From: sasdrf@daedalus.unx.sas.com (Dave Frederick)
Subject: RR Tycoon - strategy suggestions, please!
Originator: sasdrf@daedalus.unx.sas.com
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 11:49:31 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.


Well, a week ago, the wife brought my 1-year old and myself to the
mall with her while she did some clothes shopping. Yechh! After 
about a half hour, while she ducks into yet another dressing room
to try on some other stupid outfit (She's 4 1/2 months pregnant,
but "it's the clothes that make me look fat"), I take the stroller
and push Laura down to the local mall computer game store (Babbages
or EB or something). While she's looking at the demos on the TV screens,
I spot, much to my amazement, Railroad Tycoon on the bargain shelf
for $14.95! It was almost 3 times that the last time I looked, and
being a reformed Civ addict who had a weakness for model railroading
when I was a tike, I get my daughter's permission and bring the game
home. Now my wife is complaining that I'm not spending enough time 
with her (hey, I went shopping with her; what greater sacrifice could
I make?), and I only play when Laura's napping, so I haven't gotten
very far yet...

So, playing at Investor level with complex economy and cut-throat
competition, I seem to be having troubles. I get off to a reasonable
start, so I assume that I'm choosing a nice site to begin a railroad.
I try to gobble up a significant portion of my own stock early, before
I start making money (the one time I didn't do this, I was bought out
by a competitor rather early). Then I try to get out of debt before
I go after the competition. Unfortunately, by this time at least one
of the computer railroads is some behemoth that is too big and costly
to buy out, and too strong to beat at a rate war. What to do?

My typical opening (playing either US scenario) is to find a pair of
resources close enough to be serviced by one depot (say a couple oil
wells). I'll select a point between this resource and the nearest city,
and build the appropriate industry (in this example, a refinery). I'll
lay from the city to the refinery and to the resource. I'll build a
slow freight train and send it to the resource, with wait-until-full
orders, and HOLD it there until the end of the first fiscal period.
By this time, my stock drops to ~$3 a share. I'll send the train on 
to the refinery, buying about 70,000 shares of my stock while it's
en route, and getting a hefty profit for the oil delivery followed by
the goods delivery. Then I'll start looking to expand to other cities.
Does this sound like a reasonable start, or am I being too conservative?

Other questions:

1) Does everyone else keep an unscheduled high-speed train available
for priority deliveries/rate-war passengers, etc? Is this a good idea?

2) Are bonds fixed rate or variable rate? The manual hints that they're
fixed by saying (in the player notes) to refinance during boom times.
When paying off bonds, does one pay off the youngest, oldest, or
highest interest bond first?

3) Do you tend to expand your pike towards your competitors (to 
antagonize or start a rate-war), or away from them (to strengthen your
line)?

4) Is it worth taking over a weak (almost out of business) competitor
just because the price is right, or should you go after the big boys
and forget about the small fry?

Any answers, tips, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated (other
than the "edit the save file and give yourself megabucks", as I would
prefer to win within the bounds of the game itself). Since this game
is suddenly cheap, I would imagine many others are just starting out
now, so perhaps we could begin a new thread regarding this game (or
you can email me, I don't care).

Dave Frederick                          sasdrf@unx.sas.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games