Ticket to Ride: Classic Edition

I hate this, pure ducking luck.

studlybambi's solution works. While the path is set, you actually have wiggle room, but a lot of this is still luck, in that a lot of pieces need to fall in your favor:
1) You end up with 3 cars left before Jane Stanbot; this stalls her out
2) Jane cannot take ANY of your route
3) Destination tickets need to be on your side

I even ended up making a cheat sheet to keep track of my score to know when to finally end the game. I have made this shareable here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gDeINUVkTJMOUL-_rlnh...

If the reset button doesn't work just copy it out to your own drive/excel doc/etc

I did manage to get the achievement by playing against Jane Stanbot. I had to restart about 20+ times though. Mostly because often she would finish just when I was starting to draw the cards. Finally I manged to get 437 points from 30 punched tickets (I drew only one that I didn't punch). Thumbs up for the solution, studlybambi!

Ya it comes down to a lot of luck. But it’s almost impossible if you don’t have a plan. I just tried to provide the plan so all it comes down to is getting lucky

Ran this method until I had 2 back-to-back rounds of destination cards which weren't on the route and then stopped and placed the Atlanta to Miami route to end the game. Finished with 31 completed, 2 not completed. Final total of 429.

I'm of the opinion that going from Sante Fe to Denver, then to KC is the better option. It uses the same amount of turns and score more points, plus there are Denver routes in the deck also. It also gives you a reason to use black cards and cuts out three blues that are needed from Sante Fe to OKC. The only downside going this way instead is using up one more train. Once I started this route instead for the USA only Pressure Gauge achievements, my scores got much closer and I eventually got the 240 and 15 tickets also.

This aside, everything else looks great!:)

If it uses one more train then it won’t work properly. I use every train in this optimal path. So if you use one more train then the routes won’t work properly.

I stand corrected. lol I totally missed the Miami portion of this route, since we ignore it in the non-mega achievements.

I will say this setup is easier and less stressful than the non-Mega version, just having no luck getting the AI to go into their card drawing frenzy yet. I believe that part is just down to luck. I've tried different bots, keeping two 3x spaces open, keeping just one, staying behind the AI on train count, pretty much every suggestion here and elsewhere, and the AI will still eventually lay track before getting through 30 cards. I'll get it eventually, but I don't believe there's a proven "trick" to stalling out the AI yet.

I agree. That’s why I think information is the biggest part. Stalling out the computer means nothing if you don’t have the right strategy to get the most amount of points. That’s what my guide is for. Give you the information of how to do it so when the computer does stall out you will get the achievement 100%

Absolutely. That's why I gave ya a thumbs up for it.:) Now, to figure out how to stall out the AI...lol

omg... 395...

Finally got it today. Omg. I could never get the bot to glitch after probably 100+ attempts and they would end the game early. Well, I had a game that was going rather smoothly and it felt like the AI was just drawing for no reason and possibly (finally) in the glitch, as I was still laying down track and getting the route set up. I had about four spots left to secure, including both blue sections. I played the five to Miami and the AI immediately played their last turn and ended it.
It got me thinking, and remembering GorillaBuddah's post, that perhaps there's something to that section and it should be laid last.
So a couple games later, once I was getting the board set up cleanly again, I had all of the blue cards I needed, the route primarily in place, the computer seemingly drawing for no reason, dropped the three blue spot and left the five at Miami this time. AI kept drawing and I was able to gather all of the destinations I needed. Played the Miami route, AI plays their last turn, and nabbed the achievement.

So am I saying playing that Miami route last is the key? No. But there also seemed to be something to it.
Next factor I noticed at the game's end: The computer had 3 trains left when it went into it's glitch. I checked her destinations at the end, she completed two, but missed one needing to get to Seattle. With our route setup here, the only way into Seattle is the grey 4 spot and the 6 yellow, meaning it was impossible for them to complete that route. Perhaps, this helps trigger the glitch, too few trains to complete the last section? Who knows. lol

Apologies for the wordiness. I feel like we need to relay as much info as we can to see what happened/worked when we do finally get the achievement.

The tip of leaving Atlanta to Miami worked great. Got it on my 2nd attempt doing that

This route is genius. It uses 34 of the possible 69 tickets and offers a maximum of 402 points from punched tickets. I was skeptical in places, especially with leaving Pittsburgh off and opting for Raleigh, but every time I ran the numbers using a different route, this one beat it.

Your score will be:
59 from claimed routes
+ 10 from the longest train bonus (assuming the AI doesn't beat your 36 cars)
+ 15 from the globetrotter bonus
____
= 84 plus your punched tickets

... which means you need 316 of the possible 402 ticket points.

The fewest punched tickets you can do this with is 21. That includes every ticket with a value of 10 or greater, plus two tickets of value 9. The most punched tickets you will need - assuming you aren't forced to draw any duds - is 30.

I was forced to keep three duds, so I ended up keeping 35 tickets. It would have required fewer except that the AI happened to keep two of "my" tickets, including one of the 19-point ones. I kept track of every ticket drawn and noted when tickets started to repeat. The weird thing about that was that tickets I had already taken started to be repeated as well. So, I ended up getting credit for some routes twice. Final score: 430.

One other thing I thought worth mentioning is that the AI stalled this time with 4 trains left. My experience up that had always been that it only stalled on 3. I had to play the route I was saving for last (Los Angeles-San Francisco) in order to block the AI, so I held it off with a 1 and a 2 left. I don't think the stalling behavior is related at all to which route you hold open.

Great guide, however the 2-white route you said is Kansas City to Chicago, when it is actually St. Louis to Chicago.

I think I have it. How to achieve Pressure Guage in the Mega 1910 map, without playing hundreds of times.

Directions, followed by explanation. You can look at this as an addendum to studlybambi's - I won't repeat what's there.

As studlybambi says, choose Jane Stanbot as the only opponent, and plan to complete the same map, which will require every train.

Start the game, and keep restarting until you can get three tickets on this route that DON'T include Miami. The higher the points on these tickets, the easier this will be, so you might just want to keep restarting until you get at least two long tickets of, say 17-21 points. Note that there are only 8 out of 69 routes that are on our path, have 17 or more points, and don't include Miami. (There are two more that DO
include Miami.). Note that you CAN take shorter routes, but you may lose more often and waste time, so you might want to hold out for better odds at the beginning.

Now having your initial tickets, do your damnedest to claim the following short city pairs as quickly as possible, because Jane loves to claim these for some reason, so beat her to it:
Nashville - Atlanta (1)
LA to Phoenix (3)
LA to Vegas (2)
SF to LA (3)
Montreal to Boston (2)
Boston to NY (2)

This will solve a lot of grief from her blocking you.

Next, go back to drawing tickets, and draw enough tickets that DON't have Miami to give you about 75 points in total tickets. This hopefully won't take more than two or three turns.

Once you have that, only now start drawing train cards and working on completing the route, but NOT MIAMI. Draw from the deck, don't worry much about gathering blue, and complete the route as you draw. Work first wherever Jane is working, but generally I complete the coast to coast path first, and leave SF to Vancouver and the east coast for last. Your goal here is to complete your tickets before Jane runs out of cars. (That might sound like "well duh", but if there are parts of the final route that you don't need to complete your initial tickets, then don't do them now.) You might imagine that the one-car city pairs of Seattle-Portland and Vancouver-Seattle would be risky to wait on, but I've never seen Jane take those.

IF you manage to complete your tickets before Jane completes hers, and not get blocked, you have probably pulled it off. Now Jane should glitch and go into drawing mode.

Assuming she does, if you don't have the blues to get to Miami, keep drawing until you do. Take the wild cards.

Once you have the cards to get to Miami, and Jane is still drawing, now go back to drawing destination tickets. Now you can take any tickets on the route, including Miami, but dont take every ticket on each draw. Start by trying to take the longest ones, leaving any short ones for later if you can. I think this will minimize the chances of having draws that are all duds. Keep count of your ticket point totals, and draw until you have something in excess of 316 ticket points, after subtracting any duds you have to keep. You have as much time as it takes for Jane to draw the entire deck of train cards. It should be enough time.

Once you feel comfortable that you have an excess of 316 ticket points, stop and complete Miami.

You did it!

Here's why it works. I read an amazing explanation of the bot's mind from another guy on a Steam thread. If I find it again I'll credit him. The bot knows what tickets you have. No she shouldn't, but she does. The bot knows what score you will have if you complete your tickets, and if she's running low on trains and won't have the same or better score herself, she will just keep drawing rather than play and lose. She won't gamble on drawing more destination tickets. So you need to draw enough tickets early on to make sure you will beat her if you complete them. If you complete all but Miami, you will have 49 points from city pairs. I don't know if the bot considers the longest route and globetrotter bonuses, but even if she doesn't, drawing about 75 points in tickets initially should give you 124 points, which will almost always beat her, while minimizing the time spent drawing tickets. It's a close call to then be able to beat her finishing your tickets. You've lost some time drawing destination cards, and you have far more short city pairs to complete. But Jane always takes tickets with long city pairs, and that takes a while too, so you should be pretty closely matched. You have to hold out at least three trains, so not taking Miami tickets gives you more possibility to complete your tickets before Jane does, and she almost never seems to go to Miami, so that's a bonus. Miami is out of the way, so you can complete the vast majority of tickets without having Miami. And Miami is blue, the color you need the most of, so not worrying about gathering cards for Miami saves you some time too.

Let me know if this works for you. I played dozens of times before reading the explanation of the bot's brain, figured out this strategy, and pulled it off on the third try.

That worked perfectly for me. Thanks a lot!!!

Thx! Used this route and after around 15-20 tries I got it: most failed attempts were because the opponent ended the game early or her grabbing one of my roads.

The last few games I continuously managed to get the opponent in the endless card-drawing loop by getting around 10 destination tickets early and building roads when the opponent got close to my route. Ended with 24 completed destination tickets and 3 incomplete ones, got lucky with a score of 401 😇.

This is solid. Took me a dozen tries or so but RNG kicked in and Marg got stuck drawing and I was able to complete 34 tickets using this method and ended with 468 points.

Can't believe I had this one just now and threw it out the window. I could have sworn I had the route basically done, but still had enough trains to throw to Denver, and just thought there was some missmath in the solution numbers somewhere. Figured I'd leave the LA > Vegas route as my final one to end the game with... turns out I missed the route to Chicago. I had to start passing on Vegas cards because I realized I couldn't get them and had too many going to Chicago. Narrowly missed the 400 mark because of it.