If I’m still playing it at that point I’ll pick up the bulk of the DLC’s that way, I think.
With Port Royale 4, also handled by same studio, on the horizon I guess it makes sense that post-release DLC\support for the game is pulling into a terminal station. Seems like it sold pretty well though, so hopefully we see a Railway Empire 2 some day. Plenty of areas for Gaming Minds to improve or add things in for a sequel, starting with some of the user interface, in my opinion.
Hopefully my patience waiting for a Complete Edition collection pays off, because I’ve been mighty tempted by the DLC several times previously.
Well, there is Railroads!
The base game is free this week on the Epic store. Into the black-hole-log it goes…
Thanks for the heads-up. I doubt I would’ve paid for this game, but I’ll certainly try it for free.
I grabbed it since it was free and upon firing it up immediately recalled why I don’t buy Kalypso games.
So I also grabbed this and have been playing. My initial thoughts and comparing it to RRT3, since this is so clearly the Pathfinder to RRT3’s D&D 3.5.
I miss the map modes. Being able to quickly visually asses the rail congestion, view pricing maps, see goods availability or demand was great.
This ties into businesses. Buying games and such is harder because it hides much of the economic data until you buy. And determining if a business is profitable is important for the investment.
Towns don’t hold inventory? In RRT3 if I had a slaughterhouse in Denver, and cattle ranches in Santa Fe, I didn’t need to run a train direct from Santa Fe to Denver. Instead I could run one to Pueblo, and one from Pueblo to Denver. That’s because the dynamic market would cause the cattle price in Pueblo to increase (because Denver is demanding it, so it will rise towards Denver’s price) so eventually my trains from Santa Fe would start hauling to Pueblo, where my trains from Pueblo to Denver would be able to collect. Railway Empires seems to have a priceless economy, where the demand is dynamic and based on city size. So as far as I can tell that cattle from Santa Fe would never go to Denver in this game.
Station utilization. Oh god this one tripped me up at first. You’d think if you had a station with 4 platforms, and all platforms interchange and connect, that a train would use the first available platform that connects to their next open platform.
Nope! The game did not tell you this, and given how important this becomes it is negligent, but trains will go to a dedicated platform. If you just lay routes, as I did, the AI uses the shortest route only. Meaning that nice 4 platform station, with 3 open platforms? All the trains will sit and wait to use the one platform. And this can cause dumb delays where trains on the platform can’t leave, while trains can’t clear the track because they need to go to platform 1, which can’t clear until they move because the train already there needs to use the specific interchange you are on (never mind there are open alternatives) so they are stuck forever. Staring at each other. With an open platform right there
The track switching model. Now this game has a certain shift in focus, requiring switches and interchanges. This is one area clearly more involved than RRT 3, and represents the focus shift. Less on the economic and more on physical track setup. The game just doesn’t explain this well enough to let you avoid issues. I’m posting this for the benefit of others
So all this sounds pretty negative, right? Well it’s a bit more complicated. I’ve been playing a lot of RRT3 the last year still. And it holds up incredibly well. And this game is so clearly designed with that in mind. It’s not strictly a remake, but it is very much an homage with a simpler economic but more in depth track building model. The game just does not do a great job explaining this, leading to frustration at points. Once I looked up the rail switching and learned how the pathing works, I was able to try again and have a much more enjoyable time.
I don’t know that this will have the timeless quality of RRT3, and in 5 years which one I am likely to fire up again still leans RRT. But I’m going to play it some more and give it a shake out.
I had a pretty good time with this for a couple weeks. It forced me to figure out signalling and multitracks in a way no RRT game ever did. I might have kept playing longer, but I think I was let down by the scenario design, in some way I have a hard time articulating. I stopped at the civil war scenario, which is definitely a weird one. I don’t know… somehow starting a new scenario felt more like a drag than an appealing opportunity to start again.
Still, I think it’s a pretty well done–especially, as Craig points out, when you come to grips with what specifically it is trying to do and not do.
Yeah, in RRT3 one of the keys to success was buying, upgrading, and building secondary manufacturing for industry. In fact you could, with the right setup, almost entirely ignore track building for periods and solely invest in industry. That’s because raw goods delivering to manufacturing makes crazy good money. Once you had your initial rail lay and made some cash, you could shift to the economy, shares, and manufacturing. And resource generators could still make money even when not attached to rails. Especially if you build their manufacturing building nearby. In Railway Empires it appears resource generators will make zero money (conversely they don’t have operating costs that run you at a loss either) if they are not directly connected by rail. It says they transport goods by cart, but in practice this did not seem to be true.
Now this is a valid decision. While I enjoy that economic aspect, a designer can legitimately say ‘we want the focus on your rail, so any buildings not connected to a rail station make no value’. So while buying dairy farms in RRT3 is always a strong play, seriously if I can afford a dairy farm I always buy one before unpausing they are that good, here it only is worth it if it connects by rail to a larger city. Otherwise it generates absolutely bupkis.
Ultimately this is why I think once I get my initial fill here I’ll go back to RRT3 for future itches. I like that economic game more than the switching tracks one.
Can you get RRT3 to run on Win10 at something in the neighborhood of 1080?
It sounds like it’s got a lot of the economics going on which interests me. It’s why OTC was so addictive and so unique.
Don’t know about 1080, but it runs fine on my machine. But I didn’t pay particular attention to the resolution.
You need to use warehouses as intermediary storage. A little clunky, especially considering that the stations / warehouses seem disproportionately large compared to the space on the map, but it’s workable.
Yeah, I ultimately did use some warehouses. But being able to put warehouses online with the city stations would be good, rather than building dedicated routes and lines for them.
I did have a pretty effective warehouse setup, 2 platforms in and out for bringing in resources from outlying production, and the other two to tie into the main line going to the cities. This way freight didn’t hold up my routes, and I reduced the flow on major routes. Plus multiple cities got to trade multiple resources.
Limiting them to 6 items is a pain in the ass though.
Is there a train game where freight isn’t loaded on the platform? Now that someone pointed out how dumb that is, I can’t unsee it.
I think at the scale the game is being played at loading the train at the platform is fine.
The french accent of the campaign dude makes me smile.
Short answer no I don’t think it will. I haven’t played RRT3 in a least a decade but.
I got pretty far into RE, probably the first 5 campaign/tutorials and a couple of free scenarios. It is a fine sim, and the track laying is particularly well done compared to RRT3 and obviously the graphics are far improved.
I thought when I saw this thread bumped maybe I’ll get re-inspired to play it again. Short answer is no for two reason the economic model isn’t great. Secondly, while the track laying a switching are considerably more realistic than RRT3, they are also a pain in the ass, I learned them once, but I have no desire to re learn them again.
Yeah, the rail switching and track management creates a unique, and at times enjoyable, feel. Even if the platform aspect bugs me to no end.
But the economic engine of RRT3 is really good, and places greater emphasis on material chains and industrial development. Creating a cross map rail network to ferry coal into your industrial hubs, feeding rural grains and fruits into distilleries? I really like that. The rails themselves may be less realistic, but the economic exchange and development is more so.
Yeah in the end, the way the economy works in RE made me see it more as a puzzle game, and less as a sim/empire building game. To enjoy a game, I think I need be able to map events in the game to an interesting world in my imagination, and the economic bones felt a bit too arbitrary and close to the surface.
Yeah, not to mention the map modes were dead sexy (I like maps)
This is seriously some grade A UX design.
At once I can see the prices, where a resource is being produced, how much of it there is, where it is needed, and how it is getting there currently. I can immediately see a way to make a lot of money from coal. That price gradient will mean that I will have a lot of resources to make money on. And with a single click I can do the same for every single resource. What makes it? Red arrows (the height indicates volume of production). What needs it (Green, height indicates demand level). How much there is and if it is being supplied to the places that need it. And how much money I can make moving it (red is low price, nearly free if there is oversupply, and darker greens more money)
The graphics may age, and the interface not modern, but there is some high quality UX design in that map mode. Mmmmm hmmm.