South America

Campaign Details

**South America** is one of the twelve original scenarios included in Railroad Tycoon II. It is somewhat based on the namesake map of Railroad Tycoon Deluxe.

## Strategy

### Starting out

South America is a dynamic map, with cities mainly on the coastline, and plentiful raw industry as you move inland. Mountainous terrain will be a struggle if you start early, it is important to make a good start, as it is easy to fall behind and go bankrupt. On higher difficulties, the expert economical and industrial levels are difficult to manage, as you need to balance between expanding and building your personal net worth.

There are a couple of good starting locations from where you can build off of:

* Buenos Aires to Montevideo
	+ This route is probably the best start, as it is two large cities, so supply and demand is not always an issue. They are hubs where you can ship finished goods to for a great price.
	+ Once you get going, there are two main expansion avenues: North towards Sao Paulo, or West towards Santiago. North requires carefully wrapping track around the coast, and trying to find a balanced gradient. To Expand West hit Cordoba, and carefully try to find a gap between the steep ridges near Santiago.
	+ Eventually, the goal will continue expanding as much as possible, and linking industries. Long distance routes such as Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires, or Santiago to Montevideo will provide all the revenue that you need to succeed.
* Quito and Cali
	+ This area is fairly mountainous, but has 6 or 7 nearby cities that are quite big, so lots of potential to grow here. Spend plenty of time trying to find the flattest route possible, as it will eventually become a major thoroughfare.
	+ Next few extensions would be Bogota and Medellin and eventually up to Maracaibo. The best route to Maracaibo is right up to the coast and around the mountain range. Continue linking the nearby industries.
	+ The 3-Truck Shay is not a bad locomotive to reach mountainous industries, but make sure it is not strolling along your passenger lines. If you have TSC, then cargo depoting is rather useful in this situation.
	+ Eventually, head south carefully to Lima, and run long distance routes from Lima to Quito/Cali/Medellin. These can be extremely profitable, but keep the grades decent.

### Next steps

The AI was not designed for this map and will often run ridiculous routes often going through mountains, multiple rivers, or spanning bridges (TSC). Almost all the time, an AI will start poor routes either from

* Rio de Janeiro to Sau Paulo
* Santiago to Mendoza
* Ariquepa to Arica
* Caracas to Cumana
* Punta Arenas to Rio Gallegos.

This means that they are not as big of a problem than in other scenarios, as most AI will go bankrupt due to the fact that their trains can't get to the other side of the 12% gradient hill.

Apart from the terrain, the most challenging part of this scenario is the balance between dividend, and expanding the network. It is important straight away to buy as much of your company stock as possible, and keep a relatively high dividend (50% of your profit), and continue to expand every year, so investors are still happy. Efficiency of the network is key here, avoid high gradients and massive choke-points, so trains are maximizing profit. If you are successful at that, then the gold should come easy.

## Trivia

* This map is generally the same one from Railroad Tycoon Deluxe.