MaglevForever

Well done. Didn't try this myself. After playing scenarios at -25% human revenue and +25% computer revenue and max competitors, the campaign seems easy, so I'm not surprised that it's possible. In my opinion meddling with the AI operations in any way is off-limits. Playing in this way, hardest for me, best case for AI, maximum AI players, I enjoyed the challenge of these maps: -- "Secret" gold on the official Heartland, USA map, $80M company value in 20 years against 9 competitors. -- Cascadia, the original "hard" version. The links for it are dead, 0kb 😒. I have it buried on a hard drive in storage, I hope. Will be a couple days before I can search for it. Maybe someone else can post up a copy before I can find it. -- This:

Do you have the map builder? You can get it here: http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3_extras/rrt3_utilities.php That will create heightmaps in the format that the game accepts. PS. Sorry for the late reply. I say this in a thread that was inactive for 17 years.

For the record, "Stop the Trains" is in my view a tacky exploit. I don't use it for normal games. Nevertheless, our company is superior to other companies because it has fewer shares outstanding. To sacrifice that advantage is a setback that would have to be factored in. It can work, but probably isn't best/quickest. I also don't believe the extra security is worthwhile. You get +30% when connecting to Denver in whatever case. And you can also add a caboose for another -75%. Long range passengers and mail are key. So the cheap track is the obvious superior choice. With the higher stock price I think the AI will be less likely to see your shares as attractive. Pretty sure their calculation of share value is too simple to factor this in. Actually with this choice we can easily connect instantly to Denver with single track. I believe the bonus is applied when exiting track-laying. Make sure you do stock moves first because the $700k bonus counts as earnings in your first year. But buy engines/service setup after. For a cautious play you might hire Ginery Twitchell and buy back stock. You will have 3/7 shares instantly. I'm going to suggest that going deep on the margin while using all company funds to expand with long haul passengers is going to be superior to any sort of stock buy backs, depends how much you are going trying to push it. Unconnected track is allowed. Unless you have a personal handicap against it, think about connecting Dallas to Houston right from the word go. This will have the side-effect that the Texas & Pacific AI will do something more useful than a short shuffle.

The game makes some simplifications. The term "profits" is used for revenue less operating expenses, before investment on any new infrastructure/upgrades. The way you described profits here doesn't quite match the game's usage. We figured it out, but specifying no debt and $1.5M cash, would be clearer. I was always playing this without dozing any track. So maybe I'm not playing "as intended". I gave it a couple runs over the weekend. My strategy relies on some industry profits, I connect to Allentown with 5 Oil Wells, then buy them and the Oil Refinery. If you are lucky there might be a convenient accessible Electric Plant. Otherwise, leaving a big stack of Diesel in Wellsville is advantageous because the AI will haul that away rather than the precious passengers and mail that I want to run to Galeton. One of the good things about this map is that the AI on +25% revenue are good competition for most express cargoes. I leave the Consolidations on secondary duties for awhile, but those routes are low profit, and as the engines age maintenance costs make them unprofitable. By about year 10 it's better to retire most of them from longer runs. I also like to build a new large station in Westfield that covers Sabinsville houses as well to get an 8 house coverage for a "true city" demand behavior. It was just as fun as I remembered. One of my favorite challenges in this game. 😄 Here's a screenshot from one of my plays:

Hello, there. I stop by every now and then these days. Lately I have been playing some Railroad Corporation. Your post brings back some nice memories. To honor this I will play this again soon. You may see me grumble about some of the game's failures especially that corners act like a +2% grade. This breaks train classification of Express-Mixed-Freight. Also the ideal track layouts end up being a bunch of straight lines, this is quite stale, there is not much room for innovation. Thankfully with pre-built track, this map is largely immune. Any comment on this?

My observation here: Volume matters more than delivery price. All production must be hauled away fairly quickly. The most profitable industries I ever owned have been getting ALL the output from two or more resources. And I was delivering all resources to a nearby city at a low, 1 or 0, demand. PS. I'm not familiar with the "relative profitability" factor mentioned on the fandom page. Some of the figures don't correlate with my observations. Especially, Coal, Cattle, and Bakeries are at least above average for profits in an actual game.

I wouldn't know for sure without looking at that specific map in the editor, but there is a possibility that this town uses a hidden territory to track this connection. Such a connection is a different case. It depends on what the map maker chose, and if he decided to use hidden territories it was his/her call on the size, aka how close to town center you need to place your station. Connections to hidden territories are commonly used for tracking haulage targets. As a player, the safe strategy for required connections is to place as close to the town center as possible.

More info is often helpful. In hindsight your first post did have "clues" that I feel I should have seen. You are right, in that case you built what game thinks is a "rural" station and those are automatically named according to nearby towns, but with a mandatory suffix. For them the list starts with "XXX junction" onwards. Maybe you noticed already, but there is an easy clue if your station "connects" a town. If it is close enough you will see the town name turn white and under the name: (CONNECTED). This is useful when placing stations, but anytime later you also can put the cursor over a station to check. If the town name remains normal, it's not really "connected." "Connected" status, as the game defines it, matters for growth prospects. An "unconnected" town, even if well serviced, will barely grow over time compared to one that is properly "connected". This makes it general strategy to connect to the towns properly. Because of this nobody is likely to have much experience of this situation in order to answer your question. If the case is that a non-connected/"rural" station can connect more houses, then the player will tend to use two stations. If, so he will distribute some freight to both, even if all express pickups are from the rural station. This is why Mike and I are talking about multiple stations that cover the same houses, one properly connected and one in the location that will cover as many houses as possible.

"x Junction" is an example of a suffix the game adds to a city that has been previously connected in the game. The purpose is to prevent two stations from having an identical name. There are more suffixes and if we keep placing stations at one city we see this: 1st Chicago 2nd Chicago Junction 3rd Chicago Crossing 4th Chicago Place 5th Chicago Depot 6th Chicago Adjunct >6 Chiacgo Adjunct........ Further stations are called Chicago Adjunct. This is the automatic naming system. We are free later to set our own names however we like. Identical names are not illegal. But it's easy to understand how they can be confusing. Mike said to check that both stations "cover" all buildings/houses. As long as this is true, there is no obvious fundamental at work here to suggest different availability. Who knows if there is something hidden that nobody really noticed, but if so the effect can't be large, else someone would probably have noticedby now.

In the lower center of screen is the "list box". The most common use in a real game is probably for the train list. There is a list of players too. When in the editor, there is a special button on the end of the player list "<<switch control to the next player>>". You can tell which player you are controlling by the green outline around him.

Hi Richard, Good luck for Heartland Secret Gold! Things you might want to know: You might have seen them already. The 1st and 2nd are in my view the most imbalanced parts of the game, but of course they define gameplay. 1. Passengers and mail are your cash cow. Their distance computation is bugged. You receive insane revenue for hauling them as far as possible. And of course they have no specific destination in mind making the standard play to haul them about as far as you practically can. 2. Corners are treated like grades. It was awhile since I looked it up, but I think it's about +2%. This is then added to any actual grade. Needless to say that this hobbles the majority of the Express engines which typical have lower power and therefore less than ideal graded performance. Straight tracks are the way to tackle any grade and also bear an unfair advantage on flat-ground. A high grade on a corner is a killer. 3. You decide how big your "cities" are. The demand at a particular city-station is dependent on the number of houses that station covers. The more houses you can cover the better. Having 8 will count as a proper city needing all consumer goods. >8, More houses = higher demand. 4. For best profits try to pair up equal size "cities" that are as far away as possible connected by as straight track as possible, then reap express windfall.

I agree, most maps are cluttered with resources and as I hinted in the micro- thread, the sane and more profitable way to play is to ignore a lot of resources. Part of the reason why I like this type of game is that I think about optimization. This ignore-stuff is at odds with that. An interesting note is that Railroad Tycoon 3 represents all production on the map directly, usage doesn't hinge upon a rail connection/delivery. Map making therefore required a certain sense to carefully balance the economy. Skill didn't necessarily transfer across from RTII. Look for maps of sparsely populated areas. One that comes to mind is the Australian one titled Darwin 1942 by Peter Bennet. The distance factor for Express seems to blow out the price formula on long journeys. By the modern age, 1980+ or so, the increasing desire for rapid transport has mostly brought this under control. Maps from the 2nd century are obvious candidates. Letsdance made a map that addresses that in the earlier times https://forum.dune2k.com/files/file/1516-eastern-usa/ . For a map that has a long chain of production, try Cascadia by Nick Bennett. For something a bit different: Alaska Coal Mine by Gwizz https://forum.dune2k.com/files/file/1067-alaska-coal-mine/ I recommend Jeffry's monster map, but try to get used to a minimal micro- style first. Also, ignoring stuff. You can go crazy on his map. Never finished this attempt, done while I was weaning off micro-. https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/25127-replacing-engines-more-quickly/?do=findComment&comment=382406

Micro- can give best profits, I played for years that way. But, finally I managed to relax my play a bit more and dabble in automation. Simplification was how I went about it. For express traffic I look for pairs of cities. These should be of about equal size and as far apart as practically possible, connected by as straight track as practically possible with no grades on the turns. I will go for max carriages, mix of mail and passengers. Wait to fill 4. For 4-house towns it will be wait for 3 out of 5. For freight, it's better not to mix cargoes. Highest revenue is achieved by dumping a full trainload of one cargo type. At this moment I would summarize 3 overall strategies for set-and-forget freight. 1. Use it just to provide volume to push city growth. Long distance express revenue is so much higher. Best use in the 19th century. Rising running costs and rot factor make this less practical for a modern game. 2. Industrialize. Buy the factories, and run as short and cheap service, both resource in and finished good out, with the maximum of volume. Focus on the industries. Industrial profits are perhaps a little less, but more stable over an economic cycle. 3. Work the chains as Jeffry suggested. The money maker is hauling finished goods a moderate distance. Manage those end-product demands as first priority. You are in control of supply via how many resources you hook up. Resource hauls should be as short as possible, minimize costs. This is the place to use wait-till-full trains. Then when converted you have a full trainload of say Grain -> Food. Often I will repeat the resource section, but alternate destinations. Food -> City A followed by Food -> City B. This gives time for demand to recover. The typical map has heaps of resources that are just for eye candy. Automation is accepting this is ok and for #3 to ignore even more of them. I have a plan for distribution ahead of time before connecting a new resource. A rare few cargoes*, including Food can work as long distance. But said journeys in the 20th century are best if not dead-headed on the way back. That means combining with a different chain. This makes the route more complex, but after a bit of practice it can be setup without headache. *There is some confusion in the documentation about distance factor. https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/23923-cargo-data-for-v156-ripped-from-exe-file/?do=findComment&amp;comment=395629 At the moment the figures I trust most are in the data included with the download of Jeffry's US History map. PS. Sorry to say I haven't found time and/or worked out how to do the check I mentioned in the link.

Lots of the strategy stuff was made long ago. With more maps and slowly more information over time, those are more or less outdated in terms of specific accuracy. As a general idea for someone struggling any idea can be a good one. The GG1 is a super engine as noted above. But the earlier diesel engines have reasonable running costs and can also go up grades. In fact, diesels on a non-electrified system do in fact win out for a CBV race. For example to get the secret gold on the Heartland, USA map without stock tricks. Electric track on Expert seems to cost $6k per section for single and $9k per section for double. Regular single track on cleared flat ground is priced @ $2k per section, double is @ $3k per section. Obviously there are gradients to contend with on a real map, but it's pretty safe to say that electrifying can easily double your track cost. However, in modern times the E-111 exists. Fuel cost on the E-111 is more or less half that of the diesels. The AMD-103 and FP45 are unfortunately hopeless on grades. It has been reported that this game sees corners as an addition to the existing gradient, for example +2% grade. By extension these engines are poor at corners especially if there's a whiff of a real gradient on said corner. This problem has the worst effect on gameplay, it's the main one that limits how involved I can get with the game. That leaves the Dash-9 and the Class 232. These are slower than the E-111, so not only are all their costings higher, they lose outright revenue to the E-111 on any express traffic. Therefore, Diesel isn't really a viable proposition in a default modern game.

. Very nice. Thanks for this. Will test it later. 😀