... - ... - ... - ... - ... - ... - ...

Fix the bad stuff - use the Editor
The scenario you're looking at may be a good one, excepting the awkward things mentioned above. So, unless you intend to play it in a competition with 'no cheating allowed': Before 'Play Scenario', use the editor to remove the unwanted stuff:

• Delete tunnels, transmitters, lighthouses, 'road letters' etc you don't want.
• The large cities: Delete the road intersections! Leaving the rest of the road structure. The player can fill in the intersections in the towns (s)he's interested in.

• Intercity roads: cut them into reasonable pieces; so the player can build rail systems and MEGA stations. If (s)he needs those roads, the player will connect them up.
• Bridge stoppers: Where a town might easily build a nuisance bridge - both sides of water aligned, and road nearby: place a road on one of the 2 'coast/riverbank' tiles (bulldoze first). The town never deletes this to make a bridge.
• If you want this scenario to be fairly easy: straighten out coast / riverbank, for easy bridges etc. The player can do this using the Tunnel Trick, but this often needs very tricky combination operations; not for beginners!
• If you want this scenario to be fairly easy: Locate those towns which have a lot of trees nearby, and maybe no farm in the vicinity: Chop some of those trees - make life a little easier for the player building stuff here.

... - ... - ... - ... - ... - ... - ...

Host a competition?
If you intend to host a competition using this scenario, you should certainly go through it, deleting unwanted stuff. Make up your mind what sort of player this competition is for: do you want it to be an easy, medium or difficult map to work on?

Note that the competition players might use the editor before starting!
One of them might expand the towns, add a few well-placed industries, remove trees, straighten coastlines etc; giving himself an unfair advantage over the other players.

So: the competition host should generate the game, saving it on January 1st, wanted start year. With the right difficulty settings etc.

The would-be cheater might still try, but this would be an ordinary 'editor cheat' after the game is generated; this usually leaves traces.
What traces? I'm not telling! Not here!
But if one of you out there starts a competition using these methods:
EMail me and ask, and I'll tell you.

... - ... - ... - ... - ... - ... - ...

NB! The old hints below were written from TTo - TT-original; not from TTdx.
I have no screen capture facility for TTo; so: Sorry, few/no pictures.
I haven't checked all the stuff below in TTdx, but I believe it works there too.

Timing in TTd(x)
A lot of things can be done to an existing game, by going back and forth between TT gameplay and TT editor.
Warning: in a competition, using the Editor would be cheating.
Some of the changes done in the Editor you (Player No 1) have to pay for; but many of them are quite free! In the Editor:

• 'Real Time' goes fast! Bare land becomes grass quickly!
  Trees grow, towns build. But the date remains the same.
• Vehicles LOADing: Passengers and Mail will gather to your trains - they are 'Real Time' governed.
  Industry products will not change - they are date-governed, and come in fixed amounts every nn days.
  nn days: usually one to 3 'half weeks' - 3.5 days.
• You can reroute your vehicles, send them to depot, buy new carriages etc. You can add or remove roads; but not build stations, or depots, or place rails. The Rail building menu exists in 'game play' mode only.
• The editor doesn't use the F1 ... Fj keys. So don't raise land from water there. To do something fairly quickly:
  Place the tile you aim at just under the Time ON / Time OFF button.

Rule No 1:
Do NOT have Road/Rail crossings on your map!
Do NOT have a rail where a city might cross it with a road!
Why? - because the city grabs 'your' roads and converts them to hers! - The city will now own the road/rail crossing; you may remove the road but not the rail! and if the road is removed your trains can't even travel on it!

Rule No 2:
Elsewhere I've advised you to remove the town's streets, and lay out your own instead. Don't do this until after you've finished your positively last round in the editor!
Reason as above: You might have to pay twice to do the job.

Rule No 3:
Don't go via 'Play scenario'! This will create a NEW PLAYER, with your old one as your opponent! - as 'Player no 0'.
See Split personalities!

Add or move Industries
An industry requires a flat site, with size and shape to fit the minimum shape for that industry. It also demands a minimum of 8..10 tiles between it and it's 'twin' - (Forest / Sawmill; Oil / Refinery)

Adding or deleting an industry costs you nothing; the rocks/trees bulldozed by the industry are free. But: The industry tries to avoid trees and rocks. It will often 'jump' to a place away from where you point! and sometimes remove another industry!

If you want the sawmill at an exact spot: prepare the site by placing restraining rails on some of the flat tiles around.
If near to another industry: place a rail between the two.

Controlled growth for your cities

Expanding cities costs none of 'your' money.
For nice controlled growth - good street network - no steep tiles, - you need several rounds of back and forth:

• In TT gameplay: lay out road pieces with stubs and crossings, to incite the town towards a good street network.
• In TT gameplay: add road stubs to bends!
  you want the town to expand the roads, not block them with houses.
• In TT gameplay: Point roads at broken tiles! The city will often bulldoze these, bringing down some hillside.
• Now save to TRT?1.SV1; Exit to Dos; rename the file to TRT?1.SV0;
  
• In the Editor: EXPAND city one ... three times; by now you probably need another roading session in TT gameplay. (Of course you can do your roading in the Editor, if you don't mind the time flying).
• Save to TRT?2.SV0; Exit to Dos; rename the file to TRT?2.SV1. Ready for next round in TT gameplay.
  

Blasting hills! instead of lowering points
I changed my original expression 'Dynamiting' to 'Blasting' after I saw TTd, which uses a dynamite icon instead of a bulldozer.

Creating a small new town;
- maybe expanding it;
- then deleting it:
can have a 'dynamiting' effect on the hillside nearby!
And is often a cheaper way of lowering land than standard 'lower points'.

• Select a flat tile without trees or road on it; at least 12 tiles (NS + EW) away from the nearest town centre; and leaning against the hillside you wish to lower.
• In TT gameplay: Place rails on the tiles you DON't want houses / roads on - thus 'directing' the blast into the hillside!
  You might add some road pieces, pointing at tiles you want lowered / cleared.
• Now when you make 'new small town', it will have nowhere to go but into the hillside. Also, the new town will spend so much of it's budget on bulldozing - that it can't afford many houses and road tiles; making it cheaper for you to delete it.
• Deleting the new town does cost some of your money - you pay per house and per road-tile; so if you get a STADIUM: go back and start again.
• You may have to experiment a few times to get the 'blast' right, and the dummy town small enough. Count the cost of deleting the town against the number of points lowered + the number of tiles cleared.
  Sometimes, your mini town may consist of just 1 piece of road - or even nothing - just a town name!
• Some rounds between TT gameplay and Editor; with more restraining rails, and EXPAND mini-town; for more blasting.
  A long corridor for railway line or ship channel may be excavated this way.
• The BLAST method is most cost-effective when lowering 2 or 3 levels of hillside.
  1 level is too low! it costs more than plain bulldozing.
  4 levels may be too much; if the town refuses to EXPAND, you may have to lower one of the top points, to help it along.
• Before deleting mini town X: Observe that it now 'owns' some of the trees previously in neighbour A and B cities' area. If these trees are in the way of your development, you can now remove them without losing rating with cities A and B!
• DELETE Sequence: in the game:
  - First delete Town X's houses
  - Then delete some of Town X's trees; you lose rating with X, but not with A or B.
  - Then to the Editor, select town X: 'DELETE'
  - NB: This may delete houses and road bits previously belonging to A or B, if these are too near to X. avoid this by chopping MANY trees!
  - You may get an error message; but your ratings with A or B are clean.
  
• NB! You should do these blasting sequences before you expand cities A and B!

Change starting year: What about vehicles?
When saving from the editor, you can always change the date to the 1st of January any year.
If you change from 1930 to 1958: what about vehicles?

The 1958 ones will arrive en masse on the 1st of February!
But their reliabilities will be relatively bad for a while.

Petty cash? After some rounds TT gameplay/Editor, you approach the end of January: set the date back to January 1st! avoid paying Loan and Taxes at the end of the month.

Split personalities! 'Opponent quits' BUG!

This experiment was done in TTo - Original TT.

'Play scenario' creates a new player for you, leaving the old one as your 'opponent no 0', he's before you on the list:
This happens even if you have selected 'NO opponents', and/or 'starting time later'.
But you could use this for a really sneaky, naughty - infamous ... cheat:

But be warned: This often causes a BUG in the program!
Probably the same bug other people have reported - the one when an opponent goes out of business.

• Let's call your old Player no 1 'Mr Crumbletown-Badluck', and your future new one 'Ms CheatVille-Sneaky'.
• Going back and forth between TT gameplay and the editor part, you let Mr Crumbletown-Badluck borrow the maximum, and pay for your terraforming: bulldozing, blasting, raising land from water; placing industries at nice spots; laying out nice road networks for cities; expanding cities.
• When he has about 100000 - 200000 pounds or so left of his original 500000: (my example was with lots of money) start the finish:

  From town to town: pick up all his rails lying about! You don't want them there in your new life as Ms CheatVille-Sneaky!
  Delete or connect up any of his loose road bits to the town streets.
  Lower his ratings by letting him chop trees you don't want.
  When his rating is Appalling or Very Poor, on to next city.

• Leave the poor fellow a few unimportant cities - far away from where you intend to build. Place his headquarters there.

• And leave him about 110000 pounds cash! - or else his company will close down too soon, and you get a NEW opponent with OK ratings and enough cash instead of old Mr Crumbletown-Badluck. "The devil you know ..."
• Now choose your starting year; 'Save scenario'; and 'Play scenario':
  Let Ms CheatVille-Sneaky be born, with 0 debt and 'Very Good 3' city ratings.
  But: what happens?
  This is my experience - passive trial runs only:
• Mr Crumbletown-Badluck first adjusts his loan to have cash between 100000 and 110000 pounds.
  Then he does - nothing much! He may bulldoze a lot of hills somewhere (this is free for the AI opponents!)
  But he doesn't build railway lines, trains etc.
  
• Month after month, he just pays interest on his loan. Then, after a few years, when his cash is low (between +10000 and -10000 pounds):
  At a change-of-month one of 2 things will happen:
• 1: OK?: Mr Crumbletown-Badluck leaves the game without notice.
  To be replaced by a new 'Player no 0' with normal cash etc.
  Whether this one plays 'normally' I haven't checked.
• 2: BUG!! Mr Crumbletown-Badluck leaves the game?
  But the game HANGS, and your PC needs rebooting!
• By fiddling around with settings (an old OPT.dat file) etc., I have managed to push past the BUG point. But I wouldn't count on my game being uncorrupted. ... I wouldn't want to invest my time and interest in a game which might suddenly stop dead.

  I leave that research to one of you others out there!

I haven't tried it. Over to YOU!

NB! Most of these hints are from plain old TTo, no one way signals, etc!
- some hints may be obsolete, or downright wrong - in TTdx - TT deluxe.
- Few graphics? Sorry, no screen capture facility for TTo.
- Most of those you see are 'borrowed' from others - Thank you!!

Last updated: editoria.htm 2004-0415,0201 , 2003-0105 ,(2001-0705a,0602,0525 ...1998)

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