18Ardennes is set in northwestern Europe.

There are a lot of minor companies. They can't lay brown tiles, aren't
obliged to own a train, and the Director's certificate represents half
the company with the other half not for sale.

Public (what I'd usually call "major") companies start at 5 shares and
can convert to 10 shares from phase 3.

Minors are auctioned one at a time with a f. 100 starting bid. If no
player has f.100, the player with the most money picks one to buy for
all their money. The starting value of a Minor is half the sale price
rounded down; f.50 in the case where no player had f. 100. The
starting cash is twice this value. Minors lay a tile immediately if
their starting hex is empty.

The "Giullaime-Luxembourg" is basically a private; face value always
f. 100, can be sold to market, pays flat f. 25 income.

There's a 60% limit on ownership only when buying from the IPO or
Treasury. You can get up to 100% by other means, most obviously buying
from the markert.

No more than 50% of a company that's started can be in the
market. Companies must have Directors.

Share price drops one for each share sale by a Director; one for
shares in market at the end of a stock round; one for a withhold; one
for each share issued during operations. It goes up one for a dividend
above stock price. Minors and 5-shares can double-jump if they are
valued f.50 or more.

To the left of the f.50 space there's an f.0 space. Minors can enter
this; they're worthless, can't form or merge into public companies,
don't count against cert limit. As far as I can tell, since minors
can't do emergency money raising, this space is just here to collect a
minor that has no train. Public companies don't seem to be able to hit
f.0 (or close?) at all.

Sell, then buy. You can only sell a company that's operated. Purchases
and sales are always at the current market price. You can attempt to
buy a share of a public company by merging a connected minor into it
using the rules for 5-share company formation (which we'll get to) -
with the public company's Director's consent. If that is withheld, you
can discard the minor and all its assets for a market share of that
public company.

From Phase 3, at the start of stock rounds where at least one player
has f.280 and a "qualifying" minor company, all such players can bid
to open a public company. 5.2.1 says a minor company is "qualified" if
it has a token in one of the public company's "qualifying
cities"... but this restriction only applies during the stock round in
which the first public company starts. So then are all minors
"qualifying"? I dunno.  This auction doesn't change the priority deal.

Players then bid on public companies to open until all players pass. I
dunno if this is a fierce fight, or player A says "I bid 0F on
company A" and B says "I bid 0F on company B" and that's that. Maybe
it's a fight after that first time now all minors are "qualifying"?

After having won the right to open one you must do so in lieu of a
normal stock turn in the stock round. If you can't, you're bankrupt
(which can happen as a result of making up a difference, see next
paragraph); so beware of bidding if you have little excess money over
280F.

You open one by selling stock if desired (I think, only if the
resulting cash is used to increase the starting stock price?), picking
an initial stock price, paying twice that to the Treasury for the
Director's certificate, exchanging your qualifying minor company for
one more share (and making up the difference if the minor is worth
less, but _not_ getting change if it's worth more). The public company
inherits the minor's assets - trains, money, and tokens.

Players who want to exchange minors for shares of the public company
do so in a similar way except the Director can decline assets they
don't want. It looks like also the minor's value counts as double its
share price here, but only 1x share price in the initial formation.
Why? I don't know.

Two ORs to every SR.

5-shares can convert to 10-shares other than in their first turn of
operating. They don't get any extra capital immediately. The Director
can buy shares immediately (including by merging in minors). You can't
run a train you acquired by such a merger in the current OR, but you
can part-exchange it for a 4D train (before you check if you are over
train limit? I think so).

Other than in your first turn you can issue stock, selling it to the
market.

Minors lay one or upgrade one (never to brown). Public companies lay
two or upgrade one. Some printed hexes have "railheads", connections
that must be preserved in yellow. You must extend a route, or increase
the value of a city on an existing route. Plain yellow track is
unlimited.

Tokens cost f.40 for minors and f.100 for public companies. Some hexes
start with bonus tokens, which block routes just like ordinary tokens,
but can be removed as below.

Some cities start with ferry rights bonus tokens and arrows into the
sea (the W hexes?). When you token that city you can take one and then
you get a bonus (increasing with train size) for running a train with
that city as the endpoint (implicitly down the arrow and into the
sea). Some of those cities get a second arrow into the sea with
upgrades; this adds a second bonus token which can be claimed by
another company, and a company with either token can then claim two
ferry bonuses if it can run a train to each of the arrows. You can't
get two bonuses from running one train between two ferry cities.

Mining rights tokens are more or less the same but double the city
value regardless of train size. You _can_ get the bonus for both
mining cities with one train, and you can get the bonus for any one
city for as many trains as you can run to it.

Fort tokens can be collected as soon as they are on a route of yours,
no need to token the hex. You get a f.10 bonus to your total revenue
(not to any given train) for each fort token if you own a train and
have a connection from one of your tokens to Paris; ditto for
Strasbourg. (The train doesn't have to be big enough to run such a
route.)

Dits are just good. 4Ds are the special trains, running a route of any
length (overlapping your other train freely) and scoring any 4
cities. Bear in mind to score a ferry bonus you have to make the ferry
city the endpoint, and to score any bonus you have to score its city.

You can't visit two cities in the same hex but you can run from the
city to the dit in Ruhr (B16).

You can run W-E routes and N-S routes. You can run through the N/S/E
cites but the W ends are ferries which you must score the ferry bonus
on. Such a route scores a bonus f.30 per _token_ on the route. A 4D
must score the token city to get the bonus. A train could potentially
run a route which is both N-S and W-E scoring f.30 per token.

You can't half-pay. Treasury shares earn dividends; market shares do
not.  (The rulebook says "Initial Offering" shares do not pay but this
is never defined, and the 18xx.games implementation only has market
and treasury shares).

2-trains rust when phase 4 starts... but they get to run one last time
in the OR when it does start if they haven't already run.

Only 10 share companies can buy 4Ds and they can part-exchange a 4/5/6
for a f.200 discount.

A public company must own a train. You can't issue Treasury shares in
emergency money raising even though you could have done so
beforehand. You _can_ sell personal shares to raise cash for a more
expensive bank/market train than the cheapest available (this is
unusual) but not in order to buy a train from another company.
Bankruptcy doesn't end the game and is apparently pretty unlikely.