Bayern (BETA)

[CeeBee]

I'm giving this map a go but I don't think I'm doing very well. Long runs, slow engines, not much variety in cargo... I think I'm not so good at RRT3

[Cash on Wheels]

when do I get access to the other territories in order to complete the requirement to connect with Zwikau?

Beginning of August 1866. There's still a loophole that if you start the game in 1867 or later you will never receive access.

I Started in 1888 on normal, noticed no access out to territories. So I assumed you need to connect 30 cities first. That did not work, so I peeked in the editor. THen I just gave my self access to the territories. Overall not bad for a first time/ hometown map. The industries and resources are well placed and balanced. Plus It did not raise expectations by not connecting those river junctions!

recommend:

Find a maximum starting date, 1850? when I started in 1888 every event was done.

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Got my not-to-be-mentioned-salute in year 18.

Forget trains! I rather sell flood insurance here!

[RayofSunshine]

The scenario defaults to 1850, and that was the date used.

[oismachihi]

I fixed the bug Rulerofrails has reported. Thank you!

[low_grade]

I gave it a try, gold on Expert in 1866, very slow start with a Lumber Mill. Was late to realize how slow the Crampton is on 4% grades with 7+cab autoconsist, then made them all 5+diner+cab express and used DX Goods for freight after that.

Since there's no issue of Player Net Worth, issued stock every year and that's most certainly what made this an easy scenario. Perhaps add PNW as a medal requirement, or disable issuing stock.

City placement was irksome, most centered right on a river, I'd rather have them offset so it's easier to place a large station to cover the whole city.

And since this is a historical map, I'd fix the start date at 1850 and don't allow later starts. That would also prevent the bug of not being able to get territory access... hmm, maybe you fixed this? I may have downloaded the map from the archives... Another idea would be to reward making a connection between Ulm and Possen (I think it was) with access to other territories, perhaps for a small fee, $200k-$500k range, though I understand that wouldn't fit with the 1866 end of the Prussian war.

The terrain is rather severe for an early map, a bit flatter/less exaggerated when generating the map might play better, and if you also disable issuing stock (which would make the game very much harder) then starting from a flatter map would help to balance that out.

Edit: probably easiest fix, since this is a big map with grades, and given that I'm running the State Railroad: disable the stock market entirely, fix the start at 1850, reduce track laying costs by 25%, and increase loco pulling power by 25%.

[Hawk]

I may have downloaded the map from the archives...

This map isn't in the archives yet. It's still in beta stage.
There is more than one zip attached to a couple of posts in this topic. Maybe you got an earlier one.
The latest version is attached to the post right above yours.

[RulerofRails]

I can confirm that the access rights issue has been fixed in the latest version. The problem with restricting to just the 1850 start date is that you can only win after 1866 as you need to connect to Bavaria to win. There could be some waiting for the rights near the game end if you have completed everything else.

I don't do the issue stock thing (sometimes in the first year) so that wouldn't make any difference for me. I actually liked the greater than usual difficulty for the time period on this one. A matter of taste I guess.

[low_grade]

Well if you self restricted to not issue stocks (masochist) then yeah this would be a tough scenario. I imagine a later start with better locos would be a bit easier, but resources were sparse, distances great, grades steep, tons of river crossings... Starting later to get the steel bridges that could then be double tracked rather than having to go stone or else wood and no possible double track without bulldozing stations and messing with loco routes since cities are placed right on the rivers and too close to bulldoze bridges would have been nice. But what about the essential historical nature here? I like scenarios which teach me something about history (I love dry accounts from smelly books printed in the 1950s about the Russian tsars, or the economics of the Mediterranean in the 1500s, etc.)

[RulerofRails]

Obviously it's not my map, so maybe shouldn't have commented on a suggestion. You might be able to tell from previous comments that the first beta was easier. Smoothing of grades in the cities was done (had more building deformation before). The author made the map harder (more sparse resources etc.), so maybe this better explains my above comment that I enjoyed the higher difficulty. Because I don't issue stock, at least for me the scenario would become easier with -25% on track cost and +25% pulling power. I enjoy getting what I can from a situation. If I am given only the Crampton, I say, no problem, let's see what we can do. Maybe that's just me though . . .

I get your point with the cities on rivers being a bit of a pain. See your point with the Steel Bridges (after 1865) making it less painful. If it helps the author, here's some info on reserve cells:


Quick review on reserve cells (these can be edited with one of the "Paint Terrain" tools):
If cities are deleted, their reserve cells stay on the map. They need to be manually deleted.
Existing cities will have their reserve cells reinstated whenever the map is saved so it's impossible to remove reserve cells for existing cities.
Cities appear to be fixed rotation so their reserve cells will always be a cross with 4 arms, due north-south and due east-west. (Hey, guess part of the reason why the AI does silly builds? They stick to reserve cells in cities.)
All other reserve cells are controllable by the player. For example, extra cells can be added to a city to allow better options for station placement.



PS. Don't know the history of this area. "Dry accounts" . . . yeah, I'm not interested in the romanticized version either.

[oismachihi]

I made the corrections suggested here (!$th_u$!). here ist the latest (and last?) Version.

[low_grade]

I didn't replay the last version, but this time the slopes seemed much milder, very few 4's. Still unnecessarily rough in a few spots. Didn't feel the need to use any DX Goods this time, plenty of cash and a few industries. Again, just waiting until 1866. Definitely disable the stock market and call it done. If Rulerofrails golded the previous version without issuing stocks, then for sure it's okay to disable it here (just because RoR can do something doesn't mean most of us can, but when you then make it easier, well, yes. Disable the stock market.)

[oismachihi]

In this new Version I disabled the stock market (I simply overlooked that convincing hint). I also fixed the starting year to 1850. Since I often just play for fun without Goals this behavement of the scenario was rather thought as Feature, but it seems to be conceived more as a bug. In addition, I increased the pulling power of all locomotives by 25 % (as suggested earlier here) but I'am not sure if everyone likes that (since some of you found that map too simple).

[RulerofRails]

I got a chance to try out the latest version. There is a small issue with how you boosted pulling power for locos. The event you added this effect onto was made to forbid access to all territories. This means that it fires for each territory (8 times in total). So pulling power is up by 25x8=200%! Of course there are different ways to fix this. You could just to change the value from +25% to +3%, which multiplied by 8 gives an effective 24% increase. Or, just make a separate event (better practice).

ETA:
Forgot to mention that the Custom House is buildable. This building has no useful function in the game. "Building it" can be disabled in the editor in Special Conditions.

Commercial Buildings are also buildable. They also clutter the build list. These buildings are not designed to be built by the player.

To disable them: In the editor list of Industries (Overall) allowed, remove the tick beside Commerical Building. Please note that this will not stop the building from being seeded by the game's random generator (for example at game start), just from being buildable by the player.

[oismachihi]

@RulerofRails: Although I think that the Problems are fixed: Would you mind to check if the pulling power is now increased correctly. I have to admit that I'am not sure about the base values.

Thank you!

[RulerofRails]

I checked it. Looks good. Pulling Power event will work correctly now. Build list isn't filled with Commercial Buildings anymore. Building the Custom House is still allowed (forbid in the special conditions), but that's not major.

All I would suggest now is that you try to make the rivers look more natural, move them into the valleys or create valleys for them via terraforming. When they flow uphill or halfway along the side of the slope (on high ground) it's a bit of a let-down. IMO, some of them (or parts thereof) could simply be removed if they are too troublesome to fix. An example is the one flowing through Vocklabruck. Then I think it's ready for archives.

[oismachihi]

Here comes my final Version. Thank's to the forum for testing so carefully. A lesson learned ist surely, that one should not prepare language versions before finishing the Terrain

[RulerofRails]

It's probably too late unless you want to do some more (there's still quite a few "suspend disbelief" places some of the worse offenders IMO are the areas around Wurzburg and Deggendorf), but in the debug menu for 1.06 you can import/export the event text at the click of a button. Info about the debug menu: http://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=35984#p35984

Summary of what to do:
Run the game, switch it to WINDOWED mode. Exit.
Make a new shortcut for the game exe.
Then in its Properties, go to the very end of the Target and add a SPACE followed by -d like this
"C:\GOG Games\Railroad Tycoon 3 1.06\RT3.exe" -d
In the first menu "Debug" you will find the options "Export Text for Current Map" and "Import Text for Current Map". Will dump everything into a text file. If events (and their names) are identical it should be a two minute process.

PS.
One tip for the heights is that you can use the lake tool while holding shift to find the height of a particular point on the map without actually modifying anything. The alternative is to make a lake with any custom height then revert to land afterwards. Then smoothing, and the rivers will ghost so you need to repaint over them (their path is still visible in the editor, but not in regular mode).

[oismachihi]

That motivated some extra work on the terrain.

[oismachihi]

Here ist my final version