Classic Campaign, fewest trains

[loco_motive]

Rather than playing for an early finish, it seemed a restriction to cause a later finish might be a challenge. Thus, fewest trains.

All scenarios were played on hard. For the most part I did these without depoting as that was not available in the original RRT2. Those situations where I recall using some limited depoting are noted. Also, retiring one engine and then buying another, or replacing a crashed engine before it disappears from the screen, was not considered to be an increase in train count.

Note that by now after many edits many of the scenarios have brief descriptions which may include spoilers.

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1-train scenarios: 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 18.

#7 is a sole-survivor scenario, so although it was done with 1 train, buying all the companies at the end did result in momentarily owning all their trains, an unsatisfactory solution for now.

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The less trivial 1-train scenarios: 9, 14

Each require 1-year load counts, for which I used an exploit as an alternative to depoting. Anyone who wants to post results on these by actually selling loads from one station to another station, without depoting, please feel free to report results.

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#4 Silver Booms and the Market Busts - 0 trains

Pure PNW of $20M. Runs 1875-1895, 21 years, gold checked EOM. You cannot resign.

This previous one-train scenario succumbs to zero trains because of the quirky start one of the AI companies gets, purchasing no engines, allowing you to step into it and turn your original company into a slave running on its tracks. Gold 1/91.

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#5 Whistle Stops: the Puzzle scenario, either success or failure, so not considered.

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#6 Cross Canada - 2 trains.

Pretty straight forward, unless someone can do it with one.

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#10 Central Europe - 7 trains.

The most trains of the set, needing $1M Industry Profit in a single year. A further constraint was to require that all my industry be serviced by my trains only. As with many of the scenarios, I luckily also played this one for a while at the start for high PNW just for fun, so that when one of the AI's bought one of my steel mills, I took it over just to sell the mill, then went immediately back to my own company and bought the mill. I might have avoided this with an autosave if I'd noticed it sooner.

I chose my map carefully for this scenario. The biggest difficulties I had were for 2 of my steel mills, where coal was on one side of France and iron was on the other, so I did use a depot between the 2 mills so the trains could trade iron and coal. Another difficulty was that coal mines had the unfortunate habit of having earnings one year of -12 and the next year of maybe +24. In any case everything came together in the very last year, where I eked out $1043 of Industry Income.

This would be an interesting scenario to play by getting all the industry income in your company by controlling the operations of the other companies. Then it might be possible to have only 1 train or maybe even none in your company. At this stage though, I considered stepping into another company to be using their trains, except of course for the error correction I mentioned above.

Perhaps least number of trains is not the best criterion for a late finish for this kind of scenario because You could hit it lucky in an early year or a later year with the same number of trains.

Not to say that fewest trains to generate a certain amount of industry income isn't a good limiting goal.

Perhaps an equally challenging limiting goal would be least amount of Industry investment.

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#11 Brenner Pass - 2 trains.

Surprisingly, this seemed to be fairly straightforward with a minimal number of engines. It may be of some help to TSCers to know that, iirc, the original RRT2 runs on yellow flags. I decided on the run when to build my mountain track rather than restarting the scenario. As a consequence, in order to get an optimum load on some of my trains, I did depot, rather than sell, a couple extra cars in Verona, including what I could originally pick up there. The alternative of retiring engines in Verona and buying new ones in Munich was quite doable though, so depoting wasn't really necessary. Also there is one section of bad track that slows the Verona to Munich trip down quite a bit, so making most, or even all, of the trips from Munich would have been an improvement, but enough to decrease train count, I don't know.

Of course, the train speed bonus plus Trevethik helped, but I don't know if they were necessary.

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#12 When the Walls Come Down - 0 trains

Connect Warsaw to 3 other cities and have a PNW of $20M. Runs 1991-2020, 30 years, gold checked EOY.

Another previously 1 train scenario done easily with zero trains and 2 companies running on boss track. All AI companies are given full territory rights at the start only, so if you start a second company right away to become a slave, your boss company will be given full territory rights, an unneeded bonus in this very straightforward scenario. Gold 12/98 following a buy-up of all outstanding shares, otherwise a couple years later I guess.

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#13 Croissants or Crumpets - 0 trains

Connect 5 cities together and have $10M of Industry Investment. Runs 1850-1880, 31 years, gold checked EOM. You cannot resign or issue bonds.

Another previously 1-train scenario. Did 9 share buybacks, sold shares. Bought 11 shs of Indian RR and connected Delhi-Lucknow with a gap. Also connected and then bulldosed 2 small stations to thwart future expansion. Did a couple share buybacks, then sold those shares and bought 11 shares of Imperial and chaired it, filled the track gap, etc. Indian nicely bought 4 engines to run on Imperial's track. Despite all that, Indian still made money every year. At 1/1860, the first company was liquidated, after 10 years of losses. At 1/1863 Imperial had $15M cash so I cut the track to stop Indian's slave trains. At 1/70, Indian was liquidated, after only 7 years of losses. I made the connections and bought $10M industry for a gold.

Liquidation? 10 years? 7 years? rules are yet to be discovered.

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#15 Which Way to the Coast? - 0 trains

Need $10M PNW. Runs 1917-1938, 22 years, gold checked EOM.

Another previously 1-train scenario easily doable with no trains. Built quite a long line for this but slaved only the 1 company. Created boss company 2 years into the game. The slave sent out 4 trains. Also used a little trick at the start to make one of the AIs choose a better starting place. Probably not necessary but aesthetically pleasing. Gold 12/22 without any big buyout of shares.

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#16 People's Train - 3 trains.

I originally tried this with 4 diesels and saw from the results that it should be doable with 3 diesels, but that would be boring so I went electric instead. I electrified the track the slow way. Don't even remember if it was necessary. In any case, since I'm pretty sure 3 diesels will do it, it didn't really matter.

The remaining question would be how few trains using steam only?

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#17 Dilemma Down Under - 2 trains.

Need 3 consequtive years of $1M annual profit. Cannot resign or assume chairmanship. Runs 1/57-12/72, 16 years. Gold tested EOY.

I flipped through managers until I got Oakes. He got me 4 bonds. I noticed that Company #2 (Melbourne-Shepparton) had Diesel as manager and that it purchased 2 very nice F9s at a 30% discount. I let that happen, then merged it into my company right away. I set up another station in Canberra and soon after in Wollongong. As my 2 trains ran back and forth, I directed them into the best station at each end each time. Gold actually took me by surprise 12/62.

There may be many equally good ways to do this one. Someone should try it with 1 train and no depoting. With depoting, I'm sure it can be done with 1 train, but depoting wasn't available in the Original of course.

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[djf01]

All scenarios were played on hard. For the most part I did these without depoting as that was not available in the original RRT2.

By "depoting" do you mean red flag drop shipping?

Regardless, it's still very impressive what you've done.

But, I would have thought that scenarios with a PNW goal (are there any in the Classic series) could conceivably be won with zero trains. :-).

[loco_motive]

By "depoting" do you mean red flag drop shipping?

Yes, in the terminology of the User Manual.

I would have thought that scenarios with a PNW goal...could conceivably be won with zero trains.

That could very well be the case with #4, "Silver Booms and the Market Busts", which requires $20M PNW exclusively.

Resigning is not allowed in this scenario, although surprisingly you can take over another company. Doing so would immediately charge you with ownership of all their trains though, so that would not be an option anyway.

It might take some luck with both the expansion plans of the AIs and with the economy, but possibly it could be done.

Another alternative more in keeping with my underlying objective might be to disallow purchase of any of the shares of the AI companies. This might very well require more than 1 train to win.

I wonder............

[loco_motive]

I've added the missing train counts for a few scenarios plus some additional blurb for #10 & #11 in the first post.

[loco_motive]

I have just updated the first post for #'s 4, 12, 13, 15, all done with zero trains using the slave company method, where you get other companies to run their trains on your track. These were all previously listed as 1 train scenarios.

Also added remark in 1-train scenarios section for #7.

This is just the original campaign folks, designed for novices. Most of the scenarios are dead easy. especially when you know all the tricks. ;)

There's a bit of a description for each one, in some cases spoilers.

[djf01]

I think we need to come up with better terminology than "slave" and "master" companies. 

Something from real life, like "Affiliated Subsidiary" or "Joint Venture Partners" or some other such euphemism to delineate the the thieves from the suckers.