The Wargamer

Sid Meier's Railroads!

Sid Meier doesn’t create sequels just because he can’t think of anything more original to do with his finely-honed skills as a games-meister. And he certainly doesn’t design sequels because he’s risk-averse and wants to play it safe. That’s not the kind of thinking that’s made his byline not only bankable, but one of the few game whose moniker might be at least dimly familiar to journalists and commentators outside of the game industry. No indeed; the man designs a sequel only when he feels he’s got enough new and improved features packed into the code to make that sequel worthy to bear a landmark title’s name. So it has been with Civilization, and so now – or at any rate by Thanksgiving – will it be with the successor to 1990’s Railroad Tycoon, one of the most venerated management titles in the history of PC gaming.

In that classic, Sid not only invented the “tycoon” sub-genre, he also did something which, in the long run, turned out to be much more important – he cross-bred the everybody’s-a-kid-at-heart appeal of the “sandbox” paradigm (the unbreakable electronic toy!) with a robust model of economic competition (one that permitted, even encouraged, a certain amount of sneaky and underhanded business practices) and came up with a fabulously addictive hybrid, the “strategy-simulation.”

But in “computer years’ (which is a relativistic concept not unlike “dog-years”), 1990 was an eon ago. The artwork that made our jaws drop fifteen years ago looks antediluvian today, even though the basic gameplay in Railroad Tycoon hasn’t dated all that much. Hell, in Sid’s classic titles, it never does! But he’s also been listening to players’ suggestions, for tweaking, expanding, adding-on cool stuff, for a decade and a half, and subconsciously at least, all those possibilities reached critical mass when Sid just happened to drop by the site, early last spring, of a tourist attraction in Hamburg, Germany, billed as the world’s largest model train layout.

Instant childhood wonder! Wandering around that enormous and complex layout put the creative zap! Into high gear, and before Sid exited the building, he was mentally laying out the design parameters and features list that would evolve, very quickly, into the full-blown concept for Sid Meier’s Railroads!

At E3, 2K Games and Firaxis (the developer/publisher company that Sid founded about ten years ago) had a fairly detailed demo film looping endlessly behind the demonstrators’ spiels. Need we tell you that, by the end of our visit, we were all eager as puppies to get our hands on the finished game.

Another major principle behind Sid’s game-sequels is simply put: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but explore all the possible ways to make it better. Like the original, this sequel starts very simply and evolves into something quite amazingly complex; like the original, Railroads! starts off very simply – the players chooses two destinations on the map and flicks to lay track. Similarly simple click-and-drag processes permit the player to position depots, water towers, coal bins (in the 19th century scenarios) and simple trestle bridges.

Clarity-of-interface has always been a Sid Meier trademark, and so it looks to be in this title. Depot whistle-stops evolve into villages, then town, ultimately cities – the maps fill up, but you never lose track of what’s-where because the icon array over the urban mass remains clean and unequivocal. Maybe you have to hunt a bit in the later stages of a large scenario – we’re only surmising – but basically, Meier’s design lets you see everything you need to see at-a-glance. One of the keys to his success as a game designer, after all, is the reassuring fact that you can trust him not to bamboozle you or try to out-clever you with conundrums that have no quickly logical solution.

Naturally, the list of enhancements and new features (beyond the obvious improvements in graphics, which are striking enough to warrant buying the game just for how incredibly cool it looks them) is a long one. Interested readers can browse that bulleted list on 2K’s web site. Our priority here is to report the things we saw that were markedly different from the original. Most obvious is the fact that train-routes and the towns they service are scaled for fun, and not for geographic realism. What this means is that you no longer have to scroll over interminable empty prairie between depots and whistle-stops. Sid manages to do this without destroying the illusion of realism, at least, and it makes the big scenarios move considerably faster.

We’d venture to say that, for model railroad enthusiasts at least, this will be one of the finest “sandbox” games on the market. Some consumers will be perfectly content just to build their little dream world and watch it operate. But even they, we suspect, will sooner or later add the strategic, competitive layer of gameplay.

That’s where the strong and elegant economic engine comes into its own. Great men became railroad tycoons, after all, by plotting routes and scheduling runs so that raw materials could be hauled to Big Swampie, Nebraska, and finished products could be loaded on the return run to reach their intended markets in the most efficient manner – and at the most attractive shipping cost. Naturally, your rival entrepreneurs are trying to do the same thing.

Stock market wheeling and dealing, price fixing (and gouging), bribery and dirty tricks (laying track across a rival’s lines or co-opting the bridges over water barriers, forcing rival tycoons either to lay track long extra distances or eat into their cash reserves to build another bridge); all kinds of cut-throat scurrility are possible. The biggest change in this sequel is that your robber-baron tactics can now play out in real-time, in a new multiplayer mode.

Visually, Sid has opted not for photo-realism, but for a colorful Grant Wood style that seems perfectly evocative of each historical era. And as you zoom in, you’ll see more and more details of your custom-made world: people, wagons, dogs, postmen, milk wagons, saloons and “boarding houses” for ladies (the game’s sense of humor, like Sid’s, is skewed toward gentle whimsy and good-natured sight gags). If you get tired of wheeling and dealing on Wall Street (or bribing politicians), you can switch back to sandbox mode and just float around on your God-cloud, amusing yourself by watching the scurrying activities of your citizens. A dash of Sim City? Yes, to be sure; and why not?

Sid Meier’s Railroads! has all the classic tropes and extra creative touches for which Sid’s name has become revered by multitudes. It stood out. ‘Way out, above the blurred welter of zombies, trolls, and dueling tanks – it’s one of those rare “quiet” games that seized our imagination by sheer power-of-design, and it should find a rabidly loyal audience across the whole demographic spectrum upon its release this fall.

About the Author

William R. Trotter was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is a graduate of Davidson College. Since 1980, he has supported himself entirely by his freelance writing. In 1987, he became Senior Writer for Imagine Media. His monthly column on war and strategy gaming, "The Desktop General" ran for 15 years and was ultimately read by approximately 1.2 million people, in 13 languages.  Bill's journalistic work has appeared in more than 30 newspapers and magazines -- approximately 1,800 by-lined pieces. His 16 published books run the gamut from true crime, biography, history, to mainstream fiction; his most recent novel is "Warrener's Beastie" (due out in late June), about which Publishers Weekly recently said: "Trotter's sprawling novel successfully straddles the line between fantasy, science fiction, and adventure-thriller; it will find a sizable readership in all three camps." Or, as another reviewer quipped: "An oversimplified description might be 'Ship of Fools Goes to Loch Ness' ..."  For more on all his books, visit TrotterBooks.com.

Trotter lives in Greensboro, N.C., with his wife, fantasy writer and editor Elizabeth Lustig, and their three sons. When not busy writing or parenting, he spends lots of time trying to figure out how to organize and store his 7000-piece classical music collection.