Product Description

Sid Meier's Railroads brings back the Golden Age of railroading! Combining the best of real-world and model railroads, you'll be in charge of building your own railroad empire, running everything from steam-powered locomotives to more modern diesel and electric trains. Manage your cargo and your bottom line, all while engaging in corporate warfare against rival tycoons, slick entrepreneurs and robber barons. Cities and industries will grow up around you, while you lay track and route trains, haul raw materials to market and carry manufactured goods throughout the land. Challenge historical giants like Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and others in single-player scenarios Ruthless real-time multiplayer LAN and Internet play -- buy out your rivals or cash in favors to sabotage their shipments!

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5442 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: 2K Games
• Released on: 2006-10-16
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Windows XP
• Dimensions: 3.00 pounds

Features

• Sid Meier-designed railroad tycoon game
• You're in charge of building your own railroad empire
• A variety of play modes including the "sand-box" modeling mode, real-time LAN and Internet play
• Railroads! delivers a strategy experience that will cater to both RTS gamers and locomotive fans alike
• Engage in corporate warfare against rival tycoons, slick entrepreneurs and robber barons

Amazon.com
The Golden Age of railroads is back with Sid Meier's Railroads! Combining the best of real-world and model railroads, Sid Meier's Railroads! puts you in charge of building your own transcontinental empire. Not only must you learn to run everything from steam-powered locomotives to more modern diesel and electric trains, but you must also manage cargo and your bottom line, even as ruthless corporations, rival tycoons, slick entrepreneurs and robber barons try to take over.

Get moving on steam locomotives from the past, as well as modern diesel and electric trains. View larger.

Battle to build a railroad empire larger than any of your rivals. View larger.

Railroads! uses the same graphics engine used for Civilization IV. View larger.

Not only must you learn to run everything from steam-powered locomotives to more modern diesel and electric trains, but you must also manage cargo and your bottom line, even as ruthless corporations, rival tycoons, slick entrepreneurs and robber barons try to take over.

Sid Meier's Railroads! puts you in a battle to build a railroad empire larger than any of your rivals', so that you can buy them out before they buy you out. You accomplish this by not only building railroad networks linking cities and industries together, but by managing them as well. If you make sure the trains run on time, delivering people, mail, and goods to where they need to be, you will see the results as you play. If you are successful, cities will grow and flourish, but if you are neglectful in your duties, they will wither and shrink.

Sid Meier's Railroads! appears to be easier to actually control, though not necessarily to win, than the original version. You can now simply drag-and-drop railroad tracks, and as you lay out the path for your tracks, the game will give you a glimpse of how it will eventually look.

The graphics rendering in this sequel has been greatly improved by utilizing the same graphics engine used for Civilization IV. Cities on the map have come closer together, offering more living, breathing world in which to operate. You will be able to see your trains running along the tracks, with visible detailing ranging from people boarding at depots, to lumber mills depositing logs onto your cars.

Sid Meier's Railroads! introduces a large number of different single-player game scenarios, with a variety of play modes. Playing the sand-box modeling mode that will let you tinker around without having to worry about money or the artificial intelligence, while real-time LAN and Internet games will allow you to face off against fellow robber-barons. Sid Meier's Railroads! should provide hours of fun for gamers of all stripes.

Features

• Real-time action - lay track, route the trains, and the world comes to life. Cities and industries grow up around you as you service them, hauling raw materials to market and carrying manufactured goods away; Cargos are loaded onto train cars and passengers shuffle between cities.
• Easy to get started - laying track is as easy as clicking and dragging. Bridges, tunnels, railroad stations and switches sprout up automatically where they're needed.
• Haul Goods and Grow Industries - Harvest, produce, transport, and sell 20 different goods to over 30 unique industries as you build your booming rail empire.
• Plan Your Victory - Strategize your win by accumulating loads of cash, purchasing your opponents' shares in their own railroad, and executing a total buy out to drive them out of the railroad business.
• Own the Industries - Establish your dominance in each city by purchasing their profitable industries. As the owner, you'll get a cut of the profits for every carload of that good delivered - even if your competitors haul it in.
• Rule the Stock Market - Shrewdly acquire your competitors' stocks throughout the game and take control of the market. But, beware - you're competing against ruthless rail barons who will seek revenge.
• Personalize your trains - Choose from 40 trains, from the primitive 0-4-0 Planet to the super powerful 4-6-6-4 Challenger, and make them your own with unique color schemes and custom logos.
• We've got the goods - over 20 different goods to harvest, produce, and sell, and 30 unique industries, from lumber mills to war factories, each with detailed, unique animations.
• Something for everyone - build your dream train layout in train table mode, or challenge historical giants like Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and others in single-player scenarios.
• Scenario and map editor support - enables user-created maps and scenarios. Want to create a race to complete a transcontinental railroad in 30 years using only steam engines? No problem!
• Multiplayer - Ruthless real-time LAN and Internet play. Engage in economic warfare and buy out your rivals as you compete for strategic positions, resources, industries, and patents!

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Customer Reviews

Sid Meier's Railroads
Everything as advertised. It is a fun and addictive game. Not an easy sim, but not too hard that it isn't enjoyable.

Didn't live up to its hype
There was so much hype for this game when it was first announced. With Sid Meier at the helm, it seemed like it was destined to be a hit.

Sadly, it is so buggy and is a severe disappointment. The game crashes tot he desktop every now and then. The gameplay gets choppy as more cities/trains are included within a scenario. This choppiness and crashing happens even on an Intel Core2Duo/Saphire x1900xtx machine (built it myself) and yes all my drivers were up to date. Laying out track, while it is easy, it can also get very frustrating. Making junctions is just as frustrating as well.

The realism factor is hardly present. When you lay track through a city, the city simply "parts the waves" so you can place tracks within a city. The animations for the cities as well as the industries are bland. The trains while moving on the track are nice, but when they reach their destination, the train sits there, then turns around and goes the other way. If it continues on its way, the train fades slightly then goes on its way. When the train reaches a junction, when another trains reaches the same point, it makes you hit your forehead eith the pam of your hand and say," Can't be." The trains look confused and seem like to just stop and go nowhere.

When you great a consist list (cars added to your locomotive), all you do is click. If you add passenger cars, you don't even see any people. Even when you are picking up raw materials at either factories or picking up mail, you don't see a soul.

There was a lot of hype that hobbiest who miss building their train layouts or for people who have an interest in the train hobby but don't have the room, there would be an option to build your own layout. Unfortunately it;s just like the scenarios but in sandbox mode.

For some people this game would appeal to them but others who love realism, tycoon, and business sims will be disappointed. By the way, this is not Railroad Tycoon 4.

Fun for Old Railroaders and for Soon to be Railroaders
I bought this for my 12 year old son. Both him, and myself have become proficient on the older Railroad Tycoon II and when we saw that a new "Railroads" came out, I bought it for the both of us.

"Railroads" graphics are the big standout in the Railroads game. I have a 2003ish clean running Pentium 4 @ 2.66GHz with NVidia graphics card and 1GB of RAM and I had to turn the graphics on this game to minimum in order to get keep the picture from being herky - jerky. It asks a lot out of the graphics card.

The older Railroads II game can go deeper into "complexity" or "Realism" than the Railroads game does, but that is ok because the graphics are like eating desert to the eye and there is plenty of strategy in the newer "Railroads" version.

Having read some of the reviews listed here, I am reminded of the commonly made comments heard when a really popular book is made into a movie. Railroad Tycoon II and III set a high standard for a deep simulation strategy game that takes tens and hundreds of hours to master. Most of the "grand masters" of RRIII most likely started with the original Railroad Tycoon and progressed through the different versions on their path to proficiency in RRT3. With the newer Railroads game, I can see a new generation of younger gamers getting hooked on Railroads simplier game play and graphics. Then when Railroads II comes out, I suspect it will attempt to bring this newest series of Railroad simulation to the level where Railroad Tycoon III left off.

For the time being, I can see a Sid Meier Railroad simulation fan playing both versions depending upon how much time they had for a game and how deep they wanted to get. So far we have not played RR II since getting the newer Railroads. ;)