Sid Meier's Railroad

Anyone interested in this game at all?

I haven't seen much about it but I was just playing Transport Tycoon deluxe. I used to love playing this (and I still do).

It's still fun, but getting a bit dated.





Until Sid Meier's Railroads comes out, what game would you say is best?

• Railroad Tycoon 1, 2 or 3.

• And I think there's a a game called Locomotion?

~Ryanstein

 

I can't really compare because I only own Railroad Tycoon 3. But I loved the game. However it has been a long time since I played it!

Any new features or interesting ideas in the upcoming Sid Meier version?

 

This is all I know

http://www.firaxis.com/games/game_detail.php?gameid=12

 

You could always play OpenTTD to hold you over until it gets released.

 

Sid Meier's Railroads is supposed to hit the US market tomorrow.

 

Transport Tycoon... now that was a fun game, if only for the South West England scenario.

I doubt I'll be getting this game, although I was a fan of Railroad Tycoon 2 back in its day.

 

I'm curious about it. My 6yr old son loves trains. Does this have a "sandbox" mode so he and I can set up what ever tracks and trains we want to play with? Or is there a better game to do that?

 

I am really interested in it, I love Sid's games and it looks like they basically just did a Pirates! type update to the original Railroad Tycoon.

The preview makes this one look easy to get into and the Model Railroad "sandbox" mode sounds really fun all by itself.

I have never fully played any of the Railroad games prior, but I tried to get into the original. The graphics were just so dated when I finally tried to play it, my attention span became really short and just never got into it.

One preview said there would be a demo and I am waiting to try it because I just don't think anything is going to pull me away from Company of Heroes right now. So if I bought it today, it would probably sit on my desk a few weeks. I am pretty sure I will get it by Christmas though.

 

I don't know if there is a better game or not to fiddle with model trains, but Railroads! does indeed have a sandbox mode. (It's call "Train Table Mode", if I remember correctly.)

 

getting bad reviews already

 

looks like i'll stick with openttd

Is sid loosing his touch?

 

More like he's not programming any more, just selling his name.

 

What reviews?

The only review I have found so far is from gamespot and it is a pretty good 8.1.

That is a good review IMO.

 

By the looks of the train listings here, there is not even a variety of locomotive choices for North America, especialy within Diesel and Electric Locomotives.

I'll be sticking with Railroad Tycoon III.

 

check amazon.com

 

If this is what you think I must warn you that this is a HUGE change in direction/philosophy compared to RRT.

I wrote up a pretty detailed "first impression" posting here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4669325&postcount=2

It's in that sense that this game is the all-time best, as the graphics are mind-blowing.

I strongly recommend you wait - it has nasty game-crashing bugs which history suggests will be fixed after a patch or two - until then, enjoy CoH - a game which Relic managed to code to run successfully even before patches came out.

The variety of trains is actually pretty similar to original RRT - a few names have changed, a few trains have been added/deleted - but the classics are there:
Grasshopper
Norris
American
Ten-wheeler
Consolidation
Mikado
Pacific

If anything, there's much more variety on the diesel side - which IIRC kinda topped out at like 2 for the US scenarios in RRT.

A nice switch is you get money back when you scrap track/trains and when you upgrade engines, you apparently only pay the difference.


A huge disappointment is the HUGE simplification in the stock market - rather than pay out dividends (RRT2/RRT3) or have stock splits (all previous games), in this game there's only 10 units of stock per company - worth 10% of the company each.

While this may ultimately be a good move - I can imagine many people get turned off by the complications of the earlier stock market simulations - the thing is, the old stock market simulations were basically an entire game within the game!

How you ultimately feel about SMR will depend on how much you "miss" the things that were stripped out vs. how much you like the new approach.

There are some nice new twists - in the old game you'd get a bonus to be first to connect to a city - now you have to connect AND deliver a certain type of cargo to get your bonus, adding more nuance.

The "auctions" for patents and industries are a cool new twist which compensate for castrated stock market part of the game.

I was HUGELY disappointed to not be able to borrow money anymore (issuing bonds), but the game seems to let you build trains and stations(?) (but not track) even when you run out of cash, so that partially compensates for that.

The inability to use your competitors' track is a throwback to RRT really (I think both RRT2 and 3 let you do that). It may ultimately be a smart move: your OWN track gets horribly congested with your own trains. If you put one of your trains on competitors' tracks it would probably *never* get anywhere.

The first impressions post linked to above goes into huge detail about issues with the routing system - but if you hate how it works (or *doesn't* work!) on "hard" mode, it's a Very Good Thing that they include easy/medium modes to balance things out.

RRT was the first computer game I *ever* bought, so my reaction to SMR was pretty visceral and instant - more thoughts will pop up over time, I'm sure, but this was one of the few times I've had to go on the internet and "register my thoughts" on a game immediately after playing it.

(Immediately after playing it, passing out at 6 a.m., and then waking up, of course - despite the flaws, it's got the addictive gameplay qualities we know and love in Sid's games - there are serious flaws, but it's still INCREDIBLY fun.)

 

Hi everybody,
I am very sad to say that Sid Meiers Railroads is getting uninstalled off of my hard drive at this very moment, after playing it for a few hours. Whoever said Sid Meier isnt programming any more, I believe you, this feels like a dumbed down Railroad Tycoon.

Im not going to bore you guys with all the complaints i have but the major ones are,
Small maps, no more grand feeling of connecting the Nation or regions or accomplishment.
Loss of micromanagement, there isnt anything to do after a while.
Like the previous post said, simplification of stock market.
Skyscrapers and modern buildings in 1800's.
I didnt see an editor, but maybe theyll add one in the future EP.

Well for right now ill fire up RT3, and hopefully in the future there will be a better release. In RT3 I loved just trailing the train with the cam, and admiring my railroad empire, and feeling the grand scope of the U.S. from coast to coast trough praries,mountains, valleys, rivers, and all kinds of terrain.

I read somewhere that PC Games sales are dropping every year, dumbing down the greatest strategy games is NOT going to help. Trying to make them appealing for everybody is not possible, but thats my take on things, I dont mean to be so negative on this post, but after playing RT1 RT2 & RT3 u come to expect better.

 

I haven't been on this forum in a while, because I grew frustrated with Civ. I was hoping to hear some thought on Railroads, because I bought it today, and I can tell...good God it is awful. I was hoping for RT3 + sandbox mode (remember that? yeah, we used to have that), but with better strategy (you could never beat the computer in the stock market).

The graphics have not improved substancially...but the processing has. I have a decent machine, and it doesn't perform that well with this game. You can't even zoom very far out to get a lay of the land.

Speaking of land, at least you can build tunnels now -- if the computer lets you. When you try to lay track, it doesn't find a good combination if there's a mountain or hill around.

Double-tracking is now annoying, and I can't even get it right in the TUTORIAL!

So, so far, this game is a HUGE step back. How can it not have sandbox? I just want to find the best combos, hook them up, and deliver the goods.

I'd have more input, but since I can't get double-tracking to work in the tutorial, and in the scenario I tried I couldn't build any track to Las Vegas because hills were in the way, I haven't been able to play much.

Back to FIFA07, I suppose. Yeah, that's right, I've had more luck in the last year with EA games working than Sid Meier products! I should've learned after the Civ fiasco last year.

 

Does anyone know when they're gonna release it in SE Asia?

 

Wrong. If you looked under difficultly you would have seen "Train table mode" where you can do whatever you want on that map.