djf01

Then don't use the AI. Make Sydney-Brisbane profitable in ~4 years, depart with > $500k and a good reputation, and you set up the next company with $4mil of funds raised in your IPO. Use nthat to set up one of thbe longer required connections and run that profitably as yourself.

Won it in May 1968. Could have done it earlier but wasn't really trying hard enough, nor perfected the strategy. What you need to realise is you don't need to win the game with your starting company. Establish Brisbane to Sydney - should take you 3-4 years. You should have a "shareholder's are excited" rating by then too. Start a new company with starting public capital of $4mil, plus whatever you've made from Company A, and build a long point to point route without massive grades. I chose Melbourne to Darwin. Build the large Hotel, Restr & Salloon in each city. Set some trains running on it between the two cities then resign. Sell all your shares in Company B. Buy as many as you can afford in company A. The AI will make a killing on the Syd - Bris route, probably adding a few more trains. The AI will continue with the trains you set running on company B. Buy back into Company B just as the first of it's trains are about to arrive. Mine made ~$4mil each, sending the share price through the roof. By now I've got a PNW ~$12mil. I could have sold all this, started a new company (Company D) to complete the construction with electric track and stations at all the required cities, but in the attached game I tried to pull the trick again with a company C., which was just a waste of time really. The game can be won in the traditional way starting Sydney to Brisbane (but I think the best I've managed is silver), but there are plenty of other ways to win this game quickly too, even with your starting company.

Start Sydney - Brisbane

You can't really use industries before they are allowed to "appear" in the game. You can put them on the map in the editor, but they usually don't work, and in the case of the military buildings the cars to haul the loads aren't available either. I remember trying to do something similar in an American history map - requiring the delivery of uranium to Area 51 to allow the US to win WWII (I know, not exactly historically accurate :-)), but I never figured out a way to do it. {quote] The other thing I noticed is that pre-placing any military building inside a city boundary will prevent houses from forming there. Even a megalopolis in 1940 will be vacant. It seems that military buildings don't play nice with basic economics. {/quote] This is true of *any* industry placed in a city using the editor, and is a known bug. I *think* it is triggered when the random city generator tries to put some houses in the city, but the space is already taken. The routine aborts, and there are no houses or indutry at all, other than what you put their yourself. One of the PopTop maps - the one in eastern Europe with a nuclear reactor at Warsaw exhibits this bug. If you want to force specific industries at a specific town, you can either use the probability percentages (which are not 100% reliable), or you can paint in all aspects of your own city (but it looks the same in every incarnation of the map).

Lithuania is a really cheap place to buy access to to start with. And a large station can usually span the two cities there. I do the first line with Diesels, then sparkies thereafter.

Hi Hawk, The zip file is not necessarily corrupt, it's just not there. Instead it downloads a file containing the PHP errors I posted above. Have a look in the zip file in a text editor. Cheers, DJF

The download link is not really junk, it's an error message: Basically the file isn't there, or isn't where the server code is looking. Hawk, Jerry, thanks for your efforts guys, much appreciated. BTW, the map did exist, I played it a few years and several machines ago! Cheers, DJF

No, that makes it junk. It's not a zip file, let alone a zipped map. I'll re-iterate, if you have a copy can you please post if for me?

Gwizz, I've been trying to get the Northland Ontario RT2 map down, but it's junk (600bytes long). Hawk doesn't seem to have it on his site. Could you (or someone) post it by any chance?

Pretty sure. I suppose I might have forgotten to repay the bonds I inherited from my merged entities, but I don't think so. I just figured it checked the loads in the last year. I knew I'd won - and more time doing than I'd anticipated - and I really didn't have the urge to go and try and debug it. No. I found trying to use the AIs to make a profit - other than my slave which I kept largely debt free - only enriched the chairmen also holding stock. They would eventually have enough to start starting their own annoying railroads mid/late game.

Well, I had a crack at this map. It took me a few goes to get the strategy right, but the easiest way to win seems to be: - Buy a controlling interest in every AI that starts up - Take control then immediately sell all my shares (costs me about $100k to do this, but the map starts off with plenty of free cash) - Bulldoze the track between their main routes, and the stations too if they are in great cities. Build another unconnected station in the sticks somewhere. - MAX out the bond issues and issue some more stock. - Destroy the AI's value. There are lots of ways of doing this, but my preferred way is to buy and sell Steel Mills, then other industries till all the cash is gone. - Go back to chairmanship of the original railroad. After the first year I have set up pretty much all the chairmen except Cook on the path to destitution. - I bought back a bit of my own company, just to keep the market share price above the book value to stop other chairpersons buying a stake. - After he starting company has some track cells, start laying out a route (try to hire a track laying manager). St Louis to Denver was a good initial one. Laying track zipper style, you can claim 2 cell with just one cell of track. Then join them up after. - Start a new "slave" company with your remaining cash. Build a terminal station at each end of "my" railroad's route, maxed out with hotels and restaurants. Use every bit of cash left to buy new trains. Both companies will earn squillions. Repeat the process as track cells allow. Even so, "earning" $250mil of CBV takes a bit of time in RT2. I used a few other tricks to boost my CBV. You can start an AI company with up to 49% public capital. Buy up a many secondary industries as you can afford after maxing out your debt issuances. Go back to the original company. This AI company's share price will fall to just udner half it's book value after 2 years. Merge it into your main railroad at the minimum takeover price. Your railroad instantly doubles it's money (in CBV terms). Once the main RR gets a reasonable size, issue stock every year, and don't ever buy any back. That increases CBV about 5-7% each year After 12 - 15 years I was worth > 100mil PNV, I have >$300mil CBV, I had a few dummy stations set up collecting PAX just to deliver to their home to meet the delivery target, plus about 200car loads of cattle stored up just in case. I never made use of the Acorn cheap debt. A true capitalist doesn't need to resort to that sort of crap. I thought I'd try and win the game here, but guess what - in true lying republican style - I got shafted. I delivered all my cargos (350 as it turned out), but no dice. Then I merged my slave company, and it still didn't fire - and before I cold get it to the end of the 20 years or whatever it was, the profitability of the combined entity collapsed and I eventually didn't meet the PNW condition :-(. So Gerry, you know where you can stick your acorns :-)

Not that I'm aware of, but you can edit the map in question and make that engine available with a single event.

Once you know how to insider trade, boosting PNW is easy!

No, not really. No, just stop them. The scenario goals require a minimum lifetime industry profit. Plus I think passenger supply might be slightly crippled in this map (but I haven't checked). I set up runs to the neighbouring towns from Khartoum, enough to build up the credit rating until I had enough credit to afford the run up to Kampala . If you don't "stop the trains" on the short hauls when you start the Kampala runs, the share price won't fall anywhere near as much, and you won't be able to acquire as much of your company's stock.

Start at Khartoum, build to one of the nearby towns and start some industry. In 1 or 2 years, when you have enough credit, built to Kampala. Send trains from Khartoum to Kampala, and in that year sell your stock, stop everything else, then buy back in when they are about to hit those Ugandan Hotels.