Almighty Farms: Triple Crown Bound

[thealmighty]

THIS IS NOT BASEBALL There. Now that that triple crown reference has been laid to rest, we can move forward.

What this is, really, is a horse racing/breeding/whatever dynasty. We will be attempting to take a fledgling horse stable and turn it in to the #1 stable in the world, or the USA, depending.

To do this, we will be using Final Stretch: Horse Racing Sim, otherwise known as The Sport of Kings or Horse Racing Manager, depending on where in the world you are. In the sim, you start off as an unknown stable with limited funds available (a problem, as you will see below) and try to raise your status to the top by purchasing, breeding and racing the horses you have. That is the bare bones outlook of what will happen. We shall see.

[thealmighty]

Problems and disclaimers: I was getting antsy for a new dynasty and didn't feel like doing football, so I went to the computer store to find something I hadn't seen (was actually looking for a tennis sim, but couldn't find one.) before in here. The horse sim was in the bargain bin and I couldn't find anything else that hit me as a fun idea, so I got it.

Then the problems started. As I toyed with the game to get a feel for it, I found that there are little pain-in-the-ass bugs in it, like in-game notes and notifications dissapearing when they should be visable, so you can't actually see what it is you are being told. Also, you can actually run your horses races YOURSELF, like an arcade game, but the thing doesn't work properly (for example, if your horse starts on an outside position, it will never go to the rail, but stays way outside.).

Anyway, I went to the website and found no help, so I went to the forums. Well, this MUST be the worst forum ever. I know the game's been out a while, but even the old posts offer little or no help. If you post a problem, you get other players posting they have the same trouble, but noone ever gives aid or an answer. IT SUCKS.

Well, I saw there was a patch for the game, but then I read the US version did not need the patch, and it would actually corrupt the game and force a reinstall if used, so that SUCKS, too.

So I read what I could on the forums and, lo and behold, everyone (almost) was saying how you can't win, really, because you won't have the funds to do so. Seems they start you off with pocket change and it is near impossible to advance fairly.

To make money at the start, you must either,

1. buy already raceable horses or
2. lease space in your stable to other owners' horses.

The problems there are,

1. you can only afford crap horses to start and you have no infrastructure to house/train them anyway yet
2. you can't lease space until you have built things that cost, sometimes, lots of money and take time to build.

So, what to do...

Cheat was the order of the day in the forums. Seems you have to go the first week and bet all your cash on a race and win in order to have the money to start your career.

Soooo, that is the plan, we will cheat to get start-up money and see what happens from there, realizing that this is a somewhat corrupted dynasty from the start and not pretending otherwise.

You gotta do what you gotta do, even at $9.99.

[thealmighty]

The first order of business is to chose the country to base your stable in. As this was/is an internationally released game, there are 10 choices.

Country	Trot	Gallop	Winnings	Competition	Set-Up	Weather
Germany	60	60	80	50	85	Unfavor
England	0	70	90	80	85	Unfavor
Australia	70	70	80	70	75	Favor
Canada	75	65	85	60	95	Neutral
U.A.E.	0	80	100	100	95	Favor
France	80	65	90	80	85	Neutral
Italy	75	60	80	70	95	Favor
Japan	0	85	95	90	100	Neutral
Sweden	75	50	80	60	70	Unfavor
U.S.A.	90	90	90	90	95	Neutral

• trot/gallop are number of races available for type of horse
• winnings is the relative amount of the purses available
• competition is the number of other horses in the country
• set-up is the cost of getting started
• weather is the relative amount of time your training facilities will be unavailable

I might have chosen Italy, since I was born there, but decided to start out with the U.S.A. because I want to concentrate on gallop type races and the US is the best for that.

Now to pick a location in the states.

[thealmighty]

If someone could tell me if the chart is readable or not, I would appreciate it. It looks great in the Sideline Green Style I use, but I don't know about the style most people use.

[klayman]

It's readable in S' yellow. I have this game as well, I'll be following along.

[thealmighty]

Each country has 10 locations to chose from with inherent advantages and/or disadvantages in terms of costs, desirability and buildings already available. The choices in the USA are Miami, Dallas, Memphis, Phoenix, Denver, Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Nashville, Austin and Salt Lake City.

Austin is the cheapest in terms of initial purchase cost and I suppose I should think about Nashville or Memphis, which is as close to the bluegrass of Kentucky as one could get, but I chose Dallas as my base since I live there, anyway, and it is my dynasty.

Also, Dallas is the 3rd cheapest for beginning costs and has some infrastructure in place already, though not much.

The start-up cost for Dallas is $82,200. It seems that it is "an enjoyable location. The forest nearby increases fame but raises infrastructure costs."

Time to check out the spread.

[thealmighty]

Thanks, klayman.

[Franklinnoble]

I have this game, but never got into it... I'll be reading along to see if there's anything that might compel me to give it another shot...

[thealmighty]

Here is an organizational chart to show the various structures that can be built. The leftmost structure must be built before the ones to right, with the colored groups going together. For example, the Grooming room cannot be built until you have horsemanship, which you can't get until you have some boxes.

					-->	Mechanization
			-->	Hanger
					-->	Saddlery
Ground	-->	Boxes	-->	Paddock	-->	Career
					-->	Alley
					-->	Straight Line	-->	Loop Track
			-->	Horseman ship	-->	Circle of Tether	-->	Mechanical Walker
					-->	Grooming Room	-->	Solarium	-->	Pool
					-->	Club House
			-->	Staff Buildings

[thealmighty]

We begin our dynasty on March 6, 2003. We need not look at anything about our horse stock as we don't, obviously, have any.

We can get horses for our stable through purchasing via auction or advertisemsnt, or buying a horse through a claims race. We plan on waiting for a yearling auction as that is where the best horses can usually be had.

Until then, we can only build up our stable infrastructure.

[thealmighty]

At this point, as you have seen in the organizational chart above, there are a bunch of structures to purchase or build. You can build them yourself or buy them from an ad in the classified section.

There are 3 levels that most buildings or improvements can be - 1,2 or 3, oddly enough. The higher the level, the more costly, but the greater the stated advantage is for that particular building. If you construct an improvement, you can specify the level to be built, with the accompanying cost and increased time to build for the higher level. You cannot use the structure until it is completed, of course.

However, if you buy a structure from an add in the news, you have it available the next week, but must take and pay for the level offered.

At this time, Almighty Farms has the following infrastructure already in place:

1. 2 Boxes, level 1
2. Hanger, level 3
3. Riding Alleys, level 2

-Boxes allow you to have horses at your stable, either your own or boarding from another stable.
-Hangers reduce the cost of food for your horses
-Riding Alleys increase your fame rating and increase the efficiency of fitness training for your horses

Although we have 2 boxes available already, we cannot actually board other horses to have some income since other improvements are needed before anyone would bother to board here.

We need some more stuff before the auction and to board horses for income.

[thealmighty]

I forgot before, but the Almighty Farms silks are green (my favorite color) and white with a star pattern incorporated here and there.

[thealmighty]

Our first weekly budget looks like this:

Income			Expenses
Boarding/Training	0		Horse Food	0
Race Gains	0		Salaries	0
Betting Gains	0		Building Maint.	95
Horse Sales	0		Interventions	0
			Horse Training	0
Total Income	0		Purchases	0
			Races	0
Income	0		Outsourcing	190
Expenses	-285
Total	-285		Total Expenses	285

The $190 expense for outsourcing means that while we have a few buildings, we have no staff to care for and upkeep this infrastructure so we will need to get a staff manager and maintenance worker soon.

We will be in the red for a long time to come, so you can see how tough this game would be trying to stay afloat without bankrupting yourself quickly.

[thealmighty]

03-06-03 (mm-dd-yy)

---> We take a trip to the track to bet the $400,000 will still have from the $500,000 we started with. We look first at the length of the race and notice it is 2200 meters, a long one. We look over the endurance of the horses in the race and, lo and behold, we have a miracle, it seems, in our first try. A horse named Gato is rated 87 for endurance, which is 8 points higher than any other entrant. His other stats are good, so we bet the bundle on Gato to win in the 1st race.

---> Gato WINS and we take home several million as, for whatever reason, he went off at 10:1+ odds. We can now begin to build Almighty Farms into the powerhouse we hope to have.

[thealmighty]

3-13-03 (mm-dd-yy)

---> With a fame score of 3, Almighty Farms is dead LAST of the 151 stables ranked. The reason we aren't at zero, I assume, is due to the Riding Alley we started with, which raises fame as a bonus to the increase in efficiency of fitness training for your horses.

---> Receive notice of an auction for Level 1 horses and we declare (accept the invitation) we will attend. We think this will be a yearling sale, which is what we plan to start with.

---> As we will be, hopefully, purchasing some stock at the auction, we improve the 2 boxes (let you host horses, yours or others) we have to level 3 to give them more comfortable homes.

---> In order to get a jump on things, we need to start toward the Club House (lets you host other stables' horses for profit) improvement. To qualify, you must have horsemanship (raises fame also). We also need to build more boxes so we can stable more horses as needed.

	Category	Cost	Maintenance
Boxes	1	$23,750.00	$49.00
	2	$40,850.00	$61.00
	3	$51,300.00	$78.00
Horseman ship	1	$14,250.00	$19.00
	2	$19,950.00	$27.00
	3	$28,500.00	$38.00

No need to skimp at this point, so we will go ahead and purchase 2 boxes of category 3 and also category 3 horsemanship.

[thealmighty]

It is time to head to the yearling auction and check out the stock. Because we only have 2 boxes on the farm, we can purchase, at most, 2 horses at this sale. Of course, at this point we don't really know how high is good and how high is great in terms of statistics for the horses, but we know the scale is 1-99 with 99 the highest, so we will just look for the highest scores we can find and hope for the best.

[thealmighty]

The auction is, in fact, for 1 year olds, which is different than yearlings. Yearlings are, I now assume, less than 1 year old while these horses are 1 year old.

There are 11 gallop racer horses for auction, which is what we are after. We plan to race all gallop style stock, except when we begin breeding and whatever 'comes out' is what you get.

This is the information we have to go on to purchase our 2 horses:

Horse	Sex	Colour	Endur	Speed	Accel	Resist	Techni	Discip	Adapt
Beaute Bruyere	f	Chestnut	79	82	81	54	5	99	9
Memory Last Chance	f	Chestnut	79	85	82	44	5	12	2
Uno In Blue	m	Grey	79	81	80	37	9	97	7
Bronze Promise	f	Bay	86	78	84	85	9	25	3
Maybe Renard	f	Chestnut	79	82	81	43	2	99	9
Falcon	m	Grey	87	80	90	30	10	11	7
Avenir de Suede	m	Bay	81	89	81	54	2	11	9
Ursulo	m	Grey	88	90	82	46	4	18	5
Favorite	f	Black	81	81	85	81	1	67	2
Gazouillis de Mouche	m	Grey	81	84	89	64	1	30	5
Favorite Valentine	f	Bay	88	78	85	79	2	33	8

1. Endurance- ability to sustain in longer races

2. Speed- maximum possible speed
   
3. Acceleration- acceleration speed
   
4. Resistance- capacity to sustain injuries
   
5. Technique- ability to overtake horses in a race
   
6. Discipline- capacity to progress through training
   
7. Adaptability- to the behavior of the jockey

We want a male and a female. All these horses are 'List' category, which is the lowest possible, since they have no racing experience.

Which two would you take, given that the resistance factor will decrease, meaning easier to injure, with training for speed, endurance or acceleration? My choices have been made so we will see if you agree.

[klayman]

I'd go with Beaute Bruyere and Falcon. Bruyere cause she has the best potential to improve, and Falcon would seem like a good horse to win short to medium length races since he should quickly lead the pack out of the gates. But I know nothing about horse racing, so I'm interested to see who you picked and why.

[kingfc22]

I would also go with Beaute Bruyere, but would pick Ursulo instead. Ursulo has better speed and is more resistant to injury so he could be run in more races to win more money.

[Wolfpack]

I agree with Beaute Bruyere, but would take Uno in Blue even though his Resistance is low, because he already has solid stats everywhere else and you could probably get him competitive sooner and thus build sooner on any success he gives. He may not be for the long haul, but he'd give you a good start.

[thealmighty]

Male:

I chose Ursulo. Why? One major factor was, in fact, resistance. All the best males had somewhat low resistance factors. Low scores mean easier to injure, so you want a high number. Ursulo, while low, was higher than the others. Also, while Uno has a high discipline, the low resistance and low speed/accelaration/endurance (comparitively) mean that, while easier to train, he will be injury prone since the low resistance will decline even more with the need for lots of these areas to be trained. Falcon could have been about the same as Ursulo, but I chose speed over acceleration.

Time will tell but, of course, I have nothing to really base this on in terms of race experience.

Female:

I chose Favorite because her numbers were slightly better than Beaute Bruyere and the high resistance meant lots of speed, etc..., training possible and, to tell you the truth, I was struck by the name. I mean, don't YOU want the 'Favorite' to run for you in each race.

Not very scientific, but such is the life of a racehorse owner. At least it is for now.

[condors]

i will be reading, i tried quite a few times to get a stable going without cheating and never had any success. Good Luck

[thealmighty]

Thanks for reading and contributing, y'all.

[thealmighty]

3-20-03 (mm-dd-yy)

Well, now comes the boring part. We have a couple of horses, but you cannot train nor race them until they are 2 year olds. I believe the universal horsey birthday is January 1, so until then it is simply a matter of waiting for the next auction (which I have no idea when) and upgrading facilities and # of boxes to stable more stock. Also need to start hiring some help around here.

---> Our improvement of the 2 boxes we had to category 3 is complete.

---> We are still several weeks away from the completion of the horsemanship upgrade that opens up club house, which will let us stable other owners stock for profit.

---> With the purchase of 2 horses, our fame score has risen all the way to 14, which ranks us 134th out of 151.

[daedalus]

Cool. I'll be following.

[Franklinnoble]

Good stuff so far... I'll be reading. Maybe I'll dust off my copy of the game and see if I can have any luck.

[Raven Hawk]

Well, I'll definitly be follwowing this one. Good idea to pick a Grey.

[QuikSand]

You've already gotten a lot farther than I did with this game. Good luck.

[thealmighty]

It's great to get some interest and feedback as any dynasty writer will point out. Thanks for following and for letting me know you are here.

[kingfc22]

I just like the fact that I at least picked the same male horse as you.

[Franklinnoble]

Originally Posted by thealmighty

It's great to get some interest and feedback as any dynasty writer will point out. Thanks for following and for letting me know you are here.

I know exactly what you mean. It's nice to know you're not writing into a total void.

[condors]

i never tried leasing my stables maybe i should get as many as allowed and lease all of them but 1 and see if i can get a claimer horse to train

[thealmighty]

3-27-03 (mm-dd-yy)

---> Still 5 weeks left in the horsemanship upgrade.

---> We see an advertisement to purchase staff buildings at category 3, which increase the efficiency of the staff (that we have none of at the moment). Building this ourselves would take weeks and cost $36,100, Buying from an ad takes only one week, and this costs less, $34,271 so we go ahead and make the deal.

---> Fame is up to 15 now, which puts Almighty Farms tied for #130 out of 151.

[thealmighty]

Here is a look at the information we get on the horses residing in our stalls. We have only the 2 boxes so our 2 are the only stock in residence.

	Ursulo	Favorite
Race	Gallop	Gallop
Category	Listed	Listed
Age	1	1
Sex	male	female
Silk	grey	black
Winnings- Year	$0.00	$0.00
Winnings- Career	$0.00	$0.00
Km Record	1' 00"	1' 01"
Total Races	0	0
Speed	89.9	80.7
Acceleration	81.5	85.2
Technique	4.4	1.2
Adaptation	4.9	1…9
Discipline	17.8	66.5
Resistance	51.1	83.5
Form	91.4	80.8
Injured	no	no
Injuries	2.7 / 46.0	8.0 / 81.2
Endurance	88.5 / 88.5	80.7 / 80.7

When we get a chance, we'll get some other horse(s) to make some comparisons and see how our horses stack up against some others.

Looking at the large differential in the speed category, we would have thought there would be more than 0' 01" differential in the fastest times for 1 Km. Oh well, again we see how much we do not know and have to learn if we are going to be any kind of player in this endeavor.

[thealmighty]

4-03-03 (mm-dd-yy)

---> The staff buildings we purchased from the ad are now available for use if we ever get any staff.

---> Fame bumped to 16, though we have no idea why unless the new building raised it due to monetary value, as opposed to actual increases from prestige. That keeps us at #130 of 151 but now we are alone in that position.

---> Our buildings now are valued at $133,000.

---> Our horses are valued at $2,279,110. We wonder if the value will increase at all with the passing months before they age a year in january, or if the value is stagnant until something like racing or training begins.

[thealmighty]

This is what our budget looked like for the week:

Income			Expenses
Boarding/Training	0		Horse Food	160
Race Gains	0		Salaries	0
Betting Gains	0		Building Maint.	15
Horse Sales	0		Interventions	0
			Horse Training	950
Total Income	0		Purchases	0
			Races	0
Income	0		Outsourcing	30
Expenses	-1155
Total	-1155		Total Expenses	1155

If you read the beginning about the difficulty in doing well in this game due to financial concerns, you can already see what we meant. We are spending a bit over $1000 a week at this time with little infrastructure and no staff at all and no income in sight for many months. If we bought a good horse it would cost thousands. If we bought a nag it would be cheap but wouldn't be able to garner enough prize money to pay for itself. A conundrum, to be sure.

[thealmighty]

A bit of an explanation is in order for anyone wondering how we can have a budget with but $15 for maintenance and $30 outsourcing with $133,000 in infrastructure and no staff.

Another segment of the game is called PLANNING. Planning is the alocation of your personal time to:

1. aid in horse diet
2. aid in horse training
3. aid in morale of staff
4. aid in lowering maintenance costs

You have so many time alocation 'dots' to use as you see fit in the 4 categories, with up to three units usable per category. At this time we have 9 units available. This number will decrease over time as we build more infrastructure and get more stock (horses).

Because we are using 3 units on maintenance, our costs are greatly reduced as seen in the paltry amount needed per week in the budget for same. The downside of this, if we cared at this point, is that the usage of alocation units for cost reduction directly impacts the fame gained from the buildings you are cutting costs on. The more expensive the building you look after to cut costs, the more fame points you lose in so doing.

Eventually we will lose many of the units we now have and will need to use the ones left for the more important tasks like training horses. Units used for this purpose "significantly improve the efficiency" of training. Likewise, units used to oversee diet will "improve health by reducing the risk of disease," thereby increasing training efficiency.

[thealmighty]

As a side/personal note, it is a shame this game was not supported very well, at least not in the US. You may be seeing, as I am, that there is a great deal of potential depth and tactical situations involved here. However, were I not doing this in dynasty form, I would most probably have quit playing by now because I am constantly having to reload the game to see the things that some bugs sometimes refuse to allow me to see after some minutes of gameplay.

A shame.

[thealmighty]

4-10-03 (mm-dd-yy)

---> The 2 boxes we started weeks ago are completed, bringing to 4 our total available.

---> We see an offer in an ad for 2 more boxes priced at $53,600. Though building ourselves takes much longer than buying via advertisement, we have no need of more room to stable any stock right now so we decide to build our own, taking the extra time but saving some money. Ours will cost $51,500.

---> 3 weeks until we have use of the horsemanship upgrade.

[thealmighty]

4-17-03 (mm-dd-yy)

---> Nothing going on, really.

---> Fame has skyrocketed to 17, placing Almighty Farms at #128 of 151.

[thealmighty]

In the interest of neither driving away anyone actually reading this dynasty nor boring you to death, we will sorta skip weeks that are not worth talking about since our horsies won't be able to actually do anything for a while.

[thealmighty]

5-01-03 (mm-dd-yy)

---> Finallly, our horsemanship upgrade has been completed. This raises fame a teeny bit and opens many other improvements for building.

---> The major improvement opened up through the horsemanship upgrade is the club house. This increases fame some more but, more importantly, allows for leasing of stable space to other farms' stock for profit.

We can build at level 2, maximum, at this time. We do so at a cost of $15,200 and a building time of 8 long-ass weeks.

---> We see an advertisement to purchase a grooming room, level 2 for $15,702. Building this ourselves would cost $17,100, so we decide to purchase the improvement. The grooming room increases fame a tad and lowers the cost of feeding your horses.

---> Fame has increased to 18, placing Almighty Farms at #127 of 151.

[kingfc22]

I'm still reading.

[daedalus]

Me, too.

[thealmighty]

Thanks.

[condors]

i am reading and will be starting up a game as a result

[MrBug708]

Same

[thealmighty]

5-08-03 (mm-dd-yy)

---> The one week delay is over and our level 2 grooming room is ready to go. This improvement has cut our horse food bill in half, from $160 to $80.

---> The 2 boxes we were building are complete, bringing to 6 the number of available stalls at Almighty Farms.

---> The need for more boxes will hopefully grow as our club house improvement under construction will allow us to stable outside stock.

Therefore, we have commissioned the building of 2 more boxes at a cost of $51,300.

---> With the additional infrastructure we now have, our planning allocation 'dots' are down to 8 from 9. We still have no employees as the use of the 'dots' keeps maintenance costs about what hiring help would cost, but soon we will need to become employers of maintenance staff and, at the start of the new year, horse trainers and the like.

---> Fame is up to 19, putting Almighty Farms tied in the rankings at #124 of 151.

[Franklinnoble]

I started a game and cheated my way up to $15 million. Stupid thing crashes on me a ton, though. And no auto-save.

[thealmighty]

Damn, Franklin, that's way more than I have. You could buy every good horse in the auction.

My game has never actually 'crashed' out on me. It just refuses to show the notices you are supposed to get weekly (or whenever) so I never know what is going on (or half the time, anyway)...among other pain-in-the-ass minor bugs.