Revisiting congress
The new more historically flavoured merger rules read as follows:
When a company connects to another active company’s home station the two companies merge. A merged company may have several home stations from its constituent component companies. The active player decides which of the two companies will be acquire merge into the other acquiring company.
The acquired company pays a Special Dividend (see Dividends)
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Any unbuilt track markers for the acquired company are added to the acquiring company’s supply
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Each player’s shares in the acquired company are replaced 1:1 with shares from the new parent company. Shares are initially taken from the bank pool of the acquiring company, then shares from the merger supply for that company. The shares of the acquired company are placed face-down in the bank pool of the acquiring company so that it may be clearly seen that it is now a component-company.
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The income of the acquired company’s income is added to the acquiring company’s income, and the acquired company’s marker is removed from the income track
After the merger is resolved the active player selects an inactive merger company to start. If the new merger company’s home station is already connected by track, the connected companies will be acquired by the new merger company.
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Any unbuilt track markers for companies that have connected track of the home station of the new merger company are added to the merger company’s supply
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Each player’s shares in the companies that have connected track to the home station of the merger company are replaced 1:1 with shares from the new merger company. Shares are initially taken from the bank pool of the merger company, then shares from the merger supply. The shares of any acquired companies are placed face-down in the bank pool of the merger company so that it may be clearly seen that they are now component-companies
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A share of merger company is auctioned in the normal manner (see Capitalise). The new share is taken from the merger company’s merger supply if a share is not available from the bank pool
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If the merger company’s home station is already connected by track, the merger company pays a Special Dividend (see Dividends)
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The winner of the newly auctioned share selects the next merger company to start, starting the merger process all over again
If no players bid on a merger auction the auctioning player discards the share into the bank pool and receives the current income of the company divided by the current number of issued shares including the just auctioned share in exchange.
If all the merger companies have been started and a merger occurs, the active player may either pass on the rest of their turn, or may auction any available share from the bank pool in the normal manner (see Capitalise).
Quite a bit cleaner. Conversations with Ben Keightley (Coca Lite) have caused me to re-examine this simplified model, though I don’t think that was his intention. In particular I’m re-considering the automatic chaining of mergers. I’m not sure it is justified. Without automatic chaining the mergers will still tend to happen in a flurry, that is where the money is, but it will not be quite as uncontrollable an orgy and allows for interesting decisions to be made between mergers (eg track blocking) which are not possible with automatic chaining. The specific relationship of turn order and share investments also becomes more interesting. In short methinks I’ll lose the automatic chaining of mergers. I see little loss and much potential game.
The other change, and this is a biggie, is allowing the active player to determine which of the sides of a merger will pay the Special Dividend. This change was done on a whim but it feels right. It allows minor share-holders to merge foreign companies into a company in which they hold more stock, thus getting the Special Dividend where they want it while also building the agglomerate.