The City of the Tracklayers (Guide)
|
Post-Railway Content and Onwards |
| City of the Tracklayers Summary | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Variable-Length Activity | ||||||||||||||||
| Setup | Progress | End | ||||||||||||||
| 0 A | 2+ A | 1 A | ||||||||||||||
| Progress
Details |
Build and spend  Hinterland Prosperity.
| |||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
| Raw EPA | - | Raw SPA | - | |||||||||||||
One of the final acts of building the Great Hellbound Railway is giving the tracklayers their own city.
Mechanically, it is its own location, available from the Railway Station where it's located. This location has fixed storylets that are rarely used, and is mainly driven by opportunity cards.
This guide will cover the profit-making actions that are available in the City.
Decisions[edit]
In the process of arranging the founding of the city, you will decide several of its aspects, which primarily change the stats required for some of the city's opportunity cards. Once the city is complete, 
Hinterland City - Founding Body and 
New-Minted Currency can only be changed by paying FATE, while 
Leader of the Tracklayers, 
Hinterland City - Chosen Site, and 
Hinterland City - Official Alignment can be changed through gameplay.
These decisions also affect the opportunity cards showing up in the City. (There is also a card affected by decisions outside the city, and a card added with a direct rail link. These are in the table too for your convenience.)
Note that the numbers in the table below refer to the value needed to succeed with 100% certainty, not the usual difficulty ratings in the wiki.
Location[edit]
The location of the City of the Tracklayers is initially determined via board meeting right before finishing the railway line.
You can change the city location after the fact by playing the Hauling the City Out storylet, which costs:
1x Much-Needed Gap, best obtained from Intrigues in the Khanate
5x Vitreous Almanac, see Cartography Grinding (Guide)#Vitreous_Almanac for possible sources- All your current
Hinterland Efficiency
The actual movement is based on the results of a combined 
Persuasive and 
Artisan of the Red Science check. If you succeed, it moves the City closer to Hell / Marigold Station (if possible); failure moves it further away from Hell and towards Ealing Gardens. If you want a certain failure, equipping a 
Weasel of Woe is a good idea.
Moving the city also gives you 
10 CP The City Waning, 5 CP Tracklayers' Displeasure and 
Wounds.
Since rebuilding Hinterland Efficiency costs quite a few actions, it is advisable to do all the moving fairly close together, and only rebuild your Efficiency afterwards.
An Aside about Habituation[edit]
Every action spent in the City raises 
Habituated to the Hinterland by one change point. There is no way to speed this process up, nor to slow it down. Higher levels of Habituation unlock some particularly profitable cards, as well as some decent options on old cards; notably, among other things, the quality gates several stages in the Gray Man storyline.
There's not much else to say about it, though. If you're invested enough in the Tracklayer's City, you will inevitably raise Habituation until you've unlocked everything, and if you haven't, your only choice to do anything about that is to keep on keeping on just the same as if you had.
Economy[edit]
The "currency" of the Tracklayers' City is Hinterland Prosperity, valued the same as 1 
Penny.
You can gain and spend Hinterland Prosperity by playing cards, there are no fixed storylets to cash it out, nor is there a separate exchange (the Bazaar tab is the same as in the Hinterlands).
Many of the opportunity cards have an option that, on success, give you 200 or 220 + Hinterland Efficiency points of Hinterland Prosperity. Most options that have the higher payout require a double check of one of the base stats (
Watchful, Persuasive, 
Dangerous, 
Shadowy) plus one of the advanced skills.
Hinterland Efficiency starts at 0 and is capped to 300. You can raise it by first raising 
Developing... to 5, and then playing A Project Concludes that resets it, and raises Hinterland Efficiency by 50. You can raise Developing... by playing Matters of Infrastructure (unlock) and then Developing Infrastructure.
Cashing Out Hinterland Prosperity[edit]
You need to play cards to exchange Hinterland Prosperity for other items. Some of these cards only become visible with a certain amount of Hinterland Prosperity.
- ↑ 1,000 base when Chosen Site is 1 (Near Ealing Gardens), otherwise 1,050 base
- ↑ 1,000 base when Chosen Site is 2 (Above the Magistracy of the Evenlode), otherwise 1,050 base
- ↑ 1,000 base when Chosen Site is 3 (Outside of Balmoral), otherwise 1,050 base
- ↑ 1,000 base when Chosen Site is 4 (In the Shadow of Station VIII), otherwise 1,050 base
- ↑ 1,000 base when Chosen Site is 5 (In the Parish of Burrow), otherwise 1,050 base
- ↑ 1,000 base when Chosen Site is 6 (Between Moulin's Wastes and the Cold of Hurlers), otherwise 1,050 base
- ↑ 1,000 base when Chosen Site is 7 (Near Marigold), otherwise 1,050 base
Analysis[edit]
Once you've raised Hinterland Efficiency to its maximum of 300, most opportunity cards offer a 5 or 5.2 EPA option. For several of the items that can be obtained for Hinterland Prosperity, this is the most action-efficient source. There are also a few options (like Landscape in Moonlight and A visitor for (Leader of the Tracklayers)) that pay out an additional 0.3
in items.
If you turn your Prosperity into 
Captivating Ballads and then sell them at the Rat Market; this raises the efficiency to somewhere between 5.86 and 6.06 EPA, depending on how many 5 and 5.2 EPA actions you manage to play. This comes with the limitation of only being able to sell to the Rat Market at some weekends and the reducing Rat Market price bonus as your sales increase.
Another payout option is to go through 
Bottle of Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise. This is a remarkably good source of 
Vial of Tears of the Bazaar via A Presumptuous Little Opportunity and is useful for those aiming for a long-lived Noman.
Profit Through Board Meetings[edit]
If you have
140 Involved in a Railway Venture, that is, you have built the spur line to the City of the Tracklayers
exactly 1 Charter of the Great Hellbound Railway, that is, Wealth-seeking (which you can change through a board meeting)- High
A Player of Chess (15 for 100% success rate, still worth playing at 14)
then playing the option Reckon with the wealth-seeking charter of the GHR of the card Troubled Times Recur not only gives you up to 520 points of Hinterland Prosperity, but also decreases 
In Corporate Debt by one and sometimes even two points.
With this setup, you can once a week convene a Board Meeting, Vote a dividend to the shareholders twice, and then gradually reduce In Corporate Debt through the above-mentioned option. This way, there is no need to juggle board members to reduce corporate debt, raising the efficiency of the dividends option and reducing actions spent in the board meeting.
With maxed out 
Train Luxuries, you get for each dividend:
4800x Moon-Pearl, worth 48 
2x Magnificent Diamond, worth 25 
2x Bottle of Broken Giant 1844, worth 5 - In Corporate Debt: 5 CP for the first, 7 CP for the second dividend
so a total of 78 per dividend, or 156 for two dividends.
On a minimal board you'll spend one action proposing the dividend, at least four actions convincing your members, and one to accept the final vote. Two times for two dividends makes 12 or more actions. This part alone is up to 13 EPA. Of course, you cannot just add the profits and actions you spend on the Troubled Times Recur card, because you'll have to draw and play many cards to get your nearly 12 draws of this card to wipe out your corporate debt. Let's just say that if you want to spend lots of time in the City of the Tracklayers and have high A Player of Chess, this scheme gives some nice extra boost to profits once a week.
Speaking of high A Player of Chess, if you play Subvert the Revolution often enough to wipe out all revolutionary alignment of your city, it makes the Chess check easier by two points, so you "only" need 13 A Player of Chess for 100% success rate.
Betraying the Tracklayer's City[edit]
There are actually three more cashouts available for Prosperity: Betray the city to (criminal affiliates), Betray the city to the Constables, and Allow Hell its hour. In addition to their normal payouts, each of these grants favours from the respective group, and raises your Infiltrator of the Tracklayer City by 1, but destroys all the Hinterland Efficiency you have built up. Two of them also produce a hefty sum of The City Waning, while the third forcibly yanks your city all the way to Marigold. Given all this, at first blush, these options seem catastrophically bad.
There are two factors worth considering, however. First, these payouts cash out an arbitrary amount of Prosperity at once, at-value, whereas the costs they incur are entirely fixed and can be amortized across an entire 'batch'. Second, the specific items these options cash out into (
Journal of Infamy, 
Dubious Testimony, and 
Infernal Contract) cannot be ground anywhere near 5 EPA, with the current best grinds for them being in the ballpark of 2.5-3.5 EPA.
The fixed costs are not negligible; grinding enough Prosperity in one go for betrayal to be an amortized 5 EPA is highly unrealistic to expect. However, just grinding Hinterland Efficiency all the way back up to the cap gives about 3.5 EPA in Prosperity on average, and anything past that point asymptotically improves one's efficiency. In other words, if one requires truly industrial quantities of any of those three very specific cashouts for whichever reason, betrayal is remarkably competitive as an option.
Communing[edit]
The Tracklayer's City also brings the opportunity to commune with three chthonic entities; the TLU City, the Creditor, and London. The former two are accessible in the City, but London is (obviously) in London, specifically 
Your Activities. Each communion must be carried out at least once as part of the City storyline, but can be repeated even after the storyline is over for profit. Repeated communions with the TLU City and the Creditor cost 
2 x Memory of a Much Lesser Self.
Each of the three communions revolves around various advanced skill checks to raise The Mind's Ascent, with each offering different checks when you have The Mind's Ascent 1, 2 and 3; once this reaches 4 the mind of the chthonic entity can be entered, with the reward being granted on leaving the mind. Failures on these checks grant 
+2 CP Nightmares, whereas successes grant +1 CP The Mind's Ascent.
| Mind | Challenges | Cost | Reward | EPA[1] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TLU City | x 2 MoaMLS
|
 x 1 Searing Enigma
|
5.23 | |
| ||||
| Creditor | x 2 MoaMLS
|
 x 1 Primaeval Hint
|
5.23 | |
| ||||
| London |
|
4.88[2] | ||
|
Note that communion with London gives an additional +14 CP Nightmares on your first visit, and +5 CP Nightmares on subsequent visits.
- ↑ Assuming all checks are successful, and ignoring the action cost of sourcing Memory of a Much Lesser Self
- ↑ Factoring in
Tinned Ham conversion of scrip to echoes, and ignoring menaces
