Sid Meier's Railroads!

Sid Meier's Railroads!
Developer(s)	Firaxis Games
Publisher(s)	2K Games
Designer(s)	Sid Meier
Engine	Gamebryo
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Genre(s)	Business simulation game
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Sid Meier's Railroads! is a business simulation game developed by Sid Meier on the Gamebryo game engine that was released in October 2006 and is the sequel to Railroad Tycoon 3. Although Sid Meier created the original Railroad Tycoon, subsequent versions were developed by PopTop Software. After a visit to Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany, Sid Meier was inspired to reinvent his original creation.

Overview

Railroads! is fully three-dimensional and geared more toward head to head real-time strategy than the previous versions. The terrain is also more compressed in this game; there are few areas where players are allowed a long, straight run of track, meaning that terrain, such as hills, mountains, rivers, and inlets, play a much more important role in the game.

The game is heavily focused on economics – players have to build and sustain entire industries using the railroads they develop. Gameplay changes from previous editions of Railroad Tycoon include a system where new technology is first auctioned to the highest bidder. This gives the player a ten-year exclusive use of that technology. Similarly, individual industries are also put up for auction amongst players. Tracklaying is automated and much easier than other editions of Railroad Tycoon. When combined with the more "compressed" terrain, it allows for tactical placement of track to obstruct and frustrate opponents.

The game also allows head-to-head play over a LAN or the Internet, supporting up to four players per game, either human or artificial intelligence.

Scenarios

Like the previous versions, Railroads! offers various historical scenarios, in regions such as the Southwestern United States, the Pacific Northwest, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. In these scenarios (fifteen in all), the game allows the user to take on the role of various famous railway tycoons and robber barons from the past.

Custom Scenarios

With the introduction of patch 1.1 a map editor could be enabled by editing one of the games ini files. As of June 2009, there have been over fifty custom maps made by the Sid Meier's Railroads! community.

Trains

There is a large number of trains available in the game, spanning the years 1828 to 1970.

Critical reception

Metacritic reports an average score of 77 out of 100 or "Generally Favorable" in published reviews. IGN gave the game an "8.0" or "impressive."

Criticism

Upon release, game players identified many problems with the game, some of which were subsequently patched by Firaxis' 1.01 version patch. A second patch, 1.1, was released on December 22, 2006, which fixes a few glitches and improves the gameplay.

Reviewer complaints include some of the following:

• Automatic Train Routing is far from perfect. Trains frequently choose bad tracks and/or get trapped in a back-and-forth pattern.
• The limited camera angles available - unlike RRT3, players can't rotate the camera to view the sky, or zoom right down to track level without locking the camera to a train, nor are they able to zoom out very far.
• Graphics are very demanding on computer systems, slowing down especially towards the later stages of the game.
• Simplified economic and stock market system which removed earlier titles' ability to raise cash by issuing bonds, and other nuances such as stock splits and margin calls.
• Most of the steam locomotives do not have tenders. Early screenshots showed the Pacific, Mikado, and American engines with their respective tenders, but those engines' tenders were omitted from the release version. However, engines such as the Planet, Norris, and Alder retained their tenders, perhaps due to their small sizes. Later, a modification was released which reinserted the American's tender as well as the other two tenders that were made but omitted from the final release.
• "Players looking for the complex economic cycles of Railroad Tycoon 3 will find this particular game juvenile by comparison."
• Also does not work correctly with Vista on all computers. The game may crash if you have a computer using Windows Vista. This problem was not fixed by either of the released patches but the release of Service Pack 1 does seem to have brought some stability[1]. This problem is caused by memory management issues, typically with high in game settings. The game executable can be altered with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag, which allows the game to use more than the standard 2GiB of virtual address space.

External links

• Sid Meier's Railroads! Official Homepage
• Sid Meier's Railroads! at MobyGames