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Knocked it off in mid 1990, and could do it faster. You have to be a bit careful at the start, but It's extremely lucrative once it gets going. I was buying everything on the map, even if only marginally profitable, just to prevent the government nicking all my company cash at the end of the year. Eventually I simply ran out of things to buy, and had long since paid off the 10 million in bonds, so lost somewhere between 20 and 30 million to the government in a few years.
Now that I think of it, purely in terms of playing for the quickest finish, past a certain point it would make sense to spend all company cash on building new industries even if there was no chance they would make a profit. The reasoning here is that by this stage you'd probably have five years or less to play, so the amount spent on building the industry (which is what counts for CBV) would always be more than the amount lost over that time due to lack of industry profit. Net result is you'd actually hit the CBV target sooner by taking a loss on industry but still holding more CBV in spite of this.
Which brings up a point, in that this scenario forces a somewhat unnatural playing style due to its restrictions. Not necessarily a bad thing, as it leads to thinking about things in a different manner, but it did feel a bit forced and a bit lacking at times. At the moment I'm not sure what I'd suggest as proposed "fixes" and would have to give it a lot more thought before making suggestions.
By the way, despite the supposed emphasis on passenger/tourist traffic I found pax was a minor percentage of the total, even after trying to prime the pump by mass building hotels and restaurants. This is a very freight-heavy and industry-heavy map. The lack of available track combined with the lucrative nature of the map (once things get rolling) means spending up big on industry is just the sensible option, because there's nothing else to spend your buckets of cash on.
My only real grumble is the shortage of steamers past the last 1970's, and naturally I played steam all the way through, so when I noticed in late 1979 that the "Bullet-nosed Betties" has become unavailable I quickly threw a custom event into the editor to give them back at the start of 1980. And, just for fun, I also made it give me back the Kriegslok, QJ and Pennsy H3. I ended up running a mix of all of those just because I could, and found out that the old H3 is surprisingly good as a late 20th century freight hauler. It's not fast, but it goes and it gets there at a fairly natural looking speed for freight traffic, and does it with reasonable running costs. This was hauling my half-finished cargo revamp packs, so boxcars and flatcars and reefers were default D era but tankers and hoppers and express and the cabooseses were the custom weights and eras, meaning hoppers were up to 48 tons over the default 40. This still played well with default loco stats on most engines, and I do like the extra consist length given by the double hopper models. A freight train should look like a freight train.
PS: Oh yeah, and about halfway through I found myself thinking "This is Africa and it's mountainous. It seriously needs some big and boofy Garratts." Which it does. So someone had better make some.
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