Railroad Tycoon 3

Hello all, Railroad Tycoon 3 was my second game in this series that I played after the original railroad tycoon. I found a lot to love about this game. The graphics when I got this were pretty darn good for a simulation game. I found the system they put in place for movement of good and price relationships to be well realized. I loved the day/night cycle as well as the weather and how it was implemented. I really like industry in this game and how it works with the production of goods over time. I also liked the models of the cars and engines. I loved how there are four different models for cars depending on the time period, this also changes the weight of the cars and the performance of the engines. I also really loved the mechanics behind station wars. You run tracks into the enemy station and start a rate war. Who can service the station best will win the station. The pretty good was the campaign and the add on that I got for the game. I got most of the way through the game before blowing my old computer . It took me another 5 years before I got a computer and could finish the game. I had lost the momentum and the game no longer looked as great but it was good enough that I finally did finish it. I would say the campaign was pretty standard, you start fresh in each area with a company. That was pretty well realized. One thing I found that I did not like is in the last half dozen missions or so you no longer had any competition in the campaign. I also really missed the random map generator like in the original. The poor was some questionable design decisions for modern engines. They created an acceleration of instant that pretty much made the trains go full speed as soon as they left the station, pretty unbalanced. That being stated this game is pretty much the very best business/railroad simulator in the market. I've yet to find anything that compares.

I've spent soooooo many hours in this game. It's one of the best tycoon games there is. It's really satisfying to get an epic railroad/industry network working. What makes this game better than Railroad Tycoon 2 is that there is a better economy/market simulation in the map, and that products also travel through rivers and maps. This makes for a much more realistic situation, because all the industries participate in the market, insted of being reduced to a factory just waiting for some nice guy capitalist to pick the goodies up. Also worth mentioning is a whole lot better way to lay the rails than in the previous installation. What makes RR3 a pleasurable experience, than say Transport Tycoon Deluxe, is that it still concentrates on the big picture without a whole lot of micro management. You can have a single rail track with trains coming from both sides, they just slide through (the other one stops, other keeps going). You don't need to design complex swicharoos and whatnots to stop trains from colliding to each others. You're an industrial/railway tycoon, not a train manager. That makes designing your railnetwork more fluid and flexible. But if you are into miniscule type of realistic railway designing, I suggest you to try Transport Tycoon Deluxe, or Sid Meier's Railroads! for a dumbed down industry. Still, when your network gets bigger and more complex, you will eventually want to optimize your network, so you don't glutch your profits because of trains stuck in traffic. But it's not mandatory to start complex, which is what I like. As title suggest, I'm still waiting for a spiritual successor for Railroad Tycoon 3. A tycoon game that approaches railways from their impact to economy, instead of micro managing individual trains and tracks.

One of those classics that held incredibly well up to age. The norm against wich all other Railroad Simulations have to be measured. The only thing comparable on GoG right now would be Train Fever, and they are more cousins thrice removed then brothers: Railroad Tycoon features an actuall campaign with goals and a sandbox mode, rather then only sandbox. The campaign and scenarios are an interesting mix of handcrafted challenges with randomized building placement. The AI is barely there, but between the Stockmarket, National Access Rights, early/longterm profit and changing times it is hardly needed anyway. And if you just don't like a scenario, you can skip it effortlessly and come back later. Train Fever has a lot more detailed simulation of every aspect trains (down to train wagon performance), but I feel missing that in RT3 is not a bad thing. It makes the game a lot more accessible. Just declaring the wagons to be twice as heavy at same profit simply balances new locomotives against thier earlier counterparts. Where TF chooses a full fledged pathing for every good and person, RT3 simply uses a supply & demand system from station to station. With demand also "expanding" along a train network, to make certain goods will even use slow trains to get anywhere. You can easily leave the exact train consist to the Train, wich just picks up what will get the most bang at the next station. Or you can mircomanage the train to an incredible level of detail, wich some scenarios even require. It seems the balance is mostly geared towards Steam Locomotives, however. The moment Electric and Diesel Trains enter the equation it seems to get almost too easy at times. Not needing to hold for water is just that big of an advantage, not to mention the reliability and other advantages. The Graphics held up exceptionally well considering it's age. However in some situations and some angles with the draw distance it can actually overload a modern GPU.

I bought this game when it was first released and continue to play it regularly to this day. It is almost as much an economic simulator as it is a railroading game. Victory conditions are varied. Some maps require you to connect specific cities/regions, others mandate that you meet certain haulage goals, others call for building company net worth, others to buy out all your competition, and still others to build your personal fortune past a certain point. Some maps require combinations of these. There is an unofficial 1.06 patch (try a Google search) that expands available cargos, improves the AI (though not enough to make it a serious competitor), and makes other improvements under the hood. There is also a wealth of player-created content including maps and engines not found in the original game. While not always hyper-realistic it is both challenging and fun to play. It is possible to have as much fun playing the stock market or building an industrial empire as it is to lay track and run profitable trains. You can also micromanage your cargos and routes or let the AI pick the best available consist and shortest distances. The graphics have held up well for a 2003 game and players can zoom from high up in space down to a close-up view of individual buildings. The music is really sets the mood. Anyone with an interest in either railroad or railroad-based economic simulations should buy this game!