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Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Welcome to the 18XX thread, where potentially crazy grognards talk about the merit of crushing someone's soul by dumping failing companies on them after buying crap trains and stripping them of treasury money/assets.



18XX games are stock games not so cunningly disguised as railroad games. Although there are some that focus on the actual railway building aspect, most of them require you to be a complete bastard capitalist and try to make as much money as possible at the expense of other people, through manipulating the market (insider trading has never been so much fun!), causing other people's trains to rust by buying new ones, closing their routes by taking key stations and much more!

I was hit in the head when I was young, I'm interested in trying!

Good! First of all, some history. 18XX games started with the venerable 1829, which no one really plays anymore because it's grossly unbalanced and takes too long to play. Fortunately, 1829 laid the groundwork for the 18XX and now we are literally swamped with so many different titles that it's difficult to keep track of them.

Generally, there are two schools of 18XX games. The 1829 school usually focuses on being a good railroad manager rather than a financier: usually the person with the best developed routes is the one that is going to win. You don't usually want to dump your companies since they can have a good potential throughout the game. Usually these kind of games use partial capitalization.

The other school is the 1830 school, which instead focuses on being a financier, manipulating the stock-market and also the famous dumping of companies and bankruptcies. Usually they have full capitilization.



Full/partial capitilization?! I don't understand

Without going too much into detail, they are different ways that the companies get financed. Full capitalization means that you (or other people) need to buy a pre-determined amount of shares (usually 50-60% of the shares) from the bank and then the company gets 100% worth of the shares in cash within it's treasury. It's usually very hard to give the company extra money, which means that it's easy for companies to fail if they aren't managed well.

Partial capitalization means that the company itself owns the shares, so anyone buying the shares gives money directly to the company. As well as that, a company can get started (floats) as soon as the first share is sold, instead of waiting until 50-60% of the shares are sold. Any shares left in the company also allow the company to pay dividends to itself.

I don't understand half the terms you mentioned above

I will provide a glossary of common terms in the second post. Although it might be a bit daunting to understand before playing your first game, the terms start to make sense once you actually get down and play.

Okay, so where do I get started

It's easier to say what to miss out than what is the easiest to play, but I'll suggest where I started: -1846. This game is based around the great lakes/Chicago area and centers around building a successful company rather than market shenanigans, which can be difficult for a newbie. I would also suggest the smaller games like 18FL, 18GA and others like that which are relatively good to play. Even though it might be the easiest to buy and find, something like 1830 might put a new group off since you need to know how the game works if you are going to even finish the game without going bankrupt.



Where can I find more information about 18XX games?

BGG is usually good for seeing pictures of the various games if necessary, but here's a few websites anyway:

http://www.18xx.net/: Has some good info but is sadly outdated.
http://www.deepthoughtgames.com/: Mostly interesting if you are intending to buy an 18XX, expensive but worth it.
http://www.mayfairgames.com/: Recently had a reprint of 1830, you can find a few 18XX games on their site.
http://rails.sourceforge.net/: Java implementation of many 18XX game, essential for PBP/PBEM games.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3495910: PBEM game on the PBP forums in case you want to see a game being played out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rulElJITIVY: Realistic rendition of what it's like to play 18XX games.

Let me know any other links and I'll add them!

I went to spend my time discussing the merits of keeping the B&O private company over opening it immediately at high cap

Come join us in the #boardgoons where you can meet rail grognards discussing such things.

What is this thread for?

Discussion of everything 18XX mostly, but I'll try to write up more thorough AARs of my own games as well as reviews of various different 18XX games I tried. Please feel free to post AARs/pics of your own games!

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Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


(reserved for other stuff)

Admin Understudy
Apr 17, 2002

Captain Pope-tastic
Oh 18xx nerds please give me any advice on 1835. We played a round a couple weeks ago and are looking to play a rematch later this month..2 players who had played before, 2 others (myself included) had only played 1830. One of the more experienced players ran away with the game. Or rather we handed it to him. He was able to get 3 minor companies going on successful routes with two trains each and bought up a ton of the Prussian stock with that extra revenue as early as he possibly could could.

For next game I would know to pressure the trains quicker in a situation like that and not let someone get so much out of buying up multiple 2s. I also now have a feel for how/when/where the Prussian rail comes into the picture and I think that's going to be a big thing in and of itself. However can anyone familiar with it give me any tips? Are there any good tricks for the Bayer or Sachen rails that start up first?

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


I haven't had a chance to play 1835 so I can't give you specific advice, but yeah, it sounds like a situation in which you want to train rush like mad, although different games handle the rush in different ways. What's the distribution of trains in 1835 like?

FebrezeNinja
Nov 22, 2007

If there's anyone else interested in learning to play 18xx games, I'd like to put together a 4-player newbie game of 18GA, play-by-post, like the current 1830 PbP.

Preferably we could meet up in IRC to set up the game and do the first auction.

Any takers?

Admin Understudy
Apr 17, 2002

Captain Pope-tastic
There's a bunch of 2+2 (passes through 2 towns) and then 3+3, 4+4, etc. which really alleviates any rush. I think the limited number in the 3 to 5 range puts pressure on any rails relying on 3s to need to plan hard for the 6s but most of the 2s went to minor companies which get nationalized into the Prussian rail which can float only after the 4 has come out so it kind of just works out for them anyway I suppose. It was a much friendlier game than any of the 1830 games I've played.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Olayed 1848 today again and I think I learnt something about it. It was a three player game and I had enough money to float a company but after the three good ones went, I decided to try something different and decided to become the silent partner in the CAR (a company that acts exactly like the B&O but is substantially better in terms of positioning/routes, both in the early and late game). I think this proved to be a mistake because although the company I started at 100 cap was alright, it never caught up. This game reinforced the fact that there are only 3 good companies (potentially 4) with all the other ones being mediocre at best. These are the Victorian, the South Australian and the Central Australia: they all control the west and since this is the only area with 2 K cities within a single region boundary, most of the action goes out there. The Western is good but can get tokened out too easily in comparison to the others and it's home token is in an awful place.

I ended up last with the person that got both the COM and the VR winning the game by a wide margin. We might play it again next tuesday but I hope we do something else since I don't relish playing this 3 times in a row.

Orvin
Sep 9, 2006




From my experience, playing an investor (never starting your own railroad) can be incredibly difficult. While it will usually let you fill up on quality shares, you will never have as many shares as other players due to not having any president certs. You also have to keep an eye out for potential company drops.

One of the players in my group likes to play that way when possible. First off, it really only works in games with more people. Usually when it is difficult to start a company in the first stock round without help. Then you need to have the game drag on as long as possible. You need all the early shares you bought to reach a high stock value.

He has recently taken to starting a company mid game for a low IPO and running it back towards the yellow. This lets him influence the game a little, and usually doesn't come with much of an opportunity cost when there are usually no good shares to buy mid game.


Tekopo, you may want to plug this thread in the general board game thread. I only knew to look for it because you mentioned it in IRC a couple of days ago.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


I'll plug the thread in the main one, was intending to do it but kind of forgot. Here's the situation in the end. I was the only one to lose a company since the guy in the lead bought a D and I wasn't expecting it. The three companies I was talking about earlier are the COM (Grey), VR (Yellow), CAR (Black) and SAR (Purple):

Pierzak
Oct 30, 2010
I've heard that these games are hand-copied and illuminated by monastic scribes and each copy takes 15 years to prepare and costs a village and a half, is it true and why?

VVV: Yes you did. But it's still a good subject to address if you're making a new 18XX thread.

Pierzak fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Aug 19, 2012

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


I think I said it in the board game thread but these games are so niche that only the classic ones (1830) will ever get published by semi-big publishers. As well as that, there are too many of them and they all require slightly different components and for the amount of work that they would require and the amount of demand there is (really really low), it's uneconomical for any big companies to make them. So what ends up happening is that they become print-to-order, with the 'publishers' pretty much making them by hand, for relatively high prices in order to make it worth their while, although it's pretty much a 'love-of-the-hobby' sort of thing.

So you end up with deep thought games costing upwards of $50 (potentially more) and since it's literally one guy and there's a backlog, it take 7-11 months to order a game.

blackmongoose
Mar 31, 2011

DARK INFERNO ROOK!
Checking in from GenCon with an 1830 report now that I found the thread.

It turned out we only had three people, which made the game develop somewhat oddly. In addition, both the other players hadn't played in a while and were somewhat rusty. This lead to a situation where only 2 companies opened the first round, and companies were generally slow to come out. I took advantage of this to run the B&O with 3 2's and a 3 for upwards of $20/share for multiple rounds. The other strange aspect was that the PRR was one of the last railroads to start.

By the time we made it to the poison 4, I had 3 companies open, while my opponents had 2 and 1. I finally opened the PRR to eat the 4, but slightly mistimed the train rush. That meant the the B&O didn't get a permanent train, but I decided to hold on to it, since with all three southern companies (PRR, B&O, C&O), I could avoid tokening cities and run Chicago to New York with all 3 plus the NYNH&H. I ate the diesel cost, but it paid for itself with the B&O running for 46/share by the end.

By the end of the game, the NYC had withheld 2 times to grab a diesel, and was running for 55/share, but the bank broke before its president could chase me down from the lead I had built with my 4 companies. Final net worth was 13k to 11k to 10k - three companies hit the top stock value. It was definitely an extremely odd game, but there was a lot of interesting track building even during the end game, and figuring out some of the crazy diesel runs was pretty fun.

Also, Tek, you should probably mention Rails somewhere in the OP, since it makes the games so much easier to get through.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


It's mentioned in the list of links, I'll include it in the glossary section when I can be arsed to do it. With three players you should have been able to float two companies each since the starting capital is pretty high so I'm surprised that only two started, that's pretty much what you would expect from a 5 player game. I prefer games with higher number of players, though.

Pierzak
Oct 30, 2010

Tekopo posted:

So you end up with deep thought games costing upwards of $50 (potentially more) and since it's literally one guy and there's a backlog, it take 7-11 months to order a game.
Is there some way I can send the guy his markup and just get a set to print & play?

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


There are print and play 18XX games out there, don't know if they do it though. You can also buy the stuff unlaminated/unmounted/uncut, although to me it seems like a pain in the arse to do it all by yourself.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Has anyone tried 18VA? I'm thinking of adding it to my order along with 18MEX and 18FL, so I was wondering if it was any good. I like the aspect of having coal and passenger trains to make things differently, and our group needs a small game for the weekday meetups anyway.

blackmongoose
Mar 31, 2011

DARK INFERNO ROOK!

Tekopo posted:

Has anyone tried 18VA? I'm thinking of adding it to my order along with 18MEX and 18FL, so I was wondering if it was any good. I like the aspect of having coal and passenger trains to make things differently, and our group needs a small game for the weekday meetups anyway.

I've played it once - it was interesting, but it felt a little scripted, with each company having a pretty obvious way to go. Also, be warned it's not that small - it probably takes a good 3 hours for a game.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Played 1848 for the third time in a row and lost again. Since we are all more experienced with it, the game has become kind of formulaic and boring. It was fun when we didn't know the set strategies but now that we do I can't see us putting it out on the table again soon.

cherttx
Feb 13, 2012

Pierzak posted:

Is there some way I can send the guy his markup and just get a set to print & play?

Andrew Tullsen, at Print & Play Productions, has ready-to-play 18xx titles at http://bit.ly/P4rxaN

cherttx
Feb 13, 2012

FebrezeNinja posted:

If there's anyone else interested in learning to play 18xx games, I'd like to put together a 4-player newbie game of 18GA, play-by-post, like the current 1830 PbP.

Preferably we could meet up in IRC to set up the game and do the first auction.

Any takers?

I would do that. I've played 18AL via Cyberboard and it was a lot of fun.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


i'll fill out numbers if necessary but I'd be better to have all newbies.

Orvin
Sep 9, 2006




If people get into 18xx gaming, than joining the Yahoo Group may not be a bad idea. It is a pretty active group. Granted, it is mostly con reports, but there is the occasional strategy discussion and prototype info in the files section.

GaryLeeLoveBuckets
May 8, 2009
loving yes. I love 18xx games, I've played 30, 56 and 70, and I have to say 70 is my favorite with 56 being second.

Here's what I like about 70:

1. If someone goes to dump shares in a company you own, if you have enough money, you can buy them all up as an interrupt and your stock price doesn't go down. You can even do this if you already have 60% of the company, one of the guys in my group usually ends up with full ownership. I like this because it prevents most petty arbitrage by giving you an advantage as the owner if you've run the company responsibly.

2. There are connection runs. Each railroad has a destination to reach and once they have laid track to there and have a train capable of making it, they get a free turn to run that train and they put a free station there. From then on, any time that railroad ends at that station, it's worth double the listed amount. To me, this gives an interesting goal to work towards while also driving the train treadmill forward.

3. The map is really big but you can place 2 yellow tiles a turn for your build. I feel like this helps build your network really fast so that you can focus on improving or linking other railroads you buy later on.

1856 is the Canadian one, and the main thing I like about it is that you can operate a company as long as the current max train number is not greater than the number of shares sold. The companies don't start with a lot of money, when a share is bought, that money goes into the company's treasure instead which is a mechanic I like.

Orvin
Sep 9, 2006




As I have mentioned to Tekopo a bunch of times, 1870 is the most popular game in my group. They played it so much, that one of the guys in my group decided to develop his own variant of the game. Take a look at 18??. He even gave all the information to a printer so you should be able to buy it somewhere and it will look nice and professional. But you still need an 1870 base game to play.

The big changes are a different map, where the start locations of companies is chosen when they operate for the first time, and the destination is chosen by the owner as well. The other big change is that there is a large pool of privates, 3 per tier, and only one per tier is used per game. The winner of the tier chooses which one he wants.

GaryLeeLoveBuckets
May 8, 2009

Orvin posted:

As I have mentioned to Tekopo a bunch of times, 1870 is the most popular game in my group. They played it so much, that one of the guys in my group decided to develop his own variant of the game. Take a look at 18??. He even gave all the information to a printer so you should be able to buy it somewhere and it will look nice and professional. But you still need an 1870 base game to play.

The big changes are a different map, where the start locations of companies is chosen when they operate for the first time, and the destination is chosen by the owner as well. The other big change is that there is a large pool of privates, 3 per tier, and only one per tier is used per game. The winner of the tier chooses which one he wants.

This sounds pretty amazing. I especially like the three different Corporations per tier, as I never really liked the KCS or the Frisco and hated getting stuck with them because of that first auction.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


I haven't played 1870 myself and although I like the sound of the price protection system, my group did bring up something that can be used to abuse the system. Let's say you own the shares of a company that the guy to your right owns. If you sell the shares one by one and he keeps share-protecting them, you can get consecutive buying rounds with the other people not being able to do anything. I think it would be much more interesting if, when you share-protected, you merely skipped your next turn (and maybe still be able to sell but not buy shares) rather than changing the turn order so dramatically.

I didn't know 1856 had partial capitilisation. I haven't tried 56, but both Neb and 46 have partial capitalisation (the system you described) and they are pretty good games, although you'll have to wait a long time to get them since deepthoughtgames takes ages to process orders.

Orvin
Sep 9, 2006




GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:

This sounds pretty amazing. I especially like the three different Corporations per tier, as I never really liked the KCS or the Frisco and hated getting stuck with them because of that first auction.

In 18??, those privates are on the same tier. So they can't be in the game at the same time. The other private in that tier makes it so the destination for the owning company is tripled.

The thing to note, is that privates stop paying when a 5 train is bought, but they provide their bonus until the end of the game.

GaryLeeLoveBuckets
May 8, 2009

Orvin posted:

In 18??, those privates are on the same tier. So they can't be in the game at the same time. The other private in that tier makes it so the destination for the owning company is tripled.

The thing to note, is that privates stop paying when a 5 train is bought, but they provide their bonus until the end of the game.

We usually fight over the Mississippi River Bridge company anyway to open the MoPac and immediately sell it in to the company for double on round 1. I tried that strategy with the Cotton Belt as well and it caused a game restart, they weren't able to cut me off before I got to Little Rock because of the extra 1st turn placement, so they decided they couldn't stop me from running wild on Dallas.

I like that the corporations in 70 all have a strategy in mind for you to play off of, and I like that in ?? they keep giving their bonus even after they should be scrapped.

Orvin
Sep 9, 2006




Your group is not open to experimentation then. The Cotton Belt is the one that should usually be started with the bridge. The Frisco wants to run south, so it will usually join up with the Cotton Belt home if allowed (CB plays a tight city with exits west and NW. This lets the Frisco get a run on the second OR, and a path over the river when the green phase starts.

True the Cotton Belt can destinate early, but that shouldn't be a big issue. Everyone should pile on and buy the company early so they can get the bonus payout as well, even though it will not be all that great if the Cotton Belt goes directly there. If someone really has to screw with the CB, they just start the Burlington and control how the yellow track is played around Dallas and Ft. Worth, forcing the CB to wait for some green upgrades before it can get in.

Also, the Frisco can be a really good company. You do know that it floats at only 20%, right. So you either keep it going forward while only owning 20% (maybe 30%) and the lion's share of the money is going into the company. This will mean that company has lots of trains throughout it's life. The other way to go about it is to constantly withhold the earnings, to keep people from hopping on and earning a quick buck by flipping your shares. This doesn't hurt all that much, since you only own a couple of shares of it.

blackmongoose
Mar 31, 2011

DARK INFERNO ROOK!

GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:

We usually fight over the Mississippi River Bridge company anyway to open the MoPac and immediately sell it in to the company for double on round 1. I tried that strategy with the Cotton Belt as well and it caused a game restart, they weren't able to cut me off before I got to Little Rock because of the extra 1st turn placement, so they decided they couldn't stop me from running wild on Dallas.

I like that the corporations in 70 all have a strategy in mind for you to play off of, and I like that in ?? they keep giving their bonus even after they should be scrapped.

Keep in mind that you can only sell the bridge company for face until a 3 gets bought.

The thing I don't like about 1870 is that a lot of the track building isn't super exciting. There's plenty of room to build around any roadblocks, and every city outside the northeast is worth 40 or 50 so missing out on one isn't too big a deal. The only token wars are in STL and KC, and there's no real choices since the first company that can always puts a token there since CHI-STL-KC is so good. Ironically, I like a lot of the market and company aspects of it (though price protection should not change the turn order), but the building aspects are what makes it fall a little flat and lead me to prefer 1856. It's still a good game that I would recommend everyone try at least once though.

Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010


Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.
Has anyone here actually played either of the epic-scale 18s? (18c2c and 18oe, that is; if there's another in that category I don't know of it.)

Are there enough catch-up mechanics in them to stop them from turning into two-player games with hostages for the last couple hours?

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


I'm going to give 18C2C a try at the end of september, which should be fun. No idea on the catch up, but considering all 18XX games, I doubt it.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Played a home-made prototype made by one of the people in the 18XX group I play: the scale of it was the smallest I ever played, centered around the Bradford region in England (the entire game could be covered by a single hex in 1825). Some of the interesting features were 'tiers' for companies: only two companies could open per tier, with the lower tiers having to float for less and having less tokens, offboards that you can only use when you buy in (you use cubes to represent this), being able to place 1-3 tiles (or even upgrade one tile multiple times) for increased cost per tile, loans, parent companies that can help you buy trains and several tiles having different upgrade paths. It was actually a lot of fun and a lot more playable than the above makes it sound.

GaryLeeLoveBuckets
May 8, 2009

Orvin posted:

Your group is not open to experimentation then. The Cotton Belt is the one that should usually be started with the bridge. The Frisco wants to run south, so it will usually join up with the Cotton Belt home if allowed (CB plays a tight city with exits west and NW. This lets the Frisco get a run on the second OR, and a path over the river when the green phase starts.

True the Cotton Belt can destinate early, but that shouldn't be a big issue. Everyone should pile on and buy the company early so they can get the bonus payout as well, even though it will not be all that great if the Cotton Belt goes directly there. If someone really has to screw with the CB, they just start the Burlington and control how the yellow track is played around Dallas and Ft. Worth, forcing the CB to wait for some green upgrades before it can get in.

Also, the Frisco can be a really good company. You do know that it floats at only 20%, right. So you either keep it going forward while only owning 20% (maybe 30%) and the lion's share of the money is going into the company. This will mean that company has lots of trains throughout it's life. The other way to go about it is to constantly withhold the earnings, to keep people from hopping on and earning a quick buck by flipping your shares. This doesn't hurt all that much, since you only own a couple of shares of it.

Oh I know that objectively the Frisco is good, but I like being far away from others at the beginning of the game and it always seems like KCS starts as well, leading to a big clusterfuck up there. I've seen it as a train engine to feed other companies and it was very effective, but it's just not for me.

Orvin
Sep 9, 2006




GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:

Oh I know that objectively the Frisco is good, but I like being far away from others at the beginning of the game and it always seems like KCS starts as well, leading to a big clusterfuck up there. I've seen it as a train engine to feed other companies and it was very effective, but it's just not for me.

I can now definitely see why you don't like 1870. In that game the map is big enough that you need some sort of partner company to help you build. At the very start of the game it can be a small annoyance while in the yellow phase, but that should not last long. Once green tiles are available, a pair of railroads working on the same track run for a hell of a lot more than trying to make your own way.

The biggest thing to remember about 18xx games is that while screwing another player over is fun, it is rarely directly beneficial to you. You will do much better if you work on creating mutually beneficial deals with multiple players. This also helps to keep the game a bit more interesting for the new players and people in last place. It can be somewhat tough to do, but someone in last place can very easily be a kingmaker if they try for it.

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Had an interesting game of 18MEX yesterday, 3 player this time which we hadn't tried before. It was two experienced players and one newbie, and the new guy actually managed to win, mostly because me and the other guy were mostly at each others throats since we have a long history of screwing each other over. I like 18MEX a lot, I think I would rate it as one of my favourite 18XX at the moment. In a lot of ways, it's like 1830 but more gentle, since the mail runs help you to get more money in the company as well as the fact that even the more expensive trains are relatively cheap. This does lead to people trying to skip the 5 and 6 trains outright if they can, which is what happened in our game, since they aren't nearly as good as the 4D trains that you can get later on. Overall the game doesn't have too many additional rules, only the NdeM and its merger really stand out, so I think it's a pretty good intermediate game to ease new people into more competitive games.

Although I still enjoyed it, three player did have some issues: first of all, since all the companies start with high cap and since the train rush in the game is so gentle, the game isn't as competitive in 3 players as it is with 4 or 5. There was never really any pressure to get trains and the companies never really ran out of cash (added to that there were a couple of shares within the pool after our attempts to manipulate turn order, which no one scooped up because there weren't enough players to scoop them up). Also, the privates, especially the NdeM, need to be bided up much higher than their actual price.

Anyway, as always, here are the pics of the end board positions. I started the SoPac first, followed by the FCP: this was possible for me since I had started the B minor, which meant that most of the tracklaying on the west coast was already in place for the FCP to come in:



Admin Understudy
Apr 17, 2002

Captain Pope-tastic
We got another game of 1835 in last night and I'm still really intrigued by it even though it has its quirks. No one ever replied that they have played this one so I'm probably talking to nobody but I came in dead last and had about an hour where I had nothing to do but I still enjoyed the game. It got stalled at the beginning with the way we distributed the opening companies. Player 1 had more private companies than the rest of us put together and Player 2 had the only running major company, the other 2 of us were sitting on minors trying to save up enough money to start additional major companies. But as Player 1 and 2 were making more money there was no need for them to push the game along and it dragged and gave player 1 specifically all the advantage he needed to dominate the game.

I made the mistake of dumping the shares in the only company I was running in order to buy up a bunch of stock in the nationalized company that comes out. Another player had control of a company that got to determine when that nationalized company starts and he just sat on it, so something that would have been running at significantly higher payouts than any other rail came out 4 or 5 turns after I was planning on.

But that's what I get for putting all my eggs in one basket.

Orvin
Sep 9, 2006




I haven't played 1835 specifically, but if you are more than one private company payout short of starting a railroad, it is usually worthwhile to see if one of the other short players will buy a share or two of a railroad so you can get one started. The downside to this, is that person will most likely be dumping your shares in about 2-3 Stock Rounds so they can start their own company. So its something you should definitely prepare for if you do it.

If you are wondering why someone might do that, it is because if they don't there will probably not be enough shares left over for everyone to spend their starting cash. So its better to help someone else start, just so you have something to buy (or less competition for the better performing shares early).

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


I've always found that being the silent partner comes with incredible risks, especially in a full capitalisation game, since there is a very high possibility that a person will strip and run, leaving you with a company that is completely useless. I usually end up not buying many privates since I'm always so wary of not being able to float my own company, so I usually end up buying up the lower-end ones that don't restrict me to a specific company/strategy. I do think my play is actually suffering because of this.

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Orvin
Sep 9, 2006




I wonder if that is another case of groupthink. In my group, the only time someone will drop their starting company early is if they get blocked out of the track they were trying for. Otherwise it is usually a losing proposition to give up a company that has already built to start a new company that is likely starting over with no advantage other than a little bit more money in the treasury (partly due to not having to buy a 2-train).

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