Panama Canal

[RulerofRails]

I was noticing that Machinery demand was orange-red over the entire map the years I was supplying the canal. I guess I was watching it a little more closely as I have been thinking about the 1.06 cargoes over in the fixes thread. I am on the lookout for if those particular cargoes behave strangely, that's why I asked.

The idea you had for the Platinum medal is really ingenious. I love it. I am trying to get ideas for making a map and am tempted to incorporate this one. It is much better than having a Super Gold medal. Is that ok?

I found this scenario a lot simpler and more enjoyable by setting up my routes as 6-car wait-to-fill right from the start and not going back through the train list and re-doing consists. I think there was one or two trains that I had to run with less to meet the first year's requirement, but after that it was all 6-car consists. Half the reason for stopping any extra just before they arrive at the canal is that some allowance needs to be made for breakdowns and variations in economy. This means that later in the year one needs to watch the trains arriving to that area and stop those required, but it is far better than the bunching that will occur if a second wait-to-fill train arrives at the cargo source before the first is finished. The second train will often jump the queue and fill in preference to the second. Often the first train will have 3-4 cars full and will fill relatively quickly once the second train is full and departs. This causes a gap when there are no trains waiting which will likely cause some cargo to escape that stations capture area.

Simple, efficient routing and planning can make lots of things enjoyable. I did this also in my most recent play of Alternate USA. In this case I built enough demand for whatever product I was hauling at one city, for example 4 Upgraded Breweries on one cell just far enough away from the source that it wasn't attracted on its own. Corn was the only thing I couldn't do this for. Together with wait-to-fill, I left most of the routes throughout the game on auto-pilot instead of the desperate efforts I had used in my first attempt. I even had a list on paper for deliveries and was so pedantic that I was stopping and checking every train. I never did finish that play. I guess watching exactly what happens with price and demand is necessary to understand the game mechanics, but, after the learning phase, use them as your best helpers.

[Wolverine@MSU]

The idea you had for the Platinum medal is really ingenious. I love it. I am trying to get ideas for making a map and am tempted to incorporate this one. It is much better than having a Super Gold medal. Is that ok?

Sure.

[Gumboots]

Just had a crack at this. Would be great if you love micromanaging. Not my cup of tea.

[RulerofRails]

Just had a crack at this. Would be great if you love micromanaging. Not my cup of tea.

I agree that it does take some careful train timing and enough industry production for timely collection, but if you are interested take a look at my save when I found the "bug" (make sure to use Blackhawk's Quarry {link a few posts down} on a standard 1.06 if you do). I was careful with the setup and timing of my trains, and I was monitoring/stopping the arrivals for maximum points and to help with congestion around my on-track service facilities. But, as I think I proved, there is enough room to get at least silver (you can miss some years) without doing this. Of course, I needed to hammer out of the gate with a good start to have almost all my routes (at auto-pickup 10 of each per year) setup in time. At least for me, the amount of train management I was doing was fun. This is similar to Alternative USA which I also setup really good route/timing delivery schedules with large enough demands that I also built that I didn't touch except for the Corn (goes without saying, I was doing legitimate hauls instead of any of this sneaky stuff including no deliberate hauling within the territories). I think I developed some of this strategy from playing Trainmaster. While playing TM, low micro-management is one of my primary strategy goals. Don't think I am trying to change your mind, only play it if you wish.

[Gumboots]

I know what'd happen. After a couple of years of micromanagement of everything required, I'd say "#%@! it" and just bait and switch the lot from Panama and back.

[RulerofRails]

Fair enough. Bait and switch is like most cheats: it gets old really fast.

[Gumboots]

Finally got around to having another go at this. Just for the heck of it, since it's J.P.Morgan and with up to 6 AI's, I went with all six AI's and decided to play cutthroat. Naturally this included a robber baron start, and several extra companies during the game (basically, building profitable industry out of my own cash, then merging into the main company later). Played like this, it has that typical RT3 problem: the AI's are useless. You can knock them off whenever you want to, and really they're just pointless clutter. I'd suggest not bothering with the AI's, unless you just really like watching idiots stumbling all over the place and getting in your way.

I can't help thinking it's a pity that Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti don't do anything. Yes, I know some of Cuba's territory variables are used for bookkeeping, but apart from that those three islands might as well not be there (and you could do the bookkeeping another way anyhow). It's a 1024x1024 map, with the consequent overview problems and general clumsy handling, so to make up for that it would be nice if all of the map was interesting in some way.

Come to think of it, I'm half inclined to think the changes made to the zoom function in 1.06 were a mistake. Zoom in 1.05 is much quicker and cleaner, and monster maps are a/ fairly rare and b/ arguably not such a great idea anyway. 1.05 handles maps up to 768 very well, so if I was ever contemplating edits to the 1.06 .exe I think I'd be wondering where that zoom function was and what was done to it.

The AI's that I haven't taken over yet are just pointless financial black holes, and are going to be a nuisance, so I'll probably ditch this play and try another with no AI's.

[Gumboots]

Just idly pondering this one again, since I've been recoding the South America archives page.

Loaded it into the game, and noticed Cuba was seeding quite a lot of coal but no sugar. In real life, Cuba had heaps of sugar in that time frame, but no coal. Hmm. Cuba also had heaps of rail to get the sugar to the ports. A bit of a revamp of seeding, and the addition of a port or two, could really open up some extra play options on this map.

Maybe strengthening the AI's would be good too. Make them a bit of an additional challenge.

Another thing is that with it being a 1.06 map, and with 1.06 having haul at a loss available (often when you don't want it ) there's the obvious option of just forcing all shipments to Panama via custom consist, and making your money in other ways.

Edit: Just noticed that the way the port recipes are set up, they will oversupply Iron and undersupply Coal (assuming the idea was to get a balance for Steel production). Yet Cuba seeds stacks of Coal, which would balance the potential Steel production if it was usable.

However, there are no buyable ports available to the player, and the only two cities on Cuba (Havana and Guantanamo) are both set to not seed ports. The result is that the Coal that seeds in Cuba is not usable.

Was this intentional? It seems odd to set Coal seeding in Cuba, and set Iron undersupplied by mainland ports, if the plan was not to allow somehow getting Cuban coal over to the mainland. Is this a bug?

---

w00t! I got curious and looked up a few things about Panama. There's a real story in the original Panama Railway (built 1850-55, and the route of which the Canal basically follows). Check this:

Death toll
It is estimated that from 5,000 to 10,000 people may have died in the construction of the railroad, though the Panama Railway company kept no official count and the total may be higher or lower. Cholera, malaria, and yellow fever killed thousands of workers, who were from the United States, Europe, Colombia, China, and the Caribbean islands, and also included some African slaves. Many of these workers had come to Panama to seek their fortune and had arrived with little or no identification. Many died with no known next of kin, nor permanent address, nor even a known surname.

Cadaver trade
Disease and exhaustion took a heavy toll on workers. The connection between mosquitoes and malaria, and ways of preventing the disease, were not understood. The company sold workers' corpses to medical schools abroad, using the income to maintain the company hospital.

Now there's some ruthless tycooning for ya. "Let's see, if we keep killing them off we can flog their corpses for extra cash, and just import more, which we can kill off and then flog for extra cash. This is a winner!"