[HN Gopher] Railroad Tycoon II
___________________________________________________________________
Railroad Tycoon II
Author : doppp
Score : 212 points
Date : 2025-01-10 17:15 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| legitster wrote:
| > In this reviewer's opinion, it was a sparkling creative success
| as well as a commercial one, making it all the more deserving of
| remembrance. We've seen a fair number of train games built on
| similar premises in the years since 1998, but I don't know that
| we've ever seen a comprehensively better one.
|
| RRT2 is my all time favorite game, and has yet to find a
| spiritual successor in my heart. Alongside Anno 1602, it may be
| the oldest PC game I regularly open up and play for fun.
|
| The gameplay is still so good. The fact that the game is so open-
| ended and also so cutthroat, combined with the procedurally
| generated maps means it always feels fresh to play, even all
| these years later. The UI has aged but has not gotten in the way.
|
| And yes, as reviewer describes, it absolutely nails the theme.
| The sound design, the visuals, the music, the historical setting.
| Things feel gritty and real and tough. Just like the game's
| treatment of Robber Barons, the game perfectly balances
| romanticism with cynicism. The game made me love trains.
|
| I still remember learning as a child how stock trading on the
| margin worked when I simultaneously made and then lost a massive
| fortune attempting to buy out a rival.
| infecto wrote:
| I need to load this one up again and see how it plays. One of
| my complaints in most of the train and tycoon style games these
| days is they are too darn easy from a strategy perspective or
| they require casts amount of micro managing.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I've played a railroad game that felt reminiscent of RRT, but
| after a while it just felt tedious, more like a slow
| incremental game than a decent train game.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The stock management portion of the game adds a lot of depth.
| Strategy-wise, RTII is pretty simple still - a simple line
| between two reasonably sized cities will be profitable, so
| long as you keep the number of lines between the two low
| enough. But they can be _more_ profitable if you 're smart
| about which cities are connected.
|
| But trying to acquire the entire company is actually pretty
| difficult. You can buy stock on margin, but the rates are
| oppressively high, so it only makes sense to do so in short
| burst between expansion phases. But there's still risk, the
| economy can go south or the expansion may not be as
| profitable as expected, and if that happens, there's the risk
| of loans being called and your stock being liquidated.
|
| I'd say most of my enjoyment of the game stems from the
| effort to amass a personal fortune. Eventually, you do learn
| how to execute various securities frauds, which is pretty
| entertaining itself.
| legitster wrote:
| > Strategy-wise, RTII is pretty simple still - a simple
| line between two reasonably sized cities will be profitable
|
| I would disagree. On hard enough difficulties intercity
| traffic is too seasonal. Also, continued traffic to the
| same city decreases the value of goods shipped there. So
| you still have to do some fussy industry routing as well to
| usually succeed. You're also racing against opponents to
| beat them to connecting to major cities.
|
| It's not necessarily rocket science, but it's an enjoyable
| enough puzzle in it's own right.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > You're also racing against opponents to beat them to
| connecting to major cities.
|
| Although the AI players have some interesting limitations
| - they'll never connect a city you've already connected
| to, and they'll never build a line that crosses one of
| your own lines. To be fair, I don't know how important
| those fudges are for balancing the game, and if so, how
| the playing strength of the AI players could be balanced
| in a more realistic fashion (plus considering that the
| game is from almost thirty years ago)...
| mywittyname wrote:
| For most cities, the first few loads often have enough
| profit to cover like 10-15% of the build costs, with the
| first year usually covering 25-35% of the build costs.
| After two years or so, with no other expansion, cargo
| trade will be dramatically reduced and the bulk the cargo
| will be passenger/mail cargo, but so long as you don't
| allow empty shipments, the line should remain profitable.
|
| The fun comes from trying expand as fast as possible. But
| it's pretty difficult to actually fail.
| kuon wrote:
| It is a widely different game and theme, but manor lords is
| very good and has some innovations that reminded me of RRT when
| it came out. If you like this kind of games I suggest you look
| at it.
| legitster wrote:
| I like Manor Lords. Yeah, I'm a big fan of all of the
| survivalist city-builders that have come out since Banished
| (Planetbase, Frostpunk, Timberborn). They don't remind me
| anything of RRT, lol. But I definitely think they appeal to
| the same type of gamer.
| zem wrote:
| 'against the storm' is an interesting twist on the genre,
| if you haven't checked that one out yet
| kuon wrote:
| > definitely think they appeal to the same type of gamer.
|
| That is what I meant by "it remind me of RRT". I feel "at
| home" when playing them.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| _> and has yet to find a spiritual successor in my heart _
|
| OpenTTD, Simutrans?
| ta1243 wrote:
| RRT2 leaned heavily into the financial aspects, it was quite
| different to the original railroad tycoon.
|
| Personally I preferred railroad tycoon 1 to transport tycoon,
| but either way railroad tycoon 2 was different.
|
| I miss A-Train.
| legitster wrote:
| RRT2 focused much more on business and economics and less on
| routing puzzles and micromanagement. OpenTTD is good but
| very... sterile.
| throaway2501 wrote:
| it's super easy though. i had a hard time getting into rrt
| games.
| kimiahk wrote:
| Anno 1602 was my favorite game when I was young, I wonder what
| game type do you usually play? Official single player missons?
| Community custom missions or multiplayer?
| legitster wrote:
| I usually just open up a random map and fart around. It's
| just a fun, chill city builder for me.
|
| The subsequent Anno games are amazing as well, but Anno 1602
| scratches the same itch and can run on an ancient laptop when
| travelling. Also, it's not locked behind Ubisoft's cancerous
| PC launcher.
| zem wrote:
| one of my all time favourite games too. for me the best aspect
| was that I felt I was playing out the story of how railroads
| helped settle a continent, so its spiritual peers were
| civilisations and to a lesser extent simcity. the closest
| modern game I've found that captures that same sort of evolving
| story + open ended management aspect is stellaris.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| You might want to look into Shadow Empire (2020), which,
| among things like wargaming, planetary simulation,
| roleplaying and leader management, also features a complex
| logistics system (with also railroads), as well as stock
| market like trading !
| zem wrote:
| thanks, that does look excellent!
| jcranmer wrote:
| Speaking of older games that never had a successor that quite
| managed to capture what they did well, there's also SimTower,
| where the main successors are Yoot Tower (which never really
| made it out of Japan) and Project Highrise, which just doesn't
| scratch the same itch.
| legitster wrote:
| There were not a lot of published games, but I seem to
| remember there being a handful of flash game derivatives. I
| played the heck out of Corporation Inc on Armorgames back in
| the day.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| > Where to Get It: Railroad Tycoon Platinum is available as a
| digital purchase on Steam and GOG.com.
|
| Sadly, for Windows only :(
| red_trumpet wrote:
| If you are running Linux, it seems to work well with Proton,
| though I didn't check it myself:
| https://www.protondb.com/app/7620
| leg wrote:
| I've played 100s of hours of if under Proton on Linux. Works
| great.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I've recently been running it via Proton on Linux, and it
| runs quite smoothly.
|
| (Haven't tried any multiplayer on it though; the game is old
| enough that networking doesn't automatically mean "use
| TCP/UDP/IP," so I can see that stumbling bad on modern OSes.)
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| What would it be ? IPX ?
|
| Didn't that have TCP/UDP/IP emulation already in the DOS
| era ?
| jcranmer wrote:
| I don't have the game or the manual in front of me, but
| my recollection is that there are actually four separate
| networking options, of which TCP/IP and IPX were two.
| Asooka wrote:
| The Linux version would almost certainly not run on any current
| Linux. I have a vague memory of trying to run the demo nearly
| 20 years ago and it failing due to requiring some now-
| deprecated X11 extension. If you want to try, the Internet
| Archive does have a Loki software demo CD, which includes
| Railroad Tycoon 2: https://archive.org/details/linux-games-cd
| squeedles wrote:
| Still keep this on my box and crack it open now and again. I also
| pulled the music out of the distro and put it into my listening
| rotation while working. You have to add your own hawk screech
| sounds though :-)
|
| I'm a total sucker for network optimization train games though.
| Love the crayon rails games which I wrote about here:
|
| https://dave.org/posts/20221206_trains/
| ylee wrote:
| I played the Linux version the article mentions while at Goldman
| Sachs; a colleague on the Red Hat coverage team gave me a boxed
| copy of Corel Linux including the game. The port ran very well on
| my Red Hat Linux box at home.
|
| In retrospect it was part of a brief flurry of Linux ports of
| major games. I also got to play _Return to Castle Wolfenstein_
| and _Neverwinter Nights_ ; in both cases the publishers made
| Linux clients available for download that use the retail
| version's assets. Despite the valiant efforts of Wine and related
| projects, the world would have to wait 15 more years before
| Proton leveraged Wine technology to bring quasi-native games to
| Linux, and 20 years before Steam Deck made it the norm or close
| to it.
| linsomniac wrote:
| That reminds me of 1999, where I threw a party to help my
| friends modify their Celeron 300A CPUs so they could run dual-
| socket. My dual 300A running at 450MHz would run Starcraft
| under WINE faster than Windows could run it because at the time
| Windows couldn't do multi-core. Under Linux one processor would
| run the graphics (in X) and the other would run the game
| mechanics, and it would blaze.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I hate you.
|
| Well, just envy hate and just momentarily. Back then, such
| hacks were harder to find/discover. I would have loved to do
| that hack, I yearned for true multicpu.
| bombcar wrote:
| That stuff was all over Slashdot at the time, where I heard
| about it; even got one and ran it for awhile, eventually
| relegating it to a Linux server.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| Was that the period of time when you got more bang for your
| buck building a PC with dual-socket Celerons than one high-
| end Pentium?
|
| EDIT: An excellent retrospective on it here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE-k4hYHIDE
| linsomniac wrote:
| Yes, the dual Celeron 300As, if you could take advantage of
| multiple cores, were faster than the higher end CPUs,
| particularly if you overclocked to 450MHz. My box was
| stable at 450MHz for around a year, then I had to gradually
| down-clock it, eventually back to 300. Never really did
| much to track down why that was, just rolled with it and
| figured I should be grateful for the overclocking I had.
| giobox wrote:
| I also ran a dual Celeron system overclocked to 450mhz -
| it was great value in 1999. Abit even launched a
| motherboard that let you run dual Celerons without
| modifying the processors, the legendary BP6:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABIT_BP6
|
| This was first board to let you use _unmodified_
| Celerons, the "hack" to let dual CPUs work with those
| chips was performed at the motherboard level, no CPU pin
| modifications needed.
| olyjohn wrote:
| The real problem with this setup was that a vanilla
| Pentium 3 would run circles around the dual Celerons. I
| had my Celerons clocked to something ridiculous at one
| point like 600MHz and still could not beat the Pentium.
| giobox wrote:
| You are forgetting the massive price difference though.
| For sure a P3 was great if you had an unlimited budget,
| but a quick look at pricing sheets for September 1999
| shows a 600mhz P3 at ~650 dollars.
|
| The 300mhz celerons, easily over-clockable to 450/500mhz,
| where only ~150 dollars each. These prices are in 1999
| dollars too, I haven't adjusted for inflation.
|
| It was the value proposition, not the outright
| performance that made dual celeron builds attractive,
| especially in an age where we were having to upgrade far
| more often than we do today to keep up with latest
| trends.
|
| In 1999 I vividly remember not being able to afford a P3
| build, was largely why I ended up with the BP6. The P3
| also had significant supply issues throughout its
| lifespan, which didn't help pricing at retail either.
| vanjajaja1 wrote:
| iirc those overclocks needed thermal paste to be
| reapplied, plus dust in case probably crushed airflow
| pjmlp wrote:
| I feel relying on WINE and Proton instead of building a proper
| GNU/Linux ecosystem will eventually backfire, it didn't happen
| already because thus far Microsoft chosen to ignore it.
|
| However as Steam vs XBox slowly escalates, Microsoft might
| eventually change their stance on the matter, forcing devs to
| rely on APIs not easier to copy, free licenses for handhelds,
| taking all Microsoft owned studios out of Steam, see which
| company has bigger budget to spend on lawyers, whatever.
| baq wrote:
| WINE and Proton piggyback on Microsoft's guarantees of Win32
| stability. As long as that remains in place (which should be
| for all intents and purposes forever given MS's customers)
| they can't really do anything about it.
|
| So, next time you hear the joke about Win32 ABI being the
| only stable ABI on Linux, remember it's funny because it's
| true!
| pjmlp wrote:
| If all one wants it to run games that use the Win32 API as
| defined today, surely.
|
| If all one wants it to run games that use the Win32 API as
| defined tomrrow, anyone's guess.
| baq wrote:
| Note this is a huge improvement from 'binary is
| guaranteed to not work in the future, probably not too
| distant' of the standard model of Linux distributions.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Don't forget Windows finally made _Year of the Linux
| Desktop(tm)_ a reality, Windows is the best desktop Linux
| distro (Android gets the mobile Linux distro crown).
| pxc wrote:
| Windows' desktop environment is much too lackluster for
| that. It's uniquely inconsistent (many distinct toolkits
| with irreconcilable look-and-feel, even in the base
| system), has poorly organized system configuration apps
| that are not very capable, takes a long time to start up
| so that the desktop becomes usable, is full of nasty dark
| patterns, suffers an infestation of ads in many versions.
|
| Besides the many issues with the desktop itself, Windows
| offers piss poor filesystem performance for common
| developer tools, plus leaves users to contend with the
| complexity of a split world thanks to the (very slow)
| 9pfs shares used to present host filesystems to guest and
| vice-versa.
|
| And then there's the many nasty and long-lived bugs, from
| showstopping memory leaks to data loss on the virtual
| disks of the guests to broken cursor tracking for GUI
| apps in WSLg...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I feel relying on WINE and Proton instead of building a
| proper GNU/Linux ecosystem will eventually backfire, it
| didn't happen already because thus far Microsoft chosen to
| ignore it.
|
| Microsoft can't do shit against WINE/Proton legally, as long
| as either project steers clear of misappropriated source code
| and some forms of reverse engineering (Europe's regulations
| are much more relaxed than in the US).
|
| The problem at the core is that Linux (or to be more
| accurately, the ecosystem around it) lacks a stable set of
| APIs, or even commonly agreed-upon standards in the first
| place, as every distribution has "their" way of doing things
| and only the kernel has an explicit "we don't break
| userspace" commitment. I distinctly remember a glibc upgrade
| that went wrong about a decade and a half ago where I had to
| spend a whole night getting my server even back to usable
| (thank God I had eventually managed to coerce the system into
| downloading a statically compiled busybox...).
| pjmlp wrote:
| They surely can, and Valve got lucky UWP didn't took off as
| they feared.
|
| Microsoft can easily do another go at it.
|
| That is the problem building castles on other vendor
| platforms.
|
| As reminder,
|
| https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/127475-valve-confirms-
| ste...
| lukevp wrote:
| Games aren't going to suddenly start targeting only
| updated copies of windows 11 though... if they target
| even win 10 then they need to be API compatible with
| what's currently there in windows. It doesn't matter what
| new stuff comes out. Just like how we had to keep using
| ie6 compatible code for ages for the 5% of people still
| on windows xp even though it kept us from using modern
| web tech for everyone else.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Depends on how much Microsoft decides Windows Store and
| XBox App are relevant for game developers targeting the
| PC going forward.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| They can't stop publishers from targeting steam/proton,
| though. The publishers will go to where the market is.
| Sure maybe they can restrict the version published to
| whatever store windows has but they can't prevent the one
| distributed with steam targeting an older version.
| frankchn wrote:
| Right now, they are not even making their own games
| exclusive to Windows Store or the XBox App (see MSFS
| 2024, Age of Empires series, Forza, etc...).
| jwcooper wrote:
| Microsoft is going the opposite of what you're
| suggesting. Their games are coming to Steam, Playstation
| and Switch. Also, their game division isn't exactly
| thriving right now. They have a ton of studios, but they
| are not selling hardware very well right now.
|
| The more that time goes on, and the more entrenched
| steamOS/Proton becomes, they will not have any sort of
| easy time trying to lock-in to Windows. Even now in the
| earliest days of steamOS, there is blow-back when a game
| does not support the Steam Deck (which means Proton).
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| There's a good chance that if that if Microsoft doesn't act
| soon enough, and a lot more devices running Steam OS are
| released, Proton might become the de-facto platform against
| which many new games are developed, and which engines target.
|
| At that point, there is nothing Microsoft can do.
| freedomben wrote:
| Agreed. I actually think it might be too late at this point
| since it takes so long to turn the aircraft carrier.
|
| Microsoft can't realistically deprecate/remove Win32, so
| all they could do is entice with new APIs. That will work
| for some games, but especially with the frameworks in
| place, they'll have to be _really_ good to get people to
| abandon Steam Deck compatibility to use them.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They already control enough studios, PC and XBox market.
|
| SteckDeck compatibility relies on "emulating" Windows
| ecosystem.
|
| Remember DR-DOS, OS/2 and EEE PC.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| EEE PC was tiny, IBM (OS/2) were full of hubris, what
| happened to DR-DOS ?
|
| Valve is neither tiny, nor does seem to be under the
| thrall of hubris. Also Microsoft seems complacent so far,
| though that might change.
| kbolino wrote:
| They bought a lot of companies and are doing their level
| best at running them into the ground. Xbox is a dying
| platform. They may try some things that they've tried
| before (GFWL) but they're not going to succeed this time
| either.
|
| Kernel-level anti-cheat is a bigger threat to gaming on
| Linux than anything Microsoft has directly done, but even
| that is fixable.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Microsoft controls Windows and DirectX, Valve only gets to
| play until Windows landlord allows it.
|
| DR-DOS, OS/2 and EEE PC.
|
| Lets see if SteamOS makes the list as well, this is after
| all round two, Steam Machines didn't go that well.
| Yeul wrote:
| Microsoft tried to put their games on their own store but
| they crawled back to Steam.
|
| Honestly Windows is more open than MS haters give it
| credit for.
| kbolino wrote:
| Yeah, GFWL was a debacle that has thankfully been largely
| forgotten. If Microsoft couldn't pull it off back then,
| they're not going to today.
| jwcooper wrote:
| The Steam Deck is basically the successor to the Steam
| Machines. The actual hardware didn't go that well, but
| they laid the foundation in software for what we have
| now.
|
| So, in a way, the Steam Machines were a great success.
|
| Also, Valve has (for better and worse) far more power and
| control in the gaming ecosystem than most companies
| Microsoft has to deal with.
| jandrese wrote:
| On the other hand building Linux binaries and keeping them
| running for years without maintenance has proven far more
| difficult than emulating Windows.
|
| For an example track down the ports Loki games did many years
| ago and try to get them running on a modern machine. The most
| reliable way for me has been to install a very old version of
| Linux (Redhat 8, note: Not RHEL 8) on a VM and run them in
| there.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Naturally it means GNU/Linux will never improve until being
| forced upon.
| jandrese wrote:
| It just means Microsoft has put more emphasis on ABI
| compatibility. This makes sense. In the open source world
| ABI compatibility is less of an issue because you can
| just recompile if there are breaking changes. ABI
| compatibility is far more important in a commercial
| closed source context where the source may be lost
| forever when a company shuts down or discontinues a
| product line.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| It would be really nice to see open source being more
| widespread in games, though of course it's harder because
| they are more art than software.
|
| Splitting code and audiovisual assets might work ?
| jandrese wrote:
| Even then the rights get dicey when they include third
| party libraries and development systems. Doom famously
| had issues with the sound library they used.
|
| Plus, with commercial software it often happens that the
| code only builds cleanly on one specific ancient version
| of a closed source compiler in a specifically tweaked
| build environment that has been lost to the ages. Having
| the source helps a lot, but it is not a panacea.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Yet both of these issues seem to plague closed source
| software more than open source ?
|
| Doom wasn't developed with open source in mind, was it ?
|
| What open source software "only builds cleanly on one
| specific ancient version of a closed source compiler in a
| specifically tweaked build environment that has been lost
| to the ages" ?
| jandrese wrote:
| On opens source projects the build system needs to be
| reasonable enough that anybody can set it up. There are
| lots of conventions and even tools to help people. On
| closed source projects it is just Joe the sysadmin who
| sets up the machines for everybody working on it. Also,
| open source projects rarely include requirements like
| "buy a license of this specific version of this
| proprietary library and install it on your machine".
|
| Doom had the advantage that it was written by a really
| excellent team with some standout programmers, and it has
| had plenty of people maintaining the codebase over the
| years.
| freedomben wrote:
| What a shame, GOG only has the Windows version :-(
|
| I'd love to buy the linux native version.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| You probably don't, the old linux binaries are notoriously
| hard to get to function properly on a modern distribution.
|
| While the kernel interface remained stable across all those
| years, user space libraries have changed quite a lot, so it's
| much easier to run the Windows version with wine.
| freedomben wrote:
| ah, that makes a ton of sense actually. Thanks!
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| I had the box set, it was the first Linux game I bought. The
| flurry was Loki Games, a porting house. They let me help as a
| beta tester! I got to test Descent III and Mindrover. Next
| would have been Deus Ex, but they flamed out. One of them, Sam
| Latinga, built SDL and I believe is still active.
| Patrick_Devine wrote:
| I still have my boxed copy (along with everything Loki
| produced) in a big box in the garage.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I think Loki also originated OpenAL, which is still around as
| well.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I remember Corel Linux!
|
| It was the first Linux I ever used, from a PC magazine CD in
| 1999. A significantly hacked-up KDE 1.1 w/ integrated Wine. To
| this day, you can find Corel in the copyright dialogs of a few
| notable KDE apps, e.g. the file archiver Ark.
|
| I'm now looking back on 25 years of Linux use, 19 of them as a
| KDE developer, including writing large parts of the Plasma 5/6
| shell, 6-7 years on the KDE board, and working on the Steam
| Deck (which ships with KDE Plasma) at a contractor for a hot
| minute to bring gaming back as well. At least on the personal
| level it was an impactful product :-)
| luismedel wrote:
| Same here. The Spanish edition of PC Mag included Core Linux.
| It was the most pleasant install experience in much, much
| time (next, next, next, finish)
| Neil44 wrote:
| I've been playing a bit of Open Transport Tycoon recently, the
| trains are by far my favourite aspect and probably the most
| detailed in the game too. Getting all the track layouts and
| signalling to be efficient is a challenge under ever increasing
| demand. https://www.openttd.org/
| cprayingmantis wrote:
| I'm so glad to see this game getting some love. It's been a
| constant for me ever since I found it at Dollar General when I
| was a kid.
| esafak wrote:
| Is there a board game equivalent? I'd like to play with my kid,
| without us staring at a screen.
| giarc wrote:
| Ticket to Ride. Has a kids version that I play with my kids
| from time to time. There's also a very popular adult version
| plus lots of add-ons I believe.
| yread wrote:
| There is also 1830 and few others
|
| https://www.dicebreaker.com/themes/train-game/best-games/bes...
| v-erne wrote:
| And for something between Ticket to ride and 18XX games you can
| try Age of steam - this is a lot better for when you really
| feel the need to build some railroads and just move stuff and
| not to have to learn how stock exchange works.
| jader201 wrote:
| In order of complexity:
|
| - Thicket to Ride series:
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/17/game-ticket-to-...
|
| - Crayon Rails series:
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/2010/crayon-rail...
|
| - Cube Rails series:
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/18979/series-cube-...
|
| - Age of Steam (with hundreds of print-n-play maps available):
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/86/game-age-of-ste...
|
| - 18xx:
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/19/series-18xx
|
| There are (several) other "train games" that are mostly one-off
| implementations with a train theme (often route/network
| building and/or tile placement, but sometimes not), but all of
| the above are families of several games that share a common
| system (components) and board game mechanisms, so once you play
| one, it's often easy to understand/pick up on others in the
| same family.
|
| The first, Ticket to Ride is probably the most accessible, and
| therefore one of the more popular options. But the others
| definitely offer a deeper experience, if you can handle the
| (increasing) complexity.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| So many words and not even mentioning RRT3. The successor was a
| departure in some ways, but so great and dynamic in other ways.
| avereveard wrote:
| RRT3 economy was great with the addition of the moving of goods
| outside the rail system it made everything much more organic
| and realistic as you couldn't just gauge prices anymore
| jdhawk wrote:
| Also runs well under Wine!
| zeristor wrote:
| Was it Railroad Tycoon II which played Robert Johnson music in
| the background.
|
| Playing the game I developed an appreciation of it. At least I
| think it was this game that I can't forget...
| mrighele wrote:
| > Indeed, in some of the most difficult scenarios, the efficient
| operation of your railroad provides no more than the seed capital
| for the real key to victory, your shenanigans on the stock
| market.
|
| This is in fact what I don't like about RR2. The stock market had
| too much of a big part in my opinion, and I never enjoyed it.
|
| I liked much more Transport Tycoon (and its open source version
| OpenTTD) which had much more focus on the mechanics of
| transportation. Too bad, because I really loved the graphics and
| some of the mechanics of the game.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I've never played this game but it reminds me of some railroad
| game I did play where you could put all of your money into a
| commodity, and that would raise the price of the commodity...
| which would start causing the overall value of your assets to
| explode exponentially... which allowed you to justify absurd
| loans from the bank... which compounded in a loop where you
| could start to break the math of the game as the price of coal
| detached from reality and your market cap soared into the
| quadrillions and beyond...
|
| Good times
| mapt wrote:
| It may not be enjoyable, but for about a century, railroad
| schemes were often as much about entrepreneurial fundraising,
| land rights, and corruption as about actually delivering
| infrastructure - it's thematically correct.
|
| Colm Meaney delivers an entertaining performance with regards
| to this in 'Hell on Wheels'.
|
| There are parts of Pennsylvania that briefly got violent with
| each other over gauge changes (and thus, which town had a rest
| stop, and no doubt, which investment would prove profitable).
| The "Erie Gauge War".
| bluGill wrote:
| Depends on the rail road. Most were as much about what
| government subsidies they could get (federal, state and
| cities all did various things as they saw any railroad as key
| to their success).
|
| A couple railroads started because there was money to be had
| in transporting things. They picked routes that made a lot
| more sense (a compromise of geography and the cities served)
| even today when we don't have to refill the steam engine with
| water ever few miles. These are the exception though. Most
| were trying to get the upfront money and not thinking about
| the long term success.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is the same problem with the more recent _Offworld Trading
| Company_ game. You can take a half an hour building a great
| colony, harvesting all the resources, building all of the
| goods, and so on, but none of it really matters. The end game
| takes about 60-120 seconds and it 's all trading on the in-game
| stock market, resulting in a sudden "you lost" screen popping
| up even if you did everything else right in the first 29
| minutes. Kind of a let down.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > even if you did everything else right in the first 29
| minutes.
|
| But you didn't do everything right. What makes OWTC different
| from most economics sims is that the goal is to _quickly_
| establish monopolies on the various planets. So unless you
| starved the competition of resources, pivoted to producing
| high-value products from cheap commodities, or speed run to
| offworld shipments, with an eye towards buying out everyone
| else, you 're not playing to win.
|
| The matches are sprints, not marathons. And faction abilities
| are critical to victory. You really have to chose matches
| that favor your faction if you want the upper hand.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, it's entirely possible that I'm simply expecting a
| different game and just don't find the current one's
| endgame fun or satisfying. I played it a few times, chugged
| along building a nice colony, and then suddenly the big
| full-screen "Haha you lose, your opponent bought you out on
| the stock market (which you can't prevent)".
|
| I'm trying to think of any games that try to include an in-
| game stock market, where the gameplay doesn't eventually
| utterly hinge on playing the in-game stock market instead
| of whatever else the game was about. Looks like we've
| discovered a rule: "Take any game about anything, in any
| genre, and if you add a stock market, the game eventually
| becomes a stock market simulator instead."
| legitster wrote:
| I would argue that OTC without a stock market is barely a
| game - it would just a race for resources.
|
| IMHO the problem with OTC is that there is not _enough_
| opportunity for financial shenanigans. If someone
| successfully corners the market on the right commodity, there
| 's a runaway leader problem with not much you can do. The
| game wrapping up early is a grace in those situations.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Huh, I've always just ignored the stock market and haven't had
| any issues.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Yeah, that reminded me how too easy diplomacy (in particular
| tech trading) can make almost everything else pointless in some
| strategy games...
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I absolutely loved this game growing up. It scratched a similar
| itch for me as SimCity. The corporate layer wasn't particularly
| sophisticated, but it did give me some early insight into
| finance.
|
| The soundtrack was also incredible, and I wish it were available
| independently.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > The soundtrack was also incredible, and I wish it were
| available independently.
|
| For a few euros (and less if you happen to catch a sale), the
| GOG version is worth it for the soundtrack alone. But yeah,
| 7-Zip doesn't seem to recognise the installer used by GOG, so
| you actually have to install the game to get at the soundtrack
| files.
| _joel wrote:
| Must have spent an exorbitant amount of time playing Transport
| Tycoon and Railroad Tycoon back in the day.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| The way the author talked about the feeling of if a sequel could
| live up to the original, and how it had been mostly forgotten,
| reminded me of Warlords, which together with civilization and
| rail road tycoon was the main turn based strategy games of my
| youth. I remember there was a sequel, but it would always freeze
| up on our computer.
|
| ... And I don't think I've stumbled on anyone on the internet
| talk its praise.
|
| Was it just an oddity in my games library, or did other people
| place it along side the classic turn based strategy games of the
| 90s?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| About the only game from the 90s which I still play regularly,
| IMHO it's pretty close to the perfect computer game since it
| strikes just the right balance between simulation and 'arcade-y'
| fun - and all the modern 're-enactments' I tried so far somehow
| don't manage to capture the essential of what makes Railroad
| Tycoon 2 so much fun (the Platinum version runs great on modern
| computers btw:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/7620/Railroad_Tycoon_II_P...).
| Lammy wrote:
| I also really love this game. It's what originally taught me a
| lot about the workings of trains, different capabilities of
| locomotives, the need for sidings due to monetary cost of double-
| tracking everywhere, etc.
|
| The article mentions the existence of the PSX and Dreamcast ports
| but does not mention that the DC version is actually re-done in a
| fully-3D engine as opposed to the traditional approach of the PC
| version where the 3D models were pre-rendered to 2D graphics
| covering the multiple angles of rotation. It's one of the Windows
| CE based Dreamcast games! https://segaretro.org/Windows_CE
|
| Here's a longplay where you can see it:
| https://youtu.be/a7tgccUpPAc
| suresk wrote:
| So many fond memories of this game - it was a really fun blend of
| railroad sim and economic sim that I haven't really found since.
| I'll never forget the "ding ding ding" sound that goes off when a
| train pulls into a station and earns you a bit of cash!
| tdrz wrote:
| One of the best games I have ever played! I still open it
| sometimes and wonder why I could never find another strategy game
| that would hook me just as much.
|
| Also learned as a kid about stock and dividends, which proved
| quite useful later on. There was a bit o geography and history in
| it as well, plus the music! Why were our parents complaining
| about us gaming so much!?
| ge96 wrote:
| So cool to have that small beginning (photo of him at the booth)
| to hitting success
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