Make money in 1850 ??

[Bozz 💀]

How is that even possible ??
Itried everything and I onnly make 100-200k every 2 or 3 years but I end up at -1000k after 15 years...
Tried passenger transport, factory supply... Everything in 10 different games never made any profits...

[Big Poppa]

Yea same here, always played the old one on medium.

[Actionjackson]

Swallow you pride and put the game to "easy" if you new.
Some things that work for "hard" mode.

- reroll a few maps, as they are all random generated you may end up with crappy one or good ones

look for lines like->

- wood one way, half full with planks on the way back.
- crude one way, half full with refined oil back
- try to have at least your biggest money maker line in 1850 go no more than 25% of the way empty. Smal truck(horse cart) lines can go 50% empty its fine as long as you have a big cash line that covers it.

Have enough vehicles so you offset the maintainance cost of buildings, 1 train or 1 ship may not pay for 2-3 harbours or stations+tracks, but if you have like 2 trains or more you end up with money in your pocket.

- avoid lines that take large detours. If you dont have the money to tunnel through the mountain, ditch the idea, if you have to go long way around it, it wont work out with ingame 1850 tech. When you have the money -> tunnel.

You see once you get the idea it is quiet easy to start up, you just need to find the right place to do it, you can not just throw down anything on the map in 1850 and have it rain money down on you.

Good luck

[WildDogsGaming]

I paused the date as soon as I started. Set down a few tram lines in town, and a bus line between towns. Set down a couple cargo truck loads. With the profit from each of those, I just kept building more truck lines. Even the lines I knew would be replaced with trains, I just started with trucks. Kept on going and going, more and more truck lines. Feeding cargo into towns. Moved people around towns slowly, but completely. Then I started evaluating those bus lines. Which ones had the best potential for trains to start out?Where would I lose the least amount of money starting off?

Once I had my first 2 train lines down, I unpaused the date and ran at 1/2 speed. Just kept replacing the most profitable truck lines with trains.

My biggest problem with TF1, and playing this with game unpaused is time moves way too fast. By the time 1860 comes around, you have absolutely no money, but trains start costing more. By 1900, every train costs $5 mil. If you progress wrong at all, you can't afford it. In TF1, pause date was a mod, I am so glad to see it added to the game.

[Vivisector]

Still on my first play through, and making a ton of money. When I started I found 3 towns that were semi far away. Placed tram lines in each town, and connected them with 2 train lines with 3 passenger cars (39???) coming from the middle town, and going to the outward town.. Made sure the town in the middle had an easy freight option.

I let it run for a bit, and took all earning to pay down the $5 mil loan. Then when it was down to around $3 mil, I took a loan to almost 10 mil, and started up the holy grail of Transport Fever lines. Oil Well with long distance to refinery. Luckily the refinery was near my town, and the Fuel upgrader was near enough as well, that I could put a cart/wagon line down between the 2. 1 really nice thing in TF2, the crude oil > oil is 2:1. So you can create a high load oil line, and not have to much to move in the back end. I used a good chunk of the $7 million to buy tanks that could haul 70 Oil each trip. Every time the train pulls in I get about a $800,000. Sat on that and paid down the loan every time I had the money available. Didn't have any money issues after that. When the loan was down, I took it back to $10 million and started up a second line. This time i connected a logging camp to a saw mill, semi decent distance. Then hauling the planks almost across the map to a tool shop. And running the tools to the nearest towns. Every time the planks arrive I am making around $1.3 million.

Started on Medium. Will try hard next time.

[U.D.R]

Just 1 train for Oil to nearest Oil Factory. No need to export to town, the factory buy the Oil and reffine it.
You do that on the whole map. Around +400K by train ^^
You can do that with all ressource, without export to town.

I fail my first game, and after, i Discover this on my second game.
Now i'll go to hardest difficulty, because this is too simple, finally.

[Bozz 💀]

I started making money by taking cereales to a factory that makes food and then my workers export the food in a town nearby so it's a 2 way trade route and it makes me 100k per year and now I supply the factory with annother cereal production to make even more food for my workers and now I get 150k per year I have found 2 other towns where I can do the same :)

Thanks for the help my friends, profit is coming... Slowly but it's coming :)

[Actionjackson]

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

I started making money by taking cereales to a factory that makes food and then my workers export the food in a town nearby so it's a 2 way trade route and it makes me 100k per year and now I supply the factory with annother cereal production to make even more food for my workers and now I get 150k per year I have found 2 other towns where I can do the same :)

Thanks for the help my friends, profit is coming... Slowly but it's coming :)

Good stuff, you´ll see soon you snowball so hard you dont know where to stuff all that money :D

Before you build a new line where you are not sure how it works out, just make a save and than you build it and see how it goes for a few years, if it fails hard just reload the save ;)

Enjoy

[HQRDà]

Usually like in TpF , i start using trucks to connect industry and town. Starting with train or other is very complicated and makes your first profit come very late. I guess you can try only when you understand perfectly TpF mechanics.

Start with the shortest line you can make to generate profit asap (only one to three line first), you can also build some roads to decrease distances (build small segment by small segment (5-15k). One line costs me around 500k to build so i keep around 3,5m for vehicules.

Obviously try to think those lines to get its vehicules full as often as possible.

Do not build other line until those first lines are filled with enough vehicules.

You'll start generating profit real quick and since operating costs doesnt iincrease in TpF2 you can potentially make profit with those line forever without ever touching it again.

[Shau]

Cargo is really easy. Choose any base factory and a factory that needs the base material (oil, wood, stone). Connect them with trucks and buy as many as the factory can handle. Then choose the next cargo item.. Most important, don't invest too early in expensive stuff. In my game, I thought I can be smart and set up an oil-refined oil- fuel train line. Well.. I could afford 1 train, 1 station was idle, costing me a fortune every year and thus i had to wait very long.

Advice 1: Ignore the warning that your vehicles are old and should be replaced.
Advice 2: Don't use a Train that is grabbing stuff from A, brings it to B, where it is refined and drives to C, where it is used. (plus driving back to B and A). You will always lose money, because often, you need like 2 oil for 1 refined oil.

[Gregorovitch]

The most pleasurable and surefire way to play the game is to set up one of two train routes:

logs->planks->tools [logs and planks both use stake cars]
crude->oil->fuel [all three use oil wagons]

The reason is they use the same wagon type in more than one direction which generates extraordinary profits. You get $5m loan to start and can borrow up to $5m more. This enough to set up one of these routes and they can be so profitable that unlike most other early train lines they will sustain and pay off these loans fast.

My current game I started with a route that looked like this:

Saw mill ----------Forest B-----------------------------------------Forest A-------------------City----Tool factory

You need to look for one of these golden routes on a new map first and if there isn't one roll a new map until you find one.

As you can see I started picking up logs at forest A, dropped them at Saw Mill and picked up planks which the same train then takes back to Tool Factory. Forest B was used as a supplemental feed for the saw mill as planks require 2 logs each, I put a couple of extra trains to do that just from Forest B to the mill. Trucks shipped the tools to nearby town (later trains to two other towns.)

I was making $750k profit out of this line by 1860 and by 1900 it was making $12-14m a year on it's own. This line is the backbone of the business and basically pays for building and bedding in any new project.

An important note is that rather than expand out to new towns and set up new networks for the first 40 years I worked almost exclusively on supplying more and more tools to the three towns that bought them and then just passenger trains between those towns only to encourage as much growth as possible. More tools = more planks = more x2 more logs = skyrocketing profits on that line.

The reason is that investing in upgrading an existing already profitable line/network gives a far higher return than investing in a completely new line/network from scratch (providing of course there is enough production capacity/end product demand to use greater capacity).

Another important aspect of re-investing in existing lines is refining you track layouts and stations etc to improve train speed and station throughput. You get paid a set amount per load based on distance, shave 15-20% off the round trip time and profits skyrocket some more.

Do what Colonel Failure does - get the bulldozer out and don't be afraid to use it. If you skirted a mountain in 1850, drive a tunnel straight through it in 1870. It will pay for itself hand over fist.

1902 I have $60m in the bank, $12-14m more each year, and have started building out two new networks, on for machines and one for construction materials, to service four more towns. I can afford to now. All because of this one line.