Now that was close!

Yesterday I tried another 4-player game, with me playing all positions. The final scores were: 505, 504, 503 and 501. That was close - what does it imply? I can see the following options:

1. I've developed a finely-balanced game
2. I unconsciously played all the positions similarly, with similar results
3. It was a fluke result
4. The game is designed so that the actions of the players make no appreciable difference

Obviously I'm hoping that one of the first three apply, rather than the fourth.

One of the "players" did have a good lead, both financially and operationally. Her NBR commanded the East Coast London-Aberdeen route, which is the highest scoring route in the game. She score was dragged back when another player sold 5 shares in her other main company (the Caledonian). Also, she could possibly have optimised her shares better in the end game. So perhaps I shouldn't be too worried by the final score.

I am more concerned about the stock market rules. Halfway through the game, I dropped the rule that make the director's token of each company sell for half value. With that in place, I could see no incentive for people to dump companies. I'll have to re-examine the effect of this at the beginning of the game: if necessary I'll only allow companies to buy trains from each other from Phase Three (as in 1830).

I also need some rule to limit stock trashing. It would have been perfectly possible to trash all the stock prices mindlessly. Possibly I just need a two-dimensional stock market after all, although these do have some drawbacks. An alternative would be to forbid players from selling shares in companies that they bought earlier in the round, although directors would have to be careful to protect their own holdings first. Maybe I just need ledges as in Steam Over Holland, or to make only sales by the Director affect the Share Price.