Latvian Republic 1920

[RulerofRails]

With works still in progress, I played a few years, but thinking to wait for the next version with re-tweaked regions before a full play.

I did notice that Jurmala station only (Large, covering "most" of the town) has only one option with the track in the ocean. Getting from Jurmala to Exportosta is restricted to one cell wide at one point. If someone doesn't know of the trick to find "water" this may be a little tricky.

Riga is a lot bigger than before. I had a seed with 3 Dairy Processors, 3 Tool & Dies and 1 Brewery. I peaked at the sliders: all set to 1%. This clearly shows that the industry sliders aren't determining the number of industries to place in a city, just the proportion relative to others. If you just want a lot of houses, maybe use an event?

PS. Ever since Firefox went "Quantum" my browser situation isn't optimal. I switched to the ESR version which let me keep some of the add-ons I like, but it still hasn't been smooth. The latest patch to the ESR gave me "failed" downloads for a bit. It later sorted itself out. Anyway, just FYI I'm responsible for at least of 3 of the "downloads."

[Hawk]

PS. Ever since Firefox went "Quantum" my browser situation isn't optimal. I switched to the ESR version which let me keep some of the add-ons I like, but it still hasn't been smooth. The latest patch to the ESR gave me "failed" downloads for a bit. It later sorted itself out. Anyway, just FYI I'm responsible for at least of 3 of the "downloads."

Try PaleMoon. It's basically a slimmed down version of Firefox. I started using it a few years ago, until they quit supporting XP. Now I'm using it again on this Win 7 rig.
It has a lot of good add-ons, plus a lot of the add-ons for Firefox work with it.

[low_grade]

I have a flip phone, despite a TI in the house when I was 6 or 7, and programming in Basic before I was 11. Starflight anybody? I use Chrome, and have a PC (MSI) full of bloatware I'm sure. I've become an anachronism. I used to be so forward, but now I just want my old games! And I really don't care to get into the details of my rig. I think I have Windows 10? 11? Don't care, hate it, XP was better. Just work, please, and so far it has without too much trouble. No bog even with 400 locos! Yes, I spent $1300 so I could get no bog on RT3...

And I still want to play before release of Latvia II, but I also want to say, keep the original! It's a great, very different experience, and hard. Not trying to say your effort, Gumboots, isn't worthwhile, you're diving in like I've never seen before. It's tough to balance things, and you're making something new, in the spirit of the original, but with your own vision, too. I got a side research project eating up all my time for a few weeks, but I'll play this as soon as I can.

[Gumboots]

Pale Moon is excellent. It's my standard browser, and has been for several years now. I can use just about any browser on the planet if I want to (used to have a stack of them set up back when I was doing web interface coding) but Pale Moon has become my favourite since they started dumbing down Firefox and trying to turn it into another Chrome.

With works still in progress, I played a few years, but thinking to wait for the next version with re-tweaked regions before a full play.

Fair enough. Betas are coming thick and fast at the moment. But TBH I haven't got as far as regions yet. Too many other things on the plate.

I did notice that Jurmala station only (Large, covering "most" of the town) has only one option with the track in the ocean. Getting from Jurmala to Exportosta is restricted to one cell wide at one point. If someone doesn't know of the trick to find "water" this may be a little tricky.

.
IOW, I'm not planning on making Jurmala straight across to Exportosta a thing. Reason is that Riga, as such, is the city for connection requirements. Like the briefing says, all roads lead to Riga. If you want to go straight from Jurmala to Exportosa, that's your problem.

Jurmala in reality was a small holiday destination, and never had a railway to it. So although in this scenario it's a usual connection on the way to Tukums if you want the cash bonus, that's not anywhere near realistic. In reality the railway has always gone from Riga out to Jelgava, with the Tukums line turning off from that.

Edit: Just checked a 1933 map and it turns out I was wrong about Jurmala. It did have a rail connection to Riga, and it did go out to Tukums, but it didn't go straight east across the Daugava river. It went much the same way as shown in the screenshot above. You can see it on the 1933 tourist map that I posted earlier in the thread.

Riga is a lot bigger than before. I had a seed with 3 Dairy Processors, 3 Tool & Dies and 1 Brewery. I peaked at the sliders: all set to 1%. This clearly shows that the industry sliders aren't determining the number of industries to place in a city, just the proportion relative to others. If you just want a lot of houses, maybe use an event?

The sliders are obviously another bit of RT3 cruddery that doesn't do what it says on the tin. I have had seeds which have reasonable numbers of industries and municipal buildings, and I have had others which have been completely over the top. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.

I think a large part of the problem is the high seeding density for Riga, but I admit this is just a guess. It may well be as bad everywhere, and we just haven't noticed before.

An event to place extra houses is a good idea, but the catch is it wouldn't fire before the initial seeding was done, so it would be ineffective at tackling the core problem. What I may do is manually place houses in the editor and see if that knocks back industry a bit.

Edit: Here's a screenshot of the test layout I was using for that area. This is based on several criteria.

1/ My own personal preference for multiple stations, primarily to reduce congestion with long trains (it really does get over the top with only one station).

2/ The advisability of covering as much as possible of the city seeding regions to maximise cargo capture. This really does require two stations anyway. The city seeding boundaries are shown by the white territory boundary. The location of the Exportosta station gives the best chance of capturing a second port if that seeds (I've checked for possible second port locations). The location of the Riga station gives the best coverage of the Riga city seeding area, while still being compliant with the game's restrictions on stations near rivers.

3/ Given the rivers and lakes around there, and given that the default "Maltese cross" of reserved cells in a permanent fixture, it's best to lay out a networks that can utilise the default reserved cells as much as possible, to leave maximum space for seeding of buildings. This is the reason for having the cross-river connection above the city boundary and the Riga station oriented exactly north-south. Doing it this way provides two different options for getting to Tukums, and allows for easy construction of bypasses so long distance trains do not have to go through Riga or Exportosta. The traffic from different sides of the map to Riga/Exportosta can be naturally split between those two stations for best turnaround times.

I build like this anyway, so figure I might as well design the area for it. The old Riga territory being so small did not really add anything to the strategic value of the game, and really was just a PITA. When you're hauling from Daugavpils or Liepaja a slightly smaller Riga territory makes no difference to how you play or how difficult it is. I think a more generous area with scope for this sort of arrangement will be more fun and interesting.
.

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[Gumboots]

And I still want to play before release of Latvia II, but I also want to say, keep the original! It's a great, very different experience, and hard. Not trying to say your effort, Gumboots, isn't worthwhile, you're diving in like I've never seen before. It's tough to balance things, and you're making something new, in the spirit of the original, but with your own vision, too. I got a side research project eating up all my time for a few weeks, but I'll play this as soon as I can.

No worries. In a few weeks it should be ready anyway.

This really just started as a revamp to give the old one the correct map proportions. It still feels like the old one, in overall terms, and is of similar difficulty IMO.The extra bits around the edges are just to give a bit more interest while waiting for the main haulage goals to tick over. The correct proportions meant usable land area in Lithuania, so might as well do something with it. Etc. I see it more as an update than a complete new scenario.

[Gumboots]

Hey just realised something. No can do the express bonus related to exact pax loads delivered in 1.05. It would require using a variable in an effect, which is a 1.06 or TM thang only. Ye olde 1.05 doesn't do that little trick.

I could grade the bonus, such that 20-40 pax gives $X bonus while 40-60 pax gives $Y bonus. That is possible in 1.05, and I have enough spare variables to do it, but I'm not sure if I can be bothered. I'll put the idea on the back burner for now.

Anyway the beastie is done. The bugs mentioned in the earlier posts have been fixed, with the exception of the Riga seeding thing. I was thinking about how to handle that, since the sliders are as useless as, ahem, mammary glands on a bull. I'm sure that's the expression. Anyway, there are a few of options that I can see.

1/ Live with it and don't worry, be happy. A lot of the seeds are well-balanced. It's only some that look a bit weird. A large city would often have several tool and dies or bakeries or whatever anyway. It would only be an issue if you were trying to run one of them yourself, but had put your station next to another one. Other than that, it's just more demand and production which can earn you haulage bucks.

2/ Zero some of the sliders, and place some industries in Riga and Exportosta. Not my preferred option, but might be ok.

3/ Cunning plan number 3: use a start of scenario event to emulate random seeding. The city's reserved cells are always free of seeded buildings. This means they are ideal locations for randomly creating buildings via custom event, provided the location you pick has sufficient latitude to accommodate the footprints of anything you want to seed.

So you could have zeroed industry sliders for the city itself, then have your event set up with a list of industries, locations and random numbers. If RNG < 5 then create brewery at X1/Y1, if RNG > or = 5 and < 10 then create tool and die, etc. This should not be too difficult to set up, and should give the desired effect after a bit of tweaking.

Edit: Just checked this in the editor. The catch is that the minimum seeding radius it will accept is 5. This means it's likely to seed anywhere in a wide area, and could easily seed exactly where you don't want it if you weren't very careful about selecting your X and Y parameters. IOW, the idea is feasible, but has strict limitations on what it can achieve.

The reserved cells can, in a scenario with no AI track-building to worry about, also be used to hold placed houses or created houses. However, if industry sliders are zeroed then it should be seeding plenty of houses anyway, because houses and municipals will be its only options.

4/ Just thought of this. Widen the range of available industries in Riga. If chosen carefully, so as to not screw up the medal goals, a wider range of industries should mean that, on average, not as many of each are seeded. This is probably the thing that should be tried first, if trying anything seems to be required.

Anyway, for the moment I want to get into sorting out trees and giving the thing some solid playing to see how it all goes. If it looks like it will be necessary to do something about Riga seeding then it can be dealt with. If it doesn't seem to be a real problem, it can be ignored.

Regarding the regions: they work, and they work pretty well. They are already approximately right for area and things produced. It's not so much that there's anything wrong with them in terms of gameplay, as far as I can tell. It's just that I was thinking that maybe I might tweak their shapes and areas so they were more based on geography and environment rather than simple rectilinear divisions of the map. I don't think this would have a large effect. It would be mainly for my own satisfaction rather than for any dramatic change in the playing experience.

Anyway, same thing applies as applies to Riga and all the rest: I want some comprehensive live testing of it before making any more changes. It's already a pretty solid product. Anything from this point on, apart from the trees and new bitmap, is very much of a fine-tuning nature.

I will give it a final check during the week to make sure I haven't missed anything, and also see if I can get the trees and the new bitmap onto it. Should have a Beta 4 out late in the week.

[RulerofRails]

Well, I see in your Jurmala screenshot, you don't have houses/buildings? In my case the seeded houses prevented the placement you have there. The only option was "in the drink."

Another comment I will make about Exportosta screenshot is that I will want to put my station as close as possible to the port. First reason is to catch the Iron and Coal as I don't like to stack waiting trains (alternative is to catch it at Jurmala). Second reason is for a more stable Autos production. I'm a one-station-per-city kind of guy, so I will miss some buildings on purpose just to get closer to the port. If I was to do two stations, then Exportosta Main station will not cover the port because the demand model is much more likely to "theive" from the edges of station catchment.

In regards to difficulty, I agree with low_grade that the original was more difficult to make money. It could be argued that this isn't the sole focus of the map, with the haulage goals, and I still enjoy the map with current settings. The main factor is cargo density. In the editor there are all the stats for that. Having more cities means more express too. A couple of the events made things easier too, but they are creative for the story, so I like them.

The pax scheme can work in 1.05, but it needs to be done incrementally with "counter" events. I agree that these aren't much fun to set up.

PS. Thanks for the tips about Pale Moon. Seems it supports more add-ons than I thought. Good.

[Gumboots]

Well, I see in your Jurmala screenshot, you don't have houses/buildings? In my case the seeded houses prevented the placement you have there. The only option was "in the drink."

This is why Beta 4 is making cunning use of reserved cells. IOW, it will work with seeded buildings too.

Another comment I will make about Exportosta screenshot is that I will want to put my station as close as possible to the port. First reason is to catch the Iron and Coal as I don't like to stack waiting trains (alternative is to catch it at Jurmala). Second reason is for a more stable Autos production. I'm a one-station-per-city kind of guy, so I will miss some buildings on purpose just to get closer to the port. If I was to do two stations, then Exportosta Main station will not cover the port because the demand model is much more likely to "theive" from the edges of station catchment.

The placement shown in the screenshot is fairly close to the port, but that location was chose to give maximum coverage of the city limits. There would be nothing stopping you putting it closer to the port if you wanted to. It's only a matter of shifting it down the track a little bit.

In regards to difficulty, I agree with low_grade that the original was more difficult to make money. It could be argued that this isn't the sole focus of the map, with the haulage goals, and I still enjoy the map with current settings. The main factor is cargo density. In the editor there are all the stats for that. Having more cities means more express too. A couple of the events made things easier too, but they are creative for the story, so I like them.

If you want it more difficult, that is easy to arrange.

[Gumboots]

Ok, fixed the Riga seeding problem. Tried #4 from the list.

4/ Just thought of this. Widen the range of available industries in Riga. If chosen carefully, so as to not screw up the medal goals, a wider range of industries should mean that, on average, not as many of each are seeded. This is probably the thing that should be tried first, if trying anything seems to be required.

It works. Give it a wider range of things to choose from, and it gives you more variety in the results. Rocket science is my thing, y'know.

I split Riga and Exportosta so they have different industries, with Exportosta having the more heavy and smelly ones, as befits an industrial area, and Riga having the lighter and cleaner ones. Gave them all a 10% seeding chance, except for bakeries which got 5%. This is because they seemed to seed more often than the others if left at 10%. I assume this is because the small footprint makes them easier to fit in.

So Exportosta now has Bakery at 5%, with Chemical Plant, Fertilizer Factory, Paper Mill and Tool & Die all at 10%. Riga has Bakery at 5%, with Brewery, Dairy Processor, Distillery, Furniture Factory, Textile Mill and Toy Factory all at 10%. This is giving a good mix. There are some duplicates at times, but no triplicates, and overall the mix looks pretty natural. None of these will conflict with the scenario goals, and some of them will even help a bit. I'll go over the industry recipes for the rest of the cities and see if anything looks like it needs a boot in the backside.

[Gumboots]

Just in case anyone was wondering where this one is up to: it's up to where it was before. Had some things to do during the week, and didn't much feel like using my brain after doing them. However it's apparently raining this weekend, which is handy for getting indoors stuff done.

[low_grade]

I'm wrapping up my research tomorrow, it looks like, so I look forward to seeing your progress over the weekend!

[Gumboots]

Bugger. That means I have to make some now.

[Gumboots]

So two weeks later...

I wanted to think about some aspects of the scenario a bit more before letting another one loose, and I have been rather busy with physical work lately, which has meant not much brain power in the evenings. I'll get a beta out this weekend. I'm trying a slightly different approach, with building density over time approximating actual population growth and using production events to compensate. The idea is to give a realistic idea of city sizes and industry density combined with the natural ramping up of production as war damage was repaired.

So instead of the earlier betas' style (increased production early in the game combined with low initial building density and a high growth rate) I'm going with higher initial density, a lower growth rate, and reduced production in the early years. I'll start it off with -20% all industries at game start, then changing to -15%, -10%, -5%, then normal production for 1921, 1922, 1923 and 1924. Normal production will then continue until 1932, when the late year reductions will start, to prevent cargo overload in the later years (earlier versions already had this).

The aim is that later years will be similar in density/cargo supply to the earlier betas (can be tweaked further if warranted) while industry profits will be lower in the early years (thus penalising industry starts) but initial cargo supply should roughly match the earlier betas (so rail starts should be equally workable).

Regarding the Estonian pax bonuses: I'm thinking that I can have a stepped compensation easily enough, to encourage hauling more Estonian pax and make it more interesting. So hauling less than 20 loads would still get you a penalty. 20-40 loads would be neutral. Over 40 loads would start earning you bonuses, in 20 load chunks: $200k for 40+ loads, increasing to $300k for 60+ loads, $400k for 80+ loads and $500k for 100+ loads.

Given that this is really a haulage game and player cash isn't relevant, I think I'll also remove the player cash factor from all penalties and bonuses (Estonian and Russian) to simplify the coding.

[Gumboots]

I haven't forgotten about this. I've just been going through a period where I've temporarily burnt out on RT3 modding, as well as being busy with real life stuff.

The burnt out seems to be wearing off, so I'll take another look at at few projects soon.

[Gumboots]

I pulled this out for another look at it, and have done some basic testing with the new setup. It definitely needs some tweaks.

1/ Cargo is too much early in the game. I'll have to knock production back a little bit, at least in some areas.
2/ Industry seeding in Riga seems a bit over the top.
3/ Some of the other industry seeding also needs adjustment, for variety as well as density.

4/ For some reason the map is now remembering that stations were placed during testing in the editor, and is insisting on calling ones placed during a game "Riga Crossing" etc, as if they were the second or third station placed at that location during the game. No idea why it's doing that, but it's a bit of a nuisance.

5/ I want to add one more (major) river: the Aiviekste. That won't be hard, but will require another bridge when building rail up the Daugava. Which leads to...

6/ Swamps. Lotsa swamps in Latvia. Come to think of it, quite a few in Estonia too. I think these are worth adding as they will cut the amount of land area available for rural industry, which is another way of limiting early production. They will also add some more visual interest, and require more thought when running rail across country. These will be done as a patchwork of water and land squares (think black/white chessboard) so cutting straight across one will require a long bridge.

I'll use this map as an incentive to finish some more custom cargo cars. At the moment it has A era tankers and the express cars revert to PopTop models in 1925, so if I play this one it might bug me enough to do the rest of the cars. It's also ideal for testing the Schools class's effect on rendering of complex maps with a lot of trains.

[Gumboots]

I've been meaning to tweak the beta and get it out for more testing. I'll take a serious look at it tonight.

Like any of the scenarios I make it's a total riot once it gets going. I like to have plenty of things happening to keep me entertained.

[TheBonobo4]

I've been meaning to tweak the beta and get it out for more testing. I'll take a serious look at it tonight.

Like any of the scenarios I make it's a total riot once it gets going. I like to have plenty of things happening to keep me entertained.

Does this mean it'll be really difficult? I'm warning you, I'm not that skilled at this game.

[Gumboots]

I always test on Expert level and with only steam locomotives. If I can't get Gold fairly consistently, with a range of starts, I will change the conditions until I can. I usually set medal requirements to a lower level than what I can generally achieve (80% is a good ballpark, to allow for exceptionally bad circumstances). So I'm assuming fairly good standards of play, but not insane standards.

My is that if you want an easier game you can always choose a lesser level of difficulty. That's what they're for. Everyone starts on easier levels when they're learning the game. However, if you want a Gold on Expert level you will have to be on your toes. I think this is fair enough. The requirements should be pretty easy to attain on Medium difficulty level, although I admit I haven't tried it because I'm not a good test case for that option.

Anyway, when I say "a total riot" I mean I usually get bored with basic connect and haul games. I like to have several things to do, but I like them to be fun and doable. So this one has alcohol haulage to Russia and passenger haulage to Estonia as side events to keep things jumping. They're not that hard to keep up with if you apply a bit of thought to them. There's still plenty of time for train rides.

[Gumboots]

Hey if you want a bit of fun, and an idea of how my brain works, try the Royal Tour map. Probably best to read the thread about it first, because there are a couple of tricks you need to be aware of, but it's not that hard if you take a few basic precautions (like do not let the AI run your main company while you are doing something with the second company).

Once you can clock that one on Expert level you'll be pretty proficient.

[TheBonobo4]

I always test on Expert level and with only steam locomotives. If I can't get Gold fairly consistently, with a range of starts, I will change the conditions until I can. I usually set medal requirements to a lower level than what I can generally achieve (80% is a good ballpark, to allow for exceptionally bad circumstances). So I'm assuming fairly good standards of play, but not insane standards.

My is that if you want an easier game you can always choose a lesser level of difficulty. That's what they're for. Everyone starts on easier levels when they're learning the game. However, if you want a Gold on Expert level you will have to be on your toes. I think this is fair enough. The requirements should be pretty easy to attain on Medium difficulty level, although I admit I haven't tried it because I'm not a good test case for that option.

Anyway, when I say "a total riot" I mean I usually get bored with basic connect and haul games. I like to have several things to do, but I like them to be fun and doable. So this one has alcohol haulage to Russia and passenger haulage to Estonia as side events to keep things jumping. They're not that hard to keep up with if you apply a bit of thought to them. There's still plenty of time for train rides.

I have gold on expert on a number of scenarios, but I'm by no means a professional. There are still a few game mechanics I don't fully understand, or struggle with. For instance, I don't really know how hotels and post offices etc work, so I mostly don't build them unless I see the city has a large number of passengers or mail already. This is probably a bad idea. And whilst I'm almost certain the economy is random, I still would like to know if there's anything that can be done to influence a boom or not. And I am prone to going bust from margin calls!

I actually keep a text file of my best medals on maps I've played. If it's my first attempt, I'll play on medium or easy if I struggle even on medium. Then I attempt expert when I know roughly what to do. In the campaign, I have gold on all of the American, European, and World maps, apart from State of Germany , Japan Quakes (I'm yet to try that one on this laptop) and Orient Express. In my defence, regarding Orient Express, I satisfied gold in the last year but I don't think the check triggers until January so I only got silver. But with that one I only ever ran one train and used industry, since it seems far harder to run a normal railroad as the economy is poor (or so I've found). As for scenarios, of the ones I've tried I mostly get gold, exceptions being Tex Mex (I generally suck at high speed scenarios), Mississippi Valley (7 expert AI proved too tough and became too profitable in the end, though I may reattempt this one), and Italy (it was awhile ago and I played it wrong). Might be others I've forgotten.

Hey if you want a bit of fun, and an idea of how my brain works, try the Royal Tour map. Probably best to read the thread about it first, because there are a couple of tricks you need to be aware of, but it's not that hard if you take a few basic precautions (like do not let the AI run your main company while you are doing something with the second company).

Once you can clock that one on Expert level you'll be pretty proficient.

I'll check out that Australia map of yours. By coincidence, best I've gotten on the default Australia map is silver, on I think expert. Though I have read that map might have a few bugs in it.