Scenario Company Bonuses Post-Merger

[Thomas Crampton]

If you execute a merger where you starting company is absorbed by a competitor in a scenario with event based bonuses specific to your company, do you lose those bonuses?

The scenario I'm considering specifically is "Silver Booms and Market Busts", where you can't start a new railroad, and the starting railroad is gifted with a bonus 30% extra security from robberies if you connect Kansas City to Denver quickly.  The "Stop the Trains" trick can be used to juice your net worth up, but other AI investors buy your devalued revenue-less stock besides you, so it can be helpful to buy 100% of one of the AI railroads and use its credit to buy out your original one to force the AI investors out of your stock holdings.  If doing so means losing the security bonus though, it probably ain't worth it.

[jeffryfisher]

I'm pretty sure that the bonus would be granted to a company by ID, so it would cease to function when that company ID was retired.

[MaglevForever]

For the record, "Stop the Trains" is in my view a tacky exploit. I don't use it for normal games. Nevertheless, our company is superior to other companies because it has fewer shares outstanding. To sacrifice that advantage is a setback that would have to be factored in. It can work, but probably isn't best/quickest.

 

I also don't believe the extra security is worthwhile. You get +30% when connecting to Denver in whatever case. And you can also add a caboose for another -75%. Long range passengers and mail are key. So the cheap track is the obvious superior choice. With the higher stock price I think the AI will be less likely to see your shares as attractive. Pretty sure their calculation of share value is too simple to factor this in. Actually with this choice we can easily connect instantly to Denver with single track. I believe the bonus is applied when exiting track-laying. Make sure you do stock moves first because the $700k bonus counts as earnings in your first year. But buy engines/service setup after. For a cautious play you might hire Ginery Twitchell and buy back stock. You will have 3/7 shares instantly. I'm going to suggest that going deep on the margin while using all company funds to expand with long haul passengers is going to be superior to any sort of stock buy backs, depends how much you are going trying to push it.

 

Unconnected track is allowed. Unless you have a personal handicap against it, think about connecting Dallas to Houston right from the word go. This will have the side-effect that the Texas & Pacific AI will do something more useful than a short shuffle.