Heartland Heaven

[loco_motive]

Oh no, not another Heartland map!

Found this old idea from about 10/02 and thought I'd throw it out there for any remaining RRT2-TSC enthusiasts. Must be played on Hard or Expert. No time to stop and watch the trains. Well, maybe the last year or two.

The onus is on accumulating high-yielding industry for a while and then loading up with all the lower-yielding industry you can find. Meet these goals and the company hauling and other financial goals pretty well take care of themselves.

At the same time you must start a new company every 2 years and get a high PNW.

This one has a bit of alcohol in the south. Make sure you have some on the map as you'll be needing it by and by.

Any questions?

Heartland_Heaven.zip

[Gwizz]

I like this map.  But with my style of play I'd lose on it, quickly.

Haven't played it past year 5 yet.

[loco_motive]

I'm glad to see so many downloads. Hope some are actually giving it a shot and will report on things that are giving them trouble, problems they've solved, oddities they've discovered or even wins. I think its probably a hard but not complicated scenario, and it is meant to have a few problem areas.

I think I also failed to get back into my main company in year 5 on one try. Seems like a vagary of the game, since on the next try it was no trouble at all. "Stop the trains" also appears to sometimes reduce stock values to around 24 and sometimes to around 12+- at the beginning of year 3, even with the same manager. Probably some sensitive negative earnings threshhold in the first 2 years that makes the difference. This might be enough to make or break a game, but not necessarily. I've never tried it without stopping the trains.

I like the Heartland map since its got a good distribution of most everything and plays in a nice time period. I added a little alcohol in the south for a quest, turned off dividend paying by AI's, and made a couple other small changes. To win this scenario you must start a new company every 2nd year plus company #14 by completing a quest. I originally envisioned industry income was to exceed passenger income, but you can't test for that. Also didn't know if anyone would play it (even 3 years ago) so its not all jazzed up at all.

I tried it on hard with no electrics and, with that experience under my belt, pulled out all the stops on Expert with all electric in my main company and did much better than my first game. Its very winnable but one must play intensively in all phases of the game and not let up perhaps until new industry will no longer produce income in time. I got discouraged in my first game and thought I didn't have a chance with the Industry Income (the toughest goal) because I was so late in getting the >20% yield (1/56), but then the income really started rolling in and I surpassed the Industry Income goal right on time.

[loco_motive]

Well, just dumping more junk on the internet as its unlikely anyone else is going to post here. Still, who knows

This map is essentially Heartland without AI's and has the same CBV requirement of $80M, although anyone good enough to actually play this will easily exceed that. For the record, here are some results for my warm-up game on Hard using steam and diesel and my second game on Expert using electric.

                          Game 1 (Hard)  Game 2 (Expert)
                          -------------  ---------------                      
Passenger, Hum--AI          517--814       616--663
Other cargo, Hum--AI       3529--2252     6021--2021

Ind Inv Yld on 10M+ > 20%    Jan/56         Jan/52
Ind Inv Yld end of game        17%            16%
Indust Income lifetime       35,226         52,210
Indust Invests               38,550         51,500
Company Cash                 21,018         37,920
CBV                         129,482        207,155

PNW 12/59 before buy-up      75,191        113,140
Shs of main co'y owned      827/1600      1686/3288

Then buying up everything:
PNW (Ann Rep't)             146,247        291,189
PNW(1/60 by adding up)      157,426        374,420 

Running                   78 diesels      119 GG1's
Crashes                      4-5             2?

Reconciliation of CBV:

Total net income            112,182        164,594
Add back disposed engines     3,032          3,990
Add stock issued             14,268         38,571
                            -------        -------
Final CBV                   129,482        207,155

[Cam]

loco,

Thanks for the great (and very challenging) map.

I'm 14 years into my first game ... that is to say the first game I got 'off the ground' in the first few years, which in itself was a puzzle. I was stumped for ages in how to get past February in Year 3, the relief hit me like a wave when I finally broke through.

I'm conceding that a Gold will be well and truly out of my reach (actually any medal!), in that while a game is never unsalvagable with enough time and expertise, of which I'm low on both :-[, I guess I can't quite see enough growth potential on my particular map to quickly link up sufficient resources with industries (lumber and beef aside, everything else seems too remote).

I rather stupidly created a monster AI company (Aberdeen - Minneapolis) that's regularly outperforming my own!

And I can't see Mr. Hill getting his booze too soon either.  ;)

For what it's worth, I started with some Prairies (Detroit - Fort Wayne - Indianapolis) before going electric in Year 4 and switching over to Class 1045s. I always seemed too broke to pay for GG1s.

Thanks once again ... I'll stick at it, and having run through one game, I'll be better armed for a more methodical rematch ... maybe ...  :-\

[loco_motive]

Hi all. Thanks Cam for your response. I started my non-electric by connecting Chicago to Detroit, and my electric by connecting Cleveland to Columbus. I think for my non-electric game, I started company #2 in Feb, but in the electric, Sept. In both cases I definitely stopped the trains outside their destinations until at least Jan/37 (as well as the rest of this essential startup strategy- I wonder if people still know this strat or if its been lost to antiquity).

Getting ready to erase a lot of saved games and thought I'd post this Dec/51 save of my electric game (on Expert). Its a critical point in the scenario, just before meeting the Industry Investment > $10,000 and Investment Yield > 20% requirement.

I just squeezed in under the wire, amazingly close. In a dozen more games I doubt this could be repeated, but 1 year later would have been fine as well.

Company #9 was started in October/51.

Alcohol is on the way to Hill House on train #45 and this quest gets completed in 1954.

I'll keep my pre- and post-gold so if a lot of people download this or if I get any requests, I'll post the pre-gold.

Good RR'ing and happy holidays

H06_195113.zip

[Gwizz]

Bounced