I used rail to run a game and was quite happy. I looked over the mailing
lists, and couldn't find these issues, so hopefully these are not repeats.
I used the latest codebase (git pull) for the run, since that seemed to have
fixed a few issues related to coalfields.
Q1: It seems that the selection for what stock certificate the C&A gets (PRR or
Reading) is done before the start of the game. Do people just generally do the
initial bidding/private companies by hand to select this? I don't see any
moderator override within the game to adjust stock certificates.
Q2: Likewise for the M&H - the wiki notes that this can only be exchanged during
stock rounds - is there any best way to handle this if exchanged during an
operating round? It would seem this might be a common practice - unless one
thinks the NYC stock is going to sell out, by waiting to the operating round
(but before the NYC operates) you get the payout of the M&H and also the payout
of the NYC - especially if you can wait until the NYC will pay out
Possible coalfields issue:
1) It seems that the automatic revenue calculator will only count coalfields
once even if you have a legitimate route to use it 2 times. Looking at the
rules, it says the coalfields act as a small town, just one has to buy rights to
use it. In our case, the CO connect to coalfields, bought the rights, and then
load a city tile + token on K9. With 2 2 trains, the best route should be K9
(20) - L10 (40) and K13 (20) - L10 (40). However instead, rails did the K13-L10
and then K13-J14 (20). I can provide a save file the illustrates this, but
seems pretty easy to reproduce.
2) The rules I read suggest that one can not build track beyond the coalfields
unless one has the coalfields right. In my example above, it would let me lay
tile K9 before buying coalfields right. In this case above, since you can buy
rights at anytime, not an issue for the C&O. But the N&W later in the game
built track/bought tokens beyond the coalfields without having coalfields rights
and without any legitimate way to get to those spaces without going through
coalfields.
Thought for improvement: Have the offsite red areas show current value of their
worth, or if that is not possible, having them show the values at the different
phases (eg, display 30/60 on the map) might be nice. I realize you can get this
information by clicking on the tile, but would be nice to just see those values
on the map (same for Coalfields) as it would make it a little clearer the values
of different spaces just by looking at the map.
All in all, aside from these minor issues, was quite happy and will hope to
use it again.
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