All Aboard!
Santa's elves gave us Sid Meier's Railroads! for xmas. They apparently dillied & dallied about it; the game I guess has been out a year. I feel terribly out of the information loop -- we need to find a good game comm or something. Anyway, I typically insisted on getting a hint book for it, and that didn't arrive till a few days ago.
So Train Gamer & I started the game up last night. Until we learn the game, we're being total wimps -- we picked the "beginner" scenario (American Southwest) on the easiest difficulty level against only one AI opponent. (At the moment, we've only got the one computer, so we jointly play a single-player game.) It's a bit disconcerting because the game gives you a starting terminal and stretch of track. We decided where we wanted to start and had to go through lots of New Games until the game gave us what we wanted. Almost. We wanted to start in Eloy, which is due south of Phoenix, and that's what we got. With appropriate raw resources nearby, even. (Appropriate, that is, for the industries randomly placed in the two cities.) Except that our starting track is going east-west!
I just laid sample track to see what it would look like, and was able to curve around to Phoenix via a cornfield and a gold mine. Since Phoenix can turn corn into food for Eloy and Eloy can turn ore into gold for Phoenix, this looks promising. There's one stretch of track that's at quarter speed due to grade, and I don't think there's a way to "fix" that once the track has been laid. So I may go back to the start position (carefully saved!) and try relaying the track several times to see whether I can improve it or not. But just to see what the game would do, I bought an engine and ran for several years. With just one passenger/mail train, we made money hand over fist. Hmm, we may have been too wimpy!
I must say, just sitting there and watching the train run was very pleasantly like watching a model railroad. I'm looking forward to playing!
So Train Gamer & I started the game up last night. Until we learn the game, we're being total wimps -- we picked the "beginner" scenario (American Southwest) on the easiest difficulty level against only one AI opponent. (At the moment, we've only got the one computer, so we jointly play a single-player game.) It's a bit disconcerting because the game gives you a starting terminal and stretch of track. We decided where we wanted to start and had to go through lots of New Games until the game gave us what we wanted. Almost. We wanted to start in Eloy, which is due south of Phoenix, and that's what we got. With appropriate raw resources nearby, even. (Appropriate, that is, for the industries randomly placed in the two cities.) Except that our starting track is going east-west!
I just laid sample track to see what it would look like, and was able to curve around to Phoenix via a cornfield and a gold mine. Since Phoenix can turn corn into food for Eloy and Eloy can turn ore into gold for Phoenix, this looks promising. There's one stretch of track that's at quarter speed due to grade, and I don't think there's a way to "fix" that once the track has been laid. So I may go back to the start position (carefully saved!) and try relaying the track several times to see whether I can improve it or not. But just to see what the game would do, I bought an engine and ran for several years. With just one passenger/mail train, we made money hand over fist. Hmm, we may have been too wimpy!
I must say, just sitting there and watching the train run was very pleasantly like watching a model railroad. I'm looking forward to playing!