MY first attempts at this map left me broken I could manage the bronze and even silver but gold seemed out of reach. This scenario is written to be played in 1.05 and as such trains will not leave the station if its not profitable to haul the cargo. The gold targets are 150 each. Alcohol,Meat,Coffee,Steel,and Aluminum. It sounds like a simple haulage scenario but its complicated by that 1.05 must be shipped at a profit requirement. Consequently to ship large amounts of cargo to a single city you must either spread the delivery over a long period of time or ship the cargo away from the receiving city as soon as it gets there. Given that you have to make enough money to even connect never mind disseminate cargo once its delivered it changes from a haulage scenario to a money scenario, especially when you have 2 depression/recessions to contend with, and the frequent train crashes.
You are only allowed to start one more company so take advantage of that and tycoon your starting company, buy shares then have the company buy back all the stock sell your shares and start a new company. This will give you about on years start on the game. Remember every year to issue stock you need the money !! I started off by buying a lumber mill then a paper mill from then on It was industry, two distillaries two steel mills a dairy processor you name it I bought it I didn't start building rail until about year 8, and I shipped steel and aluminum first because those cargoes had the furthest to go. Alcohol was almost an afterthought ,it has the shortest distance to travel, so spread it out I also built two Tool and die in Salina and upgraded both of them to use up the metals. I built the meat and coffee network in one fell swoop, I waited until I had over 7 million in cash before I built them. I needed to have enough to connect and also to ship away excess cargo. Its important to use trains that are Good on reliability, average will cost you too many crashes.
Using these strategies its possible to hit gold a couple of years early, so you can do it without tycooning if you wish, there is more than enough time.
I enjoyed this scenario and I look forward to more from jbrockm
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