Landmark Competition on Steam over Europe

    Currently Steam has the same City Comps as the other versions of the game but, especially in the early eras, they cause more problems than they create. It is highly unlikely that the President or Mayors want players hauling to the Cities due to a) the potential of levelling them out of synch with the LM during the comp and b) taking trains away from the LM after the comp because of the extra cash bonus.


    Therefore instead of having a City Comp why not make it a Landmark Comp? The winner can be decided on an average/total of all goods delivered or a select few, such as the 5 goods with the highest tonnage. The subsequent cash bonus can then be applied to the Landmark.

    Hi Sniffa and thanks for the feedback! The idea for a Landmark competition sounds really interesting!


    I would love to hear has the city comps affected in a negative way in other scenarios?


    Or is SoE scenario a special case because of landmarks, presidents and mayors?


    Have you or someone else seen this in action, city competition causing problems for the city & landmark? How about the extra cash, does that help make investments and donations where needed to balance this out?

    CC really creates many problems in Europe.

    In the early epochs it is very undesirable.

    Because it shifts the work of the players!

    From a landmark to the city.

    This applies only to the Europe map.


    For the region's strategy to be successful.

    City / Landmark must be one level.

    1-1 2-2 3-3 ....

    And all players must be focused on a landmark.

    so, CC becomes a problem!

    But there is also a positive side to this problem.

    This shows how successful the teams are.

    Successful teams remain focused on a landmark.

    And ignore CC.

    Sniffa wrote:

    You only need one rogue player to screw the tandem levelling, as we are seeing at the moment on Loch Ness

    This is another big problem.

    Very difficult problem.


    The biggest problem. Trolls!

    Sniffa wrote:

    You only need one rogue player to screw the tandem levelling, as we are seeing at the moment on Loch Ness

    That's hardly true.


    Yes, one single player can level up the city, once the passengers are finished and you are in later eras. But once you realise you have just that guy, you can stop delivering passengers to the city while you don't want it to level up. It requires a bit more cooperation, but it's perfectly doable.



    IMO, CC are totally useless in SoE I agree with that statement. Nobody trully bothers to do them until the end of era 3, because the focus is on the landmark then. And after that, the groups are totally screwed because of the necessity to have 5 different regions in each "sub-competition" and the fact that some really poor cities that didn't develop the landmark at all are in the top spots, and stand no chance against the best teams.


    Overall, it results in most CC, even later on, not even being a fight. With an easy winner, 2 cities not even competing, and 2 competing in a league way too good for them. Simply due to the city ranking being non-representative of the true strength of cities on SoE.



    I even have tried to think of a way to profit from this free x2, but it's not even worth it. The landmark is still paying more than this x2. And time is the most precious thing on SoE, especially since the decrease of cash needed to level up the landmark, and the rework of trains (that alone is a 250M economy for everybody in carts I believe). Before those changes, it was possible to have an EG with full carts, but difficult. Now, cash is hardly an issue. Making those CC just a fun way to pass the time, if there is nothing better to do.

    I like the challenge of the city comp, actually. It requires total teamwork - communication and discipline.


    It is a little disturbing though, this subject was touched, that a single player can have such an impact on controlling the city level. True, not hauling pax to the city slows them down, but there are always players from other cities or neighboring regions that either don't get the message (no pax hauls to the city) or don't care.

    That's where my idea of the exploding train station comes in handy ;) - the region can "vote" using cash donations similar to the special routes. Once a certain level is attained - boom! There goes the engine house and it has to be rebuilt. I know - the odds of this ever being implemented are slim to none, but the mental image though.


    ...could be a good source of revenue for gold.

    sacroima wrote:

    That's hardly true.


    Yes, one single player can level up the city, once the passengers are finished and you are in later eras. But once you realise you have just that guy, you can stop delivering passengers to the city while you don't want it to level up. It requires a bit more cooperation, but it's perfectly doable.


    City levels to 8 and LM follows approx 1hr later at beginning of Era 4. Whilst 20+ players are tryng to level the LM from 8 to 9 (currently at 70%) we have had one person level the city from 8 to 10 (with some help from a very weak level 1 player), including pax (maybe 50% hauled by others). That is with their Wait Times at ridiculous amounts due to some of us killing our bank balances by hauling trains direct. This really shouldn't be able to happen, however it is a different subject than this topic.