This game is great!

I was up to 4:45am playing it last night! The gameplay is excellent and the graphics and animations are the coolest thing I have seen. Anyone ever zoom in close and have the camera follow a train? I cannot believe the stuff I was able to see and the industries with the log cranes loading logs on the cars, awesome. This all said, I think the interface in this game is one of the best I have ever seen. I am glad they done away with the micromanagement and headacts of the other versions. This one is fun and totally completely addicting as heck! I find it alot more enjoyable then any of the previous versions as well as the pop top versions. In fact I never really got into any other railroad tycoon version to much. They all gave me headacts after a while trying to manage a ton of trains on a massive map and after a while started to feel like work and no fun. I have to highly recommend this new railroads! Thumbs way up to sid and firaxis on this one.

 

This has been a paid announcement from Firaxis.

 

Wow a hijacker, never seen one of those in a while

 

Yea I agree its a great game made better by the last patch. I still see some minor bugs but hey its fun and addicting to play

 

not quite . . .

 

It is addicting for some reason, but far from great. So much missed potential.

Once you learn the formula, it really is no challenge anymore.

 

It is fun, but on my fourth game the other night I killed the ai. I had a net worth of 20 million before they could blink. It made them sell all their stock very early to keep up. I am sure I will hit that no challenge spot soon enough I guess.

Yes it has so much more potential. So many variations and factors could have been added in. It is really too bad ... so much potential wasted.

 

I started the Britian scenario last night for a change of pace. Still the formula still works even if Arms replaces Autos as the key. The AI is doing a better job of keeping up with me though and has blocked me by boxing me into a corner with their tracks.

This is were I find the game to become a little ridiculous, I now have to create wild ways to get into cities the AI has already circled. Starts making the map look a bit stupid when you have 3 - 4 train stations in the tiny cities.

 

What formula?

 

You go for the highest value resource to supply.

In the U.S. Northeast it is:
Coal->Steel->Autos

The Britian scenario was:
Coal->Steel->Arms

You look at your starting point and figure out the path you need to get to that, then the money starts rolling in. Early on of course you need to supply Passengers and Mail for a steady income, but eventually who supplies the most of the highest value resource will win. So the other resources matter little and are just a side quest so to speak.

The other part of this formula for me is do not link tracks whenever possible, design your rails to carry just one or two Trains because routing AI in the game blows hard. When you do this from the outset, it actually is quite easier then it sounds, the only limitation comes from the limit of 3 tracks linked to a station. Still, I have found that I make a lot more money with fewer no waiting trains than more trains that need switching tracks through a major hub. Just typically means that I have only 3 or 4 trains supplying a city like New York, so it usually only gets whatever it needs to produce something, Passengers and whatever extra I carry on that train, and Autos. Not very realistic, but effective if the goal is to win.

I am trying higher difficultly levels and different scenarios to see if the challenge is there even when the formula works. So far I found out that buying out a competiter can actually be easier on a higher level because my formula slingshot me past them quicker.

 

my "forumla" is a bit different... although i love to get those high value items rolling i look for the closest possible resource i can connect to get money coming in ASAP... whatever that may be, i'll take it...


this is especially true when playing against 3 ai's cause you need fast cash to expand expand expand. once i get a resouce hooked up and its manufactured goods shipped out i just look for the next closest one to get going... obviously focusing on large or medium suppliers and leaving the small ones for later...

i do this over and over until there are no untapped resources left on the map

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question, Tae.

That's pretty much as I had been doing things. Except the scenarios I prefer are comprised mostly of villages at the beginning of the scenario, and it takes nearly the entire scenario for them to grow enough to demand automobiles. But there would still be the need for the other cargos to grow them to that point.

I lay my tracks with the same idea in mind that you do. You are correct when you say, "routing AI in the game blows hard."

 

Starting position determines the difficulty of a scenario based on the formula. Typically only 2 or 3 cities on a map will demand autos initially. My key becomes how do I link to them by the time my Auto producing city has autos. The last one I played on US Northeast was with 2 AI's and I started in Harrisburgh. One AI started in Baltimore, the other in Dover. Only Washington and New York demanded autos. My auto city was close to Washington, but I knew access to it would get difficult because of the AI's starting position, so I beelined to New York. Once I started sending autos to New York, it was just a matter of time before I was able to buy out the competition.

Now of course in this scenario I was generating income off of Passengers, Mail ,Coal and Steel before I got income from autos which in there own right gererate a lot of income...especially Steel. The Only other resources I tapped into was Oil and Trees, because they were easy money and how I got to New York from Harrisburgh.

That is when I got a little disappointed with the difficulty because my starting position was not ideal but I still worked it out using this formula. Now I suppose with 3 AI I could have been in trouble because the last starting point in the scenario is Trenton. Starting there you always link up to New York and Philadelphia quick for passengers. But I probably still could have gotten into New York, just may have been limited to point of entry do to the AI tracks.

I am going to play with 3 AI from now on. I did not like doing it because tracks get really weird looking when every one is trying to link into the limited resources, and it becomes aesthetically unpleasant. I guess I am cought between the desire of train table like track layout, but the desire to have competition too.

You know, I think I really like this game alot, just certain things bug me alot too and I am finding the "winning" to not be as satisfying as it should be.

 

Do you all try to accomplish the objectives of a scenario or go straight for a buy out? What about pausing the game? How do you play, pause and think it out, build up then run? Or just let it run through at normal speed and think as it is running? I was doing horrible until I started to pause it in the beginning figure things out, then run and pause again. If the game runs the whole time, it seems pretty hard to do good. Another thing, do you all use random terrain and cities or historical?

 

I pause from time to time, usually when I accomplish a plan and need to determine the next step.

Sometimes I go for the objectives, sometimes they are near impossible to attain so I skip. For example, Northeast map, 3AI opponants it is really difficult to link Washington->Philadelphia->New York by 1880 without hurting yourself by not going for the resources.

The game I just played tonight I missed all the time objectives but finished with my highest score yet of 189. My net worth was over 50 million when I retired in 1901.