Denver & Rio Grande

[thomasjordan]

The Denver & Rio Grande was chartered in 1870 by General William Jackson Palmer to build from Denver to Mexico City.  Blocked by the AT&SF from building across Raton Pass, he turned west in the Colorado mountains, and the rest is history (he did start several railroads in Mexico, building north towards El Paso, Texas, which form the basis of the Mexican National Railway today.  He also started the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway that built east from Salt Lake City towards Grande Junction, Colorado.  The Denver & Rio Grande and the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway were eventually consolidated in the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad).  The D&RG was heavily involved in the Florence and Cripple Creek, and the Rio Grande Southern, so track building is allowed in their territory.  It had nothing to do with the Denver, South Park and Pacific, so all of South Park and the Alpine Tunnel are off limits.

This map uses the excellent Durango map, heavily terraformed to make key passes crossable by underpowered narrow gauge engines.  It completely dispenses with financial victory conditions.  Rather, the player's objective is to reconstruct the D&RG, earning points for connecting to the cities on the map not later than the historical D&RG.  Points are also awarded for hauling certain types of cargo.  Historical connection dates are listed on the status report, so the player can see what the next objectives are.

Challenge:  Most of the cities must be connected by about 1887.  The player is going so deep in debt to build track to those cities that funds are not available for double track or lots of station upgrades (at least that has been my experience during play tests.  The engines are small and underpowered.  Even the Consolidation (overpowered to represent a C-16, but I had to settle for it) has trouble hauling more than about 2-3 cars up some of the grades.  If the game lasts until 1903, the player does get a K-27 (I used the 2-6-0, as the Mikado is way overpowered for its narrow gauge conversion).

The only glich I have right now is the player is beginning with 148 victory points.  I'll be darned if I can figure out where those are coming from.  Everything else seems to be working correctly, although I haven't built to all of the cities to check the connections, victory point calculations, and grades.

I should have a draft of this up in a day or two.

Rob

[Gwizz]

Did I miss downloading this map.

Having just visited the area I went looking for the map to play.

I didn't find it.

[Gwizz]

Just looked at this thread again.  

The thing that throws more numbers into the mix is how many times each event tests.

As an example: An event can test against all railroads, each territory, dollars, etc.  and add the results of all the tests together.

Check what is testing and causing the number to appear.  

I have in the past even set all variables each to their own number at the start, -1, 0 or 1, just in case I have some wild card number hiding some place.