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RAILROAD.TXT
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1990-01-01
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REVIEW
The Official Guide to Sid Meir's Railroad Tycoon
Written by Russell Sipe
Published by Compute Books
Price $12.95 (it cost me £11.95 last year but the current
interest rates may well have changed this.)
The book covers the Story of the Railroads, the Story of how
Railroad Tycoon was written and how the game itself operates.
For a large part of it, it goes into the detail that you wish the
instruction manual had.
It looks at each of the four scenarios telling you how to best
play each of them and giving an explanation of the history
surrounding them.
It explains how to determine the best place to build your track
but if you haven't worked this out for yourself by now then you
haven't been playing it long enough.
It gives costs per square of all the different categories of land
eg, clear, forest, swamp and how these prices change depending on
the economic conditions. It soon becomes evident that it is best
to build on land when it is cheap, that is during Panic times.
When building tunnels Railroad Tycoon tells you the distance in
miles. There are two miles per square (or three miles if the
track is diagonal) so you can work out where the tunnel is going
to exit.
The "Improving Stations" is explained in more detail than in the
manual and it reveals that;
By adding a switching yard switching times can be cut by half.
By adding a restaurant you get an extra £2000 per full passenger
car, by adding a hotel you get an extra £5000 per full passenger
car and the numbers are cumulative meaning that by having a
hotel and a restaurant at a station you get an extra £7000 per
full passenger car!
The "Smooth Operator" chapter tells all about the operation of
the trains and how to ensure maximum revenues. It also reveals
that a named train will create additional income for passenger
cars. As it is likely that the train that sets a speed record is
one carrying mail make sure that you change the consist to
passengers to get more revenue.
There is a large section on how to win the game through stock
market and financial dealings. There are various strategies
suggested to enable a smooth takeover, it looks good on paper but
it rarely succeeds without a fair share of near disastrous
moments.
Sid Meir suggests never having more than £1,000,000 outstanding
in bonds and to have these at either 2% or 3%. The best time to
buy bonds is during Boom times but if this is not possible then
roll them over during Boom times. When the economy goes to Boom
sell your bonds and then buy them back immediately. The bonds
that you now have will be 2% or 3% and the interest repayments
will be substantially lower than they were previously.
One part of the book explains the attributes of the other tycoons
that are competing against you. The worst people to be in
competition against are Hudson and Rothschild who will attempt to
takeover you and have the skills to do it.
Rate wars are the death of many a good railroad and this book
suggests various strategies to survive/win them.
1. Build a station just outside the radius of the rate war
station and dump all cargoes there and then build track from this
station into the rate war station and start taking all the dumped
cargo there.
2. Have a war train waiting to take as many different cargoes as
available to your network to the rate war station to ensure more
points than your opponent in the voting by the city council.
Ever fancied building the US Transcontinental or the Orient
Express. Chapter 9 details the routes of these two famous lines.
It also tells you that you will be very lucky to ever manage to
do this without the use of the embezzlement key;
Go to the F1 screen
Hit the $ key (shift 4)
You now have an extra £500,000 to play with.
The final, quite long, chapter in the book is a talk with the
designers, Bruce Shelley and Sid Meir. From this conversation it
appears that Railroad Tycoon was 3 years in the making and was
nearly called "The Golden Age of Railroads".
This book is the perfect companion to the award winning
simulation and is excellent value for money as it adds extra
depth to the game.
Written by Martin Wright