Telegraph

[KWorld]

If you want to add canal costs to the mix, someone will have to pay $100 for the Suez Canal. ::)

Nah, that was a commercial project (well, except in Egypt, and it's one of the reasons in TTL the Ottomans have gotten a tighter grip on Egypt).

[Walter]

True, but if one wants to get revenue for that, they will have to pay for the construction.

[Guinness]

Meh, I don't care about the revenue for Suez. Now subsidies for construction could make for an interesting multi-lateral negotiation...

[Walter]

I don't mind paying $100 construction cost for 100% ownership of the Canal. ;D

[KWorld]

I'd prefer to avoid revenue-generating canals, railroads, etc.   Too much trouble.

[Walter]

I consider creating ICs to do that for us. So in case of the Suez Canal, it would be 10 ICs.

[Guinness]

hmm, that's another way to go about it, but for directed projects where you are taking heavy industrial capacity out of the economy (and away from other projects), I could see the argument for having to spend BP too.

[Walter]

Oh, I agree, but for the determination of the revenue, it would be easiest to treat the cash part as IC investment. Using the Suez as example, you're looking at $100 for ICs and perhaps something like 20 BPs (maybe more, maybe less) for the canal itself. In a report, it would look like this:

Region ----- Population--- IC --- BP --- Income --
Suez Canal ----- 0 ------- 10 ---- 0 --- 10.00 ---

[KWorld]

If we wanted to treat the a canal as a government money-making item, yes, that would work.

[KWorld]

A thought on the subject:

We look at the OTL history of similar telegraph lines.  If a line did not exist historically when a player wants it to (for example, the US wants to build a line to Hawaii in 1885, when historically the first line was laid in 1902), then the player will need to subsidize it unless there's a good case that in TTL it would be laid earlier (in this example, if the US had taken over Hawaii in 1875, there's a reasonable chance that a commercial cable would have been laid sooner than historical).

[Darman]

A thought on the subject:

We look at the OTL history of similar telegraph lines.  If a line did not exist historically when a player wants it to (for example, the US wants to build a line to Hawaii in 1885, when historically the first line was laid in 1902), then the player will need to subsidize it unless there's a good case that in TTL it would be laid earlier (in this example, if the US had taken over Hawaii in 1875, there's a reasonable chance that a commercial cable would have been laid sooner than historical).

can I presume that each of the Dutch colonies has a telegraph line connecting it with the mother country?  Not necessarily connecting to each other, those I'll have to pay for myself. 

[KWorld]

A thought on the subject:

We look at the OTL history of similar telegraph lines.  If a line did not exist historically when a player wants it to (for example, the US wants to build a line to Hawaii in 1885, when historically the first line was laid in 1902), then the player will need to subsidize it unless there's a good case that in TTL it would be laid earlier (in this example, if the US had taken over Hawaii in 1875, there's a reasonable chance that a commercial cable would have been laid sooner than historical).

can I presume that each of the Dutch colonies has a telegraph line connecting it with the mother country?  Not necessarily connecting to each other, those I'll have to pay for myself.

With the change to the UK no longer having control of parts of India (and hence no reason to build the cable to Bombay) , the Dutch would have needed to build that line themselves.  So..... 1 cable, to either Ceylon or Cape Colony?

[Darman]

Ceylon, I'll build the other cables. 

[KWorld]

I figured Ceylon made the most sense, being more centrally located, but figured it was up to you how you wanted to go.  Submarine cable across the Med to Alexandria, across Egypt to the Red Sea then to Ceylon?  Or some other route?

[Darman]

I figured Ceylon made the most sense, being more centrally located, but figured it was up to you how you wanted to go.  Submarine cable across the Med to Alexandria, across Egypt to the Red Sea then to Ceylon?  Or some other route?

Well, lets see what Guiness has to say.  Egypt is at least nominally under his control after all.  If that route fails then an underwater cable down to Cape Town makes the most sense.  I can build up from there.