Railway Empire Vs Railroad Tycoon 2

Railroad Tycoon is a serial of games simulating the performance of railroads/railways. The original game was created by Sid Meier at MicroProse and released in 1990. 2 sequels were created by other developers in 1998 and 2003 respectively, earlier Meier returned for a quaternary installment, Sid Meier'southward Railroads, in 2006.

The original "Tycoon" game and the one that helped to popularize the Business Sim genre. Conceived as SimCity meets 1830, the game was very well received when it first appeared in 1990 since information technology captured some of the real life challenge and competition of running a large runway company. It was too a archetype example of being amend than it sounded, drawing in players who weren't the slightest bit interested in trains, the stock market or 19th-century history.

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Tropes nowadays in this series:

• Alliance Meter: In Tycoon 2, you can become into your company's data book and see simply where yous stand with various territories in terms of their goodwill. Every territory has a default value, only certain things can raise it (manager bonuses, reliable and frequent service) and other things can dethrone it (untransported cargo loads, breakdowns, and so forth). The overall effect is that poor goodwill in a territory leads to college costs to learn the rights to lay track and to run trains.
• Anachronism Stew: A minor simply even so noticeable case in Tycoon 2. While train cars volition modify appearance through different eras, the world map does not, and thus a meat packing constitute or a steel mill will look the same in 1855 every bit in 2055. Additionally, managers are not confined to specific eras, so in the 1800s yous could potentially rent a director that gives discounts on diesel or electric expenses, things that do not even be yet. And of course, all these managers you're hiring variably oasis't been built-in yet, or died years agone.
• A.I. Breaker:
  • In the original installment of the game, railway tracks from one company could not cross other companies' tracks. Let'due south say some inconvenient AI thespian decided to start a company with its beginning city not far from the Thespian Grapheme'south growing network, threatening to go From Nobody to Nightmare in no time. The answer? Immediately (or at least very soon) build a spur line over to most the AI visitor's lone station and encircle it with track completely — then but leave it. The AI cannot get anywhere, and with no manner to brand any revenue, their company dies a swift decease, with the added insult-to-injury being that the player's company is at present easily positioned to take over the aforementioned at present-vacated city with their ain station.
  • Furthermore, AI players in the original game could non reconnect stations that had been severed past a rate war in an adjacent city. Endeavour this: find a three-city-long AI-controlled railway line and defeat the AI in a charge per unit war for the eye metropolis of the same iii. This leaves two isolated stations with no track at all, which subsequently leads to the plummet of the rival railway.
  • In Tycoon 2, an AI character similar Jim Fisk or George Hudson will be stymied if the difficulty settings prevent them from their usual stock market manipulations, or J.P. Morgan is easier to confront if he cannot invest in industries as he tends to do.
  • In Tycoon three, some cheap station buildings maliciously placed in the right places can block the AI expansion forever, as they can't evict or bulldoze buildings of rival companies.
• A.I.-Generated Economy: Railroad Tycoon 3 has an intricate and well developed economic system:
  • There are other rivals companies building their own ship networks like in the previous installments, but the game itself implements an alternative new method: Unpicked goods and materials are gradually moved from their production sites to the places where they are needed, following a supply and demand logic and price curves. This procedure is usually very inefficient, merely depending on the relative locations it can actually feed industries on its own, as the cargo moves slowly inland (very slowly and possibly not at all in mountain terrain), but fairly faster via rivers and other bodies of water.
  • Processing industries tend to spawn in areas with a high concentration of raw resource, simulating private entrepreneurship. These local facilities can outcompete distant ones, equally the newly generated need will be on par with the remote one, making hauling bolt unprofitable, which is non allowed past the game mechanics. Production facilities tin can likewise disappear, simply the process is very random.
• An Entrepreneur Is You lot: Commencement with 1,000,000 units of your local coin, an empty region of a country, and cities enervating goods. Goal: Provide the best service, make coin, defeat rivals.
• Apocalypse How:
  • Class 1 halfway to Course ii in the expansions of Tycoon 2. No, really: 20 Minutes into the Futurity, the Strait of Gibraltar is dammed and a futuristic geothermal power plant is congenital in Kingdom of spain while the tuckered Mediterranean Sea becomes free land for European development. Nonetheless, protesters and activists bomb the establish, turning a third of Spain into a cratered wasteland, and the resulting eruption of volcanic greenhouse gases causes world body of water levels to ascent rapidly. In the chaos, N America descends into anarchy, Africa becomes an island and a oasis for displaced civilians, the Mediterranean re-fills as Europe is flooded out, and Antarctica melts and is settled.
  • There is too the famous Cascadia map made past Nick Bennett, which can exist best described as a Spiritual Successor of The Postman.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The AI in Tycoon 2 and 3 is generally competent, but sometimes they starting time their company between two mediocre cities in mountainous terrain with rail and then convoluted or directly that their rolling stock can do no improve than clamber, and they are unable to choose a suitable locomotive for pulling, going instead for the most modern i. This only leads to a stunted and minimally profitable railway that yous can easily out-compete.
  • The AI is extremely good at finding routes with the virtually absolute profit at the moment and will constantly change routes accordingly, just if and when they connect to a rival'south network, they will usually run routes where well-nigh of the profit goes to the owner of the tracks, while they all the same have to pay fuel and maintenance. They only build stations in named cities, never in rural product centers, and are incapable of any strategic thinking, choosing the route with the most immediate profit but i that might not create added value, like the ones that fuel industries with little curt-term margin just end up introducing unrivalled new wealth into the economy. This is the reason it usually does poorly in maps with limited resources that require some puzzle-like connections to get ahead.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The MagLev in Tycoon 2 is rated as having a top speed of 280 miles per 60 minutes, merely information technology costs a boatload of money to buy, fuel and maintain, and performs very badly on grades. It's pretty much only useful on high-value passenger runs between large cities on flat ground.
  • In the same game, whatever industry that requires steel. Steel is only produced from a steel mill, and needs coal and atomic number 26 to do so, two resources you will probable never find shut together near a major town, and thus the cost of the two or iii trains needed to produce and move the steel around volition likely outweigh the profits you lot make doing so. In later on missions some industries switch to aluminum for their production, and the just industries that withal take steel are Tool and Die Factories and Auto Factories, the latter of which needs another resources, tires, to produce cargo, and tires in turn need to be manufactured from rubber ^note on the upside, the developers were commonly helpful and made safety available from ports in areas like Northward America. Good luck finding any profitable and applied route with all these factories and resources in close proximity.
  • In Tycoon 2 and 3, you tin can build break bridges across actually long distances such every bit the Great Lakes, or in the original game or 3, you can construct tunnels through the unabridged length of a mount chain. Understandably, this is highly expensive, and your board of directors will scream encarmine murder at the expense if y'all aren't already making a decent profit.
• Beyond the Incommunicable: In Tycoon 2, pushing upwards the throttle on trains, specially if they're older engines and/or have poor reliability, can consequence in their annual breakup probability going over 100%. ^notation Most likely, this simply means that the breakdown chance is so loftier that the locomotive is liable to give out more than than one time per in-game yr.
• Bland-Proper noun Production: A few trains in the third game appear with names changed from their real-life counterparts. The AMD 103 Genesis becomes "USA 103" and the SD90MAC becomes "NA-90D". The "unofficial" 1.06 patch includes the proper names for these 2 locomotives as part of its changes. And then some are entirely made up, like the MagLev in Railroad Tycoon 2.
• Blessed with Suck: In Tycoon 2, the "Basic" industrial and financial difficulty levels are this, oversimplifying game mechanics to the point that they volition hinder your attempts to play.
  • On the Bones financial model, AI opponents cannot buy stock in your company, but y'all cannot buy into theirs, putting mergers and takeovers off the table and forcing you to asphyxiate off their railroad instead. The Advanced financial model allows buying and selling competitors' stock, and the Practiced level in turn allows margin buying and short-selling for further shenanigans.
  • On the Basic industrial model, every industry in range of a station generates its respective product regardless of whether it is supplied with whatsoever required resources, meaning that if you actually incorporate the mines, farms, etc. into your system yous tin easily stop up with way more cargo than your railroad can handle (and having untransported carloads steadily tanks local goodwill towards your visitor). The Avant-garde model actually requires cargoes to be delivered earlier industries will convert them, and the Expert model does the same and allows yous to buy industrial buildings to accept a cut of their profits.
• Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Tycoon 2 introduces the People Against Humanity (P.A.H.) in the Second Century expansion, who are protesting against the development of the dammed and drained Mediterranean as well as the construction of the Geocore Found. They eventually bomb the establish, with the resulting global warming causing a Class 1-2 Apocalypse How, depending on how the role player handles the aftermath.
• Tiresome, but Practical:
  • Want to climb that wall of mountains to get at the mines y'all run into just out of your accomplish? The Shay ("Three-Truck" in Tycoon two and "Two-Truck" in 3) has a horrible top speed (about 25 mph) but is, as in real-life, one of the best steep-grade haulers in the game (definitely the best among steam engines) and is rather cheap to kick.
  • Industry investments. For a few thousand bucks, capping at a million for the really profitable industries, you get a cutting of the profits if that industry supplies whatever trains. The more trains supplied, the more coin made. Production facilities like mines and farms tin earn you lot tens of thousands a year for an initial investment of only a few thousand to buy them, if yous happen to be running trains to them over and over. If it's a production faciliy that needs to exist supplied to produce something (and it therefore has no cap on how much it could produce every yr, equally long as you lot continue running supply shipments to it), you can make back your investment into it in just a few years.
  • Station enhancements. They're invisible and you'll probably not remember about them much, but many of them reduce the punishment for goods sitting at the station not beingness moved yet, which volition only salve y'all a few pennies at a fourth dimension but it will add up over many years. Much more practical are the Saloon, Restaurants, and Hotels, which heave the profit gained from passenger routes; the latter ii have a hefty price tag, simply volition more than brand dorsum the money invested into building them. Also useful are Telegraph/Telephone Poles, which reduce station turnaround fourth dimension, because every second a train spends unloading and loading cargo is time it isn't spending transporting that cargo to brand yous money.
• Cap: 30,000,000 coin units in the original game.
• Canada Does Not Exist: Some Northward America scenarios designate Canada as function of the United States of America. On the upside, in Tycoon ii, this has the benefit of not requiring the hated customs expect-time mechanic, since the cargo does non have to cross whatsoever borders in-game.
• Captain Ersatz: Second Century in Tycoon two includes a mission where you're contacted by a small Redmond software company called "Macrosquish" who want a connection for their workers. Depending on your success in the mission, the ending bulletin of congratulations volition annotate that their CEO gives you a few chiliad shares as thanks, but the narration snarks "Like those will be worth anything …"
• Cattle Businesswoman: The role player can build (in the original game) or purchase (in Tycoon 2) local industries to make two sets of money. In Tycoon 3, both are possible.
• Competitive Balance:
  • In Tycoon 2, this is achieved for all trains via their speed versus the cars they're hauling and their course performance. Trains get exponentially slower the more cars y'all attach and the steeper the grade they struggle with, only attaching fewer cars ways less profit. Thus any railroad train can be a Fragile Speedster that moves apace betwixt stations only makes trivial profit for having but a couple cars, or a Mighty Glacier with a full load and high profits but sluggish speed. Naturally if you plan your routes properly and choose trains suited to the road though, you lot can even so brand whatever train a Lightning Bruiser, moving betwixt stations apace and still beingness highly profitable.
  • The aforementioned game also gives this regarding the three train types — steam engines, diesel, and electric. In general, steam trains have higher fuel costs and need more station facilities to keep them running properly, diesel trains have a higher initial price tag and middling speeds, and electric trains are inexpensive and fast but need expensive electrified rails to run on.
• The Estimator Is a Adulterous Bastard: Specifically My Rules Are Not Your Rules:
  • In the original game, the AI tin can build runway in ways the thespian cannot, like several bridges forth the length of a river, or up to eight tracks coming out of a station in all directions (rather than the usual two).
  • Past the time information technology gets to Tycoon two, things are much more than even, though the reckoner players still seem to be able to afford things that the homo thespian cannot (like stock in the human actor's company). And if you purchase out an opponent's company, yous're going to discover yourself wondering how their steam engines managed to run properly for years when none of their stations have roundhouses or water towers, which are vital for steam engines to run smoothly for more than a year. Additionally, the AI is able to go into debt to buy things information technology doesn't really take the money for at the time, whereas y'all either take the money or you lot don't.
  • In 3, AI companies can practice concern in territories in which they don't have access rights, and will issue bonds despite having an appallingly low debt classification, postponing a liquidation for a long fourth dimension.
  • The purchasing power of AI rivals is more sturdy than possible. Their debt is magically reduced when they are put in a margin call situation and they will conjure money out of thin air.
• Absurd Train: Take a wild gauge. From Railroad Tycoon 2, for instance:
  • Many of the older classic steam engines, like the iv-4-0 American or the 2-8-0 Consolidation.
  • Several of the late-game electric "bullet train" models, culminating in the futuristic MagLev, rated as having "instant" acceleration and a tiptop speed of 280 miles per 60 minutes.
• Re-create Protection: The first game requires identifying a train from the manual, and an incorrect entry restricts you to ii trains.
• Decadent Corporate Executive: Y'all! The actor tin can appoint in activities such as running trusts or insider trading, transport illegal goods to make some actress cash, and make shady deals with dubious figures to become a leg upwards on competitors.
  • Try this in Tycoon two: use a majority share of a rival company to elect yourself chairman, sell off or destroy all their trains, railroad and industry investments, then re-elect yourself chairman of your original company and buy out the rival visitor for a bargain price (again using your majority share to ensure the buy-out goes through), since their stock toll will have plummeted equally a result of losing all their assets. You lot'll not only go your rival out of the way, but the profit other players would have made off a "normal" merger is reduced to pennies since at the time of the merger the stock toll was so low.
  • Alternatively, after selling all their avails, start selling your participation in the company while using the cash and bonds they might have to buy back stock and keep the price of the shares high. Resign, short-sell their stock and wait a calendar month to "buy" it dorsum when it hits the minimum. You tin can now merge with the hollow company left or expect until it dies.
  • Here is a route if you're trying to better your personal net worth. Acquire a 50+1% share of your primary company, which gives yous full ownership and neutralizes the company board of directors. Resign your chairmanship and institute a new company which you also command the majority of shares (which doesn't demand to have any tangible avails). Re-have the chairmanship of your original company, and then buy out the new company for maximum share cost (if yous want you can take out bonds to increase your start company's greenbacks on manus to beget an fifty-fifty higher price per share). The effect is all of your company'south money that goes into the buyout slides into your own pocket. Your board of directors will be furious with you for treating the visitor similar an ATM, only there is nothing they can do about it since you lot hold majority buying. In existent life, this would outcome in lawsuits and possibly jail time.
  • A few maps have the objective of existence the merely railroad in operation, encouraging this sort of play to bulldoze the competition into the ground as ruthlessly equally possible.
  • The last few missions of the 2d Century campaign in Tycoon 2 have yous equally this trope in the storyline. Sure, the world is flooding, anarchy is rampant, and nutrient is in curt supply. That just means a cunning railroad baron can brand a killing supplying the people in their fourth dimension of greatest need! The narrator even says on one such mission, "In chaos lies profit".
  • A pesky rival is buying likewise much into your company and is eating away your dividends? Expect until blast times, so issue stock several times to lower the price of the share. He'll find it a bargain beneath market price and will go into debt to seize the risk. Cancel the dividend and wait him out, equally the economic system tin only go down. When the downward wheel hits, issue stock, sell some of your own and short-sell any other he may accept to invoke a margin call. You can now buy back those shares in your company, but cheaper.
• Crutch Character:
  • In Tycoon 2, the Fe Duke far and abroad has better stats than any other train to be bachelor before it, and a few afterward it too. It'll be your go-to engine for several decades, but eventually its loftier purchase cost, fuel costs, and terrible grade operation gradually go far outclassed by more modern engines.
  • Also in Tycoon ii, Thomas Crampton gives hefty bonuses to speed and acceleration for all steam engines, and despite this, he can be hired and employed for a virtual pittance, and he tends to bear witness upwardly a lot earlier than acme-tier managers like George Pullman. In fact, if you really luck out in the steam era, you can start a scenario with Crampton assigned to your new visitor right off the bat.
• Determinator:
  • Isolated industries and producers of undemanded raw materials tin can and volition endure years and years operating at a loss, hoping anytime transportation will come to their door and save them from being in the scarlet.
  • Some AI rivals go along founding new companies after you lot buy them out. This subsequent firms should be easy to encroach, as they don't start on even terms like in the beginning of the game and have to compete against a monopolistic adversary already dominating the market.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Several maps include deals to become you lot early access to higher-tier engines than what would otherwise be available past default.
  • In three, buying a new and well placed industry or agronomical building will bring solid, constant profits in the struggling early years when setting up runway infrastructure is expensive, the haulage limited and the regional demand speedily met. In some scenarios, focusing on industries and not running trains at all brings much amend returns than transporting stuff. This is a huge alter from two, where industrial incomes are marginal at best.
• Divided States of America:
  • The flooded Us scenario in the Second Century campaign in Tycoon two is somewhere between this and Fallen States of America. Flooding is bad enough that the entire Mississippi valley is gone, forth with most of the major cities. The government has collapsed into several successor states, while everything westward of Omaha is an anarchic wasteland.
  • Tycoon iii'south "Alternate U.s." scenario exists in a timeline wherein a single Revolutionary War never occurred and instead a number of independent nations emerged over time.
  • I fan-made map allows the player to pick sides in the American Civil State of war, with the success of the chosen side beingness dependent on the player's operation in special shipping missions.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: In three, if yous oversupply an manufacture, chances are a new ane will announced in the zone, which will deed as unwanted competition if y'all endemic the established facility.
• Eagleland:
  • Probably the only reason why the campaign in Tycoon two starts off with the Baltimore & Ohio Railway (B&O) on the USA's eastern seaboard, instead of starting in the actual birthplace of the steam locomotive (i.e. Swell Uk).
  • Also, there is the omnipresent bluegrass background music causing Soundtrack Dissonance, depending on the geographical setting of the scenario.
• Early Game Hell: Mostly, Tycoon 2 and 3 are hardest in the kickoff x years or so of play: you have few stock holdings, your company probably only has plenty money to lay downward track for one route and run one or 2 trains on it, the starting managers (Tycoon 2 but) to help you lot out suck, and you'll probably accept to take out bonds to help finance information technology all. Every bit the game continues and you lot begin to rack up profits, however, you tin expand your network, pay off your debts, purchase up more stock, and so forth. The A.I.s usually go broke if their showtime connection between two cities is non an optimal chain, but volition usually do fine if they are able to connect a third.
• Expansion Pack:
  • The Gold and Platinum editions of Railroad Tycoon ii add the even harder "Second Century" entrada forth with a whole bunch of new stand-lone scenario maps.
  • Railroad Tycoon 3: Coast to Coast adds maps such as Ireland, Spain, Western Russian federation, Eastern People's republic of china, and the whole continental The states.
• Explosive Overclocking: In Tycoon 2, pushing a train'southward throttle setting above 85% (represented past a blood-red zone on the throttle estimate) drastically increases the gamble of a breakdown. At 100%, that take chances is quadrupled. New trains tin can handle 100% fine, just don't attempt to push information technology with whatsoever trains that are over a twelvemonth or two quondam. Averted in the original Railroad Tycoon and in Tycoon three, where no throttles are present.
• Exponential Potential: You need money (and/or a adept credit rating) to make coin. By midgame, growth typically snowballs, as profit begets even more than turn a profit.
• Faux Difficulty: Some missions in Tycoon two's "Second Century" expansion accept the objective for the visitor to take an average lifetime speed of all trains of a particular speed. This is actually a massive restriction, forcing yous to exist more careful with which types of engine you buy, how many cars they haul at a fourth dimension, and the layout of your railroad train routes, to ensure your network meets the demand. This too means any particularly twisting routes or track over mountains is probably out of the question because they dull trains down too much, and you'll want to take it easy when running multiple trains on the same runway and then they don't arrive each other'south mode. And all of this is done to achieve a very pointless and insignificant statistic y'all would never care nigh if the scenario didn't make you care.
• Fan Sequel: What Railroad Tycoon 2 technically is. Phil Steinmeyer, the founder of PopTop Software, was a huge fan of the first game. Upon realising that it was the only huge success of MicroProse that wasn't going to get any sequel ^note peculiarly afterwards Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds left and started their own company, Firaxis Games, in 1996, Steinmeyer bundled to buy the copyrights for Railroad Tycoon and started working on the game with his own tiny visitor. The rest is the legend.
• Frail Speedster: Some of the fastest steam engines, such as the No. 999, cannot climb very well. In addition, some similarly fast engines have alarmingly low reliability ratings.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: While its adherence to historical fact is laughable, occasionally the story rears its head to shake things up, such as wars affecting railroad train route access or cargo available at the fourth dimension they would be expected to showtime.

• Glass Cannon:
  • In many early missions in Tycoon two, the Atomic number 26 Duke has speed a expert ten miles or more faster than other trains of the time, making it your get-to engine for those missions ... unless you're facing a road with steep grade, considering the Duke moves similar a snail over annihilation steeper than a gentle incline.
  • Rider-oriented locomotives tend to autumn into this in general, with loftier superlative speeds and acceleration, but desperate fall-offs in speed with heavy loads or when travelling on annihilation above a moderate grade. Plus, that loftier top speed tends to come up with a hefty fuel bill.
• Gotta Impale Them All: In a non-lethal sense, a lot of scenarios in Tycoon 2 and beyond take eliminating all other companies on the map as a victory condition. Depending on the quantity and quality of the AI opponent(s) likewise every bit the starting geography, this tin can be anywhere from trivially easy to virtually impossible.
• Guide Dang It!: The concept of delay option-ups isn't explained anywhere in the game and barely hinted in the manual, while having massive impact on the game. Cargo remains in the station for specific amount of time, then it "decays", while station owner is penalised for poor shipping. Doesn't sound like much? Certain maps tin end upwardly unwinnable because of it, equally the public goodwill tanks and then difficult, you will exist unable to buy access rights - afterward all, your railroad service is terrible. If that wasn't enough, boondocks growth is affected not only by how much you lot feed into information technology, just also how much of local appurtenances was shipped away. Thus delivering equally much cargo as viable will take a positive internet effect, since it means more and bigger towns, opening new markets and providing more than passengers.
• Heartwarming Orphan: The kid from the intro of Railroad Tycoon 3.
• Historical In-Joke/Alternate History:
  • Several historical scenarios have the player as a major driving strength behind the events, for case in the 3rd game the German language Second Reich tin can be based on Prussia, Bavaria or Hannover as the cadre power, depending on the business organization choices. A Divided States of America scenario likewise exits. Or how well-nigh the victory screen of the "Cape to Cairo" scenario which says "Have you considered colonizing Europe?" In a very literal sense, here, you can take history itself Off the Rails.
  • The large bandage in Tycoon 2 tin can result in some amusing corporate showdowns, including people who were on the same side historically (similar the Central Pacific Railway'due south "Large Four") ending upwardly at each other's throats by necessity.
• I Want My Jetpack: The MagLev was said to come out in 2008. Well in 2008, the merely such train in commercial service was the arguable white elephant known as the Shanghai Maglev Train. Even more unfortunately, Germany's equivalent of this train was dismantled in 2012. And the closest we will have to a proper commercial long-distance high-speed Maglev is the Chuo Shinkansen, which is planned to open for revenue service between Tokyo and Nagoya past 2027.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Investor, Financier, Mogul and Tycoon in the original. Changed to a more than flexible system for Railroad Tycoon 2 and beyond.
• In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, and Sid Meier's Railroads.
• Infinity -1 Sword:
  • That MagLev mentioned to a higher place nether Awesome, just Impractical? Enter the Brenner — half as much to purchase, less to maintain, lower fuel cost, elevation speed with a full load of six cars only 20 MPH slower, significantly higher grade operation and meliorate reliability. The drawback compared to the MagLev is slower acceleration. Okay, so your trains take a bit longer to get there and thus y'all make a bit less money off them, but you'll end up saving a lot more than money than yous lose since the Brenner'due south fuel cost is $seventy,000 a twelvemonth compared to the MagLev'south $305,000.
  • Tycoon ii's GG1. Highest reliability in the game, great acceleration and speed, does well on slopes, and isn't too far out of line for cost compared to other trains of its time. However, upwards until you become this train, the other electric trains accept not been annihilation special and and then you lot'll probably accept to spend a fair corporeality of money electrifying whatsoever track yous'll desire to run this railroad train on.
• Just Train Incorrect: Railroads is full of locomotives missing their tenders.
• Level Editor: They are both available in Tycoon three and Tycoon ii.
• Lighter and Softer: The credible fourth installment, Sid Meier'due south Railroads departs from the serious business, hard-simulation arroyo and has a more toyish and simplified design. Accordingly, information technology lacks the Tycoon surname and breaks the Numbered Sequels custom.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Large Boy. Also, the less iconic GG1, GP18, E111 and Nuance-9 likewise count.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • 2 railroads crossing each other volition plain create a crossing... only only if they cantankerous each following the grid of the map. If you lay down your rails in what the game considers to exist "diagonal" direction, and then cross it diagonally, too ◊, the game won't recognise the connection as a crossing, thus eliminating the standard problem of who goes first and which train has to cease.
  • Unless it'due south a mission where taking over other companies is not allowed at all, there is no rule that states you have to stick with your starting company to win a scenario. In fact, in a lot of missions information technology'southward easier to take control of a rival'south company to run it as your own, since AI companies tend to start with open access to strange territories while you lot typically need to buy the access rights. Kickoff a company and purposefully run it but to pump up your share porfolio plenty to buy a majority sharehold in some other company, and so elect yourself chairman and play normally with your new visitor while your original one falls into decline. ^annotation And for farther exploitation, you can later buy up all the stock in your onetime visitor (information technology's doubtful anyone will want information technology, without an owner to run information technology information technology'll fall apart) and purchase it out to give yourself a prissy payday.
  • Scenarios that want to force the player to start from a certain location do so by having a station already built there and disabling the capacity to build unconnected track. This can be circumvented past bulldozing the station and any existing runway then start wherever you want, trading but a few dollars for a new, premium place.
  • Scenarios that put a limit of how much rail cells you can lay down carefully have into business relationship existing stock of track, how many new are used and how many are gained down the line. What it doesn't take into account is the fact each station build past default provides you with a cell of laid-downward tracks. Sure, information technology costs 50 thousands to build the smallest station and then some other 10 to bulldoze it, but when you are few cells short from making some super-important connection, this is better than waiting for next shipment of "real" rails.
• In Proper name But: The Poptop sequels and Railroads didn't take much of the freedom, telescopic or open-endedness of the original game (and Deluxe). At least in Tycoon 2, still, a user can get into the single-player maps using the editor and remove the objectives and triggers that force victory conditions and a time limit on scenarios.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Nearly maps have randomly generated buildings, so information technology'south in your involvement to restart missions over and over to see what you lot could get. 1 such map, if you're lucky, might give you ii populous cities, one with Coal and Iron Mines and the other with a Steel Mill, creating a very lucrative route for you lot. Or y'all might end up with a Baker at one and a Produce Farm at the other. This is very pronunciated in three in scenarios designed with deficient resource. If the randomly generated industries are of the type that have to share their inputs with stuff demanded by houses, zilch new will be produced in the disquisitional early game considering the towns will have a greater pull until the zone is saturated.
  • The aforementioned goes in Tycoon 2 for the director assigned to your company when you first class your railroad corporation. It could exist someone similar Thomas Crampton, who is inexpensive to apply and gives sizable bonuses to steam engines' speed and all engines' acceleration. Or it could exist somebody who gives your railroad a +ten% bonus to territorial goodwill.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • The Three-Truck Shay in 2, too as 3's two-truck variant. It has awful peak speed, probable being even slower alone than other trains with total cargo, but its grade operation and speed loss with cars is astonishing, so while it is very slow information technology tin easily power over hills and mountains while towing six cars of bauxite ore or gravel (heaviest cargo), when most other trains would boring to an accented clamber.
  • Freight-oriented locomotives tend to fall into this in general. They don't have the loftier top speeds that are crucial to success on rider and mail routes, just they concur up better when hauling heavier loads, moving over higher grades, and remaining generally more reliable.
• Nintendo Hard: The "2d Century" campaign in Tycoon 2 presumes y'all've finished the original campaign and thus is accordingly a few steps up in difficulty — many missions have multiple different objectives to achieve, you tend to work in geographically and politically unfriendly territory, ofttimes have to play the stock market place, and need an awareness of how manufacture supply lines work. Yous want that Gold objective? You are earning it.
• No Off-white Cheating: When using a cheat code to win a scenario in iii, the dialog box that ordinarily shows a cutscene and a scenario-specific congratulatory message will instead read "You win, cheater …"
• Number Two: The managers introduced in Tycoon 2, who act equally subordinates to the Role player Character and their AI opponents in running the solar day-to-twenty-four hour period operations of their railroad companies. For varying signing bonuses and annual salaries, they impart a range of possible bonuses to railroad train speed, acceleration, safety, security, acquirement, track and station building costs, while occasionally incurring minor penalties (e.g. maintenance costs, overhead costs, lowered stock price, etc.) for rest.
• Obvious Rule Patch: A mission in Tycoon 2 has you develop a downtown runway system for Seattle, transporting simply passengers of four classifications (depending on their destination). The rule patch is that the game treats these special cars as freight instead of passengers ^note a stealthy Take That!, perhaps? for tracking profit, resulting in the managers that give massive profit boosts to passenger travel beingness useless, when otherwise they would make the mission much easier.
• Quest to the West:
  • The campaign mode of the tertiary game is chosen "Get West", and requires the player to connect Boston and Buffalo. The next mission connects Cleveland and St. Louis, and the tertiary ane finally connects Salt Lake City with Sacramento and San Francisco before 1875.
  • The Western U.s.a. scenario of the original Railroad Tycoon grants a $1,000,000 bonus to the first company that completes a transcontinental railroad. Where this occurs within the map, or if it does at all, depends on the player.
  • Several of the early entrada scenarios in Tycoon 2 bargain with this.
    • First, the player has to lead the New York Central in connecting New York City with Chicago.
    • Next, the thespian has to pick between connecting New Orleans and Los Angeles ^note the road of the Southern Pacific Railway, St. Louis and Sacramento ^note as per Spousal relationship Pacific and Central Pacific, or St. Paul and Seattle ^note the Northern Pacific.
    • And after that, the player takes control of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) as they connect Halifax, Nova Scotia to Vancouver, British Columbia.
• Railroad Baron: The thespian, of course, and some real life examples from history such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, as well as engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunel and megalomaniac rail-building globe leaders such as Benito Mussolini.
• Existent-Time with Intermission: Y'all can suspension in single-player but not in multiplayer.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Well-nigh themes from RRT2 render in the third game.
• Refining Resources: The purpose of the industries served by the railroads; converting raw materials into elaborated and more expensive goods, ordinarily with an added value.
• Riches to Rags: Be overleveraged, get caught with a margin telephone call and say your net worth goodbye, and possibly several figures in the red for your troubles with no way to bounciness dorsum in a lifetime. You tin stay chairman, but you lot have to pay debt interests that will put you further down in the hole.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: Assuming ane'south visitor has the funds on hand, continent-spanning rail lines complete with stations and trains tin be built nearly overnight, especially if the game is paused while doing then. Then again, in-game time does run in months, so it'southward partially justified, and the game mechanics generally lead to expanding one's track network in a gradual fashion, rather than edifice it all at once.
• Sandbox Manner: Tycoon 2 has "sandbox mode" as 1 of its options; in sandbox manner, the player has unlimited funds, can access every train e'er made (regardless of the in-game year), and can likewise edit terrain.
• Shout-Out: In the third game, the newspaper includes occasional references to the isle of Tropico. Both games were created by PopTop.
• Shown Their Work:
  • The locomotives in the game tend to be recognizable as real-life engines with functioning ratings similar to the real things, and historical scenarios tend to exist at least somewhat grounded in reality.
  • The benefits offered by managers line up pretty well with their real-world careers. For case, George Pullman gives +25% passenger revenue and +20% car maintenance costs. Pullman is credited with the invention and widespread adoption of Pullman sleeper cars, passenger cars with fold-out beds so customers could sleep on overnight rides, and his "Pullman Porter" workers provided elevation quality service on trains. Presumably the improver of such luxury elements means your passenger fees are higher, and the sleeper cars are more expensive to maintain than normal passenger cars.
  • Also, the tycoon characters, at to the lowest degree when under the control of the AI, are programmed to act somewhat similar their existent-life counterparts, focusing to different degrees on railway expansion, stock marketplace manipulation and/or industry investments.
• Snowclone Title/Follow the Leader: Oh, Lord, aye. Every unmarried game ending with "Tycoon" can be traced dorsum to this game.
• Soundtrack Noise: Soft bluegrass pervades the game in all maps in Tycoon 2, which is weird when yous are not in the USA, or when information technology'due south After the Terminate.
• Theseus' Ship Paradox: A train setting a speed tape volition become famous, get premium passenger revenues, a customizable proper noun (Town name rocket/cannonbal/meteor) if it hasn't one already and a star to single it out. This status remains fifty-fifty if you change the line, change or upgrade the locomotive, or replace it in time in the event of a crash.
• Timed Mission: Scenarios usually bridge 2 or three decades. A sense of urgency is often kept until belatedly in the game because information technology takes a lot of time to accomplish the exponential growth that guarantees a Gold victory.
• Trope Codifier: For the individual business concern sub-genre of the Construction and Direction Games, compared to SimCity for the local-government sub-genre.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The "Second Century" entrada in Tycoon ii really changes things upwardly. The outset segment takes place during World War 2, with you running military supplies in United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland during the Blitz (so you accept limited supplies to build new runway and take to bargain with bombing runs destroying rail and trains) and run supplies to Russian states during Functioning Barbarossa to prevent the Germans from advancing as well far. In the second segment, you have to build what's basically a lite rails transit system in major cities. The tertiary segment then takes place twenty Minutes into the Future with an actual storyline that unfolds concerning The End of the World equally We Know It.
• Units Not to Calibration: The trains seem to be a mile alpine when compared to the size of the map, and their travel time spans in-game months or fifty-fifty years.
• Updated Re-release: Railroad Tycoon Deluxe, released in 1993 with improved graphics, new audio effects, maps and several additions.
• Video Game 3D Leap: Railroad Tycoon 3 features a new 3-dimensional presentation. Tycoon two does a good chore (for its day) of faking it, though; see the page prototype to a higher place. Released in between, the Dreamcast version of II is fully 3D, and visually feels similar Tycoon 2.5.
• Video Game Time: Naturally; it's highly unlikely existent life train rides take months or years, even when cross-continental. Aversions exist in 3, which has an selection in map blueprint to reduce the timescale down to fractions of an hour instead, and several scenarios make apply of it.
• Villain Protagonist: A number of the railroad chairpersons and managers in-game were either highly imperialist, deeply corrupt, or occasionally outright dictators in existent life; of class, you tin can play equally them however yous choose.
• We Buy Anything:
  • On easier difficulty levels cities and towns volition purchase any goods. At college levels commodities are just demanded if a local industry needs them, and small towns must expand into cities before they volition buy passengers, mail, and other goods.
  • Yous can no longer haul passengers and mail anywhere in 3, since they accept specific destinations. However they will be accepted in intermediate stations, provided they can work as hubs in the system.
  • Market saturation happens in 3, but only for candy appurtenances. Commodities and intermediate resources will happily pile taller than a mountain every bit inputs for industries, which take space demand.
• White Man's Burden: The "Cape To Cairo" scenario (and its smaller-scale 3 analogue "Rhodes Unfinished") invokes this by tasking the player to aid in the Colonization of Africa past building runway and running trains between Cape Boondocks and Cairo inside 40 years of the start engagement (1890).
• Wide-Open Sandbox: Most scenarios to a somewhat limited extent, but taken literally in the Sandbox Modes of 2 and 3. Even by default, the Northward America scenario sets you downward in the continent and gives you lot free reign to build the ultimate rail empire however y'all choose and however long information technology takes.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/RailroadTycoon

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