Age Of Steam V-Pheonix Rising For Your Review

[obertran]

Now playing this hard scenario

[RulerofRails]

obertran, while there are many strategies available in this scenario, as long as you are running a solid railroad I found that the insane price spirals are a sure way to riches. On this map I remember Corn and Oil go sky high. Whether to be completely proactive and snap up the Corn Farms when cash flow allows or wait and realize the profits by hauling these cargoes later on is up to you. While playing Age of Steam (ETA: CORRECTED. I incorrectly called this Green Diamond the second in this series), just for fun I loaded a Lumber train with 19.6M of profit due to the wild Lumber prices in that scenario, I don't believe I waited for it to arrive as I had almost won the scenario. Screenshot:

Age of Steam enormous profits.jpg (64.22 KiB) Viewed 10129 times

[obertran]

Thank you very much RulerofRails . Yes, after a couple of times I have finally done it with gold medal . Now I'll try the scenary with other companies, as I have done it on my own and see.

[AdmiralHalsey]

On this map I remember Corn and Oil go sky high.]

Yeah I found that out by accident. It was mid-game and having some extra cash I bought a couple of corn farms. Next thing I know i'm suddenly getting the penalties for making to much money by industry. The corn farms were making something like 2000K a year! I'm not complaining as that actually gave me the boost to win the gold though.

[Gumboots]

Ok, this is totally weird. I only played this once or twice way back when, and never finished it due to getting bored with diesels. Never looked in the editor either, and as far as I can recall only ever downloaded the map once.

So, last time I tried it I had diesels to start with. Not this time. This time it only gives me the USRA Heavy Switcher and the Vittorrio Emanuelle. No, I'm not joking. I get those two antiquated steamers in 2008. Like I said, I haven't changed the events at all. If I had, I certainly wouldn't have changed it to giving those two locos. Beats me what is going on, but when I did check in the editor sure enough, it's coded to give those two and no diesels.

I am officially stumped by this.

ETA: Ha. I'm not going crazy. Just logged into the archives and downloaded a fresh copy of this map. Copy it into my 1.06 to replace the old map. Fire up 1.06. Yup, USRA Heavy Switcher and Vittorio Emanuelle. No diesels. Seriously.

Ok, who has been playing with the archives then?

[RulerofRails]

Could it be that you don't have the diesels installed, so the computer was forced to pick at least one type of loco you had installed? Similar to the odd thing of getting the E-88 way too early when all locos are disabled in certain scenarios?

The start is a little slower on this one, for sure. I am playing with an industry free company, and since this is my first go in a while I forgot how the taxes work. There may be a case for going into industry before the good (steam) locos are available even though industry prices are higher and you will be taxed. Rail revenues are poor and costs high in those early years.

In my play I have almost met all the goals except the requirement of 12M revenue to Niigota Port I received for this game's goals. I am only half way on that. Barring a price outbreak there, demand for most cargoes is weak and I only just tried to set up a warehouse to pump out Uranium. I did this by shipping coal in and waste away, so out of the remaining possible conversions coal -> uranium should be most profitable. Will see how it goes.

[Gumboots]

Ah. That must be it, but it's still weird. Usually if a required engine isn't installed the game just crashes when it attempts to do setup. You're right that I don't have diesels installed at the moment (completely forgot about that) but it's just loading normally anyway.

It should crash, or at least it always has before whenever I've attempted to play without something that was required. An example is the PopTop Japan Quakes scenario. If I tried to play that without the Shinkansen installed, it'd just crash while loading.

Anyway, the really weird thing is that the editor coding says those two old steamers. Even if it manages to load the game without crashing, there's no way it should be changing event coding in the editor.

Incidentally, which diesels are required for this scenario?

[RulerofRails]

Note, I corrected the caption on my screenshot after having a peak at Green Diamond as obviously my memory failed me there.

I think you need the GP 7, GP 35, F3, and FP 45. I only ever bought GP 35s, but the AI uses the other engines. There are sales for the AMD-103 and SD-90, but I don't think you need them. In my train selection screen in the editor I have NO trains selected, before an "At start of scenario" event grants the GP 7 and GP 35. Maybe that is why you could load it as the scenario isn't "using" them before the event fires.

[Gumboots]

Hmm, maybe, but that would still mean RT3 is changing the event coding in the .gmp if the required engines aren't installed, which is seriously weird behaviour.

ETA: Yup, that's what it's doing. If the GP7 and GP35 are installed, they are provided at the start of the game. If they aren't installed, the game rewrites the editor event to give you the USRA 0-8-0 and the Vittorio Emanuelle. Go figure.

[Gumboots]

Meh. Even with all those diesels you listed installed, I'm still getting a crash at the end of 2008. It saves the game to 86% and then crashes. No idea what is causing it, as the only events firing then are the medal tests and they seem ok. Can't really be bothered spending days trying to debug it.

[obertran]

How strange today I was going to play the game again and RRT crashed to desktop when I open it. After a couple of times I had to reinstall the game1.06 again as 1.05 worked right

[Gumboots]

It's not 1.06 itself on my box. For instance, AoS IV doesn't crash at the end of the year (just tested it). It only seems to be happening with A0S V - Phoenix.

[RulerofRails]

Do you have the entire 1.06 locos folder? I would try swapping it out with your current one. This scenario also has a choice event where the Trans-Euro or DD 080X could be chosen late in the game. I didn't think you would need them. There may also be another loco event I missed. This would at least pretty much eliminate an engine issue.

I have had 1.06 go bad as well, sometimes it was my fault when I deleted extras I had been using but didn't put back the original files. The last time it went bad, an anti-virus scan was to blame. Somehow, after I scanned with a deep scan 1.06 would crash as soon as it hit the scenario loading screen.

PS. AI can potentially cause crashes especially when they try to lay track, were you playing with them?

[RulerofRails]

Just finished this. I bungled things up quite a bit even declaring bankruptcy in the worst of the game, when the economy went sour again and I was stretched out trying to obtain speed increases by hauling Rocks and Logs. Of course I didn't do any recycling hauling tricks to inflate those numbers. I also didn't build any stations that weren't covering a town except for one at each of the ports. This meant that I never hauled enough Iron to unlock full speeds.

This is a great map and scenario, I love how it has a good storyline. The massive price outbreaks on the map are nicely crafted into the story as well. Makes exploiting them fun and feel less like cheating. If one exploits them, I don't see a way that a player will fail on this map, unless he lets the AI take all that revenue. In this play I went from 8M to 14M profit to 120M profit as the high prices kicked in. As I said, I didn't buy or build any industry and the AI owned all the Corn Farms. I was a little worried that the AIs profits would jump up as well, but I managed to keep most of the Corn, Oil and Diesel out of their hands so they actually lost some profit as I was truly dominating haulage on the map. Profits from their Corn Farms didn't rise as quickly as I anticipated either. I finished this with 10 years to go (made a few obvious blunders as well), so that time should virtually guarantee a medal to players that are in control of most of the Oil and Corn on the map around the 25 year mark.

I mentioned the problem I had with the 12M revenue to Niikota Port goal. I ended up finding some cheap Oil and Diesel to haul there. I didn't end up sending off my Uranium train. If I was building industry I could have easily made some demand there. Turns out that frequent service was enough to keep prices there in step with the previous nearby outbreaks and eventually Diesel broke out there so the deal was done.

I saw talk of someone trying to takeover the AI on this map. All I can say is good luck! Maybe you can takeover one or two, but it is a long stretch to take them all over as the AI chairmen start with so much cash. This gives them immediate ownership and their share price goes through the roof as well. I suspect that upon start-up the AI are gifted a fairly large amount of cash. I didn't even bother investing in the AI this play, instead bungling up finances too, having 3 or so margin calls, and ended up issuing stock two or three times to give my player a chance to buy a little more of my own company as the AI chairmen capitalized on the crashes of my share price so there were no "public" shares outstanding.

[Gumboots]

I might have to try the whole engine folder swap. I don't currently have a default folder as such, but can reconstruct it.

[Gumboots]

Ok, got it working. I had a backup folder of all the unwanted .lco and .car and PK4 files from 1.06. So, I just made another backup of my customised EngineTypes and PopTopExtraContent folders that only had the ones I wanted (IOW, only steam ) and then just copy/pasted all the nasty diesel and electrics back into the game's EngineTypes and PopTopExtraContent folders. This is a horrible thing to do to an innocent RT3 installation, but it means this scenario will run. I think it was the lack of the TransEuro that was stopping it working, but to be safe and save debugging time I just infested the poor thing will all the nasties. I will purify it again as soon as possible.

[Gumboots]

Started a play of this one, with maximum AI's, but muffed it on a margin call. Am going to start again from the same January 2008 save.

I was looking in the event coding, and noticed something about the taxes that come later in this scenario. They are partially triggered by industry revenue, but also by company cash. This means you can have all the industry revenue you want, as long as your company cash is less than $5 million whenever the tax event fires. If you're over $5 million company cash you get taxed, at an escalating rate that has additional triggers at $7,500,000 and $10,000,000, but if you can keep it under $5 million when the event checks up on you then you won't be taxed at all.

[obertran]

I also restart this scenery with 5 AIs and it changes very much. On the first years all industries were bought by the other companies and my company growed very slowly in compare. Very good map wsherrick.

[Gumboots]

Well I'm up to January 2030 now and hey, it sure gets moving. Probably wont crack Gold this time around but will have a good go at it. Corn hauling makes insane money once the price hikes start, and I managed to pick up some corn farms of my own.

Oh and those taxes hit at the end of each year, so to avoid them all you need to do is not have more than $4,999,999 in company cash at year end. Easy.

[RulerofRails]

I always spend all my money until I run out of good investment options, so I never saw the tax. The AI change up this map a lot as they get a great start compared to you. If, as I did, you don't start in the lower right corner of the map, one or two of them will definitely start there. That's the place I normally see price breakouts. With their good routing algorithm which will likely notice the opportunity to load a super-profit train and change up the trains route suit. At least on their own track and jumping a couple of cities. Did you also notice this?