Latvian Republic 1920

[RulerofRails]

I didn't have much time for any games in the last bit. Anyway, found a bit now.

Ok, the cheaper bridges are not significant for that bridge, but the game involves quite a few bridges that (in my experience) cannot be done without ramps. The cost reduction is more significant for those. It could be increased from 60% to 80%.

That picture was an illustration that it was cheaper for me to make a longer Steel bridge (compared to the conventional route with a Wooden bridge) because it involves a slight shortcut and I can avoid some grades this way. Steel I think is 75% speed limit, but with less corners and grades and a shorter route I can only speculate that there will be little difference in journey time (don't have time to test properly).

I agree completely that there are places where ramps cannot be avoided. The pic was an illustration of how could I take a realistic advantage of the cheaper bridges (as currently set). I'm to a degree isolating the bridge from the ramp cost, and therefore I am seeing some advantage, however as you can see it's rather a specific case and definitely not useful the way that the lowered consumption rate is. I don't know if I would use it, but the suggestion for lowered graded track cost was to make the bridge option more useful on a normal bridge (with ramps). You could always get fancy with this and put hidden territories along the rivers . . .

The lowered consumption is quite a big advantage, but it feels right for the scale of the map. For example distances like Valmeria-Exportosta, Ventspils-Liepaja, etc. can be done on one service/maintenance stop.

Anyway, I see that you re-did the connection offer timeframes. This is good for rails (lot less tight), makes play more similar to when the bonuses could be had at any time, but with added strategy of timing. I started Valmeria (Meat) -Exportosta (direct via Saulkrasti). A direct train provided enough revenue to hit he 1st year target. Focused on immediately upgrading the port. . . . It's looking good so far. End of Year 5 I was @ $4M CBV, and profits (Year 6) are going to be $3M+. I went to Estonia early (maxed bonds when bonus offer came up). Not sure if it was a good idea.


But I thought I would post to ask about reserve cells. Were there any changes there? Maybe this seed is just randomly unlucky, but I had a church right in the way (dozed it) of my regular Riga station on the east of the river. Even after dozing the church I couldn't place the station how I wanted (missed a Museum in the south).

Riga reserve cells.jpg

Also in Parnu there's two houses right in the way of my "regular placement."

I have the option for a placement on the north side of the river (unreserved cells), but I miss a Stadium and also don't have any catchment for port production that's going out to sea. I haven't decided yet if I should doze the houses or not.

Parnu, Cinema missed, houses blocking.jpg

[Gumboots]

You could always get fancy with this and put hidden territories along the rivers...

I think the events coding is complex enough already.

The lowered consumption is quite a big advantage, but it feels right for the scale of the map. For example distances like Valmeria-Exportosta, Ventspils-Liepaja, etc. can be done on one service/maintenance stop.

I agree. It does have a good feel to it overall. But I'm happy to change the Science event to give an alternative of lowered overall track cost if you think that would be a useful alternative for replay value. The other alternative, of course, is to simply remove the event and make the extended range the default for this map. I'm happy to code it either way.

But I thought I would post to ask about reserve cells. Were there any changes there? Maybe this seed is just randomly unlucky, but I had a church right in the way (dozed it) of my regular Riga station on the east of the river. Even after dozing the church I couldn't place the station how I wanted (missed a Museum in the south).

Yes there were some changes there. What I did was reduce the reserved cells to what I thought the minimum could be, bearing in mind that I didn't want buildings breaking rivers. I found during testing that this made for better replay. I could always get good placement of all the stations and track I wanted, and it stopped station placement being such a repetitive no-brainer.

[RulerofRails]

Ok. I finished that play. I went to Estonia a little early, and missed out on Parnu track cost reduction. I made some other mistakes too, the main one was not starting Lumber haulage on time (had half a dozen or so Furniture Plants). So in the end failed at the gold medal, haulage was 160 something. But it was just error on my part.

Also, the Oil Refinery appeared with 6 or 7 years to go, but it vanished while the first loads of Oil were in transit, so I ended up building one myself, I wasn't going to chance my luck waiting for another to appear.

But the good news is that the tweaks to the events are giving some more space that even with one slightly negative year early on (and a bit of lack of focus here and there) I managed to get the CBV target with some room to spare ($126M). I messed around with a couple other seeds and start possibilities. I think in general it's now possible for most seeds to do rail only. If the economy tanks to an early depression, you might still run out of luck, but in general I think that it's doable more often than not.

In regards to the bridge science choice. I don't really have an opinion. I was just making the point that reducing bridge cost is not going to reduce the total cost of your bridges by -60%, only the span and not the ramps. Sounds more useful than it is, so for the more casual player could be a "gotcha" of sorts.

In my mind, the increased range is very useful on this map in the later game with all the long distance haulage . A potential cheaper rails option could give a slightly better start, however rails are something that the player can optimize a lot with careful effort (including avoiding a lot of repeat bridges). The more effort you put into setup, the less savings you will see. For this reason I'm not crazy about said option. I like how you added track cost effects to some of the connection offers, I think this is enough.

In my games, station cost actually makes more difference for rail starts than track cost. I tend to only build large stations for any freight services. In the short term station cost (includes maint. facilities) is a big component of spending. So if I was to suggest an substitute offer: maybe a small reduction in station cost would balance out against the need for more maint. facilities too. But I wouldn't go too crazy. 10% max? Please note that I didn't think of this idea before posting so it may not be a bright one. For example, it's not as much "science."

[Gumboots]

Ok, sounds like we're on a roll here.

The refinery is a bit of a lucky dip. Sometimes it seeds early and stays until you need it. Sometimes it never seeds at all. Other times it does what it did to you. I think it's fine and doesn't need any tweaking. The variety is good for replay.

I think the best option is to simply remove the early event, and just make the extended range the default setting for this map. It has enough going on anyway, and we're having trouble coming up with a better alternative, so I reckon just go with what seems to make sense. Then we'd just have the other locomotive upgrade options coming in later, which I think is enough.

By the way: if you're going for a rail start at the western side of the map, and taking the early connection bonus for the Livonian coast, then I've found that medium stations are quite sufficient for Mazirbe and Mikeltornis. I usually put a large at Kolka, but mediums on the others are fine and will save you $200k. I've even gone with temporary smalls on all three at times, depending on how the seeding looks, but that's unusual.

Other stations are almost always large, although even then there can be some rare exceptions.

Also, was the latest testing done with the default $90k player cash and a January 1920 start? Or were you still relying on the Easter eggs?

[RulerofRails]

By the way: if you're going for a rail start at the western side of the map, and taking the early connection bonus for the Livonian coast, then I've found that medium stations are quite sufficient for Mazirbe and Mikeltornis. I usually put a large at Kolka, but mediums on the others are fine and will save you $200k. I've even gone with temporary smalls on all three at times, depending on how the seeding looks, but that's unusual.

Mazibre and Mikeltornis most of the time don't have any industrial production/collection, so qualify for smaller stations. All that is needed is to cover all houses + municipal buildings. In this last play I used small stations because they covered all exiting stations. Later in the game I would have upgraded them to mediums since a few new buildings had spawned, except that there was "no room." Didn't bother to build new stations.

On the topic of stations, I only built a single one in Riga, also Exportosta. My early expansion was to get through the area quickly (probably also blocked enough land to prevent a second port from seeding). That may have been a contributor to lower/failed haulage counts. This is how my setup looked.

Riga-Exportosta layout.jpg

Also, was the latest testing done with the default $90k player cash and a January 1920 start? Or were you still relying on the Easter eggs?

Yes, standard Jan. 1920 start. And of course no stock issues.

[Gumboots]

I've found it's possible to clock the haulage goals with only one port in Riga. In fact one port is how it seems to play most of the time.

I do like having three stations (one west of the river in Riga itself, and one each side of the river mouth). It's useful for splitting traffic logically. I'll usually drop the first two in early, then add the third one west of the river mouth once traffic at Exportosta starts getting too congested for my liking. I've found I can place this so it doesn't block a second port, but the second port still only seeds occasionally.

Anyway, I'll make those last tweaks to the coding. It won't really affect gameplay, since nobody has been using the cheaper bridges options anyway, but will clean up the event coding a bit. Then it's just minor eye candy and I can call it done. As far as how the thing actually plays we can call v1_1 the "final" version, but I'll rename the thing to something obvious before archiving it.

[Gumboots]

Ok, new thread for my new Latvia map, to save confusion. All posts about the new map are now in this thread.

The map itself is now available in the archives, on this link: Latvian Republic 1920

I got the final version done for the 100th anniversary of the declaration of the Latvian Republic.

This scenario will play just fine with default 1.05 cargo cars and locomotives, if you prefer to use those.

Personally I prefer to play this scenario with my custom cargo cars, and with some custom locomotives. As extra locomotives I use the 1.06 G10 and 264T Suburban Tank, as well as my SR Schools Class 4-4-0. This gives a good range, that is fairly representative of Latvian rail in the 1920's and 1930's.

My revamped version of the G10 is attached to this post.
The revamped 264T Suburban Tank is in the archives on the the New Engines page.
The current SR Schools Class (beta version) is attached to this post.

I also use custom .lco and .car files for the locomotives, to give better balance between them. Those are attached to this post.

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If anyone wants the topic for Juriko's original Latvia map, you can find that here: Latvia (beta).

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[RayofSunshine]

Well Gumboots,
This is a very interesting and challenging scenario. I did run into a problem and got "kicked down the track", but don't know the reason.
The only item which stays on the end of the years is that of the GOLD. For at least more than a dozen years, the passenger hauls have been 40 to 60, and the total after 20 years is 840, which well exceeds the demand of 480. I believe that the CBV exceeds the requirement with $1,948M was well. Got any ideas of the problem? Appreciated.

[Gumboots]

I'll need more information.

The obvious first thing is that the status page always does CBV in $K. There's no way you would get $1,948M for CBV (that's 1.948 billion) and if you only got $1,948K then that's a bit under $2 million, which is not nearly enough for a win. But then there's no way you would even get Estonia hooked up with a CBV under $2 million, so I need to know the real figure.

I'd also need to know if you got all the other Gold goals. If you're going for 480 pax that implies you are playing on Expert level. Did you get all the other Expert Gold haulage counts? It might be easiest if you post a screenshot of your status page.

[RayofSunshine]

That Gumboots is interesting.
I am not able to copy the Ledger page for some reason, but this is it typed out.

Now this is Jan 1937

Book value -$1,931M
301 Lumber to Riga
553 meat to Riga
Bronze goals completed
Silver goals completed
Gold: Estonia passenger 706
0 loads this year
Bonus alcohol 4 of 10

As mentioned previous, passenger hauls to Estonia yearly is between 40 to 60, and are acknowledged as Estonia satisfied
Alcohol is over the 10 yearly, as get a "satisfaction" and the Bonus of either $100k or $200K.

One year prior of getting the Bonus, I was "evicted" from Russian, but repurchased it, as I discovered that the train from the supply in Poka had a "wrong demand consist".

Hope that helps, as I enjoyed the scenario, with its challenges.