The City of the Tracklayers (Guide)

Post-Railroad 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 .
Items Inputs/Outputs Boosting Outputs ≤2.5 : 12.5 : 62.5 : ≥1560 :
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.

Decisions

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, and can only be changed by paying FATE, while , , and 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.

Decision	Affected Card	Chosen Option	Result
Founding Body	Genii Locorum	ANY
		Furnace	,
		Cornelius	,
		Manager	,
	The Creditor's Moods	Soul-tied, founding body NOT Furnace	,
	The Flow of Commerce	Story-backed
		NOT Story-backed
	Mouths to Feed	Lacre-imbued	,
		NOT lacre-imbued	,
	The Creditor's Grievances	Evenlode-aligned and soul-tied	,
		NOT Evenlode-aligned	,
		NOT soul-tied	,
	Assist (Tracklayers Leader)	Furnace, with Balmoral as chosen site
		Furnace	,
			-2
		Cornelius	,
			-1
		Fires' Lackey	,
			,
		Your Lackey	,
			,
			,
		January	,
Chosen Site / Railway Charter / Rail Access	Troubled Times Recur	Ealing	,
		Evenlode	,
		Balmoral	,
		Station VIII	,
		Burrow-Infra-Mump	,
		Moulin/Hurlers	,
		Marigold	,
		Direct Rail, Wealth/Church/Hell charter
		Direct Rail, Charity charter
		Direct Rail, Science charter
		Direct Rail, Worker charter
Patronage / Parabola Train / Evenlode Route	Denizens of the Neath	Ferrocephalus Real	,
		Train NOT through Parabola	,
		Train through Parabola/Parabolan Spur Line	,
		Evenlode Plains/Plains Spur Line	,
		Evenlode Hills/Hills Spur Line	,
Rail Access / Official Alignment	Merely Passing Through	Direct Rail
		Direct Rail, Complacently Unrevolutionary	,

Location

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:

• , best obtained from Intrigues in the Khanate
• , see Cartography Grinding (Guide)#Vitreous_Almanac for possible sources
• All your current

The actual movement is based on the results of a combined and 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 is a good idea.

Moving the city also gives you , and .

Since rebuilding costs quite a few actions, it is advisable to do all the moving fairly close together, and only rebuild your Efficiency afterwards.

Economy

The "currency" of the Tracklayers' City is , valued the same as 1 .

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 + points of . Most options that have the higher payout require a double check of one of the base stats (, , , ) plus one of the advanced skills.

starts at 0 and is capped to 300. You can raise it by first raising to 5, and then playing A Project Concludes that resets it, and raises by 50. You can raise by playing Matters of Infrastructure (unlock) and then Developing Infrastructure.

Cashing Out Hinterland Prosperity

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.

Card	Option	Unlock HP	Nominal Value ( )	Item Gained	Special Consideration
Charting the Hinterland	Collate the results of an expedition	1,050	12.50
Mouths to Feed	Engage in a little light price gouging	1,050	(12.50)	15 x , 5 x
Imports and Exports	Rubbery liaisons	1,050/1,000	12.50
	Real estate development	1,050/1,000	12.50
	Vibrations on the web	1,050/1,000	12.50		Can be sold for
	Trade with the Masters	1,050/1,000	12.50
	The book trade	1,050/1,000	12.50		Can be converted into Scrip via your Jericho Library, or into even more Scrip via an Upper River card if you have . Or directly into via an option if you have
	Academic encounters	1,050/1,000	(12.50)		Can only be "sold" during an Urchin War world event
	Infernal encounters	1,050/1,000	12.50
Merely Passing Through	Investigate the souvenir stalls	6,250	62.50		Verses can be converted into Scrip via your Jericho Library, or into even more Scrip via an Upper River card if you have
The Flow of Commerce	Help yourself to one of the stories he isn't watching, Convert a few tales into a safer form of art	6,250	62.50		Can be sold at The Rat Market for extra profit
Officially Non-Criminal	Give Mr Wines one in the eye	31,250	312.50	5 x	Can be sold at the Khanate for Khaganian Coinage, which can then be used to buy Crackling Devices to sell at The Rat Market for extra profit.
A Visit from Virginia	Request connections	156,000	1,560.00
	Request a trophy from a shared enemy	156,250	1,562.60
	Request a seed of the cedar	156,250			Has no known uses after finishing the Railway storyline, and cannot be sold

Analysis

Once you've raised 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 , this is the most action-efficient source.

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 3 weekends out of a 12 week cycle.

Another payout option is to go through , selling them for at Khaganian Markets, and at the same location buying which you can again sell to the Rat Market; this comes out to between 5.98 and 6.20 EPA, neglecting travel costs. With A Presumptuous Little Opportunity, this is also a remarkably good source of .

Profit Through Board Meetings

If you have

• , that is, you have built the spur line to the City of the Tracklayers
• , that is, Wealth-seeking (which you can change through a board meeting)
• High (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 , but also decreases 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 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 , you get for each dividend:

• , worth 48
• , worth 25
• , worth 5
• : 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 , this scheme gives some nice extra boost to profits once a week.

Speaking of high , 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 for 100% success rate.

Communing

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 . 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.

Each of the three communions revolves around various advanced skill checks to raise , with each offering different checks when you have 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 , whereas successes grant .

Mind	Challenges	Reward	EPA
TLU City	10 10 10		5.68
	10 10 4
	10 10 10  ??
Creditor	10 10 10		5.68
	10 10 4
	10 10 10  ??
London	10 10 10		4.88
	10 10 4
	10 10  ??

Note that communion with London gives an additional on your first visit, and on subsequent visits.