Cities - [EBPEdit Help Contents]
Cities both supply and demand various loads. Transporting loads from one city to another is the key money-earning activity of the game. Cities come in various sizes; the size determines the number of players that can serve them as well as the cost of building track to them. Most board games have about 60 cities, EBP allows up to 1000.
CREATE/EDIT
To create a city, point the mouse to a visible milepost and press c. To edit an existing city, 1) point the mouse to it and double click on it, or press c, or 2) use the Edit, Cities pull down menu.
EDIT CITY WINDOW
When you create a city, EBPEdit opens the Edit City window automatically. Its data entry fields are described below.
CITY NAME
Assign each city a unique name.
SIZE
Choose a size from the drop down list. Small and medium cities limit the maximum number of players that can build in to 2 and 3 respectively. Major cities are displayed as hexagons and jumbos as double sized hexagons. Oval cities are sized in between major and jumbo. Major, jumbo and oval cities are all considered "big" cities; railroad track can be built starting at big cities. Each map must contain at least one big city.
LOADS SUPPLIED
Highlight the loads supplied by the city. To ease display overcrowding, we recommend that no city supply more than 4 types of loads. Click the Add New Load button to create a new load type. For your reference, within brackets the load list shows the total number of cities that supply it.
NAME LOCATION OFFSET
By default, EBP displays on the map the city name below and right of the city's center milepost. To tweak the display position of the name (because it extends off the edge of the map, or is too close to another city), enter offset values from -80 to 80. Use the special value -99 for X offset to shift the name to the left side of the milepost, automatically adjusted by EBP for font size. Use -99 for Y to shift the name above the milepost. For best results on maps you plan to share with others, in these fields enter no values other than 0 and -99.
INITIAL WAREHOUSING
If a certain load is warehoused in the city at the start of play, enter the name of the load here instead of selecting it in the Loads Supplied list. The Circus is a example of such a load. There is a limit of one warehoused load per city.
BUILDING OUT ALLOWED
Set to Yes to allow a player to build out of this city if his track does not already connect to it. Generally, big cities allow build outs, while medium and small ones do not.
STARTING TRAIN ALLOWED
Set to No to prevent a player from starting his train in this city at the beginning of the game. In most cases this should be set to Yes. As an example, players may not start a train at the cities of Taiwan (CHN map) because the island is accessible only via container ferry.
STYLE
Select the map drawing style of big cities, either hexagonal or spoked/star. Leave unchanged for small and medium cities.
XSPOT RECEIPT
If you wish EBP to place xspot milepost loads in this city even if it is not the closest city to one or more xspots, enable one or more of the Plain, Desert and Water checkboxes corresponding to the xspot type. If all the xspot loads of a given type are to be placed in their closest city, you should not enable any of their checkboxes in any city; in that case EBP knows to automatically put the xspot load in the closest city.
DELETE CITY
To delete a city, point to it on the map and press Shift+C.