Hi all,
New version here, the last one was bugged.
Didn't realise that cask cars were for both beer *and* wine and deleted it, not realising what I had done until I made my first wine train and the map promptly did a CTD.
I have also made some more changes as I didn't think the map was balanced, even if it was probably historically accurate.
In the interests of game play I have done the following:-
1 ) Removed arms from the map - the map had, in my humble opinion, too many high earning resources in it with gold, arms, autos, wine and paper. The map was also set up so that arms could be produced but not sent anywhere. The war factory in Adelaide is no longer in game.
2 ) I also removed paper from the map for the same reason so paper mills and newspapers have been removed.
3 ) Fish can now be accepted directly into a place once it reaches town size. Canneries have been removed because of this.
4 ) Redundant/unused industries such as milk farms, fromageries, corn fields, swine farms and breweries have been removed from the map. Power plants were also removed as only 1 city had one. The result is that Stockyards, Food Plants, Smelters, Automobile Factories and Textile Mills can now be built where they couldn't before.
5 ) All redundant train cars removed from the map.
6) For the sake of variety, Melbourne and Brisbane have been removed as start locations and Townsville added as a start location. This now means there are 2 start locations in the SE, 1 in the centre, 1 in the NE, 1 in the SW and 1 in the NW.
7 ) To give all start locations a fair chance at development, goods needed to develop villages have been added "close" to all start locations (they might not be right on top of a start location but you won't need to sell shares to get to them!) For the sake of accuracy, though, food resources have not been added to real life desert locations!
8 ) The vineyard to the east of Perth has been moved to it's accurate location of Margaret River. 2 new vineyards have been added to represent the Hunters Valley and Coonaworra wine regions. The winery has been moved from Perth to Esperance and the textile mill in the other direction so that it's not "easy" to develop a cash crop.
9 ) Hobart removed from the game seeing as canneries have been removed.
10 ) New locations added in order to give all areas of the map the chance to develop to match the east coast of Australia had history - and the railways - seen to it! They are:-
Albany, Border Village, Borraloola, Carpentaria, Rawlina and Wyndham
11 ) Gold now accepted by all locations once they reach Metropolis.
12 ) To give Alice Springs a fair chance as a start location a coal mine has been added to the south and a gold mine added to the north (I have checked maps of Australia to make sure that they have been placed in locations where there are/were such in reality).
13 ) Some of the resources have been reduced in size to make it more of a challenge to develop the area you start in.
14 ) Some mid range industries have been added in semi-close proximity to Darwin and Townsville so that they can be developed as areas - with work - once the startup development is complete.
15 ) Adelaide, Sydney and Nuhlunbuy are now spelt correctly.
16 ) Start date now 1849 as research on my part indicates that railways started in Australia then (I do stand to be corrected though
).
17 ) End date now 1979 (just before the TGV appears in game!)
18 ) Tidied up the xml code so that it's easier to bug hunt, one of the things that had me pulling my hair out!
Think that's it, hope people like my version.
If people like it, I plan on adding some better victory conditions to the map as decent objectives turn a good map into an excellent one
McB