2nd century strategy guides

[TheDS]

Invariably, by the time I can afford to destroy the other rail companies, the AIs have some of my stock, and not many of them are willing to go far enough into debt for me to trap them, and I'm not willing to crush my own railroad just to get rid of them. My course of action is pretty simple:

• Buy up stock in everyone over the course of the game
  
• Since my railroad is usually the most valuable, it takes longer to get to 51% ownership in that, and it's required to get back into my company, but once I've got it, there are usually no publicly held shares, and I usually have from 55 to 80% of each company.
  
• Pause the game. Change company. Take out as many Bonds as possible. If they aren't very high interest, pay back the low-interest ones and take out new Bonds until they're all somewhat high interest. This can take a while for a strong company, but there is a definite limit to the number of Bonds that can be issued (and I don't mean 20).
  
• If there are any public shares, buy them all back. Sell a share of my stock, buy it back, repeat until I'm out of stock. (Sometimes I retain a share, or a majority, if I feel the company might not go away.)
  
• With all my stocks sold at high value, I then go and destroy all the trains, track, and stations, and sell off any industries they've bought. If there's any money left over, I get rid of it; generally buy a huge bridge and demolish it, build a station somewhere useless, stock it, and destory it, build a little track and destroy it, or switch managers to someone less than helpful.
  
• With the company out of cash ($2 or less) I then move on to the next one.
  
• When all companies are destroyed like this, I go back to my company and resume playing.
  

This leaves the majority of AI players poor enough that they can't restart new companies, but as I said, sometimes they have my stocks, and often they have a positive cash flow that will eventually earn them enough interest to start a new railroad. Sometimes they have enough money to start up right away (and I quickly buy up 51% of the stock), but sometimes - especially if I merged companies - they have enough money to buy up all their shares immediately, making them invulnerable to this.

On occasion, their shares are split between several players, and no one has a majority; those, I have to hope I can win chairman election, and that's only going to happen if I go to them first, but this result is rare, maybe once in 10 games.

But anyway, it looks to me like your method is to bankrupt them as well, and I was hoping there was some other way, because there are times I'd like to Merge, but not have the displaced AI start up new companies.

As to the guide... It's linked to in my message above. I would prefer to keep it where it is, and just have you put up a link to it; this way I can update it as needed, and not have to worry about redistributing to a bunch of mirrors; it's possible it can spread to places I don't know about, and while I don't mind that (as long as it's not for profit - putting it on a site or page that has unrelated-to-content paid ads counts as for profit in my book), it eventually leads to people getting old versions and never knowing about new versions.

So feel free to link it up in a place where people will be able to find it. I don't get any money out of it, and don't even get web traffic (hosted on Google Docs), but it'd be nice to know that it helped someone (and comments or corrections are always welcomed).

[Hawk]

Hey DS,

I know you said you'd prefer to keep the Strategy Guide here, but would you also consider allowing me to add it to my site?

Link's in my sig below.

I would suggest keeping it here as well as some folks that come here don't know about my site and vice-versa.  ;)

[TheDS]

The document is on Google Docs; it is not on this site or forum. Feel free to link to it with the below link. This will allow me to keep it updated without having to worry about old copies floating around.

Of course, if you copy the whole thing to your site, I certainly can't (or won't) stop you, but it would be a lot easier for you to just copy the link. I'll write it out this time so you can see it more clearly.

http://rt2p.mopjockey.com

(UPDATE: The link now present will ALWAYS point to the article, or to a page on my site that points to the article. Please update your links as the funny looking one from Google Docs is currently down and may be obsolete soon.)

[Hawk]

I suppose maybe you guys just didn't see that I did that in my first post.

Yes, I saw the link. I clicked on it. I read it.

[Gwizz]

That will be fine.  I did see the link.

Should you lose interest in the game, before you close down your link, do add the document  here and at Hawks.

You never know when someone will get hacked.  That way there is a back up copy on another site.

You play a lot like I do.

To more quickly gain 51% of you own company stock, buy some of it back.  This also delays stock

splits and the availability of more bonds. Too many stocks makes merging harder.  I tend to use any extra AI money to build track, stations or buy locomotives and not route them.  I can merge these later to my RR.  I also stop the AIs locomotives.  An AI will often buy more locomotives and float bonds to do it, if cargo builds up at its stations.  I will sometimes cut it main line on flat ground when I can later replace the track more cheaply to stop the buying of more locomotives. The bonds are the negative side since they will be added to my bond list if I merge the AI.  Once you put an AI into ressession it is less likely that other chairmen will buy its' stock. In this case the AI chairman won't even buy his own stock.  On occation I will sell stock in the AI to stop a stock split if I don't yet own 51% of its stock.  It is a bit much to sell short; but, I have done that as well.

[akuenzi]

The document is on Google Docs; it is not on this site or forum. Feel free to link to it, as I have done. This will allow me to keep it updated without having to worry about old copies floating around.

Of course, if you copy the whole thing to your site, I certainly can't (or won't) stop you, but it would be a lot easier for you to just copy the link. I'll write it out this time so you can see it more clearly.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfwp9pwf_0ggzhv7

I have a habit of creating hypertext links, to keep from seeing confusing-looking links like above, and I suppose maybe you guys just didn't see that I did that in my first post.

When I click on the link above, Google says I'm not allowed to access your strategy guide.  How does one access it?

[TheDS]

Hi, Littlebee!

Sorry about the difficulty. For some reason, a day or two ago Google blocked access to it. I'm trying to ask them why, but they don't make it easy. I'd guess someone didn't like that I used the word "God" or that I called his pet idea stupid or something else equally inane. (Or it could be that one of my stalkers has found a new way to harass me.) Until they deign to tell me what's wrong, or otherwise unblock it, we're a little stuck.

I'm kinda in the middle of something right now, but I may be moving the article directly to my site in the near future to allow me to more easily post example pictures and such in the file, and then I don't have to worry so much about it, plus I can then see how many people are reading it!

I created a shortcut URL to the document: http://rt2p.mopjockey.com which will always point to the article, or at least to a page on my site that points to the article. Of course, it's not working right this second because of the aforementioned google thing.

I know this is a lot to ask, but if you can have enough patience to come back in a few days, perhaps no longer than a week, it should be available again at the link I just gave you. (In fact, I'm going to see if I can change the link in the previous post to the same thing.) Hopefully I'll be able to get it all handled by then.

Thanks for your interest, I appreciate that you took a moment to remind me of this thread and let me know you care.

[exoticdisease]

Can someone please explain what is a "one year stop the trains strategy"?  It was mentioned a while back.  I assume it's something to do with manipulating the value of your stock in the market but I haven't managed to work it out effectively and it still makes me 5 years and cripples my company when trying to buy it out 100%.

[MaglevForever]

The basic idea is to start the game by selling all shares in your company, issuing some stock, setting up a strong route and buying some trains. Then to artificially prevent any first year profits/revenue. Either play with the throttle to simply slow trains down a bit if your route takes almost a year to run or use the stop just before a train arrives at its destination. At the start of the second year your shares will be cheap allowing you to buy a larger stake. I never used this strategy but I believe that it assumes that you will invest in the AI so that you will turn the 90k you get from selling out of your company into at least 150k once you sell out of his shares at year end. Because your trains will arrive just into the second year, you should get a super 2nd year profit to capitalize on by vacuuming up your shares as the price and your purchasing power rises with each new delivery.

The reason I don't use this method is that I have a fairly good handle on using lots of margin to get company ownerships. I am confident because I build strong companies that face a low drop in profits even when bad times set in. I think that I can build a bigger company faster by playing normally. One of the big reasons for that is that this method (the first year of no-profit) will necessarily hurt your credit rating. There may be a good case for this method if you combine it with stronger Robber Baron tricks, but those aren't my thing.

[Darto]

Hi, I have a general question about 2nd Century (as a beginner).

I have RT II already.

If I buy Second Century can I run both games installed at the same time on the same computer?

 

Some games only allow one install per computer. 

Want to try Sec Centy but want to keep my RT II game as it is too.

Thanks.

[MaglevForever]

Hi Darto,

 

Yes you can have both RTII and RTII Second Century on the same computer. You just need to make sure one install doesn't overwrite another. Make sure to specify a different folder to install Second Century in. Then when you start either game, make sure to run the right RTII exe file from the folder of the install that you want to play. Don't use the auto-boot menu of the cd.

 

I never had RTII without the Second Century. My first version was Gold which has both the original and Second Century included. In fact, I would recommend getting the Platinum version which has even more maps, although the majority of those can be downloaded here. If you go for a Steam install, I believe they sell the Platinum version.

[Gwizz]

I've thought about having two screens one to display data and the other screen to play one game at a time.

 

I think it is possible to install two different games but not in the same file.  

 

You could have a clashing between two different games playing at the same time.  Would be interesting to try.

 

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I haven't asked, But I believe this site monitors people's past automaticly, as many sites do:  

Names, computer address's, etc. for spamming activities etc.  This helps keep the site running smoothly.  

[Darto]

All right! Thanks guys. I have RR T 2, and was thinking about adding Second Century in order to play some maps for that game. Without messing up what is already on the laptop.

 

Old laptop purchased dirt cheap to play old games , Windows 98. Works great as long as I keep it off the internet. With Win 98 I cannot even go to Youtube, it says Youtube is not for such old versions of Internet Explorer (I.E. 6). So I have to download on another laptop and move it over with the CDrom disc (i.e. maps and addons). 

 

Was thinking of Sec. Cent. for the U.S. History Map here in the forum.

[jeffryfisher]

For my US History map, I highly recommend the platinum CD version and then patching it with my edited EXE and lang files. It will still run fine in vanilla, but the wartime events won't make sense (and can be ignored).

For instance, during the Civil War, you'll be told that the company delivering the most military loads will get a bonus. However, the original game didn't make military loads/cars/demands available that early (they don't appear until ~1905).