The Big Four?

Perhaps the most significant change in the history of British railways was the grouping of 1921-3, in which the existing railways were forced to amalgamate into the Big Four (LNER, LMS, GWR and Southern Railways). I had been planning to end Britain Under Steam before this point, but now that I'm adding rules for mergers, I can revisit that choice.

I'm thinking of requiring that in the final phase of the game, each player may only own a single company. The idea is that they would merge their other companies into that company (or let them wither completely). I would add a special merger round in which every company would get the chance to merge, followed by a stock round in which each player must end with only one directorship.

To this, I could add grey tiles with only a single station circle. So if a company can promote a city to a grey tile, it would gain exclusive control of that city. I'm undecided as to whether it could forcibly remove other company's markers or whether this upgrade would only be permitted if a company has the only marker in the city. This would need playtesting, of course.

I'm also unsure whether the final mergers should be initiated by the parent company or by the merging company. In my current rules for mergers, I've required both directors to agree to the merger. (Usually the two directorships will be help by the same player). But in the final merger, you could have each company choose which other company to merge into, so that all companies are included in the merger. The main point of interest is what would happen to the share price. You could see a player deliberately running down one of their lesser companies and merging it into another player's company, to drag back their opponent's share price. It's an intriguing idea.

Historical population

Ian D. Wilson kindly pointed me at the Vision of Britain web site. Buried therein is information about the population of British cities and administrative areas from 1801 to the present day. This is very useful as an indication of the relative wealth of different cities. It's less helpful for towns, as these entries tend to include the population of the surrounding areas.

Another relevant site is the Wikipedia page on Towns and Cities in England by Historical Population.

From this data, I've produced a list of possible changes to my game map. These will have to be balanced against their effect on the game, of course.

In some cases, I'm having to choose between showing a town which has an important rail junction and a larger town that has more wealth but less direct impact on the rail network. For example, Rugby is a small town. Nearby Northampton is more economically significant, but the important junction is at the smaller of the two.

To merge, or not to merge?

I'm wondering whether to include the ability to merge companies in the later phases of the game. Historically, the major companies did not merge until they were grouped into the Big Four in 1923. But some of them did work together, for example to run trains along the length of the East Coast and West Coast Main Lines. So a game merger would not represent a literal reformation of the companies, but would reflect growing co-operation between the companies.

My reason for contemplating this change to the design is that I'm still worried about managing the number of companies. If they each have to own a permanent train, that will be a lot of time spent calculating income. It could undo the benefits that I hope to gain from a simpler income mechanism.

It might also have a desirable side-effect in reducing the number of company markers that might be in play. This in turn would let me simplify the tile upgrade paths in some cases. This is not a major consideration, just a "might be nice" outcome.

If I adopted this approach, I would allow companies to merge once the brown tiles are available. Two five-share companies would merge to form a ten-share company. A ten-share company could merge with another company by swapping shares on a two-for-one basis, as in 1841.

An alternative might be for me to combine some companies at the outset. For example, I could decree that the GNR and NER would be represented by a single company in the game. Possibly the LYR and the MSLR could be similarly combined for game purposes. Or the LYR could be combined with the Caledonian, the NER with the NBR, and the MSLR with the Midland.

These are just musings at present. More testing is needed!

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.