[Rails-devel] 1856 CGR formation

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

Next thing for me to do is the final loan repayment/CGR formation process.

I have played 1856 only a few times, and seen the CGR form perhaps once,
so I would like to discuss some details here that aren't entirely clear to
me.
None of the clarifications I have seen is helpful on these matters.

"The loans are repaid in $100 increments. If outstanding loans remain 
after the treasury is depleted, the player *may* repay the remainder, 
supplementing the cash remaining in the tresury with personal cash" 
(my emphasis).

Questions:

1. I suppose that "may" means, that adding personal cash is optional.

2. The rules don't say, that paying only part from the remainder by the 
president is not allowed, but that would clearly be a silly thing to do. 
So I take it that adding personal cash is in practice a matter of 
all-or-nothing, i.e. all I have to do asking a yes/no question to 
the president (if he has enough cash): 
"Are you going to pay all of the remainder?"
If the president doesn't have enough cash, no question need be asked at all.

3. I wonder what this sentence about $100 increments means.
Say that the company has $300 loans and $150 cash, and the president
pays all of the remainder, do company and president then pay $150 each,
or $100 and $200 (leaving $50 in the treasury)?

4. And if the president pays nothing, then $100 is repaid and $50 is left 
to feed the CGR?

5. "If the player is president of more than one company, the player
chooses the order in which those companies repay their loans" - 
I would think that if payment from personal cash is optional, 
this order is immaterial. Did I miss something?
(I'm asking this because it's a lot easier to have the game engine 
determine the sequence, and as far as I can see it doesn't matter).

On the implementation:

I think the mentioned yes/no question is all player interaction 
in this whole process (except for a few decisions that the new 
CGR president may need to take regarding trains and tokens). 
So, once the merging companies are known, 
the whole repayment/CGR formation process will run 
automatically in the background, reporting the actions in the 
Game Report window and I think also in a popup message. 
The Game Status window will be properly updated.

Right?

Erik Vos