Railway Empire

[Panos]

Has anyone bought the game?

Didn't expected much given that any attempt to replace Railroad Tycoon 2 (1998) was a failure or not good enough. (Locomotion, Railroad Tycoon 3, and to some extend Train Fever which was missing AI etc).

However got the game tonight, after watching the developers playing it on Twitch and is a blast the last two hours playing the campaign....

It feels like the true successor to RRT2, and has all the little things that made the game feel great even the newspaper popups with the silly articles.

I will let you know how it goes when I complete the campaign and start scenarios and free play. Only reservation it has no multiplayer, but well....

The trailer..

 

[Panos]

Thanks for the heads up.

I have just bought it now at the time i posted this.

How do you find it? As I was finishing the first campaign mission was surprised to find that has R&D, how important signaling is, how to divert certain routes to specific tracks on the stations, not generally on the station, managing the load of some lines and many more. And this was the first tutorial/mission.

Indeed feels like an advanced RRT2, with good balance between arcade and simulation.

Graphics are OKish cartoon style, but kinda prefer the gameplay on such games than graphics.

 

[Panos]

This does look great but the price means it will stay on my Steam wish-list for a while.
I've put 1000's of hours into Transport Tycoon over the years, it's fantastic.

For those interested, if you register to Kalypso Media you get 25% voucher to apply to the game.

 

[Panos]

i loved railway tycoon 2 and have been after a replacement for some time.

I have been watching Mashinky on steam which is still in early access.

Has anyone played this also and can compare?

£40 is steep tho, i've stuck it in my wishlist, hopefully it will be in the next sale.

If you register at kalypso website you get 25% voucher. CD keys has it for £23 also.

 

[Panos]

The Steam reviews don't make the game sound great. The AI is apparently unbeatable because it cheats by being able to have loads of trains on the same track at the same time, driving through each other to stations, the auto-routing is broken, and the developers aren't very good at fixing issues. Also, £39.99 is ridiculous for a game like this.

the AI doesn't cheat. You can use the same feature if you switch it from the map settings

 

[Panos]

Kalypso made the following post today

Railway Empire – a quick glance into the crystal ball!
It’s been a whole week since the hugely successful launch of Railway Empire, and while the game has received very positive reviews from the media and consumers alike, we want to further improve on this foundation with all the great feedback we have received from you so far, along with some things that we were already working on.

With that in mind, we are happy to announce that we are currently working on the following:

• Available in ‘free mode’, we will introduce one huge North American map covering West to East coast, including a tech-tree covering all the tech innovations from almost 100 years of the steam revolution.
• A roadmap of further free updates, which will include new content, enhanced AI, bug fixes and other general improvements inspired directly by player feedback.

You will see these new updates begin to roll out over the next couple of months, and in the meantime we will continue to collect your feedback and reports, working to implement them wherever possible. Stay tuned for more details coming soon

 

[Panos]

Today there was the Open Beta announcement for the upcoming changed like a coast to coast USA map, covering all eras.

Enginemen and -women!

We received a huge wagonload of awesome feedback since the Beta and the official release.
As you might have noticed, we are constantly working on improving Railway Empire even further, which would not be possible without your ongoing support.

As we have released our development-roadmap recently and therefore more complex features coming to Railway Empire in the near future, we would love to share what we have so far.

Because of this, we created a public beta-branch, where you will find our latest builds.
Please be aware that these builds released on the public beta-branch are still in development!

Here are the new features, you can expect and playtest already:
New Features

• New Map "America"
  - In "Free mode" and "Sandbox mode"
  - Build your empire from coast to coast
  
  
• New 100-years-era "1830-1930"
  - Grow your empire from 1830 to 1930
  - All locomotives in one play
  - Re-balanced science tree in this 100-years-era
  - Overall time re-balancing to fit new timescale

We would be very grateful, if you gave it a spin and share your thoughts and feedback in the beta section of this forum. Here you can find the latest news about released builds, as well as how to get access to the public beta-branch in the first place, which is only for owners of Railway Empire for sure.

 

[Panos]

If anyone enjoyed Sid Meirs Railroads about 100 years ago, this is the true successor to that game. It's almost identical, still enjoyed a few hours on it myself.

Yeah, it does feel like Railroads, and RRT2/3.
Played half hour the new Free mode, is daunting, but going to be fun

 

[Panos]

May look into this one as I spent many a happy hour playing Railroad Tycoon on the Amiga back in the mid 90s.

AI is far superior to RRT2 & 3. They just don't build between few stations waiting for money to roll in. They expand buying factories etc (especially those you are using but haven't bought out).
On Hard difficulty they will try to run your cities and screw you up. Haven't tried very hard, but seems from others, if you aren't good enough, they buy you out before long....

The only "cheating" per se the AI does it to build on non-realistic track mode. While by default the human player is set on to realistic mode. (can change it).
Otherwise get ready to have your company bought out, fair and square without cheating.

(FYI the makers of the game are working on the AI building realistic tracks if the setting is such for the players, but is more difficult than it seems).

 

[Panos]

Enjoying it so far, but it's a bit lacking in atmosphere. I know it's a strange thing to say about a strategy game, but the game map feels a bit flat. However, I am at the very early stages. Later on it might get a bit more lively. I cant wait to start building tracks through the mountains

I can see me spending a lot of hours on it now. These are the only type of games I use my PC for now. Cant beat PC for a strategy game. Dont know how it will control on console with a gamepad!

Spent 8 hours straight today on the America map. Must say when you have 20 trains running having a line that is using overpasses to cross is amazing on first person view.

 

[Panos]

Sounds like a nightmare to organise with side tracks and signals though.

Actually not.

Is very easy if you invest from the start and build a loop, connecting all town stations, and those rural with high traffic on it having a loop also.

It can maintain a lot of trains, as long as you use the auto signal placement, directional signaling, couple of loop breakers and set the train station lines accordingly to trains.
Also waypoints help if you have to double track the loops.

You can use directional dual track straight lines on stations where you wont have a lot of traffic.

Something like this. See Pittsburgh - Indianapolis - Toledo.

 

[Panos]

What exactly can I do with these trading cards that keep popping up in my steam inventory?

Do you know never bothered about that, and have the same idea? I have thousands of them from various games.

 

[Panos]

Update 1.3 went live few minutes ago. Here are the changes

Changelog Railway Empire Update 1.3
New Features:

Community-requested feature

• Random Map Generator
  We are happy to introduce the community-requested Random Map Generator. Therefore when selecting Free Game or Sandbox Game you will find a new map: "Random"
  The “Random”-map will be available in Free Game and Sandbox Game modes. With this map, you can generate a random map with various parameters.

Additional new feature:

• New difficulty options for Free Game mode
  Player can now choose whether they want easier or harder tasks in Free Mode.
  In general, tasks will now consider the number of towns available on the map.

Adjustments
Additions

• We have added steel and stone bridges. These will be shown when tracks reach a specific height.
  
• We have added a counter to the towns in route editing mode.
  
• The icon for an available factory slot is now shown more often.
  
• We have added some AI route optimization tweaks.
  
• We have added more details to the train list.
  
• It is now possible to align the camera to the north with hotkey “n”
  
• Random maps have also been added to the editor
  
• We have added a town list.
  
• New GUI elements and icons for construction mode and train status window have been added.
  
• We have added a new action menu layout.
  
• We have added transparent goods images when the train is loading in a station.
  
• We have added new GUI elements in "Bulldozer" mode.
  
• Delete button in editor has been added.

Fixes

• [LINUX] Rendering of contour lines and tunnels has been fixed.
  
• A bug in the town generation, which caused cities to vanish has been fixed.
  
• We have fixed a random crash, which occurred in large game worlds.

 

[Panos]

Update 1.4 is on Steam Beta. It incorporates quite a few AI changes.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/503940/announcements/detail/1653262146453253359

Features:

• The AI opponents are now able to use the complex track system.
  The AI can now make use of signals and multi-track, when the player selects complex track building mode in the game settings.
  In complex mode, the AI usually builds two parallel tracks, one for each direction. They also use signals and crossings.
  Players can select the track-system for the AI in the game settings.
  
• Players and AI can build x-crossings.

 

[Panos]

Can you shut the AI opponents up totally yet?

This got removed as soon as the idiotic voiceover and popups appeared.....
Felt like it was aimed at teenagers, not a serious strategy game.

Not on the campaign but on Free mode for example yes.

If you want more serious simulator, there is Transport & Train Fever.

 

[Panos]

On Friday there is a Mexico DLC coming, with new campaign, maps and night mode.

 

[Panos]

Train Valley 1 and 2 have whetted my appetite for laying tracks this past week. Just downloading Sid Meier's Railroads to scratch the itch a bit more. But I'm not sure if this game looks too complicated having seen the map on the previous page! Does it have a good tutorial to ease you in to all the tracks, signalling, etc. or is it like Cities: Skylines where you pretty much have to figure it out yourself - I didn't like that.

Yes. Tutorial is superb, and can guide you. Also the campaign mode is teaching you stuff.
Also has Free mode, and sandbox.
Is bit more complex than Railroads!, feels like RTT2 & RTT3, and is not as complex simulator as Train Fever & Transport Fever.
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[Panos]

Btw few updated about the game.
First supports Nvidia Ansel and it's VR Viewer
https://steamcommunity.com/games/503940/announcements/detail/1652139417459391048

Second this is the new roadmap of the game. Parches and DLCs

 

[Panos]

Hi Panos.

Where abouts is the tutorial I cant find it anywhere. Or is it during the campaigns?

Cheers.

Start the campaign, it will guide you. When you see information balloons click them it will explain with ingame video.

 

[Panos]

Ah thank you.

So how did it go?