Beta test my new scenario Chile please!

[Gumboots]

Had a thought. I remembered that the game doesn't do percentages of cost well, and subtracts the percentage of the initial price rather than working it out on the current price. This is mental, because what it means it that Connies won't go down in price as $150k > $113k > $85k > $64k. Since after two price reductions they are $75k, it's clear the game will just keep deducting 25% of $150k. What that means is that the fourth engine choice event will result in FREE Connies if you just keep taking the discount option.

Now P8's may be good, but I'm not sure they can compete on a cost/benefit basis with free Connies. I'm not sure anything can. Free Connies has to totally rock. Connies are available until 1912. With reasonable playing skillz, the game will end before a Connie bought in 1912 will need replacing. So I'm now thinking that the optional strategy would be to ignore all other engines and just keep discounting Connies. That means you'd pay $150k for them from game start until December 1891 (you probably won't buy any in the first year anyway). From January 1892 until December 1894 they would cost $113k each. From January 1895 until December 1904 they'd be down to $75k each (that is where I was at before I took the P8's). From January 1905 until December 1910 they'd be down to $38k each, which is cheaper than an American 4-4-0. Then if you take the last discount in January 1911, you'd get...


free Connies!!!


That means that just before the end of 1912 (last available year for Connies) you can replace all of them, all at once, for free, with brand new ones for maximum reliability and minimum maintenance costs. They should then be totally fine for the last few years of the game.

I'm kicking myself for not thinking of this before. It's gotta be the ultimate dodge for economical locomotives.

Anyway, I had another brainwave too. This business of taking over AI companies, regardless of when you grab them and regardless of whether you use my merger method or not, still means flat-spotting your own company's growth to some extent while saving money for the buyouts. Ok, so here's a cunning plan.

1/ Start with the cheap furnace in Santiago. You can buy this without a bond. The furnace will make lotsa dosh in the first year, thereby pumping your company's stock price. At year's end stock price will be high, so pause game, take out as many bonds as possible, sell furnace, and buy back stock to pump the price even higher until there are none left apart from what you own. Now flog stock off, resign chair, short sell stock, switch game to slow for a second. You are now rolling in dough and purchasing power at the end of 1891. Your old company is now crippled and worth next to nothing.

2/ Buy into the southern company (Valdivia>Osorto>Peurto Montt) at the start of 1892. Take that over. Take out bonds. Sell all trains. Bulldoze breaks in track between all three stations. Buy back stock until you can buy back no more. Obviously, now you sell all stock, resign chair, short sell stock and unpause game briefly. Before long you'll be rolling in even more dosh and purchasing power. Southern company is now kaput too.

2/ Buy into the Santiago company before it has the chance to do anything stupid. You should be able to grab a majority of its stock in a year or so (watch out for overextending/margin calls at first). Take over the Santiago company sometime in 1892. Immediately grab bonds to the limits of its credit rating. Use those to buy the ungraded furnace at the Chickytomato mines. This will be just starting to make really good money, but will still be cheap to buy. Now set up the usual short runs with two or three stations and get those crystals moving. As soon as you can, also buy the three quarries before their price skyrockets (along with their profits). Run this lot for another year (1893).

3/ By the end of 1893, the stock price for your new Santiago company should be going through the roof. Take out bonds and extend your mines railway down to the coast. Get 6 or more trains running on said line. Pump your company and its stock price even more. Your purchasing power is now getting ridiculous, and there is only one uncrippled company left.

4/ Buy into the Argentinian company as fast as you can (at whatever rate you think is prudent). Pause game. Take that sucker over. It should have a great credit rating. Use that to take out as many bonds as possible. Oh goody, lotsa cash. Use that cash to double track your rail from the mines to Antofagasta so your lucrative trains run faster. Also double track your short Santiago line. Now do the usual stock buybacks and other dastardly deeds until the Argentinian company is well and truly screwed. Resume the chair of your Santiago company and buy all loose stock for yourself.

You are now in a solid position. The original chairman will still be holding his stock (around 25% of the total) but this doesn't matter. You hold the other 75%, and your position is so good that there will never be any need to incur any personal debt, which in turn means there is never any need for your company to waste money on high dividends. Dividends can safely be set to 0, or at whatever level you happen to prefer.

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The crippled AI companies can all be had for a pittance any time you want them, and in the meantime will not be in a position to expand or to take any economic gains away from you. At the moment I'm not sure if I should bother buying the other companies. I easily could, but they all have some level of debt and the result of merging them all would be to drop my company's CBV by roughly $2 million. That's a bit much this early in the game.

Two options. First one is to obviously wait until the $2 million CBV drop doesn't matter much. A better option, which I am liking the sound of, is to not bother merging them. They are so crippled, and can easily be kept that way any time I like, that it is inevitable that they will be liquidated at some point. Once they are liquidated the scenario will write them off as non-existent, thereby making my company the only one left (Gold condition) without it costing me anything.

The only exception here might be the Argentinian company. That still has a trivial book value of $411k for its substantial track and stations, despite the large debt it is holding. I can manage the added debt (interest rate is quite reasonable) and the ready made network would be quite handy. It would also mean instant access to Argentina for around $500k down payment, although the necessary interest payments on the debt would ultimately mean it would cost more. If I wait for it to be liquidated I may lose the automatic rights to Argentina, but OTOH there is plenty to do on the coast for now and the lack of extra debt may be better. Not sure at the moment. May try playing it both ways.

[RulerofRails]

No arguing with those free Connies! I can forgive the game for making a mistake like this since it's maths IQ isn't that high.

I see you are really getting into the Robber Baron stuff. You could take it all the way and mercilessly issue stock from mid-game onwards even if your player goes broke. Maybe it's possible to get a medal under 15 years this way?

Without revisiting the map I forgot about the Argentina access price that makes a merge of the Great Northern a top idea. The cost of access rights is not recorded as part of CBV, so anything paid for them is a loss of CBV. That's a pretty good argument for making the merge at some point in time, no matter your play style.
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Well, I broke out this map again too and decided to focus on those strategies that don't involve the special seed with the cheap Santiago Furnace. I also have an idea why the Furnaces can do so well in the first year: Ore production has been normal at strong prices in pre-game, but a game start event drops ore price which increases Furnace profits, but also retards ore production meaning that this industry chain as a whole suffers from less output as the game progresses.

So far the best normal industry start that I can put together is a 500k effort involving the Machine Shop in Santiago and a supply train running on AI tracks to bring Oil in. Other options so far are in the 400k range. Using either option it is possible to use bonds to build the Nitrate line down from Chiquicamata during the second year if you follow the natural cargo path (5% consistent grades for climbing sections), with 2 intermediate stations for high initial profit and better price breakouts (idea nicked from you, thx!), and build a section at a time, run a train on each and then build the next one. This was good for around 3.3M haulage revenue.

Then I wondered how this would compare to a rails start while using Americans and also building in sections. I used the saddle station placement to terraform the ridge a little and by issuing stock to build the final section, this is what I got:

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Because of the timing this doesn't allow as much cargo to build up before my rails equalize the prices, and because I have only managed one train to the first stop in the uphill direction this shows that a second year rail start will give up to 1M more on the same line. The question I am yet to answer is: Is it worth taking the extra 1.4M in the first year or waiting until the second for the extra 1M available then, while also missing the opportunity of the cheap farms (only worth 150k revenue per year)?

On the pictured start, I have managed to already elevate the Crystals price enough to make the Quarries profitable, and snagged them just before the shot. Two for 400k and the last one at 550k. The key to buying them is to watch how outbreaks and the effects of your rail routing's demand transmission are influencing price, and snag them just as the price is rising.

[Gumboots]

Yeah I don't usually do robber baron, but since I discovered the total rort about free Connies I was in the mood to take advantage of anything just for extra giggles. That one in the example was done with the game opening with a booming economy after the first year or so. I figured that was a bit much and wanted a bit more of a challenge, plus with that one I'd taken Dukes at the first engine choice just to see how they compared with Connies.

So I ditched that one and started another game. This new game has had a normal economy state all along, apart from a year or so of "prosperity", and I'm now up to April 1898. The lack of boom meant credit ratings were tighter and share pumping not quite as easy. I have also passed on Dukes this time and just gone with Connie discounts. This is playing out well so far (famous last words).

My original company did up end being liquidated at the end of 1897. Sure enough, the game counts this as good as a merge for medal purposes. I did merge the southern company and the Argentinian company. I got the southern one for about break even on book value, but with some handy track and stations already set up. This was back in 1895 I think. The Argentinian one was starting to look pretty grim for debt, but then it apparently got some of that AI magic and somehow refinanced its debt from about $7 million down to $3.75 million. Interest rate was ok, and share price was significantly less than book value, so I grabbed it too. Result was I had both companies merged in 1895, including access to Argentina, for hardly any cash layout and with a CBV gain on the Argentinian deal. Share price for both was about $2 or something just before I merged them.

Since economy is only normal state, and since I've taken on the debt from Argentina, I am having to play a bit more strategically rather than just rolling in silly money right from the start. I have done a couple of stock issues to generate extra cash since bonds are over the $10 million limit (it's 11.75 at the moment, at around 9% interest). I bought the extra stock up myself, and I am paying a modest dividend to cover my personal debt (around 7% of annual profit). Currently pushing the network up the coast, with the aim of having the clothing/meat/produce/cheese loads for strike prevention sorted by the time the strike event triggers. Will obviously also start moving crystals further afield once the line up north is complete.

PS: By the way, it would be quite easy to debug the locomotive pricing. Instead of just blindly knocking off 25% each time, all that would be required is to discount by 25% at first, then 19%, then 14%, then 11%. This would put the final price at 31% of the default, which is what it would be if you did discount by 25% of the current price each time.

Y'know I think we are beta testing this thing pretty thoroughly now. Maybe a carefully re-worked version is worth doing at some point.

[RulerofRails]

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This is how the third year looks. (In the previous screenshot I had forgotten to buy the 1,000 shares on margin, so went back and re-did it, and by running one train direct instead of stopping at the extra stations and waiting to upgrade one or two Americans to Connies I could buy the quarries earlier for less and hence found a little more profit with this setup.) Times are booming and I did a cold-turkey merge (didn't own any of his stocks) with the southern coastal company mid-way through the second year. Because my company is so strong and my board is highly excited I think this is bullet proof. Also, after 5 or so goes at various options, I can say that the 2M+ first year is guaranteed no matter the seeding. I also built a small station in Antofagasta at first, simply to upgrade it when the first train arrived as cash is pretty tight to finish the connection. Timing the share price issue helps, but it seems virtually impossible to get a large station in the ideal location in Antofagasta (best placement definitely depends on how the buildings are seeded there).

What I did in the second year may not be repeatable every seed as I laid some new line from Copiapo south to also take advantage of the definite Crystals and in my seed at least, the Ignots that were being produced at Furnace there. I extended this line down to the port at Coquimbo (expanding to the next town once the train has arrived at the current rail head so the train could go on for even more profits without losing any loads to the tycoonatron haulers). This is a pretty lucrative run, and I also bought the Santiago Distillery at the start of the year. The economy improved all the way to boom times during the year and I got a crystal price outbreak at the lower mid-way station on the nitrate run. Because of this, the whole combination, even though hampered by the merge with the southern company for a cost about equal to its CBV, almost gave as much profit as the first year even though costs were far higher.

By around February of the third year I had maxed out bonds at 11% average rate, so I decided to actually try to take advantage of the placed, upgraded industries in Talcahuano. I bought the Textile Mill for 1.6M as it was now about to be decently profitable, then spent the rest of the bond money on track and connections up from Vilvadi where the AI built a station in the first year. Since I am already using stations in the countryside that don't connect cities, I felt no shame in placing a station over two Cattle Farms (one had seeded in the first game year) that were in the dark orange price range. The beauty of this was that it also covered the Sheep Farm and brought in fantastic profits (around 500k) while also help supplying the Talcahuano industries very well. By the end of the year the price at the Cattle Farms had risen due to this connection and it was worthwhile to buy them. I also built a new station right down by the water in Puerto Montt to catch the Cattle available out in the sea and also a load or two of Crystals that had accumulated there. As profits were coming in I bought the Meat Packing Plant at 2.4M. I also bought the Steel Mill, but was worried that I wouldn't earn enough to snag it at base price, so issued 1.1M worth of shares which meant that my 100% ownership at year end had cost 18M on margin + 2M to gain a stake in both the remaining AI that was slightly less than their charimen's. The Steel Mill didn't give a good ROI (only around 10%) but I simply couldn't be bothered to try to stop all coal from being hauled away. I am having close oversight on trains especially on the nitrate run, but not true micro-managing. I managed another outbreak up to $246 a load already, these outbreaks are pure profit. I think I saw that a train going to a station caused the outbreak when it was loading, so it is useful to visit the other stations even if there seems to be no profit if the economy was acting normally.

I don't think there is a case for an industry start, seeing how good rails can be with the high crystal prices, causing breakouts and transmiting good prices to the quarries that soon make them a 100% ROI asset as you can snag them super early. Even with the cheap Furnace, I was up to 10M CBV at the end of year 3, here I am up to 15M. Granted, I am making things slightly more efficient this time, but at the moment this is looking far better. As a bonus to make this a pretty great run, a fourth quarry seeded as can be seen in the shot. I snagged it at 240k.
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I suspect that the AI went bankrupt in your game, hence halving its debt. I agree that the free Connies and the terrible AI tunnel build should be fixed. I think that if the AI's track is laid differently so that it is close to the river where it likes to build a tunnel it wont be able to build a bridge across the river in the first place. Who knows how strong it should be made. If the orientation of it's stations was changed it might be much more likely to build to the south which, let's face it, is the only place where it is likely to do anything that isn't plain stupid.

[Gumboots]

I've found the furnace at Copiapo and the demand for crystals and ingots at Coquimbo seems to appear in every game, but I've never exploited it in the early years. Interesting approach there. I'll have to try it. It may depend on an early boom to raise the necessary cash.

I've never been able to get a cold turkey merge to work, regardless of how well my company is doing relative to the other company. The only way I can ever get mergers to work is by holding a majority of the stock.

With the Talcahuano textile mill, what I've usually found is that it's better to place your own where it will intercept the wool stream. You can build and upgrade yours for $1,915k, and the placed one will usually be more than this. The steel mill should be fine if you set up the coal haulage. I run a bridge and track across and around to Concepion, sometimes with an extended track past Concepion to a third station at the coal mines. A couple of trains shuttling along this line to and from Talcahuano should keep your steel mill happy without requiring custom consists or micromanagement. The price of the steel mill will stay stable at $2,800k for several years, even when the mill starts to show a profit, so you don't need to grab it immediately. Good tricks with the stations in the country too. Another thing I must take a look at.

I think you're right about the Argentinian company going bankrupt. I found a couple of things with merging that one. First is that if the amount of debt you'll be taking on will push things over the $10 million bond limit, the game seems to roll the last 2 or 3 million into one bond at your average interest rate, rather than the AI's higher interest rate. This is quite handy.

The other thing is that having merged the Argentinian company early I obviously wanted it to start paying for itself, but I found trains running on it didn't deliver much in the way of useful profits. The only way I could get useful rail profit out of Argentina was to extend the network, at a time when I would rather have been extending the coastal network and buying good industry. Taking this into account, I'm now thinking that it would be better to leave merging Argentina until the later 1890's instead of going in all gung ho ASAP. It should still be possible to grab it at a very good price a bit later, after sorting the main coastal line.

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Your previous post, showing the third intermediate station between the mines and Antofagasta, got me thinking. I'd also not been entirely happy about missing the extra haulage in the very early stages, but had gone for shallow grades on a long loop southwards. My thinking was that what I really wanted was the easiest possible grades to give the early Americans better runs, and for later in the game with weaker locos compared to the heavier post-1900 freight cars. With the long loops southward I'd been able to keep grades to a maximum of 3% for most of it, with an occasional very short stretch of 4%. However, it meant taking the rails away from the existing path of stuff that was already on the move in 1892.

So, figuring that with RT3 it's often possible to get far better grades than you'd think, I had another look at it. This was just a quick look over morning coffee, and the result can probably be improved slightly. However, I've come up with a system that is buildable in four reasonable stages, keeps the grades pretty darned good and, importantly, allows a natural flat spot for the last station before Antofagasta. I don't think it's worth breaking it down more than this, since the amount of cargo this one will miss is insignificant. The other good thing about it is that it's shorter than my long looping route so should make for quicker runs from mine to coast. OTOH, that's a slight drawback later on when I want to integrate it into the rest of my network to the south. It will mean building more track then, but I don't think this is significant.

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[RulerofRails]

The cold turkey mergers work reliably only during maybe the first 3 years on this map. It is important that you don't issue stock or do anything to lower your stock price around the time of your attempt. There are definitely factors I don't understand in this too. If you want, I can give you a save of where I used one and you can check if it works for you also. In this game I got the opportunity to takeover the Argentine company cold turkey (only just worked) when I got max bonds available for almost 6M. This didn't seem like the smartest strategy at the time, but in year 4 this companies' profit is already up to 1.6M (it's boom times still) putting it a little out of reach for now. I really want access there though. Maybe the grass is simply greener on the other side of the fence, but I feel that I am at a disadvantage without the access especially when it comes to buying newly seeded farms. I don't really want to sacrifice book value for the access cost, so I am going to just hang on and let it grow itself, at least for now. I don't remember the AI doing this well last play, but that was awhile ago. I have a suspicion that seeding plays a part in how well the Argentine company does. Also, boom times are going to make it harder to attempt early game mergers.

The Talcahuano Steel Mill suffers because it is in a bit of a back corner on the demand map. The nature of the curve in the river and the steep cells on the opposite bank make the demand there a little lower than if it were in the open on flat ground. This difference is enough for Coal to be fairly eager to hop on the many trains that I was running there mainly for the sake of the other industries. I am not saying that it doesn't work, it's just not as efficient as I like. My thoughts are maybe I shouldn't buy it in the first 5 years of the game. I used to build my own Textile Mill next to the northern one of the two sheep farms that are fairly close together. Supplying the pre-placed one is geared toward short-term profits. In the first year I delivered wool worth around 300k and the mill make 400k with it. But this only works if you get there before the purchase price rises too much. If I had taken over the Argentine company early, I would have missed the low price window and built my own close to the farms.

As I have said before, I tend to play the average game without countryside stations. They are good in the sort term, but the demands that trains transfer there can effect the resource streams and on auto consist and deliver anything there, it isn't too hard to lose valuable cargo for long periods of time when you leave the train to its own vices. The cargo will wander towards a single house out in the boonies or just overland towards a city. This wandering cargo may suppress in-city prices for the surrounding cities. Best practice for these is to have trains at haul nothing when journeying to the countryside for pick-up. If you are micro-managing and want to play with demands, you can make money with them, just be careful not to lose cargo when you aren't watching.

That is some snaky track you built! I agree that it's generally possible to build far better grades than most would think possible. My favorite part of this route was that I was able to keep the grades into Antofagasta pretty sane, 2s and 3s that are good for trains accelerating for the hill climb(I really didn't have a choice to put the station lower as buildings were blocking the path and I felt that covering the city may be more important early game). It is always going to be a compromise of max grade vs cost. I was happy to settle for a max 5% grade and keep length a bit shorter. Either way, following cargo's natural path is likely the best choice for a first year rail start.

[Gumboots]

Don't worry about the save. If I want to play around with cold turkey mergers I'll just sort a game start myself. I'm sure I can get it if I have enough goes at it.

I'm going to try a few different things with the Argentinian company, and see if I can figure out the optimum merger time and strategy. If not playing robber baron, and just using my standard merger technique (which is not a robber tactic as such, even though it does involve temporarily swapping chairs) I think it makes sense to just pay the access cost to Argentina and exploit everything, then merge the other company once your own has run out of opportunities for useful growth. By that stage you'll be rolling in cash but growth will be flat-spotting anyway, so it's an ideal time to stockpile cash and play the merger for a large CBV boost.

If playing robber baron it will be a trade-off between the year you choose to finally merge, and how much havoc you wreak on the Argentinian company beforehand. There will be some combination that maximises the gain to your company while not limiting early coastal growth (important because of the strike considerations). I have an idea that allowing the Argentinian company to just barely and slowly pay down the debt you left it with could lead to a really good result (ie: low debt incurred on merger, with very good book value compared to stock price, and not limiting your credit early in the game). I find farms seed on the coast quite well too, so I don't worry about the early ones in Argentina.

As I said, to sort the steel mill just run a train or two from the coal mines to the mill. It'll work 80% or more of the time. The shuttle trains will even make decent money. You'll still get the occasional flat spot in steel production, but in my experience the mill will still be lucrative, and there will be a sufficient stockpile of steel there to keep your tool and dies and/or auto plant running if the mill drops off temporarily. Overall it's a good earner.

With the Antofagasta line, one thing to consider is that this "getting a run up" before the heavier grades is totally random. The train may have to stop at any point on the line, probably more than once. This means a consideration is how well a loaded train can accelerate itself from any point on the uphill grades, so IMO there's an advantage in keeping all grades everywhere as low as possible. The difference in maximum speed between a 5% grade and a 3% grade is 50% (ie: speed up 3% will be roughly 1 1/2 times speed up 5%) and this is going to have similar effects on acceleration, and even on fuel use, rate of engine wear, and probably breakdowns. Also, for the same money you can have more track at a lower grade. 5% costs more per unit than 3%, so a bit of extra length doesn't matter so much. Anyway, I just like taking maximum advantage of the topography. It's part of the strategy buzz for me.

I don't think covering the town of Antofagasta is that big a consideration. The town itself seems to generate little or no cargo. Most of it comes from the ports, or from other stations further south. I'm also not convinced that it's necessary to get one station to haul livestock up the cliff. I have found that the ROI from a meat packing plant there is only about 10% most of the time, so it's arguably not worth worrying about. I'm currently thinking that the only real advantage of putting the station over the cliff a bit is that it gives a slightly better profit margin between mines and coast. OTOH it's not a huge difference and it does involve a few hundred k worth of extra track, as well as tougher grades immediately out of the station. You may not lose anything noticeable if you just plonk the station on the flat bit in the middle of town.

[Gumboots]

Ok, no screenshots but I just did another quick test, and have some figures for you so you can do comparisons.

I put the Anto station right at the edge of the cliff, but not down over the edge at all. It's still on the flat terrain. I figured this gave a good tradeoff between grades to the station, proximity to the ports, and length of track. At the mines I also put the station slightly further north to save a little track, but it still covers all quarries and furnaces.

Total track miles in the ledger is 222. That means 444 track units @ a half "mile" each. Without my maintenance spurs the total track units are 400, give or take one or two (hard to tell exactly at stations). Total track cost for this example is listed as $2155k in the ledger, and the spurs would be around the 150 mark, so assume main line itself is an even $2000k. The grades break down like this:

0% grade: 39 units = 9.8% of total

1% grade: 78 units = 19.5% of total

2% grade: 113 units = 28.3% of total

3% grade: 126 units = 31.5% of total

4% grade: 40 units = 10.0% of total

5% grade: 4 units = 1.0% of total

Average grade = 2.2%

I've figured out a better placement for the last station before Anto. The track cost from the second intermediate station down to the last one is about $550k, and the second station costs $200k, so I reckon it would make sense to skip the usual second intermediate station and rake up an extra $350k for track when I want to extend from the first station (on the ridge outside the mine basin). Having the intermediate station further down the hill splits the price between all three pretty well, so it's about $30 from mine to ridge, then another $30 from ridge down to intermediate, then another $30 to Anto. Having it further down means raking up a bit more cash for the extension, but OTOH it will catch more of the cargo that is already moving. The few hundred extra cash should be accessible, so this looks like the best way to do it.

PS: I checked this new route against my standard "long loop" route. It turns out that this one saves about 20 track units (5% of total) but is about $250k cheaper (10% of total). Not only that, but that average grade of my standard route is also somewhere between 2 and 3%, just taking an educated guesstimate from the visible grade numbers. Since the new route will also catch more cargo in the early stages, it's obviously better.

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Ha. I did some comparisons myself. Looking at your screenshot of your line a few posts back, and since you said no grades were over 5%, I went and replicated your line fairly closely. I then tallied up the number of track units and the cost for them. Then I got the speed stats for Connies and Americans, including Connies hauling post-1900 cars* with the Technicians boost, as well as pre-1900 pre-Technicians. Using a little bit of plotting and a French curve I got interpolated speeds for 1%, 3% and 5% grades to fill out the default stats for 0, 2, 4 and 6% grades. I figured by working out the time spent on each grade as a proportion of the whole, I could get a theoretical average speed. This can then be compared against track cost and distance for first order approximation of trip times and other benefits (if any). It'll be a bit rough, but should give some sort of ballpark indication.

The result surprised me. It turns out that average speeds on my line were about 10% higher (rounding off slightly for brevity). However, distance was 25% greater, which meant that trip times would be about 15% greater. IOW, my trains would be going faster but would take longer to reach the next station. Not only that, but the track on my line cost an extra $400k-ish, so track cost was also about 25% greater. This means I'm effectively paying 25% more for track, to reduce station to station speeds by 15%. I need to rethink this.

*For all comparisons I used 6 freight cars and no caboose. I did check with 8 freight cars but it made little difference to the overall results.

[Gumboots]

Ok, I figured out how to handle merging the Argentinian company. Don't. I had a better idea.

Started by buying the Santiago furnace and placed farms (with one bond) to get my first company pumping. Bought a bit of stock myself, and bought back a little bit, over the course of the year. At year's end with a normal economy there was a 2:1 stock split. Max out bonds (only 2 IIRC), sell industry, and go full robber baron (buy back all loose stock, resign, sell your stock, short sell to the limit).

So start of 1892, take your purchasing power and wreak havoc on the Peurto Montt company. Rob it and sink it straight away. Take even more money and buy into the Santiago company. You won't be able to wreck it immediately because it will lack the necessary cash for stock buybacks, so run it sensibly for a year. At year's end, use the new extra credit rating and do the usual dastardly deeds.

Start of 1893, and now you buy into the Argentinian company. You can gain control of that early to mid 1893 (couldn't buy enough stock in January). This company comes with access to all territories, a few industries, a modest basic income, and a good credit rating, and you now run it. Obviously, head up to the mines and get those crystals moving. You should have enough dosh available to go straight down to the coast, with the two intermediate stations to catch the extra cargo. Buy quarries and furnace. The usual. 1892 profits, before I took over, were about $450k. After I took over in early 1893 profits went through the roof. Ended up at $3.7 million for the year and gave a 5:1 stock split at year's end. I picked up the textile mill at Talcahuano too, since it was still priced for a sustainable 15% ROI. Will probably grab the steel mill in 1894 or 1895.

So, obviously I control all stock in the crippled Santiago and Peurto Montt companies, and they're available for merging for next to nothing. Book value was about break even. Track only needed minor repair and stations were ready to go. Their debt was modest and I was able to pay it all off straight away. Currently I'm just on the 20 bond limit at 8.7% average, and the economy looks like it's heading for a boom (it went to prosperity about halfway through 1893). Throw a couple of Americans on the Santiago and Peurto Montt tracks, just to get things moving.

Result: after three years have elapsed I have access to all territories, trains running on all three original lines, plus the new line up at the mines, and no competition. CBV is about $9 million. Due to the currently inflated share price my PNW is about $12 million, even though I only hold 77% of the stock. I have some personal debt, covered by a reasonable dividend to gradually pay it down.

My original company is still in existence but is doomed to be driven into liquidation. If it does manage to raise any cash at any stage, I'll just do what I did last time it got its hands on a bond: immediately take it over and use the cash to double track some of my own line, then go back to Great Northern.

Tycooning_FTW.jpg (183.67 KiB) Viewed 4694 times

[RulerofRails]

Price breakout run.jpg (89.34 KiB) Viewed 4690 times

Well this is how this run ended. I made the most of the price breakouts to drive the price of crystals up to a high of $1,300. In the screenshot the max price has settled down to around $1,100. At one stage I made a mistake and hauled a lot of crystals south to Coquimbo, only to have them return the next year. It seems that hauling a couple of train loads south is enough to encourage a new nearby outbreak. It is far cheaper and more efficient to wait for this close outbreak instead of loading up lots of trains for the long run. I built the extra stations to collect more loads to send to the newest outbreak. The second intermediate station was a good outbreak source early in the game alternating with Chuquicamata itself, but when I changed a route to stop at the top of the ridge I inadvertently caused a breakout there. Crystals didn't stock-pile there very well, instead drifting north on the ridge towards the edge of the map while waiting for the next outbreak. I built new stations there to capture these loads for the next breakout. This strategy built up the price near the quarries, so profit from them was great, a peak of almost 2M per quarry in good times.

The geographical isolation on this section of the map makes price outbreaks a bit more manageable as you get more time to make a run before the price difference disappears (price at the stock-pile rises as well). The price outbreaks are almost free money. This is a broken part of the game, but just knowing that this money is there makes me play to try to get a piece of the action. This definitely make the game too easy. I was stuck in Depression for 2 or 3 years of the game a little before the end of the game. A ten year medal is definitely possible because of the price outbreaks. On this run I could have had it also if I had issued stock for the last 4 years (was 40M short). I made the mergers at slightly more than book value in the poor economy for a cost of 26M. In the meantime I had purchased Argentine access rights, so together this gave a small (max 5M) hit on possible CBV.

A tip: try not to let the AI purchase the nitrate quarries. I let the southern one in the smaller area go, and the Argentine company eventually bought it. While he was around this was giving him up to 500k extra profit each year which made it more expensive to merge.

I chose the cheaper engine options, and didn't get to decide about the P8. Cheap engines made them almost disposable for some of the best (1-2M) nitrate runs. I didn't replace any. I would probably have passed on the P8 for even cheaper engines as it would be late game. Possibly I would have replaced engines then. I ended up building 4 new Steel Mills (3 in Argentina) as a late game (15% ROI) solution. 3 of them were over a Coal Mine and that was the only source of Coal around. As long there is two Iron Mines handy, this makes just enough steel for an upgraded Tool & Die. I wanted to build some Electronic Factories (good use for Ingots and Ceramics in Argentina), but the price of Electronics was still too low at game end to make them good investments.

This time I went for a straight tunnel between Santiago and Mendoza even though it wouldn't fulfill any of the connection requirements. I know the intention was for the player to build over the pass, but I can't manage to lay that at reasonable grades. Later on I built another tunnel directly under the pass to fulfill the requirement, but there were some bad grades on either end to climb up to it.

I had decided to make the Concepcion connection as a branch off my main line near Los Angeles. This was the main reason I had trouble keeping the Steel Mill supplied. I have a hunch that this connection is more useful in terms of profit and seemed to help relieve some of the traffic that was entering Talcahuano. It's also far easier to supply the Concepcion Furnace. After a few years I remembered one 1.06 solution for keeping an industry supplied using a simplified custom consist. 2 or 3 cars are set to always load coal, even at a loss, while the rest of the train is set to any cargo. Once I setup the trains like this, both from Concepcion to Los Angeles and Los Angeles to Talcahuano, the Steel Mill ran much better. I bought the Tool and Die in Los Angeles and built another later.

I did something different this time, building a normal Textile Mill and Meat Packing Plant next to the pre-placed ones in Talcahuano to deal with extra resources there, instead of building them further south. Train routes were already setup to keep the parent industries supplied, so I figured that haulage revenues might be better this way for the consumer cargoes as there isn't a supply blocking demand for city-to-city traffic on the main line south. This time I built the Oil Refinery in Castro. This area is isolated geographically so could suffer from weak demand over the long-term. At least I had room to build it right next to the station instead of a couple of squares away as I did last play when I put it in Puerto Montt.
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Interesting to compare the Argentine AI's performance on your run with mine. On my run, it earned $1,093k in 1892, over double what you saw. This seems to confirm my suspicion that the AI's performance is one of the more variable things to come out of a particular seed.

My first year track had a value of $1,644k for 315 pieces. There were two pieces right next to the ridge station that were over 5 (one 6 and the other 7), I tried a couple attempts to place it in a good spot, but I am sure that these two extreme pieces can be avoided. I counted up my track pieces and 25% of the pieces are 5% grade, all the lower grades have percentages between 13 and 16%. As long as I am doing my calculations right, this gives a 2.7% average grade. Your number crunching was pretty close to the money. IMO, this is the best setup I have tried so far.

Yeah, I never got the Meat Packing Plant going well in Antofagasta either. Unless you make a special effort to force feed it with Concrete and Alcohol for a few years so that it upgrades, it will be marginal at the best of times. Not good for an early investment. I also noticed that there is little traffic on the Nitrate run, but from an industry start I aborted, a house in the radius of the second intermediate station gave an initial 5.0 loads of passengers to go to this single house. This is one of the nuances of a particular seed, but, IMO, only has about as much potential effect as economy state can have in the same game.

If you want to break the record book with this one, you need to start stoking the crystal demands for new outbreaks. Frequent service helps, so I had 10 or more trains on the Nitrate run pretty early in the game. Their empty running costs are easily made up when an outbreak gives them some really profitable stuff to haul. IMO, this is more powerful than robber baron on this map seeing no new companies can be started. The robber baron stuff will help, but taking full advantage of the breakouts is so powerful that it feels like cheating. I wish there was a way to fix the price increase events to stop them going insane.

[Gumboots]

That price breakout stuff is interesting. I'll have to play with that and see what happens. I currently have 8 Americans on that run, which were just added at whatever station had extra cargo at the time. I went with only two stations between the mines and the coast. One on top of the ridge to pump quarry profits (naturally I bought all quarries early) and the second about halfway between the ridge and the coast. This second station is already starting to demand crystals back, after less than one year.

I'm thinking I may try something else this time. Argentina has produce, meat (lots of it), cheese, and could easily produce clothing. This time the northern section of Argentina, just over the range from the Chicky mines, has seeded with several logging camps and a new lumber mill (yet to produce profit, so not bought yet). I may try doing the Chicky>Las Juntas connection early in the game just for fun, then connecting down to the rest of the Argentine network. I can see this having the potential for some good haulage. Crystals production in Argentina is low, but prices are rock bottom. Also the northern coastal area is usually devoid of timber and timber products. Connecting across the Andes up north may be good for pumping both the Argentine and coastal networks.

My copied-from-you-with-slight-changes mine run had 322 track units for a cost of $1,584k, so 7 units longer but $60k cheaper. Of that, 21% was 5% grade, 17% was 4% grade, 12% was 3% grade, 17% was 2% grade, 16% was 1% grade and 17% was 0% grade. No units were over 5%. Average was 2.6%.

With the odd grade changes on one or two squares that can occur when joining track or whatever, I have found that quickly toggling into the editor, selecting the "smooth" (bulldoze icon) tool on smallest brush size, and just dabbing it once on the offending track units often makes them pop to the same grade as the sections each side of them.

I'm just playing with robber baron at the moment to see what could be done with it on this map. I found it amusing that the four companies happened to be set up so you could leapfrog your way to total control of the map in a couple of years. I'm sure that wasn't intentional, but it is quite funny. Once I realised this I had to try it. It's obviously a good way to get access to Argentina early in the game, without any hit to CBV. It also means no necessity for high personal debt (and resulting high dividends sapping cash). OTOH, just pumping your initial company right from the start is going to be lucrative too, but depending on the seed going robber baron may be useful at times.

It did occur to me that there may be an advantage in not bothering to merge the Santiago and Peurto Montt companies, and just driving those into liquidation as well. This would mean no extra debt incurred at an inconvenient time, and less fragmentation of your rail network(s). The lower debt would mean more bonds/cash available to pump Argentina or the north coast early in the game. You might end up running on some liquidated track and stations later, which would cost a bit of your profit, but by that stage I doubt the track fees would be significant.

And with the price increase events, it may be possible to fix them. I get the feeling that the problem is the way the game handles percentages. It's obviously possible to fix this for basic stuff like the Connie pricing, just by doing the necessary calculations yourself and coding the events accordingly. If you had sufficient understanding of what was driving the price breakouts (which is the problematic part) it may be possible to compensate with event coding.

PS: Y'know I think I may try just playing Argentina and the mines, and ignoring the rest of Chile, just to see how that works out. Usually I treat Argentina as a bit of an afterthought, but I'm rather over the standard start-down-south-build-mines-run-blah-blah-blah way of playing the map. Robber baron-ing my way into Argentina asap, then just forcing the other three companies into liquidation without bothering about their assets or CBV (and without incurring their debts), then maximising Argentina's early potential and running the strike breaker trains via the northern Andes, would provide a fresh way of approaching this map and could lead to some interesting results.

[RulerofRails]

That's a good idea. I agree that some of the coastal run doesn't feel like it should have a track on it. I like the cheaper development costs of the flat plane and closer cities in Argentina that make for better earnings from a simple set-and-forget network. Some Hotels work well out there for the passengers too as they like to do shorter hops. I would develop the southern coast first as there are lots of resources there. Above Santiago the only valuable things on the coast are really the lone nitrate mine and maybe marginally the Coquimbo port for a little Meat and the Steel that can usually be made in that area if you can manage to find somewhere to put the Steel Mill (normally I put it beside the coal mine at La Serena). I have a hunch that the inland track will actually end up faster and maybe even slightly cheaper with some clever track laying. The downside I can see is that some Crystals will then have to probably be hauled up the hill after they have been hauled down. Let us know how breakouts work with this setup. On my run I held off on making the inland connection just in case I messed up the outbreaks I was keeping pretty controlled on the original run down the hill.

If you work out how to stop the outbreaks completely that would be great. I have tried to look into the way the events are applied, but if there's a trick there I missed it. My latest idea is that this may be somehow related to the bug that craters the price of a stations demand cell while the cells immediately surrounding it are much higher priced. (I still don't have a good solution for this bug, sometimes I still try to build industries on the station cell but mainly on an adjacent one to hopefully avoid some of the negative effects.)

I just did a test run of a simple industrial company on very fast speed until the second strike effect kicks in in 1904 to watch what happens to the price of Crystals if no hauling is done on the nitrate run. (This time the Argentine company suffered from poor resource seeding, it took 5 years for it to make 3M profit). The result of this test is that there were NO outbreaks anywhere near the quarries. The Santiago company was responsible for some minor ones, that saw a maximum price of $293 per load in Santiago in 1903, just before the strike really shuts down any maximum prices. The price at the port in Coquimbo was affected slightly by these outbreaks going up to a maximum of $202 per load in 1903 from a starting price of $176. The price at the mines themselves stayed pretty steady between $37 and $48 before dropping off in 1901 (probably due to the events). Antofagasta port started at $160 per load and boom times saw it rise to $170, but that's not really an increase, simply the effects of economic state. By 1901 it was also getting oversupplied and the price there in 1903 was down to $123. It was easy to see from the price map that no track, stations, and train service near the mines meant no outbreaks there as there was a green demand circle around the Santiago companies' tracks but it doesn't travel that far especially with this terrain . This is in line with my theory that haulage and the stations are causing the bug in some way. Those things are probably hard to change, but I look forward to see if you discover anything I missed.

[Gumboots]

Yeah I know I should develop the southern plain first, but I always do that. This time I want to try developing Argentina first, with the southern plain as the afterthought, instead of the other way around. I don't expect it to lead to a faster win. I just want to try it to see what happens. I'll still buy newly seeded farms on the southern plain or anywhere else, but that's about all. The rest of my focus is going on the crystals up north, and on whatever can be done with Argentina. I want to see if I can prevent the strike, or failing that at least break it, by coming through the northern Andes into Chickywotsit, then see how a medal goes after that.

[Gumboots]

Oh and that reminds me: Argentina doesn't really have cheaper development costs, as far as I can tell. Most of the cities aren't any closer together than the coastal ones, they're often further apart. Industry opportunities tend to be limited, and inconveniently spread. Passenger traffic seems low. Personally I find that flat terrain boring too, which is one of the reasons I treat Argentina as an afterthought. It's just not as much fun as the coastal areas. I want to see what I can do with it if I give it my full attention from early on. This is sort of like playing Express d'Orient by starting in Serbia. Running strike breaker trains through the northern Andes is going to mean massive track and tunnel costs. It's all about what is possible, not what is the quickest route to a medal.

And I may extend the coastal line as far south as Copiapo. That's around $4 million to build the extra line down from Anto, but the quarry at Copiapo is coded as part of the Chicky mines territory and has the same production potential. If that was linked directly to the Anto-Chicky line there may be some action there. The price differential between Copiapo and the current highest point (up the hill from Anto) is already about $160 in early 1894, so one full load of crystals would bring in about $1.2 million.

[Gumboots]

So I gave it a go. It's workable. I don't think I'll be able to prevent the strike, but I should be able to break it in six to twelve months. The problem is going to be clothing production in Argentina. I probably should have started that a bit earlier, but wool was rather hard to get. Argentina is swimming in meat and cheese so they won't be a problem. Produce will be ok too, because I've managed to get a most of it from the Anto-to-Copiapo area already.

My personal rule was no rail west of the Andes or south of Copiapo. The Copiapo to Anto line ends up being quite profitable, and once you haul start hauling crystals out of Copiapo the mine there turns as good a profit as the ones up at Chicky.

The price breakouts in the Anto hinterland are being really weird. I've been doing your stunt of tacking on extra stations just to keep coverage of all the crystals. The price difference between stations isn't much, but there are so many loads of the things and you can just keep hauling them.

Anyway I've got to January 1901 and am just about cashed up enough to put the final tunnel through from Chicky to Barramundi (or whatever it's called ). I could just issue two lots of stock but don't really want to. Argentina is mostly hooked up, apart from half a dozen out of the way towns that I've never bothered with. Once I break the strike I'll cut loose on the coastal plains. A Gold is looking like a sure thing, but it won't be in record time.

Oh yeah, here's an odd thing. The original company and the southern one went into liquidation surprisingly early, at the end of 1894. The Santiago company is still hanging in though. Now matter how dastardly I am about stealing any cash it manages to raise, it just keeps getting more finance. This is terrible. I may have to let it turn a profit, or even help it, and do a legitimate takeover.

[Gumboots]

Here's another odd thing for you. I was finding the crystals price were getting pretty stagnant with the isolated mines-to-Anto run I was using. The price kept varying between all the downhill stations, but it was dropping to $8-$12 difference between them.

So I'm now running strike prevention trains from Argentina (mid-1901, and it looks like I will be able to prevent the strike after all) and a few of those picked up a load of crystals each at $0/load. Result is that the three stations that the crystals were taken from have suddenly lit up to a crystals price of between $78 and $109 per load, which is not surprising. The funny bit is that the crystals prices in the Anto area have suddenly taken off too and are getting much larger variations between stations, already up to $48 between Anto and one inland station, even though the base price is still quite low.

This is obviously good for revenue. The higher priced stations in Argentina will add to a crystals trade there too, and they can be collected and then sent over to the Anto area. It will be interesting to see if price breakouts develop in Argentina to the point where it becomes lucrative to ship crystals back there.

[Gumboots]

Have just got to January 1911. It turns out that you don't get free Connies. I feel ripped off. I still have to pay $2k for them! I think the game probably has a limitation so that zero values for price aren't allowed. This may be a safeguard against divide by zero problems in the coding. Anyway, 2k Connies are fine. It's near enough to free.

The only catch is that if you take the 2k Connies it will be impossible to buy new locos after the end of 1912, since no other locos are enabled in that time period. I'm not fussed about this, but some people might be. I should be able to get Gold in 1916, and all Connies will be replaced at the end of 1912, so I should finish the game with no Connies older than four years, or possibly five if I get hit with a recession. If anyone is worried about not being able to buy locos after 1912, it would be best (IMO) to take the discounts up until then, so you get $38k Connies, then pick either the Class S or the Atlantic for the last choice.

Playing Argentina first is good for a change, and gives an entirely different perspective on the map. I recommend it if anyone whats to do something different with this map. The last AI company did end up going into liquidation too, so I nailed all three of them without having to do any mergers. My 2c is that this would be a good way to play it: no mergers allowed, but you have to get rid of three other companies. I've never seen that in a game requirement and it's fun for a change.

If playing that way, I think robber baron-ing your way into control of the Argentina company in the first few years may be the best strategy, since crippling the smallest and cheapest companies and taking over the largest sounds like the best bet. OTOH the southern plains can be a great source of fast and easy income, so perhaps getting enough oomph there to buy into a takeover position and then totally sinking the Argentinian company may work better. It'd be fun to try it several different ways.

For this play through I set myself some extra goals, namely no building rail on the coast (apart from the mines territory, extending to Copiapo) until the strike was broken, and then only building rail on the coast that was connected to my existing network. IOW, I came down the coast from Antofagasta, and came over the range from San Juan de Barrelwhatsit to Osorto, before filling in the rest.

When doing it this way the crystals prices don't seem to break out, perhaps because that requires the draw from down the coast to be established for years before the nitrates market collapses. Shipping crystals was still lucrative, but I never saw prices over $150.

PS: I worked out the cost vs replacement intervals for the $38k Connies you can have from the end of 1904. The cheapest option is to replace them when they turn 5 years old. Replacing when they turn 4 years old or 6 years old will cost you more, but it's only a trivial amount. Once they get past 6 years you really should replace them, since the extra maintenance costs are such a high proportion of purchase cost.

[Gumboots]

Got Gold at the end of 1914, a bit earlier than I expected. This is actually the earliest I've ever done it on this map, IIRC. Bit of a surprise, given the rather arduous start in northern Argentina. I even ended up running legit trains over the impassable pass between Santiago and Mendoza, just for fun, so I had all three trans-Andean connections done properly.

Found some more buggy behaviour. The 2k Connies are great, but after 1912 it shouldn't give me any locos. It does though. Sure enough you can only buy the Connies until the end of 1912, but at the start of 1913 the game made the Class S available, even though I had passed on it when the engine choice option came up back at the end of 1910. This is kinda cool, because it means you can grab all the 2k Connies you like, and still get better engines later if you want them.

The Class S was only available for 2 years though: 1913 and 1914. Once available it should, in theory, be available until its 1960 cut-off date, but this scenario won't let you have it after 1914. So what happens after 1914? You get Decapods.

It looks like the game will always make something, anything, available if nothing is set. I assume it made the Class S available because that was the last option given in the events, even though the event choice didn't fire because I went for the dirt cheap Connies. I also assume it made Decapods available in 1915 because that's when they do become available, and its little binary brain thought this made more sense than continuing to hand out the Class S.

The other buggy bit is that even though I clearly had all Gold requirements met at the end of 1914, including actual legit trains on all required connections, and even including actual legit trains to every town on the map no less (another first for me), the game wouldn't hand out a medal. No idea why. CBV and PNW were in excess of requirements, the connections were done, there was only one company in existence, and the status page agreed with all of this. Wouldn't hand out a medal though. I reckon I earned it anyway, so I'm calling it a legit win.

PS: After trying a few things, I think the lack of a medal must be down to the other companies going into liquidation rather than being merged. I've double checked everything else and it's all sorted. The game may have some hidden subtle difference between liquidated companies and merged companies. In both cases the company in question will not be listed as in operation, so with three liquidated companies and one active one the game says there is only one company, thereby meeting the Gold requirement and listing it as met in the status page.

However, the liquidated company's stations and track are still on the map and badged with their logo. This may, in some hidden way, be borking the game coding if it requires the companies and all their assets to be actually gone before it will tie the active companies list to the hidden code inside the game engine for the medal triggers. Dunno, but it's the only thing I can think of. I know this map backwards so I know all requirements have supposedly been met. The only thing different this time around was driving the AI companies into liquidation instead of merging them.

Gold_end_1914.jpg (150.57 KiB) Viewed 3826 times

[RulerofRails]

Decided I would try out the Argentina route. So I start the map afresh, and this time I improved my nitrate route a little bit and settled for a station that doesn't cover the fishing/livestock port so that I didn't have to and never will issue stock. I also took a first year profit cut (down to 2.1M) as I decided that I wasn't going to run a train from Chuquicamata to anywhere other than up to the saddle to try to keep the price at the mines LOWER so I got more haulage profits. In theory, without price breakouts and as long as enough Crystals/Nitrates drift out to sea this route should be good for an average of 2M haulage revenue per year. I thought that maybe I could avoid price breakouts too by breaking the route down, but not so. Maybe I should try just using one train per section and having them wait to fill (actually has less effect on the demand map than frequent haul-anything service) on the upper station so I don't lose cargo, but two trains is always going to work better especially since there is some passenger and other traffic. Anyway, price broke to $195 within the second year at the lower intermediate station (ridge).

Anyway, this particular seed the Argentina AI isn't doing well. I checked all four of his stations and the industries there are hardly running except a Meat Packing Plant that is supplied by a single Cattle Farm. Also, the economy is also booming already, but that hasn't helped him yet. With this sort of performance I could have done a cold turkey merge for 2.6M at the start of the second year with the help of fresh bonds. This was at a cost of slightly more than 50% of his CBV, and only 100k more than paying for the access rights that I require to make the connection down through Argentina. I decided to wait another year and invest all my purchasing power into buying a majority share in his company to do a classic merge. I have decided that I will settle for a 50%+ ownership in my company with no debt (easy enough without needing to turn on dividends or buyback any stock) on this run. This is the picture of just before I took out some bonds and then did the merge. For comparison, last play he made a first year of around 340k, and second year just over 1M! This is clearly the most variable consequence of the seeding on this map.

Argentine AI POOR performance.jpg (96.53 KiB) Viewed 3815 times

[Gumboots]

Yes I have noticed that the early years of the Argentine company can be highly variable. It always seems to consolidate and get going later on though, and always ends up being a strong company. This also applies if you take it over yourself in the early years. Returns from Argentina can be patchy to start with, but always end up being fairly hefty if played well.

I'm having another go at this map. Since it appears the game coding won't deal properly with liquidated companies when it comes to medal triggers, this time around I am going to merge all three AI's. That means they have to be worth merging, so although I did a robber baron start again I'm playing it differently. I'm finding this interesting compared to my normal way of playing, and want to see what I can extract from it. Since I'm merging them anyway I'm not just going to play Argentina, and will approach this play on an anything goes basis. Having to play all four companies right from the start adds some extra considerations and options.I played to January 1894 last night and will take it a bit further tonight.

The major change in the first year was building a line from Los Angeles to Temuco with my initial company. Normally I just do industry in the first year when robber baron-ing, since it can be sold off and the cash used to buy back stock. I still did industry of course, but used some of the cash generated during the year to build the track and stations. This track was deliberately built with a short break in it, so the AI gets flummoxed and thinks it can't run trains. However, it does give that company a solid base for CBV (track and stations value) and it does give it the potential to earn money later on, if the track is repaired. The track in the other two AI's (Santiago and Peurto Montt) was also breached by bulldozing a water tower. This ensures they are broke while I want their stock price hitting the floor in 1892-93 (essential for fast robber baron-ing). Obviously I'm now running the Argentine company again, and have been since early 1893.

The plan here is that, since I control all stock in all three AI companies (apart from 2,000 held by the original chairman of the Peurto Montt company) I can decide how much they earn, and when they earn it, and when I want to merge them. I could pick all three up now for $103k, but with a negative book value on two of them. What I'm going to do is allow all three to run trains for a year or two, and run my own line to connect their short lines to each other. This should enable them to pay down their debt, and boost their CBV, to a level I'm happier with. I can then merge them in 1895 or whenever for a cost of perhaps $300k all up, and with a slight CBV boost for myself. Before doing that I'll max out my own bonds at a reasonable interest rate, so I can use the AI's debt to effectively extend my credit rating beyond the official limits.

I'm probably not going to be issuing any stock this time, although I did last time. I found that when starting in Argentina and not playing the central to southern coastal runs at all, due to the initially reduced cashflow combined with the high track/grade/tunnel costs through northern Argentina I really did need to issue a bit of stock to get the strike broken within a reasonable timeframe. I won't have that problem this time around, so will probably just sit on what stock already exists. I own approximately 75% of it, which is way more than required for the PNW target, and my personal debt can be gradually paid down with a very modest dividend.

I've already found the crystals price starting to stagnate after just one year of heavy runs to the coast. They're building up around the inland station (first up from the coast) and the price differential is on the way down. I don't want to build extra mopping-up stations this time. Constantly managing a pile of trains on short hops for little profit per hop gets boring pretty quickly. Because of this, I'm going to deliberately try to stimulate things down the coast. The quarry and furnace at Copiapo can be very profitable if consistent haulage escalates the prices for crystals and ingots there. They'll still have a good haulage price to Antofagasta or Coquimbo too. I don't expect to see wild breakouts in price (I've never seen them reach the levels seen by yourself and low_grade) but I should be able to generate good haulage up and down the coast for a decade or so, until the nitrates market finally goes down the tubes.