Rank Company Personalites

[Mazrim]

Baught this game recently and been playing nonstop since. Anyways, how would you rank the company personalites. Maybe there is benefits I'm not seeing based on my playstyle. Right now this is how I see them.

Amazing Locomotives
Great bonuses, limited drawbacks. The ability to spam trains early is a massive boost to many scenarios, and free maintenance buildings is great also.

Good Ones
Rail construction (Good on maps where you can avoid tunnels/bridgres early, almost no drawbacks in such cases.)
Passenger (Great early game money maker)

Situational Ones

(Industry If you need an early game supply chain for a specific task and can't afford to gamble on cities building theitr own.)

Bad Ones
Auctions (Never played, always another character more suited for the tasks. Science are depended on having an good AI to steal from. )

Freight (This guy sucks, his drawbacks are massive. Think he's a net negative in most cases.)

[kalypso_Lord MK]

That would be actually valuable feedback for us, thank you for starting this threat!

I am looking forward to hear your opinions on each character in terms of balancing. Right now I feel the scientist is very strong.

[Saulius]

My favourite is industrialist. I like to control city and rural industries early, don't need to bother with auctions either. Best suited to my playstyle.
Don't like Doc at all. Been struggling to upgrade industries on time, cos his 70%. Locos prices matter much less than industries done on time.
Lady - passengers just side business for me. No
Tricia - last time I play her on GB&IRL scenario, got just 4 or 5 spies. Not enough to advance in tech tree well. ( May be a bug - industrialist usually got much more ) been spaming unis in mid game and switching later for museums. No
Gangster - didn't play him much. Could be ok for me. I like freight. Will try
General - seems best balanced for new players, to find theirs playstyle, learn basics. He's ok

[rff1]

I usually play as Doc. Love the cheap locos (lots of trains bring lots of cash) and the free maintenance sheds; slower maintenance doesn't seem to make much difference. And when you want to upgrade your factories it's normally later in the game, when the problem is what to spend your millions on. I agree with Lord MK, but please don't nerf this character!
The General - yes, pretty well balanced, my second choice on the basis of "horses for courses".
Not usually a fearsome oppomemt.
Smythe somehow I did not do well with. As an opponent, his most annoying feature is sneaking great long lines in so that he can place second stations in my cities.
Tricia; playing as her didn't suit me. As an opponent her cheap auctions can be a real nuisance, snapping up innovations I'd have liked.
The Don; also didn't suit me, and I hate his ability to head-hunt my newly-acquired Chief Engineer who would have given me more IPs.
Beatrix the battleaxe also didn't suit me. As an opponent, by far her worst feature is her horrible voice, and she, like Smythe, often lays tracks for hundreds of miles into my territory.

[Empty1958]

I go back and forth from Doc and The General. They seem to have a good balance for general play style. Doc helps with engines & maintenance while The General helps track cost. The others seem to have more specific strengths. These could be very helpful depending on how you want to play.

All in all I think most of us can find someone that fits them well. It is nice having the different personalities forcing different game play in a scenario.

[gardlt]

My opinion
Tricia and Doc balance suffers from game focus not being so much on company value. Tricia is +, Doc is -.

Ignoring company value, Tricia does allow early industrialization strategies, and Doc games may suffer supply problems in cities if cash is not plentiful enough to get past more expensive expansion costs. Buying resources early on is generally not a good idea.


Company value focus
Most industrialization is mainly about planning the supply chain. This will help cities grow and therefore primary motive is to serve your rail business.

There are random free mode tasks that show up occasionally, but when choosing a character we have no way of knowing that there will be a company value task in the random selection.


Suggestion
Force inclusion of the company value task somewhere in the list when choosing Doc or Tricia

More extreme option/idea
Give some benefit to company value in the rating of a game, especially in Free Mode



More general remarks
There is a trend of less mail and pax as time goes by. So a 1910 railway depends a lot more on Freight. Whereas an 1830 railway will have express going everywhere.

You can play this two ways. You could balance against this by using Don Lorenzo in 1830 and Beatrix in 1910. Or you can escalate the effect by choosing Beatrix in 1830, she feels over-powered there, and Don Lorenzo in 1910, this is good for revenue but will at the same time come with the trade-off that a potential passenger/mail revenue task is tougher.


Extra idea
Let the player chose/one-time-change character AFTER seeing the random Free Mode task list.

That could help fine-tune your selection for the tasks at hand in every game. . . .

[rff1]

When starting a game, I always make an instant save so that I can examine the task list at leisure. If I don't like the look of it (things like "Make Fargo the largest city", for example) I start again from scratch. But that's because I don't want to struggle, just to have fun.

[Empty1958]

@rff1. I also do the instant game save for the same reason. In general I like the tasks. Sometimes you get that one task that rules the game play taking a lot of the fun out of playing.

[gardlt]

You do know that you can use the Restart button from the Options menu for the same purpose? If you have a save anywhere in a game you can use it from there to start from scratch.

[Bored Peon]

Doc
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Doc has some of the best advantages, cheap locomotives and free maintainance sheds.

To get the best advantage out of Doc you need to be hauling freight, passengers, and mail. with the cost reduction you can deploy more trains faster. It also means later on upgrading trains is greatly reduced price.

You should be placing the maintainance sheds everywhere possible. That will have your trains repair more frequently and they should not break down from bad maintainance.

However Doc also has one of the worst disadvantages, the huge costs to upgrade industries and resource points.

Trixie
----------------------
Really mediocre now now that she lost her cheap locomotive ability. She used to be one of my favorites before the changes.

There is no real benefit anymore except the cheaper auction which can be easily accomplished with an accountant and mediator. Since you kind of have to buy your technology you really do not have a lot of money to spare on auctions anyways.

The hired people she gets just have very little effect. Spies get too expensive and bandits and saboteurs just have such a little effect they aint worth it. On top of that she has no income advantages to to be spending money on them.

Her 40% Innovations points is kind of a drawback that takes a while to pile up and by that point you train tech is pretty far behind. This makes any late game buyouts harder because the competitors have way better trains and have kept up with you.

industrialist
-------------------------

A really strong character because of the backhand deals and cheap industry construction.

With an auctioneer you can literally buy up industries the other competitors own, and it does not use up the auctioneer because no auction took place. A very handy ability to buy one of their factories early game, buy those factories they jam into your towns, and knock down their net worth while gaining profit later.

The General
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Kind of weak character because what you save in tracks you spend on bridges and tunnels. Some maps there is no real way around not making bridges or tunnels.

The cheaper tracks ability is maybe cheaper enough to connect an extra town at the start. Then the ability kinda gets "lost" as the game progresses because you no longer notice the effect.

However the General is good for certain scenarios that have large maps because of the reduced cost of tracks.

Don Lorenzo
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Kind of average character, mostly because the hired underworld employees are not very effective or beneficial just like Trixie.

The freight bonus is really good ability, especially for scenarios that you can can just pound freight trains to a special building (Cattle Drive, Oil exporting, etc.)

The drawback of no office personal is kind of disadvantage that means nothing. The other competitors tend to steal your office personell more often than you can hire them anyways. Plus you can use a headhunter to work around the disadvantage.

Beatrice
-----------------
Her passenger train bonus is really nice as long as you can maintain that express rating. If done properly it makes up for the loss on hauling freight.

You want to hire the advertiser for comfort as often as possible with her and aim for the the tech that improves passengers at statiosn and etc.

[Empty1958]

Originally posted by gardlt:

You do know that you can use the Restart button from the Options menu for the same purpose? If you have a save anywhere in a game you can use it from there to start from scratch.

And I do know that! Which makes me wonder why I do it the way I do it. Sometimes I think my brain goes back to when I 1st started playing with little knowledge of how to play.

[rff1]

Using Restart retains the same task list, so does not help if I have decided that I don't fancy the one I have been given.

[Weefree]

Doc is overpowered in the beginning, alwyas use him if its a time critical early task. Need a nerf maybe? And rather strengthen him for mid/late game, where his skills seems useless.

Otherwise i use the industrialist, as i am a tycoon minded player, He is also strong in industry-heavy scenarios. The buying without competition needs a nerf, maybe a 50% chance for the others to jump in?

the others seems ok, and fairly balanced, but i seldom use them. Ms Pomp is annoying, i tend to buy her out ASAP.

[Saulius]

Originally posted by Saulius Lietuva:

Gangster - didn't play him much. Could be ok for me. I like freight. Will try

Did Cattle drive with gangster.
Good choice for scenarios like this. Did it in 4 years 1.5 month. All marks gold. Have been running full load most trains. Didn't use any small warehouse, any signaled station or wh. For so high traffic control it is much better to use normal stations, dedicated platforms, full load trains.
Could do earlier. I hate to reload earlier saves, I usually accept my mistakes. Reloaded once - in the rush completely forgot to put signals on the track, all trains stuck on it. I've been wondering few month later - why meat factory doesn't has any cattle ;D