"Sid Meier's Railroads!" by Take 2

I am totally possessed by this game. Even though the game feels unfinished in some ways, I think about playing all day and when I sit down to play I lose track of time until it is 2AM. The funny thing is, I wasnt even that interested in the game. I tried it out for a friend - but he is gonna have to buy his own copy.

Unlike Pirates!, the last Sid Meier title I tried, Railroads! is a totally addicting game that is well worth the $40. With a little more love (like a major patch), Railroads! might make my Great Stuff list.

The game is basically a light world-building economic-sim. You lay track between cities and other locations to move items on trains. You bring raw materials to factories and finished goods and passengers to other cities that demand them. Every product has a price and the prices change throughout the game. In addition to track routes, you have to pick locomotives, which improve over time. The goal is to make as much money as possible and buy all the stock of your competitors companies.

This is straight-forward, simple stuff that matches Meier's stated game philosophy: "Games are about interesting decisions." It is also lots of fun.

Unfinished Bits

As much as I like the game, it just feels unfinished. First there are the bugs; then there are the features that it ought to have but doesn't.

The bugs are not PC crushing BSOD affairs but they are numerous. This game crashes more than any recent title, although it is nice about it by only dropping back to the Windows Desktop.

Most of the problems seem to happen after playing for a while, which suggests memory leaks. After playing for a while, the game starts stutter, slows down and eventually crashes.

There are also pathing problems, which is a big (and noticeable) deal in a train game. Sometimes it tells me that I cannot move a train to a new route because the tracks dont connect - when the obviously do. I cannot get trains to go in a circle/loop when I want it to (even though it suggests doing so in the manual). The worst part is that trains dont always follow the path they show in the route map and inexplicably ending up on the other side of the map. After playing for a while, some trains will mysteriously stop running and just sit there.

This is the first game that I have played where I found exploits. The economics are a little light and buying industries does not seem to have much of an impact for your own income but it affects the AI's. AI's will never bid more than $200K for an industry but if you own the industry in a town, they will stop sending material there... which is a way to attack the AI's income.

In terms of missing features, those revolve around routing the trains.

My biggest complaint is that there is no "world view" that lets you plan your routing or even see where the cities are. I hate this omission, doubly so since Civilization IV does have a great version of this feature. As a result, I get that RTS experience where I have to scroll like mad all over the map to see what is going on. What makes this worse is the scrolling is two speeds, and to get the fast speed, you have to hold down a key which is awkward.

My second complaint is the routing map itself, which is too basic for such an important aspect of the game. This screen does show the entire "world" map but it does not show you anything about locations that you dont have a station in. It should very clearly show details on cities as well as all the resource locations. It would be nice if you could select a train and cargo, and the map would show you the cities that demand that cargo. You can manually mouse-over to get this info (for existing stations) but it should be automatic.

I havent tried the multiplayer features yet but given the bugs so far, Im expecting the worst.

Despite its flaws, this is a fun game. If Take2 releases a nice patch, it may become a great game.