Long Distance

The geography of rail routes in Britain focuses largely on the main lines that run from one end of the country to another. The basic 18xx game system does not favour long routes over more convoluted ones that connect the same number of cities in a smaller area. So I'm looking for ways of encouraging companies to build these routes.

One approach is the use of bonuses for runs that connect certain cities or off-board areas. Examples include the red-to-red runs in 18EU, the North-South routes in 1812, or the Moscow-Ekaterenin route in 1861. I intend to have some of these, including at least routes from London to Plymouth, Holyhead and Aberdeen.

Another approach is to choose the tile mix to encourage certain styles of route. For example, in 1830, the only yellow tile that can be laid on a city is a straight. My current plans are to have no tight curve yellow tiles on cities or towns, thus encouraging the development of through routes. (Interestingly, this is in contrast to 1829 and 1825). I'm also not including green tiles #28 and #29 (with tight and shallow curves), so that upgrades of plain tight curves will also favour through routes.

I did consider banning tight curves altogether, including when tracing routes through more complex tiles, but this doesn't work in practice.

As an aside, I have found that the track building works well if the only yellow tile I allow on towns is one with a shallow curve. I.e. I exclude straight tiles as well as tight curves. This allows me to use towns to block direct routes between certain cities in the early game, which is very useful for balancing the companies.

I also considered providing a bonus for running the shortest route between two locations, or banning train routes that took a longer path than the most direct one. This could get rather complicated, so I will hold it in reserve. What I might do is to give a reward at the start of each stock round to the company with the shortest route on the red-to-red equivalents. This would reward track building without complicating the calculation of income during the stock round.