Best way to make money / fullfill demand?

[Darkreaver1980]

I wonder how to make money in the most effecient way. Should i use 1 train per 2 stations or use 1 train and have the train travel throught 3-8 stations in a row? Should i send a train between every 2 station or is it better to use a warehouse and ship it all in one location and distribute it from there? what is your experience?

[Ser_Bunnylot]

For low demand goods that are required by the population and not by industries (like vegies, meat, clothes, etc) shipping to a warehouse and distributing to two to three cities is fine. Just keep adding trains as long as they're always hauling the max amount of wagons.

For production goods you need a steady flow of goods so warehouses aren't the best here. Most of the time two trains is fine. Sometimes you can do with three. Remember to check for upgrades or upgrade the businesses yourself and then add more trains. So this would be raw materials like cattle to a meat factory. In my current game I have four trains supplying my level 3 meat factory.

For express goods. I'm still experimenting, but it seems like you should have seperate, dedicated tracks going directly to other cities. One train is fine between cities size 3 and smaller.

I would definitely keep most trains to two stations. Unless you've got some kind of circular track system. If it's just back and forth I'd keep it simple. Demand is steady and constant in this game so you don't need to worry about oversupply. It's not that easy to screw up :)

Between small cities you can run mixed cargo trains.

[Pex_-HUN-_]

Warehouse could be very good, I believe that you can easily overcome to competitors. However at moment, as the game logic sux, as it cannot handle tracks autoselecting on stations, it would be a massive pain in the butt to manually tweak all of your trains.
Hopefully they fixing this logic with an upcoming patch.

For my experience, I get money more quicker if I get a large station in city, then get its demand with multiple trains from both side. In this case you can set up trains more easily as you would run them through 3-4 cities/stations and tweak their plan.

Also as I see, building/buying businesses early on in the game could critical later on when competitors occupying all other cities on the map. Also buying strongest AI's share for getting money, then start to buying out the most weakest AI for merging. That's my strategy.

Hope this help, good gaming!

[Dray Prescot]

When you are trying to grow fairly small cities one source produces too much for one city, so you might have it delivering to a 2nd city on the other side of the first city using a 2nd train that does not stop at the first city or uses manual load orders to keep the first city from grabbing everything before it can get to the 2nd city. Also resource/production/farming sites are scattered enough that they will have to supply several cities.

To use a simple example from Chapter 1: the Wood and grain North of Cheyenne can be used to supply both Cheyenne and Denver, while the Cattle and Sugar plus Corn and Cotton to the east and south of Denver could also be used to supply both cities (Denver and Cheyenne). This will include 3 Factories: Brewery in Cheyenne, Meat Packing in Denver, and a Weaver in either city (although Denver is closer) when the cities grow enough to demand Cloth (and allow a 2nd Factory to be built at 40,000 population). The other 2nd Factory site (in Cheyenne normally) could be used for a Dairy (Cheese) or a Wood working factory after continued growth creates demand for Cheese or the output from the wood working factory. A Source of Milk would need to be connected for the cheese factory, as well as Milk itself for the two cities's populations. This will get both cities up to abour 60,000 population each. There wil also be demand for vegetables and fruit not too far way. Clothing will have to wait for a 3rd factory site to open in either city (at 90,000 population), or maybe Rock Springs or North Platte could be used for Clothing production, in a 2nd factory site from either city.

North Platte is far enough away that it's needs/demands will be handled separately from Denver and Cheyenne, perhaps grouped together with Norfolk.

In practice, Chapter 1 will be finished well before you reach this stage, by delivering the passengers to Rock Springs to satisfy the the last task. But the game could be continued if you want.