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>In both the game this week and last, players were inconvenienced by the lack of an >upgrade in Braga (B7). It occured to me that if they was a pre-built "dual gauge 7" tile to >the SW of Braga (A8) this would allow Braga to upgrade and allow Oporto to upgrade >with the standard tile.
Mmm. I assume you were trying to upgrade Braga to brown to get a narrow gauge route down to Oporto. The trouble with adding the connection (in A8) is that people will complain that the track is in the sea. You can always make the connection to the east, and/or upgrade Braga to mixed gauge.
>We also ended the game with a brown tile that could not be used - a K shape normal >city, I think.
There is an unnecessary five-way brown (X10) - only Santander needs one.
>There was also discussion as to why the Lisbon port is broad gauge not dual?
It's part of the general pattern of dual gauge off-map bits in the north and broad gauge in the south. (This is to give the correct historical "feel".)
>Steve Thomas wrote:
> Two rules issues came up, concerning laying track.
> A company wanted to lay a piece of metre-gauge track (I note en passant that the rules >call it meter-gauge) and upgrade a city to brown. It could access the city only by using >that bit of metre-gauge track. The rules are usually paraphrased verbally as requiring the >extra payment for an additional track operation. What the rules tell us that even in cases >such as this the additional fee is 10, but it seemed at times more logical to charge 20 >since "the additional" track was dual-gauge.
The rule is deliberately worded to be as generous as possible, in an attempt to encourage narrow gauge construction. Think of it as building both hexes simultaneously.
> The rules tell us that a company director can put cash in from hand to pay for terrain >costs, but don't allow such licence for the fee for a second track operation. We were as >latitudinarian as possible in interpreting this--the order of payments was additional fee, >then terrain costs--but it seemed clumsy.
The rules are missing a bit (again). As they stand, the owner of a private may put in from hand for an extra build, but not the director of a public. A director should be able to do so.
> This game we needed to create one #3 tile and one or two #58 tiles. The previous game >we needed to create at least two #4 tiles.
There's no doubt that we need more #58's, and probably another 1 or 2 #4's. But I've never seen all 3 #3's used - you must have been building some strange routes!
In a typical game, there are almost as many dot-town hexes that get built as plain track. There are 38 plain yellow tiles on the tile sheet but only 19 dots - clearly the mix is wrong.
>This game Stephen was extremely hampered by the lack of mixed-gauge green K->shaped cities--he needed the same one in two places, and couldn't even go via #15 tiles >since they were in use elsewhere.
There are eight plain large cities on the map, and four need a K-shaped upgrade; plus the other four often want a K-shape too. There are eight such green tiles available - 2x#15 and six different mixed gauge. A certain amount of planning is required if you want to build a network of both gauges in green. But another #15 or two is a good idea.
Ian D
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