I've been meaning to contact you for a couple of weeks about your diabolical British Columbia scenario. This one is meant to take more than 3-4 hours, and I spent I spent about a day and a half on it, and was rewarded with a bronze winOn my SCBC1896 map I have 16 listed companies. All of those companies either run a railroad or own industries and one of them is a bank.
I admit that I was a couple of years late connecting to Midway (on my first go-through I connected to Midway 1st thing, but having bought no industry-owning AIs, found that I couldn't afford to pay for the track & station maintenance simply by running trains all the way to Midway & connected towns in between).
So, anyway, on the 2nd attempt I bought out 2-3 of the industry AIs before laying track to Midway. Slowly started progressing towards the haulage goals to Trail Smelter, built up a little money, and then connected to Penticton "in a timely manner" according to the blurb.
Thought I was doing OK: Bought out the 3rd strongest industry AI (the fruit company), had a 49% stake in the 2nd strongest industry AI, and about a 30% stake in the strongest one. Should have bought out the two weakest industry AIs right away (in about the 3rd-4th years, when their prices fell very low), but by the time I realized I could buy them & sell their money-losing steel mills, one had gone bankrupt & shares were no longer publicly traded, and the other one had been preetty much bought up by the other players. Could have bought a couple of the railroads cheaply, but waited a year too long after their profits came out of the red, and their prices skyrocketed out of sight. (Is there any advantage to buying any of the railroads??)
Anyway, I was doing pretty good, *thought* I had connected to Petain & Hope with years to spare, but the connection was never credited -- even though I had stations at both places, and even connected to the AI main line at Petain. I guess I didn't place my Petain station *exactly* where the briefing said -- between the warehouse and the river -- seems my sticky track wouldn't go down that road correctly. So, even though the connection to Petain & Hope wasn't credited, there were still years to go in the scenario & I would get 55-75 extra track sections each month which I used to happily double up my main line.
Anyway, all of a sudden the scenario came to a screaching stop and I was told that I had won the bronze medal (since I hadn't officially connected to Petain & Hope, then I didn't qualify for the silver)
And, had all other things worked out OK: I had only accumulated 12 "Tycoon Points," and would need 25 for the gold win. I don't have a clue about how to obtain "Tycoon Points." Seems like I got a point for each AI I bought out, and a point each time I supported the winning candidate for the Provindial elections. But I couldn't see any clear way of obtaining another 13 points in the remaining scenario time. Any hints you can offer might entice me to try your blamed scenario again
-- Cliff in Virginia