OilCan wrote:Unbelievably, it was reaching the mail haulage quota that was my final hurdle to gold; not furniture or goods.
That's quite interesting, I looked at the map and tried a game (never tried it before either.) The make-up of this map with the cities can give great express revenue. Over the first 15 years I had roughly $100M from Express revenue.
I didn't edit the map before starting but used my companies' cash to build up service. I used Shift+E and Ctrl+Left Mouse Click on the AI players to build up their service as they had the cash. Sounds like the way you adjusted it will give the AI a far better start, making them better competition. The Hungarian one is a bit weak for sure. Personally, I didn't feel I needed an advantage (such as extra engines) for my own company. But the help for the AI is a great idea.
From the start, I connected to Saint Polten and had enough money left for 3 Cramptons, all hauling Iron and Meat from Vienna and Saint Polten towards Brunn. I put on a few more engines as the year passed and ended the first year with $411k of profit. Then I paid attention to the demand for Meat seeing there is plenty of supply with a station in Trenschin, followed by a connection to Iglau. I was building up the service and adding Hotels to the existing network, but I had used up all demand in that portion of my network. I had built a small branch line to Nowy Sandec using the AIs CRACOW station, but I then had enough bond capital to build my own track through Galicia, joining the AI track just before the service facilities (respectable distance just outside Cracow). Then I was hauling all Meat available to Cracow with a price differential averaging $50-60k per load. 2nd year profit $1.1M. 3rd year profit $2M.
I built a Hotel in every city. The thing with passengers is that they build up in the unconnected towns surrounding your network. In terms of express revenue, it's far better to make a nearby connection than try to extend across the map. Larger Cities are better, but this will nevertheless tend to result in a branched pattern. This must be balanced against freight potential which is normally better traveling in a single direction across the map. Hotels are completely necessary.
I explained my trick before, but upon a new connection check out the best place where overall revenue for the combined Passengers and Mail will be highest. Now buy a train (good passenger appeal so Crampton, then later Duke) with the consist flag set to "Any Express." After the train has loaded, go into the consist manager again. Change the switch to "Any Cargo." If the train is full add a Diner. If the train isn't full, exit the consist manager and unpause the game for a split second to let the train load a few cars of freight. Then return to the consist manager and add the Diner. There is no fixed rule on how soon after connection to build Hotels, but the destination for this train should definitely have a Hotel. A second train is most often necessary to haul the initial freight. Perhaps the freight is wanting to go to the new destination instead of originating there.
Express revenue has big potential on this map as it does on most maps in the 19th century. Really paying attention to Express revenue can give far better returns than industry on maps like this. Return from freight tends to be short term and hence takes some skill (comparable in a way to margin buying) to keep consistent. But revenue from express is far more consistent and I believe that even the newer players are going to be able to consistently to beat 10% bonds with this.
The need to haul Furniture means that this map likely isn't completable before the end of 1884 (end of year medal check). The reason for this is that even though Furniture appears in 1880, it takes about two years before Furniture price rises enough to make Furniture Factories profitable enough to allow decent production levels. Then time must be allowed to make the hauls. In my play, I finished the hauls in January 1886. However, I goofed a little with my Lumber Mill placement. In fact that was the first industry I built/bought in late 1877 (didn't bother to buy cheap newly spawned mines/farms). The problem was that it was on the cell adjacent to the station's cell, but I built it up uphill from the station and after the build the gradient was too steep meaning demand built slower than normal. Should have placed it on the other side of the station.
![Slap head !facepalm!](./images/smilies/eusa_doh.gif)
I also had a personal rule to not build any countryside stations.
The hauls are easy and fun to make. What I did was to load the train while I watched it, using auto consist but selecting the cargo type I wanted. After loading sometimes I then switched back to "Any Cargo" if I wanted to fill the rest of the train with other cargo. Whether I did that or not, I would make sure that upon leaving the initial station the train was set to "Any Express". This way I didn't need to keep track of the haulage trains. They weren't optimized express route, but maybe they hauled a few extra loads. My main Furniture production was in Nowy Sandec. Alcohol in Szolnok and Goods (built a Steel Mill) in Pressburg.
I enjoyed the recession event and managed to just get by without a margin call. I had to spend a million or so on stock buyback. Had about 50% ownership in my company which I maintained throughout the rest of the game. Thankfully, I had managed to max out bonds before credit rating dropped. The good part of the recession is that track laying is cheap. Of course, I didn't dabble in multiple companies, but I see that option is open and thankfully only one AI chairman started a second company on my play. He didn't start with majority ownership, so this worked out well.
This is a good map. Thanks for the recommendation.
![salute :salute:](./images/smilies/salute.gif)