cjsgro@watdragon.UUCP (Carlo Sgro) (02/08/86)
More random questions:
How do you deal with picking up random loads (that you have no demand for)
at a city and then dumping it later. Since the (first edition) rules don't
penalize it, it seems like it would be a good strategy (e.g. picking up sugar
in S.F. or wood in Portland) but it also seems a bit unrealistic (I can't
imagine the owner of the B&O railroad picking up oranges in Tampa in the hope
of possibly picking up a customer somewhere). Does anyone have any house
rules about this? Interesting house rules might involve:
1) fixed penalities for dumping,
2) variable penalties for dumping (depending on
what the load is; i think that it would be far
easier to unload a shipment of fruit at a bargain
basement price (as long as they weren't rotten)
than a shipment of wood,
3) penalties for the amount of time you carry unwanted
loads,
4) costs for buying unneeded loads ...ccrrick@deneb.UUCP (02/10/86)
> > More random questions: > > How do you deal with picking up random loads (that you have no demand for) > at a city and then dumping it later. Since the (first edition) rules don't > penalize it, it seems like it would be a good strategy (e.g. picking up sugar > in S.F. or wood in Portland) but it also seems a bit unrealistic (I can't > imagine the owner of the B&O railroad picking up oranges in Tampa in the hope > of possibly picking up a customer somewhere). Does anyone have any house > rules about this? Interesting house rules might involve: How about tourists?! "Sure, we'll take you to Los Angeles..." and then you cruelly dump them in Omaha... We've always allowed indiscriminate pickups and drops. This seems to make the game more interesting because it makes the players try to predict the future, hedge their bets, that sort of thing... It's always wonderful to come back from SF with 3 loads of sugar and then suddenly find that Detroit wants it for $41 million... It also allows players to mess each other up more because two people could take all the available commodities of one type or another... I feel this is important because, to me, Empire Builder has too little direct competition... -- --rick heli ... {ucbvax,lll-crg}!ucdavis!ccrrick