Hawk & Badger Railroad Forum

Hi,

quick question: how much do you guys actually play RT3 mutliplayer? I'm asking because I tried to play it with a friend, and it wasn't as much fun as I'd expected. First of all, we're both pretty new to the game, and in our naive view of it, there is usually one most desirable spot on the map. Whoever builds there first has a good advantage (of course we could BOTH build there and try to compete with each other--guess we never tried that out of POLITENESS ;P) We have also not really been able to find satisfactory win conditions. Usually a trend is established very early in the game where one player's company earns a lot more than the other's, and that's it. It's very hard to get ahead of the other player once he's got a headstart like that.

So basically, my questions are:

1) how many people actually play RT3 multiplayer? Is it fun?
2) what maps do you play it on? With or without win conditions?
3) how do you play? Very competitively? With AIs? Trying to buy each other's companies?


[edit] Additionally, does multiplayer even WORK in 1.06? It keeps CTDing on us.

I find it to be pretty fun,
though i haven't played multi player in a while,

I personally prefer to ignore the win conditions, and just build a nice railway.
I never have AI's in multiplayer,
and i HATE it when players take over other companies,
i remember a game where a guy took over my company lol,

In regard to maps, i guess any will do really,
just try and get a big one, with lots of good locations.
I think the France map is pretty good, :)


I am not sure about it with 1.06, its ages since i played,
obviously everyone playing would need to have the same version.

Don't play multiplayer with 1.06 - it may or may not work, but we didn't test it at all. If you do try, make sure everyone there is using 1.06.

I wish I could play multiplayer. I've tried several times with 1.05 but the game always gets out of sync and the delay for building things makes it too slow. Most noticeably when a train gets to a station at a slightly different time on both computers and picks up a different cargo.

what type of internet connection do you have?
If you have dial-up, that could be the problem.

I tried on my 100 Mbps cable network and with a firewire cable connection. If very many people can make it work smoothly on a network and stay in sync maybe I could be lucky and only have a hardware/software issue.

I haven't played multiplayer myself, but the Strategy Guide published by Brody has some interesting suggestions. One big thing it mentions is the importance of staking out your territory early on; it points out that tracks don't claim territory, stations do -- so it advises you to place your stations first before starting to build track, rather than proceeding the way you do in single-player.