On one play (North Carolina) I tried to play a sharp game, buying into another state and going heavy with early industry. I managed to save enough to force the territory rights when they were 1M each excluding Virginia. Then I worked on making the connections. I had connected most of the map by '80 and chose the tourist option again. Then I had to save up almost 10M for access to Virginia. I made the connection, hauled the passengers, and got the win right at the end of '82. My goal was to try to come as close to a situation of having to wait as I was able. I was unable as I always had plenty to do.
On the next play (North Carolina) I decided to play a similar strategy but bought the territory access rights one at a time for full price. The results are pretty much the same so "forcing" the rights doesn't seem to give much advantage unless you start in Mississippi. I had made all the connections around '83 and would have had a win except I chose the Oil challenge. Because of this I had to wait till '90 for Diesel and the Oil Refinery to appear on the map. Even after they appeared it takes a couple more years for Diesel to reach full price. In '92 the upgraded Refinery only produced 2.7 loads in a year. This put the win during '93. In those 10 years I had connected to every territory and all the towns that the AI weren't in, and some of the towns they were. The intense growth in those years along with expansion shot the company above 15M profit per year. These were plays where I played for the win according to the current game goals, instead of trying to poke around testing things.
I used the new warehouse that converts Ingots to 2 Machinery and it works well except that when Coal is present it wont convert Ingots as the Coal to 2 Concrete chain is more profitable. Concrete is fairly easy to make out of Ceramic (from Rock) so maybe this could be fixed by making the conversion of Coal only produce one Concrete. I know Crystals are sort of a useless cargo at present, but you could make them into Goods as a type of Glassware or just have a demand for them at the ports representing export of somewhat precious stones to exotic places where they would make more sense. Would look better than have them sitting there doing nothing.
I don't mind another industry goal or a new haulage goal, but in my opinion a general requirement at the end may kill some of the current re-play value. Which, I agree, is very good. This is a fun map to test.
I don't know if you want to do that much more work on the map, but I could see specific extra challenges based on your starting territory as a possibility to add another challenge without killing the re-play value. The easier start territories could have slightly more difficult challenges in the end. Maybe announce it in '80 just after the current win-route choice requirement. It could even be further determined by the difficulty option the player choose to play with (for example: Expert). Just an idea, do with it what you will.
Anyway, to further comment on this part of what you wrote. Yes, some use for crystals may be nice rather than them piling up. Alternatively, you could always use an event to -100 or -200% crystal production so no crystals are produced at all.
). I looked through the steel events and found the 'Brimingham'. Thanks to you that is fixed now.
If anything dial down the economics towards the end of the scenario, or is this map only intended for the expert players out there.
