Sid Meier's Railroads!
Preview
A complex economic system and AI players that will not only try to compete with you but will also try and take over your business!
by Sergio Brinkhuis
previewed on PC
Competition
So you see that it is in your best interest to keep everyone happy. You can do this by transporting all sorts of goods like coal and wood but you will also have to take care of transporting people and mail/packages. Especially in the beginning, it will be hard to service everyone's needs but the chances are that your competitors will step in wherever you leave a gap to be filled.
The AI players won't stop there though. Your competitors will actively try and eat away at your slice of the transport-pie. Not only will they do this by transporting the same goods, they will also try to beat you on service. If your trains run late while theirs run on time, people and businesses may favor their services over yours. If you don't respond to all this, you'll lose market share and with it, a piece of your income. It will be possible to out-price the competition in all this but as everyone knows, competing on price is often the same as starting a downwards spiral.
If you cannot compete with your rivals, you may want to buy them out. Yep, that's right, the game will let you try and gain control over your competitor's business. This can be done through the stock market but be aware that your competitors can do the same. Raising funds by selling too many stocks of your company may cause a hostile takeover and before you know it, you've lost an empire.
Running trains
Remember how in the original, you were struggling with laying tracks more than you were busy with any other aspect of the game? Laying your tracks piece by piece could be very time consuming indeed. This time around, things will be easier. Simply select the location where you want to start your track and then drag your track to where you want it. It is both easy and effective and if there are obstacles like trees, rivers and mountains in the way, the game will simply take the most intuitive action (remove the tree, build a bridge, dig a tunnel).
Once your tracks have been laid, you can start putting trains on them and with these huffing and puffing through the countryside, the game will really come to live. You'll see people boarding your trains, goods been loaded and much, much more. The landscape changes over time, as do cities and industries to reflect their size, prosperity and timeframe. So starting in the quiet 1830's, you will slowly see the map transform into the bustling 1950's.
Fun!
With Sid and his team of Firaxians at the helm, you know that the focus will be on fun, not on realism. That's fine with me. I for one am looking forward to playing around with the 30-odd trains that the game will feature. When I get tired of the 30 standard ones, you'll be able to find me in the LocoBuilder. This in-game mod tool will let you create your own train engines. Besides that, we can expect the game to be fairly easy to mod in other areas as well. Railroads! uses the same (though updated) graphics engine as Civilization IV and Sid Meier's Pirates! and both games were fairly mod-friendly, even if you couldn't go too deeply in the latter. So, just a couple more months down the road (or should I say rails) we can play this game and after that... well... I can already smell the 1950 to 2010 expansion pack coming up. :)
