1873 1873's about mining in the mountains. How to lose 1873 ================ The easiest way to lose 1873 is to start a railway. This section is first because it's important, but it will make more sense if you've read what follows. The concession fee of 100M (and the premium in the initial auction round) are gone; they don't contribute to the railway. The railway's treasury will be five times the par price you pick, and this needs to be enough to build its concession route (0M and 150M for the initial HBE and GHE, but as high as 500M for later railways) and buy at least one train (which maybe your friendly opponents will make more expensive before you operate). If you don't manage this you lose everything you spent. You can probably lose the game less effectively by either paying 100M for a concession and not actually forming the railway, just wasting 100M; or by picking a par price where you won't be able to afford three shares, tying up a chunk of your capital indefinitely. How to play 1873 ================ The map shows the "state railway" (broad black track) - you're not allowed to build or run on it, but connections to it matter. It also shows dashed narrow gauge track, the kind you actually build, and "concession routes", which the major railways are obliged to build. On 18xx.games, the concession routes are shown as trails of tiny tokens on the map (eg GHE's concession route is from G20 to I18 via H19). When you start a major railway, you have to build its route and run a train on it. There's a complicated rule which means no-one can make your concession route unbuildable. All stations have token spaces once track is laid, but the purple bordered ones are "towns" not "villages". Routes are weird and we'll get to what towns are later. Some hexes are mines, and some factories. Hexes with disjoint token spots are still one town/village - what this means is, for example, hex S5, with two crossing lines with one spot on each, is only tokened out once both spots are full, and then is tokened out on both lines. There's no special Directors' Certificates or, indeed, a cert limit - but companies start as 2- or 5-share and can grow up to 10-share companies, and the Director must hold at least 2 shares in a 10-share company (and can't dump it unless someone else holds 2 shares). Some companies are "independent mines" (roughly, private companies); they own one mine hex and can build one track tile per turn, and their revenue (which they half-pay) can be increased after they connect to the state railway. They're "closed" if no-one buys them in the initial auction, voluntarily by the Director during their OR, or if they go bust. Pairs of them merge into "public mining companies" which own multiple mine hexes and are traded and distribute revenue like normal companies - but can't build track at all (so they really need a pre-existing state railway connection to any mine hex they merge or buy in). Closed independent mines can be bought by publics, but not merged. Publics start as 2-share companies, one for each owner of the donor independents. The HW is a special public mining company. It (and it alone) can be formed in the first stock round but only by the owner of mine #12, who must merge it in. It gets a bonus 50 Marks revenue every OR, but it can only merge or buy in the mines marked "Vor-Harzer". (Other public mining companies can merge or buy in any independent mine). Neither of these kinds of companies runs trains. They buy and run "switchers" (shunting locomotives) and "machines" (mining machinery), at most one of each per mine hex, to improve their revenue and their value in train routes. (I think 4.3.5 means if you buy a "3M" machine, say, you can upgrade three separate mines to "3" machinery...?) They can't benefit from these improvements until they connect to the state railway, although they can buy them. Shunters and machines are in tiers which become available as the phases advance - when the first 3-train is bought, the "3M" machinery and "S3" shunters are on sale (and only those). Trains, shunters, and machinery do not rust and there is no train limit save that a mining company can only have one shunter and machine per mine, but old equipment has maintenance costs from Phase 3 onwards which may make it uneconomic to retain. If you buy across a train or shunter with a maintenance cost, either the buying or the selling company pays the maintenance cost. (Machinery can only be bought from the bank.) These can all be scrapped during the purchasing step, save that a railway cannot scrap its last train. Railways can own shunters but not operate them, presumably with a view to selling them to mines. Railway companies are started as 5-share companies by winning "concessions" at auction during "trading rounds", which is what 1873 calls an auction round plus a fairly normal stock round. Concessions become available as the phases progress. You form one in a stock round by having the concession and buying one or two of its shares. When three of its shares have been bought, it floats. It gets full capitalisation - 5x the par price. You will remain the Director until the company tries to buy its first train; you can't sell your last share and someone with more shares doesn't get the Directorship. Construction's pretty normal except that it's "restrictive"; to lay or upgrade a tile you must be able to reach all the new track on the tile. You can only lay or upgrade twice if it's yellow tiles, or green tiles with two disconnected track sections. In your first OR you build your entire concession route and only that. (If by some good fortune you floated to find it already entirely built, you can do a normal build). You can replace an "inactive" token with your own for 50 Marks (playing in an empty spot costs 100). A station token is "inactive" if the company did not visit it with a train during its last OR. A "route" is not a route for an entire train. Both a route's endpoints are one of your tokens, a factory, or an open mine. It can't pass through a tokened-out space, except that you can't be tokened out of your own concession route. It can't pass through a purple-bordered town. It also can't start or end in a tokened out space. An n-train can then run n routes, but they must form a connected network. Routes are connected by meeting in a town or village which is not tokened out (it doesn't have to have the company's token on it, and this doesn't have to be an endpoint). The company's trains routes are not required to be connected, and as normal the same track can't be used twice. You must run your concession route; the NWE has two concession routes and must run both (and construct both in the first OR, etc). Diesel railcars operate entirely independently of standard trains; they run your concession route and as many more token-token routes as you can connect together. You score: The value of every "station" - one of your tokens you visited with a standard train (no matter how many times it was visited this OR). 10 for each "stop" - a village or town without one of your tokens you visited with a standard train (again, once per OR). Another 10 for each of the above if a diesel railcar visited it. 0 for a tokened-out village on your concession route. For each open mine visited, 10/20/30 dependent on the mine (but not its machinery or shunter) multiplied by the size of the largest train that visited it (and only that one). You can't score a tokened-out mine (but AFAIK the only way to visit one is on your concession route). The five factories add a fixed sum to their hex. Hex C6 has nothing but the quarry so is just worth 60. Once per OR, standard train, can't be tokened out. You subtract your maintenance costs from your revenue before distributing it. In your first OR you must buy a train. If you are the NWE, with two concession routes, this can't be the weirdo 1-train the game starts with; and if you acquire it later, you can't scrap all your other trains leaving only the 1-train. Finally you can turn into a 10-share company. This leaves existing holdings intact but creates 5 more IPO shares, sales of which will give money to the company. The Director must hold 2 shares before the split. The QLB is an oddball; it has no concession route and comes with a built-in train which just runs its home hex. If it has at least one more train, it can score its home hex twice. If it owns a diesel railcar, its routes must visit Quedlinburg. The MHE is a large company most of which is off-map. There are 10 shares in it, but no-one can be the Director. It always runs its current train for 100 x the train size. Payouts and share sales change its price as normal, and at the end of a set of ORs, it buys the next train and discards its old one. Once it's bought a 5 its share price is fixed, it stops buying trains, and just pays out 500 an OR. A company is insolvent if it cannot buy a train in its first OR (the Director is not obliged to accept offers from other companies to avoid this) or if its maintenance exceeds its revenue plus its treasury. There's a recapitalisation procedure which I won't describe but it's worth noting the shareholders lose all shares without compensation. Afterwards the company is in "receivership"; it operates by a defined procedure and withholds. You can't buy shares in such a company normally, but "purchase options" are auctioned in auction rounds for the right to restart the company.