Sid Meiers Railroad

[Willem]

Well I got my copy, and so far I like it. I've been playing around with the South West scenario, since it's supposed to very easy. It's not. At least if you have the switching set to Hard. It's going to take me awhile to get the hang of moving my machines around. I really like the fact that I can select random terrain and city locations. There's not alot of scenarios with the game but having this option makes them pretty much infinite as far as replayability is concerned. You just never know what you'll end up with.

One complaint I have is that it can be a real pain sometimes double-tracking. You have to lay your track beside the original line, then connect the two with a single piece of rail. Sometimes I'll have some huge overpass appearing on the screen, or a double signal tower, or my view will be obstructed by buildings around the track. It would be so much simpler if this was done automatically right off the bat. I'd like to be able to select the double track, click on a signal tower, then drag the line to another signal tower and have it hook up all on it's own. Of course this would also require that we can place signal towers on the track wherever we wanted to.

[snoopy369]

If it auto-crossed over, you'd lose a lot of flexibility with forcing trains to run on a particular track (to have say an express track) as well as lose flexibility with how tracks cross over ...

[Grandpa Troll]

I worked a long day yesterday so limited PC time, but have this little bit of input, in the beginning at least, BIGGER is not better

I got a little crazy trying to tie in every city and every resource and old J P Morgan came along and snatched up several patents

Those I suppose are like Wonders and will have to pick and choose but so far I am Fanboy Numero Uno..eh Spikey..

Anyhoo, I am having teeth pulled this morning so should get some time in this afternoon playing

Be well and have fun with this game one and all

Gramps

[Grandpa Troll]

Still Loving this game

Couple points to ponder and learn:

I build a railroad track from an oil field to a city. I have a station or whatever they are called and build a train along with cars

My problem is "Boston" needs "Oil" from "Dover oil fields"

I am doing something wrong, I cant make the connection between the two????? (RR Tracks are there just cant click on the two cities, only on the oil field and when I say select 4 cars and then click on the city that demands oil, it wont light up??

I am wondering if I am allowed to bypass several of my cities?

I am new to this so am learning as I go

I did find out how the ai was having so much gold, they would sell off stock to buy the patents

Ok

Off to play some more

Be back later.......................

[Grandpa Troll]

GOODS SCREEN

I hope this helps, wish they had a small card with it on it though

[FrostyBoy]

great

well i will be getting this.. hope i get time to play it

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll
Still Loving this game

Couple points to ponder and learn:

I build a railroad track from an oil field to a city. I have a station or whatever they are called and build a train along with cars

My problem is "Boston" needs "Oil" from "Dover oil fields"

I am doing something wrong, I cant make the connection between the two????? (RR Tracks are there just cant click on the two cities, only on the oil field and when I say select 4 cars and then click on the city that demands oil, it wont light up??

I am wondering if I am allowed to bypass several of my cities?

I am new to this so am learning as I go

I did find out how the ai was having so much gold, they would sell off stock to buy the patents

Ok

Off to play some more

Be back later.......................

You probably have a problem that the two cities aren't actually connected, just appear to be - either the track going from dover to boston is unable to connect to the boston terminal (sometimes it's not quite far enough in) or maybe you've run four tracks through boston? (No city may have more than three tracks from each investor run through its terminal.)

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Sn00py
great

well i will be getting this.. hope i get time to play it

Yes..so many games so few moments to split up

I am looking to get away from some of my PBEM's and limit to a few quality games of Civilization

This way I can play some SIM4 and Railroads

I have found another so called "STUMP" and that is what to do when I end up with 10 railroads going into a city

this of course slow all to a deadstop


Plus, when you get a HUGE city its often a bit difficult to see where the track is to connect multiple tracks to it.

These are all quite possibly simple to overcome, just need to figure it out

Gramps

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by snoopy369


You probably have a problem that the two cities aren't actually connected, just appear to be - either the track going from dover to boston is unable to connect to the boston terminal (sometimes it's not quite far enough in) or maybe you've run four tracks through boston? (No city may have more than three tracks from each investor run through its terminal.)

Snoopy, so am I to understand you need to build a track "around" the city that has been maxed out?

Thanks for the help

Gramps

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll


Yes..so many games so few moments to split up

I am looking to get away from some of my PBEM's and limit to a few quality games of Civilization

This way I can play some SIM4 and Railroads

I have found another so called "STUMP" and that is what to do when I end up with 10 railroads going into a city

this of course slow all to a deadstop


Plus, when you get a HUGE city its often a bit difficult to see where the track is to connect multiple tracks to it.

These are all quite possibly simple to overcome, just need to figure it out

Gramps

Actually I meant to not say 10 Railroads but 10 trains

[Willem]

Originally posted by snoopy369
If it auto-crossed over, you'd lose a lot of flexibility with forcing trains to run on a particular track (to have say an express track) as well as lose flexibility with how tracks cross over ...

It wouldn't be a problem if we could place signal towers where we wanted to. That way you could place a tower on each end of the track you want to expand, then just drag your doubletrack from one tower to the next. The current system is really quite clumsy IMO. And sometimes I'll end up with a cluster of 3-4 signal towers side by side, which I consider to be an eye-sore and completely unnecessary. That too wouldn't be an issue if I were allowed to delete signal towers as well as place them, but the game won't let me.

Incidentally, I've seen some people complain that the trains are too large for the scale of the rest of the game. I've discovered that's something very easily fixed. If you go to Assets/XML and look for Trains.xml and TrainCars.xml, you'll see a scale number at the very top of each file that controls all the trains, scale value of 2, and cars, scale value of 1. I've lowered mine to 1.25 for trains and .65 for cars and it looks about right. You can also scale down the size of the depots so they're a little more in line with the city buildings. I've chosen .75 from a default of 1.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll

Plus, when you get a HUGE city its often a bit difficult to see where the track is to connect multiple tracks to it.

These are all quite possibly simple to overcome, just need to figure it out

Gramps

I found a couple of solutions to that problem involving the xml files. First off, in the main Assets/XML/Cities.xml file, there's a number of 80 for the grid sizing. If you increase the number to 100, the city streets get a bit wider so there's not as much clutter.

Also, in the individual scenario folders are xml files that deal with cities unique to that scenario. You can change the number of building types that appear for each city size. I've cut mine in half which, together with the extra spacing, makes it much easier for me to see where my tracks etc. are.

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Willem


I found a couple of solutions to that problem involving the xml files. First off, in the main Assets/XML/Cities.xml file, there's a number of 80 for the grid sizing. If you increase the number to 100, the city streets get a bit wider so there's not as much clutter.

Also, in the individual scenario folders are xml files that deal with cities unique to that scenario. You can change the number of building types that appear for each city size. I've cut mine in half which, together with the extra spacing, makes it much easier for me to see where my tracks etc. are.

Just asking, you tried these with no adverse affects?

Thanks

Gramps

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Willem


It wouldn't be a problem if we could place signal towers where we wanted to. That way you could place a tower on each end of the track you want to expand, then just drag your doubletrack from one tower to the next. The current system is really quite clumsy IMO. And sometimes I'll end up with a cluster of 3-4 signal towers side by side, which I consider to be an eye-sore and completely unnecessary. That too wouldn't be an issue if I were allowed to delete signal towers as well as place them, but the game won't let me.

Incidentally, I've seen some people complain that the trains are too large for the scale of the rest of the game. I've discovered that's something very easily fixed. If you go to Assets/XML and look for Trains.xml and TrainCars.xml, you'll see a scale number at the very top of each file that controls all the trains, scale value of 2, and cars, scale value of 1. I've lowered mine to 1.25 for trains and .65 for cars and it looks about right. You can also scale down the size of the depots so they're a little more in line with the city buildings. I've chosen .75 from a default of 1.

No crashes with this?


Thanks

Gramps

[Joseph]

If the Cities are to far apart, the game will not let you go between them. If you can make a short cut, then you can go to that city. I also found out that when you upgrade the Engine, then maybe the game will not let you run between two cities that were to far apart for the earlier engine.