Strategy for All Coal Routes (all black routes in standard USA)

With a little luck and a lot of bot manipulation, here is how to beat the All Coal Routes achievement for the USA standard map. This approach involves a five-player game.

What does NOT Work (1v1 strats)

Here is what did NOT work:

1v1 matches against C. Huntingbot.
1v1 matches against Marg Loughbot
(don't even try Jane or Vanderbolt because their AIs like to end the game early)

I played this to the end or midpoint of a game around four dozen times.

Why this did NOT work:

Huntingbot and Loughbot have different behavior patterns, but essentially what I was trying to do was study their behavior and then predict which routes they had uncovered based on the tracks they started taking. I would collect black cards and wild card locomotives to try to get all the coal routes while simultaenously either completely blocking the bot from getting to a desination city, or making their path very long.

99% of the time, the game would end before I could complete my routes. It doesn't matter how much blocking you do, eventually they will end the game before you get your coal routes down. One time I did complete all my routes, AND blocked the bot from completing theirs, but they still scored more points than me.

I just don't think the 1v1 attempt is consistent enough. I consistently got much closer to winning, and eventually did win, with the 5-player strat discussed below.

What DOES Work

Here is what DID work:

1 versus 4 (the max #) of Marg Loughbots. This only took me about two dozen tries.

The key to this strategy is to get all of the destination cards drawn. Each Marg Loughbot will end up with 5-7 destination cards, most of which they cannot possibly complete. Their scores will be very low or negative. You, however, will not pick up any extra destination cards, and will end the game with 50+ points.

This strategy is thus centered on manipulating the AI to draw the destination cards, and of course, luck.

Early Game

1. Cycle through games until you can get some low-value destination cards at the start. You have to keep two out of the three. You don't need the absolute lowest, but you'll want like an 8 and a 7 or lower. You will not be completing these routes.

2. DO NOT LAY DOWN TRACKS. This is counter-intuitive, but it is for a reason. You want to exhaust the railcar draw pile as soon as possible.

This is different from some other commentary I read online. I experimented with playing routes versus just collecting and stockpiling cars and playing a little, only the coal routes. I lost the games where I played routes. It defeats my strategy's focus of forcing the bots to take more destination cards.

3. Pick up coal railcars from the face-up pile when it's your turn to draw :).

4. If there are no coal railcars, ALWAYS draw from the deck (or pickup another card from face-up). Don't waste your turn by taking only one wild card locomotive if one is showing in the face-up pile. The key is to get everyone maxed as soon as possible. If you draw the wild card locomotives from the face-up pile, you are not getting to the end of the draw pile quickly enough.

Mid Game

5. MONITOR the bots to see if any of them are picking up coal railcars from the face-up pile before your turn to draw. IF they are taking coal cards, and you can predict which route they are going to take, violate step #2 to take that specific route, but play nothing further. The game I beat the achievement on, I had to do take the Chicago to Pittsburgh route early on. Sometimes you will just get screwed here and lose. Restart. Best case scenario is that the bots ignore coal cards, or if they do take them, uses coal on a grey route.

6. AS YOU CONTINUE TO DRAW AND NOT PLAY TRACKS, you WILL get to the end of the draw pile. Marg Loughbots will make some plays, but as you are hording a lot of valuable railcars, they won't be able to make the plays they want and will stop laying tracks. You'll all draw out the draw pile.

End Game

7. When the draw pile starts to run dry, there is a good chance only wilds will be left. At this point, you can take the wilds. Marg Lougbots will curiously ignore the wilds and begin drawing from the destination cards (muahahhaa).

8. As long as they cannot draw non-wild cards, the bots will usually draw from the destination pile until it is dry. They won't play tracks since you are hording many cards. You therefore want to continue to not play tracks, if possible (you can see this behavior in action towards the end of the demo below).

At some point though, you will have to play, because you will never draw from the destination pile, and the railcar stock will be depleted, and laying track is your only move. I recommend actually not playing coal routes, because then the bots will take your coal cards, which (i) risks they will play a coal route and (ii) deprives you of access to the cards. You'll want to instead play a non-coal route, usually short to to force the bots to keep drawing from the destination pile. This will start freeing up cards the bots have been waiting for. They will take them from the discard and start playing again.

• Once the railcar draw pile gets 8 or 9 deep, only then should you start freely playing your coal routes, because the risk of the bots taking up coal cars and then stealing your routes is less.
  
  
• Note: don't go overboard with playing non-coal routes. You only have 45 railcars to work with. If you play more than I would say 7 or 8 tracks at this stage, you're probably playing wrong.

9. AT THIS END-GAME STAGE, PLAY THE LONGEST COAL ROUTES FIRST.

This is very important, because there is a fair chance you will lose the black cards forever (if the bots draw them, they will sit as dead cards in the bots' hands), and you'll only be able to complete coal routes with wild card locomotives (the bots ignore face-up wilds for the most part, so you'll have these at least). The bots are also likelier to target longer routes at this stage given the hording of cards, so you have to protect them.

Ideally, you'll get the 6 and 5 out of the way using coal + wild card locomotives. You can also mess with the bots/deter them from coal routes by playing a wild card locomotive even if you have enough coal cards. That is, e.g. if you take LA to El Paso (the 6 route), click and drag from your wild card locomotive cards--you'll use 1 wild and 5 coals, rather than 6 coals. Remember, to you, a wild and a coal are the same value, but if the bots draw that wild from the pile, bots will likely use the wild on something other than coal routes.

This leaves the 4s, 3s, and the 2. Use your best judgment on which order to take these based on how you read the bot movements. Washington D.C. is an unimportant city in this version so you can almost assuredly save the 2 for last.

You will need luck here, because after you play a few routes, you'll then need to redraw either coal cards or wild card locomotives to get the last routes, and your recently-discarded coal cards are likely to stay buried in the draw pile or as dead cards in the bots' hands. Unless you are counting cards closely and know the face-down deck contains a disproportionate number of reshuffled wild card locomotives, here it is better to take 1 wild from the face-up pile if it is available You will have time; the game will not end before you get your last coal routes down.

10. Be patient about collecting the last wilds to finish your last tracks and don't panic. Just pray that a bot doesn't sneak in and take a shorter coal route. I never lost from the game ending too soon. I lost from either a bot stealing one of my routes at the very end =(, or one time I just got really unlucky and one of the bots completed 3 of 6 routes + got longest rail and that was more points than I had.

Playthrough Demo

This is my first attempt (no joke) to recreate the win after writing out the guide. I started recording midway. Up to the start point in the video, I have only drawn cards and played the Chicago-Pittsburgh route because one of the bots took the orange route and I was nervous about leaving the other one open.

I chose to play the longer routes in this order:

1) Denver - KC, because the orange route was taken and I was nervous about red or purple. Both seemed like they might want it, and red had taken a coal card earlier than anyone else.

2) Montreal - Sault St. Marie because nervous about red.

3) El Paso - LA, the last big route. In hindsight, maybe I should have taken this sooner. Yellow plays Winnipeg - Sault St. Marie with coal railcars later, indicating they might have been saving up for El Paso - LA and I lucked out.

The end game cut a little closer than I would like, but I still finished with only 3 railcars remaining.


Note: you can see the wildcard shuffle. Normally, if three wilds come face-up, the game we shuffle them out. But if it comes out like this three times in a row, it will leave them be. This will happen a lot at the end of the game when it's mostly wilds. Just be patient.

[Arkhyel]

This was the only achievement I don't have on USA map (expect 15 punched), now I have it. Thanks. It took about 10 games for me.

[RightMinister]

Thank you for the guide, it worked like a charm.

[Jaenyal]

I've just got this achievement! Thank you so much! Without your guide, I would never have earned it

[klinta.mantina]

wow! thanks for this. I'd gotten till the fact that this is the best bot and started to work on the right order of the card picking. Then I read this and it worked with 2nd try even though the 2 routes I took were 9s!

[Chillax Toto Aclashthelionfan]

What the hell is that sharp noise at 4:52 =)), I jumped out of my chair. Also great work with the guide :D

[Caybar]

Thank you. A bit of luck required, but I was able to get it keeping in mind the strategies from your guide.

[Sstavix]

This is a fantastic strategy. By forcing the computer to draw routes they couldn't possibly complete, I've been able to snag "Old Movies" and "Trestle," too. I'm going to see if it works for "Poker Player" as well. Thank you for coming up with it!

[Saglyr]

Got it on my first try!
Thank you!

[MustangTuba]

Just used this same strategy to do "Old Movies" (all grey) and it worked on the first try!

[MustangTuba]

Got it on my fourth try! Thanx!!