Work the vast natural resources of Alaska including the fisheries and coal. Get in on the gold rush in the Yukon.
You will also need to connect the key cities along the Alaska pipeline to deliver workers.
Starting location and skill level selected really changes the game. Goals can be very hard depending where you start. I suggest you start on the easiest skill level with only 1 competitor and then work your way toward a more challenging game.
Nice map :o)
This is a great map, but REALLY tough to meet the goals. Has anyone completed everything?
Mappers tend to favor difficulty when making scenarios. Combine that with the fact that when you make something it will always be easier for you and I would expect that many of the maps here are quite a bit harder than stock ones.
With that said just keep at it, the harder the it is the sweeter the victory. And don’t worry someone will have one, even if it was only the mapper himself.
This map is lovely, but inherently flawed. Here are some issues:
1) Aside from either the Fairbanks or Fort Yukon start points, all other starting locations are too far from one or more of the required initial resources to be reached early. In order to hard 100 carloads of materials in 40 years, you really need to be able to start hauling by around 1870 or so… and if you’re having to lay rail deep, DEEP into the Alaskan wilderness just to get to those resource nodes, you’re not going to get started until the 1880s.
2) Gold is another huge issue. In order to haul gold (and not gold ore) you need to have a city, and – initially at least – the only viable way to build cities is through intercity passenger travel. This means that you’re likely going to have to double or even triple track your lines very early in order to allow this important passenger lifeline to bypass slower freights. Thus, you’re spending an enormous amount of capital outlay just trying to build a town into a city before the gold produced from your mines can even begin reaching its destination. Even with 4 trains feeding off from three mines by 1880, I didn’t reach the goal.
3) The fisheries are too few and far between to be reached from the interior early enough to make a distance. I had 2 trains doing double duty from the Anchorage fishery by 1880 and didn’t reach the mark.
The issue here really is that you’re asking far too much too early. Even if one of the requirements was reduced or dropped (the gold one being particularly asinine because of its city requirement) then the map might be doable. But right now, every time I’ve tried this, I’ve gotten to about 1895 raking in nearly 2 million a year with a beautiful, seamless railroad operation, and been off by at least 30 carloads on one resource or another.
So, good job, but this needs to be retooled. I like a challenge, but this map reminds me of bashing my skull into a wall repeatedly.
Love this map, completed it and won, was unable to reach the first couple of goals..
but had no problem completing the worker deliverys for the pipelines..
everytime I load this map it gets to “Building up Steam” then crashes to the desktop. I am using the 3GB enabler and have cleared out the user map files. What else can I do?
Read this post.
You have to clean up your “UserMaps” folder
http://www.smrsimple.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=2832
Fairbanks – Nenana
Dawson
Fort Yukon
Prudhoe Bay – Barrow
Valdez – Anchorage
It’s doable, but probably dependent on your starting position.
I managed to finish everything on my first try but had only four years left to deadline in both periods. 100 gold requirement in first one and passengers to Prudhoe bay in second.
Starting position: Nenana
Difficulty: Financier
Tips:
– Nenana shoul get nearby coal. If done early, this is enough for 100 coal requirement.
– Fairbanks gets gold ore on the left and sells it to Nenana later.
– Dawson gets gold ore on the left and sells it to Fairbanks.
– These two gold industries are enough for 100 gold requirement if done early.
– Once you start selling gold and getting some serious coin, expand quickly south and connect all three fisheries to their towns. 100 fish requirement was done before gold & coal despite late start.
That’s it. First period done in time.
Second one is actually easy since you have lots of money and you can always pump passengers from two towns into your target town.
– 150 passengers to Valdez was done organically just from Anchorage. They grow fast enough with food transports.
– 150 passengers to Purdhoe Bay required building up Fort Yukon (gold smelter) and Barrow (power plant) and pumping passengers from there. I’ve done Barrow a bit late and finished with only four years left. Can be done much faster if necessary.
I must, however, agree with some of the posters here. The map is not that well thought out. There is only one way to finish it and that kills replayability. Also, I doubt that the map is doable in time on hardest difficulty.
That’s it – Good luck 🙂
Yeah, just like Kaiser said – it is not doable on robber baron difficulty. It takes at least the first 20 years to get really going – and by then, you just don’t have enough time. I can complete two of the three first missions but always fall short on the last one.
It’s a nice map, but severely flawed.
A point that would make it so that you COULD potentially finish it on Robber Baron – make the resource nodes into large nodes vs. small. There just isn’t enough time to draw the resources out of the nodes – especially the mid map coal and west coast gold. Had those been large nodes, to start with, I believe that randomizing the start locations and get a good spot would enable you to finish the first missions (with still a little difficulty however).
Yea, like the others said. It’s really not doable in robber baron difficulty. I had tried many times and even the fastest, I was still 2 years behind the goals. However, this map is really a good map and I recommend you to try it.
I recommend going into the “Scenario_User…” XML file for the map, and changing the iCarloads values for the early challenges to be a bit less. I went with 50% because I’m not that good, but 1/3rd less would probably still be a good challenge for most.
Just open in wordpad and it should be obvious.
Ok, i finally beat this one on Robber Baron/hard and with 2 AI. As you can see by the other comments it is quite a challenge with those settings. The hardest part of this map is the first era challenges… if you can beat that, the last set is easy.
You have to start at Ft. Yukon or Fairbanks, with Fairbanks being optimal. If you play with AI’s, you basically have to get lucky and get ones that build away from the center and dont mess with the fisheries. Also, i’m not sure if you can beat it without getting the cheaper maintenance patent at the beginning of the game. I would suggest restarting the game until you get a starting city of fairbanks and a maintenance patent within around 10 years. Once that happens, save the game and then you will be able to start fresh with those conditions if (when) you dont meet the first set of challenges.
Here’s my starting routes, with a main city of Fairbanks:
1. Nenana-Fairbanks-Ft.Yukon
2. Nenana-coal mine
3. Fairbanks-Dawson-Dawson Gold Mine
4. Nenana-Anchorage
5. Anchorage-both fisheries below it
6. Fairbanks-Dawson Gold Mine, shift to Old Crow Quarry soon after
7. Anchorage-Yakata
8. Yakata-fishery
It takes a lot of micromanagement and stop and go playing to get the first set of challenges completed in time. Several times i missed the deadline by only a minute or so… and when i finally beat it, i only had about 15 seconds to spare heh. Makes it very satisfying when you beat it, though. Nice map if you like a challenge.
Congratulations for being the first to break the Robber Baron barrier on this one! At first I thought it was quite impossible, but in the end I also managed the first era, with 2 years to spare, without getting the cheaper maintenance patent. I did get it in the second era though, and that helped a lot to complete the net worth goal 8 years early. I have posted a screenshot of my routes on the development thread of the map.
Map thread smrsimple.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=2411
It’s very unbalanced map and it’s impossible to meet all goals with 3 competitors at ‘Robber Baron’ level. It depends very much on a location you started at. Some start locations are losing a-priori.
nice map completed it on first attempt, as the president of united states.
Finally managed to complete this map on Robber Baron with 3 AIs. Shipped the last load of gold on the December of the last year 🙂
Wow! Well done 🙂
hola soy nuevo en esto, me encantaria jugar con los mapas que estan en este sitio pera no he podido instalarlos, o en que carpeta alojarlos.
de antemano agradeseria la ayuda.
Tough, but I really enjoyed it!
I’d say the easiest situation is when you start roughly in the middle of the map between the gold and the coal.
Thanks.
At least I was lucky to complete all goals as Hard/Robber Baron, starting from Nome, but without AIs though.
please tell me?> what`s wrong& i`m extracting to the user maps, starting the game, selecting this map, and the game turn of to my desktop! I have other maps which are working.