Anyone tried getting Train Fever achievement on Hard ?

[jamesaaa]

Hi all

Can anyone suggest a winning strategy of achieving the Train Fever goal on Hard difficulty ?

I tried starting with trains that take the supply to the factory and the distribute the goods to the cities – bankrupt in 5 years

I  then tried doing passenger transportation – created a hub in the middle which was connected to 4 outer cities – bankrupt in 13 years

suggestions?

 

thanks, James

• This topic was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by jamesaaa.

[Pasi]

Forget goods to begin with, focus only on passengers.

Build longer lines a-b-c-d-c-b and back to a instead of short lines to minimize the waiting times for the passengers.

Play on the big map.

Pay attention to track laying to make it as cheaply as possible.

Don’t hesitate to use full 10 mil loan on building your network.

Aim for 4 minute frequency

That should get you started. Good luck 🙂

[SanditeChief]

Why are you playing it on hard? You only need easy difficulty to get the Train Fever achievement. I just got it last night on easy. It’s way faster to play on easy.

[Greno Zee]

This is not a direct answer to the OP’s question but I still believe a very relevant one:

I did start a Hard Game with the intention to collect as many achievements as possibly (some are obtainable only in hard). I started by road-transporting existing goods chains. That was a very good strategy. Later I felt like adding passenger trains but that didn’t work very well. Even though my trains run constantly full, once the starter locos are gone the costs are too high to get me some profit.

Unfortunately, once 1990 stroke, all was lost. The horse car becomes unavailable but I don’t have enough money to replace all of my 300 road vehicles. as a result, lines get mixed vehicle usage and because of some fundamental game logic is broken (in this case the ability for faster vehicles to pass slower ones), the trucks stack up behind the still unreplaced horse wagons, causing all of my delivery chance to collapse and promptly throttling my company towards bankruptcy…

[montericogaming]

Hard was no joke. You have to make sure to adapt to the changes such as when cars join in. If it makes money keep it. Pay off loans ASAP. Make money and a good buffer early on to struggle to the finish line. I have a full video series in Hard Mode. Hope it helps. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2NZzDrzXcUvg-mFbD4qQyfRIZEjXjGCw

[gcampono]

I only find it interesting to play on hard difficulty and usually aim for 1 billion before year 2000.To make things not too hard I typically play on somewhat flat maps, and medium because of game performance issues.

The main difficulty is expanding at the beginning: different strategies can be employed and I’m unsure which one is the best. I often start in this way:

1a) connect cities with busses (busses are quicker to set up and get things going and promote city growth than train).

1b) connect  a few industries that are well placed.  Pay attention that well placed does not mean close (!) but instead the farther they are within the the 20 minutes limit. I always aim first at steel mills because they have two imputs rather than one. Somewhat Surprisingly raw materials seem to be more profitable than finished goods.

2a) when cash is somewhat stable, replace some bus lines with train lines. I typically try to build lines that connect more cities (A-B-C-D-C-B-A) so that my passengers can travel farther (revenues increase with distance) and try to build lines as straight as I can (revenues are calculated by euclidean distance I think, so the most efficient lines are the most efficient). I also build station near the residential area (green). I put 2-3 trains per line to allow a short enough frequency (typically 4-6 minutes) to allow passengers to go farther within the 20 minutes limit.

2b) it is important that you build a good intracity transport system to feed your train lines. I often build two circular lines going through all districts in the two direction and put enough busses or trams to get 1-2 minutes frequency. Straight lines also appear to be working, and maybe even better. In this case I try to build one line going from some district to residential/station to other district and back (e.g. industry –> commercial –> residential/station –> leisure –> residential/station –> commercial –> industry).

With time the costs of the new models is increasing, but so is their capacity, speed and power…

3a) I tend to reduce the number of busses/trams in cities. I also tend to rearrange the stops and make them more distant so as to not slow busses/tram too much. These lines typically lose money but they are compensated by huge profits on train lines.

3b) With faster transport it is important to make your lines longer (but not competing between themselves) to profit from faster transport over longer distances within the 20 minutes. Here it may be useful to find some far away raw material imputs that can be connected to an industry that can be connected to several cities to increase demand and thus allow long and long-distance cargo trains. If they are somewhat straight I may connect iron to coal to steel mill on the same line and put two trains with both types of waggons. Generally with cargo I tend not to put too many trains and instead aim for longer trains.

This strategy generally works, but it is not optimal. Last time I played American DLC and got around 700 millions before year 2000. I think I expanded too slowly in the beginning and did not profit for city growh as I had only separate passenger lines connecting 4-5 cities, but not connecting linges among them.

[gcampono]

In that way, I made small profits for the first 30 years or so, then started to make rising profits and was over 20 millions per year in the ending game.

If I have the time to make another run, I would probably start earlier with trains and don’t bother with intercity busses. I may also try a more aggressive expansion and connect more cities: even though more lines could cannibalize revenues and create more possibilites for shorter routes, they should also foster a larger growth which I hope could balance the less efficiency on concurrent lines.

Could anyone else share his strategies ?

 

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