Smr Simple!

Has anyone figured out how to make it possible to choose your AI opponent(s)? This was part of the original Railroad Tycoon game back in the 80's and a major flub on the part of the Railroads development team.

I like playing the Northwest map because it most closely resembles RT. I dislike playing a map where the cities and metros are already established. I've been playing this game every day since it was released. I have a love/hate relationship with it.

Jay Cooke and Jay Gould are the only worthy opponents. All the others are knock offs. Also, I can tell by examining the map at the beginning whether it's worth playing (why play if you know you will lose?).

On that note, Jay Cooke and Jay Gould almost always produce bizarre and unplayable maps causing you to reload a new game as many as 30 times to get something feasible. For example, Boise will have 3 industries at the start, none of which is a Newspaper...or Spokane, Missoula, and Boise will have a newspaper, auto factory, or fishery but all the paper, steel, and fish are on the coast. If you start at Spokane or Boise, it's impossible to get any momentum because you have to spend everything just to establish a money train. Meanwhile, the opponent(s) will have tons of industries (all large) right on their doorstep. Very frustrating.

It's a shame Sid Mier allowed his reputation to be used to sell this game. I find it hard to believe he had anything to do with its development and premature release. If he did, then he's sold his soul for some quick cash.

scrapser wrote:Has anyone figured out how to make it possible to choose your AI opponent(s)?

I never tried, so I don't know.

scrapser wrote:I like playing the Northwest map because it most closely resembles RT.

The NW map is the one I most frequently play.

scrapser wrote:On that note, Jay Cooke and Jay Gould almost always produce bizarre and unplayable maps.... For example, Boise will have 3 industries at the start, none of which is a Newspaper....

That is irritating, but Jay Cooke and Jay Gould aren't responsible. It happens randomly even with all the AI opponents turned off.

scrapser wrote:It's a shame Sid Mier allowed his reputation to be used to sell this game. I find it hard to believe he had anything to do with its development and premature release. If he did, then he's sold his soul for some quick cash.

If you want some proof, have a look at this YouTube Video. Although I wish it were truer to the original, Railroads! is still a good game in its own right.

scrapser wrote:Has anyone figured out how to make it possible to choose your AI opponent(s)?

Yes, it is very easy to change in the XML, you replace the names of the given opponents with your favourite ones. However, you do need a proper XML editor to do that, and it would be nicer if one could change them directly in the game interface.

Forgive the question, I see that you have been visiting this board since early 2007, have you ever tried one of our user mods?

karsten wrote:Forgive the question, I see that you have been visiting this board since early 2007, have you ever tried one of our user mods?

Due to the instability of Railroads! under Windows Vista, I have been playing only the maps that came with the original game.

It sounds to me as if you might like to play this map by Narra. I would be interested to know if it runs stable under Vista.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. To answer the question...I have the mod that includes the Coast to Coast map and other mods, which also mods the original game (all trains that need it have a coal car). I was hoping the C2C map would work as that was something I always wanted to do, even with the original game but unfortunately it crashes once thing grow past a certain point.

I play this game daily, even with all the glitches and frustration. Sure wish it was a more popular genre so the company would have put more money into it. Oh well.

Thanks, karsten. I'll give it a try once I extract it. Zip files are easy--.rar files aren't.

Go to www.7-zip.org/ and use that...it's free and works with most, if not all, of the compression types.

karsten wrote:It sounds to me as if you might like to play this map by Narra. I would be interested to know if it runs stable under Vista.

It ran exactly as it should for quite some time. I thought the problem with Vista had been overcome. Then the game locked up and I heard the audio *boink* with the error message that there was a Runtime error. Nice map though.

snoopy55 wrote:Go to http://www.7-zip.org/ and use that...it's free and works with most, if not all, of the compression types.

Thanks, Snoopy. I already had it bookmarked but hadn't used it. I've been using WobZIP to unpack my .rar files. I've had good luck with them so far.

Well, because of the higher compression ratio, I will be doing more and more of the SAMs in 7z format. If your program can handle those, no problem.