Sid Meiers Railroad

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by 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.

Awesome, for this would explain many things

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll


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

No, this is only relevant in the city that you're going to or from. You can have four or five parallel tracks, but only three of them will be 'in the depot' for unloading/loading purposes. So you'd need to cross into your main 3 at some point before the city signals [if you try to cross later than the signals that are automatically created by the building of the depot, you may not be able to hit the depot].

I've never had a problem with two cities being too far apart to connect... in the SW scenario you have to connect Flagstaff (NE corner) with Las Vegas and Phoenix, and those are very far apart, and I usually connect all three with L.A., as far apart as you can get from Flagstaff...

[Adagio]

Finally a 'fix' has been released, so now I can finally see if the game is any fun

[Dale]

All I can say after a full day of playing, is I am EXTREMELY disappointed with this game.

1. Where is the switching?
You CANNOT tell your trains which way to go when they hit a switch or crossover. It's impossible. Finale. This causes MAJOR headaches when you have a double-tracked line between cities and want trains to head down one track one way and the other track on the return journey. The basic city-to-city link where many trains can use 1 double-track. Let me give you an example:

I build a double-track between LA and San Diego. I have two passenger trains on the line and do not want them to crash. What do I do? One on each line. Then when I have money, I bring oil into San Diego which has a refinery. What do I want? Basic: the passenger trains to use one track on the journey to LA and the other track on its return to SD. They can use the one platform at the stations so I can use the other platform of the double-track for goods. Simple! (if it were Railroad Tycoon!) I cannot order my trains which direction to take at a switch, it makes its own mind up........ THE WRONG ONE!

So the result is, if you want an efficient network where trains do not hold each other up, either play on the easiest routing level (trains don't stop if they meet another train) or ONLY EVER have one train per trainline.

2. Signals.
You cannot place signals at all. Fullstop. As above, it's a MAJOR issue. Why? Well, consider this example. I have a single line (due to money constraints) and want to run a second train on the line. I create a double-track section in the middle of the line where the trains can pass. I need one signal on the main line, and two at each end of the parking bay. But the game automatically places the signals for you, two at each end. So the train you want to park happily travels along the main line and stops the other train. No one uses the parking bay! Rediculous!!!!!

3. Train intelligence.
This is totally non-existent! Look at the second example above. You would expect the trains to look at the signals and use the right tracks that are open. They don't.

Conclusion:
So all up I give this game a 4 out of 10. I'm very disappointed with the mechanics of the game. You cannot create an advanced network. The only sane way to play this game is on easy routing level where trains do not hold each other up.

This sort of scenario is impossible (and quite common in a game such as this):
In the beginning I create a passenger line from city A to city B. Years later when I have money I create a second line from resource A to city A (the line swings out to the left). Further on I bring resource B to city B. So now each city has two lines coming in. Okay, now I want to move the manufactured goods that city B created from resource B to city A (a simple resource --> factory --> population movement). I need to move the line resource A to city A across to platform 3. The train will not move across. No matter what you do, the train will continue to use platform 2. It won't even let you delete the line to platform two after linking platform 3 to the line. You are FORCED to either create a messy rail line from city B to city A that crosses the other lines, or delete the train from resource A to city A (thus wasting all that money as you have to buy a new train again after) to fix it.

TOTALLY FRUSTRATING!!!!!

I will be giving the game another go today, but I don't hold hopes for it. This one will most likely go on the shelf.

Sorry Sid, but you're no longer the designer you used to be. Simgolf, Dinos, now this.

Dale

[John-SJ]

DP, sorry

[John-SJ]

I've been experiencing some of that frustration as well. I haven't played nearly as much as Dale, but I have been running across some frustrations anyway.

The worst offender was the following: I started a new game and built my fist line to cattle, 'cause that's what was demanded. So, to start I have city A to resource A. City A didn't demand passengers, but B and C were both nearby and they both had high passenger demand. So, (since I can only extend existing track) I built a spur from my main line to City B, then a a parallel track at B's station to city C. I bought a train and clicked B, then added 4 passenger cars, then city C and ended the route. (I know now I should have started with C and routed to B) When I closed the router I saw the train and 4 cars created at city B, ON THE WRONG TRACK!!!

WTF! Can't the game figure out that the original track only goes to city A?

Now, hearing about the switching problems, I too am pretty disappointed.

[Dale]

I just found you can only effectively run three lines at a platform. Oh the woes of this game!

But on the plus side it looks pretty!

Shame about the gameplay.

Dale

[FrostyBoy]

hmm, simple real-life train management logic is lost in this game?

That's a shame, why would Firaxis do that? That doesn't really make sense to me.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Dale
I just found you can only effectively run three lines at a platform. Oh the woes of this game!

But on the plus side it looks pretty!

Shame about the gameplay.

Dale

You can in fact only run three lines through one platform, any others will skip the platform (ie, if you wanted an express NYC-Washington you could run a fourth line past philly and baltimore).

[Dale]

Okay, I've played around with it today again, and whilst I've got the hang of setting up lines (and signals) I'm still not impressed with the game. I found out what my mistake was. When creating the switch piece I was making it from the second line to the signal which created a second signal (which is what was causing the problems). However, if you go from the signal on the first line to the end of the second line, you only have the one signal and the second line is added to that signal. This elliminated a lot of the problems, but not all of them.

Say for example I have a station with three lines: passenger/mail, ore in, steel out. A simple thing. My passenger/mail line needs to be kept seperate as P&M is speed calculated for income. However goods aren't. So you have your steel out train (off to the arms/car factory) set to wait till full to get the most profit from the trip. Therefore, the ore coming in must be on its own line too, as the waiting steel train will block incoming ore. As mentioned above, each station can only service three lines. Now, I add a second ore line. I link in the second ore line onto the signal at the end of the ore in platform. No problems there. It adds in, and manages incoming ore trains so there's no blocking. Now comes the fun part, I add a third incoming ore line. The problem is, you can only have two lines per signal piece. You cannot have three lines funnel into one platform through one signal, which you can do in almost every other railroad/transport game, even the crappy industry giant you could do it. So you have to add it in further up the line, causing a second signal, and a place where trains can block each other.

Another situation:
I had a P&M loop of one line between 4 towns. I then brought in cows to one of the cities and then moved the food to the next town. When I created the train to move the food to city B it created on the P&M line. So I thought instead of wasting that $80K I'd add in a switch piece from the P&M line to the food line before city B. Cool, the food train pulled into platform two. But I couldn't delete the switch piece to leave the food train on the correct line. So every time it returned to city A it blocked a P&M train costing me time and money. Also, every now and again a P&M train would go onto the second line, unload/load, turn around then go all the way around the loop to the next station holding up trains everywhere!

While the game is pretty, and good to look at (though a further out zoom would be great), the game severely lacks in gameplay. It's very simplistic, and only really works for single train lines. Not efficient at all. Also, once you get your ore --> steel --> arms/car --> city lines going, the AI cannot keep up. It's win from there. It's a one decision strategy that guarentees the win. Sorry Sid, but you missed the mark on your own quote, "If there's only one logical decision, then it's not a strategy game".

Final rating: 5 / 10
Shelving?: Yes

Dale

[John-SJ]

Lopsided Technology

It never ceases to amaze me how the people in Railroads (at the start of a game) have archaic steam engines and yet are able to produce automobiles even in the 1830's.

I liked it much better in previous games where there was a technological timeline that industry followed as well as engine technology.

[Jeje2]

Just visited the official site of this game and to my great GREAT disappointment I couldn't find the PC-requirements anywhere.
Visited all the pages and clicked on everything I could find.

Obviously I've just fallen off current trends and this info is available there somewhere (hints anybody?) - it is, isn't it?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll


Just asking, you tried these with no adverse affects?

Thanks

Gramps

No, that I can tell at any rate. I've been getting crashes, but that was happening before I made the changes, so I doubt if that had anything to do with it. I was hoping I could rescale the cities the same way I did with the trains, but there's no adjustment for them. Same with the resources on the map.

Incidentally, I'v encountered a repeatable crash a couple of times while trying to lay double-track in a city. I'm not sure what the cause is since I can usually do it with no problems. Just every so often, the game will crash to desktop if I try to lay it. I can save my game when it happens and it will still do it when I reboot.

[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 ...

Another solution would be to have a selectable option of having the line snap to a signal tower. That way you could deselect it anytime you wanted an out-of the ordinary connection.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Seems like they should have worked on the mechanics of tracks and trains, then on the pretty graphics.