From: schow@bqneh3.bnr.ca (Stanley T.H. Chow)
Subject: Re: Railroad Tycoon hints?
Keywords: games, railroad tycoon
Organization: Bell Northern Research Ltd, Ottawa
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 18:26:44 GMT

In article <86629@netnews.upenn.edu> vinson@shiva.seas.upenn.edu (Jack Vinson) writes:
><1992Aug19.181241.11971@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> writes this in article mitton@dave.enet.dec.com (Dave Mitton)
>>
>>In article <2A8768E5.17036@ics.uci.edu>, davida@bonnie.ics.uci.edu (David A. Andersen) writes:
>>>(a) Stick with Mail & Passengers.
>>>      - They make the most money, use other things (goods, coal, etc.)
>>>        only to kick a competitor out of a city.
>>
>>I've seen this suggestion in one of the books.  I have trouble reducing
>>the game to this level.
>
>I agree with Dave's comments here.  How can you just let coal or wool or
>goods just pile up (and disappear) in a city?  I've also found that
>although the passanger/mail trains get you going initially they don't seem
>to keep the cash flowing very well.

Depends on which game you play. For Europe, you definitely want to stick
to pessangers and mail. For USA East, coal conversion is the way.

>Now I have some questions:
>
>1)  Has anyone ever been able to build textile mills or forts in the Europe
>scenario? 

See document. 

>2)  Why can the computer cheat when building railroad and we can't?  i.e.
>Track coming out of stations at odd angles, 135 degree turns, several
>sections of track over a river, etc.

This is discussed somewhere, the justification is that you are intelligent
and the computer players aren't. Also, the computer players don't actually
run trains anyway, so who cares what the tracks look like :-)

>3)  What is the highest retirement bonus anyone has ever achieved without
>cheating?  I've only made it to about 3.5 million at the %100 difficulty
>level.

Depends on what you mean by cheat and which scenerio. Without taking 
advantage of unintended features, I can usually top 10 million in all of
the four scenerios (the USA East is hardest). Taking advantage of the
bugs, I can go to the limits without building any tracks.

>4)  Related question:  How does one continue to increase profits even as
>expenses continue to increase?  After about 70 years it seems that my
>profits increase at about the same rate as my expenses which keeps me from
>making a whole lot more money and my shareholders begin getting pissed if I
>don't start doing something.

Buy the other railways. Get faster trains. Replace old trains. (You expense
should not go up with time. Expenses are directly tied to tracks, stations,
locomotives, etc).

>5)  Is there an "easy" way to take over another RR so that your not ending
>up paying off all their debt?  The only thing I've figured out is to
>slowly buy them out and beat them on getting to 60% of their stock.
>Completely buying them out becomes rather expensive.

Timing is everything. If you start out with a couple of million and they
have to keep borrowing, you can beat them to 60%. If they are rolling over
their bonds and deeply in the red, you can beat them to 60%. Slowly buying
almost never get you there. Also, completely buy them out, then sell off 
the 40%, wait for the price to drop, then buy the 40% back. This is 
actually not all that expensive.


--
Stanley Chow            InterNet: schow@BNR.CA
Bell Northern Research  UUCP:     ..!uunet!bnrgate!bqneh3!schow
(613) 763-2831
Me? Represent other people? Don't make them laugh so hard.