Sid Meier’s Railroad – First impressions

On a friday evening at a friend’s house, with XBOX 360 blaring “GOAAAL” from NHL 2007 from EA and money being tossed towards the winner, I was on my friend’s PC who is a big spender when it comes to tycoon or strategy games. He has every tycoon game, from the bargain bin games like Mall Tycoon and Prison Tycoon, to wargames from indie developers like Shrapnel games.

One game he just bought two days ago is Sid Meier’s Railroads! He knew I wrote for this blog and wanted me to pimp such a great game. After playing for a few hours, and just played my fourth game just this morning, let’s just say that I have mixed feelings about this game.

For those of you who thinking that Sid Meier’s Railroads! is some micromanagement complex economic train simulation, stop reading. Just like Sid Meier’s previous remakes like Civilization 4 and Pirates, this game became more simplified. I dare even call it a “Monopoly with Trains”

Is this a bad thing? Depending on what type of gamer you are. If you like the idea of building stations to service your trains like the previous Railroad Tycoons, you might dislike the new “fixed” maintaince costs that occur every few seconds to pay for the train instead. The older the train, the higher the cost. You don’t need to worry too much about landscaping anymore because the game modifies the landscape and costs automatically when placing your tracks. Removes micromanagement? Yes, and I find this to be a great thing.

The landscape is also much smaller then the previous games, allowing a much faster paced game. The economy is much more simplified, with people and mail not longer requiring a specific destination: you get paid by how far and how fast you go. You can create some influence over a cities economy either by buying industries to create demand or supply them with their needed sources and watch it grow as the years go bye, thus creating more demands. Industries that you create or own by bidding add extra cash when either your or someone else’s train brings the supplies that industry. For example, if you make a processing plant that uses cow to create food, a rival can bring in cow, and you get profit for each cow. However, remember that they can use that food you just made from the cow and deliver it another area for even more profit. You really need to think two steps ahead of your opposition if you plan on winning.

Visually, the game looks wonderful.  You can see little bits of animated detail in the game, from cows entering each car on your trains to small number of people walking on bridges.  The art style is very similar to Pirates and Civilization 4.  Performance wise, the game is very sluggish.  Creating a new rail ultimately kills off your computer’s performance and as the game advances, the numerous trains, cities, and rails put a toll on your PC.  Do not trust the minimal requirements in this game.

A big change in the game is the technology. When a new tech is made, and not by you or other players but by the environment, the you will bid for exclusive use of the technology for ten years before it goes public. Depending what you are trying to do, you either might find them useless or very profitable. The concept of auctions also allow some rather interesting multiplayer scenarios.

Unfortunately, there is the bad part of the game comes in. There isn’t many people playing multiplayer and the AI is not much of a challenge. They won’t bid on many industries and I never even saw the AI once start a bid on an industry on their own. They don’t seem to expand very well and at times, I see a very profitable trade route for the AI but they never once put a track connecting it. The AI needs to be more aggressive and cutthroat to make it worthwhile for the player. I even played the highest difficulty in the game, which increases costs of everything but lowers trade revenue, and still managed to buy out my competition (which is the goal of the game). On my first day of playing the game.

In the end, Sid Meier’s Railroads! might not be for everyone. If you are new to the tycoon genre or hate micromanagement with a passion (like yours truly), you will like it. If you are expecting a really complicated game with a deep economy that can baffle professors in universaties, avoid it.

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