I played the first 10 years. My status is posted below. Click on it to enlarge it.
I was able to connect 51 cities thus far. You can see the cities I've connected in the mini map. Should make the 90 city connection without a problem. Running 112 trains which is more than 2 per city - should have about 200 or so trains with 90 cities.
I have 3 AI playing with me. They are doing well which indicates that the map is rich with resources. Usually, AI struggle unless there are lots of resources (cargo) to haul. Will wait for a recession to buy the first one out.
You can see that my company book value is about $60M in 10 years. That's incredible growth - again an indicator of lots of resources on a map. My stock splits about every year. I have no problem in gaining company cash. Should get the $20M by step 4 with no problem. I will have to buy out the AI which will cost me some company cash.
My haul numbers are low - as to be expected at the start of a game. Will be interested if I can achieve 100,000 in 40 years.
Overall, an enjoyable and compelling game.
Here's some comments and edits:
1) Disable houses, hospitals, museums, churches, schools and such in the editor. These are available for the player to build and you probably don't want that.
2) Remove the condition Game Variable 1= 1 as a condition in "great job" event. The event will not trigger since GV1=0 at the start of a game.
3) You may want to consider offering the new engine later in the game. I was spending all my meager cash on keeping my fledging company afloat when the offer came along - I had to refuse it cause I was too poor at that point.
4) Company profit is not shown on the ledger (but is a requirement for 1910)
5) There are 14 cities which have no industry at all. You may want to reconsider this. Over the long time period of this game, these cities should develop industries of some sort.
6) And, on the same note, you have set the build densities on key large cities (like Chicago) at about 500%. This will create HUGE cities over time. You may want to start the game off with the large cities at about 200-250% and let them grow over time.
7) The map is very well colored - very vivid. I would be interested in knowing how you made it. The only drawback is that the terrain is very 'bumpy' in places where it should be smoother. I noticed deep pits and oddly high hills in several places. You may want to sweep the 'smoothing tool' over these areas.
8) Lastly, the requirement to connect New York to Pittsburg and then Chicago forces the player to start building East to West in the northern states - in otherwords it sets the same path of connections each time one plays the game. You may want to switch Chicago with New Orleans or Atanta to force the player to spread out in all directions.
Overall, I'm enjoying the game. I'm not sure I can complete the entire 90 years (and I thought Arop created long games!), but I'll give it a try.
) and it said that those locos were first made then - no offence, you have a few problems with these things.
