Sid Meier's Railroads!

by 2K Games

Product Features

• Sid Meier-designed railroad tycoon game
• You're in charge of building your own railroad empire
• A variety of play modes including the "sand-box" modeling mode, real-time LAN and Internet play
• Railroads! delivers a strategy experience that will cater to both RTS gamers and locomotive fans alike
• Engage in corporate warfare against rival tycoons, slick entrepreneurs and robber barons

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000FU1F0O
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5.5 x 1 inches ; 3.2 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: October 16, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,329 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #99 in Video Games > PC Games > Simulation
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Forge Your Rail EmpireProduct InformationSid Meier's Railroads! marks the return of the watershed title in simulation/strategy gaming that launched the popular "tycoon" genre and inspired a new generation of games. Sid Meier's Railroads! comes home to its original creator the legendary Sid Meier who together with his team at Firaxis Games will take this game to a whole new level of fun!The greatest railroad building game of all time is back in a vibrant 3D world delivering exciting multiplayer options in-game customization tools streamlined interface and unmatched gameplay that's easy to learn yet challenging to master. Combining the best of real-world and model railroads Sid Meier's Railroads! puts you in charge of building the greatest rail empire in the nation - managing trains cargo and your bottom line - while engaging in all-out corporate warfare against rival tycoons slick entrepreneurs and robber barons!Product HighlightsReal-time action - lay track route the trains and the world comes to life. Cities and industries grow up around you as you service them hauling raw materials to market and carrying manufactured goods away; Cargos are loaded onto train cars and passengers shuffle between cities.Easy to get started - laying track is as easy as clicking and dragging. Bridges tunnels railroad stations and switches sprout up automatically where they're needed.Challenging to master - with a new market system that tracks supply and demand and complex random events that can cause a boom or bust at any time players must stay on their toes at all times or risk obsolescence financial collapse or hostile takeover.It's all about the trains! - over 30 trains to use from the primitive 0-4-0 Planet to the Super powerful 4-6-6-4 Challenger from the classic diesels to ultra-modern bullet trains.LocoBuilder - customize your train liveries from color schemes to custom logos.We've got the goods - over 20 different goods

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

219 of 225 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars We Expect Better From Sid, October 20, 2006

By 

Tim Challies (Oakville, Ontario) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Sid Meier's Railroads! (CD-ROM)

I've spent some good time with the game now and, despite the fact that I'm about as big a fan of Sid Meier's work as you're likely to find, have to admit disappointment with this game. When it comes right down to it, the game seems more like Sid's golf game than the original RRT. It's shallow, fast and just not nearly as fun as you'd hope.

Of course it's not all bad. The graphics are beautiful, the music is great and you actually get a real manual. The game looks nice and plays nice, even on a system which is not a true gaming rig. The animations are great as well and I love how each of the train cars at a depot have to be filled individually with coal or grain or whatever the case may be. The patent auctions are well done as well.

Unfortunately, there are a few problems with the game:

First, the game moves too quickly. For example, if you play the Eastern USA scenario, you may start in Baltimore. You can immediately join with Washington, plunk a depot in Washington, and get a little Grasshopper to run a single mail car and a single passenger car back and forth. By the time the train has made its first run from Baltimore to Washington, you'll have enough money to connect to your second city (Baltimore to Frederick). So you do that, and get your second train. Give it four or five minutes and you'll be able to either double the line between BAL and WAS or create a third line to a nearby resource. Within fifteen minutes you will have connected to every city and needed resource in the vicinity. By then your opponents (assuming you are playing against two) will have pretty well done the same so that every good-sized town has at least one connection. The opponent railroads are a complete mess, with weird overpasses and tunnels all over the place. Much like the previous iterations of RRT, the AI seems to deal with brute force rather than sophistication.

Second, the maps are too small. RRT and RRT2 had a real epic feel. RRT2 was especially good with this, allowing you to make huge railroads stretching across an entire continent. The maps in SMR are tiny in comparison and few in number. This could be my single biggest point of disappointment. It contributes, of course, to the first problem, since you now have three railroads stuck in just a small corner of a country.

Third, the financial game is shallow compared to previous RRTs. The same is true of the economies. There doesn't seem to be much sophistication in this. Also, it is very easy to make great deals of money and, because the game moves so quickly, if you take a few minutes to look around the map, you'll probably find that suddenly you've got a couple million dollars in your account. This may be less the case in the more difficult European scenarios, but certainly I haven't had any trouble making money in the US of A. The stock market offers buy and selling. There is no splitting, no short selling or anything else. There are ten shares per company and that's it. I may just be missing something, but it also seems difficult to know how much different resources are worth, which ones are the most valuable, and so on.

Fourth, there seem to be some problems with routing. It's not unusual to see trains getting all plugged up near stations, even stations with three tracks running through them. The crossovers kind of work, but not as well as you might hope. When a station gets enough traffic running through it (and that may be only 5 or 6 trains) it can really begin to bog down so trains sit endlessly without being able to unload. There have also been times when the little "end of line" roadblocks have refused to go away, even in the middle of a station. That means no trains can run past the roadblock out the other side of the station. To this point I haven't found an easy way of resolving this. I think it will prove difficult to have stations with a large number of trains accessing them.

Fifth, laying track is so automatic it's almost disappointing. Unlike previous games, there do not seem to be a lot of premiums in placing bridges or tunnels. A track running from Phoenix to Flagstaff, which requires at least one major bridge and a couple of long tunnel sections, will only set you back about $500,000. That wouldn't get you very far in previous RRT games, and I think it's better that way. It used to be more important to find just the right route (anyone else remember running trains through the mountains to California in RRT2?), but now it hardly matters anymore. Terrain gets smoothed, tunnels get dug and bridges get built just like that. You can just smack a track wherever you want one and the game takes care of the rest.

Sixth, there is no campaign. This is hugely disappointing as the campaign in RRT2 was one of the best parts of the game (with the exception of those stupid puzzle ones where all you had to do is route trains). The individual scenarios have a list of objectives, but if you are not looking for them, you won't find them and won't heed them. I don't think you ever get reminded of the objectives and they don't seem to have any real bearing on the game. They are just there. Once you finish a scenario there is no connection to the next one--you just start over. All-in-all, this is pretty disappointing.

So overall, I think it has the makings of a great game...they just didn't finish it. The game itself is so good in the way it looks and the way it plays. It pains me that they kept it so shallow.

PS - One more thing. I forgot to mention the strange fact that the economies are not modified depending on the era. So be prepared to funnel steel to an automobile manufacturer in 1830...and one that is based in a city filled with 20th century skyscrapers.

108 of 115 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Build the Greatest Railroad in the Tri-County Area!!!!! Or, "They're writing copy for some other Railroad game.", October 24, 2006

By 

Someone "krs94108" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sid Meier's Railroads! (CD-ROM)

I don't know what marketing person wrote the description on the box, but their pants are on fire.

The greatest railroad building game of all time is back in a vibrant 3D world

- well, it is in vibrant 3D. Huzzah. If the greatest railroad building game of all time is "back", it's returned battered, bruised, and totally unrecognizable. It's like the bloody, huddled figure of a long-lost friend collasped on your doorstep. You want to cradle it in your arms and scream "Why? Oh, why?" over and over again while shaking your fist at the sky.

delivering exciting multiplayer options,

- exciting = existing; options = option.

in-game customization tools,

- Ha! "Should my locomotive be purple? How about green? So pretty!" That is the extent of these "in-game customization tools". Even your starting city is picked for you!

streamlined interface,

- Streamlined = Lacking in Content. The so-called interface offers an intriguing variety of useless menus and pointless reports. But they're in vibrant 3-D!

and unmatched gameplay,

- Unmatched by what? Pushing a boulder up a hill for eternity. "Sid Meier presents: Sisyphus! In vibrant 3-D! With multiplayer- push a boulder up hill for eternity with a friend! And customizable! Well not really; we pick the hill for you- but if you want to push a more colorful boulder, we can do that!" Actually, Sisyphus did it for eternity, and I played Railroads! for about three hours.

that's easy to learn yet challenging to master.

- Easy to learn... oh my yes. Challenging to master... if you leave your monitor turned off, or if your keyboard is in another room. After my first attempt, I cranked the difficulty all the way up. And then I turned off my monitor and pretended I was playing RT2, or solitaire.

Combining the best of real-world and model railroads,

- That doesn't even make sense. It is a computer game, not tabletop trains, not Amtrak. It is not like tabletop in that you are expected to earn money. It is not like Amtrak in that you are expected to earn money. It is not like tabletop in that you have no way of "driving" the train. It is not like Amtrak in that your network may span two states. This is not a "I'm an engineer!" sim, and it's not a business game.

However, it is like tabletop in that the cities are about four inches apart, and that your train is typically in three stations at once, but I do not know that's the "best" part of model railroads. (It's like Amtrak in that it is highly overpriced.)

Sid Meier's Railroads! puts you in charge of building the greatest rail empire in the nation

- HA! HA! HA! You can run an astonishing Pittsburgh-to-Chicago route; Washington DC-to-New York City is an exciting, seven minute option. The maps are so small that, perhaps, "greatest rail empire in the state" would be possible. This game would be tolerable if you could at least go from NYC to Chicago, or manage a transcontinental line. Nope. The European maps are even worse.

while engaging in all-out corporate warfare against rival tycoons, slick entrepreneuers, and robber barons!

- all-out corporate warfare = all-out corporate lie. There are no bonds, no options, no short selling, no stock issuance, no nothing. There is "stock", and there are ten shares of it. No more, no less. They might as well have done away with that aspect entirely, but then we couldn't claim to have all-out corporate warfare. You can't even use another company's tracks or stations. So all-out corporate warfare is a bald-faced lie.

So disappointing!

116 of 129 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Did anyone at Firaxis play RRT3? RRT4 this is not!, October 17, 2006

By 

Andrew M. Zumwalt "amz0f4" (Columbia, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Sid Meier's Railroads! (CD-ROM)

SID!!! SID!!!! Did you ever play RRT2 or RRT3 or Locomotion?????

In the media excitement leading up to the release of Railroads!, preview authors often commented on the possibilities stemming from Sid Meier and his reconnection with his old game, Railroad Tycoon. I, too, was ecited. I had spent many hours playing the original, Railroad Tycoon 2, Railroad Tycoon 3, and Locomotion. Locomotion wasn't the game I was expecting, and Poptop stopped developing the Railroad Tycoon genre after releasing the Coast-to-Coast expansion for RRT3. However, after playing Railroads for a few solid hours, I'm must say that Sid has disappointed me.

Poptop released Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3. After they released RRT2, they made some awesome changes to RRT3. The economy was dynamic in that goods would move even without a railroad, if the demand was high enough for a good. That same dynamic isn't in Railroads; you get paid for moving goods (supply and demand does play a role, but only on a global scale). Poptop created a tool by which you could see the amount of the goods on the map and the price difference between different points. Again, nothing like it in Railroads. Poptop allowed players to upgrade all engines of one type into another type with two mouse clicks. Sid has no such tool, so the player must upgrade each engine one at a time. RRT3 (and RRT2) had an interface that meshed with the game (For example, setting routes was handled in one window and it was easy to stay on top of things); Railroads seems clunky and a throwback to the original.

Finally, my biggest complaint is the rail system. In the original game, there were signals that allowed trains to move; the system was simple, and if you double tracked, trains did pretty well. The genre expanded with Transport Tycoon. In TT, there were some serious signal and track work (for examples of what I'm talking about, google Transport Tycoon). RRT2 and RRT3 simplified this and put in place a hierarchy; trains that stood higher in the hierarchy would pass over trains that didn't. Signals weren't used. It wasn't as sophisticated as TT (or Locomotion, TT's successor), but it made gameplay simple, and maps could accommodate massive amounts of trains without the tediousness of trackwork late in the game. With Railroads, the signals are back however, in TT, you could make smart signaling decisions (one way signals, non-reversing trains, and loops). In Railroads, the signals just indicate whether a train can proceed or not (and you can't place them, like you could in the original! They just appear at intersections and at stations). Even then, if a train has stopped at a signal long enough, it will just decide to move forward. The design of the rail network attempts to replicate the original Railroad Tycoon, but the genre has moved on. If a game is going to use signals, then give the player some control over them! If the game isn't going to use signals, use waypoints! Both RRT3 and Transport Tycoon advanced the genre using these tools; Railroads lacks both.

There is more to this list, and I'll add to it as I think of them, but Firaxis and Sid Meier have really disappointed me with this game. It seems that they brushed up the original with new (I admit they are very cool) graphics and sound, but the gameplay hasn't really kept up with the time (Did anyone at Firaxis actually play RRT3 or Locomotion?). If you're thinking about buying the game, I advise you to first download and try the demo.

Railroad Tycoon 4 this is not!

Andrew