[Spring 2013 PP] Birth of an Empire Scenario Template

[kamnet]

Allow me to introduce to you my first-ever scenario, Birth of an Empire.

Birth of an Empire is staged in the year 1860. You, and possibly other entrepreneurs, will be bringing modern progress to a vast area which has largely missed out on the first stage Industrial Revolution, but is now ready to enter into the second stage. You find that nearly all of the towns are small and rural, and only a few urban centers of between 1000 and 2000 people. The economy is largely driven by agriculture. This land has vast untapped resources, though. Fertile farmlands and vast reserves of oil, coal, iron and timber await to be reaped. Accessing these reserves will not be an easy task for you, however. The landscape is wide and challenging, with coastlines, plains, mountains and valleys. A crude network of roads connects some, but not all, of the towns in the land, and most of the discovered reserves are not connected at all. You will have to carefully invest in infrastructure and slowly grow and improve your infrastructure in order to reap the bounty. There are only a few secondary industries for processing food, and there is no heavy industry infrastructure at all. Rest assured, though, that there is so much available that once you are able to reach it, you could see potential profits for centuries! Watch your wealth accumulate, or start investing it back into the lands and transform this poor, rural area into the model nation of the future!

Version 1, released June 19, 2014

This update (noted by date) includes replacing North American Roads v1.1 with v1.0, which is functionally equivalent, and replacing the Windows version of North American Building Set with the DOS version. Links to these two files are now included.

This is a semi-finished scenario template. By that, I mean that before you can play the scenario you will need to customize it in the scenario editor. Some basic NewGRFs are included in order to set the economy and infrastructure. It is not advised to remove these NewGRFs or else the game may become permanently corrupted!. However, no NewGRFs have been selected for any types of vehicles, NewObjects, Game Scripts or other enhancements. You will need to provide these in order to turn this into your own unique gaming experience.

REQUIRED OPENTTD VERSION: This scenario is only compatible with the Spring 2013 Patch Pack version 2.1.143 or newer in order to take advantage of the many features available in this patch pack. You will also need to enable the scenario editor. Please see the noted previous and continual warnings regarding changing NewGRFs.

• REQUIRED NEWGRFS
• FIRS Industry Replacement Set 1.3.0
• Early House 2.0 beta r707
• Polish Building Set v4
• Swedish Houses Set v1.1.1
• NLHS Dutch Houses v0.1.01
• Real Arcade Town Set v0.2
• w2w (wall to wall) building set
• UK Town Set v2.2
• Town and Industry - UK Houses
• North American Building Set (DOS version)
• Urban Renewal Set beta2
• US Town Names 1.0

• OPTIONAL NEWGRFS
• OpenGFX+ Trees v0.8.0
• OpenGFX+ Landscape v1.0.1
• North American Roads v1.0 (DOS version)

Required NewGRFs should not be removed. Older or newer versions of these sets may be substituted if OpenTTD recognizes them as compatible NewGRFs. Optional NewGRFs were included for aesthetic purposes and can likely be removed or replaced without causing a corruption in the scenario. Adding new NewGRFs should not present any issues, however CHANGING OR REMOVING NEWGRFS MAY CREATE A PERMANENTLY CORRUPTED GAME! It is advised that you be very selective in which NewGRFs you choose to add. Adding vehicle NewGRFs (trains, planes, road vehicles and ships) may alter the economy of purchasing and selling vehicles, and removing them may not reset the default settings. I intentionally chose an early start date of 1860 in order to take advantage of NewGRF sets which have early vehicles. However, feel free to include the NewGRFs you want and change the date if necessary.

All of these NewGRFs should be available either via the in-game content download system (BaNaNas), via GRFCrawler, or otherwise found on tt-forums. If you cannot locate one, however, please do not post here, instead send me a PM. I will help you locate the missing file and then update the post here with a link.

This scenario is being released completely untested. After working on it for months, it has reached a point where I am ready to put it out there and see what people think. I mostly created it just to see how nice of a sandbox landscape I can create. I have no idea if this will be too difficult to master, maybe I don't have enough infrastructure to make it possible to be competitive, maybe it's too easy at this point, maybe I need to add some NewGRFs. I just don't know what will happen, but we shall find out, won't we?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Historical Releases & Changelog
Version 1 - Released June 18, 2014

[Yoshi]

and it should be compatible with all previous versions in the 2.0 release.

Sadly not
v2.0.103: "was created with newer version"

[kamnet]

and it should be compatible with all previous versions in the 2.0 release.

Sadly not v2.0.103: "was created with newer version"

DOH! *facepalm* I should have known this. This always happens when I'm posting in early morning after being up all night. Duly noted in the first post. I'm sure I've screwed something else up too.

You should upgrade, Yoshi!!

[kamnet]

THIS IS NOT THE NEWEST RELEASE. PLEASE SEE FIRST POST FOR NEWEST RELEASE. POSTED FOR HISTORICAL PURPOSES ONLY
PLEASE ONLY REPLY DIRECTLY TO THIS POST IF YOU NEED ASSISTANCE WITH THIS VERSION (otherwise the subject won't be correct)

Version 1, released June 18, 2014

This is a semi-finished scenario template. By that, I mean that before you can play the scenario you will need to customize it in the scenario editor. Some basic NewGRFs are included in order to set the economy and infrastructure. It is not advised to remove these NewGRFs or else the game may become permanently corrupted!. However, no NewGRFs have been selected for any types of vehicles, NewObjects, Game Scripts or other enhancements. You will need to provide these in order to turn this into your own unique gaming experience.

REQUIRED OPENTTD VERSION: This scenario is only compatible with the Spring 2013 Patch Pack version 2.1.143 or newer in order to take advantage of the many features available in this patch pack.

REQUIRED NEWGRFS
FIRS Industry Replacement Set 1.3.0
Early House 2.0 beta r707
Polish Building Set v4
Swedish Houses Set v1.1.1
NLHS Dutch Houses v0.1.01
Real Arcade Town Set v0.2
w2w (wall to wall) building set
UK Town Set v2.2
Town and Industry - UK Houses
North American Building Set
Urban Renewal Set beta2
US Town Names 1.0


OPTIONAL NEWGRFS
OpenGFX+ Trees v0.8.0
OpenGFX+ Landscape v1.0.1
North American Roads v1.1


Required NewGRFs should not be removed. Older or newer versions of these sets may be substituted if OpenTTD recognizes them as compatible NewGRFs. Optional NewGRFs were included for aesthetic purposes and can likely be removed or replaced without causing a corruption in the scenario. Adding new NewGRFs should not present any issues, however CHANGING OR REMOVING NEWGRFS MAY CREATE A PERMANENTLY CORRUPTED GAME! It is advised that you be very selective in which NewGRFs you choose to add. Adding vehicle NewGRFs (trains, planes, road vehicles and ships) may alter the economy of purchasing and selling vehicles, and removing them may not reset the default settings. I intentionally chose an early start date of 1860 in order to take advantage of NewGRF sets which have early vehicles. However, feel free to include the NewGRFs you want and change the date if necessary.

[Yoshi]

I have them all, but i liked to test your statement

No, I just had a shortcut to this version on my desktop...

[Yoshi]

I just looked onto it.

And i love it

I want more

[Comm Cody]

Can we see pictures?

And where can you find the Spring 2013 PP?

[kamnet]

First post updated with link to Spring Patch Pack 2013 development topic.

A few screenshots, not that it lets you see a whole lot, unfortunately. This is a 2048x2048 map with 60 height levels. Forget trying to get a shot of the whole map, it's just too big.

[kamnet]

After spending the last several hours playing, so far I think I'm impressed with my work. It most certainly is daunting to start out with. I selected my NewGRFs I wanted to expand with and went off to play. Based on my choices and style of play, I eventually found some success with a couple of ship routes transporting mail and passengers, and eventually found a couple of towns where I could string together a profitable service of transporting mail and passengers by horse & buggy. After a year and a half I had enough saved up to go all-in on a pax/mail rail line, and it quickly started turning a profit. After recooping my investment, I found another line to fund, had that profiting by the end of year two. I then expanded that route with a second train that dealt with grain, goods and livestock at stations between my initial two, and it's also going well. In a three year period I was able to build four successful ship lines, three successful pax/mail horse & buggy lines, two successful rail routes, pay off my $200,000 loan and turn $1m profit. That may be in part to me running DayLength at my preferred 31 days, and possibly abusing a known issue with profits not being divided correctly. I'm not complaining, it took some effort to figure out how to make profit to begin with!

So my next plan is to start building up cash and expanding and improving the routes I already have. As most of these towns are small, I'm going to have to invest in the industries around them in order to get them growing.

[Comm Cody]

I cannot find the NLHS Dutch Houses v0.1.01 set anywhere.

Also, what is it that you need to type into console in order to change grfs back and forth?

[Yoshi]

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... 0#p1093132

[Comm Cody]

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... 0#p1093132

I could hug you right now.

Thank you very much.

[kamnet]

Also, what is it that you need to type into console in order to change grfs back and forth?

See here: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=939635#p939635

Forum info has been updated.

[kamnet]

A few more screenshots from my personal game: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... 5#p1124495

[kamnet]

So after 52 weeks and a few downloads, any feedback? I've had a lot of fun playing 12 years into the game, I think I'm ready to make some improvements.

I may consider placing a few more secondary industries to help things get started, but to be honest once I found a few profitable routes it wasn't long until I had the money to fund my own industries anyhow.

I would also like to re-think rivers. I'd love to see them play a more prominent role in transportation.

[kamnet]

After playing this game for nearly 25 in-game years, I think I may have simply placed too many farms. I've not even gotten into heavy industries, just farms, but in 25 years I amassed over $525 million in revenue, after laying out a lot of expenditure on tracks (and then double-tracking most of that) and connecting about 1/4 of the map via rail and frivolously spending hundreds of millions of dollars building/changing station layouts, upgrading engines, and doing all sorts of eyecandy things.

That doesn't mean that this hasn't been a challenging scenario for me. Ignoring the fact that I'm flushed with cash after about a decade in, I've been mindful to not rip through the landscape and build track, rather I try to build it with the contour of the landscape, doing only minimal terraforming, and expanding to full double-tracked lines only when it's become clear that passing junctions are no longer capable of keeping up with demand. Another huge challenge is with dealing with the many, many small towns on the map. I learned early on that simply running through their zones was an easy way to tick off town councils, even if you built a station there and tried to service it frequently. Best course of action became to simply route around it, and then start with a small road station that was serviced frequently. If you could maintain a "Good" or "Very Good" rating, then you could start with a train station on the edge of the zone and either work your way in, or help the town expand until your station was inside its boundaries, by which time you should have an "Excellent" or "Outstanding" rating and build the town from a few dozen residents to several hundred or more. I imagine this could be even more difficult if you changed their attitude from permissive to pessimistic in advanced settings.

Unfortunately, I don't think this map is going to allow me to do anything meaningful with rivers. The wider lake bodies and the water around the edge of the map makes for good play, but the inland terrain is just far too hilly and I haven't found any easy or good ways to try to connect towns via waterways. I may have to take a crack at another map for that.

With 73 downloads, has anybody else given this a shot? I'd love to hear your feedback.

[te_lanus]

I recently downloaded it and it's good. But with my playing style I become bankrupt quite often

[kamnet]

What is your playing style, where were you encountering issues?

[te_lanus]

What is your playing style, where were you encountering issues?

I normally start by connecting big towns (and intown, for big towns) as a public transport. Then I'll connect the big towns with smaller towns (mostly with buses to begin with, but it depends of the size of the town and if their is enough townns to justify a train). Cargo distubution only happens later in the game

What I've found there isn't enough big towns to get this strategy working

[kamnet]

This is true, there's not enough, and what is there is a pretty long distance, and what large population towns there are, there really are just big enough to barely support that.

I started off by connecting two towns of 600+ population with a ferry service that turned around a small but stable profit. I used that to fund a second ferry service between two towns of 1000 and a middle town of 300. I then bought my first train to connect a town of 1000 with a town of 500, which also had a lot of farms and a mill, and I started a food production chain. That started the money rolling, and within a few years I had all of my loans paid off. With that I connected the second and third 1000 population towns and started shipping them both food.

Within several years I had three towns with populations over 1500, and currently 30 years into the game they're all now over 5000 population and shipping a lot of passengers to and from, I never have empty trains.