New American Millennium - RRT3 Mod

[Quintillus]

FYI, the game status screen in the annual report says that you need $75M in book value to win gold, but the briefing and forum post say $100M. I think it's $100M, since I haven't won yet ! But as they say in 1929, what's a little challenge for a tycoon?

The profits are indeed rolling in. Just got my first million-dollar-per-delivery train in service, delivering diesel from Texas to Florida. Canada and Mexico are connected, and all the cities required. It's 1944. I have been issuing stock to speed it up, but unlike last time when I diluted value, the profits are enough to keep investors happy, and selling off industry was not necessary. Just need another $25M or so in book value. Which ought to be pretty easy to do, barring an economic collapse. I'll probably keep issuing stock till I have a cool million outstanding shares, but it's likely unnecessary.

The industrial profits are also well above what's required. $50M for gold; I'm at $99M. Although investing so much in those did make the 1925 goal a bit tough.

I'm in much better shape than in my MN game, too. From '41 - '43, 3M made about $2.5M in profits per year on about $9M in revenue. The Ohio & Everywhere is making about $5M per year on about $12M in revenue. The biggest differences being 25% more trains this time, 10-15% higher revenue per locomotive, and the combined train maintenance + fuel costs being almost 50% lower (despite having 25% more trains). Track mileage is almost identical at a bit under 5000.

Edit: Wound up getting silver, but I'm not sure why. Pretty sure I had all the Gold requirements, including # of cities connected.

My railroad is super-profitable this time. I played on till 1956, investing heavily in industry around 1950. This brought in millions per year in additional profits, and I'm now raking in more than $10M annually. So much that I'm not sure how to spend it! I've started building stone bridges, put in some electric track in Oklahoma, but there's still too much to spend.

My latest industrial ventures are more textile mills, an auto plant in South Carolina, plastics in Montana, meat in North Dakota, and furniture in Canada. And pretty much everything is a gold mine; there was a lot of raw opportunity up north.

 

[Meteor Man]

Damn I'll have to fix the gold requirements, something is preventing it from firing. And fix the briefing.

Nice work!

 

[Quintillus]

It was a fun time! And now I've started playing some of the other scenarios. I never really got into RRT3 like I did RRT2, so there's a lot of unplayed content left.

I took a look in the editor (haven't modded RT3, but did in RT2 and it's similar enough to understand). I have an idea as to why it may not be firing gold. There are two NYC>SF events. The 1925 is first in the list, and if it succeeds sets Game Variable 1 to 2. The 1930 one is also in the list; it sets Game Variable 1 to 1. My guess is after you connect, if it's before 1925, it sets Game Variable 1 to 2. But then it keeps going through the list of events to process monthly, and sees the 1930 event (which though one time, also hasn't triggered yet). Its condition is now also met, so it sets Game Variable 1 to 1. Thus preventing Gold from being winnable.

There are probably several ways to fix it, whether the 1930 events has a "Game Variable 1 != 2" condition, or using another Game Variable if there are extra ones available. Hopefully it will allow someone to win gold!

 

[Meteor Man]

It was a fun time! And now I've started playing some of the other scenarios. I never really got into RRT3 like I did RRT2, so there's a lot of unplayed content left.

I took a look in the editor (haven't modded RT3, but did in RT2 and it's similar enough to understand). I have an idea as to why it may not be firing gold. There are two NYC>SF events. The 1925 is first in the list, and if it succeeds sets Game Variable 1 to 2. The 1930 one is also in the list; it sets Game Variable 1 to 1. My guess is after you connect, if it's before 1925, it sets Game Variable 1 to 2. But then it keeps going through the list of events to process monthly, and sees the 1930 event (which though one time, also hasn't triggered yet). Its condition is now also met, so it sets Game Variable 1 to 1. Thus preventing Gold from being winnable.

There are probably several ways to fix it, whether the 1930 events has a "Game Variable 1 != 2" condition, or using another Game Variable if there are extra ones available. Hopefully it will allow someone to win gold!

Aha, yes, thanks Quintillus for doing my job for me I promise I'll get this updated tonight or tomorrow! I will get this updated!

 

[Quintillus]

No hurry! I've continued playing through the other scenarios that I never played, in roughly chronological order. Thoughts so far:

Britain - Fun, easy to make money. Not much challenge, but easy expansion can be a good time. Connected to everywhere that was connectable by 1855, including cross-connections. Gold.
East Coast USA - Similar to Britain. Lots of money to be made. The Appalachians required some effort in track-building, but with quick expansion, domination of the region was never in doubt. Gold.
Southeastern US - This one was much tougher. Good a nice cotton/textile establishment going in Alabama, but profits were moderate. Wound up with a Bronze.
Southern Pacific - This was the opposite of the first two. Stuck in SoCal, with no industries, and hemmed in by mountains. Made money by industrial investments elsewhere, and made enough to buy the AT&SF, but nowhere close to the objectives.
Ireland - A good time, money fairly plentiful, limited industry but able to build it up. Made my base city of Tullamore quite the economic success story. Gold.
Russia - My favorite of the built-in scenarios thus far. Though money is plentiful, meeting the objectives of troop and weapon transport is not easy. Bronze-Silver-Gold, and gold with only a few months to spare. I eventually realized that I'd been overinvesting in industry at the beginning, which although profitable, only helped to meet objectives insofar as it allowed bankrolling the initial track layout. Once I got half a dozen or so cities connected, express routes quickly funded themselves. Also a fan of the big map (like New American Millenium) and almost limitless opportunities, both in industry and cities.

I also downloaded some third-party cargo skins from the Hawk and Badger railroad; it's very nice having some variety in that area. Particularly having troop cars distinguishable more easily in the Russia scenario.

On the whole I'm liking RT3 about as much as I liked RT2 back in the day now. There are pluses and minuses (the lower variety of cargo graphics, and graphics in general being minuses; the economic model quite possibly being the biggest positive, and the additional flexibility in laying tracks also being notable), but now that I've played it a lot, I can say that it's, if not a clearly better successor, at least a comparably good one. So it can now take its place in the stable alongside Civ4, as a game that doesn't replace its predecessor for me, but can be enjoyed concurrently and without remorse, with both having their charms and areas of strength and weakness compared to the other.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm back in this scenario! In the interim I've played about a third of the build-in scenarios and about a third of a campaign. It felt like a good time to go back to my RT3 roots, so I fired it up! I also decided to go electric this time, and see if I could make that work.

And it seems like I learned some stuff about RT3 in the interim! Compared to my previous efforts, even the one that won gold, my railroad is gushing cash this time. It's now 1915; in my gold and silver games, my book value at this point was $7.2 and $9.7 million, respectively (the silver started out better, but the gold ended better). In this one it's already over $26M. I didn't get to that in either of the last two for more than another decade.

So what did I do different/what is going better?

- I started in Mississippi this time. And went all-in on King Cotton. Around 1910 I started to diversify into steel goods, but textiles proved to be a huge money-maker, with moderate capital costs. In previous attempts, I'd invested in heavier, more complex industries (autos, munitions) earlier, it took longer for them to ramp up, and that meant a slower growth of profits.
- I've become much better at being smart about debt. In this game I have $10M in debt at 5.2% average interest; in the gold/silver ones I had $6.5M at 8.5%, and none due to having declared bankruptcy and paid off my remaining debt. In effect, I got an extra $3.5M in capital for the same interest payments this time, for being a bit more patient about when to take out loans as quickly as I could.

The electric ploy is working out so far; I've connected Jackson, MS to Chicago, and east to New York. And despite my ugly locomotives, the routes are making money - about $250K on $800K of revenue in last year. But it's a pittance compared to my industries, which made $6M directly, or $4.5M after interest/overhead. One interesting effect is that my average express speed is 35 mph vs 19mph before, I suspect largely due to the locomotives being more tolerant of even mild grades, and not needing to fill up on water.

Cost-wise, electric is not proving to be cheaper yet. Comparing proportionally to station maintenance (which I expect to be relatively similar between playthroughs), track maintenance costs 2.5 times as much this time, versus 1.05 times as much with steam. On the plus side, the 2-D-2 locomotives are cheap (I have the European ones available, but haven't used any yet). Train maintenance + fuel is about 2/3 of station maintenance costs this time, versus about 125% previously. Not enough to outweigh the track maintenance at this point... but as the tracks become busier it may narrow the gap. And there's a certain value to the faster speeds, too. Nonetheless I don't think the lower costs and higher speeds are quite canceling out the higher maintenance and ugly passenger appeal penalty. But things may change over time.

In upfront costs, I'm paying $7750/mile of track, versus $6500 last time. But this time is flatter on average. However, I am saving on locomotives - I've paid $450K for 9 trains, versus $440K for 5 trains. Electric still doesn't win since track costs are vastly higher overall, but it does have some advantages that may grow over time.

 

[coanda]

One thing worth doing if you're really trying to for the best results is to keep an eye on new neutral businesses.

All neutral buildings are put into a list by the game (the player has no way of directly viewing the entire list at once, it's done internally under-the-hood). On rare occasions where neutral buildings go out of business, they create a vacant spot in the middle of the list that will be filled with the next new construction. But generally, new buildings get appended to the end of the list. This is why if you select a new building and keep hitting "page down" over and over again, it cycles through buildings with generally a steady increase in the year they were created - newer buildings later.

Eventually you hit the end of the list and go back to the very *first* building. This is an important building - set a camera hotkey with Shift + 1 (or some other number) and now you can always return to that building. Why is this useful? It means once you select that building, you can press Page Up to cycle backwards through the list, newest building first and moving older. If you do this every 6 months or so, you can find newly-built oil wells, ranches, or other structures that you think will be very profitable, and buy them up immediately before their profits start actually rolling in and causing the buy price to spike.

Of course, you take the risk that the building you bought won't actually be that profitable; it may even run at a loss. But a lot of industries are pretty safe investments, with their initial buy prices generally under-estimating their value. It is not uncommon to be able to find businesses that will give a 20%, 25%, 30% annual rate of return on the initial buy.

 

[Quintillus]

That's an interesting point, @coanda . I have, of course, snagged buildings up nearly as soon as they were built, but generally by luck. I'd wished for a way to know which buildings were new, and that is a good way to do it.

I eventually ran out of my RT enthusiasm, and haven't played yet this month. But I'm sure I'll be back.

 

[trader/warrior]

Oh man, this seems amazing!

RRT3 is one of those games I always go back to, and always keeps fresh. Will definitely try this soon.