Best Game In Railroad Tycoon Series

[Andemagne]

Quickly! what's the best game in Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon series? I just noticed that I have missed this whole series.

[proviisori]

Why not play em all?

[DrSpike]

Well there are pros and cons for each one.

RT: A classic, and free for legal download. But it's almost 20 years old and frankly you'd have to be a bit of a masochist to play it now.

RT2: A fine addition to the series, and although old you can play it without gouging out your eyes.

RT3: I didn't play this but it got mixed reviews from fans (as always when new gameplay elements are added or old ones changed). It's only around 5 years old though.

Personally I'd plump for RT2, to get the RT experience without having to play the original.

[Nikolai]

Only RT1 and Railroads are Sid's games in that genre?

[Andemagne]

proviisori: I have only one life.


Dr Spike: what about Railroad Tycoon Deluxe and Sid Meier's Railroads?


Nikolai: yes.

[Kataphraktoi]

RT3 is probably best if you havnt played any of them. Ofcourse i prefer number2. I dont know about the two mentioned above

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Andemagne
proviisori: I have only one life.


Dr Spike: what about Railroad Tycoon Deluxe and Sid Meier's Railroads?


Nikolai: yes.

I think the deluxe game was just a tweaked version of the original, and as such the same points above apply.

Railroads I didn't play, but there was a thread on it here. If I recall correctly most people thought it was so-so. If you are going to go for a modern version it may well be worth the nod over RT3 though.

[Jonny]

Personally, I'd go for RT3 over Railroads; I wasn't that impressed by the latter. Of course, RT2 is better than both... I'd imagine that you can still find the Platinum Edition for sale.

RTDeluxe, while ancient, is legally free and can be found at the Railroads site. You may want to briefly play with it just to get a (very basic) feel for the genre.

[Standup]

RT2 easily and worth buying the gold or platinum editions with the expansion pack and loads of extra maps.

RT1 was very good but the graphics are pretty basic now. Well beyond the gameplay over graphics debate.
RT Deluxe was an expanded version of RT1 with according to the box I've just dug out...

"six world regions" (Africa and South America being the additions)

"Enhanced VGA graphics"
"more opportunities for wealth and power" (more resources really)
"11 new trains"

I wonder if its worth anything? All on floppy and none of my 3 PC's has one anymore

RT3 for me didn't quite work. The 3D made rail building hard and I found it hard to keep a grip on the economy with the way the screens were laid out. Some nice features though especially the way goods will move on their own down rivers etc. If you get this then you'll want the Coast to Coast expansion which was a free download. Quite a few patches as well and could probably have done with one more.

Railroads I'm afraid just didn't do it for me. Scale was wrong and a bit brief.

[Andemagne]

seems to me that RT2 is the best in the series. thanks Guys

[halfapple111]

I don't think so. I just got Railroad Tycoon 3 for a few weeks, and have enjoyed a lot. I think RT3 is a improved sequel to RT2. When laying track a grid can be overlaid, which gives me an idea of the elevations. This allows me to keep expenses down and improve travel speed by avoiding steep slopes when laying new track. reallly cool.

[Joseph]

If they took RRT 2 maps, RRT 3 replacing train engines and Railroad together we would have a real nice game.

[Jonny]

I'll admit that RT3 had a lot of good things about it... it was by no means a bad game. That said, though, my main beef was with the auto-consist feature, where the game automatically picked the most profitable cargo to ship for you. Sure, you could play without it, but it felt to me that the game was designed to be played with it, and, while it helped the AI, it seemed to be removing a large part of the strategy of the game.

[Standup]

I'd forgotten that feature. This caused problems as you couldn't run trains at a loss. This was useful/necessery to develop industries or attack rivals.

Can't remember if that was addressed in patches.

[Andemagne]

Originally posted by Andemagne
seems to me that...

Originally posted by halfapple111
I don't think so.