In 18 India, plenty of track gets built, creating routes all over the map. One of the most fun aspects of 18XX gaming is engineering your routes for maximum revenue and efficiency, and 18 India seeks to enhance that experience to its fullest!

Lots of Track

1829 Mainline, the source of our inspiration, also has very generous track laying rules. For example, you can place an unlimited number of yellow track tiles on a single action. However, this is limited by certain criteria. For example, all of the yellow track you build in one turn must be contiguous in one direction and you must stop if you place any sharp curves or if you connect to a city. As you can see, these small rules can be a bit fiddly.

In 18 India we wanted to strike the balance between the grand feeling of laying a bunch of track and not getting bogged down in the fiddliness of copious rule restrictions. So, in 18 India, you may place up to 4 contiguous yellow track tiles in one direction. There are no rules about stopping your build with tight curves or encountering cities. This provides an excellent balance of enhanced playability with lower rules overhead.

Upgrades Available Straight Away

One of the fantastic mechanics Mr. Tresham gave to us with 1829 Mainline is that all colors of track upgrades are available from the start of the game. If you are familiar with other 18XX games, but haven’t played 1829 Mainline, this will instantly be flagged as different. I must admit that I was skeptical of this mechanic when I first read the rules. “No way”, I thought, “you’ve jumped the shark this time Francis.” But in reality it seems to balance itself. If I choose to upgrade a location, I am choosing not to extend my routes. 18 India is a big map, so not extending my routes delays access to commodities, or coastal cities, and we think it’s this very decision space that adds a ton of fun and nuance to the game. Of course, the natural progression of yellow to green to brown to gray must be followed. So, in 18 India, during a company’s operation, it may either place up to 4 yellow track tiles OR upgrade one track tile to its next level.

Lawson Track

During a chat with famed 18XX designer David Hecht regarding his excellent 1826 game. He mentioned that he wondered if he should have used “Lawsonian” track in that game instead of curvilinear, due to the large area depicted – metropolitan France. Hecht’s comments about track consideration got us thinking about the kind of track that we wanted to have in 18 India. 

If you are unfamiliar with how Lawsonian track and curvilinear track compare, consider that the two track tiles shown below are functionally equivalent. Lawsonian track can be considered to be more efficient in presenting railroad networks on a large scale. 

Like 1826, 18 India also covers a large area.  We agree with Mr. Hecht, that Lawson track tiles depict routes at a scale that favors a grander scale and adds playability over the more “zoomed in” feel that curvilinear track provides. As a result we adopted Lawsonian track to represent our rail networks in 18 India.

Towns to Cities?!?!

Towns are very important features of a company’s rail network in 18 India. Since a non-express train operates between cities, all of the towns on the route add their revenue to the train’s run, making them sought after. A yellow Town may be upgraded to a green city and this can be important for several reasons. First of all, you may need to create a city from a town in order to have a legal route as a route can neither begin nor end at a town. This is especially true when trying to complete some of the commodity routes before your competitors can. Also, upgrading a town to a city on a competitor’s route could cause their trains to have a new, less lucrative route. When a town upgrades to a green city, there is only one station location available, so, placing a station in the new city can block your opponents temporarily – forcing them to upgrade the city to brown to reopen their routes. Of course, there are a couple of choke points on the map – due to the presence of the coastline – where it is impossible to upgrade the city to brown! Nobody ever said that track engineering was for the faint of heart.

Overall, the track laying rules implemented in 18 India are intended to speed up play and get us into the enjoyment we seek: building routes, running trains, and earning revenue! 18 India is a rail engineer’s dream game! At the end of a game, seeing the board covered with great rail networks is oh so satisfying, and if you love the narrative that a well built out map provides, you’re going to love 18 India!

Example of Track Building

Early in the game, the Bombay Railway, based in Mumbai, whose herald is a standing cobra, would like to build a route from Mumbai to Jabalpur in order to secure the commodity contract for spices. To do this they plan to upgrade Jabalpur to a city from which a 2-train can begin a legal route. They have decided to avoid as much of the terrain expenses as possible and plan to place 4 yellow track tiles on the spaces shown (see Figure 2 and Figure 3, below).

Note that the Director has decided to include the town of Bhopal on the route to earn extra revenue on the train’s route. On the company’s next operation, they will pay ₹30 to build track through the difficult terrain in the area of Bhopal, and will build the remainder of the route on the hexagons numbered 5, 6, and 7. The Director decides to stop building track at Jabalpur (see Figure 4, below) even though a fourth yellow track tile could be placed. It is important to note that at this point, a legal train route does not yet exist. In 18 India, a train must begin and end its route at a city, not a town. At the end of the operating round, the Bombay Railway’s stock value will decline since it has produced no revenue. In an upcoming post, we will discuss how a Guarantee Company is protected against such declines in stock value..

Finally, on the company’s next turn, the director upgrades Jabalpur to a city, creating a legal train route. The company then builds a railway station there and runs a 2-train from Jabalpur, picking up the Spices hexagon, Bhopal, the cluster of towns northeast of Mumbai, through Nashik, and into Mumbai (see Figure 5, below). The revenue of this route totals ₹180. The revenue for this 2-train is calculated as follows, starting from the green Bhopal city tile: ₹30 (Jabalpur) + ₹10 (Bhopal) + ₹20 (Bhiwandi) + ₹10 (Nashik) + ₹70 (Mumbai) + ₹40 (Spices) = ₹180.  A fantastic run for a measly little 2-train. 18 India is filled with little engineering puzzles like this one. It’s one of the things that keeps us coming back time and again.

---

Previous Articles:

The Origins of 18 India

18 India: Mitigating Randomness (Part 1)

18 India: Mitigating Randomness (Part 2)