(a Eng) Balkanika

[Hawk]

I merged your new post with the thread that already existed on this map.

As you may notice, you were the last one to post in this thread back in 2010.

[RayofSunshine]

Thanks Hawk,
And sorry about that. I just don't have any idea of why my system does not find a trace in a "search". I know that you have a different program for it, so at least one of our systems work correctly. LOL

[Hawk]

Thanks Hawk,
And sorry about that. I just don't have any idea of why my system does not find a trace in a "search". I know that you have a different program for it, so at least one of our systems work correctly. LOL

Actually, I don't have a different program to search with. I did find a problem with the forum though.
In the style you use - prosilver - I realized that the search option wasn't there. I have corrected that.
I didn't see it before because I use the prosilver_se style and the search option was there all along. It wasn't until I changed styles, to check and see if that was the problem, that I realized the problem.

No search option.

Click on image to view full size

Corrected settings.

Click on image to view full size

Now you can search the forums.
As shown in the above screenshot, just click on the link that says Advanced search. Then follow the tips in the screenshot below.

Actually, in the screenshot below, it should say 'Type search term here' instead of 'Type scenario name here', although if you were looking for a scenario thread by name, you would type the scenario name.
Confused yet?

Click on image to view full size

[RayofSunshine]

Okay Hawk,
Now I believe that when we tried for me to get stuff in the "search", it was found that my screen was not showing the "advanced" option. So, I just tried the "search" which appears at the left side of the sceen, above the "post reply", and came up with "no item found". However, such a search with the "advanced" option, did bring up the item of which I was searching. Hope that this will cut down on you having to keep finding stuff for me.
Thanks again for your efforts.

[Hawk]

As I mentioned, that Search option wasn't there before. I had to get it to show.
I didn't realize it was missing until I switched to the prosilver style that you use.

[Joan]

Although this map seems to be really difficult, it is not. As you can see in the next image, I reach the gold (and bonus also) in just 25 years.



What I did was the follow steps:

1. Build an oil refinery in Larissa.
2. Build a tables factory and paper factory in Kalampaka.
3. Buy the rights to build in Romania.
4. Buy and build some factories in Romania and start the railroad network there, between Craiova, Bucarest, Galati and Constanza.
5. Sell my factories in Greece in order to get money and extend my railroad network.

Then is quite easy to connect the cities required in the other countries

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Fun but not actually difficult. Or maybe I just got lucky. Larrissa not only had the oil but also a ton of wood which is a great start to an expanding industry. Started by buying a lumber and paper mill then bought up all the base resources, expanded with a diesel refinery, furniture and upgrades and before I had even laid any track I was making a killing. The map loves your resources as well - sure its tough to lay the initial track but there is high demand for everything in the next valley over so very profitable trains through out.

Somewhat Humorously I got confused and thought Crete was Rhodes so I connected Crete by some huge super bridge. Then, when I realized my mistake built my line across Crete and then connected it to Rhodes by another super bridge.

[obertran]

Nice map. I played the 2nd vers.

Good steps Joan, I have seen them now that I have finished this map. I did start with industry and then jump from a valey to the other, increasing the industry in Creece. It took me 30 years for gold and I enjoy it very much .

[Gumboots]

Just a warning for anyone who is thinking of playing this map. The .gmp is badly corrupted in places. There is "water" locked into the code but it's not visible, and it's not fixable in the editor.

This is terrain which should be land, and has cargo price squares on it like land should have, but whenever you try to run track over it the cursor reads it as water. I tried fixing it in the editor, by using the same trick that works when "ghost" rivers get locked into a map, but it didn't work for this problem.

The problem area is between Tebe and Lamia. Unfortunately is on the only reasonable approach to Lamia, and tuns right into the middle of the town. The game actually seeds buildings on the corrupted "water" area. It just won't let you build track on it. This kind of ruins the map IMO. It really does need some work done on the terrain. A lot of it is a great track-laying challenge, which I like, but parts of it are just plain rooted, which isn't challenging or entertaining.

Incidentally, the one I downloaded is named Z-Balkanika. This seemed to be the correct English map, but I notice this thread has a different name. Was there an uncorrupted version of the English map available anywhere?

[RulerofRails]

Took a look. I think you will find that this particular water is a "river". The city center of Lamia is in the water!

I also think that I worked out how to make these "ghost" rivers.

Instructions for headaches:
1. Paint a river
2. Paint a lake over that river
3. Use the tool to revert the lake to "dry land"

I'm not saying that this is the only way.

[Gumboots]

Good point. It might be a ghost river. I just assumed it was ocean because there's no river around there, and there is ocean nearby. I'll take a look at fixing it with the river tool later and see if that works.

The rest of the map could still do with some work though. It has some wild lumps in places, with rivers flowing uphill and in the wrong direction. I'm pretty sure no rivers flow uphill. Not last time I checked anyway. It's potentially a good map. Just needs bit of touching up here and there.

By the way, there's an event which tells you to connect to a town in Albania by 1915 for a "bonus" of some sort. So I checked the editor. If you take the connection to *some Albanian town* by 1915 then you get another event, which sends you chasing off to Mount Athos with a time limit, and if you take that one as well then you get sent off on a wild goose chase to Belgrade, and if you get there within the time limit you get...

...THE !!!&!%@% ORCA.

IOW, unless you totally love that thing, ignore the events. Those are about the only events in the game too.

[Hawk]

To the best of my knowledge there isn't another version o this map available.
I don't remember what Sugus did to update the map back in 2013 either.

[Gumboots]

Ok, that was it: ghost rivers. The map maker had tried to put rivers all through and around Lamia, then got them locked in by mistake. They're not hard to get rid of once you know what they are. And obviously they can be replaced with ocean easily enough, where necessary (ie: not in the middle of Lamia).

The only problem then is that just every river on the map is a mess. They flow uphill in places, or along the sides of cliffs, with broken bits everywhere, and usually flowing in the wrong direction. The wrong direction flow is easy to fix (one click per river) but the rest would most of a day's work to sort out. I'm not that keen at the moment.

[RulerofRails]

Well, there are quite a few other maps with wonky rivers too. It's a bit of a let down, but normally I manage to swallow it and play on anyway. That said, I haven't played this map. No good reason. In terms of strategy here. After looking at it for 5 minutes, I would actually tend to industrialize from the start then buy into Romania with bond money to lay first track there. Unfortunately I don't have enough time to play it right now.

[Gumboots]

It's not bad for a fun little game. I got about a third of the way through before running into bugs annoyed me enough to can it. I might have another go at it later.

The best way to approach it would be to buy into Bulgaria as early as possible. Connecting Bulgaria to Greece gives a 50% reduction in all territory access costs, so obviously once you have done that the map opens up a lot faster. If I had a seed which made starting in the eastern end of Greece feasible, I do that and then force a Bulgaria connection asap.

As it was, I started with a textile mill in Kalamata. That gave a good run to the port *some-name-starting-with-P* just up the west coast. Wool down to Kalamata, clothing back up. The isolation of prices imposed by the terrain means you'll probably want rail fairly early.

The connected track requirement is a nuisance, given that the terrain is so tricky that you'll usually want several attempts before finding the best path. Trial and error track laying is much easier if you don't have to have connected track to try something out.

[Gumboots]

Had another quick go at it. It looks like all the industries are placed at the start of the game. Several starts all gave the exact same seed.

Starting at the east end of Greece and going for an early connection to Bulgaria works well. That area has a few decent industries available at a good price. I played a mix of rail and industry from the start, building rail connections as I bought existing industries. Terrain in eastern Greece is nearly flat, so track costs are low, and you can do a lot of connecting with only one bridge to get into Bulgaria, which is also nearly flat. You don't need a second bridge until you want to connect Romania (that's flat too) and by that time Romania's access cost is half price and you're making oodles of cash anyway.

At the moment I have the Greek towns connected from Salonica around the coast to Edirne (Turkish, but gettable by a large station on the Greek side). Have also hooked up most of Bulgaria and Romania, and have just connected Resita/Belrgade/Osijek in Yugoslavia. The Bucharest-Belgrade connection is worth going for fairly quickly for as it gives a 20% reduction in all industry purchase costs.

This sets up the remainder of the game to be ridiculously lucrative. If you assume normal industry ROI of about 20% over the long term, cutting the purchase price by 20% effectively boosts ROI to 25%. You're only paying out 8 units of cash to make a profit of 2 units, instead of paying out 10 units to make a profit of 2 units, so your ROI becomes 25% instead of 20%. Or, to put it another way, it boosts your industry profits by 25% (because 25/20 = 1.25) for the same expenditure on industry. This is a gold mine.

Have played to March 1905 so far (10 years elapsed out of 35). I've used stock issues quite heavily, which I don't normally do but felt like trying for a change. Maximum bonds, of course, all refinanced to 5%. These have to be paid off for Gold (zero debt).

Gold is going to be a piece of cake. Annual profits are up over $6 million. Lifetime industry profits are $18.5 million (only 20 needed for Gold). All that's left now is some connections to Athens, Durazzo, Istanbul and Rhodes. Really, you would have to try pretty hard to lose this one.

Edit: By the way, rail is lucrative on this map, without needing to get fancy. At the moment I have about $22 million worth of track, stations and trains. This is returning about $8 million/year in freight and express revenue (roughly 1/3 express, 2/3 freight) with no real attempt to optimise rail and with about $2 million in costs for maintenance, fuel, etc. So yearly rail profit is near the $6 million mark, which is a very good ROI of around 28%. This will drop as distribution on the map evens out, and if the economy tanks, but the point is that this is not a map where getting a decent start requires a lot of industry and no trains. You can just go ahead and play it naturally, without worrying about it.

Edit 2: Gold in October 1911. A 1910 medal would be easy enough. CBV ended up a bit under $102 million, and LIP a bit over $50 million. Spent about $2 million on disposable post offices and bulldozing houses over the course of the game. This was just to get large stations everywhere and knock down a few small lumps. Used a steel bridge to cross the Lamia valley, and didn't bother going to the town itself. All bridges were steel, just because I could. There were only two suspension bridges: a short one across the Dardanelles, and a long one running from Bodrum straight to Rhodes. Also used two short tunnels.

With a bit of care laying track the terrain is ok. It's possible to get everywhere you need to go without going over 6% grade, and that's only for a few squares here and there. I didn't go to all the gnarly places on the map, because there was no need. Athens is a requirement for a medal, but I didn't connect anywhere south of it.

[Gumboots]

This one might be worth fixing. The author said he didn't mind if people wanted to build on it. IMO what it needs is:

1/ Fix the text. At the moment it's still a bit Italiglish, or perhaps Englishiano. That's an easy job.

2/ Fix the badly-borked rivers. This is a bit tedious, but I've had a quick go at it and it's not going to be too horrendous.

3/ Fix some bits of water (like in Lamia city). Add wave blocking in some areas, to make it look more natural.

4/ Minor terrain smoothing where track has to be laid. Not much. Just enough so clever track laying gives a fairly decent result.

5/ No access territory under most of the ocean, to prevent stupid monster bridges everywhere.

6/ Change some of the architectural styles. Japanese stations in Greece are a no-no.

7/ Give it some more interesting events and conditions. Ideas like:

----a) Higher LIP requirement. Maybe $200 million/Expert - $150 million/Hard - $100 million/Normal - $50 million/Easy

----b) No personal debt, to match the existing requirement for no company debt.

----c) Add a PNW requirement. Maybe > 50% of CBV on Expert setting, decreasing to 20% on Easy setting. This would slow down expansion by not allowing such liberal use of stock issues. Having it as a proportion of CBV would add more interest than a fixed dollar value.

----d) Since some people have bought into Romania before connecting Greece to Bulgaria, perhaps add an extra challenge for that situation. For example, since Romania is lucrative and flat and has ample pax traffic, buying into Romania before connecting Greece to Bulgaria could add an express speed requirement. YTD express speed would probably be generally more fun than LTD express speed. This could also included a pax loads requirement, to prevent single "perfect" runs with one pax car. Penalty for failure could be $50k for every city connected.
.

---

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That should make it a pretty good map. The economy seems to be generally ok. Loco selection is fine. Loco events and company are ok, but could be tweaked a bit.

[Hawk]

Are you going to tackle this or is it a request/suggestion for someone else?

[Gumboots]

I was idly thinking about having a go at it.

Edit: I just had an idea about pax traffic requirements. The number of loads required should be tied to number of cities connected. A bigger network gives more haulage potential, so the target should increase to match that. The number would have to be fairly low, since there will be a range of city sizes on a fully-developed map and small cities would provide minimal traffic.

On the other hand, large cities will provide quite a lot of pax traffic on this map, and you could also include mail in the target to make it an express target instead of just a pax target. So offhand maybe set it at four loads of "express", per city connected, per year. That would allow running trains on an "Any express" setting without penalty. It should be enough to make people take express seriously, without making it dominate the entire game.

The number of loads would have to be set at the start of each year, so that connecting additional cities late in the year didn't make the target impossible. This might lead to people trying to game it by doing most new connections in January, but that shouldn't be a big issue in practice.

The express speed requirement should stop people doing bait and switch to get loads up, since stopping the train and reversing it cuts into average speed quite dramatically. If it is set as YTD then a mistake in one year won't stop you getting a win. You'd just have to pay a company cash penalty, that's also tied to the number of cities connected. I suppose you could also have it set that consistently failing the express target incurs a PNW penalty and/or an escalating company cash penalty and/or game over, if you were feeling evil.

[Gumboots]

I've done some quick testing on these ideas. At the moment, using a 1905 game save from my first play through, and adding status events to keep track of express loads and express speed, the YTD loads are coming in at over 8 per year per city (21 cities connected) and the YTD speed is sitting on 28 mph.

This is with most of the main Yugloslavian, Romanian and Bulgarian cities hooked up, and the few on the flatter eastern end of northern Greece. IOW, good terrain for express speeds, and good generation of pax traffic due to the generally largish cities.

The network is running some dedicated express trains on high priority, but also quite a few on mixed traffic. Express and mixed locomotives are S3's, on standard 1.06 stats (no event modifiers), with consist set to 7 default C era express cars + the default C era dining car(although obviously they don't always pick up 7 cars at a station). Servicing is being done on spurs, but all express trains are stopping all stations on their runs.

IOW, I haven't yet made any real attempt to optimise express loads and speed. I was using the S3 because of its good reliability, low running cost, and decent pax appeal. It's just a fairly normal setup, and is not even using the fastest locomotives available.

So this is decent basic data for more ideas. First thought is that pax traffic will drop if the economy crashes. There are two ways of looking at this. Being nice, you could reduce the number of pax loads required, or even tie them to economic state for added interest. Being evil, you could just leave required loads high enough to incur some penalty, or require more effort, during a depression.

Second thought is that as the network expands into more difficult terrain and includes more smaller towns, loads per city and speed are likely to reduce. OTOH, some of this could be made up by using faster locos (ie: Atlantics) on the more lucrative Romanian and Yugoslavian runs, which may add some interest.

Third thought is that I'm quite liking this YTD speeds and loads idea tied to yearly penalties for failure to meet the goals. I think it's likely to be more interesting than the more usual lifetime express speed and/or pax loads requirement. The obvious next step would be to extend it a bit, so that as well as a penalty for failure to meet that target you could also gain a bonus for exceeding it by a large enough margin. This should give more replay value, because people would have the option of playing it as either industry/freight-focused or express-focused.