I don't want to create a dedicated thread about balancing...

I've finished 1st level with 3-star rating, but stuck on the second level.
The problem is also tracks. More precisely, once any city is connected to the same network, they produce traffic to all (?) other cities. The requirement for city growth is "green" status, which is hard to reach because there is no available tracks to upgrade infrastructure to satisfy such conditions. So, It's a vicious circle.

Contracts are also not a solution because they require high-profile engines to satisfy conditions, which require alum, which require connections to "rest" cities, which cannot grow due to extra traffic to other cities using inefficient infrastructure that cannot be upgraded without tracks.

Hi, thanks all for the feedback!

Regarding cement: This does tend to mount up quite quickly as things are now. We're planning to add more and more things to do with it over the course of EA, which should solve that

Regarding the second level: Once tracks and platform are laid between two cities and the journey becomes possible, passengers will start to spawn. They will stop spawning though once you disconnect the cities. The strategy I use in cases like this is to disconnect some cities and sell the infrastructure (it is a full refund), then focus on growing a small subset of the cities

If you three starred Forgotten Valley and have found Horseshoe Isle that hard, it suggests that we need to rebalance Horseshoe a little! I'll take a look at the contracts, potentially the rewards could be more useful

Thanks again for the feedback, we'll be rebalancing and tweaking all through EA, and feedback like this is great for us to understand where it needs adjustment!

> it suggests that we need to rebalance Horseshoe a little! I'll take a look at the contracts, potentially the rewards could be more useful

The Horseshoe is definitely more challenging. I'm now two starring Desert Dew and this feels simpler than even one star on Horseshoe. Probably more rewarding contracts there is the solution.

Thanks for collecting user feedback, the game is amazing!

Okay, then I must not have understood how the game is supposed to work at all.
The strategy through the level is to fulfil an objective, then leave everything and move on to the next objective?
I find that very nonsensical!
It should be more about building an infrastructure, expanding it and then developing it.

The reward for completing a goal should be a sufficient number of stations for the next step. The additional goals should be more about optimisation.

It should be more about building an infrastructure, expanding it and then developing it

Now the game is actually about improving infrastructure and growing cities, at least in scenarios and after 1st star. It's not obvious on Forgotten Valley, because you can produce power and train parts and use the crius for everything, so it's enough to have general double-tracks infrastructure and use the same type of engines for everything. But later, in the following missions, you're limited by these resources and, additionally, get faster but expensive trains (e.g. the hermes 142km/h instead of 66km/h). So, you're forced to build more complex infrastructure to mix medium and fast trains, also have large and long stations.

The game starts focusing on intensive growth very fast (as opposed to transport fever or openttd with default settings, where extensive path prevails much longer). All cities become connected early (even earlier than 1st star) and then you're forced to develop cities to fulfill star requirements.

Gaps between stars are sometimes VERY large. For instance, 1st star in Desert Dew is 30/h between the factory and market, which can be solved by 60% with cargo, but the 2nd star require 100/h and.. oh.. this is a huge difference, because it's max 20% with cargo, all other flow must be passengers, which means you should grow cities very strongly and optimize latency while resources are very limited. I even doubt that I'm able to reach 3rd star here (maybe it requires some cheese that I haven't found yet).

The strategy through the level is to fulfil an objective, then leave everything and move on to the next objective?

I found that contracts could not match the goals of stars (which is a real goal of each mission) because they can require all stations to be green. Keeping stations "green" requires optimization of latency (faster trains, shorter paths and so on), while stars can require XX/hour, which means optimizing throughput (bigger trains, transfer stations and so on).

Anyway, I like that >1 star is hard to reach, but I agree that game is unbalanced for now (that's expected for early access).

The Tithonus (Mistra map) train is _very_ imbalanced. It's literally game changer. It's small (shorter platforms), cheap (more trains) and fast, so cement and train parts (resources that cannot be produced on the map) don't limit the player at all once all other trains are replaced with this one. I think this train should be nurfed, or the map should be redesigned to challenge players somehow else.

The strategy I use in cases like this is to disconnect some cities and sell the infrastructure

I replayed the second map and didn't rush to aluminum and this is much easier. So, I don't think now that the second map should be rebalanced. Probably, the game shouldn't suggest new players to research and develop aluminum early to avoid confusing them, but it's optional.