I have tried to reproduce JugglerX's popular classic sandbox challenge for Modern Times... although it is almost double in time length to the original
However as I have all the DLC's those without them may not be able to play it ( not sure)

A tip: due the the higher costs of MT buildings the usual strategy of playing this challenge (Booze baron... distillery, imports and Nuclear testing ) doesnt work as well although it is playable...

It is available under the online challenges tab in game.

I have played it through twice and not had any game breaking bugs but all comments, bugs and thoughts on improving it welcomed

(all credit for the concept must go to JugglerX and if he wants to upload his own version I will of course rename/remove my version)

Hi Rikki,

Pleased you made this map. Just had a play through and scored 700,000
Modern times has certainly made more strategies viable, not just booze baron. I did not choose booze baron for this score.
I think a score of close to 1 million is possible without cheating.

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Here are some thoughts for improving version 2

Really what we need to be focusing on is creating a more diverse mixture of strategies. Really the way to do this is by re-weighting the end game score multipliers.

Currently income is the best way to improve your highscore. Happiness and swiss bank just don't increase your highscore enough for the effort and expense you need to put in. People naturally attempt to discover the most efficient way to make money, and that so far has been booze baron. Modern times has made other income strategies viable, but only just.


Happiness should have a significantly larger highscore multiplier
Let's face it, once your happiness is over 55% increasing it any further just wastes your cash. The highscore multiplier for happiness should be much higher and should be increased in tiers: 70%, 80%, 90%, 95%, 100%.

Small reduction in the export price of Rum
modern times will make booze baron less dominant, but a reduction in rum export prices by 15% to start with would be ok.

Swiss bank should have a higher multiplyer
It costs alot of money to generate swiss bank, the score multiplier should be doubled.

Tourism & Military
I'm not sure how these could be worked in, but it would be nice if building tourism and military either generated a bonus, or became necessary to avoid rebels or being voted out. At the moment both of these sectors are just expenses. We do have to remember however that this challenge is not a scripted scenario. For tourism, perhaps income multipliers for all tourism buildings are increased x 2/3, significantly more if your tourism rating and environ rating are high (making tourism and enviro character traits a possibility)

For Military, perhaps there is a link between industry/exports which creates rebel activity, meaning at least some money needs to be moved into the military.

Add trees to the map
We've had this request a few times, maybe only half the island. In my opinion they just get in the way!

Disable cheating
If we could figure out how to disable cheating that would be huge. I'm not sure if it's possible.


Id also probably make the island a little larger and a bit more square. With the larger population cap and the larger bio farms I could fill this map.

mineral deposits are good.

I'm not sure about this one, but on the original map the entire island was fertile for all crops. On this version only half the island is fertile for sugar. This may have been on purpose by you to deter booze barons. Anyway, not sure if the entire island should be fertile or not.

Welcome your thoughts!

Rob

I am going to tweak a few things.. the sugar should be island wide as the idea is for the scenerio to be almost sand box and allow each user to build the best island they can

Trees I think are best left off the map , as that then defines part of the island as logging and doesnt allow the free reign, In your orginal (pre MT version) I used the Horticultural Station too place forests were I wanted them.

we dont have that option with resources so have tried to distribute them in a manner that allows players to design their own Island

Similarly I have cut down majorly on the offshore oil deposits from the original and moved the fixed buildings to the centre of the map- two things I personally felt were not quite right with the original

The major difficulty with the MT version over your original is that electricity/power comes into play much earlier and will drain a lot of early money if MT buildings are to be used.. that makes it a very different scenerio from the pre MT version.


I am loath to play with the weighting on happiness et al as I am unsure of the balancing within the game and playng about with one may make another too prominent

As it stands it is a sand box with orginal game parameters albeit a little ahead in time than the developers intended - something I think/hope I have carried over from your excellant original

As for the cheating.. that is something I hope that the developers look at closely.. I have to admit I havent played my own challenge in slow time and micromanaged.. just on full speed to ensure it plays out correctly- and even on that setting I have acheived 750K+ The tourism boost has changed the dynamics of the game a lot