Things I should have taken into account from the start: the possibility of upgrading a one-spot station tile to multiple spots.
2 Likes
Keeping the tile set in the back of your head is quite useful. Especially in a game like 1889 that uses limited tile sets (which is not the case for all 18XX). Very early on certain kinds of track tiles may run out which can really mess up your plans.
1 Like
Mea culpa for that!
Most cities will open up for more than one token spot. Most, in this game, will top out at 2.
18xx.games allows you to view the tile selection. It’s really hard to track the tile availability when playing online.
Not at all. I looked at the tiles in the rulebook, I just didn’t make the connection.
1 Like
I agree. If you don’t regularly check the tiles tab, you won’t find out whether a tile runs out until it’s too late.
1 Like
My last game (also 1889; also my first game), I probably lost because I failed to notice the special ‘H’ city tiles that are used for the city located at I4. It starts out as a gentle-curve but only upgrades into a 3-prong with even spacing between tracks (I call it a Delta, but I doubt that’s a common term for it).
What Just Happened? a.k.a. Train Rusting and Emergency Train Buying
pillbox operates TR TR lays tile #611 with rotation 4 on G4 TR skips placing a token TR does not run TR's share price changes from ¥90 to ¥80 pillbox sells 2 shares TR and receives ¥160 TR's share price changes from ¥80 to ¥70 pillbox contributes ¥555 TR buys a 6 train for ¥630 from The Depot
The TR lost it’s trains! Trains “rust” as more, newer trains are purchased. TR ended up in a position where it no longer had any trains. What’s more: it couldn’t afford the cheapest train available (6-train costing ¥630)
When a company has a valid route, does not own a train and cannot afford the cheapest train available, the director must perform an Emergency Train Purchase. In this case, I didn’t actually have enough in my wallet to cover the rest of the train either, so I sold 2 shares (I sold shares of TR, but it could have been any of my holdings; I think in 1889 you cannot cause a directorship to change, which can limit what shares you can sell – you also cannot violate the Bank Pool limit, so if there are 4 or 5 shares of TR in the Bank Pool, I wouldn’t have been able to sell those 2 shares in particular).
IR buys a 5 train for ¥1 from KU
I’m not sure why what happened there happened? IR (president @RogerBW) bought a 5 train from KU (president @mr.ister) which as far as I can see is a major boost to IR and leaves KU without a train and @mr.ister libel for most of the purchase price of a Diesel! Can you force someone to sell you a train or was there an agreement to do that or am I missing something?
This probably needs to be rolled back unless this was agreed to before hand.
18xx.games allows any company to buy any train from any other company without going through a confirmation step. The expectation is that corp-2-corp train buys between different directors will be negotiated outside of the game and the website doesn’t actually need to intervene.
Yeah, someone who knows the interface go ahead and roll it back.
As far as I can see, there’s supposed to be some way of setting the price at which you’ll sell a train to another company. But I can’t find where this is in the interface and I’m guessing Name1ess didn’t either. It may be that that bit of the code hasn’t been written yet. Sorry!
I’ve rolled us back to the Buy Trains step for IR. RogerBW to finish the IR’s turn again
2 Likes
Phew you had me worried there for a moment! It’s curious that the site does allow for this. But oh well with the undo button there’s really no harm done.
1 Like
Thanks for sorting this out. I thought that it was probably a misunderstanding but I couldn’t be sure.
2 Likes
…and that is why you should try to keep a bit more cash in your company. With ¥8 more I could have upgraded my old train to a D…
Well I do feel kind of bad about all of this …
2 Likes
This is too late to be of use in this game, but a few notes:
pillbox got caught empty train-handed
pillbox operates SR SR skips laying track SR does not run SR's share price changes from ¥140 to ¥125 pillbox sells 1 share IR and receives ¥50 IR's share price changes from ¥50 to ¥45 pillbox sells 2 shares TR and receives ¥160 pillbox sells 1 share UR and receives ¥110 UR's share price changes from ¥110 to ¥100 pillbox sells 3 shares SR and receives ¥375 SR's share price changes from ¥125 to ¥90 pillbox contributes ¥1080 SR buys a D train for ¥1100 from The Depot
Often in 18xx (and especially in 1830-alikes), the game will end with a bankruptcy – that is, when a company is forced to own a train, has none, cannot afford one and the president liquidating their assets still fails to raise enough money. In this case, it wasn’t quite that bad, but I did have to sell over half my portfolio to purchase a D-train. The D-train is expensive but also lucrative.
Diesels
So a 2- train can travel between two revenue locations. A 3-train: three. A D-train? Unlimited revenue locations. 18xx enthusiasts are, likely, playing their entire game with 6-trains and/or D-trains in mind. Early in the game, you rarely have to look very far from your company’s home hextile to figure out how to run your train. But one of the most interesting parts of 18xx (and my personal favorite) is how the track develops throughout the game and, specifically, how that influences the late game trains that can run half-way or, in the case of Diesels, circles around the board.
Game Over
-- Stock Round 8 -- mr.ister sells 2 shares KO and receives ¥160 mr.ister buys a 10% share of AR from the market for ¥50 RogerBW sells 1 share UR and receives ¥125 -- The bank has broken -- UR's share price changes from ¥125 to ¥110 RogerBW buys a 10% share of SR from the market for ¥100
“-- The bank has broken --” – no amount of glue or duct tape will make it what it was before. Most 18xx games end either due to bankruptcy (covered before) or when the Bank Breaks – that is, the game starts with a fixed amount of money; that money is distributed between the Bank, the players and the corporations. When the Bank reaches a value of ¥0 or less, the end of the game triggers and you complete either the current Stock Market Round or the current Set of Operating Rounds (I think it’s usually more common for the Bank to break during ORs). finish the current set of ORs or, in the case the Bank breaks during a Stock Round, complete 1 more complete set of (3) ORs. The Bank being out of money doesn’t prevent players and corporations from getting paid (the bank just prints more money, after all) – in physical instances of 18xx games, players typically work out the last few ORs on paper anyway… any limitations of physical game money is supplemented by IOUs or spreadsheets.
What happens now?
We finish the current Stock Market Round. If we were in the middle of a set of Operating Rounds, we would finish those instead. We do not proceed beyond that. There will be no more ORs in this game; if we had broken the bank during ORs, there would not be a Stock Round.
The only thing after that is to tally up the scores. You score is the (cash you have on hand) + (cash value of your shares at current market value).
Company cash is now irrelevant (in a physical instance of play, you could use any cash on companies in lieu of IOUs since it literally has no further impact on the game). 1830 had no privates that could last this long. In 1889, there’s one that can stay in play throughout the game (which mr.ister is holding) that will be worth its marked Value.
In closing, allow me to be the first to congratulate @mr.ister on a well-deserved win. I hope everybody enjoyed the game!
Apparently we’ll do another Set of Operating Rounds! Buckle up, folks! The scores are going to be big!
1 Like
Well, on the basis that it’s not over until the Fat Controller sings… (I’m glad now that I’m suddenly playing a lot of multi-day games that I already had a policy of logging a game on the date when it ends.)
Final score is what the server’s calling the Value, right?
What is the significance of the tiles with a cross-bar on the track (e.g. B11 Nakamura or G10 Nangoku)? That’s not shown in the tile manifest so I guess it’s something the game server is doing rather than a characteristic of the tiles, but…?
I feel that I could have had an enjoyable game either as an investor or as a track- and train-planner. Both together sometimes felt like a dual-viewpoint novel, where each narrative thread suffers because one was enjoying the other one and got pulled away from it.
I’m not going to jump into another game at once, but I believe I now have at least a basic idea of what the thing is about; and I like it.
2 Likes
Those are how this particular implementation renders Towns (also known as dits, dots, and/or doinks). G10, in particular, is a special ‘P’ tile that I laid as the special ability of one of the privates.
I believe so, yes. And my calling mr.ister’s victory early was mostly a function of me not realizing at the time that we still had a set of ORs to complete. I don’t think he’s assured victory yet by any means, but he’s definitely in a strong position.
1889 is definitely not my favorite 18xx games (though its the only one I’ve played so far). It’s very restrictive and narrow – which is good as an introductory game and/or as a game that is playable at low player counts (1889 being one of the few 18xx games recommended for 2-players). Other games in the family can have completely different “feels” to them – in particular, Lonny Orgler games are usually a footrace to see who can launch and run the best companies the fastest (and his games are often decided by a fix number of rounds rather than a Bank breaking).
I’m glad we were able to give you a glimpse. And certainly I struggled in this particular scenario to focus on all of the many moving parts in this game – I was actually unaware of just how close the D-train was to being bought and my 4’s disappearing on me was quite by surprise (I figured I had another set of ORs at least) – that’s on me, but it’s also a reflection of how distant and stale play-by-web implementations can be. I’ve played 1889 twice now, once on 18xx.games and once on TTS – I much prefer TTS (with voice chat) for the added immersion; it really makes a difference.
2 Likes
Looks like we may need to back up the last stock round:
I honestly was expecting 18xx.games to take care of enforcing paper limit, but that does not seem to be the case.
Weird: if I roll back to the Stock Round, everybody is within their stock limit. The game must render the cert limit incorrectly during ORs (probably to simplify the backend calculations for paying share dividendsd)
False alarm!
Update: Mystery Solved! See below
What Do You Mean, Paper Limit?
Most 18xx games have a limit on the number of certificates you can hold. Not the number of shares, but specifically how many pieces of paper you can have in front of you. “What’s a piece of paper?” you ask – well, it’s usually rectangular and typically white, about 21.0 x 29.7cm unless you’re in a backwards country like me. But what’s an “18xx piece of paper?” I’m glad you asked! Certificates and Private Companies are pieces of paper for the purposes of this conversation. A Director’s Certificate, despite being worth 20%, is a single piece of paper, so there’s distinct advantages to holding the Director’s Cert in a company (this is typically the biggest flaw in a Investor-only strategy).
The number of pieces of paper you can hold depends on the game and the player count, here in 1889 @ 4 players, it’s 14. Of note, mr.ister’s private company occupies one of those slots, so his effective limit is 13 share certificates.
What’s Up with the Yellow and Orange Squares on the Stock Market?
I meant to cover this earlier but never got around to it. During the last Stock Round, AR was positioned in the Yellow portion of the Stock Market. Companies in Yellow on the Stock Market do not count against your paper limit. Additionally, companies in the Orange area also do not count for paper limit, and when buying these, you can buy as many as you like all at once as one Stock Round Action.
So, AR was in Yellow, meaning during the SR, they were not counted against any of our cert limits. AR also ended the SR completely sold out (held exclusively by players and not IPO or Bank Pool), in this case, as with all companies that are completely held by players, the market price for that company goes up 1 space. In this particular scenario, AR then left the Yellow area which means those certs now count against limits. Fortunately, we can ignore limits outside of Stock Rounds. If we were to do another Stock Round now, the first thing anybody above the paper limit would have to do is sell shares until they were within the valid limit – but in this case, we will end the game after the current Set of ORs.
1 Like
Certainly towards the end of the last stock round I was finding myself without the option to buy stuff, and I was on 14/14 certificates.
1 Like