Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games
Subject: How I kicked butt on Railroad Tycoon.
From: xibo@fido.econ.arizona.edu (Mr. Coates)
Date: 15 Sep 92 08:42:47 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Xibological Perimeter



I was playing the Europe scenario.  I chose a spot in north-central Europe,
near East Germany.  My opponents appeared in Poland and Russia.  So I set up
a moderate length of track, completely straight, going north/south, and ran
trains with 1 passenger and 1 mail car.  This got funds coming in nicely,
allowing me to expand.  I expanded to the north until I hit the north coast,
making sure to build unused track reaching into the water.  Then I build track
south, east of the Alps, cutting in between Italy and Yugoslavia, and hit
the south coast.  Again, I built unused track into the water.  All this time,
and for the rest of the game, I made almost all of my trains 1 passenger, 1
mail car.  In order to avoid having to deal with rate wars, I built more
useless track shielding my stations.  I then removed the connecting links
of track so that the redundant, shield track would not confuse the trains.
But still, there would be no space for enemy track to reach my stations.

I had this done by 1930.  This left me with 70 years to develop the rest
of western Europe at my leisure, with my three opponents trapped in eastern
Europe, unable to take over my stations due to the shield track.  Also, the
computer doesn't build on water,  so it couldn't cut across the water to
get to me, either.  I had over half of the map all to myself.  In this manner
I was able to build stations and get the maximum of 32 trains pretty easily.
Again, all were 1 passenger, 1 mail car.  The only exception would be times
when certain cities had a surplus of mail or passengers; then I would
temporarily adjust a train or two.  Likewise for priority shipments.

At every station, I made it a complete Terminal, with a Hotel, a Switching
Yard, a Post Office, and a Restaurant.  At half of the cities I put in
Maintainence shops.  This maximized the profits of each city.  While this
made the startup costs rather expensive, it paid off within a few years,
and the rest of the game was extremely profitable.  I also double-tracked
almost all of the track, and even went to lengths to avoid tunnels, because
tunnels can't be double-tracked.  Double tracking really improves train
performance.  Also, I added signal stations every 5-7 square-lengths of
track, which also increased performance, since you can't manually override
all the signals when you have 32 trains running around.

Another thing I did was to upgrade to the fastest train as soon as they
became available.

Stocks:  I never went in debt.  Debt is BAD.  As soon as I could, I bought
up 50% of my treasury stock.  Once my TGVs were running, in 1980, I was
making money incredibly fast, faster than I could spend it.  So I went
crazy buying opponents' stock.  What really helped was that due to the
limited # of cities the opponent had (they were locked in eastern Europe)
none of them were really huge, and I was able to buy up their stock.  I got
49% of the biggest one, and didn't like the price they offered for the
rest, so I dumped their stock.  See, as you buy up shares towards 49%, he
buys his, trying to cover himself.  Then when you dump a lot of shares
near the end of the fiscal year, you take a lot of profits.  The stock
devaluates, and the enemy suffers a great loss.  Repeat the process a
few times and soon he'll be greatly in debt.  Then you can wait another
couple years and he'll think you won't touch him, and sell off some of
his stock.  Then you can buy his shares, and he won't be able to afford
to buy his own stock back, since he'll have to sell bonds to do so.  By
the time he raises the cash, you've gone over 51%.

Once you get one railroad, the other two are easier.  Note that you should
give the captured railroads a lot of money and pay off their bonds, so they
will be profitable; otherwise they evaporate and go away, and you lose your
investment, AND gain a new competitor, most likely in your 'free zone'.

Using this, I made Prime Minister by 1970, took over the other three
railroads by 1990, and ended the game with a nice $30 mil retirement
bonus.

But now that I've clobbered the game, I don't think I'll be playing it
again for a while... =)


Xibo