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.

It's been a while, but here is my latest map: Australian National. Set in the period 1991 - 2011, it's a model of Australia's interstate rail network. It starts as an operators map, but you need to make it profitable, then expand to win the medals. No mail or passengers, you have to do it with low margin cargos. Concentrate on the cross continent freight runs with the starting fast diesels. Autos -> Perth are the most profitable. But gauge restrictions make this impossible for the first few years. Make use of any mail that appears at startup. I needed to pull all sorts of tricks to get this to work. Line in RT2, running a second load of AUTOS into a different station in the same city gets pretty much the same as the first load, but only half as much if run into the same station. Anyway, I found this a really satisfying and challenging map.

It's been a while, but here is my latest map: Australian National. Set in the period 1991 - 2011, it's a model of Australia's interstate rail network. It starts as an operators map, but you need to make it profitable, then expand to win the medals. No mail or passengers, you have to do it with low margin cargos. Concentrate on the cross continent freight runs with the starting fast diesels. Autos -> Perth are the most profitable. But gauge restrictions make this impossible for the first few years. Make use of any mail that appears at startup. I needed to pull all sorts of tricks to get this to work. Line in RT2, running a second load of AUTOS into a different station in the same city gets pretty much the same as the first load, but only half as much if run into the same station. Anyway, I found this a really satisfying and challenging map. Australian_National_V0.91.zip

Hey Jerry, you always have this option: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_census_phenomenon

That's right. I forgot uncle Rupert had bought that. I liked reading WSJ when I was last in the states, before the takeover. So why are you calling it a Democrat plan? From the sounds of things, both! However he did it, I think it's fair to say McCain scuttled the deal. All the reports seem to suggest that the house Dems and Reps had stitched up a deal that day. With some provisos, they were prepared to support the *Republican* (actually it's probably fairer to call it the Poulsen package), and the suggested amendments were those negotiated with the House Republicans. The Dems were expecting the meeting to more or less rubber stamp a bi-partisan approach to addressing the financial crisis they'd negotiated. But at the meeting, the reps have fallen in behind McCain's non-position, and suddenly it's the Democrat's plan.

Believe it or not, I've been trying to avoid making partisan comments on this issue. BUt I think I have made a big one, some what unintentionally ... I Just read an article in LA Times http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-mccain27-2008sep27,0,7166605.story suggesting that McCain has been obscure on the issue, and suggesting deliberately so. I made the statement because I *really* don't know, and really would like to know - and just presumed it was my lack of reading/interest in he subject that I didn't. Can point me to a concise summary of McCain's stated position? (Again, not meaning to be facetious)

Did you edit out a request for more info on attending that meeting? Anyway, here's an article from some local tabloid rag you guys get: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122247077035980785.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs%3Darticle As far as I can tell (I can't find the place I read this last night, somewhere in the Aussie mainstream press), the proposed $700bil bailout proposal has basically come straight from the Fed, and endorsed by Bush. It can be summarised as: - Give Poulsen $700bil to buy distressed mortgage assets as he sees fit. Obama's plan: - Give Poulsen the 700bil - Install a bi-partisan congressional oversight committee to try to reduce inappropriate use of the funds (good idea, but probably counter productive the way Washington politics works :-)) - $400k salary cap on "rescued" companies (probably a bad idea - gives execs a motive to continue to pretend their company is OK rather than seek needed help - but if that's the political price of getting the package up - so be it) - And additional package to support distressed home owners (big tick from me, and will greatly boost the value of the US gvt's new "investments", and cut the overall cost to taxpayers in the long run) Republican's Plan: - "Only" give Poulsen 350bil of public money. - Source the remaining 350bil somehow from some sort of private sector funded insurance scheme. (Absolutely nutty IMHO. At it's core, the problem is the credit/capital basis underpinning the financial system is contracting/deflating. Taking 350bil out to put 350bil back in - to probably dud investments - does nothing to the stop deflation, just helps it along slightly. It's the same flawed logic that the Fed have been applying to date that has caused this to develop into a major crisis) I'm not completely sure of McCain's position. Both Republicans and Democrats are in an invidious position. The Reps fear a disproportionate public backlash if a massive chunk of public money is sent to prop up the Wall St elite - some of which - not all, but some - is well earned. The Dems have the burden of incumbency. They have the numbers, but don't want to be seen to be accused of handing out pork, being "big spending democrats", when they were forced into that position by policies of the right. (They'd much rather be handing out taxpayer funds to *their* constituents :-)). I don't really know which I despise more. The Dems for not passing the Bush proposal, or the Republicans for grandstanding, pretending to try and scuttle it. I can understand why both have behaved the way they have, and I'm sure both would have done the same if they were in each other's shoes. I can't say I approve though. Same with McCain. I think there must be something to the accusation that he was behind the Republicans pulling out of supporting the package. Especially it is true the house Reps made the deal without McCain's involvement. That would have made McCain look completely irrelevant, and Obama look like he's already got one hand on the White House tiller. It's smart, almost inevitable politics, but a terrible public policy outcome.

Wow, Obama must have been stunningly or McCain absolutely terrible for GWIZZ to say that!

Practicing your Spanish ;-)?

You'd better hope that your lot get their act together GWIZZ, and sort out this mess, because the way they are going about it, they are helping along the collapse process, rather than doing anything meaningful to stop it. I think the US has between 6 and 12 months to turn the ship around, and you they don't, you will see a depression that will make 1930 look like you dropped a dime down a storm drain. Rather than act to restore confidence and/or underwrite in the US financial institutions. So far the Fed has acted to hasten their demise to ensure depositors are protected. But in the process they have continued to undermine the rest of the financial sector, which is ensuring anyone in the slightest bit of trouble can't re-capitalise. Until a floor is out under the losses, the credit multiplier will continue to unwind, till eventually a domino too big for the Fed buy out will fall, and the whole system in the US, (and a lot of the western world too) will completely collapse. Then it'll be the Mexicans complaining about all those illegal Americans streaming across the border desperate to get a job cleaning toilets for 3 tacos a week.

OK, I played a game of this today. I used this method to get steel cars before 1856, and it worked a treat. I made a huge number of blunders in this game, and made no effort to use any of my advanced strategies - primarily because the only AI railroad built the useless Whitehorse to Juno and bankrupted himself. The only problem was I bought camel backs as my subsiduaries' locos, and they took 7 years to reach Fairbanks from Spokane! But *that* certainly had the feel of narrow gauge to it!