Few things get many gamers as excited as a Sid Meier game, especially one bearing 'Railroad' in the title. The original Railroad Tycoon, released in 1990, was more than just a virtual model railroading set: it allowed you to construct an economic empire wielding cutthroat methods to crush the competition; "railroading" your opponents, if you will. Now, with the impending release of Sid Meier's Railroads!, engineers from across the gaming globe are frothing with excitement to get their coal covered hands on this spiritual successor to Tycoon. Firaxis was kind enough to send me a preview build of the game to see how it compares to its hallowed predecessor.
The first thing I did upon loading Railroads was dive into the Tutorial mode. It's been a good sixteen years since I've done any railroading (I didn't play any of the sequels) so while I was eager to see what changes a new Sid railroad game would introduce, it was also a matter of needing to work off a bit of rust. Since you gotta learn to walk before you can run, the tutorial kicked things off by teaching me how to move around the map.
It's as intuitive as you'd think it would be: use the mouse to scroll the land, hold the center button (there are also keyboard controls, if you're so inclined) and move the mouse around to rotate the view. It seems so obvious, yet I found it to be the game's small way of saying, "Look at me, I'm pretty!" The graphics in Railroads are quite breathtaking, especially at the higher resolutions. The mouse wheel can be spun up or down to zoom in and out, respectively, and while the zoom in distance isn't quite what I wanted it to be, given the spectacular graphics, it's adequate enough to note tiny little details: watch loads of cargo get placed into your train; smoke billowing from stacks; orchards of grapes getting shuffled around as you pick them for cargo. When you zoom out, there are puffs of cloud that signify just how high up you're really viewing the action from. A nice touch, but I found the clouds to be more of a hindrance than a help, so I didn't zoom out all that often.
The next item of business was learning to lay track. Simplification is the name of the game here; you simply choose to lay a single track, then click near a starting point. (there has to be track in a location you choose to place new track.) From there, you can move the mouse to a city, farm, oil mine, wherever, and click to place the new string of track. Don't fret if your track needs to stretch over water or through high ground: the game takes care of these details quite nicely by building whatever other structures it deems necessary. In the tutorial map, my first track had to run underground, so the game took care of constructing a tunnel for me. In a map I tried later on, a bridge was built over a river so I could connect two cities that were amply spaced apart. Features such as this one demonstrate that the game wants you to focus on building your ultimate railroad, not on superfluous details that are better left to the AI.
It's also quite easy to map out train routes. After you've connected at least two locations via a lay of track, you click a button to build a train, which pops up a new interface. Setting your new train to work is completed in three easy steps: click the starting location; choose the car types your train will employ (e.g., passenger, mail, gold, oil, et cetera); then click the final destination. There is also a button in this interface that allows you to change the style of your train cars, but I didn't mess with that too much. You can fiddle with this and other such options (such as paint jobs) in the game should you so desire.
It's inevitable that multiple trains may need to use the same road simultaneously. Railroads took this into account, and it's handled almost as smoothly as laying a single track. Click the double track button, then click next to a run of single track at the point where a train begins its movements (next to the signal lights). Then click beside the area where the track was extended (another signal light). Finally, click the single track button, click at the end of your new track, then click on the original lay of track next to the second signal light. Sound complicated? Or if not complex, then a bit drawn out? Yeah, I thought so too. Of course, compared to the time-consuming pain of constructing track in Railroad Tycoon, it's nothing much to complain about. Still, there are quite a few steps in there; I would've enjoyed a simpler process. Maybe click the double track button, extend the track as mentioned (next to the original track), then just click and drag the new track onto the original line. Would that have been so difficult? Apparently. The game has gone gold, so I don't expect this process to be tweaked. We'll just have to deal with it.
Flip the page to learn about auctions, industries, and a bit more.
_PAGE_BREAK_The last step in the tutorial entailed learning the basics of actually winning a game of Railroads. You win by buying out your opponents, and there are a couple of nifty ways to do just that. Each railroad, including yours, of course, has stock available in the public trade market. Buy up all your competition's stock, and you own them. Conversely, if they buy all of yours, you're out of business. You start with 50 percent ownership of your railroad, but the other half is available to the public. If you find yourself hurting for cash, you can sell stock in 10 percent increments, but of course, the more of your railroad you leave available to your competition, the more opportunity you give them to buy you out.
What I really found myself watching out for were patent auctions. Throughout the course of a game, new technologies will become available. Some can be rather crucial to your operations; a tunneling method that results in a cheaper cost when digging through mountains, for example. How do you procure this tech, and others? Inventors invent them (that's what they do, after all) and allow you to purchase them--if you win an auction. If you're able to outbid your opponent(s), you win a 10-year patent on the technology, after which time it becomes available for public consumption.
Auctioning adds another bit of strategy to the game: if you win, you get a monopoly on your prize for 10 years. But how much are you willing to pay for it? Bidding amounts can become quite ludicrous. Maybe you should pass, yes? Of course, if you do, you've saved yourself some cash, but you've also lost out on what could have been a lucrative acquisition... for the next decade. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
The single player track should provide hours of entertainment for any railroad tycoon. A variety of maps that take place around the United States, Europe, and other exotic locales charge you with the challenge of creating a massive railroad empire out of... practically nothing, really. Depending on your skill level, there are plenty of options available for you to tweak your game play experience. You can set the difficulty level of your opponents, the number of opponents, (choose zero if you just want to focus on building your domain, then go back and challenge the AI later on once you're confident in your abilities) the degree of difficulty on route construction, (on lower levels, trains just kind of "step aside" when other locomotives need to pass by; otherwise, you need to do things like build double tracks) and more.
Each map starts you at a city with a bit of track. From there, you expand the track to string together the scattered assortments of businesses such as coal mines, gold mines, meat, harvesting, and more. Each city has certain supplies and demands, which you can view by hovering the mouse cursor over whichever area you're interested in. If, for example, City A has a high supply of passengers, and City B has a high demand for them... well, ship 'em on over there. If you so desire, you can build an industry in a given city (up to 3 industries per city) to create a demand for it, thereby getting more bang for your buck as your trains as chugging around the map. There are maintenance costs to your railroad, rail cars, et cetera, to consider, so keeping things as focused and centralized as possible is a good idea.
While I didn't have a chance to check out the multiplayer portion of the game, I have a good idea of what it's like, both through interviewing the game's producer (see link below) and playing the single player maps, which are essentially training modes for multiplayer. Up to 4 players can wage economic war via LAN or over the 'Net, with the goal being, of course, to buy out all your competition and be the last man standing. Auctions should also prove to be a ton of fun, especially when a technology springs up that all 4 players need.
If I had to pick something about the game I like the most, what would it be? Probably the fact that it ships this week. Sid Meier's Railroads is looking mighty fine, and you'll have a chance to see this for yourself come Tuesday, October 17 (some stores may not see it until Wednesday). All indications point to Railroads being a worthy successor to Railroad Tycoon. If you're in the mood to do some railroading but have run out of room in your basement, this one's likely to keep you entertained for quite a while--especially if you've got three friends to crush.
Sid Meier's Railroads! will be available on October 17, 2006 for PC.
Other articles of interest:
--> Sid Meier's Railroads Q&A -- an interview I conducted late last month with the game's producer, Dan Magaha.
--> An interview I conducted with Sid Meier himself -- find out more about the man behind your favorite Tycoon games... and that Civilization game everyone keeps talking about.
