Railway Empire

[Orange46]

This game deserves it's own thread.

I just finished the 3rd campaign chapter and I have to say that I like the game, despite chapter 3 being an updated version of Bridging the Mississippi. My aha moment came at the end of chapter 3 when I took a ride on one of my Toledo-Omaha Express's as it delivered the final passengers needed to complete the chapter. I am playing on realistic, so signals matter. Unlike SMR, trains don't get lost and the game doesn't crash. I especially like not needing to build dedicated track which means that I can route a train like the Toledo-Omaha Express thru active corridors of intercity and local industry trains.

I also like that each city has a display of where its passengers and mail want to travel to. However, I am not sure if express from Toledo would ever get to a city like Omaha without a dedicated train. What I do know, is that my intercity trains carried a lot of express cargo and the chapter's completion task required non stop delivery.

Cities also have a display of what their industries want and what they have available to ship and trains can be set to pick up specific loads or anything that is going to the next city. But, unlike RT3, cargoes don't seem to ship if there is no demand at the next city (i.e. that city consumes those goods). They do have a warehouse that comes with 4 tracks and can store goods, but I haven't tried that building yet.

One complaint that I read was that you could only play in 20 year segments, but they just introduced some scenarios that cover 100 years. Hopefully, they are playable.

[RulerofRails]

I have been playing it too. It's different in play style (signals), but still good fun in my opinion. Miles ahead of Railroads! for sure.

I'm impressed with what the devs have done so far, still working on new features, some months since release. If you have the game on Steam they even give the public access to a beta build. The release from last weekend allows random maps.

[Goemoe]

Hi,

I couldn't find it in the games description. Is there a multiplayer option in Railway Empire? Sounds interesting so far. Keep playing and reporting

[RulerofRails]

No multiplayer. No plans to include that in the future either.

[Orange46]

I am replaying this game now while I await Transport Fever 2. It looks like more things have been added and I can't remember if cargo moved along the lines as in RT2 and RT3 but it is now. I also don't remember if industries produced on their own, a feature that many liked about RT 3, but thy are in the current version. Lots of meat and meat on my trains even though I have yet to connect to any cattle or cotton locations.

[Sugus]

Only at the end of last year I became aware of this game. And after a few minutes of playing I was excited! I bought all DLCs and mostly play in free mode.

But it's also really fun to just sit on a running locomotive and to view the passing area.

[Orange46]

I think you will also like Transport Fever 2, although I am usually too busy to sit behind the horses - err - i mean engine or in the cockpit.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4279

[AMD 103]

For anyone who has or wants to use the Epic Games Launcher, Railway Empire is free on the Epic Games Store till September the 17th.

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p ... mpire/home

If you don't care too much for anything Epic, it's still a good way to give it a swing and see if you want to buy the complete collection on Steam or GOG.

[sbaros]

I was more or less forced to order this today because we received a Nintendo as a gift and I saw no other use for it. Its delivery is expected in about 3 weeks. I have started watching video tutorials on YouTube . However I have not found yet any noteworthy discussion forum about it such as this one.

[sbaros]

I spent several hours with it. Lengthy in-depth comparisons may be written, however I'll confine myself to the bottom line for the time being:
The only circumstances to bother with it are:

1. If anyone donates it to you or/and
2. If anyone donates a Nintendo Switch to you (as in my case)

The other matter is, why bother with it at all when taking a break from RR Tycoon 3. Well, its only enjoyable features are:

1. the ability to do some creative track-planning and track capacity estimations including signalling design and
2. a much more satisfactory track alignment and engineering works survey tool

Of course both the above features can be better enjoyed in other simulations, unless someone donates either the hardware or the software as I stated above. Otherwise I find the whole feel somewhat "childish" and the business model rather disappointing. Worst of all however I find the lack of user-customization capability.
I guess the hours spent in it will never get comparable to the amount spent with RR Tycoon 3, especially in a time depth of nearly 2 decades !

[Orange46]

I hadn't played RE since late 2019, but decided to buy the latest upgrades and revisit the game. Yes, it is better than I remembered. Comparing it to Railroad Corporation, it is more developed and has more user content and although placing signals can be a pain at times, that's one of the few drawbacks to this game. RulerofRails prefers RE over RC and I am now beginning to agree with him.

Back to replaying the original campaign - I am now delivering lumber to cross the Mississippi - (I wonder if Bridging the Mississippi inspired them?)

[sbaros]

user content? How the hell is this created ?

[Gumboots]

Probably created by the maker. IOW, it would be "user-downloadable content", not "user-created content".
Looks like the game is only available on Steam if you don't want to use XBox or Nintendo, so not of much interest to me at the moment. Graphics are nice, though.

[RulerofRails]

RulerofRails prefers RE over RC and I am now beginning to agree with him.

Hmm. Maybe I said this awhile ago. RC was in my opinion released "unfinished." With some updates most of the major issues with pathing etc.. were addressed. For example one-way track was added, etc.. At the moment I prefer RC.

From what I can tell RE definitely had a bigger budget. So we could say in many ways things are more "polished". However, after update 1.13 it seems that each new patch is breaking something that worked properly before. Latest thing is passenger counts. I have it set on legacy and I haven't played it for a month or two. The "user-content" isn't really much of anything. It's impossible to create any new lands. So they are just re-hashes of the land released by the developer with the game or in the DLCs. You see a lot, because they took the decision that you can test your creation, but can't save your progress, unless you upload your "map." So 80%+ of these are experiments when people checked it out. Side-note: I think you need steam version in order to play any of these.

After you play RE enough, everything feels the same. Towns etc.. aren't unique enough. At a given size they are demanding all the same stuff, in the same quantity, for the same price no matter how far you haul a load it will only pay you $2k. All you can do is grow and run hundreds of train since the volumes are stupendously high. There's no point to carefully planning a route or consist. Everything will be duplicated and repeated as towns mushroom overnight. It's not uncommon to have more than 8 dual line connections to a town. That's conservative actually. I have tried to play the game "carefully", taking care of each locomotive and pausing often. However, this was an excercise in frustration. The short: this playstyle is not supported. All it takes is changing one little piece of track on a trains route, maybe add a new connection, etc.. and the train may ghost a station, stop there and never unload. I once spent hours trying to re-purpose a train from one route to another. I wanted to have it unload, then switch orders to a new route so it should load up with new cargo. I gave up. We don't really control what the trains are doing. It feels like "for your safety", the game will ignore what you are trying to do. It's more an arcade game. And can be reasonably enjoyed as such for some time.

Another thing, there is almost no risk. Whatever you do, you pretty much cannot fail. There are full refunds on pretty much everything in the scenarios. In free mode you can turn them off. But all you have then is random tasks that are quite generic. It's impossible to adjust any of the advanced options for a map we create. The functionality looks like it's there but according to devs it's not supported. As you can probably guess, I've pretty much had my fill of the game. I got my money's worth from it and more, but with time the deficiencies in the game became more apparent. It feels like you are executing rather than strategizing while playing. A sequel is in the works, so maybe they can focus a bit more on gameplay rather than just cool looks next time. I'm hoping... PS. RE is available on GoG and also Epic.

RC has much more basic looking maps and the graphics are less refined. It is also done by a lot more smaller team and is slower and less "smooth" in operation. However some randomization has been implemented in the DLC, and I believe in one or two free maps for MP. The "user" maps can actually have new lands. Although sadly there are some more restrictive limitations (few event possibilties, no control of loco selection, no randomization) they operate under also. The main thing for me is that the game is more about management of my trains and expansion planning, than just build, build, build, copy train, copy train, etc.... This is mainly thanks to lower volume and not facing a constraint that 40%+ of cargoes must be present to keep a city population stable. The campaign has been reduced in difficulty since release. But there is still some chance to fail. I get the feeling that these devs are more in tune with what a player like us would want. They recently announced a sequel which will have difficulty levels (both games failed on this), and placeable signals (not sure how to feel about this). I have better hopes for it. This one will have electric/diesel a bit like "Second Century" in RTII. I would safely say that they take more inspiration from RTII than RT3.

PS. Maybe one of the RE guys had played your map to bridge the Mississippi. Features that game gets credit for with me: incentive to finish tasks in half the given time and the way clicking on a piece of track will give you a filtered list of all locos that are currently using that track.

[Orange46]

Thanks RoR for the update. You should post this on Steam under both games. Lots of good stuff for the developers to think about. But for me, after 2 years of not playing RE and with 5 new maps, I will get my moneys worth. Then, to a await RC2, (I tried to create an RC map, but gave up when I lost all, except for a playtest game save. Nothing revolutionary, but just a reset of Apocalypse back to Dec 25, 1830 when the Best Friend arrived in Charleston.

[RulerofRails]

Just to let you know that I have commented a lot on the Steam discussions and sometimes more directly via email etc. for these games. Enough to say that I think they know what I think. In RE's case I think I have commented too much. Over the time some of my suggestions were taken on board for both games (earlier in their lifespan). If you felt strongly about a point I made, and see it the same way, feel free to comment it in the feedback in your own words. Quite probably you will see things a little differently than I did which is good. The more people that say something the better. There are a lot of players who never comment something except to complain.

[Sauerteig]

Hey everyone,
I reinstalled railroad tycoon 3 in hopes of finding a few scenarios I had not yet played to get my fix. So far have my doubts about what is available. Anyway I was perusing this forum and saw this.
I played railway empire for a bit but eventually tossed it. I like the signal system in princple but it is so unwieldy. So is the track planning tool. I think my biggest grief may be the goofy rivals that are reminiscent of a bad Hanna Barbera cartoon. Games like railroad tycoon cater mostly to adults or mature minors who are interested trains and probably also history. I really wish they had followed after the railroad tycoon and had famous railroad tycoons and barons as the figureheads.

[Orange46]

I agree with your comments on signals and goofy rivals, but since
RE2 is currently the best way to get my railroad fix I will continue to support the game - warts and all. After a while, the track planning works well, despite the single track signal annoyances on automatic and other glitches. My biggest regret is that I can't create a version of North America thru the Ages for this game. I tried and then RulerofRails played it and did so well that I gave up. The game is too easy and when it is hard, it is because of ridiculous random goals. (NAttA is supposed to last a very long time with limited money and give you lots of time to enjoy the trains while being forced to slowly grow your railroad.)

[RulerofRails]

Update from me on this. I gave up on RE2. Haven't played it for months now. This game seems to have been designed around one thought: player must build a huge sprawling network. That's fine in theory. It's just that there is no "reason" to build it. And the signals and track work make the build process unnecessarily tedious for a result that because of equal demands at all cities (at equal population) is more or less repetitive each time. (If I hadn't played RE1 as much, would have gotten more mileage from the sequel.)

Turns out there are more and more railroad games showing up these days. I have tried the RRC2 demo and the Train Valley World demo already this year. From what I saw, they both have some "potential", whether they will live up to it remains to be seen, but I'm sure neither will be a true RT3 "sequel."