Growing Annual Profits

[airplayne]

I am struggling to complete tasks that require you to achieve a specific amount of profit per year. Has anyone come up with a good way to boost profits so it is easier to complete these tasks?

[Dray Prescot]

Profits from Industries and owning Resource Sites are generally a lot less than from delivering cargoes by train, i.e. it takes longer to payoff their purchase price. So if you need fast growth of profits try to avoid buying them, except to make sure the right Industry goes on new vacant lots, i.e. do not buy existing Industries already owned by private investors. (if you are OK with the type of the Industry that owned by private investors).

[gardlt]

A healthy company shouldn't have much trouble with profits. Making a profitable company is pretty close to Goal #1. I'm just saying this because it's better to prevent rather than patch up later. Or maybe to say that, "How to be more profitable?" is a better question. :)

Freight rates are fixed, it doesn't matter how far you haul it. The key for profits is short-haul freight at volume. Infrastructure cost is low. So the profit from your investment is high.


As Dray said, industries are not great for profit. So really you need to work out how to haul more. In the long-term, trying to grow more cities to a larger size will increase available profit opportunity. In the short-term, connecting new cities is good. Each city has an "internal warehouse" that stocks some supplies so the city wont run out between train deliveries. This store doesn't fill via wagon transport. So the initial fill will give a spike.


Obviously if there is a short high-volume resource run you can do, that will be great for profits
into the future. If you a shy on space, and not using warehouses for infinite platforms, you might temporarily halt growth at a city. What I mean is to use capacity used with longer-haul supply runs on short hauls that wagon transport will probably normally take care of. Good candidates can be Cattle, Logs, Cotton, Grain.


Aside from expansion/city growth there are some more tricky, less-ideal methods. One of these is to upgrade an industry you already own. This isn't risk-free, and some care needs to be taken. The idea is that the upgrade will raise the storage limit at that factory for both the input and the output. If you are supplying the input there will be a lot more volume for a short time. But check to make sure that the resource site is producing enough. Also, the factory will run for awhile to fill up the output stocks. You wont get more than you put in though.

A more tricky method is to stop some deliveries, but being careful not for long enough that the city shrinks. Then you might capture some of the initial "fill the stockpile" spike. This isn't practical on Trainiac mode. I haven't tried it intentional and definitely not on a mass scale.

You might also delete your maintenance sheds for awhile. Assuming that your lines are running at capacity but below demand.

[Dray Prescot]

Like Gardit says, to get fast growth of income (and profits) for your Railway, you need fast growth of the Cities you connect to. Getting your Cities to start growing and then keep growing is the primary challenge of RE. Look carefully at each City's demand list (and look at future demands as it grows and wants new items), you do NOT have to supply everything, just over 60% of the demanded carloads. There are usually some goods/resources that are difficult to supply to any particular City (or group of Cities). Usually you can still grow with a missing item(s). Concentrate on getting enough there to keep growth going in each City. Your primary income comes from transporting things and the bigger the Cities, the more there is to transport.

This is NOT a game like Port Royale or Patrician (also from Kalypso) where a large amount of your income comes from owning production assets (and supplying them) and where you OWN the goods being transported and then sold. In RE you do NOT own the goods, you are "Just" being paid to transport them for others.

Managing what industries get built on newly available lots when Cities grow past 40k, is normally a challenge when your available cash is already tied up (which it should be, idle cash makes no additional money). Sometimes I will try (it does not always work out) to delay growth in certain Cities past 40k until I have enough cash/bonds to build a desired Industry. A separate problem is that a desired type of Industry, is not yet available to build because there is NO demand for it's produced goods ANYWHERE on the game Map, or because of date available limits. I usually try to get one City to keep growing faster and sooner (a Promoter is ideal if you can hire one) than other Cities to open up new types of industries that can then be built in my other Cities when they grow past 40k at a later date. If you can get the private investors to build the industry you want, GREAT, but often they will build the "wrong" (for your plans) Industry on a new lot. They will usually wait awhile before doing so, giving you a time window in which to act, if you can raise the cash needed.

By the time 3rd Lots open up at 90k populations, you ought to be generating much larger profits so saving to build the Industry should not be much of a problem. By that stage you are probably extending your track network to reach more Cities and types of Resouces not found near your starting area, which makes it possible to feed additional types of Industries than you could earlier.

Playing as the Industrialist can be helpful because it is cheaper for him to build new Industries on newly available lots as well as to upgrade them, but even for him it takes a long time for Industries to pay off their build (or buy) costs. Other characters have different abilities, try them out and see what works best for you on a particular Map and conditions. You will have to build/buy industries eventually in many games, the question is when.

To meet most goals, you need fast growth of your cities. Depending on the goal (or task) you may have to grow particular Cities faster than others, and invest your research points in certain techs over other techs, or even certain industries over others.