Beta test my new scenario Chile please!

[low_grade]

Hmm, yeah, the Ecuador map... was my first attempt. More power to you if you want to recolor it and upload it. My permission granted, if needed, to replace the archive map with any color-improved work you're motivated to do.

[Gumboots]

I took a quick bash at it just to see how it went. It really just needs some thing less lurid over the neon bits. A bucket fill seems to sort out the eastern side (I think I used the swamp grass texture), and a bit of brushing should sort the western.

[Gumboots]

I hauled this one out for another look, since it's a good one and I wanted to try a different approach. I started with one of my saves of an initial seeding that had the cheap and lucrative furnace in Santiago.

This time I went with using robber baron tricks to sink my initial company, and immediately took over the southern company based in Peurto Montt (the only one that is accessible at game start). I then merged my initial company into this one to knock off part of the Gold aims right at the start (down to 3 companies instead of 4). This worked well, but one catch I wasn't aware of is that the company you take over has an event setting its overhead to 50% over normal. To get around this, another approach might be to try and sink the southern company at the start and merge that into your initial company, but I'm not sure that will be possible. This map is so lucrative that I didn't really notice any difference in income due to the increased overhead.

Another catch with starting by taking over the Peurto Montt company is that if you want to keep the Santiago company contained you have to build lines right up to it very early on. I left it a bit late and it expanded a bit more than I really would have liked, but I just built around it until I could merge it.

Anyway, having control of all coastal lines south and north of Valparaiso meant that when it came time to break the miner's strike I could run entirely on my own track, without ever having to wait for loading at another company's station and without traffic interference. By the time the strike started I already had enough cash to have laid track all the way up the coast, and had the loaded trains about halfway through their trip. I figured I'd do nicely here, with an early break to the strike. No such luck. Even though all four trains were carrying a full 8 loads, the strike-ending event didn't trigger once the fourth train had unloaded at Chuquicatama. I did check that all cars were 100% before they left the station but must have missed one or two. Problem is I didn't know which ones, so had to resort to loading and sending two more trains with a mixture of all the required cargoes. This took a fair bit of time before the strike broke, which was not good for my bottom line. Moral of the story, send a bit of extra cargo (at least one load of each) the first time to make sure everything is covered.

As it turned out, the long strike did help knock down the stock price of the Santiago company, so I took advantage of that to merge it. However, the long strike had prevented the Santiago company from becoming as healthy as usual, and with my patented merger technique guaranteeing a CBV boost in proportion to the health of the target company, it probably would have been better overall to have an early break to the strike.

The rest of the game played normally. I did use the intermediate station right on top of the ridge up at Chuquicatama basin, and sure enough the prices at the quarries took off early and they became a very good investment. I think this confirms that having a station on top of the ridge is the way to get good profits at the quarries.

I also used a second, medium-size, station down at the coast. This was because I'd found that just having the usual large station in Antowhatever didn't always grab the livestock from the port, even though the port was within the large station's capture area. The second (cheap) station just hung halfway down the coastal cliff on a short spur and never had any trains running to it. The idea here was to ensure that the livestock from the port came up and over the cliff to my meat packing plant. The second station was close enough to the port to include it in the station capture area, while the main station (large size) up on the flat included the second station and the port in its capture area. This seems to be very effective. Demand spread down the cliff rapidly and livestock started making the trip up within a year. I think this trick is worth keeping in mind where any cargo has to be hauled up from a difficult location.

I saved the game at the point where I'd just merged the Argentinian company and needed to sort out the inland train routes. Since I can easily win from here I may not bother finishing, unless I can think of some way to use the finish to test new strategy.

[RulerofRails]

I also used a second station to collect the Cattle from the port of Antofagasta. It almost doesn't make sense to have a port there below a virtual cliff. But its necessary to send Crystals out to sea, so we get to do some fishing!

On the subject of mergers. When I play I let the AI have control over the main area it has connected even once my rails reach that area. I never run directly competing routes. When I merge, I imagine that I am buying the rights for their area as well as their track, trains, and industry. Their area forms a share of the total economy possible on that map. I can always do a better job of managing their area (share of the map's economy) after the merge, so as long as they are around they are preventing me from unlocking the potential of the map. The larger the economic potential of a map, the later it may be that the AI start to drastically hold back potential. If, as is the case here, the AI are pre-placed in good locations, it isn't many years before a merger can be a good expansion investment when the value of their economic area comes into play.

If I am not mistaken, the price for the merge of a healthy company should fall fairly close to 10% ROI. Once it is in my hands I expect 15%. Remembering that even at 10% ROI when profits are re-invested at 10% it only takes 7.5 years before the initial investment is doubled, I tend to believe that the returns on the merger as an investment will generally be bigger at the end of x amount of years than the amount that can be gained by dinking with the books if the AI is allowed to grow itself. But I do not consider mergers as a pure investment decision because of the dangers of flat-spotting company growth while costs are catching up and revenue is not increasing as I stop expanding to save for a merger. Also, saved money isn't being invested so that is potential being wasted as well. That's why I tend to try to get them fairly early and get them as cheap as possible without share manipulation. It's all about timing. If you can steal one in a good location before it gets a stable income going I will even use bonds for all the financing, but once a company is established I like to have enough company profits to save and do the merge within two years or less. This is what I did on my last play of this map. I took over Great Northern during year 5 at a cost of around 8M while profits were 7M.

Even with events that help the AI a lot, I still feel that merging them into one company fairly quickly gives a far easier way to get CBV and hence large PNW goals than dinking around with the books and multiple companies. IMO, It's simply a more efficient way to unlock economic potential quickly.

[Gumboots]

I don't run directly competing routes either, but at towns that are the interface between my network and an AI network I sometimes build my own station on my own track, just to speed up traffic turnaround on my network. That's what I meant by "build around it". The AI still has access to my track, but I don't need to run on theirs.

The economic area was why I tried grabbing the southern company at game start. It had the same upfront cash and same credit rating as my initial company, but knocking it off immediately served several purposes. First, it gave me a substantial and immediate boost to PNW and purchasing power via the cash I fleeced from the initial company. This then meant easier and faster stock purchases with less need for early high dividends from my new company and without spending company cash on stock buybacks. I was able to gain almost all of the new company's stock, apart from the small percentage held by the original chairman, without doing any buybacks at all. In fact I was issuing stock early to fuel growth, buying up all the new stock myself, and covering my debt with a modest dividend. Naturally, this further increased my percentage of the total stock.

The cash not spent on early high dividends and buybacks can go into growth. Then with unrestricted access to the economic area that would normally be held by an AI, and which was lucrative and easy to connect, I was in a good position to expand rapidly. As I said, well before I needed to break the strike I had my own track and stations covering every coastal town from Castro in the south to Chuquicatama and Anto up north, apart from four or five towns claimed by the Santiago company. Industry portfolio and cashflow were looking healthy too.

"Dinking with the books" is very handy for mergers IMO, since the aim here is to up CBV as a Gold medal goal, and by swapping chairmanships you can arrange the merger to give a much better CBV result than any other method. Bear in mind that the reduced merger price I arrange results in a halving of the merger cost, while improving the profitability of the target company (apart from the temporary hiccup for one year, which drops the price nicely for you as well as fixing the AI's mistakes). The reduced merger price means less saving is needed, which results in less time flat spotting your own company's growth and quicker access to more economy due to the merger occurring earlier. It also allows a much cleaner result after the merger, in that you don't have to fix the AI's network mistakes since the fixes have already been paid for by the AI company. Again, this means even more money left in your own company's coffers post-merge. To my mind, lumping your own company with the cost of fixing the AI's network mistakes simply doesn't make any sense, unless you are in a situation where PNW is critical and you cannot afford any loss of PNW at all. That doesn't apply here, since PNW is going to be so close to CBV anyway, and therefore hugely in excess of the Gold requirements.

[RulerofRails]

I am curious about how far into the game you are doing mergers? I assume that you have always taken out the southern coastal company within the first couple of years? I shouldn't have assumed that you were waiting until around the 15 year mark (mid-game) for the larger merger of the Great Northern. My post was about the benefits I can see of having the company merged during those 10 or so years from early game. Basically a year-5 merger versus a year-15 merger. Are you merging while still in the high-growth expansion phase or later once good ROI opportunities are drying up? Flat-spotting growth only applies to the high-growth expansion when costs are still playing catch up. I would also say that I am less worried about the problems with the AI network especially in this case, since with pre-built track they wont have squandered too much in the first 5 years. Engines also will still be fairly fresh and likely few industries are on their books.

I save a fair bit of my play time by not having to sort out the year-5 AI very much, it's not something I enjoy so less is better for me. In the 1800s I tend to run 8-cars which easily distinguishes the AI engines from mine. All I need to do is a quick run through the engines with "Pg Dn" to correct the few I will absorb. In 1.06 the AIs force of one-car minimum for the first stop will easily distinguish AI engines as long as you don't run with the same configuration. This can be a problem to fix though as it will take a little longer.

There are few games where I pay dividends before I have finished the high-growth phase. Stock buy-backs are a no-no also. If I have to do either that's normally the sign that I over-extended. I don't tend to service debt either. Once the expansion phase is finished and I decide to pay debt off I will turn dividends up far enough to quickly get rid of it. But maybe there is some advantage to having a few dividends on if you are issuing lots of stock. I don't tend to do that either, but it could make a faster medal if you issue stock up to the point that PNW has bleed down till you have just 100M left.

PS
I went back through this thread to refresh my memory and my last play was pretty efficient. The year 5 merge is probably more difficult than I remember. The more expensive and later in the game a merge is, the more benefit I see to using your patented method. Once Great Northern has expanded itself and if my profits never got near the level for two year max saving + merge, I would tend to defer the merge until after the high-growth expansion period and your method is ideal for this.

[Gumboots]

No, I usually leave the southern company for some time. If it's left to itself it pays very good dividends after a while, so just sitting on half or more of its stock tends to be a good deal for PNW and purchasing power while you're doing other things. I usually merge Great Northern fairly late, after fully exploiting everything on the west coast. It doesn't really matter to me since I'm only after CBV, and the bigger Great Northern gets the bigger the CBV boost I get when I merge it.

Anyway, this time I wanted to try a different approach to my usual so decided to nail the southern company immediately just to see how it played out. It played out rather well.

The Santiago company is a classic example of why I like my merger method. Early in the game it always wants to build track from Santiago to Racangua. Due to the AI limitations, the only way it thinks it can do this is with the restriction of the river is to put a bridge where it will run straight into a cliff, then go up the side of the cliff at a totally stupid grade. Since the AI is also programmed to put maintenance sheds roughly halfway along every line, and since it can't put one in the tunnel, it puts it on the totally stupid grade before the tunnel. All trains then lock the system up on that grade. The AI wonders why its trains aren't delivering, so thinks it needs more trains. This makes the problem worse. It's already doing this by the fifth year. There's no way I am interested in sorting that at my own expense. Why should I? Far better to "dink with the books" and pick up an efficient system one year later for half its book value.

[RulerofRails]

I agree that the Great River does a really stupid track lay with that tunnel. I think this is a mis-step with map design. I wonder if placing a house in the right spot will deter it? I also understand how players like Wolverine seem to give the AI a helping hand in situations like this. Unless Great River gets further south before I expand around it, I view it like poison and it is the type of unhealthy company that I will wait to go almost bankrupt later in the game before a merge. As such I pay little for its CBV, but it's still book value so I leave the tunnel anyway. Your method is good for an earlier merger in this case.

Something I am finally considering is the higher haulage revenue that the AI receives compared to human when playing on Expert. I wonder how many stations an AI can manage properly with its routing mechanism. I suspect not many. Maybe 4, but probably only 3. In light of this, using the helping hand method of oversight seems a good idea until I consider the effects of each train's route on the price demand distribution which controls cargo flow which means less industry profit. Without my oversight I am still sure that I can beat the AI on ROI from its assets/economic area.

As you found with the southern company that an early merge turned out well, this is what I have found in the majority of cases. That was my main point. For late mergers your method is perfect. I just don't find myself doing many.

[Gumboots]

The other thing I sometimes do is merge Great Northern after fully exploiting the rest of the map, including Argentina. The access cost for Argentina is pretty trivial in comparison to the money your company will be making. You can just pay the fee, gatecrash Argentina, then start partying like crazy and make the access fee back in one year. Soak up the whole country apart from Great Northern's fairly small network, build lots of industry, sort out the required connections across the mountains. Then, when it looks like there's not much else left to do, take the chair of Great Northern, wreak strategic havoc, then merge it at the end of the year for a sizable CBV boost.

[Gumboots]

Thought of another approach, which I think I'll test. Would still start by taking over the southern company immediately. The difference is that next time I think I'll try boxing the Santiago company in before it has the chance to do anything stupid. If I build stations in San Antonio and Racangua in the first year or so, and connect the Racangua one the way I usually do it (ie: go through the valley at zero grade, then a bridge over to Santiago with the track on the Santiago side doing a loop around the back of the station for good grades) then the Santiago company should be stumped and just sit on its initial short line. In practice it will probably find something even more stupid to do, but at least it'll be amusing to see new and greater forms of stupidity.

[Gumboots]

I tested boxing in the coastal AI's. It works up to a point. The southern company behaves itself if you place stations in Castro, Valdivia and Temuco. These can be small stations to start with, and upgraded later. They don't need any line run to them at the beginning either. If this is done, the southern company will just sit on its initial short line from Peurto Montt to Osorno and won't expand, at least up to year I merged. Can't remember exactly when that was, but it was early in the 1900's.

The Santiago company is a different problem. I placed stations in Racangua, San Antonio and Illapel.The AI stayed away from San Antonio but suddenly expanded up the coast to Illapel, with really stupid line, just about when I was ready to get the strike breaker trains running up from the south. I could see this leading to trouble, so promptly walloped it with my standard merger tactics, including bulldozing the stupid track. This was 1901 IIRC. Until then it had been leaving the coast alone. Now that I know about it, I'm sure building my own line from the AI's Valparaiso station to Illapel by 1900 would keep the AI docile.

Racangua was still subject to the exact same stupidity the AI usually exhibits: bridge straight into a cliff, maintenance shed halfway up the cliff, then tunnel to my station at Racangua (instead of its own AI station it normally uses). The only way of getting around this, AFAICT, would be to do the connection from Santiago to Racangua with my own line very early in the game, before the AI goes there. I suspect this would then prompt it to tackle the coastal run up to Illapel sooner, or to connect to San Antonio early, since these would be its only real options for expansion.

Short version: boxing in the southern company effectively turns out to be simple and cheap. Boxing in the Santiago company turns out to be trickier and more expensive. I'm not sure it's really worth boxing either in tightly since they can be lucrative if given a bit of breathing space.

[Gumboots]

Hey this is weird. Having another go at this, starting from the same initial save (IOW, Santiago furnace and placed farms bought). This time I'm ignoring the AI companies for the first few years and just pumping my own company. I suspect this is always going to be the best strategy on this map.

Anyway, this time the game gave me Ye Decapods in 1893. No Dukes or anything. Just Decapods. I've never seen this happen before and have no idea why it happened this time. Nothing in the events has been changed, and usually the same starting point will give me Dukes. It's a mystery. I took them anyway and just ran with it, since they are much better for hauling freight on grades and I was just trying out different strategy. Has anyone else even seen something like this happening?

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Thought I'd try something a bit different with the nitrates run. This time I placed the usual second station on top of the ridge just outside the mine basin to get the profits for the quarries pumping. I then placed a third station down on the next level spot, with the idea being that it could serve to generate a bit more haulage profit while I waited for sufficient cash to go all the way to the coast. I figured the extra coverage would be good once the full line was operating too, since it should catch more cargo. At the start of 1894 I was able to run all the way to the coast, and have three trains running mines>station-on-ridge>third station>straight back to mines, and four trains running from third station to the coast and back. All of these will just complete their runs without running out of water, so no towers are needed except at the mines and at the coast.

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This generated massive haulage profits in 1894, with $2,994k of freight revenue and a little bit of express. With the Santiago furnace, placed farms, "nitrate" quarries and upgraded furnace at the mines, total profit for 1894 was $3.3 million and there was a 4:1 stock split at the end of 1894. I had 100% of my company about halfway through 1893 without using any stock buybacks at all, apart from buying back 3,000 in 1891. Purchasing power is now about 3.5 million, which is enough to grab a majority of stock in both the southern and Santiago companies, or a majority in the Argentinian company.

I think this network setup is a real winner for the start of the game. Obviously with Dukes the haulage profits should be a bit lower, due to Duke's being a fair bit slower up grades, but they should still turn in a better result with this network than with the others I've tried.

Oh and regarding the second station at the coast, which sits down the cliff to get more draw on the ports, this time I used a large one and still managed to keep usable grades. There are four squares of 6% grade and one square of 7%, with a few 5's, but the rest are 3 or less. This run just has one train shuttling back and forth and should work well, with the grades being much better than the last time I tried this (up around 20% or so). Usually I set this train to run full loads downhill and only 1 car up, because of the extreme grades up, but this time it will be able to run normal loads both ways. Prices for ingots and crystals are always a bit better at the second coastal station too, so as well as drawing stuff up from the ports it helps the mine profits. It didn't contribute to the 1894 profits because I just built it at year's end, but should be useful in 1895.

[RulerofRails]

Good luck in letting the AI grow. The rewards from this decision depend on how your companies' performance is vs his. The better you can perform the more attractive the early merge scenario becomes, but that's my opinion. I do understand that your style of dedicated spur maintenance means more costs to bring the AIs network up to standard especially if choosing a later merge option. In your case I would also tend to ditch most of their trains also as re-doing the existing train's routes for maintenance spurs in a new location is tedious.

I think I remember some engine choice events in this one. Did you look in the editor? This may be a true glitch seeing it didn't happen before.

Nice track-laying as always. I am turning the grid on to lay track now and that seems to help me find slightly better lines. Laying track down to the ocean to give Crystals a faster trip out to sea is a great idea also. The second mid-way station seems a bit short term, but as long as it has enough cargo in its radius when you build it to pay for itself and two engines (if you cannot re-purpose the engine making this cost a loss) I think of it as a quick in-and-out investment which will double your CBV value quickly and be good for credit rating but not give a good ROI over time as I am suspecting most of the traffic that escapes will be collected by the station right at the top of the ridge.

[Gumboots]

The AI won't grow much. They're quite slow about expanding. When I deliberately boxed them in early I didn't notice any real advantage for my company, so this time just concentrated on maximising my own company's opportunities.

What ended up happening is that I used the (escalating) purchasing power I had to buy an absolute majority of stock in all three AI's in 1894/95 (have currently played to January 1904). This entailed buying on margin to about $20 million, with remaining purchasing power right down to the line, but with sufficient options left to easily handle any possible margin calls if they occurred. This is something I normally wouldn't do, but decided to try just for something different. With my company in expansion mode and a reasonable economy I figured it would be safe enough, and it was. It required fairly high dividends from my company for a few years, tuned to match the current interest rate, but nothing crippling. Even got through a short depression without any problems. Dividends have now been wound right back to less than 5% of annual profit, and debt is coming down very well.

The Santiago company got merged some time back when a handy recession dropped its share price to below CBV. I combined this with my usual merger method and got an extra good deal in CBV terms. The cost of doing my maintenance spurs never bothers me, because the way I do mergers the AI company pays for all necessary restructuring anyway. I don't consider any restructuring costs when deciding when to merge. And yes, I always ditch any trains that are older than a few years. I want to get the best deal for my company, so take advantage of the lower maintenance costs for new locos.

The "Great Republic" company (Peurto Montt>Osorno>Valdivia) is still unmerged because it is a special case. This one never expands further if you connect your own line to Valdivia. As far as I know it will never even build from its Peurto Montt station down to Castro, nor will it buy industry. All it does is sit on its short line of three stations. I don't think you can run this better than the AI does, because there are so few options with such a limited area. Also, the game seems to give the AI cash from nowhere, or maybe much lower operating costs, which human players don't get. With 3 stations and no industry, this company is getting annual profits that are 75% of listed revenue. Since it's not expanding or buying industry its company cash just escalates, and it puts this into stock buybacks and very high dividends.

Because of the stock buybacks it has done my 51% of stock is now 78%. Dividends have escalated to $5.50/share, so that little AI company is now paying me $880k per year and has been for a while. This will be stable for several more years, until eventually the company will begin to decline. The $880k/year is doing a wonderful job of taking my personal debt repayment burden off my own company, and there is no competition for industry, so I figure leaving the little AI alone for a while is a good option for overall ROI. Its stock price will be pretty stable from now on, so I can merge whenever it suits me. Basically I'll just use it to help pay my personal debt down to a level I like, then use my usual merger methods to get a CBV boost for my company.

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The engine choices thing seems to be a genuine bug. The scenario is supposed to give the player Americans and Connies as the starting locos. I have Ned's Cowboy Locos installed on my 1.06 and this seems to throw the game for a loop. I never get the Connie at all, and I get the second Cowboy American (not the first one). TBH this is probably a game where not having the Cowboy locos would be an advantage at the start, since Connies are late the 19th century super engine if you need to haul freight on grades.

I have checked the editor and the Decapod is not selected in the basic loco list, nor is it given by any event. I have no idea why it was given to all companies this time, but not any other time. However, by checking every event I did find another bug. Because I have the Cowboy Engines installed but have removed all electric and diesel engines, the third engine choice event in 1904 will actually give me the Connie II if I select the option for the 2-D-2! This is handy to know since it's now 1904 and I'll get that choice very soon.

As it turns out the P8 would probably still be the better choice since it has higher top speed by 12 mph, is about equal for free weight margin, has less pulling power (7 as opposed to 9.4) but better acceleration by 2 grades, better passenger appeal, better reliability, and better fuel economy. Purchase price is fractionally cheaper, but maintenance cost fractionally higher. The only time you'd want the Connie II over the P8 is if you really wanted the extra pulling power and were prepared to sacrifice speed, acceleration, passenger appeal, and fuel economy, but with this game I happen to have the Decapod anyway for an ugly freight hauler, and it will eat the Connie II for breakfast.

What I think I will do is skip both the P8 and the Connie II this time, and just take the 25% discount on locos. That way I can keep running the S3 for express and the Decapod for freight, which seems to be a good mix, and get them both cheaper.

Re the second intermediate station, I'm finding it's pretty good long term too. The main advantage is that the trains will get there and back, from either coast or mines, with barely enough water and with adequate oil. This speeds up turnaround since there is no need to go to a water tower. If I only had the station on top of the ridge the coastal trains would need an extra water stop.

Oh and the other thing I'm trying this time is running a few longer distance trains from the second (over the cliff) coastal station down to Valdivia, where there was a much better price for crystals. These trains use special inline maintenance sheds and water towers that are mostly skipped by the other trains. They just haul crystals and have only recently gotten underway (they're currently between Copiapo and Vallenar). There are four of them, hauling seven cars each, with an average value of $205 per car (ie: 5.74 million total). I would have sent more but that amount stripped the northern station of crystals. I'm going to see if I can get those price breakouts you have seen sometimes.

[Gumboots]

Ok so peak crystal prices turned out to be about $500 per load. This is the nominal price, not the actual delivery profit. Actual delivery profit was between a third to half of that (varied a bit over time). Target city for delivery was Valdivia, although if I'd taken over the southern AI earlier I could have gained slightly larger profits to Peurto Montt at some stages.

It had never previously occurred to me to ship crystals all the way down the coast. The reason it had never occurred to me is that crystals are basically useless. No industry does anything with them, and the southern coastal area has several quarries supplying crystals, so I had always just assumed that the only place it would be worth shipping them was to the northern ports that had been scripted to have an artificial demand (mainly via the offshore warehouses). This turns out to be wrong.

Despite crystals being useless, and quite well supplied in the south, the area between Valdivia and Peurto Montt will spontaneously develop a massive price for crystals. Despite the northern ports being deliberately scripted to have a very high demand for crystals, the price for them there will collapse fairly early in the game. After a couple of years of deliveries to the coast, the highest price for crystals in the northern area will usually be right on top of the ridge just outside the mine basin, even though there is no obvious demand for crystals there. This seems to be buggy behaviour, and would tell us something useful about how the game engine handles cargo prices and demands if we could figure out what it was telling us.

Now that I know all of this it becomes obvious that as soon as I have a complete coastal line from north to south, which should be in place by 1901 due to the necessity of running strike-breaker trains, the first thing to do is to stop thinking of shipping crystals from the mines straight down to the coast and instead start shipping them direct to Valdivia. I found I could ship as many loads of crystals as I could get my hands on and the price would stay high, before starting to finally collapse around 1910. These trains take a long time to complete their journey, but will each pay around $1.5 million for 7 cars of crystals when they do arrive. That's pretty good for a $125k locomotive on a line you have to build anyway.

I did find that the second station at Antofagasta worked very well this time, now that I have figured out how to hang it over the cliff while keeping reasonable grades. I ended up running two shuttle trains there with standard loads both ways, and they were each consistently returning between 100 and 200 k per year. This brings up an obvious idea, namely that it would be best to only have one station at Antofagasta and to hang it down the cliff as far as possible consistent with good grades. This would cost less in infrastructure, should reduce turnaround times, will give the trains from the mines higher profits, and should still draw livestock up from the port if you want to run a meat packing plant in Antofagasta. The trains from the mines would then be set to run all the way from the mines to Antofagasta, stopping at the intermediate station(s) up the hill, instead of using different train from mines and coast to the intermediate station(s).

[RulerofRails]

Despite crystals being useless, and quite well supplied in the south, the area between Valdivia and Peurto Montt will spontaneously develop a massive price for crystals. Despite the northern ports being deliberately scripted to have a very high demand for crystals, the price for them there will collapse fairly early in the game. After a couple of years of deliveries to the coast, the highest price for crystals in the northern area will usually be right on top of the ridge just outside the mine basin, even though there is no obvious demand for crystals there. This seems to be buggy behaviour, and would tell us something useful about how the game engine handles cargo prices and demands if we could figure out what it was telling us. **!!!*

Don't forget that non-mining areas will only produce 10% of normal Crystals production (except in the 3-year pre-game simulation). You can thank the game's notorious price increase event which is raising the price of Crystals. This map behaves rather well with it compared to other maps. I suspect that may be due to the hilly terrain and the amount of water that provides only narrow avenues for it to influence. Breakouts aren't too severe, but that doesn't change the fact that these occur sometimes without consideration of supply or demand on the map. In my experience break-outs never occur as a result of industrial demands on a map, most often originating at a station (it seems that having some of that cargo present there will increase the chance of this), and occasionally completely randomly. Low_grade was doing dedicated micro-management to re-haul Crystals on his play to try to get the full effect of the latest break-out price, this in turn seems to help trigger new breakouts. And it is clear that it does because he mentions seeing $500 price differences between stations. Crystals is a super high value cargo so even a 10% drop in price gives a great run. On my play I used the returning strike-breaker trains to haul Crystals south, but didn't get into the micro-management stuff.

Placing the Antofagasta station so that it covers the ports was the strategy I used. I still had some problems with the Cattle coming up though. The plus side was that cargo was less likely to wander into the ocean as well before I make the connection south. As you discovered it's fine to try to keep demand high by facilitating Crystals hitting the surf which will help keep mine profits high, but when there are big price differences for an over-priced cargo, hauling has potential for far more profit than industry. It becomes a question of whether to stock-pile and sacrifice some short-term profits for some a little down the road. Once the Crystals are in the sea that is book value lost as you can never haul them again. If they are on the land, even if some of the cargo rots before the price in their location drops, they are will still become available for re-hauling to a new location eventually. Also, if few ever reach the off-shore warehouses, the on-water price will stay fairly strong further into the game. There is no best strategy for this therefore, read it as you go and try to make the most of the conditions with inconsistent effects of the price increase event. Another thought: because the Cattle wants to wander down the coast, if it needs to be "fished" from the ocean you may as well "fish" it where the on-land price is lower. This is an exploit of sorts, but as long as you don't loop it ("fish" it, deliver close to the port, wait for it to travel down again, "fish it", etc.), I think it is a legal tactic.

Talking about this one makes me want to play it again. I wasn't sure what I could do better this time, but after looking at the save I realized that I was doing a shoddy job of supplying the expensive industries like Machine Shop, Auto Plant and Steel Mill. For a time I didn't view them as top-quality investments, due to the two-cargo inputs almost necessarily needing a wait time before production can start, difficulty to keep them consistently supplied, and the inflexibility of a large cost vs. a few smaller ones. However, thanks to Hawk, a few months back I have finally realized that they are great, I just don't concentrate on them too early unless I get a super opportunity with a high-cash start. Basis for this is mainly to wait for a good amount of all the various cargoes to build up on the map. Because this means that bonds will be used in the waiting period, normally this translates into waiting till I can buy one in half a year, so around 5M profit per year. Last play I did have a few problems with the supply plan of my Oil Refinery in Puerto Montto (read that as didn't really have one). I built a special track and stations to collect the oil but didn't have a good enough plan to stop oil from being hauled away from Puerto Montto. What have you done with oil?

PS. Care to share a pic of the design of your special service sidings for the long-haul north-south trains?

[Gumboots]

I'm giving it another play now (didn't finish the last one as it was going to be a win anyway, but not a particularly interesting win). This time I tried several different things for the first few years to see what balance gave the best kickstart. Also, this time I'm deliberately going a bit lighter on industry initially to get the full length coastal line up and running as early as possible to take advantage of the crystal-hauling dodge.

This seems to be working well. AFAICT the longer distance crystal price breakouts seem to start gathering steam in 1894. Before then there's not much point hauling them anywhere except between mines and Antofagasta. After that it starts getting advantageous to haul them further down the coast. I'm now in May 1899 and have been hauling them for a couple of years now (got the line finished in late 1897). This time the price breakouts started at Valparaiso, not at Valdivia, which is fine by me as it's less distance to haul. Current price differential between stations is about $220/load.

The Antofagasta station will haul cows up the cliff with only one station if you get the placement right. I've attached a screenshot of how I did it. This is already hauling cows up the cliff within 12 months of building a meat packing plant in Antofagasta. That's a pretty standard start-up draw time even for shortish distances on flat terrain, so I'm happy with it. The station placement is a bit tricky to get right. There are only a few ways it will fit down there anyway, but it's best to get it as shown in the pic. This will give you good grades out of Antofagasta and will allow a maintenance spur if you want that. If you get the station orientation slightly wrong the grades will be total crap. Play around with it a bit after saving and you'll see what I mean.

Antofagasta_cliff_station.jpg (55 KiB) Viewed 6045 times

The inline sheds and towers for my long distance trains are nothing special. Just basic bypasses that the long distance trains are scheduled to hit, while the rest of the trains just use the standard spurs off main track at the stations. I only schedule the sheds on the bypasses, on the assumption that if it goes through the shed it will go through the tower too, and it'll always be shorter on water than on oil. This works fine. I'm not religious about using spurs all the time. I'll use inline facilities where they are required. I just prefer to keep most maintenance on spurs to keep the network as free-flowing as possible.

Basic_bypass.jpg (56.29 KiB) Viewed 6045 times

I've never bothered with machine shops, but I always have at least one steel mill. The placed one at Talcahuano, which is already upgraded, is a bargain at 2,800k if you grab it fairly early. Once it gets going I find it will average 7-800k profit per year, even allowing for slightly variable coal supply. I put at least one upgraded tool and die right next to it. Sometimes with a second tool and die, sometimes with an auto plant, often with both once towns stop gobbling coal. If running an auto plant there I put a tyre factory right next to the auto plant, then custom consist the rubber direct from Valparaiso. This will keep your auto plant well fed and happy.

With the Puerto Montt oil refinery what I do is have a line running from Peurto Montt to Castro. I then branch off this about 2/3 of the way to Castro, run down the gentle slope, then island hop across with timber bridges so I can nestle a large station in against the cliff on the other side. It's another one where if you play around a bit you can get nice grades and a maintenance spur fitted in there, which you probably wouldn't think would be possible until you try it. I then have two or three trains running from this station, with a minimum 2 cars so they'll wait for oil. It won't take long before all the oil from all land-based wells is being caught here. I find this provides sufficient food for the oil refinery. I don't seem to have a problem with too much being shipped away.

Oh yeah, I tried something different with locomotives this time too. I got rid of the Cowboy engines so the game will give me standard Connies and default model Americans at the start. For hauling freight on grades Connies beat Dukes, and passenger traffic isn't a huge deal in this game, so I chose to skip the Dukes and just get cheaper Connies and Americans. Started the mine runs with Americans just to get a lot of cheap trains going. Used Connies a bit later for all the main runs on the southern areas, since cash flow was up by then. Then when the choice came up for the S3, etc I skipped those too and just took the discount again. Combined that with the Technician's event, and I now have Connies that have decent top speed, reliability and acceleration, with excellent hauling power, for a mere $75k each. This means I can afford to replace them early, before the raised maintenance costs become uneconomical. I'm running them with full 8 car loads on flat country (6 or 7 on grades) and no caboose and it seems to be going well. I'll replace them sometime in Year 7. When the P8 becomes available I may grab that, or I may just go with ridiculously cheap Connies. Not sure yet.

[RulerofRails]

My station in Antofagasta turned out similar to the way yours looks. Like the way you managed completely smooth grades, good work! The off-line spurs seem are similar design to what I used in AOS Blue Streak, a solid solution.

Interesting strategy with the engine choices to go for the cheap Consolidations. I view fuel consumption as one of the factors in engine costs, most of the time this cost is greater than maintenance costs. The one level upgrade from the Consolidation to the Duke and the S3 may be excusable seeing the Consolidation still has the best grade performance, but I can't see myself passing up the P8 which is 30% faster at full load and two levels better on fuel economy. The main advantage electric engines have over steam is fuel costs and before Coast to Coast the business strategy to deal with 1900 weight increase was to electrify for the 2-D-2 but thanks to the P8 that's no longer the case adding to realism. I like the idea of going for the cheap Consolidations, and think that it will be a winner until the P8.

I would be inclined to make the 1904 appearance of the P8 (max 13 yr old engines meaning majority are around 10yrs old) my first replacement point giving me a definite incentive and cost saving for the extra outlay which is sure to boost profits as well. Normally in a game I tend to stretch the replacement dates a little from optimal, and normally this is to try to have a replacement date correspond with an upgrade to a new engine or miss a replacement before game end and thus hopefully come out ahead in terms of CBV. If you are more ambitious than I and calculate that it is worthwhile to split this interval in half to make replacement at an average of 5yrs lifespan with the 75k Consolidations let me know.

[Gumboots]

Yeah I went for the P8 when it became available. Twice the price of the Connies (apparently the previous discounts don't apply to new types of engine, so P8's turned out to be 150 each) but better in every way apart from passenger appeal. When the discount option for the P8 becomes available I'll grab that too. That should knock the price of P8's back to $112k, which is more reasonable. The Class S has no advantage over the P8 AFAICT, so no point taking that.

The current situation is that my economy has been stuck in full depression for 6 solid years without a break. Things were going well before then. I merged the Argentine company at the end of 1901. Saw a downturn coming so figured I might as well keep going with mergers. Merged the Santiago company at the end of 1902 and the last one at the end of 1903. Figured the economy would start getting back to normal after a couple of years. No chance.

The crystal haulage is becoming less lucrative now so I'll have to get inventive. It's behaving really weirdly this time. The highest price has been at Vallenar for several years, so crystals just keep stacking up there. There's now a tower of 99.7 loads of crystals just sitting around in Vallenar. At some point the price there should collapse, but no telling when that will be.

With the cheap Connies and maintenance costs: if you take the Techinicians option as well as the early discounts you only pay $75k for the Connies, but you pay $14k per annum initial maintenance cost, and of course that compounds by ten percent every year. This means they rapidly become uneconomical. I figure Year 7 replacement works pretty well.

[Gumboots]

Hey I did a bit of basic number crunching from the current state of play. Generally I've been replacing by age, so the youngest Connies are one year older than the oldest P8's. Youngest Connies have just finished Year 4 of their lives. Oldest P8's have just finished Year 3. This means the Connies are one year ahead on maintenance cost escalation, which should put them at a slight disadvantage.

I have fifteen of the youngest Connies and 25 of the oldest P8's. The mixture of routes and grades seems, at a glance, to be fairly good for comparisons. All the Connies had a $20k annual maintenance cost, compared to the P8's maintenance cost of $25k. Fuel costs for all the Connies averaged out at $25.4k per train, and for the P8's it was $19.9k per train. This means total annual running cost for the Connies was $45.4k and for the P8's it was $44.9k. This is a difference of only 1.1% in the P8's favour, and bearing in mind the Connies are one year ahead on maintenance cost at this stage. As the P8 maintenance costs escalate with age, in comparison to fuel costs, it's clear the Connies will gain a running cost advantage.

The important bit is profit of course, and the P8's can haul more ass. So, I tallied up profits from where I am now. This is not as good a comparison, and I'm not sure how much credence should be given to it. I've been mainly concentrating on the coastal areas and less so on Argentina, plus I only opened up Argentina about the time P8's became available, so the Argentine side started with P8's and not many of them. This may skew the profits per train in favour of the Argentine P8's. They may have more cargo per train, and they certainly have less in the way of grades and congestion to deal with. Using only the coastal P8's may be a better comparison, but I haven't sorted those out yet. However, for what it may be worth, annual profit for the Connies averaged out at $129.1k per train, and for all the P8's it came to $141.4k per train. This is an advantage of 9.5% to the P8's.

This is a definite advantage, but only on the order of $12k per year. Given the purchase cost of a P8 is $150k and the Connie is only $75k, it would take a bit over 6 years for the P8 to make enough extra money to pay for the difference in purchase cost. With the increased maintenance costs resulting from the Technician's event meaning earlier replacement is better (caveat: depending on how many years to the end of the game) it doesn't look as if the P8's are going to have much overall advantage. I may have been better off if I'd just taken the extra cost reduction on Connies instead. If I had done that they would now be only $56k each, and with a further cost reduction option in 1910 they would come right down to $42k each.