Railway Empire

There's a lot of good here, but the track laying (particularly parallel tracks and switching), and the line management, are half baked - and for a game called railway empire, that's the stuff you really need to get right. They've got a sequel, hopefully they worked this out there.

While I like this game I couldn't recommend it to someone who just wants a fun game to play. At first, the game is fine, developing rail networks and feeding supplies to cities, etc. The problem is though, is that in order to survive against the AI, which, cannot be decreased in strength, you must assemble a spaghetti mess of tracks and trains in order to pump cities with a ♥♥♥♥ ton of mail and passengers. Otherwise, you will not be able to break even with most of the AI in terms of monetary output (normal difficulty, lowest). Also, some achievements are locked behind DLC paywall. Besides the frustrating constant struggle to catch up to the AI by spamming trains, cities get developed very fast. Almost too fast. I had maxed out 4 cities by 1855, and capped their development. This leads to a limit on the amount of money you can eventually make, causing the company in first to simply buy out every other company. Also, once an AI begins to buy shares of your company, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥. There's nothing you can do to stop their purchases physically. It is possible to expand the hell out of your railway to gain more money to prevent them from buying shares, but this is hard because by the point of the game where the AI is buying shares of large companies, there is likely little or no resources/cities left to occupy. If you do not turn OFF realistic tracks (turning them off allows you to overlap trains), you won't be able to make enough deliveries to outpace even the lowest level AI. There's also no reward for distance. It is literally pointless to build long routes of tracks if you can just have trains stop at multiple cities and pick up additional supplies. This also applies to curves, you can avoid mountains and hills by curving the tracks (mountains and hills greatly increase track cost). There's no penalty for doing this. The Orange AI also always seems to have a buff, as it always beats all other AI players. Eventually, your cities, which will grow so insanely fast- will need more supply to keep them maintained, otherwise they will dwindle at an equally alarming rate. With SIX lines directly from a cow farm to Atlanta, it is still not supplied with enough meat. Tasks are either way too easy (8 tasks done before their deadline in half time, gold checkmark), or way too hard. Once you've built a massive rail network you'll have a ♥♥♥♥ load of trains (hundreds), even if you have only 50¬ or so points because you'll keep spamming to play catch up. You'll have to upgrade these trains to the latest models or you risk losing express line bonuses, slow delivery, breakdowns, etc. This becomes so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ inconvenient when you have these HUNDREDS of trains to replace with the new models. You have to individually replace every single one through the train tab. I wasted THREE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ YEARS replacing all my trains to the latest models in 1878. I like the concept of the game, but it's constant stress and fighting. There's absolutely no point of small tweaking or tinkering. Only worth it if you enjoy pulling out your ballsack hairs with a tweezer.

Railway Empire is a solid building and management game that will definitely appeal to fans of the genre. The gameplay is fun, but can feel a bit repetitive. Once you’ve figured out the mechanics and found the right strategy, you can easily apply it everywhere, which can make the game feel a bit too easy. That said, it’s still enjoyable and has that addictive quality that kept me hooked. [h2]Achievements[/h2] [b]Required time:[/b] 125-150 hours [b]Difficulty (in my opinion):[/b] 5 out of 10 [b]DLCs required for 100%?:[/b] Yes, 9 (Mexico, The Great Lakes, Crossing the Andes, Great Britain & Ireland, France, Germany, Northern Europe, Down Under, Japan) To get all the achievements in Railway Empire, you’ll need to finish every campaign mission with the highest rating ("President"). It might sound scary at first, but it’s not as tough as it seems. In the scenarios, you can pick the difficulty level, and with the right strategy, hitting the needed score is pretty straightforward. For the main game, you only need a President rating in one mission per region, but in the DLCs, you’ll need to get it in every scenario. On top of that, there are some extra achievements to unlock, like growing cities to a certain size, setting up express lines between specific cities, or connecting every city on the map. A good trick is to focus on city-to-city traffic first, then use warehouses to boost population growth. Follow that, and you’ll be on the right track!

I'd rate this game a 3.5/10 on the surface level it's great, detailed trains from various time periods that you can ride on and the early game of hauling cargo and passengers from city to city is fun.. but the shine wears off later in the game when you have to build byzantine spaghetti junctions of railways to supply cities that consume goods faster than a black hole whilst dealing with annoying AI. but the deal-breaker in this game for me is that if you don't supply cities with enough cargo constantly, cities will shrink. this, combined with the fact that cities won't demand certain cargo until the city reaches a certain size or builds a factory that demands it leads to a situation where most cargo is useless UNLESS you supply ungodly amounts of every OTHER type of cargo the city demands. any chance of creating a neat, clean-cut industrial chain in this game is a pipe dream. EDIT; After reading some of the other reviews of the game mention the lack of a British map/British trains in the base game(yes I know they have it as DLC), I have to say that, as an Englishman with an interest in history and mechanics, having various American maps in the base game but none set in the country that invented the train in a train sim game seems like a mistake. In my opinion, the Victorian era trains are the most interesting of the bunch from a historical and technical standpoint and to gloss over that era seems short-sighted.

Casuals und entspannte Spieler aufgepasst! Wer hier hofft ein Eisenbahn Game zu finden, bei dem man entspannt aufbauen und ENTSPANNT gegen die KI um den Sieg ringen kann ist hier fehlt am Platz und sollte weitersuchen. Versteht mich nicht falsch, das Spiel ist schon gut und ich hatte meinen Spaß.... bis zu den Szenarien, dann ist der Spaß in Frust gewechselt. Das Spiel macht schon viel richtig: ✅ gute Balance zwischen simplen Desgin und komplexen Warenströmen ✅ Sowohl Miromanageing als auch "einfach verbinden und macht mal Züge" möglich ✅ Kampagne ist gut, wenn auch nicht die beste. Diese ist zwar schon herausfordernd, aber ist noch machbar. ✅ generell macht das Spaß eigentlich Spaß... aber... Es gibt schon ein paar Sachen, die das Games schlecht machen: ❌ Der Gleisbau ist einfach ungenau, zu friemelig und ich hasse es, dass man nur die Steigung sehen kann, nicht aber ob diese steigend oder fallend ist. ❌ Die Entscheidungen der eigenen Züge, welche Waren ausgewählt werden (ergo der Automatik-Modus) ist manchmal einfach schlecht. Ich habe eine Brauerrei in der Stadt. Warum liefern die Züge also nur seit 5 Fahrten Mais, anstatt die sch*** Brauerei mit Getreide zu beliefern. Muss ich denn unbedingt Mircomanagement machen??? ❌ Und das größte Problem: Die KI, der Grund warum ich das Spiel inzwischen nicht mehr mag. Der Entwickler ist selbst jemand, der Strategiespiele am liebsten auf auf höchsten Schwierigkeitsgrad spielt. Wenn man das weiß, dann versteht man auch die KI. Einige Spieler behaupten zwar, dass die KI zu einfach sei, aber für mich, der auch gerne mal 15 Minuten lang Züge beim fahren zuschauen will, ist sie VIIIIEEEEEELLL zu schwer, vor allem in den Szenarien. Wenn du nicht die ganze Zeit 110% gibst und alles ins kleinste Detail managen tust, dann schaffst du entweder die Aufgaben nicht, oder wirst aufgekauft. Fazit: Wer schwere Spiele mag, Spielmechaniken ins kleinste Detail lernen und verstehen will und kein Problem hat, Runden immer wieder neu zu starten, weil man es nicht geschafft hat, der wird mit Railway Empire seinen Spaß haben. Alle anderen... nun... schaut lieber weiter, bevor ihr wie ich das Spiel erst mögt und dann frustriert deinstalliert.

So racist that the technique witch reduce rail building cost use Mexican and Chinese people in the icon , the great development are full of blood, shame!

Quick Summary: This game can be a lot of fun. The biggest problem is the way the tutorial is set up. Instead of giving you a full tutorial, or a tutorial broken up into segments, it's done as the scenarios. This would't be an issue, but they don't play out in a comprehensible way and features of the game are locked until you complete the scenarios. If I didn't have years of previous transport sims, I would have given up on this game. Once I get my moneys worth the game will just go on the shelf. This game has a VERY high learning curve. [Played with all DLC]