Age Of Steam IV-Blue Streak For Your Comment and Review

[Gumboots]

Yeah it might be worth testing if anyone can be bothered. I find that by the time things to get about 200 trains I've just about had enough, even though my computer seems to handle it just fine.

I missed the $100M in Year 4 bit. That's pretty good going. I'll have to think some more about the warehouse approach. I hadn't noticed the overheads. They were all making so much profit that I didn't give a rat's.

I was thinking of going for instant gold but I got ordinary gold first (end of '32 I think). I ended up not using dodgey haulage tricks so had to wait a bit longer than late '29. I used the extra time to check out how to get more efficiency out of the network. Once I had all the Chicago-Dallas haulage requirements covered I rerouted a pile of trains. Good result. Express and freight revenue went up by a third that year, even with only a couple more trains. After doing a bit of thinking I reckon I could clock the haulage earlier without tricks. I will give it a go, just as a change from my usual focus on industry.

This one could probably teach me a few things about good routing. One trick I did think of would be to put a lot of towns on bypasses. With this map requiring long haul trains, quite a few inline sheds and towers are needed. I usually put those on bypasses, with the main line running straight between towns. This makes for a lot of work setting all the waypoints to get to the bypasses, especially if you want to shift trains around. OTOH, if I put the inline stuff on a straight main line, with the towns on bypasses and the inline stuff next to the towns (but on the main line) there will be no need to set waypoints for long haul trains. They can just run straight through and pick up stuff when they need it. Since the shorter haul trains will be diverting to the towns, they won't hit the inline stuff and will rely on maintenance spurs at towns, which they have to be set for anyway. This will keep the average speeds for short hauls high, while allowing greater ease of setup and changes for long hauls.

Once the depression hit I noticed a few interesting things. Since I had oodles of cash I didn't do the lay-offs. All I did was stop a pile of trains and leave just a fifty or whatever to cover the main routes. I'd left most trains running the first year of the depression, then started cutting them right back. I noticed that as soon as I stopped a substantial proportion of the roster the company overheads went down dramatically. This was an instant effect, so I figure this has to be related to the trains since other factors usually affect overhead only after a few years.

The other thing about the depression is that even in the middle of it, hotels and restaurants are still generating anywhere between 30% and 90% ROI. They're the only industry that still works, so obviously it'd make sense to have stacks of them lined up before the end of '29. Either that or change the scripting so that their profits are nobbled as badly as other industry, which would be more realistic.

Then there's the offer to get your bond money back early, at the cost of a $250k penalty. This makes a lot of sense in the middle of the depression. The prime rate is up at 14%, so a cash injection of $7.5M right then means you suddenly start earning 14% on the extra cash. This is a bit over a million per year, which is handy at the time, and is a much better rate than you would have got if you had held onto the bonds. Holding onto them for another ten years will only get you an extra $2.5M in total. You can use the high prime rate to make that much in a couple of years of depression, then have it available for use after the depression breaks.

[RulerofRails]

When I was playing for the haul goals (normal gold medal) I experimented with some different forms of spurs to place through maintenance on. The obvious one is when the track turns a corner you can make a shortcut and turn out with a triangle shape. I was messing around with some bow (archery) shapes. I wasn't even using these ones, but it's a fairly clean shot to use as an illustration. The lower left attachment point doesn't allow a through track option there. I chose this because I had other lines to the south that would take any potential cargo east more efficiently.

Blue Streak spurs.jpg (19.57 KiB) Viewed 152128 times

I am surprised that simply stopping trains is going to make maintenance drop suddenly. Were you still making a profit in the depression? The only time I have seen overhead drop remarkably is when you post a loss in the ledger at year end. I think it is a bit of fail-safe to prevent overhead really sending you into the hole. Sometimes in scenarios with high overhead I have tried to line up a large scale engine replacement with a bad event (depression, strike etc.) that will already severely reduce profits. If I post a loss on the books, I pay a lot less overhead on the bigger profits from fresh engines. It probably makes a small difference, but mainly it's a for fun thing.

[Gumboots]

Ah, that may be it. The depression years were run at a loss, and the biggest loss was the first depression year (which is also when overheads were still at the usual level). So it's probably just the game slashing overheads due to the massive losses. It makes a huge difference to running costs in the depression though. The first year looks scary, but after that it stabilises fairly well. I went into the depression with about $120M company cash and came out with $67M, even after spending a wodge of it buying back shares, just for the heck of it, right before the economy returned to normal.

[Gumboots]

Got me an instant gold. Mind you, it's a bit daft calling it "instant" when it takes 20+ years of game time.

I did all the haulage the legit way, without using bait and switch or hauling at a loss. I just used better routing. It could be done faster without trying too hard. About half the CBV at game end was company cash. If that had all been used for expansion it would have given a quicker finish.

I was only 19 short on meat from Chicago when the "instant gold" triggered at the end of 1929. CBV had actually topped the $1B mark earlier in the year, so I did get it before the crash. All the other haulage goals were covered with a considerable margin. I could have rearranged a pile of haulage-all-done-now trains but was too lazy. Once I realised I was on track to hit the instant gold I just made a half-arsed attempt to get it. I spent the last few years doing train rides, and building some extra warehouses when I could be bothered. This worked. Awesome strategy.

These warehouses are nuts once the economy is fully developed and into the roaring '20's. When you can plonk two upgraded warehouses and an upgraded distillery on top of one produce farm, and have them turning 50% or better ROI with hardly any delay, you can just wander around the countryside putting warehouses all over the place. Just keep building as many as you can be bothered with. Take train rides, look at the scenery, and hey there's a farm! Pause game, build stuff, back to train rides. It's a really high-stress way to play.

Couple of things I found this time around. I never thought I'd say this, but the Camelback is a really useful engine in this scenario. There's plenty of flat terrain that suits it, and with the nitro-fueled upgrades everyone gets it isn't such a slug. It gets a decent top speed and fast acceleration, with acceptable passenger appeal, and it's still really cheap to buy and run. I ended up running about 20% Camelbacks. They're not as fast as Pacifics, but they're fast enough for a lot of jobs and they're an awful lot cheaper. Even with that many Camelbacks my overall freight speed was 36 mph, after the USRA years knocked it back a bit.

For situations were passenger appeal isn't relevant and there are some grades to be dealt with, the Mastodon works well in the early years. Once the Mikado becomes available, that's a better loco for the same price. It's also handy in the USRA years because it has a better reliability rating than the others. The way to go for minimal pain in the USRA years would be to replace any ageing Mastodons with Mikados.

[Gumboots]

Hey RoR, I found your post with the "$100M in Year 4" result. Your memory was out by a year. 1909 is Year 5, but that's still a very good result.

I did a bit of playing around with various warehouse starts. So far I can easily get $3M > $10M > $18M > $28M in Years 1 to 4, using bonds and stock issues to the max. I assume your first year result with most seedings would also be locked to about the $3M mark, since there are very few options in the first year. I have no idea how you managed to jump the Year 4 result to $57M, so I'll have to do some more trial and error and see what I can come up with.

I was thinking some more about this scenario's coding. A lot of thought went into coding the Depression, and IMO it 's one of the standout features of this scenario. I kinda feel that the goals should require playing through the Depression. In a way it's nice to get a gold before everything crashes, but on the other hand the Depression adds some factors you don't normally have to deal with. For instance, at the moment there's no need to ever concern yourself with the stock market. Since it's possible to finish before the Depression does much damage to your rep, you won't ever be sacked by the investors. That means the best strategy is to ignore the stock market and just sit on your original 10%, while never paying any dividend, and put everything into growth. OTOH, if you are going to have to play through the Depression it'd be a gamble on whether or not you need a majority of stock to safeguard your position as chairman. To make it even more of a gamble, the event that codes for stock price reduction could be made to hit harder. That way you'd have to decide whether to get a majority or not, and when to get it, but there still wouldn't be any need to set a PNW goal so it'd retain the feel of the original.

So with that in mind, I'm thinking the haulage goals should be increased to a level that will keep proficient players busy through the Depression, without sending less proficient players over the 1945 limit. Could include goal increases with difficulty level, so you have to haul more on Expert than on Easy. I'd also be inclined to make it all doable with around 200 trains, since personally I can't be bothered running many more than that (slow sorting, sometimes CTD, and general ZOMG where is that one I'm looking for, etc). Running 400 trains would be too much like real work.

I'm not as keen on using the "instant gold" since IMO that reduces the haulage strategy to just hauling anything anywhere at any price, with as many trains as possible, while pumping stacks of warehouses everywhere to make the cash. If you have to make specific haulage to and from territories, you have to put more thought into resource management to balance fast early profits against availability of shippable cargo later in the game. Can't ship corn to Dallas if it's all being eaten by high profit warehouses. It might be good to add a choice for enabling or disabling instant gold, like you can enable or disable the steam tech lessons. That way people could pick the gold they wanted to play for without the other one interrupting things. This should add to replay value too.

I'm not sure why the bond choice event was added. The municipal bonds option makes no sense, since the ROI is only 5%. The way the event is coded it just takes your $5M and hides it somewhere, then gives it back to you later +5% per annum. That's the same rate as the bonds you rely on to raise cash for making a better ROI over the interest rate. Even if you just kept that $5M as loose company cash you would be making 7% on it in a normal economy, only dropping to 5% in boom times, so tying up cash in something that only ever generates 5% is a waste of time.* This is if you pay it all in one lump up front.

The situation is nominally worse if you "finance it" because that way it takes $550k off you each year for ten years, so you fork out $5.5M, but you still only get back either $7.5M in 10 years (if you take the early return in the Depression) or $10M in twenty years (if you let it run the full term). OTOH you have to balance that against the ability to put more cash into earlier expansion since you're not losing $5M of company cash in one hit, so that makes financing it the better option overall. Anyway, the early return only gives 3.6% ROI (average $0.2M per year on $5.5M capital) which is total rubbish, but OTOH you then get to earn the Depression prime rate of 14% on your refunded $7.5M while the Depression lasts, making the early return by far the better option. Either way though, these bonds are still not a really good option. As far as I can tell they will always lose you money compared to just using the same cash for earlier expansion.

So, rather than being a choice between "safe but still profitable" municipal bonds, or risky but potentially high profit gambling on commodities, which is how it's presented when you get to choose, it's actually a choice between municipal bonds that will always lose you some money, or commodities will probably lose you a lot more money but may make stacks. The only reasons I can see for including such an event are 1/ for a bit of fun, if you feel like gambling or 2/ to bamboozle people who don't do the maths.

*Come to think of it, this is yet another argument for never repaying bonds once you have refinanced them down to the minimum 5%. Since you get paid interest on any company cash you are holding, the average rate you are being paid over the economic cycle will always be greater than 5%. It'll average around 7% if you hold the cash long enough. If you are holding 5% bonds and repay them, you're only saving that 5%. This means on average you'll lose 2% profit overall, and that's without even counting the early repayment penalty of another 2%. If anyone still thinks that repaying low interest bonds really does boost your CBV, and for some reason some people do seem to think that, they really should check the basic arithmetic.

[RulerofRails]

Sorry about that mistake with the years. Another bit of info to go with that is that the partially edited map I was playing on had been saved as a gmp while fully seeded. I didn't realize this till a good while later, but having some of the resources in the same spot each time gives an advantage on how to anticipate cargo flows. This could also mean that more resources were seeded than normal. That's not to say I found the best combination though. Obviously things was booming that time as well, so there are a lot of reasons why this could be hard to attain again. The question is how much do those factors matter? I might hazard a guess at up to 20% versus a normal economy and proper seed. I might just have to try again with a proper seeding and see if I actually remember some more about how to get the most from them. I will let you know as I re-remember stuff.

I love how deeply you delve into a map you are playing. That's great! I do that to an extent as well. I agree that the economic crashes are coded well. I like how you picked up that financing is the better option for the muni. bonds/commodities event. I think this was provided to keep the player interested while waiting for the hauls. I think the intention was for fun. Call the commodities gambling, but that's exactly what most of these guys in the steam era did a lot of. I don't think the gambling part of it is out of character, we are just too dialed into the game that almost nothing is a chance for us in the game. I do agree that the bond returns could be bumped a bit. Having them a bit lower may encourage reluctant players to jump into the commodities market. Reverse reasoning or whatever.

I always chose the commodities. Aside from the 5% chance that you will lose everything, you can keep your investment on for as many years as it takes to hit the big gain and then you cash out. Every year it's assumed that you had 5M to play with. This is a bug. Maybe it should really have a floating number stored in a variable to record profits or losses (by applying percentage returns on the CURRENT floating figure) of the previous years. Even if this number was kept in line with the original numbers I figure that the big payout will most often make this the better choice. A simpler fix would be to simply add or subtract the profit or loss from company cash if you decide to stay in the market thus keeping the current investment at 5M, although the percentage changes to a floating number would be more realistic.

I never have worried about the investors sacking me. It was so long ago since that happened to me, I don't even remember it. That said I normally do a fast charge at stocks to get at least majority ownership in the first years of the scenario, so maybe that's why. Often don't even pay off the debt I run up at all in a regular scenario as that would waste company money. I guess I'm the opposite of those folks that steal from their companies!

200 trains is enough for me too. The 400 run did take hours just to lay all the track and build stations then setup trains. Then it was just watch the trains run for the most part. Quite a boring way to play. Heaps of warehouses, heaps of trains and then just wait for those 70,000 loads. Shamough increased the load count for instant gold from 15,000. He obviously found that number too easy. I was trying to prove that it would actually take longer to reach instant gold at 70,000 loads than regular gold with the normal hauls. It would have except that you have to wait for the territory events to come up before you can get access on the trip to the regular gold. When I tried really hard with those warehouses and all those trains I did manage to get the instant gold a bit faster, but it is more work. Far easier to play for the normal gold and a 18, 19 or 20 year medal. Good to make it optional.

[Gumboots]

Yeah I've had another crack at it, just for the early years so far, and still had $3M for the first year, but got $11M, $20M and $29M for years 2, 3 and 4. That's a bit of an improvement. Then after doing that I look around some more and find stuff I'd missed earlier, so I can see potential for boosting things a bit. Getting something in the 30-35 range for year 4 should be pretty easy.

The odds on the commodities thing are easy enough to calculate. The catch is that with the result depending on random numbers, due to the very small sample size you can't really rely on the basic calculated odds, unless you play for a 100 years or whatever. Assuming you'll only be playing it for ten years or so, it's like tossing a coin ten times and getting three heads in a row. It can easily happen, and those three heads could be the ones that make you lose the lot. So it's still a gamble.

Another thing is that although the nominal odds of losing the lot are only 6%, the odds of making a loss of some amount are worse than 50/50. First there's the 14% loss event, which comes with a 19% probability. This puts you up to 6 + 19 = 25% chance of a loss. If you don't make any profit that year, I'd call that a loss compared to what you could have made by expanding your company, so add another 24% probability to that 25% to cover the "no profit" event. We're now up to 49%. Then there's the 7% profit event, which has a 25% probability. That profit is still less than you could have made by expanding your company, so AFAICT should still count as a loss (albeit a smaller loss). So all things considered there's a 74% chance of making some kind of loss. OTOH I suppose that's still better than the municipal bonds option, where it's guaranteed that you can never make a profit and will always make a loss. I find it funny how the dialogue for the municipal bonds maturing congratulates you on having make a good investment.

About the sacking thing: it's ages since it happened to me too, but if the stock price crash was made severe enough the investors might get sufficiently stroppy to apply the boot. I'm trying out something just for fun. The plan is to let the stock issues get away from me, so that by the late 1920's I only own about 20% of the stock (I'd grabbed about 60% by year 2 or 3). This means I can use a very small dividend (< 2%) to easily get my personal cash above zero by about 1920, and increasing modestly after that. Then over the course of 1928-29 I sell all my stock at the height of the boom. Since I only hold a minority of the stock, I should be able to dump it all without affecting stock price too much. When Wall Street crashes I have piles of filthy lucre, and can then buy up a controlling interest in the company without needing to buy on margin and without needing to pillage the company for dividends.

[RulerofRails]

The catch is that with the result depending on random numbers, due to the very small sample size you can't really rely on the basic calculated odds, unless you play for a 100 years or whatever.

I never was good at probability maths. I think I understand that the odds are different in a small batch. Wouldn't this apply to all the games that use random numbers? How would you fix or workaround it to get better random numbers?

Another thing is that although the nominal odds of losing the lot are only 6%, the odds of making a loss of some amount are worse than 50/50.

I missed counting the zero again when quoting 5% . I agree that in the short term the odds are bad, but I do think this event gives a good glimpse of people who play the stocks hoping for the big payout. In real life it hardly ever comes true. As you have pointed out, maybe the question should be, what are the odds of getting the big payout which is the only option where you can hope to end up ahead in ROI terms. Over time is where it becomes too tricky for me. Can you easily calculate it (assuming the random numbers probability method was working correctly) over say 10 years?

I don't know what ROI figure to compare that too either. The superpower warehouses are capable of over 100% ROI in the right circumstances but 50% is perhaps a good average to assume for the good chains. As to how long that can be kept up, that's another thing. Way I see it is: either a player will be making a poorer return on investment at that point where the big payout could be a good thing or if he knows how to get a lot better ROI he should be in cruise mode by then. Maybe it has some chance of helping the poorer (or playing with personal handicaps like minimum industry) player, on the other hand it's just a fun distraction for the good (or less-restricted) player who is just throwing money around at that point. Also, it's a lot easier to click a button once a year than spend the money on real stuff especially when opportunities are getting thinner.

Another way to look at is that if you finance it, which I calculate to be equivalent to having 11% interest on that particular 5M, you can then invest that money at more than 11% ROI and even if you lose everything the very first year, you wont actually lose any money just potential ROI. Sure the ROI of that 5M might be equivalent to if you kept it as cash, but it's still not really bad. Maybe the best way to actually handle this event is to invest in Commodities for one year, choosing to finance, then at the next time the event fires (I forget how long you have to wait before the first investment return info shows up) cash out. There is a small risk that you could "lose all", otherwise, you are now sitting on at least 9.3M (if it's 700k loss) which thereafter can be compared to a 6% interest bond giving it a good comparison to an extra set of 20 bonds to invest at that time. After the next 9 years, that cost goes away. The risk over one year shouldn't be much, and depending on how your ROI is, assuming 15% ROI after 11 more years you will end up ahead of the total of the big payout.

I started to have a little crack at the warehouses again too. I went back and looked at my saves and the first and second years on that run were just about 2.8M and then 10.8M. The economy was booming in the end of the third year. I am curious what your first year is like. My recent best year is only 2.6M. I did that by building Northern Cities next to the farms where they would naturally receive some Livestock within that year. Consideration does have to be given to demands, but with good demands Corn to Milk and Grain to Meat are both good options (don't really consider one as being much better than the other over time, but that could be true).

From what I saw and have been remembering, the main gist of what I am doing in the second and third years is to build warehouses so that each corn and grain farm (demands permitting, along the map edges not so much) has fertilizer. The output from a farm with good demand for what it produces should be at least 5 or 6 loads a year (IIRC Corn can go a bit higher than grain). Because the Southland East can also make Livestock from Corn, I tend to put a Southland East next to a Corn Farm then an upgraded Northern Cities next to it which also has the fertilizer conversion. The Livestock clamps down overhead at the Northern Cities and the Fertilizer it supplies gets the farm humming. A win all round! Later in the year I come back and upgrade the Southland East and then place a second upgraded Northern Cities. This also gives a low overhead on the Northern Cities so will go through the potentials of this before going to Grain and will use a Rubber Bauxite Supply to give Rubber and then support two upgraded Northern Cities per Grain Farm. There are multiple demands involved here, so it takes a little thought to try to get a good order for the expansion.

In the third and fourth years, mainly I am taking the slower options such as Cotton to Grain then subsequently Grain to Meat or with a cells separation Grain to Milk. I did build some Riverboat warehouses next to a Textile Mill to make a shared Cotton supply and then left the surrounding Cotton Farms free of warehouses, so still sustainable and trying not to rob the current industries. Again trying to fertilize the farms even though demand for fertilizer is probably still quite low there.

A side topic about the fertilizer demand: I realized from this map that the pre-placed farms are showing a good demand even though fertilizer has just been introduced whereas the seeded ones have no demand. I wonder if there is a trick to this maybe to do with the build date, but even phantom demands might work to get demand for the future cargoes with some experimentation. Just a thought.

That's what I recall right now. My current game recessed in September of 1906. I still made 11M profit, so maybe I am optimizing a little more. That will knock back potential future earnings a little more though. Will see how it pans out.

[Gumboots]

You can't really get "better" random numbers. It's purely a sample size problem. Probability just tells you the overall result from an infinite sample pool. The thing is that within that infinite sample pool the individual results will still be randomly distributed, and this is not the same as evenly distributed. I think this is what catches a lot of people. Randomly distributed means all your big payouts might be evenly distributed, but OTOH they might all happen at the start, or at the end, or any other way. You can't tell in advance. It might make more sense if you think of your game play as just taking the first few samples of an infinite sample pool. That's really what you are doing.

To guarantee actual results that closely mimic the calculated results, you need to take a lot of samples. So if enough people play this scenario for enough centuries, you should see overall results that look good compared to the theoretical probabilities. One person playing over ten years is anyone's guess. This doesn't mean the odds are any different though. The odds are still exactly the same. What's happening is that as the sample size decreases, the results you'll get in practice may or may not appear to get more random, because the results from the infinite sample pool are randomly (not evenly) distributed within that pool.

This means you can't just assume that if you play for 17 years, that 6% (IOW, roughly 1 in 17) chance of a big payout means you will definitely get a big payout once. You might, or you might not. Short version: probability sux.

Way I see it is: either a player will be making a poorer return on investment at that point where the big payout could be a good thing or if he knows how to get a lot better ROI he should be in cruise mode by then. Maybe it has some chance of helping the poorer (or playing with personal handicaps like minimum industry) player, on the other hand it's just a fun distraction for the good (or less-restricted) player who is just throwing money around at that point. Also, it's a lot easier to click a button once a year than spend the money on real stuff especially when opportunities are getting thinner.

Yup, I sometimes take the commodities gamble just for the heck of it. It's only a game anyway, and by that point I'm in cruise mode.

Another way to look at is that if you finance it, which I calculate to be equivalent to having 11% interest on that particular 5M, you can then invest that money at more than 11% ROI and even if you lose everything the very first year, you wont actually lose any money just potential ROI. Sure the ROI of that 5M might be equivalent to if you kept it as cash, but it's still not really bad. Maybe the best way to actually handle this event is to invest in Commodities for one year, choosing to finance, then at the next time the event fires (I forget how long you have to wait before the first investment return info shows up) cash out. There is a small risk that you could "lose all", otherwise, you are now sitting on at least 9.3M (if it's 700k loss) which thereafter can be compared to a 6% interest bond giving it a good comparison to an extra set of 20 bonds to invest at that time. After the next 9 years, that cost goes away. The risk over one year shouldn't be much, and depending on how your ROI is, assuming 15% ROI after 11 more years you will end up ahead of the total of the big payout.

You lost me there. I'll try reading it again later.

Your general approach to early warehouses seems close to mine, which makes sense given the limited options. I think it's coming down to a matter of optimising for the seeding in question, as well as deciding on whether you will play for instant gold or standard gold with legit haulage, with the latter putting restrictions on which warehouses you might be able to build in which locations. I think it's clear that going for instant gold should allow more scope for profit in the early years.

My best first year was a Northern Cities at Topeka, followed by one at Council Bluffs, with both having easy access to livestock, corn and grain. I followed these up with another Northern Cities and a Southland East near to Dixon. All of these were upgraded asap. Topeka made $1787k. Council Bluffs made $927k. The two at Dixon only made $344k between them due to lack of time, but came on well in 1906. Total profit for 1905 was $2,983k (after $75k company expenses).

[RulerofRails]

Sorry, if that doesn't make sense. I didn't think that through for long enough. The main idea is to take the commodities choice and also choosing to finance, wait one year and then cash out. I was thinking about how you must make more than 11% ROI on the 5M that was "invested" in order not to make a loss due to financing cost and made the mistake of thinking that this figure would be diluted by the around 5M you should most often get when you choose to cash out immediately. Really, the 5M you get when you cash out is the thing that can be compared to bonds. These would cost 11% for ten years, so it isn't a clear winner strategy.

I was completely isolating the 5M "invested". Maybe that is almost fair because it is a forced choice, but thanks to your query I think that it should properly be treated as a cost. Once again sorry about that.

[RulerofRails]

Blue Streak 104M.jpg (71.3 KiB) Viewed 153126 times

Well, after a few attempts I managed to repeat that result and do a bit better. This is on the version 3 map as I uploaded it further back in the thread. The profit progression was 2.6M->13M->32M->54M->104M. Economy was prosperity in 1907 and went boom in September 1908. I realized that I used a similar strategy to start as last time. Only 2.6M first year profit this time. I had done false starts with up to 3.2M, but that's going for the short term when the real money lies in getting those moos into your factories for low overhead. I think I improved on my other run here, but I can safely say I don't understand all the ins and outs and of course more is possible. I think the miss year of 54M vs 58M last time is mainly due to the poorer conditions around Springfield with the Dairy Farms. It could also be that the beta version I was testing had slightly more industries on it (409 versus 437 raw producers at Jan 1910 with total building count 1985 vs 2109). Last time I had gotten a string of 8 Corn Farms with 3 warehouses each going there before year 4. This time there was no Dairy Processor in Springfield and still plenty of Dairies around so prices were low. These buildings were likely a seeding error in the beta. Anyway, I decided to try to be clever and built one Northern Cities warehouse there to let sit for a year to build some Cattle demand as there was no Meat Packer south of Kanakee on that side of the map. Then during the fifth year I filled this in with warehouses. Rubber demand was built up too which is also important.

I know this sort of growth seems wrong. 54M to 104M in one year. This is mainly due to lots of Grain available from the Cotton to Grain conversion, so lot's of new warehouses on the back of that. Whether you make Meat or Milk this is a x9 conversion. Also remember that overheads are artificially low as profits are spiking. The next year overhead will kick up big time to over 30M. Also I have a bit of rail revenue from spending 4.2M on rails in June this included a 900k suspension bridge. In six months it has provided me with 3.2M of profit, a nice little slice to add to the pie. I decided to do the minimum to win the haulage contract, so built single track and only water towers. The trick was to only have loads going in one direction. The returning trains will not hurt average speed when they stop. I ran 5 cars on the Eight Wheeler. I did a false move by buying ten trains at once and have them all waiting on top of one another to depart the station, but I discovered that this HURTS average speed. The first train came in at 37mph (I had two runs, that was the faster one and this ended up being overall 35mph), but the average dropped with each successive train until it was 26mph, but alas I had set the last two to wait to fill as they were both missing a car so the total only hit 48 so a rewind was in order. I think I did two other rewinds when I realized obvious places that I could do better.

About the seeding:
This seed had a Meat Packing Plant and Brewery in Atchinson, my first warehouse was built on the same cell as the Meat Packing Plant. There was also a strategically placed ranch that was drawing the Corn from the farms across the small river near Council Bluffs. The farm itself is about halfway between Council Bluffs and St. Joseph but on the big river. I never built a warehouse in Topeka or Council Bluffs, instead building warehouses at the farms themselves.

I have gotten better first year results with different seeds (up to 3.2M with what seems the most common seed, no Meat Packing Plant in the west of the map). What I am doing here is deliberately taking less ROI in the first year by building warehouses that have a small wait before they receive Livestock and thus planning to efficiently use the naturally available Livestock as soon as possible. Low overhead is the king! Interestingly the low overhead effect is not dependent on the price of Livestock so a nearby ranch in green territory will actually give a better effect as it provides more Livestock to be consumed.

For the development in the north, Livestock does matter, and specifically how close any farms seed to Livestock farms and their streams. The Grain->Meat conversion is better, but only IF there is a supply of Livestock. Supply of Livestock is more important. Because you can build a supply (SouthLand East warehouse) at any Corn Farm, the Corn Farms are more important in the long term.

The South:
Seeding in the south is far less important. I tend to develop by placing one River Boat Traffic warehouse to share the supply of Cotton at each Textile Mill (I will boost the nearby farms with Fertilizer later) in the second year (once the insane return warehouses are built). In the first 100M run, I didn't spend a cent on the Cotton to Grain conversion until the fourth year. If there is low Milk demand near Springfield it's necessary to start in the third year. I doubt I have figured out the very best way to run this, but I will share my thoughts.

First off, the Cotton Farms with the highest prices for Cotton are the best ones to start with because they will rise to full production quickest once supplied with Fertilizer. I build at the ones close to Memphis as I will use the x3 multiplier conversion of Rice to Wool to supply the Textile Mills there in order to make the Clothing hauls.

I think that it's obvious that you need 2 cells to fit all the warehouses that a Cotton Farm can support and also to separate the River Boat Traffic from the farm itself to enable the Grain to Milk conversion. When I build the first warehouse to do the Cotton to Grain conversion I check the price of Grain and which way it will drift. I try to build away from that side so that I can put 3 warehouses (If things work out perfectly I sometimes get 4) on the cell I expect Grain to move to. Then I wait until the first partial load of Grain moves onto that cell before placing a Northern Cities warehouse as this will jump start the Fertilizer supply as well. I then come back later as the Grain stack builds up to add more warehouses. I largely ignore the Good demand at the SouthLand East even though it does provide lower overhead. It isn't as high profit and this will miss out on a 3x conversion. Good luck to all how want to experience the super power warehouses!

[Gumboots]

I usually avoid touching all the corn farms around Springfield, just because if going for the corn-to-Dallas haulage goal later in the game, I find there needs to be a good reserve of cheap, un-utilised corn for me to ship. If it all goes into warehouses, I'd have to force shipping corn at a loss via custom consist, which would also strip the warehouses of profit. There's a lot of corn that needs to be shipped. 200 loads is a solid 10 years' continuous production for 6 corn farms, taking every bit of it.

I realise that if I went for it without any other considerations, I could easily grab more short term profit from that area. I think this is largely where our results diverge. Once I've exploited the few corn farms around the perimeter of the northeast (usually near Dixon, Kanakee and Shawneetown) I start looking for other opportunities elsewhere.

And with Topeka, etc I do the same thing: build on top of the farms rather than in the towns. That way production starts instantly, as long as you build on the right side of the farm to intercept the existing output stream. Building on the wrong side of a farm can delay any profit for several months (trap for beginners).

BTW, I've found that a grain to milk conversion, with several River Boat Traffic's just over the river from Topeka, is a good one in the early years (along with other things of course).

[RulerofRails]

The other way to think about this is that if you supply with Fertilizer and a good demand you will get high output at the Corn Farms. In Boom times I was seeing 8.3 loads outputted. Normal economy should be around 7. The combination of Northern Cities and SouthLand East should nominally use 4.67 loads per year, leaving over 2 loads extra. Any Fertilizer converted in the Northern Cities will lower this total as well. This means that overall it doesn't compare too badly to Corn Farms without Fertilizer. The other nice thing about building warehouses on the farms is that it will collect all the extra Corn nicely in a stack. I notice that Corn will slowly build-up at farms with 3 warehouses as well, I believe this is due to the Fertilizer conversion.

I have 9 Corn Farms with one or two warehouses throughout the map, in addition I have 4 farms with no warehouses. I tend to skirt a track down the west of the map and this is good to shorten the journey for trains picking up Corn from the farms west of Council Bluffs which I have never built warehouses on so far. Anyway, as I said I built warehouses at most of the farms around Springfield in the last year. Warehouses at 8 farms that were built in 1910 gave $5M of revenue. Subtract that if you will, but I would have no problem meeting the Corn haulage goal.

By the way, even though I will likely not finish this game I chose access to Memphis. The Lumber from there is in my opinion the hardest goal to meet without cheats, especially if you don't take (at for profit) from the stacks at other Lumber Mills. I have a potential 12 loads of Logs that will eventually migrate there. I can ship more in from the area around Fort Smith but I must also wait for the Log demand to build in Memphis before I can ship Logs there without ship-at-a-loss. Then I would choose Dallas/Fort Worth because its significantly easier if I have a Livestock demand there early. That also takes extra time to build up.

As far as avoiding ship-at-a-loss from the warehouse stacks, that could be an issue. There are ways to manage it though. Part of the reason why I don't forsee an issue is I will simply skim the stacks not allowing supply there to ever run out and my local trains from Dallas to the nearby ranches will end up taking a lot of that Corn out to boost production at the farms so the price in Dallas should be at or near the highest level with the help of new warehouses to make Cattle. There will also be plenty of time to fulfill this since I will chose Dallas second.

[Gumboots]

7 loads of corn from one farm? It shouldn't be more that half that, even with fertiliser thrown into the mix. I must check the event coding again. It sounds like he's boosted corn production even before the Roaring Twenties takes off. 7 loads in a normal economy would certainly make a difference.

I find that which city's haulage goals are hardest to meet depends partly on the seeding that time around, and partly on which order you choose to connect them. Sometimes Memphis can be easy. Other times not so easy.

[RulerofRails]

In the bca files, the Corn Farm is allowed to convert 3 loads per year in addition to the 3 it produces. The float value of how much the farm can convert is placed at 42 to 45. The game treats this separately to the production "supply" (no input) entry which is the normal farm output. The game will overrun figures a bit when an industry is doing really well. I was actually seeing up to 8.3 in boom times. I averaged this down to 7.

So in short the coding IS NOT what it's advertised to do. I think there may have been a reason for this as the game is really accurate in working out the actual demands for cargoes (look for the relative size of the green triangles). If properly coded for 1 load per year converted from Fertilizer the game would only see a 0.2 demand which would be really easy to overwhelm and react very slowly. I think that demands under 0.5 are too low to be useful on a map. Ultra low (0.1 and 0.2) demands are one of TM's main gameplay drawbacks in my opinion. When I added a Machinery conversion to mines and logging camps I also added a separate demand which wouldn't output anything. This meant that the total demand the game sees is still decent while not much will be converted. It was the best compromise I could come up with. The insane conversions such as 0.2->1 must remain because of the potential differences in price. Fertilizer could be $150 where Corn is $40. Any conversion must be profitable after costs or Fertilizer will actually hamper a farm's output instead of increasing it. An extra entry for demand could be added and the conversion figure corrected, but that's something for a mod.

[KevinL]

I must be a terrible player, because I cannot succeed at this map in 3 tries. Twice on hard, and once on normal. When the first challenge comes, I am only able to have enough cash to build 6 trains. The first challenge needs 50 loads, and I can get about 30. Then I have to finance and the -$500k hits me each year and puts me in the red until December. I managed to add a few stations with bonds, but I'm still at 6 trains and hauling about 75 loads a year. I failed the next three challenges of course and the financing just keeps me millions in the red. :(

Many suggestions say the warehouses are the way to go, but I can barely come up with $200k for the trains and stations, let alone $500k for a warehouse.

At 5 years into the mission when the first challenge comes, I'm just getting started and just starting to expand my rails beyond the first 3 stations. I think its just too early.

[Gumboots]

You need to read the thread. There's stacks of information here about how to really get things pumping, even on Expert level. Seriously, it is easy, yes easy, to generate $2 million in the first year.

[RulerofRails]

Kevin, generally most plays of this map are done by using an initial bond and an industry start. In this case the industries are the warehouses. The warehouses make so much money that the best plays involve nothing but building well-placed warehouses until the beginning of 1905, when one must direct some of the company's profits to laying enough track to make the speed test.

Most of the documented plays are extreme; everything was done in the attempt to maximize profits. There is nothing wrong with a more casual play style that is based on some warehouse profits that mix rails in as well. Even warehouses that aren't ideally setup will in most cases turn out far more profits than track and trains that cost the same amount.

This map can be won without building more than a handful of industries that are critical for the haulage goals late in the game. But, this requires more time, skill, and a deeper level of understanding in the game's economic pricing model, than using warehouses or even well-placed normal industries.

As Gumboots said, there are many tips for getting more out of the warehouses that are unfortunately buried amongst some of the testing stuff in this long thread. In the new forum style there is a "Search this topic" feature below the main title of the thread no matter the page you are viewing. Put warehouse in there and you should be able to get some ideas without wasting too much time with boring testing stuff. Good luck with this map!

[KevinL]

I changed my strategy and saved up for building a few warehouses, and now the money is working and rolling in. I was able to get the first city for free and am now planning on the second city. Thank you!!

[aiven]

Woah, really enjoying this one on expert, though warehouses are a bit broken. Did not use them in the beginning as recommended, but have racked up quite some money from them later.

Did not:
- Exploit hauling goals by hauling stuff in and out of a city many times (clearly not the creators intent).
- Haul at a loss (don't really know how to do it anyway, is it by using custom consist??).
- Load any saves back in time, to avoid bad outcomes or mistakes.

Not saying this is how everyone should play it, but it makes the game more challenging and fun for me.


I think I will manage gold now, it's the 3rd time I started over. I did not look in the thead for advice, since I wanted to figure it out for myself. The 30's recession hit me really hard on my last playthrough, but on game #4 I was preparred, with 70M in cash. By splashing these money in, I just made the hard 4 years, without firing any employees.

Such a great map, really hard too. I learnt a lot about the game from doing it, so the next challenging map will probably be easier.