The most important thing.

Look deep inside you and ask yourself why do you want to play the game. Once you answer that question then that will determine how you play the game. 

For some people it is to be on the honours list. Just be in the top three players in the round. For others it is to be the best association. For others it would be to win the game which would be to be  and take part in the winning city. The ironic part about this is that Rail Nation does not mention the top cities or the players. This is significant because the game is over when one of the top ten cities delivers all 48 goods. 

What I have realized is that the reason I play this game is because I enjoy it. There are enough problems in life. I want this game to be a distraction. I do not want to go through the forums and see people arguing. I also don't want to see  my hardwork go down the drain. 

I will continue to preach the importance of working together as an association and a city. However sometimes it is absolutely necessary to break away from the city no matter how late. 

Leaving New Cork for Niceview is like being forced to leave a palace that you helped build to moving to a tent. However better it is to sleep in a tent where you are welcomed and served food with love than live in cold walls where even shadows are doused with poison.

I wish the associations in New Cork all the best. Indigo Rainbows have moved to Niceview. I do not know if Niceview will make it into the top 10. I hope so. It would be interesting to see where New Cork ends up. Can one association change the fate of cities? Don't be surprised if you see a post titled "A Tale of Two Cities" soon. Always remember that winning is good but happiness is what counts.

The final push

Sometimes things are just not in your control. We came pretty close to gaining a level quite a few times today. However each and every time we came just short. It is at these times you realize the extent you can do by yourself. You can boost your trains with gold. You can repair your trains to 100%. You can switch over trains to other goods. You can invest in an industry but if other people are not doing the similar thing at the same time then it will be to no avail. It is at these times you realize how inept some people are. Associations taking over industries which they have no business going near to. People supplying goods that they should not be running. Some individuals messing up the occupancy rate by running required goods too early. How hard is it to read the city or association forums? Sometimes you feel like giving people a nice shake. Ofcourse most of them are too ignorant and adamant to accept that they are wrong but at least there is hope because some people are willing to learn and change.

I do not think there is a pure perfect strategy. However once a strategy is decided then stick to it until there is a need to change things. 

On another note interesting times are coming ahead. In one server we are going for an 8 association model and on another a 3 association model. Different tactics. Will one work and the other not? If both works then was there a difference in the cities? More on that later.

New Strategy?

Rail Nation has grown as a game at a very fast rate. Now these have created some interesting problems. The maximum number of people in an association is 25. The old model depended on having four associations with each one dedicated to one resource and they would help around with other resources to either give a big push on the beginning or at times if the good is lagging behind. 

A top association can get to level 25 headquarters by era 4 or 5. Lately we have seen about 150 people in a city by era 2. Some of these people may only be connected to the city. Even with that you will need more than four associations to accommodate the people on the city.

The simplest solution would be to suggest to the developers of the game to make the number of goods to either six or eight goods or some other changes relating to associations. There is no fun in that. Rail Nation is a strategy game and the 

The magic number to remember is 48. This is the number of goods that needs to be delivered to win the game. If this is right then I believe that we need to have associations that when divided gives you a whole number. This would be two,four, six, eight, twelve, sixteen and twenty four. At this stage two and four are too small to work with. For the time being I think that six or eight is good. If it is six associations then the two strongest gets one good each. The other four associations are split into two groups and friend each other. They alternate between being the main supplier of the Required Good. The eight association system would work in a similar way. 

Theoretically this should work and be more efficient than having five associations where one association sits out one round and concentrates on either making profit or boosting goods that are low. I will see if I can convince the cities in I play in to try this out. If it does then I will have an update. If it doesn't then we can rule out two strategies that don't work.

End Game

I still have not been able to analyze what happened during the end game properly. However it was one of the most thrilling and invigorating experience that I have had recently.  So at the mega city stage the ranking was as below.

The final stage was as below

Two interesting things to note here. The first is that Sandport and Maybury who were in the first two at the city stage ended up being the first and second at the mega city stage. However the main thing is Sandport was about 50% faster than Maybury. That to me is a huge difference.
The next surprising thing was the performance of Liberty. They dropped from 3rd to 7th. From what we discussed during the game; the main reason for Liberty's bad performance was that they tried to deliver many goods based on the majority that an association had rather than delivering one good at a time.
I was in Rocksdale. Considering that we were in 6th place I think we did really well to get to the 4th place. We started out well. Then in between we fell to 7th place and then finally ended up at the 4th place due to the sheer determination of the people in Rocksdale. Personally I think we could have done better. The main people calling the shots was in a non European Time zone. So when the people in Europe got up then we started delivering different goods and could not decide on what good to deliver. This lost us a lot of time. It increased the occupancy rate of quite a few goods and it costs us a hell lot of money. End game wagons are not cheap. The number of wagons per train is also high. I had quite a few of my trains running idle because I just did not have the money to buy the wagons. Possibly having two people from a European time zone and two people in a Non European calling the shots would help a lot.
We have started in Rocksdale again. The core of Rocksdale is back and we have learnt from our mistakes. I am looking forward to playing the end game in Rocksdale again but before that I will hit the end game in Smoke Chamber.
Finally I have to thank the people who helped me learn along the way specially the people at Short Line.

Competitions

Every six hours there is a competition. These require you deliver a certain number of goods in a specified period of time. The time given is very generous especially at the initial stages. There are also city competitions where the top 10 cities as determined by a formula and not by the official ranking is split into two groups of five. I will deal with this topic later.

In terms of the daily competitions, there is a newbie quest given by William L. Smith to complete five competitions. The faster you do this the better it will be. There are also two categories of medals. One has to do with the number of completions won and the other with the number of competitions completed. You can focus on competitions to get these medals but this is not something I do. My approach is to mainly take part in competitions where the goods demanded are required by the city. There is nothing wrong in taking part in other competitions too but you may get a lot of flak from the people in your city. The bottom line is that you take part in competitions as long as it does not hinder the growth of your city and you are not being too selfish. A classic example of being selfish is to take part and win a competition that gives a bonus train. You will get the money equivalent of the train which is peanuts and it would be more beneficial to another person and your city if you do not win. Sometimes it is better to sacrifice prizes and competitions for the greater good.

New era strategy

We started a new era on another server and I found the strategy being used very interesting. We intentionally did not level our goods in the previous era. However as soon as the era started we pushed the required goods and ended up raising our city level twice in a day! 

The normal strategy I have seen is that there our four main associations. The association that loses a good gets the new good. This would be the perfect strategy in an ideal server where each and every member of the four associations are equally active and are able to grow at the same rate. In other words it is rail nation utopia. The truth is that usually at least one association will not be upto scratch. So the solution would be for the top association to either take on the new goods or help with them or at least help with the new goods. Taking on a new good by a stronger association is a very good idea especially if the smaller association has not researched coupling. More on coupling later. In the meantime keep on chugging.

The dawn of a new era.

We are at a dawn of a new era in Steam Boiler. From Diesel Engines we move to Electric Engines. In less than 24 hours I have to get as much money as possible and get my research points completely full so that I will be able to progress as much as possible in the initial period. If a sufficient number of us are able to do it then Rocksdale should get a decent enough push. We have grown the city by one more level. This is always a nice thing to achieve just before an era ends. Have ends associated with beginnings is a normal progress of life. Rocksdale will provide a good challenge by the time we get to the megacity stage.
I love things in Smoke Chamber. However I seem to be steadily falling in rankings. I may have to reassess my strategy there. That being said; our association and city (New Cork) top the rankings. However 8 days out of possibly 90 days is a very short time to get cocky about our dominance.
The less said about Westhill the better it is. I cannot wait for Coal Box to come to an end. Things are just not being run smoothly there. It just shows how important the leaders of an association are and even more so why leaders of the four major associations should get along well.
So I continue to sit on my chair and survey my empire in Rail Nation and continue to sing Rock Island Line.