European Union

Discussion about reviews and strategies for user created scenarios made for RT3 version 1.06.
Grandma Ruth
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European Union Unread post

Not sure where to post this, but I have at last finished my European Union map. Here it is. Although it's taken me so long to do, it's actually not a difficult map to play but it may give you an hour or two's entertainment!
I'm not very artistic so if anybody wants to improve it, feel free. I think I've made a major achievement in getting the rivers to run the right way :roll:
The events are real, the economy of the different countries and cities is as authentic as I could make it. I created it in 1.06 but it might play in 1.05, I don't know.
Have fun!
This map is now available in the archives: European Union - added October 12, 2020
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Gumboots
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Re: European Union Unread post

Looks pretty decent.
You'll have to do a Brexit map now. :lol:
Grandma Ruth
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Re: European Union Unread post

That's why I ended it in 2019 - couldn't cope with Brexit in real life or in RT3!!!!!
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Gumboots
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Re: European Union Unread post

Fair enough.
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RulerofRails
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Re: European Union Unread post

Tried it. Great concept for a map. I think I know how to make the second page of the ledger work by using the newspaper to setup without having repeats.

Technical:
Slovenia (#19) is out of order. WIth this in the right place and a line reserved for a note that the second page is active: There is room for 13 on the first page.

This scheme needs to use another variable to count how many of the territories that display on the first page have been completed. Game variable 1 is easy.

The later ones will have two versions, one for if they should be on the second page and one if they should be on the first.

To keep things from getting mind-boggling complicated I would suggest to move the ones that are annexed later to the end of the list. That's: Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. I can make that work if you want, but it's too complicated to explain. :-?


The 2nd page version will test if the first page is full. For example the first will test for GV1 = 1. The 2nd GV1 = 2, etc..


There is also need to duplicate some of the completion checks, to guard against consistenly completing the current last one on the list.
We add
a Postion 13 completion check will test for GV1 = 0. If so it will perform GV1 +1.
a Postion 14 completion check will test for GV1 = 1. If so it will perform GV1 +1.
etc..

This is where the countries annexed later cause the complications. We can't be sure what exactly is the current last item on the list without a lot of calculations. Basically we would need to x4 each of these completion checks adding a time component. One normal, one for if Bulgaria is on the list, one for Croatia, one for Romania.


Maybe it sounds complicated but I'm happy to implement it for you if you want. As long as Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania are re-ordered it can be done with a reasonable number of events.

Other options.
A crude one: accept some doubling of names. Some of those on the first page may also be on the second.

Another idea: divide the list between the pages until there are only 13 left. (A-K) on the first page, (L-Z) on the second. If it's clear for the player this may actually be the best solution. To do this, you should make two versions of the last item on the first page. One with a long string of Enter, Enter, Enter, Enter, Enter, Enter and a "." or anything random at the end. This will block ones that should be on the second page from appearing as repeats until you are ready to make the switch when you would use the "normal one." Why do this? Because my testing seems to show that Newspapers setup without titles aren't going to work reliably for second page.

Maybe you fought this enough already and are happy with the current solution. But if you want to make use of the second page in one of these ways I can make it happen.


Diesel/Electric, the engines. (... :idea: :idea: :idea: ....)
I see you used the all European engines flag. This is good, people can play with their custom ones, but I would also recommend an event applying to the WHOLE GAME at startup that specifically forbids access to the E-88 and DD 080-X. Those things are not remotely realistic. Their introductions will then not appear.

I played it with the Class 132 without bonds or industry. The scenario is based on track-laying/expansion, an electric system doesn't have time to pay for itself. If you look at the Poptop maps they will have a steam/diesel/electric choice where there is often a perk of cheaper electric track. This leads me to the conclusion that default electric track was never intended to be balanced as a way to start the game, but rather an upgrade for a developed game. You could make such a choice here. If you go electric the diesel engines aren't allowed. For balance, reduce electric track cost by 30% at least. Maybe add 200k company cash in the start of the second year. It's fine as is, just to say that there is no inherit balance between diesel and electric.

You could do something simpler also, such as if you only have electric track passenger generation is higher for the next year. Would suggest +25%. Apply temporarily to the whole game.
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Gumboots
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Re: European Union Unread post

RulerofRails wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 5:24 pmTo keep things from getting mind-boggling complicated I would suggest to move the ones that are annexed later to the end of the list.
They weren't annexed.
Annexation (Latin ad, to, and nexus, joining) is the administrative action and concept in international law relating to the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state and is generally held to be an illegal act.
Countries that join the EU do so voluntarily, because of the benefits offered by membership.
RulerofRails wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 5:24 pmThis leads me to the conclusion that default electric track was never intended to be balanced as a way to start the game, but rather an upgrade for a developed game.
Yup. sounds about right.
You could make such a choice here. If you go electric the diesel engines aren't allowed. For balance, reduce electric track cost by 30% at least. Maybe add 200k company cash in the start of the second year. It's fine as is, just to say that there is no inherit balance between diesel and electric.

You could do something simpler also, such as if you only have electric track passenger generation is higher for the next year. Would suggest +25%. Apply temporarily to the whole game.
If you're after realism, the more developed parts of the EU primarily use electric for pax and freight. Some of the less developed parts (basically, some former Iron Curtain countries) still have significant use of diesel. I'm not sure of the exact proportions of diesel vs electric over all countries but it wouldn't be hard to find out. That would open up the possibility of having electric track cost set via territories to encourage a more realistic choice.
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Re: European Union Unread post

Gumboots wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 5:46 pm If you're after realism, the more developed parts of the EU primarily use electric for pax and freight. Some of the less developed parts (basically, some former Iron Curtain countries) still have significant use of diesel. I'm not sure of the exact proportions of diesel vs electric over all countries but it wouldn't be hard to find out. That would open up the possibility of having electric track cost set via territories to encourage a more realistic choice.
I hadn't really thought about electric trains, we only got them in Bradford last year, September 2019: https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/ ... -bradford/
I prefer to give the player as much choice as possible so I haven't prescribed anything really, except the joined-up track. Players can start where they like, use what trains they like, start more than one company, etc.
@RulerofRails: please feel free to play around with this scenario as you like. I have had such a time with it that I don't care if I never see it again, but perhaps you could save your version with a slightly different name so we can play both!
I didn't really follow what you're saying about the list of non-completed countries. This will obviously be different for each time the game's played, depending on which countries the player chooses to do first. I thought I'd put the territories in alphabetical order but maybe not :oops:
If I could have figured out how to use the second page of the ledger, I was thinking to have the whole list there from the start with a note against each one whether it was completed or not. The Bronze-ready event was a compromise; it was just fortunate that the one ledger page is able to take the 12 countries that will be left once you've completed ten.
The number of countries is completely arbitrary as well - there were actually 27 countries in the EU at one point, but as RT3 will only let you have 23 + 1 territories I had to do something different. I've seen other maps where Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) is counted as one territory to get round this restriction. I started by including the possibility of linking Belgium itself as a territory but that seemed a bit weird so I dropped the idea.
Thank you both for taking such an interest, it's made all the time I've spent worth while! {,0,}
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Re: European Union Unread post

Oh I've just remembered you can run diesel trains on electric track, so it doesn't have to be "either-or". Anyway I'm off to look at the Southern British Columbia map now!
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Re: European Union Unread post

I'm waiting to try and understand what RulerofRails is saying about a list of countries, which I confess I don't get at all, before posting a final, final version. @RoR, do you think you could post a screenshot of the list problem?
Meanwhile I've whittled down the locomotives to a more manageable and realistic size. I've taken out the two mentioned and a few more that were obsolete by 2004. I've left in our favourite Class 132, the obvious choice, and just for fun the steam Red Devil, in case anybody wants to play with a steam engine!
I've also taken off the restriction on building unconnected track, which served no useful purpose. That was a hangover from the original game which I've lost, but in this one everything has to connect to Brussels anyway so players are forced to have hundreds of kilometres of useless track eating up their cash. [Maybe I could have a requirement that there was haulage from each territory to Brussels, which would make it a bit more challenging.]
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Gumboots
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Re: European Union Unread post

Steam is always the way to go. :D

Hey here's an idea. I've been meaning to finish the Schools class for ages but haven't there's no scenario that really suits it. You make one, I'll finish the loco. (0!!0)
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Re: European Union Unread post

Isn't it interesting, what different people enjoy about this game? When I was a little girl, you weren't allowed to have a train set, so I played with my friend's - it was laid out all over his attic, magnificent set-up but I was relegated to making the landscape - farmhouses and stations and models and so forth. I enjoyed it, but never got into the different kinds of engines. I could recognise a Mallard, maybe, but beyond that I'm lost.
My pleasure in RT3 is the puzzle element, finding ways to meet the goals. I like to play, but creating my own scenarios is what I really enjoy, especially in creating events and setting goals for the player.
What we need is someone with artistic talent who could make really nice base maps - that's my least favourite bit of all, especially rivers! So let's have a go by all means. Now I need to find out what Schools class is - I thought it was some kind of academic exercise at first!
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Re: European Union Unread post

Oh wow! there is one working on the North Yorkshire Moors railway: https://www.nymr.co.uk/southern-railway ... 926-repton
Not very far from here, my daughter was at Whitby last weekend - oh my, when we get released from this house-arrest a trip is a must !!!!!!
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Gumboots
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Re: European Union Unread post

Rivers are fairly easy once you know how. I never thought I'd say that, but honestly they are not all that difficult once you get your head around a few basics. I even enjoyed doing the rivers of the NSW map. I hated doing them on the Latvia map, but learnt a lot from it. I just kept going out of sheer bloody-mindedness because they make such a difference to the finished result. By the time I made the NSW map I'd figured out a few extra tricks, and it was actually fun (see this post and the next few after it). Although I admit that after doing them all I'd had enough. :D

The Schools class are great fun. There's just something very appealing about them. Repton is one of the skins I was doing for it. I got it to this stage, but haven't done any more on it since then.
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Re: European Union Unread post

I had a look at Wikipedia and already got some ideas for a WW2 scenario, maybe. Meanwhile, I've been looking at the SCBC one and I've already learnt something, but I can't seem to make it work in the European Union map. I want to do an event to deny access to a particular territory. There is one in SCBC but I can't seem to reproduce it. Maybe because it's a 1.05 scenario and mine is 1.06?? Anybody any ideas?
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Re: European Union Unread post

Solved it! It was the testing frequency I had wrong - works with "when new company is started"
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RulerofRails
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Re: European Union Unread post

There is a problem with the list in terms of not being alphabetical. Slovenia is at the top of the list.
EU Slovenia out of place.jpg

2nd page of the Ledger

Most of my post was about how to make the second page of the ledger work. If you make a newspaper with [Territory Name] in both fields save it then convert to regular then status events in the 1.06 hack to make the 2nd page of the ledger work, the results for such an event will show up twice, once on the first page and once on the second. If you do this for all territories 13+ it works, but looks a bit sloppy. I was brainstorming ideas to make it work. I'm happy to put them in the map.

Of course after some thought I have a better idea, I didn't test it completely but I think it can work fine for a variable list as well. This relies on the fact that you created the territories with IDs that list in alphabetical order (Austria is ID#2). So for example we can at game start "set TV4 to [Territory ID]" AND "TV4 -1" for all territories. Then TV4 = the territories place in the list.

When a territory is completed there will be an event for all territories below it in the list to do -1. For example if you are operating in France (#9) then IF "Territory ID >9"; EFFECT "TV4 -1". This will keep the list the correct length.


The cool part here is that this is not a pain to make a variable length list (Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania can stay in alphabetical order). At game start all "Territory ID >5" will get "TV4 -2" to offset Bulgaria's and Croatia's absence. All TV4 >19 will get an additional -1 to offset for Romania's absence. Then when Bulgaria opens in 200701 all "Territory ID >4" will see "TV4 +1." Same for Croatia and Romania. !*th_up*!

This system works a lot better and perhaps is a little easier to understand. :-D Still it can be a little complicated. As I said I'm happy to put it in the map if it's something that you still want, i.e. the full list of countries that uses the second page in the ledger.


Engine choice

In regards to the engines, I agree with you that generally more choice is better. This is why my suggestion to still use the "ALL european engines" flag but then forbid the couple specific default ones that are completely unrealistic will automatically see any custom engines the player is using show up for him to play with.


Electrification incentive
I don't really want to make a different version. I just had the idea that there is a lot of electric in Europe compared to other parts of the world and I thought there is some untapped potential for incorporating that somehow in the scenario. Obviously electric needs to be a bit cheaper. However, what I was really thinking was a territory specific passenger generation boost for if you have only electric track in that territory. Again, I wasn't quite sure a "neat" way to do this, but now I thought of one. Again it uses Territory IDs and would reuse one of the territory variables (probably TV1, with a simple 1/2 = yes/no usage). The conditions met events would need to set TV1 =1. So, it's happening only in territories where operation has commenced.

AT START OF YEAR:
Have an event test against all territories IF "TV1 =1" AND "# of non-electric track pieces =0"; EFFECT "TV1 +1" AND "Passenger production +30%"

AT END OF YEAR
Have a rollback event IF "TV1 =2"; EFFECT "Passenger production -30%" AND "TV1 -1".

This will guard against an exploit in case some non-electric track was built there during the year. The reason to have 2 events instead of just one with a temporary duration is that temporary duration for specific companies/players/territories is broken. We need to use a rollback system.

Note on degredation
Are you using dgVoodoo? I think your map may have some degradation from saving many times. I see some blockiness around the coastlines. You can do an easy test. Open the map in the editor, without doing any changes, save it with a different name. If the file size of the new file is smaller than the last you are seeing degradation. WIth dogVoodoo you shouldn't get degradation. dgVoodoo on Win10 64-bit: viewtopic.php?p=46891#p46891

Never fear that once again if you have an older backup for the paintjob, this can be restored. Just send that my way and an up-to-date version of the map and it's a 5 min job. :-)
EU, blocky coast.jpg


PS. You mentioned territory access: this is tied to a company. You can't forbid access to companies that don't yet exist. This is why the "when a company is started" frequency should be used, as you discovered.

PS PS. This map uses 1.06 cargoes, so it can't be a 1.05 map. The fixes you made for Alternate USA can be a 1.05 map since none of the 1.06 scripting is used, and no new cargoes/industries added to the seeding lists. It's a simple change for the first two bytes of the gmp file via hex editor. Those need to be "E5 25".
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Gumboots
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Re: European Union Unread post

The other thing (apart from dgVoodoo) about map quality is the height tables for MicroDEM. The old ELEV_COLORS_0-9999.dbf is borked. It is limited to approximately 40 metre height resolution, and will only generate badly degraded terrain. To get good terrain generation from MicroDEM you need a better set of elevation tables. You can create these to any resolution you like, depending on map scale.

See this post, and the next two, for details. !*th_up*!
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Re: European Union Unread post

List position
Thanks, now I see what you mean. I’ve moved it back to where it should be.
2nd page of the ledger
I don’t know why it could be, but I just can’t make this work. I can get a list on the third page of the ledger, no problem, but for the life of me I can’t get the second page to be anything but blank. With anything, not particularly variables – I can’t make it show text either.
Having got this far, I think I prefer the way it is now with just the remaining ones showing. Even I can remember which I’ve done up to ten! And it’s fun to see the list reducing as you get closer to winning.
Engine choice
Never thought about the engines much before, but now I’ve had a look at the ones that are really still in use and only allowed them – plus the 132 and the Red Devil. Bit of a conflict between realism and choice …
Electrification
That’s an idea – maybe force the Baltics to get with the programme! It would also make the game a bit more of a challenge. In the real world there’s nowhere in Europe using electric locomotives exclusively – the highest percentage is less than 70%. In the Baltics they only use diesel, and we’ve only just got electric trains last year in the North of England ☹ (Actually the very most up-to-date locomotive here is the Azuma, an electric/diesel hybrid. I hate it because for some reason the carriages are very uncomfortable indeed – no idea why having a speedy engine should make you have to have uncomfortable seating?)
I did want to boost passengers in some places (smaller than countries) where they are big tourist areas but the most I could manage was “ferry” ports. If I weren’t using all the territories, I could have one (remapped) called “Tourist” where the production was boosted. All good ideas for future scenarios!!!!
Degradation
This has bothered me and I’ve always saved maps with new names to try and counteract it. I did the test and the size is the same – but it does look blurry. What I mean is, all the versions look blurry. I never did anything special to get RT3 to work in Windows 10, just tried to install it on the off-chance and it was fine. I hadn’t played for some time - since XP in fact. I even kept an old computer with XP for a while, specially to run RT3.
Maybe I should make an effort to follow all the instructions about Win10 in that thread.
PS.
I was managing to keep with you (just about) till the words “hex editor”. Far too technical for the likes of me!
And another thing …
I read somewhere in one of these forums about someone copying and pasting from one scenario to another. I’ve never been able to copy and paste, it’s one of the many frustrating things about RT3. What am I missing?
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Re: European Union Unread post

Grandma Ruth wrote: Mon Jul 20, 2020 6:53 amDegradation
This has bothered me and I’ve always saved maps with new names to try and counteract it.
Based on my own testing, I'm convinced that is a myth anyway. It's an algorithm. It will do what it does regardless of what name you give a map.

If you run dgVoodoo you get a/ no blurry textures when playing and b/ no degradation when saving maps. You also get better shaders while playing, a more stable frame rate, etc, etc. It truly rocks. (0!!0)
And another thing …
I read somewhere in one of these forums about someone copying and pasting from one scenario to another. I’ve never been able to copy and paste, it’s one of the many frustrating things about RT3. What am I missing?
Two ways you can do it.

1/ Ctrl+C inside an event condition/effect/dialog/whatever window in the editor, then Ctrl+V it to a .txt file you have stashed. This works back the other way too: you can Ctrl+C from .txt file and Ctrl+V into an editor event.

2/ Have two RT3 installations running in separate windows, and you can use the same copy/paste method to transfer events from one map to the other.
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Re: European Union Unread post

All these years! All these years I've been trying to copy from one to another by selecting the text as you might do in Word. Countless hours of typing I could have saved myself! !hairpull!
Well, better late than never. Now I'll attempt to run dgVoodoo
Thank you !$th_u$!
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