Australia 1850 - WA

[Yarimotsu]

Hi

I've signed up to the forum to request that someone share this map, if possible. I see that both the previous supplied links are dead...

RTC2 was a loved part of my childhood and remains a game that I go back to often - I'd love to use this map to grow my home region.

[CrownVic95]

On 2/13/2022 at 12:36 AM, Yarimotsu said:

Hi

I've signed up to the forum to request that someone share this map, if possible. I see that both the previous supplied links are dead...

RTC2 was a loved part of my childhood and remains a game that I go back to often - I'd love to use this map to grow my home region.

I re-posted this map at the request of another member - see my post dated 10/22/2020 on the previous page. The map is still there.

[Yarimotsu]

12 hours ago, CrownVic95 said:

I re-posted this map at the request of another member - see my post dated 10/22/2020 on the previous page. The map is still there.

Thank you very much for replying - I definitely tried your link before and it was inactive, but you seem to have reactivated it by your presence alone! 😄

[CrownVic95]

On 2/15/2022 at 6:32 AM, Yarimotsu said:

Thank you very much for replying - I definitely tried your link before and it was inactive, but you seem to have reactivated it by your presence alone! 😄

Glad to hear you got it.

So what do you think of the map? It is about all I played for years. Was never a fan of the "medals" or of any scenarios where you're racing against time. This map dispenses with those.

Though RRTII is, by far, the best of the popular RR games, the original Railroad Tycoon had a better rating concept at the end with the career progression.

[CrownVic95]

Ok, it's time for me to share a frustration that has bugged me for years with no progress toward finding a solution or understanding the (so far) inexplicable observations that generate it. It may pertain to this map OR it may be something about using the editor generally that I don't understand. It may also be yet another glitch about which there's nothing we can do. Just wanted to throw it out there for comment.

I love this Australia 1850 WA map, but I didn't play it very long before feeling the need to tweak it in the editor for the purpose of increasing start-up cargo resources. One strange thing I observed right away is that you never see a logging camp generated in the WA territory near Perth where you start. NEVER. EVER. Lots of logging camps pop up over in South Australia, but none EVER in WA. Having done lots and lots of other tweaking to this map and still unsatisfied, this morning I finally decided to investigate and do something about the logging camp problem.

I looked at the percentages set in both the regional marker and each individual towns, finding no explanation there. The numbers were similar to that for iron ore mines and I've always seen lots of iron ore mines. Nonetheless, I tweaked them higher so that they were higher than every other industry except Bauxite, which doesn't appear until 1910. My map starts in 1855. What did that tweak accomplish? Absolutely nothing. But that only confirmed what I already intuitively knew. There's no way on earth random chance generation based on percentages in the same ballpark could explain  NEVER EVER seeing a logging camp in hundreds, if not thousands, of restarts over the years.

So I went for broke, still feeling though that the solution lied elsewhere. I reduced the percentage of all other industries to zero and raised logging camps to 100. Nothing. Didn't make a damn bit of difference except to eliminate ALL other industry generation outside the towns.

I have a feeling that, if we can make sense of this and understand what's causing it, it will be a big future help generally to those of us carrying the perfectionist bug and refuse to settle for life without logs. 🙂

 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2022 by CrownVic95

[jeffryfisher]

2 hours ago, CrownVic95 said:

you never see a logging camp generated in the WA territory near Perth

Aha - You're missing a vital factor: underlying terrain. Just as ports need sea terrain squares, logging camps need wooded terrain squares. W Australia is a desert. It doesn't make any sense for logging camps to be there.

If you must have some, I suggest doing a little research on real-world logging in the Outback. You might just convince yourself to zero the logging and sawmill settings of your econ regions. If not, then be careful about adding forest (unless your real aim is to create a fantasy Australia that is wet and forested).

An alternative is to import finished lumber via your ports.

[CrownVic95]

12 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

Aha - You're missing a vital factor: underlying terrain. Just as ports need sea terrain squares, logging camps need wooded terrain squares. W Australia is a desert. It doesn't make any sense for logging camps to be there.

If you must have some, I suggest doing a little research on real-world logging in the Outback. You might just convince yourself to zero the logging and sawmill settings of your econ regions. If not, then be careful about adding forest (unless your real aim is to create a fantasy Australia that is wet and forested).

An alternative is to import finished lumber via your ports.

Jeffry, thanks but I'm a fairly well educated 72 year old - not a second grader. I suggest you look at the map in question and re-think your suggestion. We're not talking about the real world here. On this map, there are more trees, more densely packed in the area just south and east of Perth than in any map area where logging camps abound. In both cases, the squares are labeled as lush grass. If the squares around logging camps were designated "forest" or some such thing, then you might be onto something. I've looked at all that and thought about all that. First thing I did.

And yes, I'm well aware of other ways to bring logs into play. I've been doing that for years with port supply modification. But I shouldn't have to do that - I want some logging camps. And, in my mind, this strange and elusive phenomenon has become an intellectual challenge for which I intend to find the answer. I don't think there's a RRTII map God looking down and preventing logging camps in WA just because he feels they shouldn't be there.     

Thanks anyway.  🙂

[CrownVic95]

Frustrating that there are so few of us who remain interested in this great game. I still consider it the very best ever designed, understanding that it is geared for analytical minds. And perhaps analytical minds are all but extinct in the world of 2022.

I continue to be at a loss to understand why there seems to be nothing I can tweak in the map editor to get logging camps to appear in Western Australia. It just makes no sense. Logging camps always appear in easternmost South Australia, covered by a different map point setup. Logging camps there are set at 60%, but setting them at 60% in WA nets you nothing, despite there being more trees (visually) on the map there than where logging camps do appear.

There has to be another factor here that does not appear in the editor, at least not anywhere one would expect to find it. But it has to be something simple that is software controlled, like everything else in the game. At this point, it is purely an intellectual challenge. Drives me crazy that it will not allow me logging camps for reasons it will not divulge. 🙂

I need Phil Steinmeyer to chime in here. And having mentioned Phil, what better time to thank him once again for arguably the greatest game of all time. 

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by CrownVic95

[Gardiner]

CrownVic95, did you ever find a solution to your WA logging camp issue? I'm a new player of this game (last 6 months) and would be embarrassed to divulge how much I've played since I found it. I'm currently playing this map, and it is very frustrating how slow things develop, or in fact, how some things never seem to. I'm considering making some map tweaks (importing different things through the ports is an amazing idea) but am hesitant to cross that particular Rubicon.

[Gardiner]

I've been playing this map for a while now, basically 'went for it' on a first try and got a textile mill in Perth, a port in Bunbury with a cotton farm sitting right on top of it, but not a whole lot else. I have to say, I appreciate the challenge of this map, but otherwise, feel like it's a bit too extreme. These one horse towns simply DO NOT grow in a lot of cases. Perth started at 4 houses, went to 5, then to 6, then back to 5 (!?) despite me absolutely slaughtering it with every possible resource I could access. I've managed to get Katanning to town status, but outside of Perth and Bunbury, these three are all I have. It's now 1904, and things are slowly coming unglued as my first trains age themselves to replacement. There's nowhere to even move these goods to when I finally manage to make them.

This map is not so much challenging as it is just a long frustrating slog. It's grossly unrealistic IMO....pumping a city full of all available resources should do something, and here it just doesn't do anything. Expanding to adjacent territories is impossibly expensive, and the industries that do pop up randomly are a dairy processor (with only available dairy in queensland), a timber mill with all the logging camps located in Adelaide thousands of kilometers away, and the ubiquitous and useless paper mills. None of the AI companies have managed to expand beyond 2 cities, and 3 of 5 have shuttered ages ago.

I think this map can really be improved a lot.