Railroad Tycoon Platinum Cheats
Domenec Reynolds
I have really never messed with mergers so fooled around with it a bit in the current game I am testing. After taking over a lame railroad, I found that it was running 4 steam trains between their only two cities with no water towers! There was a full compliment of most every other station improvement possible at both large stations, and all 4 trains showed almost full water after running for 3+ years! Is this a program bug or what? Now that the trains are mine will the water be required? Of course, one of the big negatives for the merger was the assumption of almost $2 million negative cash. The only way to make the acquired railroad profitable would be to add more track to nearby stations but cannot be done any time soon with the debt. It looks like the best plan in this situation would be to add the necessary track to their track before the merger (which I always allow in my scenarios). In any case, I am abandoning the merger and returning to a previous save at this point.
Computer-run companies cheat. Their engines don't need water or maintenance (so if you use their track, don't count on getting any). They also ignore demand, being able to deliver anything anywhere for simple-economy payoffs.
The main reason to merge a computer-company with yours is to remove an obstacle to expansion. A secondary reason (if you own most of the stock) could be to drop a huge wad of cash into your own pocket. For the most part however, computer-companies are trash. The best thing to do with them is drive them out of business (with the remove-track option selected)
"Remove track option????" What is this? I know I can bulldoze their track once merged. I also discovered that water will be needed once the merger happens. In the game I referred to in first post it turned out that the company I ended up merging with had just gone bankrupt. I merged because they had started in another location that I almost started with. I quickly made the merged RR profitiable and endied up with much higher quotas for the winning conditions than I would have without the merger. Since this was a test run for a new revised map it has set the winning conditions probably too high to be duplicated.
I believe the remove track option suggested is the "Liquidate Bankrupt Companies" in the Gameplay section of the game options of RTII and so applies game wide - there's not an individual map option as far as I know. It only applies if the company is liquidated usually after at least one bankruptcy and then when the share price falls to $1. its my preferred option but isn't the default. normally the track is left littering the map. I don't recall if you can merge with a liquidated company in RTII - I think railroad tycoon 3 introduced this option and it wasn't available in RTII.
The name is misleading. Liquidation happens at year-end if a company's "book value" has fallen below zero. A company can declare bankruptcy many times before book value hits bottom, and each will discharge half of its debts. However, a company in a death spiral will eventually hit zero book before it can declare again (I think the cool-down is 5 years).
Beware however: When a company's track is ripped out, it may cut gaps in yours (if you ever crossed it). You should be saving your game just before each year-end anyway. If a liquidation rips out track, roll-back to your December save and carefully walk all of that track (and stations) making notes of track-breaks and opportunities. You might even spot a train that is in danger of vanishing with the track. If you can stop it before it enters the danger zone, do so. If not, then note its route & cargo (and pray that the deletion does not cause file corruption).
I am under the impression that human players in expert mode receive hardly any revenue from undemanded cargo. Are you saying the AI players get more than the human player would for the same undemanded cargo?
Without the source code or documentation of the economics for the AI we can only speculate. It depends on the difficulty levels as to how much the human player gets for undemanded cargoes anyway - this much is known - and also the modifiers are known (select a map then click options and select a difficulty). the AI may get the exact same BASE value as the human player but then any revenue modifier percentage will take effect anyway - we just don't know definitely.
>I have just bought a copy of Railraod tycoon from a friend and it looks quite
>good. Can anyone give me any advise on some simple strategies to use. What
>track configurations are best - circles or wheel spokes? I will start in
>englans as I am familiar with the country layout. where is the best place to
>start a track from?
G'day mate.:)I've never set up in England before; I always play in the Western US.
(Not ethnocentricity, but rather I like the feeling of 'wide open
spaces'.) To decide where to start a track, look at the resources on the
map and the facilities available to turn them into products. I play at
the Mogul level, cutthroat, complex economy, but no dispatcher operation
(what a pain). I try to set up near some resources and with 3-4 cities
connected by 4-5 trains (I float a ton of bonds, usually 25MM worth).
Then I expand, avoiding giving poor service to any station threatened by
rate war. When the time is right, I start pirating the comp players'
stations through aggressive rate wars, often at two connected stations at
once (the capacity you remove from the further one will cripple the
nearer one for him). I carve the computer railroads into small pieces
and let them live (they just start up shop somewhere else if they go under).Hope this helps.
--
Julian
The big money is in long distance mail, also passengers. Wheel spoke
configuration is best, operate trains between diametrically opposite
points. Double track and use plenty of signals - mail is very time
critical. Set train type to limited to ensure nothing gets on or off
without traveling the maximum distance - and therefore paying the
maximum fee. Build post offices, restaurants and hotels.If you have stations A,B,C,D,E,F along a straight line, run trains
A-D, B-E, C-F, then add trains between the largest towns to carry
any excess loads.Unfortunately strange things start to happen when 16 bit numbers
overflow, so very profitable trains don't always make the money
they should.
Everytime you start a game, the map is different. London will be in the
same place, but in one game it will be a hamlet and the next it will be
a megalopolis. Therefore, there is no 'best place' to start a track from.
Look around for two large cities not too far apart. If they also have
useful commodities to produce, that is good but not vital.- Reid Gagle Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Flakes "'Normal' is just a cycle on your washing machine." -- John P. McAfee