange46]

In many of the tests, I struggled for a couple of years before things started to come together. Also, I did not build maintenance sheds until my trains were running low, as money was too scarce, and I just replaced my planets when they ran out of oil - $100,000 is just too much to pay for a facility to service Planets. You pay $5,000 a year to maintain the facility and it uses up $10,000 of interest a year on the money needed to buy the shed in the early years.

And to answer an earlier question, the bridge was rebuilt fairly quickly in real life and continued to operate throughout the legal struggle. Curiously, the first two bridges were badly located and probably were an obstruction to river traffic. The second (replacement) bridge was hit repeatedly over the years (but not destroyed) until it was taken down and moved to a safer location.

[RayofSunshine]

This is a very interesting and challenging scenario and equal to Orange46 talent and imagination.

It took me over 1 yr to find the simple "trigger" of getting the Chairmanship for the Memphis-LaGrange Rwy system. However, I am not able to "build" a bridge between the 2 cities.

Now previous responses refer to bridges in question. And seeing that I am prohibited traffice thru East Mem, I have as yet figured out the initiative to get that bridge crossing built.

Need some suggestions, as I also don't see any "ports" that a ferry boat can use either.