Railway Empire

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.
Achievements
Required time: 125-150 hours
Difficulty (in my opinion): 5 out of 10
DLCs required for 100%?: 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!

Railway Empire. *Sigh* The memories this game brings me. If you haven't a resource management game before, this is a good one to train you for it. I didn't intend the pun but I'll just leave it there.

The base game takes you through the story of the first railroads of the United States. You'll learn how to set up trains and your grow your business while competing against AI rivals. (No Co-op sadly, which is a big upset to me.) To me, there are two ways to play this. 1. Just set up trains to complete the tasks before they are due and move on, or 2. Play the game in Free Mode and learn how to profit off the stock market. I know the second one sounds weird but, this games mechanics with the stock market are really impressive, and when managed right, you too can control whatever part of the USA you desire.

There isn't much on the negative side of things to say, other than the lack of a Multiplayer to me. I'd love to try and manage a railway against some friends but, I'm not against buying out AI. The DLC's are not that necessary to have. They do offer some unique features and more trains that will be familiar to any Thomas the Tank Engine fans, (yes I grew up watching Thomas, don't judge,) but other than that, they are just new regions with their own resources. You don't need to buy them to have a good time.

My sole opinion, this game is absolutely worth it to play, but it will take several hours of your day playing so, do think about saving the game session when you can.

NOTE TO SELF:
Most important thing is, to hit "Edit" when planning the stops, so you can choose the platforms for every train!
In the beginning I was going crazy, because just clciking on the city leads to every train wanting to use platform 1, and all trains will start on the same rail and block each other, despite freely available double-track! It drove me nuts. - Also: unless you want "President" / 30 Points / 100% rating on the win-screen during the campaign, I strongly advise to go with "Manual Pause": you wont get 100% / 30 Points, but the game only pausing in some Menus / game windows, but not in others drove me crazy.
I played the first and second Mission without Pause, and without proper knowledge about platforms, and I almost rage quit the game right there. While it was nice getting full points, it felt immensly stressful to go from deep thinking to immediate stress back and forth the whole time.
Another note; hit F1 for ingame help: if you wonder e.g. which cargo counts as "foodstuffs" and thus gets the bonus from refigerated cars - the cargo categories are under "Banking activities" / "Stock Market", for whatever reason. (There are 35 possible different types of cargo in four groups.)
After I learned how to play, I found it very addictive. Better than Sid Meier's Railroads tbh, bc it snowballs less drastically, and the maps are larger, thus more to scale. (Sid Meier's Railroads is only ever a challenge on the highest difficulty setting., and then the window when you start buying the AI shares can be quite narrow).
I bought Railroad Empire on sale for 30€ with all DLCs, which will probably keep me occupied for the next week. - It is an absolutely worthy successor to the Railroad Tycoon series / genre.
While the original Railroad Tycoon and RRT 3 felt more serious and rewarding, they are 20 years out of date, and quite ugly and hard to get running on a new PC. (Also: Been there, done that.)
P.S.: After you "merge"=take over your opponents, you also inherit their staff: I tended to liquidate their whole operation, so I could focus better on the last remaining mission goals, but that left me with 50 employees, that I had to find new trains for, when I was ultimately in the last steps of the mission. Even firing 30 of them would have been tiring. - One has three different options; keep everything, keep only the stations and tracks, or liquidate everything. Maybe keeping everything is les hazle. Also probably worth inspecting, what the AI did, while I am still learning?

Loving this game in 2024; wishing I had tried it sooner. To me it seems like a spiritual successor to Railroad Tycoon 3 -- an economy simulator as well as a computerized model train set. It's challenging to figure out the best train routes, it's enjoyable to lay the track and place buildings, and it's fun to watch the trains run and the cities grow.

This is a magnificent resource management game. Clever historical tasks and settings add depth and context. Highly recommended, but...

Warning to new players - especially to those crossing over from Railroad Tycoon who provide so many of the negative comments! There is a learning curve for switch placement and station platform management. This time investment is required to play, and, once mastered, these elements are why RE is such a deeply satisfying experience.

A fun campaign, but today after the 25 hour mark i just felt like I had had enough. Making train routes is kinda fun, but once you start making a lot of money, its hard to spend the money faster than you make it, and its just a race to spend the cash laying track faster than you earn it. The game play is sorta similiar connecting each new town, buying a new business, connecting that in, rinse/repeat x100.
Big fan of transport Tycoon Delux and Anno games, but 26.8 hours of this, is enough for me.

It's a 'strategy' game. You have to plan where you'll lay track as some direct routes can be more expensive (like hills and tunnels) than a more circuitous route. If you plan on lot of traffic then double track with frequent signals, otherwise single track is cheaper with passing tracks. I'm ex railway so I appreciate the realistic signalling and train dynamics for different types.
This is a game I enjoy just relaxing with.