Well, James, while I thank you for the compliment, due to the large amount of personal intervention on my part in both the game and the Pakset, I'm not sure if it's 'good use' or 'abuse'...
The latest two parts I found out needed intervention were for me:
1) That Nelson's column, when it showed up, instantly quadrupled my largest town, and according to my rules would have forced 5 new industry chains. After pushing down it's level from 200 to 15, it became more manageable for my purposes...
2) That when using the manual industry density increase, if I saved the game and reloaded it between two times, I always get the equivalent of a 'new industry chain' event, never an 'industry expands it's chain' event. I had to correct that with more manual intervention at a suitable moment.
But back to the story. My games have a tendency that it encourages me to deviate from my long-term plans, and the years following the last chapter were no exception...
So let's take a look at another map with numbers:
It all started well enough according to plan. In 1804, work started at Inverness on the fruit and wool/textiles services (1). Here a novelty for this game was used, as the wool services' return leg passes the clothes shop. So on the way back, it delivers whatever textiles are available.
But 8 years later, on reaching the 11000 mark, and with savings running up high, another greengrocer with fruit orchard opened up in London (2). As more profit always brings faster saving for future big construction, and this was not too far away from the depot at Wakefield, 5000 of the savings were spent into building services here. This quick win paid off, but the plan to build shipping lines had to be temporarily abandoned.
Then, in 1814, several things happened in short succession. First, a column in memory of Nelson was erected in Port Talbot (3). Although initial rumours spoke of a jump in population from 1700 to 4500, it turned out to be only to about 2000 (see above for the intervention). The screenshot shows the new monument.
In December of the same year, however, the builders' yard at Wakefield closed, dragging the stone quarry and the forest with it (4). Although the clay pit didn't close (it still had a contract with the Pottery at Lowestoft), it's transport services for the moment were down too. So all the vehicles were stabled. They were not sold, and neither were the stop at the clay pit nor the depot demolished, for possible future use.
The people of the region didn't despair though, but set up new industries to replace the lost trade potential. First, the orchard at Inverness signed a contract for supplying cider to the pub at Newport. Being far apart, this was not so useful at this time.
But a few months later, an arable farm opened near Inverness, contracting the local greengrocer (5). This opportunity was used to set up a vegetables service, pushing traffic on the road to Inverness to the limit of it's capacity, but making up in part for the lost revenue at Wakefield. The screenshot below shows the situation at this point.
And with this underway, the same thing happened in London (6). The lost revenue may have been more than compensated by this and some of the stabled horses put to good use, but the downside is that the plans for shipping have gone nowhere and money was again at a low eb...
