Help with the campaign's third scenario

[carlos.HV]

What the title says. I think I can complete it, but everything feels extremely inefficient. So far, I'm making good progress, but I'm really struggling with revenue. I've got as many lines as I can between cities (so three; topeka-kansas, kansas-wichita, and wichita-topeka) and they're kinda bringing money, but I don't get why, even though I've grown all three to over 45k inhabitants, these trains are still carrying only one passenger car, one mail car, and maybe one or two freight cars. By this point in some other scenarios, with cities like that, I already need to sort trains for express only and freight only because they get too large, yet here they're almost empty. Am I suffering from a bug or am I doing something wrong?

[Overheal]

no you're not doing anything wrong per se, the region is sparsely populated compared to eg. the UK, so there isn't even much demand by wagon for passengers. The problem you're facing then is speed: your passengers are getting there but their ticket price is a function of time. That one or two cars of multi-tonnage freight, that's slowing your passengers down. Even with only 1 or 2 mail/passenger wagons, you can average train balances of many thousands of dollars if they are lickity split.

This is a tough scenario financially. I tried to buy up all the businesses early and then train everything around, but since the cities are so small to start, the businesses aren't profitable and they sink me with costs. The scenario will have you buy into a beer factory but that can be done later. According to the tutorial, the game is always balanced such that if you are the Transporter of the goods (ie. the railway) you will end up making the biggest share of money on the transportation of the good even if you don't own the farm for the raw material, or the industry for the finished good. So eventually, you will be able to buy up those businesses, it's just not essential that you do, least of all when they aren't operating in the black. Early on let the AI businesses eat their own costs.

I did get this scenario roaring though, by having track 1 for each city be freight and track 2 be express, passengers should be picked up every 4 days (10% of them give up every day after 4 days). Warehouse in Topeka for logs and grain and cloth and meat and corn. Logs and grain to topeka only. Wool to KC. Cows to Wichita. Don't buy any businesses (that comes later). Maintenance sheds should be in the cities but very soon you'll want your rural stations to have them and set the rural ones to 100% so cities can dispatch faster (later on, get rid of maintenance in Topeka and replace with a Dispatch). You don't want cities to repair very often, because it tears into express train speeds, they can complete multiple round trips before repairing so leave it set to 60~80% for cities and 100% for farms.

Kansas City and Wichita should each get an immigration center built in them so the area grows faster, starting at 30k. Ditto for Topeka. At 50k swap these out for libraries, museums at 80k and universities at 90k.

From there ignore Oklahoma until much later. Buy into Nebraska, connect Omaha to KC, Cows and Logs to Omaha, connect North Platte to Omaha etc., send carrots to Topeka WH. At about that time you'll then just have to figure out how you want to link Denver etc. into the network. The Opponent will do the work of bringing logs and grain to Cheyenne, you just need to bring Steaks and you get credit for founding this one.

[carlos.HV]

Thanks for the help, tho I must admit I just wasn't being patient. 20 minutes after I started this discussion, I managed to solve most of my issues. Turns out my number 1 problem was the way I had set the tracks between the three cities was very inefficient. The track went from Wichita to the right then straight up, joinig with the one headed to Kansas very close to Topeka. This caused me a lot of issues, so I instead changed all tracks for more of a triangular setup than the one I had, which was mostly linear. Now I've managed to link oklahoma, too, and all express trains are bringing over 18k/week. I'll take note of your advice for most other scenarios when it can apply. Thanks, bud.

[Nexztar]

And i have no problem with money but the mission to transport 60 passengers without changing trains from topeka to denver. I have tryed this campaign 8 times and I still fail of last task list 40 %. And I don't know that I'm doing wrong ?

[EMAPhil]

Originally posted by Nexztar:

And i have no problem with money but the mission to transport 60 passengers without changing trains from topeka to denver. I have tryed this campaign 8 times and I still fail of last task list 40 %. And I don't know that I'm doing wrong ?

Setup a direct express line Topeka to Denver with no intermediate stops. When the task is achieved you can edit the line to make it more efficient

[Dray Prescot]

Part of your problem in tasks of this type: Deliver X Passengers from A (Topeka) to B (Denver) is getting enough Passengers in A (Topeka) that want to go to B (Denver),

Is to get more Passengers in A (Topeka) that want to go to B (Denver), a lot sooner and faster.

The solution is a trick I figured out in Chapter 1:

Go to Wichita and send an Express Train with priority on Passengers to Topeka, that Train will take Passengers from Wichita that want to go to Denver to Topeka and drop them off there. Keep running this Route again and again.

Now do the same with an Express Train from Kansas City to Topeka, with a priority on Passengers, this Train will take Passengers that want to go from Kansas City to Denver and drop them off in Topeka. Keep running this Route again and again.

Now you have a lot of extra Passengers pouring into Topeka that want to go to Denver, build a direct line (probably a double track) to Denver and only use it for an Express Train, with NO MAIL Cars allowed on the Express Train so the Train travels faster. You should finish the Task in just a few round trips because of the extra Passengers. Add additional Trains to this Route so it has a Train leaving every 4 Days, so you do not lose any Passengers that want to go to Denver. You will be surprised how fast you finish that Task. (I have just started working on Chapter 3 myself).

Also make a point of growing the size of Topeka early in the game as much as you can, since larger Cities generate more Passengers and Mail. You also want to grow Kansas City and Wichita as much as you can as well to get more Passengers generated.


By using exactly this Trick in Chapter 1, I got the deliver 320 Passengers from Boston to Portland Task done by the end of Feb 1830 (only 2 Months). I had a Train from New York City delivering passengers from New York City AND Philadelphia + Washington DC via the other Company's Route to New York City and dropped them off in Boston who wanted to go to Portland.
PLUS I had another Route delivering Passengers from Buffalo and Syracuse via Albany along with Passengers from Albany who all wanted to go to Portland but I dropped them off in Boston.

The trick is bringing additional Passengers to the (A) Start City from other nearby Cities (as many Cities as you can find and connect) who want to go to the (B) Destination City.