I rarely win when playing 18xx games, but I’m start to get better at working out what went wrong after the game is over. I recently managed to win an online game of 1836Jr-30 over on 18xx.games - this is probably my first 18xx win since those first games. I tried to apply the lessons I’d learned from my earlier games of 1830, 1828 and 1836Jr-30, and pace the buying of the trains (not always pushing them1), building cohesive and long routes using my two companies (NFL and HSM), utilising shares in the yellow/orange/brown region to earn cash from 90% ownership of the NFL running a Diesel, and ending the game exceeding the certificate limit of 13 owning 18 certificates/20 shares. Throughout this game I was thinking a lot about the pacing, and in particular thinking about The Train Rush2. Is now a good time to act, or do I just keep on running my trains? I still made mistakes of course, particularly on the map with some tokens in the wrong spots allowing other companies in to token valuable cities.
But for 1846, the more I play it, the more I lose, and the more I don’t understand what’s going wrong. I just can’t figure out how I make such a mess of playing this game.
I recently read Tao’s post about 1846 strategy, which contains a wealth of information gleaned from a discussion with some notable players. My main takeaway from the article was to make sure you own enough shares that are paying dividends, to be able to continue investing in shares. Because the stock movement is tied with dividend payments, it’s also important to make sure that the company is able to run trains for enough money to keep pushing the stock price up.
An early East-West route certainly helps get the money flowing early on in the game. But not all companies can manage this as they have too far to travel across the map: both in terms of tile lays and the train length early on. I remember a game where I was running the Illinois Central (IC) which has to work to get both North-West to Chicago3 and somewhere in the East, and when it managed to connect it didn't have enough tokens to keep it defended. Those companies must find a way to make good dividends another way, whilst still building direct track for long end game East-West routes. This is another thing to balance: good routes and enough trains early to pay me dividends to invest elsewhere, but keeping enough in reserve to work on the longer routes and trains for later.
On the surface, what you should be doing in 1846 sounds fairly simple. Build efficient track to run a couple of trains to generate good income. Because unsold shares are in the company, the company treasury is topped up and with those payouts keeping the stock price rising, future shares of my company that I buy inject healthy amounts of cash to keep buying trains, to keep paying that income. All while cashing in on payouts from the other companies. This general pattern is often discussed whenever 1846 strategy is discussed, such as in the long Train Shuffling episode talking about many aspects of this game.
Running multiple trains seems to be key. There are some good single East-West routes in the Grey Phase that would pay over $400, but even that's not going to “double jump” the stock price much outside the golden box when “triple jumping” is then allowed. The solution here can only be another train, and I think this must apply throughout the game. These help generate good dividends - for buying shares of other companies and topping up my company treasury - and for keeping the momentum behind the stock price to keep pressing it up the chart. These seem to combine to make sure there is enough cash in the company to keep buying track and trains, to end up with a nice E-W route plus another route to keep moving up the stock track.
Sounds simple? I just can’t get the knack to make this work in practice. In my games I seem to loose the momentum somewhere between SR3 and SR4, and my money making engine runs out of steam4.
I have many horror stories of my bad play.
My NYC was running OK, generating revenues, and had secured its first permeant train: a 4/6T. But it’s longer term situation wasn’t looking so great: I had 4 shares but almost all the others were bought, and with only $262 in the treasury and a share price of $70 it was going to struggle to buy a grey train. I dumped the company and started the C&O in desperation to fix my personal position. This ended very badly as my final score was about a third of the other players. Once a company looses pace in the game, I don’t know how to resuscitate it, and my, position.
In another, I was running the B&O, working on building a safe and efficient (short) East-West route. I didn’t invest heavily in the green trains, saving my cash for the tile lays and the permeant trains, and resisted issuing shares to keep them for buying the permanent trains. I missed the chance to buy a brown train, and so issued the 4 remaining treasury shares to buy a grey train, ending its chances of two permeant trains. Worse, it didn’t generate enough revenues along the way and so I didn’t have anywhere near enough personal money to reach the share limit at the same time as the other players.
There will be countless others of course, but these stick with me as lowlights.
I guess I’ll just have to keeping on playing a lot more 1846.
Leave me a comment to let me know how you figured out how to play 1846.
The Dad’s on a Map Choo Choo Crew episode on Heuristics also talks about the fallacies of just buying up the trains.
Not the podcast, although the 1836-Jr episode is a particular favourite.
Should the IC just use St Louis and aim East, and worry about Chicago later? Should it go to Louisville along the way for some dividends, risking loosing a way into the East? It’s lonely out there in Cairo!
Pun intended.
I always enjoy reading these, so thanks for writing them. Like you, I always lose at 1846 so I might be exactly the person you need to play to avoid coming last.