buying industries, power stations, short trade routes

[markofjohnson]

Power stations can use coal and or oil. If there is a power station close to a large source of fuel, I build track there as soon as I can, and I buy the power station before I ship any fuel to it (so it is cheap). It very quickly pays for itself and then churns out huge profits to build out the mid and end game. However, you have to choose carefully... would you rather burn your coal in the power station or make a lot of steel and autos? Maybe if you start using coal, you can later switch to more distance coal or oil when you have a larger rail network and want to use the coal for steal?

If you are going to build an industry, in order to make a short high profit route, then what are your choices? Always try to put the steel mill close to the coal, or the refinery close to the oil, etc. The raw materials are heavier to ship, and anyway generate less profit than the manufactured material. (I think.) This may only be important for large coal mines, oil fields. Small coal mines will get drained quickly, so you can aford to ship coal a long way so that it replenished by the time your train returns. But... can you grow the mine? Industries grow if you work them hard, but do the sources of raw meterials grow? Not sure.

I've noticed that wood, papermills, and newspapers are often very far apart and hard to make a lot of money from. I tried building a newspaper close to the paper mill, or a paper mill close to the wood, but the whole endevour was not very profitable.

mj

[leo]

coal mines and other resources grow ...

[KW33D]

I have recently spent a lot of time working on my efficiency of routes and a lot of thought has to be put into how to get your resources around early in the game and how that will affect where you want to put the production industries in the mid to late game. Short routes is the key but it takes a lot of planning to get the right industries in the right cities.

[markofjohnson]

I recently started succeeding with long routes for coal and steal by putting multiple trains on the same route.

For me, the aim of the game is to make best use of no more than 6 trains going in and out of cities (and then only of each of the 3 tracks are acessed from both sides) but I'll break the rule and have more trains if some of them are on routes way across the map with slow freight. This can be a good early game strategy when trains are cheap but really slow and you want to maximise a large coal mine etc.

[CaptainPatch]

Power stations can use coal and or oil. If there is a power station close to a large source of fuel, I build track there as soon as I can, and I buy the power station before I ship any fuel to it (so it is cheap). It very quickly pays for itself and then churns out huge profits to build out the mid and end game.
mj

Something finally dawned on me last night:

We tend to think of our railroad network as being a tree, with a main trunk with lesser branches attached. But it doesn't have to be that way.

How many times have you thought to yourself, "I wish my start position had been closer to that resource/industry combination **over there**?" But, sadly, you can't pick where you start. However, that need not stop you from capitalizing on profitable combinations way off from where your home terminal is located.

At game start, freeze the game. Thoroughly examine the _entire_ map. Note places where there are oil wells and/or coal mines _really_ close to Power Plants. Hopefully, there will be a few that aren't _too_ far away.

Find the closest combination to your start point. Sell off some stock to build up your cash. Resume the game and start an auction for the Power Plant. The other Barons _shouldn't_ even bid, because the Power Plant isn't connected/active yet. Once you've acquired the Power Plant, freeze the game again.

Next build the cheapest possible route to the Power Plant's town. NO BRIDGES! They're too expensive. Don't worry about the slopes. Plant a Depot in the town. Then connect from the Depot to the resource; build the Annex at the resource.

Now go back and sell off all of the track from the Power Plant's town to your home terminal. You should get back nearly all of the money that you laid out for the connection. Use the money to build the initial route that you would have normally constructed anyway. Once you've set that up, and you're practically bankrupt, THEN buy your first engines, for the Power Plant line and your main route. Maximize the load your engine can haul from the resource to the Power Plant; speed isn't as much of a concern. Ideally, that engine should never be sitting waiting for a full load; there should always be enough Oil/Coal to fill your train, and the amount available should never reach 12. If the product available builds to 12 faster than your train can pick it up, add more trains.

Once you start to get a reasonable cashflow building up, branch out to favorable resource/industry combinations as often as possible -- but ALWAYS buy the industry first; if you don't own the industry, it's not nearly as profitable.

A fringe benefit to the remote branches is that they sometimes make good jump off points to expand your network to towns that offer incentives for specific deliveries.

[darthdroid]

I would never use more than one engine per resource, it's not financially viable. And frankly, by the time I'm starting to buy people, I usually have close to 20 engines. Once again, ignoring the short track glitch, this seems to be the case with most good players. But using several engines to do the same thing is a bit silly unless.....

You have 2 cities with a bunch of finished goods you cannot keep up with. But even ONE crappy engine can ship all the goods a coal mine or any raw material can provide....if you disagree I ask you to take a closer look at your routing cuz something is severely slowing you down and it AIN'T the engine

The shortest distance between two points is what?

-Bob the Lunatic

[darthdroid]

Also captain:

You offer a contradiction: you said build the shortest route but NO bridges. I greatly disagree......bridges are very undervalued and underused by less experienced players. Sometimes a bridge is cheaper than tracks on the ground, most of us are surprised when we learn this. Also note that some bridge types are cheaper than others.....pay attention to why and how!

YES, build shortest route to resource, INCLUDING a bridge as necessary.

-Bob the Lunatic