Norway & Sweden BETA version

[OilCan]

Attached is a BETA version of another beta game originated by -FD- several months ago. -FD- relinquished it to whomever could improve it. Sugus worked on it for a while then turn it over to me. After working on it for a few days, I scrapped the entire thing and started with a freshly made map*. I kept the game story of connecting cities for the medals, but added some spice to it.

This is a 1.06V beta game. The goals are to connect key cities and to connect up to 75 cities for the gold. The game starts in 1947, half a year after the end of World War II. The player's task is to help rebuild the economies of Norway and Sweden - and to have lots of fun doing it. There is a history theme which follows the timeline of the game.

I think this is a somewhat easy game to win the gold, but of course I know what to expect in the game. Any advice or comments to improve the game would be gladly accepted. I am the worst with grammar and spelling, so those edits would be welcomed as well.

(* -FD-'s map was nicely made but was distorted (stretched) in projection. This made the city locations out of true line with each other. That's the thing about RT3 Mapbuilder - the further away from the equator you move, the more distorted the map becomes. The only way to correct it is to copy down the proper projection dimensions which Mapbuilder gives you and 'resize' the image in Gimp or some other photo editing software.)

[Sugus]

Well done, OilCan, it's really great fun to play this scenario. And yes, it has absolutely nothing to do with the (unbalanced , if not unplayable, but nevertheless very interesting) scenario initiated by -FD-. I did it on normal in the following way:

1946: Starting in Stockholm
1847: Malmo (was first of all somewhat irriated, because I expected "Malmö" - agree, but would like to translate your final version into German)
1949: Umea (possibly not the expected direction a player would expand first), 20 cities
1950: 10 loads of steel, taking over the other company (not yet knowing that this was a good idea)
1952: 30 cities (now the hint for the takeover appeared ) -> access to Norway, so Oslo
1953: 40 cities, Trondheim (by directly going to north from Oslo)
1954: Molde (from Trondheim)
1955: 50 cities, Bergen (from Oslo via Stavanger)
1957: 70 cities
1958: GOLD

As mentioined above, a great pleasure to play this scenario. Yourself classified it as "an easy one", but possibly you could make it somewhat harder to win by adding some hauling (or other) conditions ...

Anyway

[OilCan]

Thanks for the good review, but 12 years to get the gold!? That's too fast...you missed some hauling deals which come about in 1960, '62 and '64. You even missed the Denmark deal.

Maybe track cost should be more expensive the first few years, or prices for cargo start off lower. I'll have to think about ways to make a player take a little longer than 12 years to win. Maybe connecting to Denmark should be a condition for the Gold.

I plan to add the diacritics to various city names, but this is a slow process because I have to copy each one into the RT3 editor from Word. Unless you have a special trick to this.

Generally, I do not like playing games which require no unconnected track because I like to place a station in a city before I run track into the city. Did this special condition cause you any trouble?

Also, was the profit tax too expensive? or not expensive enough?

Did you run electric or diesel engines?

[Wolverine@MSU]

Generally, I do not like playing games which require no unconnected track because I like to place a station in a city before I run track into the city. Did this special condition cause you any trouble?

I don't like unconnected track either. I like doing as OilCan does (placing station first) because you can scout around for the best location for the station and then connect it with track. With "no unconnected track", I have to fiddle with station placement first, see where the track in front of the station needs to go, then hold my finger on the screen at that position while I try to get the track to run to that spot. It works most of the time, but my monitor quickly gets a bunch of annoying fingerprints on the screen. In addition, it makes it difficult to get branch tracks exactly where I want them. When you have to start on already laid track, the branches often don't follow the route I want because you have to plan to "lay" a certain amount of track or it won't let you lay any, and often, the track it wants to lay isn't where I want it to be. I haven't played this scenario yet, but will when I get some time (if it rains over the weekend) and get back with my comments. I also agree that if you want the player to play on further into the scenario, you need to have some events to force continued play.

[Sugus]

"Unconnected tracks" is not a problem for me - though I prefer the other way too. For this scenario it might be a good restriction and I'd like to left it as is.

In my run I used only electric engines.

The profit tax is possibly slightly too high, especially in the later years when you begin to earn a lot of money.

Making Denmark access as a winning condition sounds good. Another point could be the AI, which - in my short try - was rally easy to takeover.

[Wolverine@MSU]

After playing through to Dec. 1959, when I met all Gold Requirements, I can make the following comments:

"Unconnected tracks" is not a problem for me - though I prefer the other way too. For this scenario it might be a good restriction and I'd like to left it as is.

I agree for this scenario.

In my run I used only electric engines.

Me too.

The profit tax is possibly slightly too high, especially in the later years when you begin to earn a lot of money.

I don't think so, especially if you're making bucks off the haulage quotas. Maybe some incentives/bonuses for paying such high taxes like some break on overhead due to the government picking up the tab on things like health care and retirement plans? Or a rebate based on the amount of capital invested in track and stations (a bit complicated with event variables, but probably doable)

Making Denmark access as a winning condition sounds good. Another point could be the AI, which - in my short try - was rally easy to takeover.

And perhaps connecting to some of the Danish cities, at least Copenhagen

All in all a very nice and glitch-free scenario. I've gone back to my Dec. 1959 saved game, where I built burn track to connect the required cities, and continued play with "normal" track expansion, and investment in some secondary industries (auto, furnace, Machine shop etc.) and trying to supply them with required inputs. It's a really nice map, although I think the elevation factor was set too low. The map seems awfully flat, even in the most mountainous regions.

[OilCan]

Thanks for the comments Wolverine. I have been mulling over some possible things to help draw the game out longer. At this point, I think it will be a couple of haul requirements, plus a connection to Denmark for Gold.

I worked and worked with the elevation of Norway's mountains to try and strike a balance between being too easy and being too hard (unrealistically steep track grades). I looked at a lot of Norway pictures on the internet and noticed that the valleys were fairly wide and not dramatically steep, so I went with that idea. I used the lake tool to widen a couple of the valleys, but most valleys were only treated with a good smoothing. I wanted the player to attempt cross-mountain routes from Oslo to Molde or Bergen, so I smoothed out some valleys and rounded some ridges to allow routes without extreme track grades. The route from Gavle to Trondheim came out flatter than I would have liked, but what's done is done with the elevations.

Let me know if you find any problems as you finish out the latter portion of the game.

[RayofSunshine]

Well, I didn't complete the scenarion in 12 years, but then I just like to play, and medals being secondary.
I liked the concept of challenges with this sceanrio. They were periodically "thrown" at the player, which made the challenges and momentum of the game more interesting. Of course, being that I don't necessarily like mountainous terrains, I found the terrain to be within an acceptable level. Nothing like that of "North Wales".
The options of conditions in the "laying track" in different scenarios, I have found acceptable, but sometimes difficult to manage. Again, North Wales was frustrating at times, just to find level areas for a depot. And I had to use of number of tunnels to get to destinations. BUT, that is part of the challenge.
It will be interesting to see the final edition of this scenario, as maybe to some, it was "extremely" too easy. BUT then again, we are not all Tycoons.

[OilCan]

The final version of this game has been sent to Hawk for the map archive. I put the beta aside for awhile to rethink a way to add 'challenge' to the game. After several test runs, I think it now has sufficient challenge.

[Hawk]

It's now available in the archives.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/rt3_europe.htm

[low_grade]

My first try with some industry development went poorly (not yet peeking at the Editor, that was obviously a bad decision.) There are really no price gradients! I peeked at the editor now, unfortunately, because so many events are so good and you don't have any clue what the triggers are. I abused the +$50k/month event for many years, always building more track whenever I had any income to make sure I got down to $0 by the end of the month. In this way I rapidly built a network, though it was hard to save up $200k so it took a bit longer to place stations and buy locos, lol! I had years of only $100k profit. And of course I go for the events, King's Challenge for $1.5M and on from there, using Zephyrs then F3's then electrifying in a normal economy and going E18's finally just because... Made the connections in 1962 on Expert, could have made them by 1960 probably if I wasn't being silly about electrifying and some other things. Although I'd seriously consider a 2-D-2 start...

I'd make the sand offer closer to the start to avoid the feeling of so many wasted towers by that point... All the extra cash from aluminum, tires, sugar, and lumber was a bit much (I even bulldozed my one industry all game, a furniture factory I'd built on the lumber mill in Gavle, lol!) This felt like a game that was going to take forever, then once the cargo prices got better and all these bonuses started kicking in it was a quick run to the finish. And too much floating cargo, I'd rather see just warehouses.

All in all, perhaps a bit too much going on, making the game too easy all at once. Bonuses should all be early, before cargo prices return to normal, from there you should be on your own, with taxes holding you back, and not so many advantages granted (to load/unload, pulling power, reliability, no sand, etc.)

But, of course, I immensely enjoyed OC's immersive scenario building! Great news and in spirit at least if not always in gameplay great events. And yes, throw away the old map and use this one. I was actually able to build all the way around Norway and from Oslo to Trondheim, which was impossible on the old map (except the burn track at the end...)