steve39

Oh ye of little culture! PopTop went to so much trouble with all the different vegeation, it's so beautiful, and you turn it off! In the process you can hardly see Produce farms. Another aspect is that in some scenarios things may be hidden among the trees quite deliberately. Lose the trees and some of the playability goes with them. Besides, isn't a no-vegetation perspective utterly desert-like? I now play with everything on, unless I have to lay track over complex territory: then I toggle the vegetation on/off. It also helps when creating a scenario to try and avoid excessive afforestation, especially in areas where things will have to be built. Cities, for example, aren't actually inside forests because they have been cleared to make room for man-made thingies like houses. Elsewhere it can help to thin an impenetrable forest and leave glades.

I'm not happy about comparing apples with oranges either, but can't get too involved for a week because of a heavy work load. I should however underline one aspect of my tests - I deliberately chose an established position which I knew was going to trip the economy, in fact with a 50% chance. Under normal conditions when a company is being run profitably and share values and earnings are rising, the chance of the economy turning down is close to 0%. I can now get an economy into Boom inside 2-3 years and with care keep it there for another 15yrs. Please, none of this "if it works for you

Methodology All my trials involved 20 tests so if a result states "50%" incidence of a fall in the economy, that means 10/20. The "raw data" is as simple as that - and there is no "interpretation" except to present these figures as a percentage. I'm sorry, I thought I'd made that clear. The error, put simply, is 1/20 on the raw data, which is +/- 1, and hence +/- 5 on the percentage figure. For example, 50% is accurate within 45-55%. That's why in one case I stated that 50% and 55% were not significantly different. In fact, say, 40(+/-5)% and 30(+/-5)% are not significantly different, or at their limit of significance. For greater precision the sample size would have to be scaled up. It's a while since I did advanced statistical calculations but there is no need to employ the whole shooting match here; this is good enough for our purposes at the moment. For a clearer resolution it would need a game situation in which every possible combination can be tried, and at a sample size of, say, 50 where the accuracy would be 1/50, ie. +/- 2 on the percentage, or a sample size of 100, etc. Followed perhaps by a regression analysis. But that is quite a task and before starting it's necessary to identify fruitful trends first - and that's where we are at the moment, with some success I would say. It's easy to play Devil's Advocate - but muddying the waters with unquantified opinion; no reference points; and errors of logic is not helpful. This problem will only be solved by knuckling down to some hard graft and the application of science (bit of a clich

Here's another set of trials from a later point in the same game. It's mid-February and Share value & earnings have begun to fall. Cash in hand (cih) $1,570K. Once again the percentage figure shows the number of times the Economy fell in April: 2(a) No change : 50% 2(b) Repay 2 Bonds (6%) (reducing cih to $570K) : 55% 2© Buy Back Shares (2000, cost $1,235K, reducing cih to $335K) : 35% 2(d) Lay track (28 cells), (cost $300K reducing cih to $1,270K) : 35% I haven't calculated the likely error/scatter in these samples of 20 but would say that there is no significant difference between 50% and 55%. In other words, repaying two Bonds made no significant difference. Buying back a load of Shares, however, had the same effect as laying track. Except that laying track is a heck of a lot cheaper! Steve

djf01's comment about temporarily increasing the value of the stock is right and I buy AI shares to keep things ticking along and as a precaution in February and August. Here's what happened when I trialled a doubling of the purchases. Also, re your track cells question. Previous results re-quoted for comparison, plus more detail. As before, the percentage is of the economy falling (from Boom: making no changes gives a 50% result): © buy 4 lots of AI shares (share value +6.8%) : 50% (h) buy 9 lots of AI shares (share value +10.2%) : 40% In short, buying 4 shares hadn't helped (unless married with track laying). Buying more did have an effect by itself, but not all that great. (d) lay $500K flat track (38 cells), (and thus reduce cash in hand to $160K) : 35% (j) lay $500K steeply graded track (14 cells), (and thus reduce cash in hand to $160K) : 50% This shows that it's the track cells which count, not money spent on track laying. It also indicates that there may be a minimum requirement lying somewhere between 14 and 38. Any more ideas or combinations to try? (h)+(e) for sure! Steve

Good questions! 1) Cash -5,961 Stocks 23,308 ------- Total 17,346 Purchasing Power 5,692 This was achieved by only issuing shares in Year 1, then personally buying a mixture of AI shares (often before an Economy check), and own shares carefully so as not to overdo it, in the period after an Economy check. OK, AI shares don't earn as much but I will eventually buy out all the AI (yep, I'm power crazed, and it adds a nice extra degree of difficulty to a game)! I've only developed this approach quite recently. When things are sitting comfortably, my railway may occasionally offer shares for which the income will be $1.0-1.5 m. Useful for a large burst of track laying and speed things along, or to buy out an AI. 2) (g) Buy Distillery ($400K, Very Lucrative, making $52K pa) and hence reduce cash in hand to $260K - 50% In other words, it made no difference. I suspect that the effect you allude to, ie. raising illiquid assets, may be a long-term one and thus difficult to assess. Adding lots more hardware by acquiring an AI does have an immediate effect, though. Couldn't repeat with Hotels as all my passenger stations already have them. 3) The Economy was already at Boom. But teetering

I should begin by apologising for a week's silence; I have been doing my homework. When I left it we were faced by JSS's assertion that all changes in the Economy are random, as is their timing. If I may put this politely and use an old English phrase, that's balderdash and piffle! djf01 made a good addition by noting that the condition of a player's company and how he manages it will put the economy on an upward or a downward trend. I've taken a scenario (not POS) and when play was well developed - and my own company shares had begun to decline in both value & earnings - I tried the following options in August, one of the two months before the Economy is likely to change. Cash in hand was about $660K. My shares Spending Limit was very high (and equal to my Debt) so I could try making purchases without fear of penalty). Sample size for each trial was 20. The percentage figure quoted is for the Economy falling: (a) no action - 50% This illustrates an underlying degree of randomness. (b) buy 2 lots of own shares - 50% © buy 4 lots of AI shares - 50% In other words, share dealing like this by itself won't help. (I think we all know that using your company to Buy Back Shares is beneficial). (d) lay $500K track (and thus reduce cash in hand to $160K) - 35% (e) maintain cash in hand by taking a Bond and spending approx. $650K laying track - 30% This shows that the most important factor in preventing the economy from turning down (or encouraging it to rise) is to lay track. The caveat is that it's best done from your own cash, providing THAT isn't denuded too much. Using a Bond as an aid can allow you to maintain liquidity and lay more track (the difference between 35% and 30% is not significant). I'll come back to use of Bonds in a moment. (f) combination of © and (e) - 10% In short, in order to bale me out, most effective was to lay track AND buy AI shares. This achieved 90% success in preventing the Economy from sliding. Coming back to use of Bonds, I added to trial (e) with another Bond which I spent on more track. The chance of a downward turn in the Economy promptly doubled from 30% to 60%. This shows two things: - there is a limit above which laying more track does not help. - taking Bonds just before an Economy check has a negative effect. As yet unchecked is a suspicion that it's beneficial to reduce the number of Bonds you hold (or perhaps the total interest on them?). By using the techniques described above, coupled with an early expansionist policy, I can get Boom inside 2-3 years and maintain it for 20 years. - - - - - POS (Prince of Steel) - JSS quoted a lot of runs of this scenario to support his case. POS-II is available now so I did some trials with that (eight). Most evident is that this is a scenario in which it is hard to be profitable - the biggest cities are far apart, fenced off, and expensive to buy; other Cities are also far apart; and industries are not well placed vis a vis the resources. Hence journeys are long and not very profitable, and neither is your company. In such marginal conditions you cannot expect the Economy to lift - and it won't. A second factor I noted is that the choice of locos offered was poor and got worse: the designer is deliberately offering predominantly expensive and unprofitable locos. A third factor in this vein is that it's hard to buy shares because you start in debt! These three factors result in a game where profitability is simply not enough to encourage improvements in the Economy. Steve

Hi Gwizz, (a) Isn't this "stop the trains" trick a trade-off? From what you say it's possible to buy shares cheaper. Fine, but the value of the stopped trains is decaying all the time and nothing much is happening with your railroad. - I find it more useful to link two large cities as quickly as possible and launch as many trains as possible, and as quickly as possible, to bring in loads of revenue and expand like mad. For me it's "the" foundation. If two decently big cities are reachable in the first year I will connect them and set off three trains, which if covered by double track at the passing points, can make return trips. That's 6 revenue earning trips when there's a lot of traffic and demand. - It two really large cities are too far apart, let's call them A and D, I build a line as far as I can afford towards it, and two stations en route, B and C. Then start with trains from all three stations, A,B,C, the maximum distance each, while still keeping a small cash reserve in the kitty. One or two will pass en route (cover with some double track where possible) and they will all have arrived by around July-August. This generates so much revenue that I can extend the track to D and start a fourth train (from there), if possible with a more powerful/expensive loco - all in the first year. All four trains are redirected to run A-D non-stop. The cost of the intermediate stations (B,C) may be $200K and they may be little used again, but they will have enabled connection of two distant cities and four trains beavering away between them - all in year 1. - A hybrid of the above is to connect two local Cities for their quick revenue and, elsewhere, start a longer run with a small station at the halfway point for sand/coal. By the time the train reaches the service station, the shorter runs will have provided the revenue to complete the longer run. Whichever approach I use, by the middle of the second year I'll have bought several more big locos and the money is pouring in fast enough to start extending to the next big city. In the early years when demand is at its highest the revenue from these trains is huge and - crucially - you can maintain a high divi on your shares: which makes it easier to buy more. This is a virtuous circle and, I think, better than artificially depressing share prices to make them buyable and sacrificing your railroad's profitability. Your Spending Limit rises too. Meanwhile, PopTop thinks all this is "a good thing" and raises the Economy from Normal to Prosperity and then Boom. Yet another virtuous circle and where I think I came in! (b) Keeping your shares Spending Limit above the Debt ain't so hard if you start carefully and use Bonds. Keep a rough balance until your Spending Limit exceeds $1000, then gradually become more daring. As your Limit continues to rise, it all gets easier still. Staying in Boom is part of it, and when things eventually do turn down, if you haven't raised your shares Debt too high, you will be able to ride it out. © Keeping a high level of cash in your railroad account won't by itself prevent the Economy from falling. I've played games where the cash in hand was many millions, and the Economy would still fall if I stopped expanding, or allowed my shares divi to fall to zero and stay there through forgetfulness. Darned complicated game this RT2! Steve

Well, Einstein, I'm mightily impressed by your proposed equation! But can't help myself and wonder if anybody else can chip in? It would be good to know what one of the game's fundamentals is based on. Coming back to the shares divi, I've noticed many a time that if you allow it to sit at zero for too many months the Economy will drop a step. I could be mistaken and will try a test when part way through my next game. For my sins, I try to play a clean game, hopefully in the spirit of the scenario designer, and have never tried the "stop the trains" trick. Not my cup of tea, I suppose. Goodwill - thanks for saying where this is displayed: I realise now that it's a page I stopped looking at a long time ago. My partner in crime, though, Geoffrey, assures me that its only influence is on territory purchase price, which in many games is a peripheral aspect. Hmm... I shall now watch this like a hawk and see if any other correlation can be spotted. Steve

This is interesting, and I confess to never having found where the Goodwill is shown. Could you explain further please? Steve Doh - I forgot to include in my list re managing the economy that if shares are being traded, you must keep the divi on your own shares >0.

Hi, Loads building up at stations a "problem"? It's one I have never known! But what about the GOODWILL? I was under the impression its only effect was to make buying a Territory more expensive. Are there any other effects? Steve PS - I think we're all familiar with what happens when the Economy turns down; I'm trying to focus on how to manage it and play for as long as possible under Boom conditions. Some players are definitely better at this than others and I sometimes wonder if players who struggle to get a Gold award have got the hang of the railroad tactics - but find a cycling Economy, up and down, just something to live with when in fact good tactics can help.

RT2 always plays best when loads of money is being made and the Economy is in Boom but only relatively recently have I worked out what helps the latter, though not entirely. Would anybody like to comment please? 1) The Economy is checked twice yearly and may change in March or September. 2) There is an element of randomness about what happens, especially in the first March and if it goes into Recession, I regard it as an unwarranted stunt by PopTop, kill the game and do a Restart. 3) When starting, try to leave around $100 unspent; I may be wrong but it seems to encourage the first step up to Prosperity. It looks as if the less you leave in the kitty, the less chance there is of an upgrade in the first March. Much depends on how much track/locos you wish to start the game with and thus earn in the first year: view it as a trade-off if you like according to taste. 4) Some players like to cheat, again according to taste, and one here is to save mid-February and if the Economy misbehaves, shall we say, back-track. I like to get Prosperity during the first year and Boom by the second - and stay there for as long as possible. 5) A prerequisite in raising the Economy and keeping it high is to keep laying track. I suspect that a set number of cells has to be laid each half year but have never worked out how many, nor if they're counted over the whole six months or weighted towards the last month before the Economy is checked. If I get nervous about an impending change, I may save my money for a few months and then build track in the month or two before the Economy is checked. 6) Having a decent amount of cash helps. So does arrival of a high revenue train, or several. Looking at it the other way, if you have a long period of low revenue and inactivity, the Economy will fall. 7) Buying shares is a tricky one. Overdoing it by offering or buying too many doesn't seem to be viewed favourably. But so is doing nothing! One marker is to try and keep your shares Spending Power above your Debt. You can let the debt exceed this gradually but it's best to have a Spending Power above $1000 as soon as possible and the higher the better. It'll give you more room for manoeuvre too. 8 ) Dealing too much in your own shares seems to be a definite way of tipping the Economy and I tend to play this down now and buy more AI shares, partly also because I like to buy out every single AI (just a quirk of mine which adds to the enjoyment)! If in dire straights buying some of your own shares, or buying them back, will boost their value and help but this can be expensive and desperate stuff! Best I can say here is to take it easy and don't launch too many of your own shares: the Economy doesn't seem to like that at all! 9) Bonds are a safe way of raising cash, again if you don't overdo it. When the interest rate drops I replace the first bonds (usually around 10-12%) with something lower and repeat every so often as the rate drops to its lowest level of 5% (only available in a Boom economy). Repaying bonds can also help the Economy. 10) There's an element of "steady as she goes" about all this. 11) Now, for the record, my playing style is, on the main lines, to run full trains only and no caboose (unless it's a very important train). They make loadsamoney - but you MUST choose only the locos with the highest reliability. Breakdowns and crashes are not only caused by less reliable locos: they also happen more if the Economy drops. When I get a breakdown, and especially two in quick succession, I stop and check my financial position and if my company's shares are beginning to fall and lose earnings, I realise that I've got it wrong and without the kind of action already described, sure as night follows day, the Economy will drop. 12) It's possible to play most of a game in Boom conditions and it's not just that you make more money, generation of passengers and raw materials also goes up. It's a virtuous circle. When, alas, the economy does drop you may struggle to get back to where you were so, as the saying goes, try and keep your nose clean! Any thoughts on this would be welcome. Steve

Gwizz is right, and it's one of the beauties of RT2 that you can collect raw material and drop/store it (red flag) at a main line station. Make sure that the main line station already has servicing facililities and buy the cheapest loco available to do the shunting. Sometimes it can be worth electrifying a short line like this simply to use the dead cheap to buy and cheap to operate little shunter, or do the opposite with an old banger of a steam loco. Reliability isn't very important. Such services hardly break even, but that's not imporant - what counts a lot more is having a main line station fully stocked and expensive fast locos whipping the stuff away. Another version of tbis multi-station approach & cheap shunters is to generate finished goods at the principal terminus off which fast trains can make even more money. A significant consequence is that your main lines are less crowded and full trains run fast and make loads of money! The only drawbck as you go through the later half of the 20thC is that PopTop kind of forgot about shunters/switchers, which never went out of fashion despite the move towards the roads, so it can be a hard tactic when only enormously expensiove locos are available! I've been known when doing a scenario to programme extended life of shunter style locos, or even programme them in if they're not available. I have to confess that these concepts are among the reasons why I still like playing RT2. :) Steve

Sounds great! PS - Are you launching this scenario through the Forum because it's ready to go or for beta testing and feedback? :)

Ah, RISK was alway one of my favourite games (except that whoever got Australia always won!). Now, I'm not sure if I follow you correctly becausue the Military Depot doesn't produce anything; it just sits there and pays you for certain incoming cargoes. Weapons and Munitions plants DO produce as stated on the box, but require feeding with metal and rubber/chemicals. Are you delivering them me and not getting a result? Perhaps you aren't delivering enough? I'm using all of these at the moment in a new scenario and find no problem.

It would also be nice to correct some of the dafter settings for the extant locos, like the fictional unrelaibility for the LNER A4 (Mallard et al). The BR Deltic, once the most powerful diesel in the world, is also rated rather poorly. Ah, I have the answer - they're not American! Isn't it strange, too, how all the best locos in RT2 seem to be American? It would be useful to balance these things out. But I fear that it's not possible...

Gwizz, I recall that one of the PopTop scenarios was a kind of "last man standing" but The Take-Over Tycoon you describe sounds totally manic and the result of a wholly devious mind - I like it! :O ??? ::) :D

I hesitate to enter this one but my heart's with TheDS - whatever the scenario challenge is, I always add a personal goal of "absorb all competitors". Perhaps I find too many scenarios too easy? Gwizz has good ideas about making the AI railways work for you but I prefer to put them out of business. By the same token, I like to write scenarios which are as complex as I can make them - the more challenges the better! I know it's not everybody's cup of tea but in my book the really "great" scenarios are not the "green field do as you please" ones but those which have creatively original challenges against which the clock is ticking and the bank manager tut-tutting!

Thank you, my man! Anything that encourages players to move on to the improved version is a good thing. Alas we never heard any more from Snoopy in Austria so don't know if he has yet discovered the Joy of TSC.

Gwizz is right, it helps to learn basic techniques rather than asking for help with a specific scenario. Isn't there a download somewhere which runs over this, full of tips? Hoping not to scare you but the PopTop Campaign scenarios are part of the learning curve and not all that hard! That's the beauty of RT2 - it is not the kind of game you learn in an afternoon and after a few days, you're bored with it. I was still finding new things after several years; and still am, really. When you've honed your skills, you'll find many of the separate scenarios, especially ones you can download on this site, will really test you!

Er, thanks for the feedback and my apologies for not coming back sooner! The problem hinged on my having too many versions of RT2 and I inadvertently renamed one of the holding files for maps wrongly - doh! I only discovered this today when spring-cleaning. :-[

The question of moving Chairmanship around intrigues me. I've never done it myself. You can only do it where you have a controlling majority of the shares, where I have always gone for a merger. Am I missing something here - what's the advantage of not merging (apart from saving the cost!)? ???

PS - It

In a word, finish the RT2 scenarios and get yourself the TSC version (if you don't already have it)! It's a vastly superior game. But I should add is that RT is unusual in having a very long learning curve; it can take years to learn all the ins and outs: that's one of the reasons why it's so satisfying and why players come back to it every so often. If you get stuck with a scenario, give it a rest and come back with fresh ideas. The more approaches you try, the better you'll get. Indeed, some scenarios are so canny that you can need several attempts to get under their skin. You may already be doing this but it also helps to save regularly. Back-tracking is a vaulable aid at any time but especially when you're learning.

I had a go myself and this is how I did it (Expert level): - Lay an electric line between Broken Hill-Ivanhoe, ignoring most of what's already there, and run three basic electric locos collecting wool en route and hence goods. - The starting conditions include loads of dosh with which it's easy to buy up a majority of shares in the Melbourne-Shepparton line. Extend it to Canberra, buy big diesels, and voila; the Gold is yours by the end of 1960. Yup, that's all of 4 years' play. I'm always on the lookout for buy-outs like this, and they don't come much easier than this! ;D