outofmage

Hi Batchman. If you want to do it right, you need to buy back ALL but the last 1,000 share. You can find shares outstanding in your finance book page, just above the annual dividend, the number MUST be 1,000. Don't forget, you own 2,000 share in the beginning, you need to sell them to allow your company to buy them back.

Hi, Maglev. If you still want to try this, you can do it on Heatland US. Beginning options are Omaha&Lincoln or Chicago&Gary. Build single track and middle size station can control the budget under $500K. Issue a bond, buy back all the stock but the last hand (don't forget to sell your beginning 2,000 share in the buy-back process), resign as chairman, the "share holder's committee" will buy two engines to run between the two cities. Then you buy the only 1,000 share for $2K. In another way. Just issue the bond, buy back all the stock but the last hand, resign as chairman. The committee will connect two cities and buy two engines.

Happy to see your posts again after so long, jeff. I replace the engines on a planned pace. I usually take a peek in the Editor to see which engines are available for this map before I play, pick my favorite ones to cover the playing years. Then I look at the time span each engine would serve and 'cut' each engine's serving period into reasonable pieces depends on their reliability and costs. For example, in North America map I currently play on. I plan to play from 1830 to at least 2000. These are engines I picked and their serving periods. passenger trains: 1831-1837 John Bull no rep. 1837-1848 Prussian 1842 rep. 1848-1868 America-C 1858 rep. 1868-1902 8-wheel 1880 rep. 1892 rep. 1902-1935 Atlantic 1918 rep. 1935-1990 GG1 1952 rep. 1970 rep. 1990-forever E111 every 15 years fright trains: 1877-1905 consolidation 1886 rep. 1895 rep. 1905-1919 Camelback no rep. 1919-1935 Mikado no rep. 1935-1990 GG1 1952 rep. 1970 rep. 1990-forever E111 every 15 years I plan these ahead and think about pros and cons against each choices during a period, then I can do a replacement plan. I have trouble choosing between consolidation and Mogul for freight trains in 1895 replacement, I believe the reliability of consolidation can make up the speed disadvantage to Mogul. Over all, I have a strong lean to reliability because I anticipate a big game and the tracks must be busy, so I cannot stand a broken train in the way. I also choose Atlantic over Pacific between 1918-1935 for the same reason.

loco, I just test the companyId=playerId issue when you choose to cycle both companies and players. I also got the same result with you and I will try to explain why this is happening with my tests here. As you mentioned, there will be only 3 entries if the game has 3 companies currently even though we expect 3*4=12 entries if there are 4 players. I believe it's because when you choose to test against both players and companies, the 'playerControlledCompany=CompanyId' is indicated. To be precise, the program writes 'players INNER JOIN companies WHERE Players.playerControlledCompanyId=Companis.CompanyId' when you compile the trigger leaving both players and companies checked, maybe this statement is always included in every event. To confirm this theory, I design my test as this: I create a map with 3 players, and each player has a company. I set the player cash as $80K, $800K, $8,000K, and the company cash as #100K, $1,000K, $10,000K. So player cash is lower than their own company, but some players have more cash than other players' company. only one event for this map: test against all players test against all companies test monthly trigger: PlayerCash>CompanyCash effect: GameWin3 I just tested it, at first, nothing happens, but after 7 months, player #1 wins. Because the company controlled by the first player gets not enough interest to cover the overhead and salary, its cash drops down below player #1's cash and triggers the event. This confirms that the playControlledCompanyId=CompanyId is always indicated as long as you check both players and companies. Primary key needs to be defined as a result of joining of two tables, game designers chose CompanyId as the primary key, leaving playerId useless. This is further confirmed when I remove some of existing maps 'playerControlledCompanyId=CompanyId' term and everything still works fine.

Jeff, that's a very good idea, to do it one time for all. But I doubt there might be a bug in it. The first player's PV1 could be set as 0 before GV1 add 1. However, since this event is triggered every year, the first player's PV1 will be override as 4 (assuming there are 4 players in total) in second year. Adding an event to initialize PV1 as -1 and change the trigger to PV1<0 should fix this bug. In the other case, if GV1 add 1 before setting PV1 to 1 instead of 0, which means PV1 is the true value of playerId, there won't be this bug. Hopefully all we have done here can help other map creators to full fill their design purpose later. Edit: I also notice that what you have done is similar to what loco has done in his 'PlayerId in events' thread in post #2

Jeff, I want to clear more about my intention of my post in #16. This method is to actually replace the function of player Id, not only to answer akuenzi's question from the first post. I agree that your method in post #11 works for this scenario, solve Ak's problem. However, to find a more universal answer, extra mechanic is needed. What if we have no idea how much cash this player has, and we still want to apply some effects on to a pre-defined player anyway? For example, as we talked about before, we want to assign a territory to a defined player. Although it is impossible due to the basic mechanic of the game, this is actually some map creators trying to accomplish, so I think my method can be used here. What map creator used to do is to add restrict to the map forbidding company creation and assign each human player's company and AI's companies to their own territories. This means if you want to assign territory, you will have to force player to stick with one company, otherwise you can't take full control of each player's territory access. This reduces the flexibility of map design. With the PlayerControlledCompanyId trigger and the replacement of playerId technique, we can assign territory to a company created by pre-defined player every time, which means assign territory access to a player. Although we are already able to take full control of human's territory access by checking against only human player, but we can in practice also restrict each AI with its own territory even if we destroy or merge his company through the example I will present below. Thus we increase map design flexibility. Here is what I designed, and this has been tested. The task is to assign #2 player #6 territory full access every time he creates a company. As usual, it takes one GV and one PV. event #1 test against all players check every time a company is created trigger: GameVariable1<2 and PlayerVariable1=0 effect: set PlayerVariable1 100 Add GameVariable1 +1 ----------------------------- event #2 test against all players test against all companies test against territory id=6 check every time a company is created trigger: GameVariable1=2 and PlayerVariable1=0 and PlayerControlledCompanyId=CompanyId effect: set PlayerVariable1 100 add GameVariable1 +1 territory allow all: do it ----------------------------- event #3 test against all players check every time a company is created trigger: true effect: set PlayerVariable1 1 add PlayerVariable1 -1 set GameVariable1 1 add GameVariable1 -1 This method can be used at least in Mad King map and Free four all map. P.S. Akuenzi, I can feel my English skill has improved as I hang around more on this forum. It's been a fun time.

Jeff, I admit 4 events are little too much. But in post #16, I have a better version which can compact into 2 events. Yes, if the human player happens to be #2 player, it will give the human player cash. I try to solve this problem with more universally usable solution. This method not only answer the OP's question, but can actually replace the function of playerId, including human player's. This method can be used in both single and multi player games, it is able to apply any effect to any player(given his playerId) at any time. In other words, we have the technique to replace playerId with one GV and one PV and 2 events(without init event). Thank you for pointing out the flaws in my solution and all these efforts in confirming that the player Id does not work.

loco, the information of this thread is indeed very much for someone to comprehend over one night. I can sum it up our solutions for you. The OP's question is how to give #2 player some cash at a particular time not get the money he has. I solve this problem in post #12 and #16 introducing two methods. They are all working, I've tested them. In post #11, jeff introduced a method to go around the player Id issue, he just give some money to the player who is running low in cash not directly to a particular player id. Because akuenzi's intention is to give this computer some money so it can come back to the game. Akuenzi simply does not want a dead AI. In post #15, akuenzi adopt jeff's solution and this case is closed. But in this post, he also mentioned how to apply effects to a player with certain Id, which is solved in #16 by me. Other things are also mentioned such as assign territory access to a company, not a player; replace Game Variables with Territory Variables to expand game-scale variables; player Id bug seems not fixable by modding EXE file and so forth. Jeff has lots of posts explaining his thought process trying to solve the original problem, but with no direct solution but confirm the Player Id does not work. Of course my final solution in #16 is not perfect, it can be improved with some adjustment.

I just got a better solution. It still takes 2 variable but takes 3 events and won't be limited by the starting date of the game. It's easier to understand and can replace the function of playerId too. #1 event check at the end of each month trigger: GameYearMonth=188101 effect: Set GameVariable1 to 2 #2 event check against all players check at the end of each month trigger: GameVariable1>0 and PlayerVariable1=0 and GameYearMonth=188101 effect: Add GameVariable1 -1 Set PlayerVariable1=100 #3 event check against all players check at the end of each month trigger: GameVariable1=0 and PlayerVairable1=0 and GameYearMonth=188101 effect: Add GameVariable1 -1 [effect you want to apply to this player] Here is some explanation of my design. GV acts as a counter. Every time an effect is applied to a player, GV will count down once, until you hit the target player to apply some "true effect" other than just set Player Variable away from 0. As counter can be set to any number, you can remove the first event so you leave GV as default 0, and in #3 event's trigger change GameVariable1=0 to GameVariable1 =-2. It works the same. However, it can't set access rights to a particular territory for a company controlled by an AI. You can only set this to a particular CompanyId or human player's company or all the computers companies. PlayerId can only effect player cash, player variables,if this player controlled by human, player character and deactive player.

I got the answer you need. It will take one Game Variable and one Player Variable and 4 events. Say we arrange GameVariable1 and PlayerVariable1 for this task. You need to place these events as ordered below: event #1: test against multiple players(include human and computer) check at the end of each month trigger: GameVariable1<1 and PlayerVariable1<1 and GameYearMonth>=188011 and GameYearMonth<188101 effect: Set GameVariable1 to 100, Set PlayerVariable1 to 100 event #2: test against multiple players(include human and computer) check at the end of each month trigger: GameVariable1>1 effect: Set GameVariable1 to -99 event #3: test against multiple players(include human and computer) check at the end of each month trigger: GameVariable1<1 and PlayerVariable1<1 GameYearMonth=188101 effect: Set GameVariable1 to 100, Add PlayerCash +1,000,000 event #4: test against multiple players(include human and computer) check at the end of each month trigger: GameVariable1>1 effect: Set GameVariable1 to -99 Notice: Yes, event #2 and event #4 are the same, they are not typo. With these, by the end of Jan 1881, $1,000K will be added to #2 player. You can modify this task by changing the date of #1 and #3 event with the formula: StartingYearMonth=TargetYearMonth-PlayerIdMonths. In this case: 188011=188101-2. If you want to add cash to #5 player in 190508, 190508-5=190503, which means the starting date in the #1 event should be 190503.

That's why the game is usually limited in 20 or 30 years. After that, you will have too much money, and with that kind of money, you don't need to do anything to keep a company alive. If you like to continue playing after winning a prize, which is very common among the old players, because we need to extend the game as much as possible to experience something new. I suggest you to pay dividend. You can reduce the cash holding by company to a point when railroad operational profit takes back the major part of your total profit against the interest revenue just like in the early stage of the game. You can force yourself to pay dividend just like the debt owner forces you to pay interest. After all, for a sustainable business, stock dividend and bond interest are not that different. I believe a company should be a pure source of profits from railroad industry, not a bank account. If you don't pay dividend, well, actually you should do, only because you reserve the profits to invest and expand to get more dividend later. If you don't need capital to invest, pay your share holders. If you valid my idea, you won't ask for a "no interest option", because you already have the "no dividend option". Lower interest actually means lower efficient use of money. No interest means zero efficient of capital, and I don't like this idea.

Yes, I have skype, but never use it. How can we get in touch via Skype?

A lot is going on here. I want ask how do you start this game? Since you mentioned you played this game 10 years ago, did you start from a saving or a completely new game? Because you may not remember which route you chose 10 years ago before you play the scenario and proceed to connect N.O. to L.A. while the actual requirement is connecting St. Louis and Sacramento. BTW, you can't choose which route you connect in the game, you must choose it from the campaign board where the old man is talking. No matter which option you choose, the news will always congratulation to you when you make any connection, but not the credit for winning. If it's not this reason, maybe it's still because the trains are not fully loaded as you set the first 2 trains as yellow. Do you know that the dinning car does not give you credit for transporting? If you set up 2 passenger 1 mail and 1 dinning, yellow light, you may only get 2 goods loaded and depart. Even you set 3 passenger 1 mail and 1 dinning, 2 loaded cargo are still able to depart. If so, you might only haul 4 cargo with the first 2 trains. The third train may not arrive on time. BTW, do you know you can check how many goods a train is hauling are loaded or empty? You can count them and see if there are 6 cargo on the way. If a train is running slow, not directly indicates it's fully loaded, empty cars still weigh 2/3 of loaded cars for passenger and mail.

Check if your train is fully loaded when they depart from station. Deliver an empty cargo won't give you money or the credit for transporting this load. You can eliminate empty hauls by setting up the signal lights from green to red.

1. If you have trouble controlling AI, you can try my last hand of stock method. 2. I don't like to merge AI's crap either. At least if I merge an AI, I am planning to destroy my company too. 3. I have never tried this. 4. That's quite creative, maybe you need to save/load to find out which route computer prefer to connect, then mess up with the terro they tend to build tracks on. 5. If you want to block AI's trains, you can buy a cheap train and run on AI's busiest track, then press Ctrl+B, your train will break on AI's track and block the track. You don't need to build track across AI's railroad, and it's not going to work if AI build their track first. The priority will always be local trains>foreign trains. But broken trains will always have higher priority despite the track ownership (with normal throttle). j7n's method will also work, but you need to seduce AI onto your track to do so, but this method is permanent, mine needs to press Ctrl+B every 5 or 6 months. 6. You can bulldoze your own industry, but not within station's radius owned by other company. Even if you can, I believe it's more of your lost than AI's. AI can always get 80% of base value even this station does not demand this cargo at all, so they still get quite some revenue, but you lost half of the purchase price paid for this industry and a stable stream of income every year.

Long Diagonal I'll try my best to answer all your questions. 1. I am sure it's the station owner who gets the revenue from restaurants, hotals and saloons. Descriptions in this game sometimes can be ambiguous or even wrong, don't trust them. 2. I am not 100% sure about this, but my experience and tests show that only when the goods produced by the industry get delievered, it's going to profit from it. If any goods produced by an industry disappear because of the late of pick up, it's going to lose some money according to how much goods disappeared. According to the Strategy Guild written by developers of RRTII, each better eco condition inscreases cargo value by 10%. From my experience, it's not always exactly 10%. The formula must be quite complecated, I can't figure out the whole equation. As for overhead, I don't believe there are overhead calculated for industries. If you don't supply a manufacture, it's profit will always stay at $0, indicating industry profit may not take overhead account. 3. I don't know, you can ask loco_motive, he is more familiar with all these maps. I can't recall any stand-alone map that eliminate passengers, but a lot of campain maps do this to meet its campain set-up scenario. 4. Storage facillities increase max pick-up time, and a little bit of cargo value caused by delayed pick-up. This small inscrease in cargo value is because the storage time is expanded, the losing value caused by delayed pick-up for the same delaying time is proportionally decreased. 5. I don't quite understand the first 2 questions. Rot factor is mentioned once in Strategy Guild The later the date, the rot factor is increased as trains become faster.. This is how I understand rot factor: it's a date related variable, as the game year getting late, the cargo value is slowly decreased. But the speed of this decrease also slows down. They use some kind of formula to calculate this factor, it's the main reason that causes 19th century is far more profitable than 21st century. If you start in 1800, the rot factor is so small that a 500-cell away passenger worths 10,000K per load. However, I don't know the whole story of the rot factor, maybe each kind of cargo has it's own rate of dropping value.

You make DB 18 201 available? That explains the high risk very well. In this map, steam loco speed is geared up, DB 18 is as fast as TGV. Giving its reliab. is above average, it's very commen to have 20% or 30% risk. I remember last time I use DBs were on Antarctica, these beasts were not reliable and cost a lot, hope you can handle them on cascadia.

Without any services, AI trains are filled up with water, sand and oil at the time of month starting or ending, even without any stations around. So if AI trains run on your track, they don't need to be served either. Since your map is modified, there may be some train safety events applied. The ex-AI trains could simply be old, 50% can happen a lot with average reliability when they get old and running on grade. 25 year-old train double the break down odds, every 200 tons of good it's hauling double the odds too, every 2.0% grade four times the odds. That's 16 times of normal odds if a 25-year old train hauling 200 tons of goods runs on 2.0% grade tracks. Not only for that, a higher top speed engine can make the yearly break down odds looks bigger too. Because the game actually roll the dice when your loco goes into a new segment of a track to determine wether it's gonna break down(I know how to prove this). Thus even all the variables are the same, faster loco travels more each year, so they have higher yearly break down odds, but the actual possibility of breaking down at each segment of track is the same as slower loco has. If your map modified loco speed, this will also affect the unusual break down odds.

Jeff, Meglev understand my idea quite well, you can ask him if you don't follow my language. However, the best way to understand it is to try it out. My introduction is a bit heavy in details, but once you are on the road, you don't need to learn the whole story. Start from the first method of buying back all stocks in the very beginning of the game, you will see.

I did some tests today, and I think it depends on RRTII versions. Distance from station was a factor in RRTII original version(1.50) and TSC(1.55), but not in Platium Edition(1.56). (different versions have slightly different mechanic in this issue) I create identical maps from scratch in each version of the game. Build a station covers 2 meat packing plant, one is closer than another to the station. Build another station to cover houses and cattle yards. Type cheat "overtime", use a train to haul only 6 loads of cattle and 6 food back in the first year. Buy the meat packing plant after annual report to see their profits.The result is: in v1.50 and v1.55 (Chinese version), the close to station one makes $44K, the far away one makes $12; in v1.56, however, they both make $38K. They really twisted some small things that they thought not important enough to be listed in the History file. It's quite insteresting that we make this revealed. This is a link to download my tests: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/77269283/industryTests.zip [Edit] I am sorry for not reading your posts completely loco, but I do have some spare time currently. I get your whole idea and I will do your "successive barrels of water theory" in more details. This theory is indeed all over the game. For example, it happens in AI buying up the oversold stocks too. When you dump a lot of stocks into the market, AI will buy them up to the price they thought to be reasonable. It may takes several AI's purchase power to bring up the stock price, and they do this in the order of id. When one computer maxout his leverage, next one fill it in, some only use up their cash, some use up all their purchase power depending on their style until the stock price bounce back to its "true value", left with the last AI not buying any share. This also happens in a 32-AI game, when there are limited cities to be connected, the front-end-id AI will start companies, the middle-end AI invest in large, the last-end just do nothing with their 100K cash. However, we need to confirm the "successive barrels of water" theory in this industry demand scenario by tests. we need to know the capacity of each barrel(the yearly demand for an industry). By controlling the throttle to slow down the train or reduce the loads for each run, we can figure out how much loads each bakery needs to fill up its capacity. And if we under-supply them, the water only falls in higher barrel, nothing into the lower barrel, if we over-supply them, water will fill in all barrels and overflows into somewhere. I do this in 1.56 version to reduce complexity, after all, the other versions are out-dated. I also use grain-food industry as loco did. One station covers grain silo, the other covers 2 bakery. Here is what I got from my tests: I set 50% throttle for 3 loads of grain and food back for 20 years closer get:29 further get:50 20% throttle for 2 loads of food for 20 years closer get:21 further get:34 10% throttle for 1 load of food for 20 years. closer get: 11 further get: 31 All the tests were running on "nowreck" cheat, and on stable economy status. I don't want to continue. This already proves that the "successive barrels of water" theory doesn't fit in, no matter how few of loads you deliver each year, even less than 1 load per year, there is always a few loads slip to another one and the final delivery ratio is close to 1:2. I can't explain this, maybe it's a mix of demand level of each industry and the location of them lead to this 1:2 ratio. Nevertheless, it does prove that one of the 2 same kind of industry has higher priority than the other. Besides this, I believe it's not coordinates that decides which industry has higher priority, it's by the order of somehow un-shown and un-known industry id. Trains have id, companies have id, players have id, I think industries have id too, although we never see them in games or editor. In loco's theory, lower x and y co-ordinate have higher priority in getting served. I think it's because he put down the industry in the editor by the natually habit of putting them from left to right and from top to bottom. By accident, this makes industry located in lower x and y co-ordinate in the front of the id list. To confirm this, I build two bakery in same places but in different order in the editor. I discovered that the bakery being built later (no matter where it is) has higher priority in getting served. This is the test I did for you to have a look, you can look at the industry profits to see how each one gets served. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/77269283/fd-testz80-1.GM2 It doesn't make sense why it's not the earlier one being built has higher priority, well, at least we have an answer, and it makes this study at least not completey useless. Now we know if a same kind of industry building pops out in a city we already serves one of this kind of industry very well, we need to buy this new industry, because it has higher priority and will become more profitable than the original one. Sorry, it's quite long. To sum up: 1. When deliver to a station covering 2 same kind industry, one of them always get a lot more loads than the other. 2. I think each industry building has an unique id just like other elements of this game. 3. Industry id has some effect on deliver priority, not the distance, not the grid position. 4. Industry that appears later has higher priority.

Jeff, you must have noticed that the profitability difference between the same type of industries within a station's radius. If delivery follows demand, they should get evenly supplied and equally profitable. Same thing happens to farms and mines, closer they are to the station, more lucrative they get. I think this mechanic is reasonable, industries far from a station makes it more expensive and takes longer to transfer their goods between their properties and train stations. So they have lower priority when you supply/carry away goods to/from them.

In deeper thinking, I also have something to say. The beauty of the whole deal is that the borrower does not take responsible for the debt, because the problem of leverage usually needs time to be revealed. Once the creditors find out that Company A, used to worth 10 million, worths nothing while the company being liquidated, the true borrower, which is me, has long gone. No one is responsible for this hole. This is why I believe Obama should not be responsible for the pile of debt US is owing. The debt bomb is not planted when it explodes.

Wow, what a long list! Thank you for your sharing loco, looks like I still have a long way to go.

Meglev, you are learning very fast. It's only been 2 days since I posted this method here, you've gone so far! You get 5-8 million after 2 years if you are in 20th century using the buyback at beginning method, you've done great. I got 10 million in 19th century when passenger routes are a lot profitable. To cash these stocks, I prefer merging them. Since you control all the companies, you can assign as chairman and issue bonds in every company. Usually each company has different earnings, so they have different credit rates, leading to different cash after you maximize their loans. After this, you list their cash and market capital in order of the amount of cash like this: Cash Market Capital Company A 7,000K 10,000K Company B 5,500K 6,000K Company C 4,500K 5,000K Company D 4,000K 4,000K Company E 2,500K 2,000K Now you can merge from top to the bottom, assign as chairman in company A, sell all of company A stock(it's gonna collapse), merge B by 1/6 premium with 7000K; take over 5,500K from B, merge C by 1/10 premium with 5,500K; take over 4,500K cash from C and merge D etc. In the end you get an ultra company with massive debt. Usually the amount of debt this company has equals to the amount of cash your person has if you own 100% of each company, if you own 50%, you get 50% of it's debt. Cash your stock in this way can actually inflate your PNW, and force computers to cash their stock too. If they are aggressive in stock buying, they will buy into A because you've over-sold the shares of A. Now, destroy all the assets in A, it's actually a big task because it contains all the assets now, then you can bankrupt computers by the way. The smart ones may not be drawed into this trap, they restart companies. Then it's another round, hah? I agreed with you that RRT2 stock market is very predictable in the eyes of players that knows what's going on and what are they doing, like me, the stock market is a fountain of infinite cash. And it's very addictive, once you know how to make money from stock market, it's hard to go back to run an honest railroad.

In this thread, I want to share my stock market trick experience with you which I call "Holding the last hand of stock". I have been looking around for a while, it should be new to this forum. It's based on special behavials of stocks when there are only 1,000 shares outstanding in the first opening year of a company. I still can't catogory this as cheating, using game loopholes or a clever strategy. To achieve the 1,000 shares outstanding, you need to be able to buyback stock and issue bonds on this map. In the beginning of the game, you can simply buyback all your stocks at once untill the last hand you can't buy, as long as you have more cash than equity. Although the stock price may swing from $50 to $80 and end up in $2, you should left with $0 cash. This is because buyback stock can be considered as canceling out cash and equity on both side of balance sheet. Thus, if you got more cash than equity - in other words "less non-current assets than debt", you can cancel out all the equity, AKA, buyback all your stocks. So, if you issue a bond before buying back, you should end up with $500K cash. It's enough to connect 2 cities with single track, but not the engines, you need to resign and let computer buy them for you. You can also simply leave the computer to select 2 cities to connect if you are lazy to do a connect with a $500K budget - it's quite hard I have to say. Once computers set up the connection from short term credit, you can buy the only 1,000 stock for $2K, and this is going to worth a million at the end of the year. Meanwhile, if this map allows you buy on margin, you can buy into a large share of computers' companies in the fist year with quite low prices. Besides this, you can speculate your 1,000 shares, with one-trade own and one-trade dump, you can make quite a margin before and after your trains stopping and getting some revenue. The revenue may be small, but the effect on the last hand of stock is surprisingly strong. You can cheat by save&load a few times to achieve the best result. If you do this correctly, you can controll like 3-4 companies in the beginning of the second year with a PNW of 2-3 million. You can do merge, massive expand on debt, stock price manipulation to bankrupt computers, you say it. This is one way of doing it. I use it when there are lots of computers in this scenario. The other way is buy back stocks at the end of the first year. You need to generate revenue very fast in the first year, and you can't have too much non-cash assets. It's because, as I mentioned before, in order to buy back all but last hand stocks, you need to have less non-current assets than debt. Let me explain it furthermore: Assets = Liability Assets = Cash + Non-current Assets Liability = Equity + Debt as Cash > Equity so NC Assets < Debt "Non-current asset is less than debt" means you need to use your tracks and engines with efficiency to get enough credit to cover the investment of them all. Passenger revenue is usually not enough especially in 20th century. Grain-food or cattle-food industry is good because they tend to be close to cities, so they require not much additional tracks to build. If you achive this status before the end of this year(you may need the help of Oakes). Now buy back all your stocks. In the end the price should be $2-$5. This is tricky, although the company has no equity and all the assets are relying on debt, however, it earns like $2,000K in a year, and the EPS is extreamly high, how come the stock price is so low? I figure it's because the profits are not confirmed buy the annual report yet, and this company has no earning history! So the EPS of "last year" is 0, equity is 0, the stock has no value! Well, I don't think so, "other investors", I'll buy them! After the annual report, the stock price is shockingly over $9,000. The EPS is confirmed, it's $2,000 per share, the price should be $20,000 per share, but with $0 book value per share draging it down to $9,000. Here is another tricky thing. Now you can issue stock. It should be 5% of your shares outstanding rounding by 1,000, but wait, 50 rounding by 1,000 is still 1,000. You can double the shares! The amount of capital you are going raise is actually $10,000K, not $8,000K, because you will raise so much cash and it would drag up BPS so much that the share price goes up instead of dropping down. After stock issue, the price may raise another 10%, now it's $11,000. With so much equity on the line, your credit rate surge, and you should be still hiring Oakes. After maximizing the credit, you find yourself sitting on $18 million cash to be invested. With this, it is time to build the nation's economy. The last but not the least way is to combine this two together. You open your first company doing the first method, collecting like 10 million personal cash after 2 years. You should leave a company with like nothing but 20 million debt for further use. Open a new company with 14 million capital of a new company, you can make around 20 million profits in the third year of the game. Since you may have build like 24 million worth of tracks and buildings, you need to merge the previous debt-only company so that you can have enough debt to reach the "Non-current Assets < Debt" requirement. Now you can use the second method to make your share price reach $100,000. In the beginning of the forth game year, by issuing 1,000 stock, both PNW and CBV reaches 100 million, which is usually the end of the scenario if it requires PNW or CBV only.